A Day and A Life of a Bronze Age Trader

A Day and a Life of A Bronze Age Trader
(Perspective of a little girl in Sumer)

Hello my name is Lila, I am 11 years old and I live in the city of Bulaba in Sumer. I am not very rich but I still have quite a nice life. My mother is a merchant trader, she sells some of the most wonderful things! She makes beautiful pottery, jewelry, and also sells tools that my father makes. My father is a goldsmith, he makes bronze, he uses it to make tools, weapons it so cool! My father told me that a long time ago we use to use stone but now we have found bronze which is better because its stronger and longer lasting. And the last member of my family is my brother Aran, he goes to school and learns how to write! Oneday he wants to become a scribe. Isn't that so cool! I wish I could go to school but girls are not allowed to. Our city has a ruler King Hiragua, he seems like a nice man but really I have no clue. My family and I are not the poorest people, in my opinion I guess we are higher than other people in society. Farmers are below us, they susally live out in the villages near by. Even though they are a low class they are still important becasue they produce all the crops for us to eat and make food out of. But below them is servants probably some of the servants serve the king! But slaves are the lowest people, sometimes I see them they look like they are not really having a good time. Well any way when I am older I want to be a potter and jewerly maker like my mother, I guess she is sort of my role model. I love her, i love all my family. Living in the city of Bulaba is lots of fun!

The Begining of Civilization

The Beginnings of Civilization

How did civilization start? How did we get from settling and farming to these big huge cities?Farming was very hard work, but people were able to produce there own food and have a good supply for almost all year-round. So this means people did not have to travel from place to place because they had enough food to last for a long time. When you have a big supply of food it is called surplus. If there is lots of food surplus then that means the population will grow. If you had only a hunting a gathering life you could not have many children because you cannot take care of them all if you can only get so much in a day. But if you have a food surplus you could have have quite a few children and you could feed them all and still have lots of food left. 10,000 years ago there was about a population of 5 million because people were still only hunters and gatherers. But then 7,000 years ago when people started to settle and farm the population went up to 20,000 million. As the population increased settlements grew into towns, and because of food surplus people did not have to spend all there time producing food, they could do other things for example some people became artisans, and made baskets, leather goods, tools, pottery etc. Cities were more likely to develop in places with rich soil and good supply of food. You would also need a good supply of watter and materials to build shelters. Most cities were built near rivers, for example the Huang river in China. Cities were differnt from farming, they were much bigger and had large public building. Buildings for woreship, storing food, and selling goods. If you were working in a village you were usually a farmer but working in a city you had a wide variety of occupations.

As the populations of cities grew government fored, they provided services and order in society. The New Stone Age grew into societies of civilization. They had leaders, ad workers for differnt jobs. In 6600 B.C. in Europe and Asia they discovered bronze. This was useful because it was harder than copper, and longer lasting. They used it for weapons, tools etc. Traders took valuable items like pottery, tools, weapons, baskets, and spices and traded them with other places. For example in China they went along the silk road to trade things like silk, jade,and pottery with other countries in Europe. In 3500B.C. they invented the wheel and axle and this made it easier because they could carry more things. Social classes is a group of people having similar backround, incomes, and ways of living. In most large cities the king is the most powerful person. Under the kind you have the next class the priests for the city's religion and nobles who are government officials. The third class is artisans, small traders, and merchants. After you have farmers and workers, and the lowest are slaves who are owned by other people. This is how civilization started.