Architecture

Today, I will be writing about Ancient Mesopotamia. Rather than writing about everything, I will be focusing on architecture. Now, architecture was quite important. The impact and ideas inspired some of the greatest architecture today. A quick example is the pyramids in Eygpt. They took the shape of ziggurats that were massive temples. Anyway, I will explain more about architecture in ancient Mesopotamia. __**Houses**__ Houses were quite vital for survival. It offered shelter, protection against storms and snakes or scoprpians. The houses in ancient mesopotamia were clustered around the ziggurats, temples for the Mesopotamian believers. Now, I will take you on a tour around an average house in Mesopotamia. Houses in ancient Mesopotamia would usually consist of three floors and a roof. On the first floor, there would be the front entrance. When guests enter, they would find a large courtyard. The courtyard was a significant to the people mainly because it would hold the animals they would raise. The courtyard would hold animals such as cows, pigs, goats, chickens etc. That was what they would depend on for their survival. It would provide them milk, meat and eggs. Children also played in the courtyard. So that was the first level. Now, the second and third level usually contains bedrooms and living space. Now moving up to the roof, you would find a nice big flat area used for extra living space. They would use the roof mainly for cooking so that there won't be so many fumes inside the house. They may also sleep on the roof at night which was cooler than their stuffy bedrooms. Sometimes, the roofs would have grape abores allowing more privacy. If the people wanted more privacy, they would also use four walls, but only wealthier people could usually afford that. That also brings us to the other topic about walls in Mesopotamia. They would be made up of several layers of sun dried mud bricks. Adding the extra layers would make the house or building much stronger. It also offered protection against elemtents such as rain, wind etc. They were also limited with stone and wood, so using sun dried mud bricks were very useful. To build architecture in Mesopotamia, it had to be built to match with the environment. If it was built near the desert, then the achitecture must have been made with strong walls which would protect them from sandstorms (but they already did). First of all, the environment in ancient Mesopotamia was extremely hot, considering its location. Also, scorpians and snakes could crawl through the roof or windows which was real dangerous. Last of all, there always be floods in the Euphrates and Tigris river during the months of March and June. The architects built thick walls as I mentioned earlier. The thick walls offered great protection, without them, the Mesopotamian shops, ziggurats and houses may not have survived.
 * __How architecture was built according environment__**



The Mesopotamians built wonderful architectural buildings but what inspired them to make such beautiful buildings? Well the Mesopotamians conquered many cities which inspired them to make buildings based on the conquered cities. That meant more possibilities for temples, houses, shops, and kingdoms. They were also inspired by other cultures to use new technology for building. Some were ramps, pulleys, plows etc. They were then able to build bigger and taller structures. Without them, we may not have some of the greatest architecture in the world.
 * __Inspiration for architecture__**

Ever since architecture was created, it had a serious impact to the people. It supported religion as its structures were created such as ziggurats (focal point of their worship and religious beliefs). The ziggurats encouraged people into believing the Mesopotamian gods. Once the orginization of religion began, more believers came to the ziggurats to worship.The ziggurats may have even encouraged some of the biggest religions today.
 * __Impact of Mesopotamian architecture__**

Mesopotamian architecture is very amazing. The ideas and buildings had many features that we wouldn't regularly have today. For example, the bricks they created is now a very popular building material. Such a small thing can become a wonderful matrerial. It also probably inspired people to build with the strongest and best materials today. The use of their environment was great because they took advantage of what they had. That is an example of how little material they need inorder to make big things. The Mesopotamians were very inspiring. We are now able to design and build better architecture. If it wasn't for them, we may not have houses or apartments today. We'll probably be all living in tents or caves but definately not houses. But thankfully, the Mesopotamians created architecture so we don't have to live in caves or tents. It was all because of the Mesopotamians. Without them, we may not be able to live like how we're living right now. It just shows how effective their architecture was to us. Also, the way they designed architecture was very important. Without the idea of roofs and windows, we may live differently. Or prehaps if they never made walls, then we would live differently for sure. Even the colours they used would have changed things. If they didn't invent paint or colours to customize our walls, we would all have the same colour walls which will just take the life out of the city.
 * __Critical thinking__**

__**Conclusion**__ After doing this project, I realized how much I learnt by just researching. I think this was a great opportunity to research and learn about Mesopotamia independantly. I wouldn't say this was the greatest project ever did but I did really enjoy doing it. A lot of things I found was very shocking because i didn't know anything about Mesopotamia before. This I have to give thanks to Ms. Angel. Without her, I probably wouldn't have gotten a chance to experience this wiki project. I hope to do more wiki projects!

Websites: Houses: [] Environment [] Effects of architecture []
 * Bibliography**

Images: House []

ziggurat []

desert [] war [] Books: Mesopotamia-invention of city Gwendolyn Leick