Ancient Mesopotamia
.... Looking at today’s culture, we have many beautiful gardens in B.C. which people from all over the world come to view. Minter Gardens and Buschart Gardens are highly renowned and can be compared to the Hanging Gardens as they are gorgeously landscaped and were created for people to experience. When people didn’t have time for leisure, works that would have taken years to create could not have been created; as society began to develop, people created works of art and passed these talents down into later generations to enjoy and understand. Cuneiform is the earliest record of writing that exists today; it is over five thousand years old and first originated as pictograms. Pictograms were used to record information about taxes and crops, but after time, the pictures developed into script writing. Script was used to record anything from daily events, to astronomy. Eventually script that was important was baked into clay tablets so that it could last for longer periods of time. Narrative poems, or epics were used to tell stories while preserving legends of disasters, their heroes, or to teach religion. Evidence of epics can be seen, still coming through the ages. Some examples of epics are: the Epic of Beowulf in the Anglo-Saxon times, and Shakespeare’s writing which often contrasted good versus evil while teaching a lesson. Today, our world writes down all sorts of information and when it is important enough, it is published in books, on the internet, or preserved in texts. Without the influence of writing from societies way back when, documents of historical breakthroughs and important points could not be recorded. Even though the Mesopotamian society flourished so long ago, there is written record of medical practices, much like today. They have record of prescriptions, along with diagnostic treatise which give explanations covering gynecology, pediatrics and convulsive disorders. There are even explanations of diseases such as neurology, fevers, and worms which relate to examples of today. Treatment can even be compared and for some treatments is almost the same as modern day treatments, (such as excessive bleeding is an example of this). There were two different types of doctors, an ashipu, or ‘witch doctor,’ or an asu who was frequently referred to as a ‘physician.’ The asu can be compared to emergency room doctors today. If someone had a wound, the asu would apply a washing, could bandage it up and even made plasters. These ancient physicians would have developed through time and become savvier in their areas of expertise, leading up to modern day doctors who study and work through many of the same medical problems. The large difference between the Mesopotamian physicians and today’s doctors is that we have advanced technology today and back then, they would have had to strictly rely upon opinion, examination and the history of the problems. The technology may be very different, but the influence from the Mesopotamian society is evident. Mesopotamia was not a rich region in terms of natural resources. In order to acquire the resources that were needed to live, people needed to trade with neighbouring countries. Just as today, not all countries have the ability to be self sufficient, so they must trade goods to gain what is needed for survival. In Mesopotamian times, grain, oils and textil...