Her name and writings provide evidence for an individual woman's role in religious, political, and literary life in the third millennium BC.

Her position as a priestess shows that women generally controlled Mesopotamian political institutions.

Her writings demonstrate that writing was used exclusively for religious purposes.

She was responsible for introducing cuneiform writing to Mesopotamia.

It allows them to trace the development of one society over thousands of

years.

It allows them to compare societies that existed at roughly the same

time and identify similarities and differences in their development.

It assumes that societies develop in exactly the same sequence.

It focuses exclusively

on environmental change.

Southern Mesopotamia

The Indus Valley

Upper Mesopotamia

The Levant

The development of Roman cities

The decline of all Mesopotamian cities

The spread of Egyptian pyramids into Mesopotamia

The expansion and influence of Uruk culture and urban developments

Humans abandoned permanent settlements

Humans became completely independent of their environment.

Humans stopped modifying their surroundings.

Humans adapted their ways of living to new environments and food sources.

It eliminated the need for farming.

It provided an ecosystem for large sea water mammals

It provided fertile land for agriculture.

It prevented all foreign contact

Persian Gulf and Euphrates

Tigris and Euphrates

Indus and Tigris

Danube and Nile

People stopped living in communities.

People became more dependent on domesticated plants and animals.

 People returned to a fully nomadic lifestyle.

People stopped using tools.

The construction of modern buildings

The study of prehistoric animals only

How empires developed and affected people and societies

The history of European art

People increasingly lived in permanent communities.

Human populations became smaller everywhere.

People stopped living in groups.

Hunting completely disappeared immediately.