Geographic: Southern Mesopotamia is made up of marshy areas and wide, flat, barren plains. Cities developed along the rivers which flow through the region. Early settlers had to irrigate the land along the banks of the rivers in order for their crops to grow. Northern Mesopotamia is made up of hills and plains. The land is quite fertile due to seasonal rains, and the rivers and streams flowing from the mountains. Early settlers farmed the land and used timber, metals and stone from the mountains nearby.

Mesopotamian Languages. The principal languages of ancient Mesopotamia were Sumerian, Akkadian Amorite, and - later - Aramaic. writing"cuneiform" script, deciphered by Henry Rawlinson and other scholars in the 1850s. Government: Mesopotamia had a king for each city rather than just one ruler for the entire civilization for example the city of Babylon was ruled by king hammurabi Religion The cultures of Mesopotamia had a polytheistic belief system, which means that the people believed in multiple gods instead of just one. They also believed in demons created by the gods, which could be good or evil. The people of Mesopotamia worshiped these other worldly beings to keep the beings happy, because if one of these powerful beings was angered then the people of Mesopotamia would, in some way, be punished for that unhappiness. They believed that when something bad happened, whether a natural disaster or not, it was because the correlating god was angry at them, so they did their best to keep the gods happy.