Mesopotamians believed that the world was a flat disc, surrounded by a huge, holed space, and above that, heaven.

The Mesopotamians believed that the soul, or some part of it, moves out from the body of the sleeping person and actually visits the places and persons the dreamer sees in his sleep.

This is largely because Berossus wrote that the Mesopotamians believed the world to last " twelve times twelve sars "; with a sar being 3, 600 years, this would indicate that at least some of the Mesopotamians believed that the Earth would only last 518, 400 years.

The ancient Mesopotamians believed in an afterlife that was a land below our world.

The pagan Mesopotamians venerated images of their gods, which it was believed actually held the essence or personality of the deity that they represented ; this is evident from the poem How Erra Wrecked the World, in which Erra deceived the god Marduk into leaving his cult statue.

The Mesopotamians believed that these pyramid temples connected heaven and earth.

The ancient Mesopotamians believed that history repeated itself after a massive cycle of many years.

In approximately 8000 BC, the Mesopotamians began using clay tokens to count their agricultural and manufactured goods.

* Sargon, left-handed guitarist of the fictional band The Mesopotamians from the They Might Be Giants song on their 2007 album The Else

This has prompted one scholar to make the claim that the Mesopotamians ' " entire existence was infused by their religiosity, just about everything they have passed on to us can be used as a source of knowledge about their religion.

The Mesopotamians used sun-dried bricks in their city construction ; typically these bricks were flat on the plano-convex mudbricks.

For instance, the New Year ceremonies among the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, and other Near Eastern peoples re-enacted their cosmogonic myths.

There has been evidence of early upper class Egyptian and Mesopotamians having indoor shower rooms where servants would bathe them in the privacy of their own homes.

Although the beliefs described above were held in common among Mesopotamians, there were also regional variations.

Styli were first used by the ancient Mesopotamians in order to write in cuneiform, Egyptians ( Middle Kingdom ), and the Minoans of Crete ( Linear A and Cretan Hieroglyphic ) made styli in various materials: reeds that grew on the sides of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and in marshes and down to Egypt where the Egyptians used styli from sliced reeds with sharp points ; bone and metal styli were also used.

Fermented cereal flour-generally millet-drinks have been produced by native Anatolians and Mesopotamians since the 9th or 8th millennia BC and Xenophon mentioned in the 4th century BC how the locals preserved and cooled the preparations in earthen pots that were buried.

This served the Mesopotamians well for many years, but were eventually outclassed by slingers and archers.

As both Mesopotamians and Egyptians began to regard writing as an indicator of one's privilege / rung in societal hierarchy, instructors of the times were given rein to develop drilling ( reading / identification, and so on ) and memorisation techniques still in operation in modern language instruction.

They are ethnically Assyrian, sometimes known as Chaldo-Assyrian, indigenous people of Iraq and descended from the ancient Mesopotamians / Assyrians.

The Israel of the Persian period included descendants of the inhabitants of the old kingdom of Judah, returnees from the Babylonian exile community, Mesopotamians who had joined them or had been exiled themselves to Samaria at a far earlier period, Samaritans and others.

On February 12, 2009, They Might Be Giants performed the song " The Mesopotamians " from the album on Late Night with Conan O ' Brien.

From this time, Mesopotamian sources concerning Elam become more frequent, since the Mesopotamians had developed an interest in resources ( such as wood, stone, and metal ) from the Iranian plateau, and military expeditions to the area became more common.

During the first part of the rule of the Simashki dynasty, Elam was under intermittent attack from Mesopotamians and Gutians, alternating with periods of peace and diplomatic approaches.

These differ from the sandals worn by the Mesopotamians, with the strap between the third and fourth toes.

Thus far the only people who have been attested with a high level of genetic, historical, linguistic and cultural research to be the descendants of the ancient Mesopotamians are the Assyrian Christians of Iraq and its surrounding areas in north west Iran, north east Syria and south eastern Turkey.

Optics began with the development of lenses by the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians.

Professor Sarah Iles Johnston argues that ancient civilizations, such as the ancient Mesopotamians, Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians held polytheistic beliefs that may have enabled them to deal with the concept of theodicy differently.

The ancient Greek historian Herodotus was the first to state that the ancient Mesopotamians practised temple prostitution:

Bloodletting is one of the oldest medical practices, having been practiced among ancient peoples including the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Mayans, and the Aztecs.

These religions are mainly based in the west, the United States and Europe, the surviving remnants of the actual Mesopotamians have shown no interest in these practices, preferring to follow various ancient Eastern Rite Christian denominations.

The classicist G. S. Kirk criticizes Eliade's insistence that Australian Aborigines and ancient Mesopotamians had concepts of " being ", " non-being ", " real ", and " becoming ", although they lacked words for them.

The Greek historian Herodotus noted that ancient Mesopotamians used barrels made of palm wood to transport wine along the Euphrates.

Canopus was known to the ancient Mesopotamians and given the name NUN-ki and represented the city of Eridu in the Three Stars Each Babylonian star catalogues and later MUL. APIN around 1100 BC.

Decimalised currencies show an advantage in accounting, because amounts are written down and calculated using the decimal numeral system ( but when another numeral system is used, such as the vigesimal system that was common among ancient Mesoamerican civilizations or the sexagesimal system used by the ancient Mesopotamians, this advantage disappears ).

The region is the traditional homeland of the indigenous Assyrians, Aramaic speaking Christian descendants of the ancient Mesopotamians.

Optics began with the development of lenses by the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians, followed by theories on light and vision developed by ancient Greek and Indian philosophers, and the development of geometrical optics in the Greco-Roman world.

Modern engineering as it is understood today took form during the scientific revolution, though much of the mathematics and science was built on the work of the Greeks, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Chinese, Indians and Muslims.

Further evidence shows the Mesopotamians and Ancient Egyptians had vine plantations and winemaking skills.

Among the Mesopotamians, Hittites, Phoenicians and Egyptians, interest was legal and often fixed by the state.

There are also reports of inductive lecanomany being used by the Mesopotamians, though they sometimes substituted flour for oil.

The Mesopotamians regarded ' the craft of building ' as a divine gift taught to men by the gods as listed in me 28.

From this belief, the Mesopotamians deemed the liver of special sheep the means to discover the will of the gods.