Dr. Evil and the Civilization Destroyer

This Webquest is designed to guide grade 7 students through learning about the inventions created in Ancient Mesopotamia.

Introduction:

You are part of a large team of evil scientists who have created a "Civilization Destroyer Machine" that has the potential to wipe out a entire civilization in the past or present. You are planning to use it to scare world powers and take over the world. Your group is thinking of going back in time and wiping out Mesopotamia to make sure that it works.

Task:

Somewhere in your evil mind you know that Mesopotamia was important in making the world what it is today.

Your task is to research the inventions that were created by the early Mesopotamians and create a poster to show your team why it is important not to destroy Mesopotamia.

Read the process to find out exactly what you must do.

Process:

1. Look at the web sites that are listed in the Resources section and make a list of the inventions that were created in Mesopotamia.

2. Pick one of the inventions that will be your focus. Research this invention and its creation using the web sites in the Resources section. You must answer the following questions about it:

What is it?
How was it used?
Why was it invented?
Draw a sketch of it or something to do with it(rough).
How did this invention change the world today? (Would our world today be different without it?)
How did this invention make life easier for the Mesopotamians?

3. Create a poster to advertise this invention and on the poster present all of the research that you have collected.

Resources:

List of all Inventions

School	Writing	More about Laws
Sumerians	Laws	Math Overview
The Wheel	City	Cities
Math	Warfare	Babylon Numbers
Writing	Calendar/Astronomy	Irrigation
More good links	More Irrigation	Hotlist of links

Also check out the books in the library!

Don't forget to look in your textbook.

Evaluation:

You will be required to hand in:

The list of all inventions created in Mesopotamia
Your rough notes
Your poster (that is finished to perfection and shows that you put a lot of effort into it)

Click here to look a the marking criteria for this project.

Conclusion:

Congratulations! You manage to convince your team not to eliminate Mesopotamia. Instead they decided to go back in time and destroy a small civilization in Ancient South Africa and immediately three quarters of the American basketball players vanished!