OU on the BBC: What The Ancients Did For Us - The Mesopotamians

I'd get some strangers on the internet to help you out with that, pal.

The mesopotamus is the most dangerous animal in the ancient world, much more murderous than the helvelephants. Its main source of food was the troytoise, although it would have trouble getting the meat from the troytoise's wooden-like shell.

Or you could try this:
http://www.open2.net/whattheancients/mesopotamians.html

do you want to tell us about it?

Thanks Dan,

I think the importance of this kind of codification can not be overplayed. In Greek and Roman society law givers are awarded the very highest accolades and the Greek law maker Dracon is remembered in our own language (Draconian). Now as this survival implies we may not always like laws or the people who make or enforce them. However, while insurance underwrites the lifestyle and liberties we enjoy, for all its being almost universally despised, so law is the foundation upon which they were created. The writing down of laws, the setting in stone so to speak, really signifies the birth of a civilisation, the expectation that a society is a true corporation, with beliefs and insitutions that will, or should, last beyond living memory, that things must be done for posterity and for the greater good. Lets face it, we all feel safer in houses bult by people whose lives, or rather their livelihoods, today, depended upon the strength of their construction.

Hi Space monkey, (bear with me here)

Perhaps someone will come in with a more complete answer, but as I understand it the problem is that creating a wheel in one piece, by taking a slice from a tree trunk, for example, did not result in a sufficiently strong wheel. Such slices were doubtless used in pottery wheels, and whole logs may have been used as rollers in certain circumstances, but although a tree trunk can withstand a lot of forces - it must support a great wheight of branch and foliage and makes an excellent mast, for example - a cross section cannot withstand compression such as a load bearing wheel must withstand. Some method is needed in whereby the strength that wood possess when load is exerted along the grain. The three part wheel was a partial solution to this problem, but not a whole one as it was not until spokes came along that this problem was entirely resolved.

of course there were what looks like one piece wheels and this illustration demonstrates the problems of weight and uneven wear and splitting (although its very great age probably aggravates this impression:

www.glenbow.org/media/bog/ancientwheel.htm

One reason why wheels may have been made in three rather than two parts is that this arrangement means that damage at any point in the circumference, especially at those points where the compressive force is exerted perpendicular to the grain (ie against the two hemispherical sections of wood)can be repaired by replacing relatively small, easy to manufacture components. Each half of a two part wheel would be more difficult to make and would bear forces against as well as along the grain. More than three components would create two many points of weakness into the design and would make it a compliocated piece of equipment.
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