:See Also: [[Comparison of Hammurabi, Hittite, and Assyrian Codes]]
Following the flood, humanity was still one united body, living in one place, the area now known as Mesopotamia or Iraq, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow through a fertile plain. Here the people had settled and given birth to children. Their state of security was so great that they began to consider themselves the masters of all creation, ready to challenge G-d Himself for supremacy. They saw their own unity as the key to this, and they did not commit the sins of banditry and sexual infidelity (bestiality) for which the previous generation had been condemned. They were kind and loving to one another, but they grew arrogant as a group and decided to build a high tower, the Tower of Babel(Heaven's Gate, Sumerian: Nun.Ki), from which to gain an access to heaven.
This was a form of idolatry (violation of the Covenant of Noah), and their punishment from the heavenly court was that their languages should be confused. They would no longer understand each other as before. This was the origin of separate languages as we now have them; seventy basic tongues were established, from which all of today's languages descended. This was also the number of the actual nations of the non-Jewish world before they were subdivided and intermingled.
