How it works
At first everyone on earth spoke the same language. The people settled on a wide, flat plain in the land of Shinar, between two big rivers.
They made bricks of river mud, baked them hard in the fire and joined them with sticky tar. They planned a city and a tower that reached the sky, and wanted to make a great name for themselves.
The Bible says God came down to see the tower and mixed up their language. The builders could no longer understand each other, so they stopped.
The people spread out over the earth, some north, some south, some east and some west. The place was named Babel, which means mixed up.