Chapter Notes

EARLY SOCIETIES

This section explores the very beginnings of human existence, starting from millions of years ago. The story of humanity is a long one, beginning with our earliest ancestors in Africa and tracing their development through the study of bones and stone tools. A major turning point in this story was the shift from a nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle to settled agricultural life, which began around 10,000 years ago.

This transition led to incredible changes:

• Settled Life: Growing crops required people to stay in one place, leading to the establishment of permanent villages.
• Domestication: People learned to grow specific plants like wheat, barley, millet, and rice. They also domesticated animals like sheep, goats, cattle, and donkeys.
• New Technologies: To support this new way of life, people developed pottery for storage and cooking, polished stone tools like axes and hoes for farming, and eventually began using metals like copper and tin.
• Growth of Trade: As communities grew, so did trade. People exchanged goods, ideas, and materials like wood, stone, and metals over long distances.

These developments paved the way for the growth of the first villages, towns, and eventually, the first cities. This transformation was so profound that some scholars call it a revolution.

Writing and City Life

The world's first cities emerged in Mesopotamia, the land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, which is now modern-day Iraq. Mesopotamian civilisation is famous for its prosperous cities, rich literature, and advanced knowledge of mathematics and astronomy.

A Brief History of the Land

• The name Mesopotamia comes from the Greek words mesos (middle) and potamos (river).
• The urbanised south was initially called Sumer and Akkad.
• After 2000 BCE, when Babylon became a major city, the region was known as Babylonia.
• From about 1100 BCE, the Assyrians established a kingdom in the north, and the region became known as Assyria.

Languages of Mesopotamia

1. Sumerian: The first known language spoken in the land.
2. Akkadian: Gradually replaced Sumerian around 2400 BCE. It was spoken for centuries, until the time of Alexander the Great (336-323 BCE).
3. Aramaic: Began to appear from 1400 BCE and became widely spoken after 1000 BCE. It is similar to Hebrew and is still spoken in some parts of Iraq today.

European Interest in Mesopotamia

Europeans were fascinated by Mesopotamia largely because of its connection to the Bible. The Old Testament mentions "Shimar" (meaning Sumer) as a land of brick-built cities. Early archaeologists in the 19th century hoped to prove that the stories in the Old Testament, such as the great flood, were literally true.

Mesopotamia and its Geography

Iraq has a diverse landscape that supported the growth of civilisation in different ways.

• North-east: Green plains and tree-covered mountain ranges with enough rainfall to support agriculture, which began here between 7000 and 6000 BCE.
• North: A stretch of upland called a steppe, where animal herding was a better livelihood than farming.
• East: Tributaries of the Tigris river provided communication routes into the mountains of Iran.
• South: A desert, which is surprisingly where the first cities and writing emerged.

How could a desert support cities? The Euphrates and Tigris rivers, rising in the northern mountains, carry nutrient-rich silt. When the rivers flood, they deposit this fertile silt onto the land. The river water was channelled into irrigation canals, making the agriculture of southern Mesopotamia the most productive of all ancient systems. Besides crops, the region had abundant fish, and date palms provided fruit.

The Significance of Urbanism

Cities are more than just places with large populations. True urbanism happens when an economy develops beyond simple food production to include trade, manufacturing, and services.

Key features of urban life include:

• Economic Interdependence: City dwellers are not self-sufficient. They rely on each other for various goods and services.
• Division of Labour: People specialize in different jobs. A stone seal carver, for example, needs a bronze tool maker for his tools and a trader to bring him coloured stones. He doesn't make or find these things himself.
• Social Organisation: A system is needed to manage the flow of goods. Trade and storage must be organized, food supplies from villages must be distributed, and different activities must be coordinated. This often requires a leadership structure where some people give commands and others obey.
• Record Keeping: Urban economies with complex transactions often require written records.

Movement of Goods into Cities

While Mesopotamia was rich in food, it was poor in mineral resources. The south lacked stone for tools, good wood for carts and boats, and metals for tools and ornaments.

To get these materials, Mesopotamians traded their abundant agricultural products and textiles with people from Turkey, Iran, and regions across the Gulf. These areas had the mineral resources Mesopotamia lacked. This long-distance trade required:

• Social Organisation: Someone had to equip and direct the foreign expeditions. This was initiated by the people of southern Mesopotamia.
• Efficient Transport: The cheapest and most viable mode of transport was over water. River boats and barges could carry large amounts of grain and other goods using the river's current. Land transport using animals was much more expensive, as the animals needed to be fed.

The Development of Writing

Writing is a form of verbal communication where spoken sounds are represented by visible signs.

• The first Mesopotamian tablets were written around 3200 BCE. They were not great works of literature but simple lists of goods like oxen, fish, and bread loaves that were brought into or distributed from the temples in the city of Uruk.
• These early tablets used picture-like signs and numbers.
• Writing emerged because city life involved complex transactions that occurred at different times and involved many people and goods. Society needed a way to keep accurate records.

Clay Tablets and Cuneiform

Mesopotamians wrote on tablets of clay. A scribe would shape a piece of wet clay and use the sharp end of a reed to press wedge-shaped signs into the moist surface.

• This wedge-shaped script is called cuneiform (from the Latin words cuneus, meaning ‘wedge’, and forma, meaning ‘shape’).
• Once the clay tablet dried in the sun, it became hard and durable, almost like pottery.
• Because a new tablet was needed for every transaction, hundreds of thousands of these tablets have been found at Mesopotamian sites, giving us a wealth of information about their society.

By 2600 BCE, the script was fully cuneiform and the language was Sumerian. Writing was now used for much more than record keeping, including making dictionaries, validating land transfers, and recording the deeds of kings.

The System of Writing

The cuneiform script was complex and difficult to master.

• Each sign did not represent a single letter (like 'a' or 'b') but a syllable (like '-put-', '-la-', or '-in-').
• A scribe had to learn hundreds of signs.
• Writing was a highly skilled craft that required dexterity to write on a wet tablet before it dried.

Literacy

Because the writing system was so complex, very few Mesopotamians could read and write. Literacy was not widespread. If a king could read, he would boast about it in his inscriptions. Most communication was still verbal; a letter sent to a king would have to be read aloud to him by a scribe.

The Uses of Writing

A long Sumerian epic poem about Enmerkar, one of the earliest rulers of Uruk, illustrates the connection between city life, trade, and writing.

• Enmerkar wanted precious materials like lapis lazuli to beautify a temple and sent a messenger to the distant land of Aratta.
• The messenger made many long journeys, but the chief of Aratta would not give up the goods.
• Eventually, the messenger became exhausted and mixed up the long oral messages.
• To solve this, Enmerkar took a piece of clay and wrote the words down—the first time this had ever been done, according to the poem.
• When the ruler of Aratta saw the tablet, he was stunned. The "spoken words were nails," meaning they were sharp, clear, and permanent.

This story shows that Mesopotamians saw writing as a tool created by kingship to organize trade and as a sign of the superiority of their urban culture.

Urbanisation in Southern Mesopotamia: Temples and Kings

The earliest cities emerged from settlements that developed around 5000 BCE. These cities were of different types, but many grew around temples.

The Role of Temples

• Early settlers built and rebuilt temples at specific spots. The earliest was a small shrine of unbaked brick.
• Temples were considered the houses of gods, such as the Moon God of Ur. They grew larger over time, with rooms around open courtyards.
• The god was the focus of worship and the theoretical owner of the community's fields, fisheries, and herds.
• Temples became major urban institutions, organizing production (like oil pressing and weaving), employing merchants, and keeping written records of goods.

The Rise of Kings

Agriculture in Mesopotamia faced many hazards, like floods and droughts. People also fought over land and water.

• In times of continuous warfare, successful war chiefs emerged. They would distribute loot to their followers and take prisoners as servants.
• Over time, these victorious chiefs began to offer precious goods to the gods, beautifying the temples.
• They organized the community to fetch valuable materials and managed the temple's wealth. This gave them high status and the authority to command people.
• Leaders encouraged villagers to settle near them for protection and to quickly assemble an army.

The city of Uruk is a prime example. Around 3000 BCE, it grew to an enormous size of 250 hectares as dozens of smaller villages were abandoned. People moved into the city for safety, and Uruk was protected by a defensive wall from a very early date. Rulers put war captives and local people to work on temples and other projects, paying them with rations.

The Seal - An Urban Artefact

In Mesopotamia, people used cylindrical stone seals. These were small cylinders, pierced down the middle, that could be rolled over wet clay to create a continuous picture.

• They were carved by skilled craftsmen and often included writing, like the owner's name and official position.
• A seal was used to secure goods. It could be rolled over the clay covering the knot on a package, acting like a security tag.
• When rolled on a clay tablet, it served as a signature, authenticating the document.

Life in the City

Excavations at the city of Ur give us a glimpse into the lives of ordinary people around 1930s.

Social Structure

• A small ruling elite controlled most of the wealth, a fact made clear by the treasures buried with kings and queens.
• The nuclear family (a man, his wife, and children) was the norm. The father was the head of the family.
• Sons inherited property from their father.

City Layout and Houses

• Ur had narrow, winding streets, which means wheeled carts could not have reached many houses. Goods like grain and firewood likely arrived on donkey-back.
• The irregular shape of house plots suggests there was no town planning.
• There were no street drains. Instead, house roofs sloped inwards, and rainwater was channelled into sumps (covered basins) in the inner courtyards.
• People swept their household refuse into the streets. Over time, this raised the street levels, and house thresholds had to be raised to prevent mud from flowing inside.
• Light entered rooms from doorways opening into courtyards, not from windows, which provided privacy.

A Trading Town in a Pastoral Zone

After 2000 BCE, the royal capital of Mari flourished. Unlike the cities in the agricultural south, Mari was located much further upstream on the Euphrates in a region dominated by pastoralism (herding sheep and goats).

Farmers and Herders

• Herders and farmers often coexisted and exchanged goods. Herders provided young animals, cheese, and leather in return for grain and tools from farmers.
• However, conflict could also arise. A shepherd might lead his flock across a sown field, ruining the crop, or herders might raid agricultural villages.

Nomadic communities from the western desert often moved into the prosperous agricultural lands. Some came as herders or hired soldiers, and a few gained enough power to establish their own rule. The kings of Mari were Amorites, a pastoralist group. They respected Mesopotamian gods but also built a temple to Dagan, the god of the steppe.

Mari as a Trade Hub

Mari's prosperity came from its strategic location for trade.

• It was positioned on the Euphrates, on the route between the south and the mineral-rich uplands of Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon.
• Boats carrying wood, copper, tin, wine, and oil would stop at Mari.
• Town officials would inspect the cargo and levy a tax of about one-tenth the value of the goods before allowing the boat to continue.
• This trade, especially in copper and tin (the components of bronze), was crucial for the entire region. Mari became exceptionally prosperous, though not militarily strong.

Cities in Mesopotamian Culture

Mesopotamians highly valued city life. They saw cities as places where people from many communities and cultures could live together. When cities were destroyed in war, they remembered them in poetry.

The best example of this pride is found at the end of the Gilgamesh Epic.

• Gilgamesh was a legendary ruler of Uruk. After his best friend died, he went on a quest for immortality but failed.
• Upon returning to Uruk, he consoled himself not by thinking of his family or legacy, but by admiring the city itself—its strong foundations and fired brick walls that his people had built.
• He took comfort and pride in the collective achievement of his city.

The Legacy of Writing

Perhaps the greatest legacy of Mesopotamia is its scholarly tradition, which would have been impossible without writing.

Mathematics

Tablets from around 1800 BCE show that Mesopotamians had developed:

• Multiplication and division tables.
• Square and square-root tables.
• Tables of compound interest.
• They calculated the square root of 2 with remarkable accuracy.

Time Reckoning

Our modern system of time comes directly from the Mesopotamians. They were responsible for:

• Dividing the year into 12 months.
• Dividing the month into four weeks.
• Dividing the day into 24 hours.
• Dividing the hour into 60 minutes.

These systems were passed on to the Romans, the Islamic world, and eventually medieval Europe. They also kept careful records of astronomical events like solar and lunar eclipses. This was all possible because of writing and the institution of schools, where scribes were trained not just as record keepers but as intellectuals.

An Early Library

The Assyrian king Assurbanipal (668-627 BCE) was a great collector of Mesopotamian culture.

• He established a library at his capital, Nineveh.
• He sent scribes to the south (Babylonia) to find and collect old tablets on history, epics, omen literature, and astrology.
• His library contained thousands of tablets, including the Epic of Gilgamesh. The tablets were organized and catalogued by subject.

And, an Early Archaeologist!

Nabonidus, the last ruler of independent Babylon, showed a remarkable interest in the past that was similar to a modern archaeologist.

• He wrote about finding a stele (a carved stone slab) of a very early king to learn how to properly dress his daughter as a priestess, an office that had been forgotten for a very long time.
• On another occasion, his men found a broken statue of Sargon, king of Akkad (who ruled around 2370 BCE). Nabonidus, showing reverence for this great king from the remote past, summoned skilled craftsmen to repair the statue's head.