History Writing Assignment

Chapter 1

The human story

River Valley of what is now Syria, a group of villagers became some

of the world’s first farmers, thus taking a large step in shaping world

history. People who hunted game and gathered vegetables and nuts

occupied Abu Hureyra 13,000 years ago, when the area was wetter

and blessed with many edible wild plants and herds of Persian gazelles.

But a long cold spell brought a drought; to survive, the Abu Hureyra

villagers began cultivating the most easily grown grains and later

raised domesticated sheep and goats. By 7600 BCE they had shifted

completely to farming and animal herding.

The Abu Hureyra farmers pursued a life familiar to rural folk for

millennia afterward and even similar to many places today. A village

was composed of several hundred people crowded into narrow lanes

and courtyards, with families dwelling in multiroom mud houses with

plaster floors. At night family members studied the sky and pondered

the mysteries of the universe. Men did much of the farm work while

women carried heavy loads on their heads, prepared meals, and ground

grain in a kneeling position—activities that were hard on arms, knees,

and toes. Work for both women and men called for muscle power and

strong arms, and many villagers suffered from arthritis and lower back

injuries. Abu Hureyra was abandoned in 5000 BCE.

Prehistory includes a vast span of time during which all

living

creatures appeared and developed. Humans evolved physically,

mentally, and culturally over many millennia, learning to make simple

tools and then spreading throughout the world. Later most societ-

ies, like the Abu Hureyra villagers, made the first great historical

transition from hunting and gathering to farming and animal herd-

ing, profoundly changing the relationship between people and the

environment. The rise of agriculture all over the world made pos-

sible the emergence of larger societies with cities, states, and more

advanced technologies, which in turn stimulated long-distance trade

and the rise of social, cultural, and economic networks linking distant

societies. The ancient farmers, traders, and city folk laid the bedrock

for the world we live in today.

Some scholars have promoted a “big history”

that places the development of human societ-

ies and networks in a much longer and more

comprehensive framework. They argue that we

cannot comprehend the rise of complex societ-

ies without knowledge of pre-farming peoples,

human ancestors, and, before that, the begin-

ning of life on Earth and the formation of our planet within the

larger cosmic order. Recurring patterns of balance and imbalance

and of order and disorder in the natural world, such as global

warming and cooling, have always played a role in human history.

People have speculated about the origins of the cosmos, Earth,

life, and humanity for countless generations. Over the years their

views have been integrated into religions.

1-1a

Perceptions of Cosmic Mysteries

Human development on Earth constitutes only a tiny fraction

of the long history of the universe, which most astronomers

think began in a Big Bang explosion some 13.7 billion years ago.

As the universe expanded, matter coalesced into stars, which

formed into billions of galaxies. Our solar system emerged about

4.5 billion years ago out of clouds of gas. On earth the develop-

ing atmosphere kept the surface warm enough for organic com-

pounds to coalesce into life forms. This is the story presented by

modern science.

Over the centuries most human

societies, to explain their existence,

crafted creation and origin stories and

cosmologies explaining the natural

and supernatural worlds. While vary

-

ing greatly, these explanations usually

involved myths or legends of some divine

creator or creators. The earliest known creation story devel-

oped by a farming-based society, from Mesopotamia, claimed

that heaven and Earth were formed as one in a primeval sea

and were separated by the gods, powerful human-like beings

unperceivable to mortals. Mesopotamian beliefs influenced the

seven-day creation story in the Hebrew book of Genesis.

Many cosmological traditions, however, were very differ-

ent. Ancient Hindu holy books describe a universe emerging

out of nothingness: “There was neither nonexistence or exis-

tence then neither the realm of space nor the sky which is

beyond. Darkness was hidden by darkness emptiness.”

Thena great heat formed the cosmos and generated life. The Chinese

believed that the universe was created out of chaos and dark-

ness when the creator Pan Ku fashioned the sun, moon, and

stars to put everything in proper order, producing a unifying

force in the universe, the “way,” or dao

Early Life and Evolutionary Change

Life has a long history. Simple, single-celled life emerged by

perhaps 3.5 to 3.9 billion years ago and remained dominant

until about a half billion years ago, when complex life forms

proliferated in incredible variety. Animal life colonized the land

between 400 and 500 million years ago and evolved into many

species. Volcanic and earthquake activity influenced human

history, and sometimes intense volcanic eruptions dramatically

altered regional and even global climates. Warmer or cooler

climates helped shape human societies and sometimes under-

mined them. Most natural scientists, while still debating the

mechanisms, agree that living things change over many genera-

tions through evolution, modifying their genetic composition

to adapt to their changing biological and physical environment.

A half dozen massive species extinctions have occurred in

the past 400 million years. For example, 250 million years ago

gigantic volcanic eruptions produced enough climate-changing

gases to rapidly warm the planet and almost wipe out all life.

The best-known extinction involved the dinosaurs, which flour-

ished for 150 million years before dying out about 65 million

years ago, probably from the cooling of the planet from increas-

ing volcanic activity combined with the cataclysmic impact of

one or several large asteroids or comets smashing into the earth,

destroying food sources and killing off about 70 percent of all

species. This occurrence gave mammals a chance to rise, and one

group eventually evolved into humans. So far humans have been

lucky. Scientists estimate that 99 percent of all species eventu-

ally became extinct when conditions changed dramatically. Yet

species have died rapidly over the past two hundred years, mos

likely because of environmental changes such as pollution, habi

-

tat removal, and global warming generated by human activity;

this trend is rapidly accelerating today.

Eventually evolutionary changes among one branch of

mammals led to the immediate ancestors of humans, which are

part of the primate order, the mammal category that includes

the apes. Over 98 percent of human DNA is the same as that

of chimpanzees and bonobos, although human-chimp lines

diverged sometime between five and six million years ago.

By using their superior brain to gain an evolutionary edge,

humans ultimately dominated other large animal species. They

formed complex social organizations that emphasized coop-

eration for mutual benefit, developed tools, mastered fire, and

learned how to use speech, all of which gave them great advan-

tages. Ultimately they developed a more complex technology

to manipulate the physical environment in many ways to meet

their needs. Understanding human origins requires archaeolo-

gists and other scientists to sift through evidence from many

sources, including fossils, DNA, early tools and other artifacts,

caves, and campsites. New evidence is regularly discovered, fos-

tering new understanding but also controversies. However, there

is much that scholars and scientists agree on.

Hominids, a family including humans

and their immediate ancestors, first evolved five to six million

years ago from more primitive primates in Africa, where the

span of human prehistory is much longer than anywhere else.

The most extensive fossil evidence comes from the southern

African plateau and the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, a wide,

deep chasm stretching from

Ethiopia south to Tanzania.

Scientists vigorously debate

fossil and artifact remains and

whether teeth, skulls, and bones

belong to ancestors of humans, other hominid species who died

out, or apes, but fossil discoveries and analyses of DNA some-

times recovered from them point to several stages and branches

in early human evolution. A common ancestral, apelike group

living in the woodlands and savannahs of East Africa developed

occasional and then permanent bipedalism (walking upright on

two feet), making more activity possible by leaving hands free for

holding food or babies, making and manipulating objects such

as tools, and carrying food back to camp. Bipeds, being higher

off the ground, could also scan the horizon for predators or prey.

Diverse hominid groups apparently coexisted at the same

time, but only one led to modern humans. Early hominids

known as

australopithecines

(aw-strah-lo-PITH-uh-

seens)

lived in eastern and southern Africa four or five million

years ago, with brains about one-third the size of our brains.

Some 2.5 million years ago one branch of australopithecines

evolved into our direct ancestor. The earth cooled, fostering the

first of a series of Ice Ages, which covered large areas of north-

ern Eurasia and North America with deep ice sheets and gla-

ciers. As Africa and its hominid inhabitants experienced a drier

climate and more open habitats, the challenges posed by this

climate change encouraged increased intelligence. Our likely

ancestor

Homo habilis

(HOH-moh HAB-uh-luhs)

(“handy

human”) had a larger brain size and ability to make and use

simple stone tools for hunting and gathering. Stone choppers

and later hand axes made possible a more varied diet, more

successful hunting, and larger groups that could cooperate to

share food. The other branches of australopithecines died out.

As hominid societies developed, males increasingly became

the hunters or scavengers for meat and females the gatherers

of nuts and vegetables, a subsistence model often known as

foraging. Although meat became a more crucial protein source,

gathering still probably brought more food than hunting or

scavenging. These early humans were most likely vegetarians,

like many primates today. Cooperation between the sexes and

group members was the key to survival and probably involved

communication through gestures and vocal cries.

Between one and two million years ago, as southern Eurasia

developed a warmer climate, some

Homo erectus

bands migrated out

of Africa, perhaps following game herds. They carried with them

refined tools, more effective hunting skills, and an ability to adapt

to new environments. This first great migration in human history

corresponded to the ebb and flow of the Ice Ages as well as the

periodic drying out of the Sahara region. Over thousands of years

these hominids came to occupy northern Africa, the Middle East,

South and Southeast Asia, China, Europe, and perhaps Australia.

One of the earliest and best studied non-African sites, per-

haps 1.8 million years old, was found in the Caucasus

(KAW-kuh-

suhs)

Mountains of western Asia. Bones and tools discovered in

Chinese caves and skulls from the Indonesian island of Java, then

connected to mainland Asia, have been dated at 1.6 to 1.9 million

years ago, and one recent but controversial find in China suggests

an even older date of 2.1 million. Fossils from frigid eastern Siberia

date back 300,000 years, indicating how adaptable and resourceful

the species had become. These hominids also lived in Spain by

800,000 BCE. However, their tool cultures differed somewhat from

those of Chinese

Homo erectus

, indicating cultural diversity and per-

haps major variation from the Asian species. By 500,000 years ago

Homo erectus

in China lived in closely knit groups, engaged in coop-

erative hunting, and used both wood and bamboo for containers

and weapons. Most lived in caves, but some built simple wooden

huts for shelter. Their hand axes were the Swiss army knives of their

time, with a tip for piercing, thin edges for cutting, and thick edges

for scraping and chipping. Scientists debate whether

Homo erectus

could use speech or make art. Finding their fossils on Indonesian

islands suggest that they could build and sail primitive boats.

Discovering how to start and control fire was perhaps the

most significant human invention. Where or when people first

used fire or how many millennia it took for knowledge of fire to

spread widely remains unclear;

Homo erectus

probably controlled

fire at least one million years ago. Fire opened up many possibili-

ties, providing warmth and light after sunset, frightening away

predators, and making possible a more varied diet of cooked food,

which fostered group living and cooperation as people gathered

together around campfires. Fire also enabled ancestral humans

to spread to cooler regions, such as Europe and northern Asia.

Beginning around 400,000 years ago, a vibrant new tool cul-

ture emerged that has been identified with the

neanderthals

(nee-AN-der-thals)

, hominids probably related to

Homo

erectus.

Earlier generations of scientists, obsessed with the question

of what separates humans from nature and makes us superior,

believed that Neanderthals were very primitive compared to mod-

ern humans, but we now know that they were just as evolved and

social as, and behaved in similar ways to, modern humans, and in

fact contributed genes to us. Neanderthals gradually inhabited a

wide region stretching from North Africa to western and Central

Asia and, by 200,000 BCE, Europe, especially Spain and

Germany. We might have cartoonish images of Neanderthals as

simple-minded brutes whacking each other with clubs, but their

cranial capacity equaled that of modern humans, and they had

larger bodies. Skillful hunters with deadly spears, they ate large

animals as well as plants and shellfish. Neanderthals maintained

social values, buried their dead, cared for the sick and injured,

and produced impressive cave art. Scholars debate whether they

possessed spoken language, but agree that they were capable of

communication, used tools, made bone flutes, wore jewelry, and

sailed boats to Mediterranean islands. Recent fossil discoveries in

Siberia and Tibet suggest that a species related to Neanderthals,

known as

Denisovans

(dun-EE-suh-vinz)

, may have once

been widespread in eastern Eurasia before the arrival of modern

humans, but their exact relationship to the Neanderthals and to

modern humans is a matter of debate. Recent genetic studies

suggest that Neanderthals and Denisovans also interbred with

at least three other unknown early human groups as they spread

across Eurasia.

Neanderthals had long lived in Palestine when modern

humans arrived there from Africa and apparently shared the ter-

ritory for many centuries. Around 45,000 years ago some modern,

tool-using humans, known as

Cro-Magnons

(krow-MAG-nuns)

after a French cave where early fossils were found, began migrating

into Europe from Asia. Recent analyses have found that modern

humans in Europe and Asia (but not Africa) have a small number of

Neanderthal genes, suggesting some interbreeding. Many people in

eastern Asia and the Pacific islands also inherited 3 to 5 percent of

their DNA from Denisovans. A recent but disputed study suggests

that Denosovans may have mated with modern humans as recently

as 15,000 years ago. Recent finds also reveal some possible cases of

Neanderthal–Denisovan mixing. Modern humans inherited some

Neanderthal DNA that helps protect us from certain infections.

The last Neanderthals died out by 30,000 BCE. Whether and how

Neanderthals were ultimately annihilated, outnumbered, outcom-

peted, assimilated, or simply outlasted by the more resourceful and

adaptable modern humans, who had better technology and warmer

clothing, generates much debate among scholars.

1-1d

The Evolution and Diversity of

Homo Sapiens

The transition from

Homo erectus

to archaic forms of

Homo sapiens

(“thinking human”), a species physically close

to modern humans, began around 400,000 years ago in Africa.

By 200,000 years ago a more widespread, complex tool culture

indicated

Homo sapiens

occupation. Eventually members of

Homo sapiens

were the only surviving hominids and humanity

became a single species, despite some superficial differences.

With a larger brain, Archaic (early)

Homo sapiens

were more

adaptive and intelligent, able to think conceptually. They lived

in fairly large organized groups, built temporary shelters, cre-

ated crude lunar calendars, killed whole herds of animals, and

raised more children to adulthood. Possession of language

gave

Homo sapiens

an advantage over all other creatures, allow-

ing them to share information over the generations, adjust to

their environment, and overcome challenges collectively.

Scientists debate precisely how and where

Homo erectus

evolved into

Homo sapiens

, with some arguing that the evolu-

tion occurred in different parts of the Afro-Eurasian zone. The

most widely supported scenario based on rich finds, called the

African Origins theory, suggests that

Homo sapiens

evolved only

in Africa. Until recently, the oldest known fossils of our spe-

cies in East Africa dated back about 195,000 years. But fossils

discovered in 2017 in Morocco, in far northeastern Africa thou-

sands of miles from East Africa, are roughly 300,000 years old,

suggesting that, if other scientists confirm the finds as Homo sapiens

, not just East Africa but the whole African continent

might be considered the “cradle of humankind.” More discov-

eries in the future may well deepen our knowledge but also

complicate our understanding of the human past.

Whatever the case many

Homo sapiens

eventually left Africa,

perhaps in several dispersals or waves likely sparked by sporadic

climate change, and then spread throughout Afro-Eurasia, dis-

placing and ultimately dooming the remaining

Homo erectus Neanderthals and Denisovans. The study of genetic codes

mostly supports the African Origins theory. But many mysteries

about hominid evolution remains. For example, scientists debate

whether a controversial 210,000-year-old skull found in Greece

is Neanderthal or Homo sapien, raising questions about human

migration from Africa. And 18,000-year-old bones of diminu-

tive but tool-using hominids, 3 to 3.5 feet tall as adults, on the

small remote Indonesian island of Flores sparked debate as to

where these fossils fit into the human family tree. The Flores

people (nicknamed by observers “hobbits” because of their small

stature) may have been miniature versions of

Homo erectus or Homo sapiens or perhaps constituted some unknown, and more primitive, human-like species. In 2019 another fossil discovery in a Philippine cave adds to the mystery. What scientists have named Homo luzonensus (“Luzon Man”), who seems to have had a mix of human, Homo erectus Homo floresiensis and australopithecus traits and may also have been small in size, lived there fifty thou-sand years ago and may or may not descend from Homo erectusm or perhaps Denisovans. No land bridges ever connected Luzon or Flores to the Asian mainland, raising more questions as to how they got to the islands. These finds confirm that human evolution was highly versatile and diverse as groups adapted to unknown conditions around the world. However and wherever the evolution into Homo sapiens

occurred, all humans came to constitute one species that could interbreed and communicate with each other. It remains unclear whether a few differences in physical features, such

as skin and hair color and eye and face shape, developed ear-lier or later in Homo sapiens

evolution. Recent studies suggest that these appeared between 40,000 and 100,000 years ago.In the past, some scholars attempted to explain these physical differences through allegedly objective or scientific categories,such as the nineteenth-century concept of “race,” or a large

group thought to share distinctive genetic traits and physi-cal characteristics. Attempts to organize societies by such cat-egories have produced horrible abuses, systematic inequalities,and even genocide. But, by the late twentieth century, most experts discarded “race” as a scientific concept not only because of its inability to clas-sify human populations and its harmful legacy, but also because “race” is now viewed as a social construct—a subjective con-cept created by individuals and groups to describe their identi-ties and those of others. Such categories change with time and social context and are not scientific fact. Much genetic intermixing occurred over the millennia. Observable physi-cal attributes such as skin color reflect a tiny portion of one’s genetic makeup and thus cannot predict whether two groups are genetically similar or different. For example, the earliest hunter gatherers in Britain ten thousand years ago may have

had dark skin, but later arrivals, farmers from the Middle East,intermarried with them. For all of these reasons, some argue that there is no such thing as a pure “European,” or anyone else,

in the past or today. Scientifically speaking, humans are much more similar than different.

Sometime between 135,000 and 100,000 years ago in Africa, anatomically modern humans with slightly larger brains, known as Homo sapiens sapiens, developed out of Homo

Sapiens With this biological change, language and culture expanded in new directions and developed many variations. Scholars debate whether creativity, intelligence, and even

language abilities were innate to Homo sapiens sapiens, as sug-gested by advanced stone tools and wall paintings in South African caves from 75,000 to 100,000 years ago, or arose only

some 50,000 years ago, possibly as a result of a genetic muta-tion. With this great transition humanity reached its present level of intellectual and physical development, establishing

the foundation for the constant expansion of information net-works to a global level.

Modern human language development made possible complex cultures with shared learning and became the main method of communication for much of history. Five or six

thousand languages emerged around the globe. Some, such as English and German, have a clear common ancestry, but schol-ars debate the relationships and origins of most of the world’s

languages. Human intellectual development also included thinking in abstract, symbolic ways, revealed early in decoration and art. Ocher, for example, a natural red iron oxide,

was mined in various African locations and probably used for body decoration. The first gorgeous cave and rock art appeared at opposite ends of Eurasia, in southwestern Europe and Southeast Asia, around forty thousand years ago, and over the next ten thousand years became widespread in Africa, Eurasia, and Australia. This shows that art was developing about the same time across the Eastern Hemisphere. The art probably had magical, religious, or ritual purposes, such as the celebra-tion of spirits or valued animals. But some old cave paintings

in Europe represent star constellations, telling us about their concept of time and interest in the seasons or the future.

The Globalization of Human Settlement

Pushed by changing environments sparking a quest for food resources, beginning by around 120,000 years ago or perhaps even earlier, and continuing until some 12,000 years ago, rest-less modern humans settled much of the world. As people spread, genetic differences grew and Homo sapiens sapiens proved able to adapt to many environments. Some had already

left Africa to settle in Palestine, where they likely encountered and perhaps interbred with Neanderthals. Eventually modern humans reached central and eastern Eurasia, from where some

moved on to Australia and the Americas.With many traveling east along or near the Indian Ocean coast, and others perhaps taking a northern route through

Central Asia, modern humans crossed to the eastern half of Asia, arriving in India and Southeast Asia by 70,000 years ago and maybe earlier, China between 70,000 and 120,000

years ago, Japan by 25,000 and 30,000 BCE, Tibet by 30,000 and 40,000 years ago, Siberia 30,000 years ago, and Europe between 35,000 and 45,000 years ago (see Map 1.1). To reach

Australia and New Guinea from Southeast Asia across a very shallow sea required rafts or boats, but modern humans may have settled there between 73,000 and 45,000 BCE. The peo-

pling of the far-flung Pacific islands to tas early as 15,000-20,000 or possibly, as a few disputed stud-ies propose, even 30,000 or 40,000 years ago (see Chapter 4).At various times a wide Ice Age land bridge connected Alaska and Siberia across today’s Bering Strait, and the evi-

dence for several migrations chiefly from Asia over thou-sands of years is strong. The first settlers moved by land or by boat along the coast. A few highly controversial stud-ies suggest that some Stone Age settlers arrived in eastern he east began much later, around 2000 BCE.

Archaeologists long thought that the peopling of the Americas came very late, the earliest migration into NorthAmerica occurring only 12,000 to 15,000 years ago. But recent discoveries suggest that the pioneer arrivals may havem crossed from Northeast Asia, probably in very small numbers, The agricultural transformation eventually reached across the globe. Agriculture came first to Eurasia, where geography favored the movement of people to the east or west along the same general latitude, with-out abrupt climatic changes.By contrast, the Americas are constructed along a north–south axis, and northern and southern temperate regions are linked only through a huge tropical zone stretching from southern Mexico to northern

and eastern South America. Some peoples, such as those in Australia and the Arctic, did not or could not make a full transition from hunting and gathering food because of

environmental and geographical constraints. Many societies contributed significantly to the discovery and production of the food resources we use today.The dates for the beginning of agriculture vary consider-ably. The breakthrough to the earliest known farming came between 9500 and 8000 BCE in the region of southwestern Asia known as the “Fertile Crescent,” encompassing what is today Iraq, Syria, central and eastern Turkey, and the Jordan

River Valley, which had many fast-growing plants with high nutritional value, such as wheat, barley, chickpeas, and peas.Food growing also began independently in several other parts

of the world (see Map 1.2), although we still do not know precisely when because hot, humid climates are poor for pre-serving plant, animal, and human remains. In eastern Eurasia

crop cultivation began around 7000 BCE in China and New Guinea, 7000 or 6000 BCE in India, 5000 or 4000 BCE in Thailand, and 3000 BCE in Island Southeast Asia. Crops gradually spread to distant regions; hence, wheat and barley domesticated in the Middle East around 8000 BCE reached China a millennium later.In the Mediterranean region, farming began in the

Nile Valley between 8000 and 6000 BCE, and in Greece by6500 BCE. Farming may have spread into Europe with migrants from Anatolia in western Asia who intermarried with or dis-

placed local hunters and gatherers, reaching northward to Britain and Scandinavia between 4000 and 3000 BCE. Beginning around 4500 BCE some early European farmers constructed

giant stone megaliths, such as Stonehenge in southern England,as ceremonial or religious centers, astronomical calendars, or for burials and funerary practices. In Africa farming in the south-east Sahara and Niger River basin may date to between 8000

and 6000 BCE and Ethiopia to 4500 BCE. In the Americas cultivation apparently began in central Mexico between 7000 and 5500 BCE and in the Andes highlands by

6000 BCE, if not earlier. Farming reached the Amazon River Basin by 1500 BCE, Colorado by 1000 BCE, and the southeastern part of North America by 500 BCE.The earliest crops grown varied by local environments and needs. Millet dominated in cold North China, rice in

warmer central and southern China as well as in tropi-cal Southeast Asia, wheat and barley in the dry Middle East, yams and sorghum in West Africa, corn in upland

Mesoamerica, and potatoes in the high Andes of South America. Some crops such as flax produced fiber to make clothing. Other plants had medicinal properties. Southwest

Asians began making wine from grapes and beer from barley between 6000 and 3000 BCE. Overtime farming became deeply ingrained in the psychology, social life, and traditions of many societies (see Discover Historical Voices: Food and Farming in Ancient Cultural Traditions). Farming technol-ogy gradually improved. People living in highlands with steep

slopes, such as in Peru, Indonesia, China, or Greece, made fields on terraces, laborious to construct and maintain.

Chapter 2

Some five thousand

years ago in the southern Mesopotamian, an unknown artist carved a beautiful narrative relief on a large vase and donated it to the city’s temple for the goddess of love, Inanna, the first known goddess in recorded history.

The scenes of domestic and religious life celebrate a festival honor-

ing the goddess, while an agricultural scene shows sheep, barley, and

water, the staples of the area’s economy. A procession of men carry

foodstuffs they will present as gifts of gratitude to Inanna, possibly

the female figure with a tall, horned headdress. The vase pictures for

us the social order and rituals of one of the world’s earliest cities.

Sometime after the people in Southwest Asia and India had

become comfortable with farming technology, they began to make

the next great transition by founding the first cities and states in the

Indus Valley in northwestern India and all along the

a large semicircle of fertile land that included the valleys of the Tigris

Rivers stretching north-west from the Persian Gulf to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Ancient South Asians (in what is today India, Pakistan, and Nepal) also established the foundations for several enduring religions.

The Mesopotamians and Indians, benefiting from contact through

trade and migration networks, were among various Afro-Eurasian peo-

ples who built the foundations to sustain large populations. For at least

three millennia a large majority of the world’s population has lived in an

arc stretching from Egypt and Mesopotamia eastward through India to

China and Japan. The people of western Asia created the first systematic

use of writing, bronze, large states, institutionalized religions to worship

deities like Inanna, and networks to exchange products and informa-tion by land and sea. The city of Agade was visited by traders from near and far, while Southwest Asia became a crossroads between Europe, Africa, and southern Asia and a great hub for trade and communication networks extending to distant lands.

Around five thousand years ago, small city-states emerged in Mesopotamia, especially

in the southern Tigris-Euphrates Valley, establishing a foundation for much that

would come later in the region and later in world history. The connections between

these diverse peoples helped their cultures change and grow. Over

the centuries various peoples moved into the area, each adopting and building on the achievements of their predecessors. Their cities were dominated by religious temples, and their people were divided into elaborate social class structures. As conquerors combined city-states into empires, Mesopotamian societies were soon linked by trade to the Mediterranean and North Africa.

2-1a

Western Asian Environments

Life in western Asia owed much to the geographic features that brought people together. Most early urban societies began first in wide river valleys such as the Tigris-Euphrates, Indus, and Nile because they provided life-giving irrigation for crops that supported larger populations. In Mesopotamia (the Greek word for the “land between the rivers”), the flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which stretch from the western edge of the Persian Gulf through today’s Iraq into Syria and southeastern Turkey, made possible a flourishing society. The long river valley promoted interaction, both friendly and hostile, between peoples, as well as frequent invasions through mountain passes by people living to the north and east. To the northwest is the mountainous Anatolia Peninsula (modern Turkey),and to the east lies Iran (known through most of history as Persia), a land of moun-tains and deserts and the pathway to India and Central Asia. To the south the Arabian peninsula, largely desert, was characterized by oasis agriculture and nomadic pastoralism.Ancient Mesopotamia had a climate similar to southern California today. Most rain fell in the winter, and summer temperatures in some places reached 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

During the long, scorching summer, the land baked stone-hard, searing winds blew up a choking dust, and vegetation withered. The winter brought winds, clouds, and the occa-sional rains, while spring brought rains and melting snows from nearby mountains that swelled the rivers to flood level, sometimes submerging the plains. Still, the annual but unpre-dictable floods created natural levees that could be drained and planted, and the nearby swamps contained abundant

fish and wildlife.Many different peoples settled the region, some of them speaking Semitic languages, including Arabic and Hebrew, which are related to some African tongues. Speakers of Turkis tongues and of Indo-European languages such as Persian, Armenian, and Kurdish arrived later. Europeans later referred to southwestern Asia as Asia Minor or the Near East and to

the region along the eastern Mediterranean coast as the Levant (“rising of the sun”). Geographers today use the label Southwest Asia and often lump the region together with Islamic North Africa under the broader concept of the “Middle East,” midway between East Asia and Europe.

The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers fostered several Mesopotamian societies. The modern city of Baghdad is mid-way up the Tigris, and ancient Babylon was only a few miles away on the Euphrates. Such cities arose when the farmers and herders in the nearby hills needed more food. Possibly pushed by a cooler climate, they left the hill country and created the first towns in the marshy areas near the head of the Persian Gulf, building elaborate irrigation canals to grow food after the annual floods. This irrigation had significant consequences, for it neces-sitated the cooperation that laid the foundations for organized societies and then cities. Yet irrigation also slowly degraded the soil, the salts it added eventually creating infertile desert.

2-1b

The pioneering Sumerians and Their Neighbors

Settling in southern Mesopotamia about 5500 BCE, the Sumerians built the first Mesopotamian cities and states (see Map 2.1). By 3500 BCE Uruk in Sumer had grown into a city, eventually reaching a population of fifty thousand. Other Mesopotamian peoples, such as those in the north at Tell Hamoukar (see Chapter 1), may have also forged early states. By 3000 BCE Sumerians had created a network of city-states, urban centers surrounded by agricultural land that was controlled by the city and used to support its citizens.

By 2500 BCE these Sumerian societies had grown to several million people. Uruk was surrounded by five miles of fortified walls and had influence as far north as modern Turkey. An attack by Uruk on Tell Hamoukar is the world’s oldest known example of large-scale organized warfare.The Sumerians were clearly proud of their cities and felt that their city life made them superior to other peoples. A Sumerian myth begins with the lines “Behold the bond of Heaven and Earth, the city. Behold the kindly wall ... its pure

river, its quay where the boats stand ... its pure canal.”The mud-baked brick houses of Sumerian cities were constructed around courtyards. The largest city building was the temple, or ziggurat, a stepped, pyramidal-shaped building (almost an artificial mountain) that was seen as the home of that city’s chief god. One of these temples may have inspired the later Hebrew story of the tower of Babel

.

2-1c

Sumerian Society and Economy

The Sumerians, like later Mesopotamians, generally divided their specialized workers into full-time farmers, professional soldiers, government officials, artisans, traders, and priests. At first Sumerian cities were governed by assemblies composed of leading citizens. Whether these assemblies amounted to a kind of democratic government is a matter of scholarly debate. The assemblies seem to have appointed a city leader, sometimes a woman, with both secular and religious authority. However, the waging of wars led to more domination by rulers, priests, and

nobles, and gradually women lost the right to be elected leader and serve in the assemblies. When war leaders became kings, or hereditary monarchs, the assemblies lost power.

The Sumerian nobility and priests controlled most of the land in and around the city, which was tilled by tenant farmers or slaves. A Sumerian proverb claimed that “the poor man is better

dead than alive; if he has bread, he has no salt; if he has salt, he has no bread.” The many slaves,

who included captives taken in battles and criminals, were reated as personal property but allowed to marry. Eventually royal officials, nobility, and priests controlled most of the economic life of the cities. Royal tombs in Ur show that the elite lived well but practiced human sacrifice on a large scale. When a king or queen died some members of their court, including sol-

diers and attendants, who may have considered it an honor, were killed in grisly rituals and buried with them. Their bodies were usually arranged neatly in the royal tomb alongside their dead sovereigns, the warriors with weapons at their side and the women in elaborate headdress. Ritual killing associated with a royal death was also practiced by some other ancient cultures.The Sumerians introduced patriarchy, a system in which men largely control women and children and also shape ideas about appropriate gender behavior. Sumerian women were gen-erally subservient to men, but they could inherit property, run their own businesses, and serve as witnesses in court. A queen enjoyed much respect as the wife of the king, and Sumerian religion allowed a woman to be the high priestess if the city divinity was female. Within family life, which was much treasured, women were important but also faced stereotypes, as this proverb suggests: “The wife is a man’s future; the son is a man’s refuge; the daughter is a man’s salvation; the daughter-in-law is a man’s devil.”The trade networks involving Sumeria may have been some of the first in world history with significant consequences.Because of their lack of natural resources, the Sumerian cities formed extensive trade links with neighboring societies. They imported copper from the Caucasus Mountains to the north

and then discovered how to mix it with tin to make bronze,an alloy that made for stronger weapons. This discovery began the Bronze Age in western Asia; later bronze helped shape

other societies in Eurasia and North Africa. The Sumerians also imported gold, ivory, obsidian, and other necessities from Anatolia, the Nile Valley, Ethiopia, India, the Caspian Sea, and

the eastern shore of the Mediterranean.The Persian Gulf became a major waterway, with many

trading ports. Bahrain Island served as a trans-shipment point for goods flowing in from all directions and as a hub where various traders and travelers met. Mesopotamian

merchants traveled there carrying textiles, leather objects, wool,and olive oil and returned with copper bars, ivory, precious objects, and rare woods from various western Asian societ-ies and India. Trade helped people learn and profit from each other’s skills and surplus goods. The Sumerians also had some trade and other connec-tions with Jiroft in southeastern Iran, another urban-based, bronze-using farming society that emerged sometime between 3000 and 2500 BCE. Jiroft’s economy was based on cultivating date palms. Its gaily decorated capi-tal city, with lofty red brick towers, supplied craftsmen to

Uruk. The ruins of Jiroft city include a two-story citadel, a Sumerian-like ziggurat, the world’s oldest known board games, and staggering numbers of decorated vases, goblets,

cups, and boxes, often adorned with precious stones from India and Afghanistan.

2-1d

Sumerian Writing and Technology

The world’s first written records were produced by the Sumerians, who were innovators in many areas. Trade and the need to keep accurate records of agricultural production and public and private business dealings led around 3200 BCE to the Cuneiform writing system. Temple recordkeepers, or scribes, made rough pictures (say, of an animal or fish) on soft clay with a reed stylus that made wedges in the clay and then baked the bricks on which these pictograms were scratched. Soon a stylized ver-sion of the pictogram stood for an idea, and eventually an even more abstract version with a phonetic sign described a speech

sound. The oldest tablets allow us for the first time to know the names of a few ancient people. For example, a five-thousand-year-old receipt for shipments of barley revealed that Kushim

was the accountant in charge of the transaction.Writing provided a way of communicating with people over long distances and allowed rulers to administer larger states. Those who controlled the written word, like those who master electronic communication in our day, had power,

prestige, and a monopoly over a society’s official history. Writing also gave temple scribes and religious leaders the power to determine how written texts attributed to the gods should be interpreted. Since writing required mastery of at least three hundred symbols, only a few people, mostly from the upper class, learned this skill. In part to produce scribes, the Sumerians created

the world’s first schools, where strict instructors beat students for misbehavior or sloppy work. A clay tablet describes the life of a pupil who spent twenty-four days a month in school

and was frequently beaten: “My teacher said: ‘Your hand [writing] is unsatisfactory.’ [He] caned me. I [begin to hate] the scribal art.” However, because cuneiform eventually

transformed pictures into phonetic sounds, it made the writ-ten word more accessible, even for people whose only goal was a good recipe for a meal of red broth and meat. The

cuneiform script was so adaptable that it was used in multiple cultures over several thousand years to write a number of quite different spoken languages.Writing became crucial in history by making it easier

to express abstract ideas and create an intellectual life based

on a body of literature. The oldest known signed poetry

was composed by Enheduanna, a

Sumerian priestess and princess living around 2300 BCE.

Royal women were often authors. A written language based

on clearly understood symbols also allowed communication

among people who spoke different languages but under-

stood the same written symbols. For example, the number is understood today the same way by Spanish speakers, who pronounce it “cinco,” and German speakers, who say “funf.”

While giving a strong sense of identity to all who shared a

language, writing also encouraged the spread of trade and

culture, including religion, to other peoples.

Sumerians also pioneered the first use of the wheel, glass,

and fertilizer, inventions that we still live with today; created

some of the earliest calendars based on their observations of

the movements of various celestial bodies; and introduced

one of the first mathematical systems, based on the num-ber 60

. Remnants of this system can be seen today in our

sixty-minute hours and sixty-second minutes. Many other

peoples eventually adopted these innovations. Humanity also

inherited from the Sumerians the division of night and day

into twelve hours each. Sumerian intellectual advances set a

framework for scientific progress in Mesopotamia over the

next two millennia, especially in astronomy. By the eighth

century BCE stargazers pondered the mechanics of the

heavens in order to make predictions from what they saw

in the night sky. Hence, they observed the daily movement

of the stars and the shape of constellations, documenting

them on clay tablets and recording and predicting celestial

events such as lunar and solar eclipses. Their interest in the

stars also led to the nonscientific field of astrology, predict-

ing the impact of the stars and planets on individuals, which

became and remains hugely popular around the world.

Although they were not the first to convert barley into beer,

the Sumerians, like us, enjoyed alcoholic beverages and desig-

nated a special goddess, called Ninkasi or “the lady who fills the

mouth,” to supervise beer production. The many taverns fos-

tered early drinking songs: “I will summon brewers and cup-

bearers to serve us floods of beer and keep it passing round! Our

hearts enchanted and our souls radiant.”

6

2-1e

The Akkadian Empire and Its

Rivals

For centuries each Sumerian city had its own king who ruled

the people in the name of the city’s god. This independence

ended about 2350 BCE when Sargon

(SAHR-gone)

, the

ruler of Akkad

(AH-kahd)

, a region just north of Sumer

whose capital was Agade, conquered Uruk and then united

the other Sumerian cities under his family’s rule. This was the

world’s first known empire, defined as a large state control-

ling other societies through conquest or domination. The

Akkadians enslaved many people in Mesopotamia, and

slaves constituted perhaps a third of the empire’s population.

Under Sargon, whose name meant “true king,” trade between

Mesopotamia and India reached a peak. Indeed, merchant

ships from as far away as Oman

(O-mahn)

in eastern Arabia

and even farther away, from India, docked at Agade’s wharves,

carrying copper and various exotic products.

Sargon’s empire soon came into conflict with one created

by another city, Ebla

(EBB-luh)

in northern Mesopotamia,

whose large empire stretched from eastern Turkey to Mari

(MAH-ree)

, several hundred miles north of Akkad. By the

twenty-first century BCE the Akkadian Empire was

destroyed, probably from a combination of internal conflicts,

external attacks, and less rainfall due to a disastrous drought

between 2200 and 1900 BCE that affected much of Eurasia.

Indeed, Mesopotamian societies were powerless against

abrupt climate change, and Sumerian legends express dread

of the periodic droughts: “The famine was severe, nothing

was produced. The fields are not watered. In all the lands

there was no vegetation [and] only weeds grew.”

7

Irrigation

canals silted up, and settlements become ghost towns as peo-

plemigrated.

As the Akkadian Empire collapsed, a new Sumerian

dynasty led by Ur took over much of the lower valley between

2100 and 2000 BCE, forming the neo-Sumerian Empire. Some

Ur kings boasted of their commitment to art and intellectual

life. But a coalition of enemies eventually sacked and burned Ur

along with other Sumerian cities. Ur’s temples were destroyed,

its populations killed or enslaved, and its treasures plundered.

A surviving lamentation describes the destruction: “Ur is

destroyed, bitter is its lament. The country’s blood now fills its

holes like hot bronze in a mould. Our temple is destroyed, the

gods have abandoned us, like migrating birds. Smoke lies on

our city like a shroud.”

8

The Akkadians, Eblaites, and neo-Sumerians established

the first empires in history, even though their creations were

short-lived and not the large bureaucratic organizations

we see in later empires. They were largely collections of

city-states that acknowledged one city as overlord. It soon

became clear that whoever had the best army would dominate

Mesopotamia.

2-2

Later Mesopotamian Societies and

their Legacies, 2000–600 BCe

SOCIETIES

What were some of the main features of Mesopotamian societies?

The Sumerians and Akkadians estab lished a pattern of city living, state build-

ing, and imperial expansion. From 2000 to

539 BCE a series of peoples coming mainly

from the north successively dominated

Mesopotamia and created new empires,

each contributing to the politics, laws, culture, and thought of

the region. This pattern changed only when the entire area was

incorporated into the Persian Empire.

2-2a

The Babylonians and hittites

Babylon was the first state to dominate

Mesopotamia in this era. In 1800 BCE the

Amorites

(AM-uh-rites)

conquered

Babylon, a city about 300 miles north of

the Persian Gulf and, based there, gradually extended their

control. Babylon’s most famous king, Hammurabi. HAM-uh-rah-bee)

, who ruled from 1792 to 1750 BCE, had

nearly three hundred laws collected to “make justice appear in

the land, to destroy the evil and the wicked [so] that the strong

might not oppress the weak.”

9

His law of retaliation—an eye

for an eye and a tooth for a tooth—remains famous today, and

some of his principles appeared later in Hebrew laws. Some

3,700 years ago the Babylonians also developed the mathemati-

cal field of trigonometry, the branch of mathematics dealing

with the relations or functions of the angles and sides of tri-

angles, making it easier to do calculations in fields like astron-

omy, surveying, map making, and, many centuries later, artillery

range finding. Their breakthrough, using a base of sixty, came

fifteen hundred years before the classical Greeks created the

version used today.

By 1595 BCE the Babylonian Empire had disintegrated

from attacks by the Hittites, an Indo-European

people from central Anatolia who expanded their power

until they met the equally strong Egyptians in Syria and

Palestine. The Hittite Empire dominated various parts of

western Asia from 1600 to 1200 BCE. By sending plague

victims into enemy lands, the Hittites pioneered the first

biological weapons. Later they also developed iron weapons,

which were superior to those made of bronze. They treated

their subjects less harshly than the Babylonians and adopted

many Mesopotamian gods, establishing a tradition of reli-

gious tolerance in the region.

2-2b

The Assyrian Empire and

Regional Supremacy

In 1115 BCE the Assyrians

(uh-SEER-e-uhns)

—by creat

-

ing a large, well-organized military; systematically using ter-

ror against enemies; and devising methods of bureaucratic

organization that later empires imitated—began conquering

an empire that was eventually larger than any before, with

a population diverse in culture and geography. One of their

greatest kings, Tiglath-pileser

(TIG-lath-pih-LEE-zuhr)

III

(745–727 BCE), conquered the entire eastern Mediterranean

shore, and later Assyrian rulers added Egypt to the empire.

One Assyrian king described himself with some accuracy as

“obedient to his gods and receiving the tribute of the four

corners of the world.”

10

Using iron weapons while their ene-

mies still relied on softer bronze ones, the Assyrians launched

armies of over fifty thousand men drawn from all corners

of the empire and divided into a core of infantrymen aided

by cavalry and horse-drawn chariots. They used battering

rams and tunnels against the city walls of their enemies and

employed guerrilla, or irregular hit-and-run tactics, when

fighting in the forests or mountains.

Assyrian kings created a systematic bureaucracy to rule

over several million people in the Tigris-Euphrates heartland,

as part of a reliable and efficient communication network of

“royal roads,” and created an early version of the “pony express”

that allowed them to send messages hundreds of miles within a week. While the rulers were notorious for their luxury, extrava-

gance, and debauchery, some were both brutal and learned.

Ashurbanipal

(ah-shur-BAH-nugh-pahl)

(680–627 BCE)

was a ruthless but bookish despot who also founded a great

library to collect tablets from all over the country. He boasted

that, in school, he learned to solve complex mathematical

problems and discovered the “hidden treasure” of writing.

Assyrian kings were builders on a grand scale. To inaugurate

a new palace, Ashurbanipal bragged that he invited some

seventy thousand guests and for ten days gave them food

and drink, bathed and anointed them, bringing peace and

joy before sending them back to their own territories. One

of their capitals, Ninevah, was a huge city by ancient stan-

dards and its temples and palaces were decorated with colossal

sculptures and beautiful carved reliefs. An intricate system of

aqueducts and canals watered the king’s spectacular pleasure

gardens and game parks. But such conspicuous consumption

stressed the state treasury.

2-2c

Violence and the Fall of the Assyrians

The Assyrians were most remembered, and deplored, for their

brutality, which ultimately contributed to their downfall.

Ashurbanipal bragged about mutilating and burning prisoners.

After destroying the state of Elam in Iran, he boasted that

“like the onset of a terrible hurricane I overwhelmed Elam.

I cut off the head of ... their braggart king. In countless numbers I killed his warriors.” As to the capital city, “I destroyed it ... [and] burned it with fire.” Soldiers routinely looted

cities, destroyed crops, and impaled their enemies. To prevent

revolts, the Assyrians often simply moved people to another

part of the vast empire. For example, according to legends, all

the inhabitants of one of the two small Hebrew kingdoms in

Palestine were exiled to Mesopotamia, where they disappeared

from history (see Chapter 3). Yet the Assyrians also tolerated

other religions, allowing the Hebrew faith to survive the con-

quest of their state.

Many hated Assyria’s brutal rule. Eventually Assyria was

weakened by civil wars, political unrest, overpopulation, and

drought caused by climate change. In 612 BCE, a coalition

including the Chaldeans (also known as neo-

Babylonians) captured the Assyrian capital at Nineveh, burning the spectacular palaces and temples to the ground. The fall of Assyria was an iconic event, recorded by

passages in the Hebrew bible and by Greek and Roman writers.

They described the fall as punishment for the moral depravity of

the rulers. The winners write history, but some modern writers

have been kinder to the Assyrians, the greatest power of its era.

Their most memorable neo-Babylonian ruler, Nebuchadnezzar

(NAB-oo-kuhd-nez-uhr)

II (r. 605–562 BCE), a brutal

strongman, rebuilt Babylon and, according to ancient accounts,

adorned it with magnificent palaces and elaborate terraced

“hanging gardens.” Built to please one of his wives, the gardens

became famous throughout the ancient world. Some scholars doubt that the Hanging Gardens in Babylon ever existed and

were a myth. But most scholars agree that Mesopotamians

invented the idea of cultivating gardens purely for pleasure

rather than food production and characterized them as “para-

dise.” From there the notion spread throughout the ancient

Mediterranean and much later the world, to the benefit of gar-

den lovers today. Eventually wealthy private individuals and

families, and not just kings, were cultivating private gardens in

their own homes. Around 600 BCE some scribe in Babylon

made a map on a clay tablet that depicted the world known

to his society and centered on Babylon; it may be the oldest

known effort at a world map. Nebuchadnezzar led the con-

quest of the remaining Hebrew kingdom in 586 BCE. The

Chaldeans flourished from 626 BCE until they were conquered

by the much larger Persian Empire in 539 BCE.

2-2d

mesopotamian Law and Society

Several documents tell us much about Mesopotamian life

and beliefs. The eighteenth-century BCE Law Code of

Hammurabi reveals the social structures of this early urban

society (see Meet the People: Hammurabi the Lawgiver).

Hammurabi’s Code makes clear both how people were valued

and how they viewed laws, government, and social norms. In

noting that families were responsible for the crimes of any

of their members, the Code probably reflected a high crime

rate, no doubt because of the tremendous gap between rich

and poor. To keep lines of inheritance clear, Hammurabi pre-

scribed harsh punishments for sexual infidelity and incest, as

did many societies. Women who violated social norms gener-

ally suffered harsher punishments than men, just as the eyes

and teeth of poor men or slaves were worth less than the same

body parts among the upper classes. Each slave was branded

with the owner’s symbol, and some endured harsh lives of

forced labor. Yet some slaves also owned their own assets, car-

ried on business, and even acquired their own slaves.

The Code also addressed economic issues. In this class-

conscious society, a surgeon could lose his hand if his patient

was a free man who failed to survive the operation, certainly a

disincentive to take up medicine. If the patient was a slave, how-

ever, the surgeon had only to replace him or her with another

slave. If a house collapsed, killing its inhabitants, the builder

could be executed. The high interest rates on loans confirmed

a thriving commercial class. The Code’s punishments tell us

how precarious life must have been in this society, where a

single small break in an irrigation canal wall could spell disaster.

2-2e

Mesopotamian Religion and Literature

Like most early people, the Mesopotamians believed in a host of

gods and goddesses, such as Inanna, later called Ishtar the beautiful goddess of love who created desire. This polytheistic religion imposed no moral demands, but while the divinities came

with human weaknesses, they were powerful enough to punish

humans, who were created to serve them. People saw themselves

as subject to the gods’ whims and held ritual ceremonies in mas-

sive temples where the gods were housed. The Babylonians and

later the Assyrians changed the names of some earlier gods but

maintained the basic Sumerian view of the universe.

The

Epic of Gilgamesh

(GILL-guh-mesh)

, first writ-

ten down about 2000 BCE but revised and retold by

Mesopotamians for another 1,500 years, reveals some of their

religious values and attitudes. Perhaps humanity’s first epic

adventure story,

Gilgamesh

echoes Hammurabi’s view of the

world as a dangerous place in which happiness is hard to find.

While there are different versions in several languages, collec-

tively they cover a range of attitudes and activities, among them

love, greed, sex, sexual assault, responsibilities to society, and the

centrality of urban culture. Although only one part of a very

rich legacy of literature and mythology,

Gilgamesh

had the most

enduring and widespread influence, enriching the traditions of

varied Eurasian societies.

In one version of the story, the hero, modeled after a real

king in Uruk about 2750 BCE and created to be two-thirds god

and one-third man, engages in a series of adventures involving

both the gods and men. With his friend Enkidu, Gilgamesh

challenges and defeats the evil but divine giant who guards a

mysterious cedar forest. Gilgamesh then rejects a proposal from

Ishtar, telling her that she is fickle and recounting the disagree-

able things she has done to her previous lovers, such as turning

one of them into a wolf. In revenge, Ishtar causes the death of

Enkidu. Reflecting on his friend’s death, Gilgamesh searches

for the key to eternal life, an ultimately futile quest involving

many setbacks that reflects the general pessimism of

Mesopotamian culture. A Uruk master scribe lamented:

“Gilgamesh, what you seek you will never find. For when the

Gods created Man they let death be his lot, eternal life they

withheld. Let your every day be full of joy, love the child that

holds your hand, let your wife delight in your embrace, for these

alone are concerns of humanity.”

12

Scholars have noted the similarities between this epic and

stories found in the later Hebrew book of Genesis. In both there

is a paradise: the garden of Eden for the Hebrews, Dilmun for

the Mesopotamians. In both a great flood destroys humankind,

a man challenges the god(s), and a serpent comes between a

man and immortality. However, although the writer or writers

of Genesis may have been influenced by

Gilgamesh

, there are

some differences in tone and attitude between the Babylonian

and Hebrew versions. In the Hebrew story, God sends a flood

to punish humans for evil living. In more urban Mesopotamia,

where floods were frequent and destructive, the gods “decide to

exterminate mankind” because “the uproar of mankind is intol-

erable and sleep is no longer possible.” But a dissenting god

causes his favorite mortal to survive by building a boat and

loading it with his family and “the seed of all living creatures,

the game of the field, and all the craftsmen.”

13

2-1 Early Mesopotamian Urbanized Societies, to 2000 BCE

Why did farming, cities, and states develop first in the Fertile Crescent?

Around five thousand years ago, small city-

states emerged in Mesopotamia, especially

in the southern Tigris-Euphrates Valley,

establishing a foundation for much that

would come later in the region and later

in world history. The connections between

these diverse peoples helped their cultures change and grow. Over

the centuries various peoples moved into the area, each adopting

and building on the achievements of their predecessors. Their

cities were dominated by religious temples, and their people were

divided into elaborate social class structures. As conquerors com

-

bined city-states into empires, Mesopotamian societies were soon

linked by trade to the Mediterranean and North Africa.

2-1a

Western Asian Environments

Life in western Asia owed much to the geographic features that

brought people together. Most early urban societies began first

in wide river valleys such as the Tigris-Euphrates, Indus, and

Nile because they provided life-giving irrigation for crops that

supported larger populations. In Mesopotamia (the Greek word

for the “land between the rivers”), the flooding of the Tigris and

Euphrates Rivers, which stretch from the western edge of the

Persian Gulf through today’s Iraq into Syria and southeastern

Turkey, made possible a flourishing society. The long river valley

promoted interaction, both friendly and hostile, between peoples,

as well as frequent invasions through

mountain passes by people

living to the north and east. To the northwest is the mountainous

Anatolia

(ANN-uh-TOE-lee-uh)

Peninsula (modern Turkey),and to the east lies Iran (known through

most of history as Persia), a land of moun-

tains and deserts and the pathway to India

and Central Asia. To the south the Arabian

peninsula, largely desert, was characterized

by oasis agriculture and nomadic pastoralism.

Ancient Mesopotamia had a climate similar to southern

California today. Most rain fell in the winter, and summer

temperatures in some places reached 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

During the long, scorching summer, the land baked stone-

hard, searing winds blew up a choking dust, and vegetation

withered. The winter brought winds, clouds, and the occa-

sional rains, while spring brought rains and melting snows

from nearby mountains that swelled the rivers to flood level,

sometimes submerging the plains. Still, the annual but unpre-

dictable floods created natural levees that could be drained

and planted, and the nearby swamps contained abundant

fish and wildlife.

Many different peoples settled the region, some of them

speaking Semitic languages, including Arabic and Hebrew,

which are related to some African tongues. Speakers of Turkish

tongues and of Indo-European languages such as Persian,

Armenian, and Kurdish arrived later. Europeans later referred

to southwestern Asia as Asia Minor or the Near East and to

the region along the eastern Mediterranean coast as the Levant (“rising of the sun”). Geographers today use the label Southwest Asia

and often lump the region together with

Islamic North Africa under the broader concept of the “Middle

East,” midway between East Asia and Europe. The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers fostered several

Mesopotamian societies. The modern city of Baghdad is mid-

way up the Tigris, and ancient Babylon was only a few miles

away on the Euphrates. Such cities arose when the farmers and

herders in the nearby hills needed more food. Possibly pushed

by a cooler climate, they left the hill country and created the first

towns in the marshy areas near the head of the Persian Gulf,

building elaborate irrigation canals to grow food after the annual

floods. This irrigation had significant consequences, for it neces-

sitated the cooperation that laid the foundations for organized

societies and then cities. Yet irrigation also slowly degraded the

soil, the salts it added eventually creating infertile desert.

2-1b

The pioneering Sumerians and Their Neighbors

Settling in southern Mesopotamia about 5500 BCE, the

Sumerians built the first Mesopotamian cities and states

(see Map 2.1). By 3500 BCE Uruk in Sumer

(soo-MUHR)

had grown into a city, eventually reaching a population of fifty

thousand. Other Mesopotamian peoples, such as those in the

north at Tell Hamoukar (see Chapter 1), may have also forged

early states. By 3000 BCE Sumerians had created a network

of city-states, urban centers surrounded by agricultural land

that was controlled by the city and used to support its citizens.

By 2500 BCE these Sumerian societies had grown to several

million people. Uruk was surrounded by five miles of fortified

walls and had influence as far north as modern Turkey. An

attack by Uruk on Tell Hamoukar is the world’s oldest known

example of large-scale organized warfare.

The Sumerians were clearly proud of their cities and felt

that their city life made them superior to other peoples.

A Sumerian myth begins with the lines “Behold the bond of

Heaven and Earth, the city. Behold the kindly wall ... its pure

river, its quay where the boats stand ... its pure canal.”

2

The

mud-baked brick houses of Sumerian cities were constructed

around courtyards. The largest city building was the temple, or

ziggurat

(ZIG-uh-rat)

, a stepped, pyramidal-shaped building

(almost an artificial mountain) that was seen as the home of that

city’s chief god. One of these temples may have inspired the later

Hebrew story of the tower of Babel

(BAY-buhl/BAH-buhl)

.

2-1c

Sumerian Society and Economy

The Sumerians, like later Mesopotamians, generally divided

their specialized workers into full-time farmers, professional

soldiers, government officials, artisans, traders, and priests. At

first Sumerian cities were governed by assemblies composed of

leading citizens. Whether these assemblies amounted to a kind

of democratic government is a matter of scholarly debate. The

assemblies seem to have appointed a city leader, sometimes a

woman, with both secular and religious authority. However, the

waging of wars led to more domination by rulers, priests, and

nobles, and gradually women lost the right to be elected leader

and serve in the assemblies. When war leaders became kings, or

hereditary monarchs, the assemblies lost power.

The Sumerian nobility and priests controlled most of the

land in and around the city, which was tilled by tenant farmers or

slaves. A Sumerian proverb claimed that “the poor man is better

dead than alive; if he has bread,

he has no salt; if he has salt, he

has no bread.”

3

The many slaves,

who included captives taken in

battles and criminals, were treated as personal property but allowed to marry. Eventually

royal officials, nobility, and priests controlled most of the eco-

nomic life of the cities. Royal tombs in Ur show that the elite

lived well but practiced human sacrifice on a large scale. When a

king or queen died some members of their court, including sol-

diers and attendants, who may have considered it an honor, were

killed in grisly rituals and buried with them. Their bodies were

usually arranged neatly in the royal tomb alongside their dead

sovereigns, the warriors with weapons at their side and the

women in elaborate headdress. Ritual killing associated with a

royal death was also practiced by some other ancient cultures.

The Sumerians introduced

patriarchy

, a system in which

men largely control women and children and also shape ideas

about appropriate gender behavior. Sumerian women were gen-

erally subservient to men, but they could inherit property, run

their own businesses, and serve as witnesses in court. A queen

enjoyed much respect as the

wife of the king, and Sumerian

religion allowed a woman to be

the high priestess if the city

divinity was female. Within family life, which was much treasured, women were important

but also faced stereotypes, as this proverb suggests: “The wife is

a man’s future; the son is a man’s refuge; the daughter is a man’s

salvation; the daughter-in-law is a man’s devil.”

4

The trade networks involving Sumeria may have been

some of the first in world history with significant consequences.

Because of their lack of natural resources, the Sumerian cities

formed extensive trade links with neighboring societies. They

imported copper from the Caucasus Mountains to the north

and then discovered how to mix it with tin to make bronze,

an alloy that made for stronger weapons. This discovery began

the Bronze Age in western Asia; later bronze helped shape

other societies in Eurasia and North Africa. The Sumerians

also imported gold, ivory, obsidian, and other necessities from

Anatolia, the Nile Valley, Ethiopia, India, the Caspian Sea, and

the eastern shore of the Mediterranean.

The Persian Gulf became a major waterway, with many

trading ports. Bahrain

(bah-RAIN)

Island served as a trans-

shipment point for goods flowing in from all directions and as

a hub where various traders and travelers met. Mesopotamian

merchants traveled there carrying textiles, leather objects, wool, and olive oil and returned with copper bars, ivory, precious

objects, and rare woods from various western Asian societ-

ies and India. Trade helped people learn and profit from each

other’s skills and surplus goods.

The Sumerians also had some trade and other connec-

tions with Jiroft

( JEER-oft)

in southeastern Iran, another

urban-based, bronze-using farming society that emerged

sometime between 3000 and 2500 BCE. Jiroft’s economy

was based on cultivating date palms. Its gaily decorated capi-

tal city, with lofty red brick towers, supplied craftsmen to

Uruk. The ruins of Jiroft city include a two-story citadel,

a Sumerian-like ziggurat, the world’s oldest known board

games, and staggering numbers of decorated vases, goblets,

cups, and boxes, often adorned with precious stones from

India and Afghanistan.

2-1d

Sumerian Writing and Technology

The world’s first written records were produced by the

Sumerians, who were innovators in many areas. Trade and

the need to keep accurate records of agricultural production and public and private business dealings led around 3200 BCE

to the

cuneiform

(kyoo-NEE-uh-form)

(Latin for “wedge-

shaped”) writing system. Temple recordkeepers, or scribes, made

rough pictures (say, of an animal or fish) on soft clay with a reed

stylus that made wedges in the clay and then baked the bricks

on which these pictograms were scratched. Soon a stylized ver-

sion of the pictogram stood for an idea, and eventually an even

more abstract version with a phonetic sign described a speech

sound. The oldest tablets allow us for the first time to know the

names of a few ancient people. For example, a five-thousand-

year-old receipt for shipments of barley revealed that Kushim

was the accountant in charge of the transaction.

Writing provided a way of communicating with people

over long distances and allowed rulers to administer larger

states. Those who controlled the written word, like those who

master electronic communication in our day, had power,

prestige, and a monopoly over

a society’s official history.

Writing also gave temple

scribes and religious leaders

the power to determine how written texts attributed to the gods should be interpreted.

Since writing required mastery of at least three hundred sym

-

bols, only a few people, mostly from the upper class, learned

this skill. In part to produce scribes, the Sumerians created

the world’s first schools, where strict instructors beat students

for misbehavior or sloppy work. A clay tablet describes the

life of a pupil who spent twenty-four days a month in school

and was frequently beaten: “My teacher said: ‘Your hand

[writing] is unsatisfactory.’ [He] caned me. I [begin to hate]

the scribal art.”

5

However, because cuneiform eventually

transformed pictures into phonetic sounds, it made the writ-

ten word more accessible, even for people whose only goal

was a good recipe for a meal of red broth and meat. The

cuneiform script was so adaptable that it was used in multiple

cultures over several thousand years to write a number of

quite different spoken languages.

Writing became crucial in history by making it easier

to express abstract ideas and create an intellectual life based

on a body of literature. The oldest known signed poetry

was composed by Enheduanna

(en-who-DWAHN-ah)

, a

Sumerian priestess and princess living around 2300 BCE.

Royal women were often authors. A written language based

on clearly understood symbols also allowed communication

among people who spoke different languages but under-

stood the same written symbols. For example, the number

5

is understood today the same way by Spanish speakers, who

pronounce it “cinco,” and German speakers, who say “funf.” While giving a strong sense of identity to all who shared a

language, writing also encouraged the spread of trade and

culture, including religion, to other peoples.

Sumerians also pioneered the first use of the wheel, glass,

and fertilizer, inventions that we still live with today; created

some of the earliest calendars based on their observations of

the movements of various celestial bodies; and introduced

one of the first mathematical systems, based on the num-ber 60

. Remnants of this system can be seen today in our

sixty-minute hours and sixty-second minutes. Many other

peoples eventually adopted these innovations. Humanity also

inherited from the Sumerians the division of night and day

into twelve hours each. Sumerian intellectual advances set a

framework for scientific progress in Mesopotamia over the

next two millennia, especially in astronomy. By the eighth

century BCE stargazers pondered the mechanics of the

heavens in order to make predictions from what they saw

in the night sky. Hence, they observed the daily movement

of the stars and the shape of constellations, documenting

them on clay tablets and recording and predicting celestial

events such as lunar and solar eclipses. Their interest in the

stars also led to the nonscientific field of astrology, predict-

ing the impact of the stars and planets on individuals, which

became and remains hugely popular around the world.

Although they were not the first to convert barley into beer,

the Sumerians, like us, enjoyed alcoholic beverages and desig-

nated a special goddess, called Ninkasi or “the lady who fills the mouth,” to supervise beer production. The many taverns fos-

tered early drinking songs: “I will summon brewers and cup-

bearers to serve us floods of beer and keep it passing round! Our

hearts enchanted and our souls radiant.”

6

2-1e

The Akkadian Empire and Its Rivals

For centuries each Sumerian city had its own king who ruled

the people in the name of the city’s god. This independence

ended about 2350 BCE when Sargon

(SAHR-gone)

, the

ruler of Akkad

(AH-kahd)

, a region just north of Sumer

whose capital was Agade, conquered Uruk and then united

the other Sumerian cities under his family’s rule. This was the

world’s first known empire, defined as a large state control-

ling other societies through conquest or domination. The

Akkadians enslaved many people in Mesopotamia, and

slaves constituted perhaps a third of the empire’s population.

Under Sargon, whose name meant “true king,” trade between

Mesopotamia and India reached a peak. Indeed, merchant

ships from as far away as Oman

(O-mahn)

in eastern Arabia

and even farther away, from India, docked at Agade’s wharves,

carrying copper and various exotic products.

Sargon’s empire soon came into conflict with one created

by another city, Ebla

(EBB-luh)

in northern Mesopotamia,

whose large empire stretched from eastern Turkey to Mari

(MAH-ree)

, several hundred miles north of Akkad. By the

twenty-first century BCE the Akkadian Empire was

destroyed, probably from a combination of internal conflicts, external attacks, and less rainfall due to a disastrous drought

between 2200 and 1900 BCE that affected much of Eurasia.

Indeed, Mesopotamian societies were powerless against

abrupt climate change, and Sumerian legends express dread

of the periodic droughts: “The famine was severe, nothing

was produced. The fields are not watered. In all the lands

there was no vegetation [and] only weeds grew.”

7

Irrigation

canals silted up, and settlements became ghost towns as peo-

ple migrated.

As the Akkadian Empire collapsed, a new Sumerian

dynasty led by Ur took over much of the lower valley between

2100 and 2000 BCE, forming the neo-Sumerian Empire. Some

Ur kings boasted of their commitment to art and intellectual

life. But a coalition of enemies eventually sacked and burned Ur

along with other Sumerian cities. Ur’s temples were destroyed,

its populations killed or enslaved, and its treasures plundered.

A surviving lamentation describes the destruction: “Ur is

destroyed, bitter is its lament. The country’s blood now fills its

holes like hot bronze in a mould. Our temple is destroyed, the

gods have abandoned us, like migrating birds. Smoke lies on

our city like a shroud.”

8

The Akkadians, Eblaites, and neo-Sumerians established

the first empires in history, even though their creations were

short-lived and not the large bureaucratic organizations

we see in later empires. They were largely collections of

city-states that acknowledged one city as overlord. It soon

became clear that whoever had the best army would dominate

Mesopotamia.

Later Mesopotamian Societies and their Legacies, 2000–600 BCe

The Sumerians and Akkadians estab

-

lished a pattern of city living, state build-

ing, and imperial expansion. From 2000 to

539 BCE a series of peoples coming mainly

from the north successively dominated

Mesopotamia and created new empires,

each contributing to the politics, laws, culture, and thought of

the region. This pattern changed only when the entire area was

incorporated into the Persian Empire.

2-2a

The Babylonians and hittites

Babylon was the first state to dominate

Mesopotamia in this era. In 1800 BCE the Amorites conquered

Babylon, a city about 300 miles north of the Persian Gulf and, based there, gradually extended their control. Babylon’s most famous king, Hammurabi (HAM-uh-rah-bee)

, who ruled from 1792 to 1750 BCE, had

nearly three hundred laws collected to “make justice appear in

the land, to destroy the evil and the wicked [so] that the strong

might not oppress the weak.”

9

His law of retaliation—an eye

for an eye and a tooth for a tooth—remains famous today, and

some of his principles appeared later in Hebrew laws. Some

3,700 years ago the Babylonians also developed the mathemati-

cal field of trigonometry, the branch of mathematics dealing

with the relations or functions of the angles and sides of tri-

angles, making it easier to do calculations in fields like astron-

omy, surveying, map making, and, many centuries later, artillery

range finding. Their breakthrough, using a base of sixty, came

fifteen hundred years before the classical Greeks created the

version used today.

By 1595 BCE the Babylonian Empire had disintegrated

from attacks by the Hittites

(HIT-ites)

, an Indo-European

people from central Anatolia who expanded their power

until they met the equally strong Egyptians in Syria and

Palestine. The Hittite Empire dominated various parts of

western Asia from 1600 to 1200 BCE. By sending plague

victims into enemy lands, the Hittites pioneered the first

biological weapons. Later they also developed iron weapons,

which were superior to those made of bronze. They treated

their subjects less harshly than the Babylonians and adopted

many Mesopotamian gods, establishing a tradition of reli-

gious tolerance in the region.

2-2b

The Assyrian Empire and

Regional Supremacy

In 1115 BCE the Assyrians ing a large, well-organized military; systematically using ter-

ror against enemies; and devising methods of bureaucratic

organization that later empires imitated—began conquering

an empire that was eventually larger than any before, with

a population diverse in culture and geography. One of their

greatest kings, Tiglath-pileser

(TIG-lath-pih-LEE-zuhr)

III

(745–727 BCE), conquered the entire eastern Mediterranean

shore, and later Assyrian rulers added Egypt to the empire.

One Assyrian king described himself with some accuracy as

“obedient to his gods and receiving the tribute of the four

corners of the world.”

10

Using iron weapons while their ene-

mies still relied on softer bronze ones, the Assyrians launched

armies of over fifty thousand men drawn from all corners

of the empire and divided into a core of infantrymen aided

by cavalry and horse-drawn chariots. They used battering

rams and tunnels against the city walls of their enemies and

employed guerrilla, or irregular hit-and-run tactics, when

fighting in the forests or mountains.

Assyrian kings created a systematic bureaucracy to rule

over several million people in the Tigris-Euphrates heartland,

as part of a reliable and efficient communication network of

“royal roads,” and created an early version of the “pony express”

that allowed them to send messages hundreds of miles within a

week. While the rulers were notorious for their luxury, extrava-

gance, and debauchery, some were both brutal and learned.

Ashurbanipal

(ah-shur-BAH-nugh-pahl)

(680–627 BCE)

was a ruthless but bookish despot who also founded a great

library to collect tablets from all over the country. He boasted

that, in school, he learned to solve complex mathematical

problems and discovered the “hidden treasure” of writing.

Assyrian kings were builders on a grand scale. To inaugurate

a new palace, Ashurbanipal bragged that he invited some

seventy thousand guests and for ten days gave them food

and drink, bathed and anointed them, bringing peace and

joy before sending them back to their own territories. One

of their capitals, Ninevah, was a huge city by ancient stan-

dards and its temples and palaces were decorated with colossal

sculptures and beautiful carved reliefs. An intricate system of

aqueducts and canals watered the king’s spectacular pleasure

gardens and game parks. But such conspicuous consumption

stressed the state treasury.

2-2c

Violence and the Fall of the Assyrians

The Assyrians were most remembered, and deplored, for their

brutality, which ultimately contributed to their downfall.

Ashurbanipal bragged about mutilating and burning prisoners.

After destroying the state of Elam in Iran, he boasted that

“like the onset of a terrible hurricane I overwhelmed Elam.

I cut off the head of ... their braggart king. In countless num-

bers I killed his warriors.” As to the capital city, “I destroyed

it ... [and] burned it with fire.”

11

Soldiers routinely looted

cities, destroyed crops, and impaled their enemies. To prevent

revolts, the Assyrians often simply moved people to another

part of the vast empire. For example, according to legends, all

the inhabitants of one of the two small Hebrew kingdoms in

Palestine were exiled to Mesopotamia, where they disappeared

from history (see Chapter 3). Yet the Assyrians also tolerated

other religions, allowing the Hebrew faith to survive the con-

quest of their state.

Many hated Assyria’s brutal rule. Eventually Assyria was

weakened by civil wars, political unrest, overpopulation, and

drought caused by climate change. In 612 BCE, a coalition

including the Chaldeans

(kal-DEE-uhns)

(also known as neo-

Babylonians) captured the Assyrian capital at Nineveh

(NIN-

uh-vuh)

, burning the spectacular palaces and temples to the

ground. The fall of Assyria was an iconic event, recorded by

passages in the Hebrew bible and by Greek and Roman writers.

They described the fall as punishment for the moral depravity of

the rulers. The winners write history, but some modern writers

have been kinder to the Assyrians, the greatest power of its era.

Their most memorable neo-Babylonian ruler, Nebuchadnezzar a brutal

strongman, rebuilt Babylon and, according to ancient accounts,

adorned it with magnificent palaces and elaborate terraced

“hanging gardens.” Built to please one of his wives, the gardens

became famous throughout the ancient world. Some scholars doubt that the Hanging Gardens in Babylon ever existed and were a myth. But most scholars agree that Mesopotamians

invented the idea of cultivating gardens purely for pleasure

rather than food production and characterized them as “para-

dise.” From there the notion spread throughout the ancient

Mediterranean and much later the world, to the benefit of gar-

den lovers today. Eventually wealthy private individuals and

families, and not just kings, were cultivating private gardens in

their own homes. Around 600 BCE some scribe in Babylon

made a map on a clay tablet that depicted the world known

to his society and centered on Babylon; it may be the oldest

known effort at a world map. Nebuchadnezzar led the con-

quest of the remaining Hebrew kingdom in 586 BCE. The

Chaldeans flourished from 626 BCE until they were conquered

by the much larger Persian Empire in 539 BCE.

2-2d

mesopotamian Law and Society

Several documents tell us much about Mesopotamian life

and beliefs. The eighteenth-century BCE Law Code of

Hammurabi reveals the social structures of this early urban

society (see Meet the People: Hammurabi the Lawgiver).

Hammurabi’s Code makes clear both how people were valued

and how they viewed laws, government, and social norms. In

noting that families were responsible for the crimes of any

of their members, the Code probably reflected a high crime

rate, no doubt because of the tremendous gap between rich

and poor. To keep lines of inheritance clear, Hammurabi pre-

scribed harsh punishments for sexual infidelity and incest, as

did many societies. Women who violated social norms gener-

ally suffered harsher punishments than men, just as the eyes

and teeth of poor men or slaves were worth less than the same

body parts among the upper classes. Each slave was branded

with the owner’s symbol, and some endured harsh lives of

forced labor. Yet some slaves also owned their own assets, car-

ried on business, and even acquired their own slaves.

The Code also addressed economic issues. In this class-

conscious society, a surgeon could lose his hand if his patient

was a free man who failed to survive the operation, certainly a

disincentive to take up medicine. If the patient was a slave, how-

ever, the surgeon had only to replace him or her with another

slave. If a house collapsed, killing its inhabitants, the builder

could be executed. The high interest rates on loans confirmed

a thriving commercial class. The Code’s punishments tell us

how precarious life must have been in this society, where a

single small break in an irrigation canal wall could spell disaster.

2-2e

mesopotamian

Religion and Literature

Like most early people, the Mesopotamians believed in a host of

gods and goddesses, such as Inanna, later called Ishtar the beautiful goddess of love who created desire. This polytheistic religion imposed no moral demands, but while the divinities came

with human weaknesses, they were powerful enough to punish

humans, who were created to serve them. People saw themselves

as subject to the gods’ whims and held ritual ceremonies in mas-

sive temples where the gods were housed. The Babylonians and

later the Assyrians changed the names of some earlier gods but

maintained the basic Sumerian view of the universe.

The Epic of Gilgamesh first writ-

ten down about 2000 BCE but revised and retold by

Mesopotamians for another 1,500 years, reveals some of their

religious values and attitudes. Perhaps humanity’s first epic

adventure story, Gilgamesh echoes Hammurabi’s view of the world as a dangerous place in which happiness is hard to find.While there are different versions in several languages, collec-

tively they cover a range of attitudes and activities, among them

love, greed, sex, sexual assault, responsibilities to society, and the

centrality of urban culture. Although only one part of a very

rich legacy of literature and mythology,Gilgamesh had the most

enduring and widespread influence, enriching the traditions of

varied Eurasian societies.

In one version of the story, the hero, modeled after a real

king in Uruk about 2750 BCE and created to be two-thirds god

and one-third man, engages in a series of adventures involving

both the gods and men. With his friend Enkidu, Gilgamesh

challenges and defeats the evil but divine giant who guards a

mysterious cedar forest. Gilgamesh then rejects a proposal from

Ishtar, telling her that she is fickle and recounting the disagree-

able things she has done to her previous lovers, such as turning

one of them into a wolf. In revenge, Ishtar causes the death of

Enkidu. Reflecting on his friend’s death, Gilgamesh searches

for the key to eternal life, an ultimately futile quest involving

many setbacks that reflects the general pessimism of

Mesopotamian culture. A Uruk master scribe lamented:

“Gilgamesh, what you seek you will never find. For when the

Gods created Man they let death be his lot, eternal life they

withheld. Let your every day be full of joy, love the child that

holds your hand, let your wife delight in your embrace, for these

alone are concerns of humanity.”

12

Scholars have noted the similarities between this epic and

stories found in the later Hebrew book of Genesis. In both there

is a paradise: the garden of Eden for the Hebrews, Dilmun for

the Mesopotamians. In both a great flood destroys humankind,

a man challenges the god(s), and a serpent comes between a

man and immortality. However, although the writer or writers

of Genesis may have been influenced by Gilgamesh, there are

some differences in tone and attitude between the Babylonian

and Hebrew versions. In the Hebrew story, God sends a flood

to punish humans for evil living. In more urban Mesopotamia,

where floods were frequent and destructive, the gods “decide to

exterminate mankind” because “the uproar of mankind is intol-

erable and sleep is no longer possible.” But a dissenting god

causes his favorite mortal to survive by building a boat and

loading it with his family and “the seed of all living creatures,

the game of the field, and all the craftsmen.”