In this region there are several cities that appeared about 6,000 years ago. The inhabitants of these settlements were clever and clever people who made several vital discoveries. It is believed that they invented the wheel, the plow with a metal blade and, most important of all, the art of writing .
The lands around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were low-lying plains where the soil was deep and fertile. Every year in spring, the rivers flooded their banks, depositing a rich layer of silt on the land. Despite this, however, the region (now part of Iraq) was too dry to be ideal for farming. In summer little or no rain fell and the land became dry and hard. Without water, crops could not grow. Mesopotamia could only be successfully cultivated when its inhabitants learned to control and regulate the rise of the life-giving waters.
Sometime around 5000 BC, the people of the land of Sumer, in southern Mesopotamia, learned how to do it. They built dams, canals and pools to store water and take it to their fields . This allowed them to grow dates, vegetables, barley, and wheat. The harvest could be stored and consumed long after it had been harvested, freeing people from the danger of starvation. So the ancient Sumerians prospered, their numbers increased, and their communities grew larger.
Thanks to irrigation, Mesopotamia became a land of plenty. The people fished in the rivers, hunted wild birds in the marshes, and raised animals such as pigs, sheep, and goats . As they irrigated and plowed their land, the production of their crops increased, eventually generating a surplus. This meant that some members of each community could abandon agricultural work and pursue other occupations, becoming priests, administrators, artisans, and merchants. This specialization is one of the first signs of civilization.
Thebeginningsoftrade
Specialization also meant that artisans could produce goods that could be traded . Mesopotamian potters transformed the local clay into containers for eating and drinking. They also produced weights for looms, tools, and beads for ornaments. Sumerian merchants began to travel extensively, establishing trade ties with distant regions such as Anatolia, Syria, and India . These merchants could trade Mesopotamian crops and goods for raw materials they lacked, such as wood, building stone, and metals.
As the network of canals grew, the towns began to cooperate in maintaining it. Society became more complex. At the same time, warfare became more common, as villages were raided by neighboring settlements or tribes from outside the region . More and more people were forced to live in large settlements to protect themselves; settlements began to be fortified with high walls. This is how, around 4500 BC, some of the first cities in the world arose. A new urban era had been born, which took its name from one of the largest settlements in the region .
The city of Uruk
The settlement in question is Uruk, which around 4500 B.C. sheltered a thousand citizens. About 3000 BC it had already become a large city with an area of 100 hectares, which served as a home for thousands of people. The settlement was protected by 9 km of solid brick walls. The great temples built on the mound dominated the city. They were dedicated to Ani, the sky god, and Inanna, the goddess of love and war. The main characteristic of the temples were the powerful columns decorated with nail-based drawings -painted black, red and white- inserted into the plaster . Archaeologists excavating Uruk found priceless treasures, including a sculpted white marble head of a woman, perhaps representing Inanna, and a tall alabaster vase with religious scenes.
In times of war, the men of Uruk and other cities united to form armies . They chose chiefs, called lugals, to lead them into battle. Most likely, these war chiefs eventually became the first Sumerian kings, who soon ruled the cities. At the same time, each city came to dominate the region around it, forming a small kingdom.
In the cities, most houses were built of adobe, sun-dried mud bricks . It is possible that the king and important citizens, such as priests and nobles, stayed in large houses; but the most impressive buildings were the temples, which were built on mounds of earth that raised them high above the settlement and surrounding lands. Some of them were gigantic:the terrace of the Uruk temple occupied a third of the city.
Some archaeologists believe that the temples were originally warehouses where the harvest was stored. As they also contained the sacred objects of the community, they ended up becoming the center of religious ceremonies and commerce. Therefore, the priests were not slow to take responsibility for the proper government of the city. Each year, farmers brought their crops to the temple and gave a portion to the priests as an offering to the gods. The priests also controlled trade and even the network of canals.
Great discoveries in Mesopotamia
Around 4000 B.C. the Uruk civilization entered a new phase, characterized by many brilliant discoveries. By this time Sumerian metallurgists had learned to extract copper from its ore, heating it to high temperatures.
Metallurgy
About 3500 BC they were already making bronze, a stronger metal, which was an alloy of copper and tin. Craftsmen made tools, ornaments, and weapons by pouring copper, bronze, and gold into molds . Around the same time, farmers improved the plow, which until then had been pulled by people, by attaching it to oxen teams. Metal blades made plows even more efficient, allowing farmers to farm more land .
The wheel
Around 3500 BC, craftsmen in Uruk invented the potter's wheel, a wooden table that could be turned and made the heavy task of shaping clay easier. Some 300 years after that discovery, the wheel was already used in wooden carts pulled by oxen, the first means of wheeled transport . The wheels were made of solid sections of wood, so the first chariots must have been heavy and clumsy. But even so, a cart pulled by a mule or donkey carried three times more grain than a farmer could carry on the backs of those same animals.
Write
Sometime around 3300 BC, the Mesopotamians invented writing. The first written texts were commercial records and lists of agricultural products delivered to the temples . To create these records, scribes made marks on soft clay tablets with a pointed tool called a stylus and then set the tablets in the sun to dry.
This simple recording system gradually developed into a more sophisticated form of writing, which meant that people could send messages and instructions over great distances and pass information from one generation to the next.
It took approximately another 500 years to go from this signed writing to a more complex system. The oldest forms were simple signs (pictograms), which represented images of real objects . Thus, for example, a bull was represented by drawing its head. But little by little the sign of the bull came to mean the idea of strength, in addition to the animal itself. Finally, a system of signs in the form of a wedge, called cuneiform writing, ended up appearing. The new signs were phonetic, that is, they represented the sounds of language, whether whole words or syllables. This was a very important step towards the writing system we use today.
Cylinder-seals
Cylinder seals appeared in ancient Uruk at about the same time as writing.
They were small cylinders of stone or ivory in which images were engraved that left an impression when rolled on fresh clay . They were used to seal official documents, as well as jars, trunks, and doors, to indicate who owned the sealed property. A wide variety of scenes were recorded on them, proof of the great skill of the craftsmen who created them. The images included scenes from daily life as well as from the lives of the gods and heroes of myths and legends. Like writing and other inventions, cylinder seals soon became widely used outside of Mesopotamia.
Ziggurats
Many ziggurats were built in Mesopotamia. These large pyramid-shaped structures were used as platforms on which the temples were built . Like the one in Ur, built by the Babylonian king Ur-Nammuf, they were made of adobes that were later covered with baked bricks to protect them from the weather. The most famous ziggurat was the one dedicated to the god Marduk in Babylon. It had eight stories and many stairs leading to the top. The temple at the top was believed to contain a bed in which Marduk himself slept . At night the temple was abandoned, except for the priests, who stayed in the building to keep the god company.