The exploitation of irrigation allows a village of a few hundred to grow into a nation of tens of thousands virtually overnight in terms of our ability to judge time with archeology. Add in a growing economy been a vacuum for surrounding tribesmen and you can have a populated nations filling all available lands inside three centuries. The USA did exactly this. thus the ancient question of where they all came from turns out to be irrelevant.
We also now clearly understand, in this blog at least the real global reach of the Atlantean sea trade world which clearly matured around 2500 BC. That had at least a one thousand year genesis and locally much more as well. Thus the idea of trade stations been established globally anywhere possible very early makes total sense. The coast of the Mesopotamian Delta lands were as attractive as the Nile Delta and would easily have acted as a seed.
I use the phrase seed rather than any thing else because all such ports allowed trade in copper in particular and luxuries as well. What it did not particularly do was facilitate mass movements of peoples during the early stages. Much more important however it allowed the transfer of global knowledge of which we literally have pyramids of evidence stacked up all the way to China and India.
We have excellent reason to think that this network was dominated by Atlanteans derived from European and north African stock and their sudden demise plunged the globe into an information and trade Dark Age around 1159 BC.
Sumer does lock down an earliest date which complies even to expectations that i have developed.
The Rise and Fall of Sumer and Akkad
http://humansarefree.com/2015/06/the-rise-and-fall-of-sumer-and-akkad.html#more
The Sumerians were the first known people to settle in Mesopotamia over
7,000 years ago. Located in the southernmost part of Mesopotamia
between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (modern day Iraq), Sumer was
often called the cradle of civilization.
By the 4th millennium
BC, it had established an advanced system writing, spectacular arts and
architecture, astronomy and mathematics. The Akkadians would follow the
Sumerians, borrowing from their culture, producing a new language of
their own, and creating the world’s first empire.
The origin of
the Sumerians remains a mystery till this day. They called themselves
Saggiga (the "black-headed" or "bald-headed ones") and their country,
Kengi ("civilized land"). Some believe they came from around Anatolia or
modern day Turkey.
Others suggest they might have come from
India and were Caucasian in origin. They were established in southern
Babylonia, in what is now Iraq, by at least 3500 BC.
Located in what the ancient Greeks called
Mesopotamia, meaning "the land between the rivers," Sumer was a
collection of city-states or cites that were also independent nations,
some of which endured for 3,000 years.
Beginning around 3500 BC, the Sumerians began to build walled cities, including Ur, the capital of the civilization.
[ this alll implies a significant change in military doctrine and that was likely the wheel and chariot which aloowed rapid closing of an armed force necessitating permanent defences lightly guarded in times of peace - arclein ]
Each
of these cities contained public buildings, markets, workshops, and
advanced water systems, and were surrounded by villages and land for
agriculture. Political power originally belonged to the citizens, but as
rivalry between the various city-states increased, each adopted the
institution of kingship.
Each city-state was believed to be under
the rule of a local god or goddess and their temples dominated the
towns architecture. The most famous temple, the Ziggurat of Ur was a
three-storied, 15m (49 ft) high building constructed from mud bricks in
the form of pyramidal graduated terraces.
It formed a complex
of temples and included the royal palace. On top of the structure was a
shrine dedicated to the god of that city.
Photos taken of the Temple of Ziggurat of Ur, by Kaufingdude, 2007. (Wikimedia Commons)
The Sumerians were among the first known cultures to develop many
benchmarks that are used to define a "civilization”. They are credited
with the establishing codes of law, the plow, the sailboat, and a lunar
calendar.
They also developed a numerical system, based on the
number 60 that is still used to measure seconds and minutes. However,
probably the most famous legacy is their writing system. The Sumerians devised one of the earliest writing system known as cuneiform or wedge-shaped symbols.
The
earliest known cuneiform inscriptions were found in the lower
Tigris-Euphrates Valley in what is now southeastern Iraq and date from
about 3,000 BC. Writers made the symbols by pressing a pointed
instrument called a stylus into wet clay tablets.
The tablets
were then dried in the sun to preserve the text. Hundreds of thousands
of these tablets have survived, providing a window into Sumerian
culture, economy, law, literature, politics, and religion. Their writing
system would influence the style of scripts in the region for the next
3,000 years.
While the cuneiform writing system was created and
used at first only by the Sumerians, it didn’t take long before
neighboring groups adopted it for their own use. By 2,500 BC, the
Akkadians, a Semitic-speaking people that dwelled north of the
Sumerians, starting using cuneiform to write their own language.
However,
it was the ascendency of the Akkadian dynasty in around 2,300 BC that
positioned Akkadian over Sumerian as the primary language of
Mesopotamia.
While Sumerian did experience a short revival, it
eventually became a dead language used only in literary contexts.
Akkadian would continue to be spoken for the next two millennium and
evolved into later forms known as Babylonian and Assyrian.
An example of a Cuneiform Tablet. From Annals of Tukulti-Ninurta II, king of Assyria (890–884 BC), relating a campaign against Urartu. Found in Qalaat Shergat (ancient city of Assur).
Photo by Jastrow, 2006. On display at the Louvre Museum. (Wikimedia Commons)
The Sumerians may have been one of the first known civilizations, but it
was the Akkadians that formed one of the first known empires. A Semitic
group, they moved into southern Mesopotamia during the early part of
the third millennium and gained political control of the area.
The
civilization was founded by Sargon the Great, and was a collection of
city states under the control of Sargon’s city, Akkad.
Sargon
reigned from approximately 2334-2279 BC and conquered all of southern
Mesopotamia as well as parts of Syria, Anatolia, and Elam (now western
Iran) establishing the region's first Semitic dynasty.
Sargon is
known almost entirely from the legends that followed his reputation
through 2,000 years of Mesopotamian history, but not from documents
written during his lifetime.
This lack of contemporary record is
explained by the fact that the capital city of Akkad, which he
commissioned, has never been located and excavated. It was destroyed at
the end of the dynasty that Sargon founded and was never inhabited
again, at least under the name of Akkad.
“The Curse of Akkad”
was written within a century of the empire’s fall and attributes
Akkad’s downfall to an outrage against the gods after the temple of
Enlil was plundered:
For the first time since cities were built and founded,
The great agricultural tracts produced no grain,
The inundated tracts produced no fish,
The irrigated orchards produced neither syrup nor wine,
The gathered clouds did not rain, the masgurum did not grow.
At that time, one shekel’s worth of oil was only one-half quart,
One shekel’s worth of grain was only one-half quart. . . .
These sold at such prices in the markets of all the cities!
He who slept on the roof, died on the roof,
He who slept in the house, had no burial,
People were flailing at themselves from hunger.
Bronze head of Sargon of Akkad was the first Mesopotamian ruler to control both southern and northern Babylonia, thus becoming the king of Sumer and Akkad and inaugurating the Akkadian Empire. (Wikimedia Commons)
In 2350 BC, Sargon conquered all the Sumerian city-states, uniting
them under his rule, creating the first Mesopotamian Empire. He defeated
the armies of Sumer in two battles and captured Lugalzagesi, the
Sumerian king who had united (or conquered) all of Sumer and earned the
title of “King of Kish”.
For the next two centuries, the Akkadians would rule Sumer during which time the cities carried out many revolts against them.
Around
2,100 BC, as Akkad declined, the city of Ur took its place rising to
prominence a century after its fall, and the city-states once again
became independent. The Akkadian empire collapsed sometime after 2,200
BC.
Historians blame its downfall on tribes of mountain people
called Gutians who conquered many parts of Sumer. Assyria and Babylon
would grow to dominate the area afterwards.
From 2112 to 2004
BC, a dynasty based at the city of Ur revived Sumerian culture to its
greatest height, even though the Sumerian language had begun to fall out
of use. By 2,000 BC, it was no longer being used and was replaced as a
spoken language by Semitic Akkadian.
Although Sargon’s dynasty
only lasted around 150 years, it created a model of government that
influenced all of Middle Eastern civilization and left a permanent
imprint on Mesopotamian civilization for the millennia that followed.
By Bryan Hilliard, Ancient Origins | Cover Image: Illustration of Mesopotamia. (Jeff Brown Graphics) | References:
"THE BIG MYTH - the Myths." THE BIG MYTH - the Myths.
"Ancient Scripts: Sumerian." Ancient Scripts: Sumerian.
"Tall Al-'Ubayd | Archaeological Site, Iraq." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/612242/Tall-al-Ubayd
"Apocrypha: The Sumerians and Akkadians." The Sumerian Culture.
"Ur, Sumeria." Ur, Sumeria. http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/iraqur.htm
"Life in Sumer." Ushistory.org. http://www.ushistory.org/civ/4a.asp
"A Brief Introduction to the Sumerians." Sumerian Shakespeare.
"Apocrypha: The Sumerians and Akkadians." ART HISTORY WORLDS.
This article is published with the permission of Ancient-Origins.net,
which releases the most up to date news and articles relating to
ancient human origins, archaeology, anthropology, lost civilizations,
scientific mysteries, sacred writings, ancient places and more. If you
appreciated this article, please consider a digital subscription.
No comments:
Post a Comment