Sunday, March 2, 2025

Civilization Begins In The Neolithic?

Does The Rise Of The First City
In The World
Indicate That The Neolithic Era
Was The Beginning Of Civilization?

Was there a direct evolution of some Neolithic societies in Mesopotamia that led to the first city, Uruk, The Mother of All Cities? This is important because Uruk became the model for many cities after that.

With apologies to my academic readers.
I have taken liberties in this article with the location of the citations because I used so many quotations. They are located below each quote or major idea along with an Internet link to the full document. These links will allow the reader to view the authority of the source and to read the document cited.Every text before a citation is a quote unless it is unclear. In that cae I have added quote marks as needed.

INTRODUCTION

It is my contention that civilization began in the Middle to Late Neolithic. 

The Ubaid Neolithic cultures and societies provided the essential ingredients for the first city-states to emerge. Most importantly, it was not just one element that they provided. Agriculture was, of course, essential but it was a very sophisticated intensive agriculture that produced a surplus and allowed the cities to emerge. 

"Agriculture is believed to be a pre-requisite for cities..."
--------------
Urbanization and the Development of Cities

Yet, in addition to agriculture there were a number of critical innovations, such as the first large villages. Thousands of people lived close together which had never been done before. This laid the groundwork for the later large cities. 

Civilization is based on an improbable idea -- that strangers can live and work together in an urban setting forging new allegiancies to replace the natural ties of family, clan, or tribe.
It's a very unnatural way of living.
--------------
Miles, Richard PhD. BBC: Ancient Worlds/S1:E1 (Come Together).

Moreover, it was unique religious Neolithic architecture that provided the basic symbolic model that later was adopted and enhanced by the cities. These early monuments evolved into huge magnificent Ziggurats built by almost every city-state in Mesopotamia. They became symbols for each city and a key part of each citizen's identity. 

There was also an extensive 'reed' technology that was developed with Neolithic technology and that was used to make boats of different sizes and was essential for commerce. This reed technology was also used to make a wide variety of essential items, all of which continued to be made in the cities.

And finally, and just as important, there was a new sense of time, of linear time, that was essential for agriculture but also for city planning.

All of these things came from the Neolithic Ubaid cultures in Mesopotamia and the city-states could not have emerged or become established and powerful without them. 

Moreover, the Neolithic Ubaid culture was prevalent throughout Mesopotamia for more than a thousand years before the rise of the cities. 


EXPERTS AGREE THAT THE UBAID NEOLITHIC CULTURE
PROVIDED A SOLID FOUNDATION FOR THE RISE OF THE CITIES

An understanding of the rise of complex cultures [in Mesopotamia] should begin with the Ubaid Period which falls chronologically between the origins of agriculture and the rise of urbanism. During the Ubaid a new social order was evolving in southern Mesopotamia and the Susiana Plain (ELAM) of southwest Iran out of which emerged complex societies with a centralized state structure.
------------------------
Beyond the Ubaid: Transformation and Integration in the Late Prehistoric Societies of the Middle East
Edited by Robert A. Carter and Graham Philip (PDF)

"During the fourth millennium B.C, the Mesopotamian mix began to tame alluvial plain and marshlands between the two rivers, the land we call Sumer, with roads and canals. Here Sumerian's farm villages evolved into small city-states, each clustered around a temple and ruled by an ensi or "priest-ruler". 
------------------------
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology, Brown University.

There was much continuity between the Ubaid culture and the succeeding Uruk period [the first city], when many of the earlier traditions were elaborated, particularly in architecture.
---------------
Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art. “The Ubaid Period (5500–4000 B.C.).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (October 2003). http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ubai/hd_ubai.htm

In addition, it is important to note that inventing new interconnected technologies from scratch was probably more difficult than further developing those technologies. For example, the Ubaid societies developed the concept of canals and then engineered them into a network of 'water highways' that were used for irrigation, flood control, commerce, and transportation. This idea, this engineering, and a complex network of canals was extensively developed later by the great city-states in Mesopotamia, but they were building on the original ideas that had been put in place by the Neolithic Ubaid engineers.

However, the Ubaid technology went much further. It combined agriculture with the flexibility of the canals to deliver grain to a central control. And it created  fleets of reed boats to work the canals. In other words they did not develop one technology they invented several that worked together.

In the past, the person or culture that came up with a new idea was given the credit for that idea. Mesopotamian cities, for example, have been credited with creating written language and records. So in this case, the Ubaid Neolithic cultures should be given the credit for creating an early civilization. 

In spite of this argument, I have to admit there is a problem when evaluating the Neolithic. Much of it is lost or buried under many layers of soil. There is simply much less evidence than there is for the later cities.

Nevertheless, based on what we do know and based on what I outline in this article, it appears possible that early civilization was created in the Middle to Late Neolithic. 

For these reasons, I propose that the later part of the Neolithic period should be considered the beginning of civilization.

Middle to Late Neolithic   = Civilization 1.0
Mesopotamia and Egypt  = Civilization 2.0

Yet my idea that civilization began perhaps thousands of years earlier than historians had previously thought, and in the Neolithic era, is only a general hypothesis. It will take many years of study, research, and excavations to prove or disprove this idea.


THE FIRST CITY AND ITS RELATION TO THE NEOLITHIC

However, there is one specific time period that strongly suggests the truth of this idea. And that idea is the rise of the Mother of All Cities, the city of Uruk, the first city in the world, which became the model for most other cities in Mesopotamia. In this case, the path from Neolithic to city-state was much clearer and the connection more obvious.
 
Uruk was known as the "Mother of All Cities" because it was the first city, and at one point, the largest city in the world.

The Ubaid culture led to the emergence of Uruk in multiple ways, such as the development of agriculture, architecture, urban organization, belief systems, and various technologies such as weaving, pottery, and reed technologies, along with a new sense of time. 

Mesopotamian scholars are in agreement that the city of Uruk could not have emerged without a solid foundation that had been built by the Ubaid culture.

The first cities all have their roots in earlier "temple towns" that first arose in the Ubaid period ca. 5500-4000 BC. Understanding the Ubaid culture is thus crucial for any investigation of how complex societies first developed. 
--------------
Incipient Social Complexity in The Ubaid Horizon (5800-4000 BC). U.S. National Science Foundation. Program Manager: John Yellen. BCS  Division Of Behavioral and Cognitive Science; SBE  Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Science.

However, the rise of the other city-states in Mesopotamia may have developed differently. While the Neolithic Ubaid culture was widespread throughout Mesopotamia, it does not mean that early civilization began the same way for all cities. However, in the case of Uruk, it appears to have come directly from the surrounding Ubaid culture. So this lends support to the idea that civilization in general began in the Middle to Late Neolithic era.

However, many scholars make a clear distinction. They believe that certain aspects of the cities such as the huge magnificent Ziggurat towers, the dense population, the walled cities, and the right angled white buildings made of fired bricks were markedly different from the Neolithic. In addition many consider the invention of writing by the cities to be a key difference. Therefore they believe civilization began when the city-states became established.

Yet, these often-cited aspects ignore other important parts of city life. Outside the city walls, a much larger farm population lived an essentially New Stone Age (Neolithic) existence that supplied the surplus grain these cities required. These outside areas contained villages and towns where farmers tended the fields and supplied the surplus grain that made these cities possible. 

Moreover, critical Neolithic farm tools, such as the sickle and plow, continued to be used for thousands of years all through the Bronze Age. These better Neolithic tools were essential for the planting and harvesting of barley, the main crop, and other crops as well. Bronze was too soft for this kind of work and too expensive. 


"Recreation of a Neolithic sickle, Museum Quintana, Künzing, Germany."
Flint was held in place with bitumen (similar to asphalt) that occurred naturally.  

"Stone tools maintained themselves during the Metal Age, yielding only slowly to the new material, which was expensive and the product of special skills. The copper and bronze tools and weapons... that constitute impressive displays in museums were rare luxuries. "
--------------- 
Britannica. "Neolithic Tools." Britannica.com. https://www.britannica.com/technology/hand-tool/Neolithic-tools

From the Metropolitan Museum in NYC:
"Flint...Was the primary material used to make sickles in Egypt until the first millennium B.C. When iron became more widely available. The reason for using flint was probably multifaceted and included considerations such as its abundance, its ease of manufacture compared to casting metal tools, flint’s proficiency at cutting grain.."
---------------
Bifacial Sickle Insert, Neolithic–Predynastic Period, ca. 5000–3100 B.C. Metropolitan Museum.


Large community buildings made entirely of reeds, known as mudhifs.


Rabas or homes for the average person.


Long before the rise of civilization in Sumer, reed houses were probably being built in the Neolithic era.
"Reed buildings were constructed from as early as the preceding Ubaid Period."
---------------
Perkins, A.L. 1949. The comparative archaeology of early Mesopotamia. SAOC 25. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, p. 88.

There was another key technology that has gone largely ignored. It was vital to the villages outside the walls of the cities but also vital to the cities themselves. I am talking about reed technology.

Later, with the rise of the great city-states in Mesopotamia, reed houses were often built in the outlying farm villages and outside the walls of the city.

"Reed houses undoubtedly formed a more important part of the urban and rural landscape than has generally been recognized by scholars, who have tended to assume that all of the population in Mesopotamia lived in mudbrick dwellings."
------------------
Potts, D.T. Mesopotamian Civilization, The Material Foundations, p. 117. London: The Athlone Press. 1997.


"2 people in a mashoof (Arab canoe) surrounded by reeds."

Mesopotamia contained an abundance of high-quality reeds that grew wild. Farming villages and towns utilized Neolithic reed technology to make comfortable, inexpensive reed homes and sophisticated, large community buildings. Furthermore, reeds were used to make boats that worked the canals, enabled commerce, and brought the harvest to the cities. This versatile and advanced reed technology was also used to make rope, fences, baskets, containers, furniture, fish traps, and all-purpose mats.

In Mesopotamia, and particularly in the region where the Tigris and Euphrates meet the Persian Gulf, that natural resource was, and still is, the reed that grows in marsh-like environments. Generally, these reeds are quite sturdy and can grow to lengths of up to 15 feet. Now if you’re wanting to build a boat, 15 feet of reed gives you a fair amount of material to work with, it would allow you to construct a decent sized vessel without even having to combine reeds for purposes of achieving greater length.
--------------
Boating with the Ubaid People. Maritime History. Episode 001.


A model of a large reed ship, the Tigris.
While this model may not apply to the Ubaid time period, it demonstrates that boats of this size could be built. Furthermore, it has been proven that seafaring boats were constructed in the Ubaid era.
This example of a large boat could carry 50 tons of cargo. Thor Heyerdahl built the full-scale ship to prove the seaworthiness of reed ships. He sailed the Tigris with no problems for 5 months in the Persian Gulf.
"Model of the reed boat Tigris, boat of Thor Heyerdahl." 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tigris_Model_Pyramids_of_Guimar.jpg

It has been well established that sophisticated large seagoing reed ships had been developed in the Neolithic era before the beginning of Mesopotamian cities and the world's first civilization arose. 
------------------
Carter, R. A. "Boat remains and maritime trade in the Persian Gulf during sixth and fifth millennia BC." Antiquity, 80 (307), 2006, pp. 52

While reeds were an important material for farming villages that supported the cities, reeds were also a critical resource for the cities. While not well understood today, port receipts, indicating the delivery of reed bundles, clearly show that reeds were perhaps the second largest industry after agriculture. Neolithic technology had taken weaving with reeds (woven-fiber technology) to a high level of sophistication, which continued in the cities for thousands of years all during the time period of the great civilizations. In particular reed boats of all sizes were essential for transportation, city commerce and to bring the harvest to the city.
---------------
Mesopotamian Misconceptions. DeconstructingTime (2021). 
https://deconstructingtime.blogspot.com/2021/06/mesopotamian-misconceptions.html

"Cucuteni (a Neolithic Culture) kiln reconstruction "
Art Museum, Piatra Neamt, Romania. The invention of the kiln was as important as the invention of pottery. It allowed high sustained temperatures, which later would be modified for the smelting of metals.


Ubaid pottery.
Neolithic societies invented the kiln and pottery technology which required high and consistent temperatures. Recent discoveries found that they also invented the pottery wheel. 


A BASIC MISUNDERSTANDING

When I took the required Western History course in college, there was a sharp distinction between the Neolithic (New Stone Age) and the start of civilization which was often coupled with the arrival of the Bronze Age. This period, which has also been called the Late Stone Age, was, we were told, a crude, rough, Stone Age era. Even though it had made major advances, it was still a long way away from the sophistication and precision of civilization. 

Yet, I believe this is incorrect. And I am not the first person to say this.

Today archaeologists are beginning to reexamine and reevaluate these long held assumptions. "Not too long ago, archaeologist Rengert Elburg found something that convinced him that 'stone age sophistication' is not a contradiction in terms."
---------------
Curry, Andrew. The Neolithic Toolkit. Archaeology.Org, November/December 2014. https://archaeology.org/issues/november-december-2014/features/germany-recreating-neolithic-toolkit/

Yet, I will go much further. I will argue that the New Stone Age was quite advanced and that, in the case of some cities in Mesopotamia, it slowly evolved, almost seamlessly, into the era of civilized city-states. 

But perhaps more importantly, the legacy of New Stone Age agriculture, technology, belief systems, and especially timekeeping continued all during the early and late civilizations and were a critical part. 

The Neolithic cultures set the tone and put forward ideas that changed the world and that we still live with today. Without these ideas and skills, these early civilizations could not have emerged or existed. And to take it one step further, our modern world would not exist.

Here is what the Metropolitan Museum said about these cultures and the transition to a city and urban way of life.

Much of Mesopotamia shared a common culture, called Ubaid [a Neolithic culture] after the site where evidence for it was first found. Characterized by a distinctive type of pottery, this culture originated on the flat alluvial plains of southern Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq) around 6200 B.C. 
Indeed, it was during this period that the first identifiable villages developed in the region. Some villages began to develop into towns and became focused on monumental buildings, such as at Eridu and Uruk.
There was much continuity between the Ubaid culture and the succeeding Uruk period [the first city], when many of the earlier traditions were elaborated, particularly in architecture.
----------------------
Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art. “The Ubaid Period (5500–4000 B.C.).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (October 2003). http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ubai/hd_ubai.htm 

In addition, the excavation of a large Neolithic Ubaid town (occupied approx. 6000 - 5000 BCE) shows that the Ubaid culture could establish a complex village long before Uruk and other Mesopotamian city-states came into being.

The recently excavated Ubaid village of "Tell Abada is of particular importance; it is an almost complete village with three occupational levels unearthed. Several residential houses and buildings with distinctive architectural features are exposed. Industrial workshops dedicated to the manufacture of pottery vessels are present. Of express interest was the first-time discovery of pottery-making equipment, notably the potter’s wheel."
----------------------
Jasim, Sabah Abboud. An Ubaid Village in Central Mesopotamia. Oriental Institute Publications 147,
Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2021.

Model of a large Neolithic village.  
This is the Neolithic town Çatalhöyük (CATALHOYUK) in the Anatolia region of Turkey. It was perhaps the first city in the world, founded about 9500 years ago (BP). At its height, 8,000-10,000 people may have lived there.
---------------------- 
From Video Of Catalhoyuk Model Recreation.
WWW.ZDF.DE: Catalhöyük: humanity's first large-scale settlement (CC BY 4.0). Video with Creative Commons license for free use. 
The producer, ZDF, (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen) is a German public-service television broadcaster based in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate. 


All this supports the idea that instead of there being a clear distinction between the rustic New Stone Age and the rise of highly populated city-state civilizations, the two were intertwined and inseparable. 

Even the later huge religious Ziggurats in the cities had often begun as Neolithic designs which were enlarged and became symbols for each city. 

The Ubaid period saw the development of the first complex societies in southern Mesopotamia, with the earliest evidence for towns with temples, economic differentiation, irrigation, and centralized leadership.
The first cities all have their roots in earlier "temple towns" that first arose in the Ubaid period ca. 5500-4000 BC. Understanding the Ubaid culture is thus crucial for any investigation of how complex societies first developed. 
---------------------
Incipient Social Complexity in The Ubaid Horizon (5800-4000 BC). U.S. National Science Foundation. Program Manager: John Yellen. BCS  Division Of Behavioral and Cognitive Science; SBE  Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Science.

And there was more. The critical new understanding of linear time that had developed in the Neolithic era was passed on to city administrators who refined it, further divided it, and used it to coordinate activities such as the storage and distribution of grain.

ABOUT NEOLITHIC TOWNS AND CIVILIZED CITIES

One of the main benchmarks that has kept the late Neolithic cultures from being considered early civilizations has been the small number of people in a village or town. The population of the Mesopotamian cities was in the tens of thousands, while the largest Neolithic village was only about 4000. 

Yet again, this shows a lack of understanding about the Neolithic way of life. It ignores a major early advance made by Neolithic cultures that was fundamental to the rise of the cities.

While not well appreciated today, another skill of Neolithic cultures was to create villages and towns that had many more people than the small tribes which had been essential for their previous nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle. So in addition to sedentary living, Neolithic cultures found a way to accommodate many more people living together. 

This particular innovation of the Neolithic cultures was a major achievement but has not been well understood in our modern world.

To go from living in a small nomadic tribe where everyone knew everyone, to a sedentary village of hundreds or thousands of people was a huge change. 

"Hunter-gatherer groups tended to range in size from an extended family to a larger band of no more than about 100 people."
------------
National Geographic, Feb 9, 2024.

An assessment of existing estimates indicates that PPN  [Pre-Pottery Neolithic] villages may have been occupied by a maximum of around 500 people during the PPNA; up to 1400 people by the Middle PPNB; and up to 4000 people by the Late PPNB.
---------------
Birch-Chapman, Shannon et al. "Estimating population size, density and dynamics of Pre-Pottery Neolithic villages in the central and southern Levant." Taylor & Francis Group, Mar 28, 2017.

The clever Neolithic cultures found a way for thousands of people to live in relative harmony. The Neolithic communities created distinctive shrines and religious buildings that everyone paid homage to. This meant that people could assume that even a stranger in their town held the same fundamental beliefs. 

Neolithic cultures passed this skill and understanding of symbolism on to the city-states, which were then able to expand the Neolithic model with their huge temples and large populations.


BUT WHAT ABOUT WRITING?

For many historians, the invention of writing by the cities was a critical dividing point between the Neolithic and the start of civilization. However, writing took about a thousand years to develop after Uruk was founded and, therefore, was not essential in the beginning. Just like in the early cities that had small populations, writing was not needed or necessary, and so it was not critical during the Neolithic era. But reed boats, agriculture, canals, villages, and religious shrines were essential, and these had been well established by the Ubaid Neolithic cultures long before the cities emerged. 

 "Early writing tablet recording the allocation of beer; 3100-3000 BC."
Example of how writing was begun for accounting purposes.

For many historians, history starts with writing, and everything before that is prehistory. However, I argue that writing was only one of a number of  important technologies.  Many more essential technologies were developed in the late Neolithic -- and therefore, writing by itself, should not be the defining technology that divides the Neolithic from Civilization.


A HISTORICAL MISUNDERSTANDING

The Neolithic way of life was a decisive break from the Paleolithic Old Stone Age past. It was completely different from the nomadic small tribe hunter-gatherer foraging way of life that had existed for millions of years. Although it was labeled 'stone age,' the New Stone age had much more in common with the rise of civilizations and much less in common with the Old Stone Age. 

Furthermore, the great civilizations in Mesopotamia did not reject or distance themselves from the preceding Ubaid Neolithic way of life, instead, they embraced it. They built around previous sacred Ubaid religious areas and deliberately designed new religious structures to express continuity with the Ubaid past.

The transition period happened over a thousand years, from about 5500 BCE to 4000 BCE. Due to the particular circumstances of Southern Mesopotamia, the development seemed almost natural or inevitable. The rise of the great city of Uruk sprang from the ongoing success of the surrounding Ubaid Neolithic farming that had developed a complex, intensive, and unique system that produced a surplus of grain, mostly barley. It was the surplus that was the critical tipping point because surpluses allowed people who did not farm to specialize or to administrate and govern. 

This surplus then 'funded' (so to speak) the establishment of administrative centers, huge granaries, and large temples. Once in place, the granaries allowed administrators to plan the distribution of grain to 'pay' its workers and to also plan for times of poor harvests.

In Mesopotamia, grain was king. Or, to put it more accurately, grain made kings. The palace and temple institutions that rose to prominence during the third millennium BC were built on the production, stockpiling, and distribution of grain...
---------------
Paulette,Tate. Dissertations: Grain Storage and the Moral Economy in Mesopotamia (3000-2000 BC). Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures. Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago (2015).

It is important to note that this was a peaceful transition that grew out of a developing technology. This success of Neolithic farming technology led to the creation of the city-state of Uruk. It did not come about because of war, or invasions, or subjugation.

 "A contextual analysis comparing different regions shows that the Ubaid expansion took place largely through the peaceful spread of an ideology, leading to the formation of numerous new indigenous identities that appropriated and transformed superficial elements of Ubaid material culture into locally distinct expressions."
---------------
Hamblin, William J. (2006-09-27). Warfare in the Ancient Near East to 1600 BC (0 ed.). Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203965566. ISBN 978-1-134-52063-3.


AGRICULTURE AS AN EXAMPLE
OF SOPHISTICATED
ESSENTIAL NEOLITHIC TECHNOLOGY


GRAIN STORAGE AND DISTRIBUTION

To everyone's surprise, the sophisticated storage of grain turned out to be one of the earliest technologies associated with agriculture.

Surprisingly, complex storage was in place during the early Neolithic, even before "the emergence of domestication and large-scale sedentary communities by at least 1,000 years." (See Kuijt et al next.)

"Life-history of Structure 4 granary Dhra', Jordan.
This illustration shows the cyclical process of construction, use, and abandonment over several hundred years (Illustration by E. Carlson)."

This blog is about the human perception of time. Sophisticated long-term storage implies a new Neolithic sense of time, unlike the earlier nomadic hunter-gatherers homo sapiens who ate food immediately as they found it and did not save it.

While not often mentioned by researchers, storage of grains was as important as agriculture. This meant that the Neolithic people not only had to decide which plants to cultivate but also which could be stored long-term. Growing bountiful crops was pointless if the harvest spoiled. In Mesopotamia the main such cereal crop was barley.

"These morphological changes are the byproduct of shifts in human practices...combining the active management and extraction of plant resources such as cultivation, with new systems for food processing and storage. The increasingly “built world” of the Neolithic sees important transitions" during the PPNA (prepottery) Neolithic.

"Food storage is a vital component in the economic and social package that comprises the Neolithic, contributing to plant domestication, increasingly sedentary lifestyles, and new social organizations... The granaries represent a critical evolutionary shift in the relationship between people and plant foods, which precedes the emergence of domestication and large-scale sedentary communities by at least 1,000 years."
----------------------
Kuijt I., Finlayson B. Evidence for food storage and predomestication granaries 11,000 years ago in the Jordan Valley. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009 Jul 7;106(27):10966-70. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0812764106. Epub 2009 Jun 22. PMID: 19549877; PMCID: PMC2700141.  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26314333_Evidence_for_food_storage_and_predomestication_granaries_11000_years_ago_in_the_Jordan_Valley


 I would add that storing grain long term probably led to an administrative system that was hierarchical as grain not only had to be saved but then distributed in an equitable manner. This may also have been one of the Neolithic practices which were later expanded in the city-states with the power of the king and his administration.


FARMING

While the Neolithic era is rightly credited with the invention of agriculture, this hardly conveys the sophistication of their technology. After focusing on a limited number of basic plants (founder plants), they domesticated various strains for much greater yields. They also domesticated strains that were easier to harvest. 


"The majority of the crops and vegetables of today were domesticated
from their wild progenitors within the past 12,000 years."
(Alseekh, Saleh et al. Domestication of Crop Metabolomes)

CANALS

In Mesopotamia, they built a complex network of canals that brought water from the rivers into the fields for irrigation and flood control and that were also used for transportation, commerce and delivering the harvest using a wide variety of boats made of reeds. Some scholars consider these water highways to be as important as irrigation. They also built flood control systems.  

"Southern Mesopotamia was a land dominated not only by the Euphrates and its branches but by a substantial number of artificial canals as well, many of which were navigable. Not surprisingly, therefore, a great deal of travel, transport, and communication was waterborne, and indeed some scholars consider the facilitation of trade and transport by Mesopotamia's canals (whether so intended or not) to have been as important a role as irrigation."
------------|
Potts, D.T. Mesopotamian Civilization, The Material Foundations, p. 122. London: The Athlone Press. 1997.

 Even today, 90% of our calories come from foods that were domesticated in this first wave of the agricultural revolution.
--------------
van der Crabben, Jan. The World History Encyclopedia,  22 March 2023.
https://www.worldhistory.org/article/9/agriculture-in-the-fertile-crescent--mesopotamia/


A SUMMARY OF ESSENTIAL NEOLITHIC TECHNOLOGIES

Here is a summary of 12 critical Neolithic technologies that were passed on to the Mesopotamian city-states, who continued to use and develop them.
Planting and farming; domestication of plants; irrigation; long term grain storage; canals; pottery; weaving and the development of the loom (considered the world's first machine); woven-fiber technology (reed technology) to make boats, houses, rope, and baskets; domestication of animals; the development of large complex sedentary villages; the development of sophisticated stone tools used all through the bronze age; and temple architecture. 

This article is almost 8,000 words long, so I will save a detailed discussion of weaving and other technologies for a future article.


HOW DID URUK COME INTO BEING?

The beginnings of...civilization, as we now call it, were sown when the heads of several different [Ubaid] family groups resolved that their chances of a prosperous and secure future would be enhanced if they worked together as a more or less permanent collective. It was this decision that resulted in the creation of Uruk, The Mother Of All Cities.
---------------------
Miles, Richard PhD. Ancient Worlds: The Search For The Origins Of Western Civilization. Allen Lane;,2010, page  3.

THE IMPORTANCE OF UBAID MYTHOLOGY & URUK TEMPLES

The city [Uruk] was formed when two smaller Ubaid settlements merged. The temple complexes at their cores became the Eanna District and the Anu District dedicated to [the goddess] Inanna and Anu, respectively.
--------------------
Harmansah, Ömür, The Archaeology of Mesopotamia: Ceremonial centers, urbanization and state formation in Southern Mesopotamia, 2007, p.699.

Both Neolithic Ubaid settlements retained their identity with their different temple districts in Uruk. Both districts honored, preserved, and revered their Ubaid past and legacy.

While Inanna was originally a goddess from the Late Ubaid period, she continued to be a major mythological figure in the Mesopotamian cities for thousands of years.

"Ishtar on an Akkadian seal."
Ishtar is the Akkadian name for the Sumerian goddess Inanna.


About Uruk and the Sumerian goddess Inanna (3400.2200 BC).

"The rulers of the Dynasties of Ur III and Isin Larsa appear to have had a strong predilection for the religious and literary traditions of Uruk, and their inscriptions and building activity at Uruk identify the site of a major temple complex connected with a cult of Inanna, called Eanna, 'the house of heaven'."
---------------------
Collins, Paul . The Sumerian goddess Inanna (3400-2200 BC). , Institute of Archaeology, UCL. Paper from the Institute of Archaeology 5(1994) 103-118]. download.pdf, page 106.


In the sacred Eanna district at Uruk, the Ubaid Neolithic heritage was revered for thousands of years. See the listing top left, bottom of the list. See location: Top Right indicated by the letter "U".
 
The early part of this evolution is best epitomized by the city of Uruk which grew from a small Ubaid town to a city of several thousand during a two-century period in the mid-4th millennium.  
The increasing size of the Uruk temple was equaled by its political importance. The temple combined religious worship, storerooms for agricultural surplus, administrative centers for the redistribution of food from the city (god) fields and subsidiary villages. 
-----------------------
Historic Overview of Early Mesopotamian Civilization. The University of New Mexico. http://www.unm.edu/~gbawden/328-sumhist/328-sumhist.htm



The Warka Vase
LEFT: Full photo of the vase
RIGHT: Detailed photo of each level.
"Warka vase, a slim alabaster vessel carved [with these images]...from bottom to top with: water, date palms, barley, and wheat, alternating rams and ewes, and men carrying baskets of foodstuffs to the goddess Inanna accepting the offerings."
The votive Vase of Warka, from Warka (ancient Uruk), Iraq. Jemdet Nasr period, 3000-2900 BCE. The Iraq Museum, Baghdad. 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Warka_vase_(background_retouched).jpg 

 

 A SOPHISTICATED CANAL SYSTEM
'HIGHWAYS' FOR UBAID VILLAGES AND THE CITY OF URUK


By the time the city of Uruk was founded with the agreement between the Ubaid families, Ubaid technology had created a network of complex canals and levees which had multiple purposes. These purposes included irrigation, flood control, travel, commerce. 
The Sumerians built complex canal systems to collect and channel the overflow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The canals were used to water and fertilize farm fields. The dams were built from reeds, palm trunks, and mud, and had gates that could be opened and closed to control the water flow. 
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GOOGLE AI OVERVIEW

 

Carbon dating clearly shows that from the Middle to Late Ubaid period, sophisticated canal systems were being built. This is explained in a table that is contained in the following document.
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Egberts, Ella  et al. Dating ancient canal systems using radiocarbon dating and archaeological evidence at Tello/Girsu, Southern Mesopotamia, Iraq. Cambridge University Press: 08 August 2023. Creative Commons Copyright.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/radiocarbon/article/dating-ancient-canal-systems-using-radiocarbon-dating-and-archaeological-evidence-at-tellogirsu-southern-mesopotamia-iraq/DFCB7F569B744396C9E4BDA923A8EB07

Uruk was extremely well penetrated by a canal system that has been described as, "Venice in the desert." This canal system flowed throughout the city connecting it with the maritime trade on the ancient Euphrates River as well as the surrounding agricultural belt. 
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Fassbinder, J.W.E., and H. Becker. Magnetometry at Uruk (Iraq): The city of King Gilgamesh, Archaeologia Polona, vol. 41, pp. 122–124, 2003.

Boats of all sizes were built. A fleet of such boats serviced the region. For the city-states, they were an absolute necessity because they brought in the food and supplies and were engaged in trade, all of which were essential for a city to operate.

ABOUT POPULATION SIZE
The farm population outside the city was much larger than that of the urban area. So a majority of the people and a majority of the land were outside the city. And it was these farmers that provided the grain for the city to function and survive. This means that a majority of the land and citizens did not live inside a walled city in brick houses, but instead lived outside, many in reed houses close to villages. These hamlets, villages, and towns probably lived in a way that was similar to the Late Neolithic. This was not uncomfortable or primitive but included sophisticated, large ceremonial buildings made entirely of reeds and comfortable reed houses

Artist's Concept Of Fiber Homes Outside An Early City


"An Arab Village of Reed Mats and Round Fort
on Lower Euphrates, Mesopotamia."


TODAY THE DEFINITION OF A CITY INCLUDES IMPORTANT ADJACENT COMMUNITIES
-- So The Surrounding Farmland At Uruk Should Be Considered Part Of The City

A central city and the surrounding area is today called a Metropolitan Area.
"The general concept of a metropolitan area (MA) is that of a core area containing a large population nucleus, together with adjacent communities that have a high degree of economic and social integration with that core."
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Definition from the US Census, Census.gov. https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/reference/GARM/Ch13GARM.pdf

At its peak the city of Uruk may have had 40,000 city dwellers, and another 80,000–90,000 people, mostly farmers, living outside it's walls.
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These population estimates from:
CITY:
Nissen, Hans J (2003). "Uruk and the formation of the city". In Aruz, J (ed.). Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. pp. 11–20. 
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FARMERS AND THE POPULATION OF ADJACENT AREAS:
Algaze, Guillermo (2013). "The end of prehistory and the Uruk period". In Crawford, Harriet (ed.). The Sumerian World (PDF). London: Routledge. pp. 68–95. 

 

A NEW SENSE OF IDENTITY

The basic design and purpose of the huge Ziggurats that were built in most Mesopotamian city-states, was inherited from the Ubaid temples. 

The central ziggurat in Babylon.
In the distance can be seen two other ziggurats as well.
Entitled "Babylon and its three towers."


There was much continuity between the Ubaid culture and the succeeding Uruk period [the first city], when many of the earlier traditions were elaborated, particularly in architecture.
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The Ubaid Period (5500–4000 B.C.)

"The temple at al 'Ubaid restored."
A Ubaid temple design which led to the design
of the huge Zigguats thousands of years later.


Originally a small, single-roomed shrine, the temple in the Ubaid period consisted of a rectangular building, measuring 80 by 40 feet, that stood on an artificial terrace. It had an “offering table” and an “altar” against the short walls, aisles down each side, and a facade decorated with niches. This temple, standing on a terrace probably originally designed to protect the building from flooding, is usually considered the prototype of the characteristic religious structure of later Babylonia, the Ziggurat.
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The emergence of Mesopotamian civilization. The Encyclopedia Britannica.

Computer Simulation Of The Ziggurat Of Ur
"Computer reconstruction of the Zugurat of Ur-Nammu...
built at the beginning of the 21st century BCE"


As we know from our own modern world, investing in public works is a tried and tested way to manufacture a common identity. They create civic totems to replace tribal ones.
--------------------------
Miles, Richard PhD. BBC: Ancient Worlds/ S1:E1 (Come Together).


THE IMPORTANCE OF SCALE IN EARLY CIVILIZATIONS

It is my opinion that the main difference between the Middle to Late Ubaid Neolithic era and that of the early city-states was scale. 

Scale has its own particular demands. The scale of the cities required things that the earlier smaller villages had not required, such as an administrative structure, socialization, coordination, and massive buildings such as granaries. 

The need for complex organization and tracking led eventually to writing -- which was invented for accounting purposes. Nevertheless,as I wrote earlier, it still took about 1000 years after the founding of the city of Uruk for writing to be fully developed because in the early stages it was not essential. 

Writing was eventually needed because a city with tens of thousands of people required the sophisticated 'machinery' and coordination of a central government to gather, store and redistribute the grain and to do so in a timely manner which the entire city depended on.

'Beveled Rim Bowl' (BRB): The first mass-produced product.

Large scale also required mass production, such as pottery, that was inferior to the Ubaid pottery but which could be made in huge numbers. The standard-sized 'beveled rim bowls' (BRB) as they are called, were the first mass produced item in history and were also perhaps the first standard way to measure and distribute grain and food, like a kind of currency (which had not been invented yet). This is an example of a technology that came about due to the demands of a large society.

After about a thousand years, when the cities had become fully grown, the importance of scale was expressed in the huge, towering Ziggurats that stood at the heart of most cities and could be seen from any point in the city and its environs. Each Ziggurat had a design that was unique to a particular city. These iconic buildings were symbols and centers that created a shared identity among its people. And because they could be seen from any point including the outlying farms, they tied the citizens together.

Each Ziggurat was considered unique because they were built in different cities, dedicated to the specific patron deity of that city, resulting in variations in design and size, even though they shared the overall tiered pyramid-like structure characteristic of Ziggurats. 
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GOOGLE AI OVERVIEW

Scale is also relative. 
The largest Mesopotamian city, Uruk, held perhaps 80,000 people at its height which was huge for the time and the largest city in the world at that moment, but which today would be considered small.

When the cities did become large they took on a different tone. Large buildings, writing, roads, wheeled carts, armies, mass produced woven cloth and pottery were now readily available.



THE NEOLITHIC LEGACY

The following three images are direct evidence from the time of Mesopotamian city-state civilizations. They show that thousands of years after the Ubaid era, Ubaid Neolithic ideas, designs, and engineering continued to be an important part of Mesopotamian life.

Continued use of reed boats thousands of years after the Ubaid era.
BOTTOM: Bas-relief: "The Assyrian military campaign in the marches of southern Iraq. This campaign was conducted against the Chaldeans in 700-699 BCE...Assyrian soldiers captured fled enemies on a reed boat." 
TOP: Drawing made from that same bas-relief. 
(King, Leonard. A History of Babylon. London, Chatto and Windus, 1915, p. 201.) 
This bas-relief shows that thousands of years after the end of the Ubaid Neolithic era, reed boats were being built and used.


Image of reed buildings thousands of years after the Ubaid era.
This image of a reed house on a Sumerian ceremonial trough from the 3rd Millennium shows that these houses were still an important part of the Mesopotamian landscape even as many buildings were being constructed of brick.
(The British Museum, WA 120000, neg. 252077)



"Babylonian cuneiform tablet with map of Nippur 1550-1450 BC. "

While this cuneiform tablet with a map of Nippur 1550-1450 BC is from a period thousands of years after the Neolitic Ubaid era, it includes the canals and water courses that were critical to the life of this city, canals that first began in Mesopotammia during the Ubaid era.

For the busy farmers of the Babylonian sacred city of Nippur, ready access to water was essential. It’s hardly surprising, then, that this tablet, which maps an area near the city, features a complex irrigation network of ditches and canals, depicted by lines, along with a number of towns and agricultural estates
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Weiss, Daniel. Nippur Map Tablet. MAPPING THE PAST  MAY/JUNE 2019. Archaeology.Org.


SUMMARY

"The Mother of All Cities," Uruk, was the first city in the world and a model for many later cities. But this first city had grown and developed directly from the technology and customs of the surrounding farms, agriculture, towns, canals, temples and reed technology created by the Neolithic Ubaid people. 

What has been called Neolithic, at least a thousand yeas before the first city, created the intensive agricultural technology which produced surplus grain that allowed Uruk to rise up and become established. Ubaid technology also created the beginnings of a sophisticated 'water highway' system with canals and a fleet of  reed boats. 

But that is only looking at civilization in terms of technology. Just as importantly early Neolithic villages and towns provided the model for crowded cities, the model for thousands of people living closely together.

Neolithic towns, along with their way of life, sense of identity, belief system, symbols, monuments, ideas, and new sense of linear managed time created the foundation that was handed down to the first city, Uruk, a legacy that Mesopotamian cities were proud to build on.
 
Moreover, for thousands of years, the existence of these cities depended on the continuing surplus grain that farmers kept producing, farmers who lived a life similar to the Neolithic. Many of the critical farm tools, such as the sickle and the plow, retained their Neolithic design and were used all through the Bronze Age.

CONCLUSION

All of this suggests that seeing the Ubaid Neolithic cultures as less important than the first "civilized" cities is a mistake. 

The Ubaid culture and settlements need to be understood as early civilizations in themselves that set the tone for the later civilization's development, without which the early cities never could have emerged.

Another mistake is that the Ubaid Neolithic culture has often been dismissed as prehistory because it did not have a writing. Yet, thousands of years before the invention of writing, the Ubaid societies were creating a new way of living and surviving that was the foundation for the rise of what has been called the first civilizations, i.e., the first cities.

As I have shown, the first city, Uruk, did evolve directly from Neolithic Ubaid culture and technology. After that the influence of Uruk was immense as it became a model for later Mesopotamian cities and other cities.

This means our understanding and concepts of these eras, time periods, and transitions need to be reexamined. 

So, again I suggest the distinction between the Middle to Late Neolithic and the rise of the cities should be as follows:

Middle to Upper Neolithic = Civilization 1.0
Mesopotamia and Egypt   = Civilization 2.0


This is a fanciful, but perhaps not inaccurate, painting of a large ship made of reeds at the port of Eridu, considered to be one of the oldest cities in Mesopotamia, about 5000-6000 years ago. The ship as pictured is not unrealistic and was constructed using bundled reeds, a large version of coiled basket weaving techniques.



A basic map of Mesopotamian irrigation.
Postgate, J. Nicholas. Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the dawn of history. Routledge: London and New York, 1992.
https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Joukowsky_Institute/courses/ancientneareast/files/9444529.ppt


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