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Upland Villages. By 7000 B.C., highland peoples had settled in northern Mesopotamia in areas where agriculture was possible through the use of seasonal rainfall. These Hassuna people lived in close contact with other societies downstream that developed irrigation agriculture.
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Upland Villages • By 7000 B.C., highland peoples had settled in northern Mesopotamia in areas where agriculture was possible through the use of seasonal rainfall. • These Hassuna people lived in close contact with other societies downstream that developed irrigation agriculture. • In about 6500 B.C., Halafian painted wares appeared over a wide area of upland northern Mesopotamia and Anatolia; they are thought to have coincided with the emergence of chiefdoms in this area.
Settlement of the Lowlands • Human settlement along the Persian Gulf shifted as sea levels rose at the end of the Ice Age. • The complicated climatic changes in this region since 15,000 years ago form the environmental backdrop to the rise of civilization in Mesopotamia.
Settlement of the Lowlands • Environmental Change • The dramatic environmental changes at the end of the Ice Age were significant factors in the development of city-states in southern Mesopotamia. • Frank Hole (1994) has developed a hypothetical scenario: • Two environmental factors played a vital role: • Drastic changes in sea level at the end of the Ice Age and • Intense climatic variability, especially during the fifth millennium B.C., when the so-called climatic optimum after the Ice Age finally ended.
Settlement of the Lowlands • Archaeological Evidence • The first known lowland farming communities date to around 5800 B.C. • ’Ubaid - small communities located in clusters along the Euphrates channels • Covered about 10 ha (28 acres) and housed perhaps between 2500 and 4000 people • ’Ubaid may have been the cultural precursor of later Mesopotamian civilization
Uruk: The Mesopotamian City • The ancient city of Uruk epitomizes cultural developments just before and during the early stages of Sumerian civilization. • Even as early as 3500 B.C., the entire life of Uruk and its connections with cities, towns, merchants, and mines hundreds of miles away revolved around the temple (ziggurat).
Sumerian Civilization • Sumerian Civilization • Was in full swing by 2900 B.C., and was part of what we call a nascent world system, which linked polities as far afield as the Iranian Plateau and the Indus in the east and the Mediterranean and the Nile Valley in the west.
Sumerian Civilization • Sumerian Civilization • Mesopotamia never achieved political unification under the Sumerians. Rather, dozens of city-states vied for political and economic supremacy and competed with other societies in northern Mesopotamia and close to the Zagros Mountains.
Exchange on the Iranian Plateau • The rise of urbanization in Sumer was by no means a unique phenomenon, for by 3500 B.C., cities had come into being upstream of the lowlands in areas where only dry farming was possible. • Proto-Elamite clay tablets have turned up in settlements in every corner of the Iranian Plateau, in central Iran, and on the borders of Afghanistan.
Exchange on the Iranian Plateau • The Elamite state emerged in all its complexity after 3000 B.C. and came under the rule of Akkadian kings from central Mesopotamia for a while, but by 2000 B.C., the Elamites were strong enough to attack and destroy Ur in Sumer. • The Elamites’ power and importance depended on their geographic position at the center of a network of trade routes that led to the Iranian Plateau, the Persian Gulf, and most city-states in the lowlands.
Exchange on the Iranian Plateau • On the resource-rich Iranian Plateau, long-distance exchange joined widely separated communities in what has been called an interaction sphere, which linked most of the southern part of the region for many centuries. • These long-lived networks may have connected major centers near key sources of such commodities as lapis lazuli, turquoise, chlorite, and other materials.
The Widening of Political Authority • By 2800 B.C., Mesopotamia held several city-states, each headed by a ruler who vied with the others for status and prestige. • The Sumerians were in contact with other states and urban centers in northern Mesopotamia and across the rivers in Elam and farther afield to the east. • They maintained regular contacts with Anatolia, with the eastern Mediterranean coast, and sporadically with the Nile Valley.
The Widening of Political Authority • Inevitably, as the societies became more complex, so the city rulers became more secular. • At the same time, the volume of long-distance trade rose dramatically, to the point, some experts believe, where Sumerian rulers made a conscious decision to develop a formal maritime trade, through the Persian Gulf, with areas to the east such as the Indus Valley.
The Akkadians • While Sumerian civilization prospered, urban centers waxed and waned in neighboring areas. In these regions, too, lived rulers with wider ambitions, who had a vision of a larger role. • By 2500 B.C., Akkadian cities to the north of Sumer were competing with lowland cities for trade and prestige. In approximately 2334 B.C., a Semitic-speaking leader, Sargon, founded a ruling dynasty at the town of Agade, south of Babylon.
The Akkadians • By skillful commercial ventures and judicious military campaigns, Sargon’s northern dynasty soon established its rule over a much larger kingdom that included both Sumer and northern Mesopotamia.
Babylon • Babylon’s early greatness culminated in the reign of the great king Hammurabi in 1792 B.C. • He integrated the smaller kingdoms of Mesopotamia for a short period, but his empire declined after his death, as Babylonian trade to the Persian Gulf collapsed and trade ties to Assur in the north and for Mediterranean copper in the west were strengthened.
The Assyrians • Assur - In the late second millennium B.C., this city in the north nurtured the Assyrian Empire, which was extended by vigorous and despotic kings during the first half of the succeeding millennium. • At one time, the Assyrian Empire stretched from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.
The Assyrians • Assyrian Empire - Fell in 612 B.C., and the power vacuum was filled by the Babylonians under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar. • Babylon fell to Cyrus the Great of Persia in 539 B.C., and Mesopotamia became part of the Persian Empire.
