Waiting for the football last night I watched this excellent programme, on ancient Sumer. The Sumerians appeared in the far distant past, possibly from the hills, possibly from the desert, or even possibly arriving by sea not long after the Ice Age ended and sea levels even in the Gulf rose high, some say as high asd a 13 storey building.
Around 5500 BC they began to erect huts used as temples at Eridu, now far to the south in Iraq. The civilisation flourished once they understood how to manage the land and by use of the massive amount of crops they grew became wealthy and the number of cities grew.
By 3500 BC huge numbers lived in cities, some 20,000 or so in URUK the capital itself, clearly an elite had risen and the masses worked the land and gave their craftsmanship to the state. This would entail grumbling similar to what we hear daily around us, but obviously not from ourselves.
This also required a better means of accounting, and these people were good at accounting. Clay tablets were used to keep records and over the years a form of writing developed, civil servants arose and multiplied, administrators took their important pompous positions, and soon writing concerning numbers, merchandice and payment became what is now called literature. (This does not include the daily press, obviously).
To think that those first words, soon developed from indications of how many sheep had been sold or how much Beer had been given to workers, those words today allow us into the minds of a people 5500 years from us.
They do not appear to be much different from us.
It was the thought of what writing can do for us that struck me, not for the first time, and how powerful this is. Printed words take us back thousands of years, into foreign minds, new understandings in science, maths (the Sumerians were good at numbers, they gave us 60 seconds in a minute, and had complicated maths long before the Greeks were thought off), farming techniques, stories and histories, many of which kings of old gathered together with the intention of helping them rule better.
It is also interesting that as far away as China and in South Americas that writing developed not that much later. Growing population leading to growth of cities, dominationg personalities, and need for organisation appearing at almost the same time everywhere.
Note: Any spelling mistakes here are in fact 'Sumerian' spellings.
4 comments:
That sounds and interesting programme I'll try and find it.
Dave, My fault, I forgot to link to it. I have put it up now.
We were taught about Sumer in Junior School...luckily a good teacher who had us enthused by the borth of writing.
I'll look up the viseo when you put up the link.
Fly, I never heard of them at school. Egypt was as far back as we went. It was later when I looked myself I found them, so little on offer at schools today I fear.
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