(quick) Prologue 2.0

Below is a timeline I made of the entire history of the Middle East, starting from the beginning of time to now.

If the timeline looks oddly empty, it’s because it is empty. We have to fill it in together. You and me. Come, take my hand.

Note: There are a lot of dates in this post. Most of them are wrong. Apparently there are two different systems for dating ancient history. The first way involves the use of the correct dates. The second way, termed “short chronology”, was invented by the type of person that likes the world to be unnecessarily complicated, because all the dates are off by about 64 years. Despite this, people still use it (probably because they made the same mistake I did and didn’t feel like going back to fix it). So long story short, every time you see a date in this post just assume it’s plus or minus 64 years.

Prehistory (6 million B.C.-10,000 BC)

The first human-like creatures are thought to have appeared in Africa around 6 million years ago. Roughly 2 million years ago, one of these creatures discovered that rocks were hard and could be used to break stuff open. Hence the dawn of the Paleolithic Era around 1 million BC (meaning “old stone age”) .

For the next 1,900,000 years, hominids meticulously perfected the fine art of smashing-stuff-with-rocks. Then, just when it looked like the apex of technology had been reached, modern humans came along and figured out how to make fire.

This was around 100,000-200,000 years ago.

Unlike their predecessors, modern humans lived in small hunter-gather societies of 15-30 people. For the most part, daily life went like this:

And so for the first 100,000 years or so that humans existed on the Earth, they wandered around from one place to the next, eating food all day, smashing and stabbing everything with rocks, and setting shit on fire.

Then, around 10,000 BC this happened:

This turned out to be a really big deal. Rather than meandering around in search of food, mankind finally decided it was way more convenient to just plant some seeds, set up a nice hammock, crack open a beer and wait for the food to grow. Hence the Agricultural Revolution and the start of the Neolithic Era (New Stone Age)

Armed with this new awesome idea called agriculture, humans stopped moving around and started living in small settlements. Many people believe the oldest settlement on Earth is Jericho, near the Dead Sea. There’s evidence that people started chillin’ there as early as 12,000 BC.

Apparently farming was a much easier skill to perfect than smashing-things-with-rocks, because it took a mere 6,000 years for humans to get really good at it. This, too was a big deal because before farming, humans basically spent their whole lives doing two things:

But once agriculture improved, people were free to devote their time to other important things:



Suddenly, there was time for stuff like art, music, public service, and binge-watching TV shows on Netflix. In short, the ability to stop endlessly searching for food all day was the biggest step towards the formation of human civilization.

The two earliest civilizations on earth both started next to rivers; the Sumerian civilization in present day Iraq, followed shortly thereafter by the Egyptian civilization near the Nile river. Both civilizations were part of an area that’s sometimes called the fertile crescent, because it’s a semi-circle of habitable land in an otherwise oppressively uninhabitable area.

Today, we’ll talk about the inhabitants of the northern part of the fertile crescent, the first civilization in the Middle East (and Earth): The Sumerians.

Part 1: The Sumerian Civilization

By 5300 BC, people started settling in an area that is present day Iraq, in a valley between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The Greeks would later call this area Mesopotamia (which surprisingly is not the name of a respiratory illness but instead means “between the rivers”).

It’s pretty crazy that civilization first started in Mesopotamia based on how difficult the surrounding environment was. See, it turns out the Tigris River was kind of a dick and would flood at completely unpredictable and largely unhelpful times.

Hardship of this sort would define the way that Sumerians viewed the world and therefore their culture. For example, here’s a nice excerpt from a cheery little Sumerian poem:

“The sin I have committed I know not; the forbidden thing I have done I do not know. Some god has turned his rage against me; some goddess has aimed her ire. I cry for help but no one takes my hand.”

Yikes. Anyways the totally emo Sumerian civilization would exist for close to 4,000 years–which is a really long time. Let’s try to go through that really fast.

Uruk Period 4100-2900 BC

You could say the Sumerians were totally in the zone during the Uruk period. Over just 600 years spanning from 3800-3200 BC they invented writing, the wheel, the plow, orchards, sail boats, and irrigation. Cities sprouted up all over the place and if I were to list a few of them and then throw in an extra made up name consisting of random letters you probably wouldn’t be able to spot the fake. There’s a map below if you’re interested.

By 3000 BC, the city of Uruk had become the largest in the world (and was home to the world’s largest ball of yarn). This time marks the beginning of the Early Bronze Age.

Dynastic Period 2900-2350 BC

Despite being part of a common group, the cities of Sumer bickered and fought with each other over petty, insignificant things like water and food. Out of all this fighting arose the need for strong rulers. This led to the first kings in history, known as Lugal (‘big man’). Under the robust leadership of Lugals, the 13 city states of Sumer would finally stop bickering and work together to manage the floodplains in an organized fashion.

Akkadian Empire 2350-2200 BC

A little bit north of Sumer, the city of Akkad started to become pretty popular. Nobody knows exactly where Akkad was located, but a close cultural relationship between the Sumerian speakers and Semitic speaking Akkadians soon evolved.

Then, around 2350 this guy named Sargon came out of Akkad and took over Sumer. In doing so, Sargon created the world’s first empire (basically, he ruled over a kingdom from afar). Sargon was actually a pretty cool guy despite having this annoying tendency to knock everybody’s walls down and forcibly take over huge swaths of land. Sargon allowed a lot of the Sumerian cultural customs to continue during his rule, which led to an even closer meshing of the Akkadian and Sumerian cultures. Under Akkadian rule, the main spoken language switched from Sumerian to Akkadian. After a short period, the Akkadian empire failed but at this point the people of Sumer said “fuck it” and decided it was too much work to go back to speaking Sumerian. Instead, Akkadian remained the spoken language while Sumerian became the main written language.

Gutian Period 2200-2111 BC

After the fall of the Akkadian empire, there was this really awkward period of anarchy where the Gutians (I don’t even know, they’re just some group of people) would come in from the Zagros Mountains up north and destroy stuff. Honestly, we don’t know much about this period except that the Sumerian writers apparently really hated the Gutians, cause they talk mad shit about them at every opportunity.

The Third Dynasty of the City of Ur 2111-2000 BC

Eventually the Gutians were overthrown and the Sumerian city-states reunited under King Ur-Nammu of the Sumerian city of Ur. This momentous occasion was known as the “Third Dynasty of Ur”, or the “Neo-Sumerian Empire”, or the “Sumerian Renaissance”, or just Monday. This was a pretty sweet dynasty that lasted five generations.

For some reason, people started to get real creative during the Sumerian Renaissance, and started asking questions like:

“How did the world come into being?”

“What happens when we die?”

“If I’m clean when I get out of the shower, how does my towel ever get dirty?”

This kind of creativity and search for understanding is best exemplified in the great epic poem of Gilgamesh, which is believed to have been written around this time.

The epic of Gilgamesh focuses on Gilgamesh, an ancient king of the Sumerian City of Uruk. Two thirds god, one third man, and 100% badass, Gilgamesh was initially kind of a douche. He was basically the world’s first version of “that guy” that everyone secretly hates. He’d piss off his subjects by demanding sex from young women while making all the young men build stuff.

Fed up with Gilgamesh’s uncool ways, the people eventually go crying to the gods. The gods, who are just trying to have a good time up in heaven, are annoyed at first but finally decide to send this guy named Enkidu to kill Gilgamesh. Enkidu was like that alcoholic friend that rages so hard that it’s actually scary. He was described as living with the animals and suckling at their breasts.

Anyways, Enkidu goes to kill Gilgamesh and after a “prolonged wrestling match” the two call it a draw and decide to just become best friends instead. They then set off on a series of adventures, battling monsters, outwitting the gods, and learning what it means to be women in the modern world. During one of their more famous escapades, they go to this forest that’s forbidden to mortals, kill the monster guarding it, and steal a bunch of trees.

Enkidu was also a pretty good wingman and the two went clubbing a lot and picked up tons of girls. One night, Gilgamesh ends up totally rejecting Ishtar, who just happened to be the goddess of love. Ishtar then goes all crazy ex girlfriend on Gilgamesh and pulls the classic “I’m sending a winged-bull from heaven to kill your best friend” move.

After the death of his BFF, Gilgamesh gets really sad and goes about trying to find immortality in mankind’s first ever recorded mid-life crisis. In the end, Gilgamesh doesn’t find immortality, but he learns to become a wiser king and stops being an a-hole to everyone. Upon returning home, he sees his sweet city and decides that his name will live on in its legend.

Anyways back to real life. Creating a sense of awe and admiration was central to the governing power of kings during the Third Dynasty of Ur. Nobody took this more seriously than King Shulgi who started a rumor that he ran 100 miles from Nipper to Ur…and then back again, to officiate the festivals in both cities. He also encouraged everyone to name their children after him so they would regularly be reminded of his power.

Despite this foolproof method, the Third Dynasty of Ur slowly started to deteriorate due to outside influence. A group of people named the Amorites kept coming in from the west and north, while the Elamites kept intruding from the East. In an effort to stop these incursions, Shulgi built a 155 mile long wall. Unfortunately, the wall was way too long and couldn’t even be properly manned. It also had this major design flaw in that it wasn’t anchored to any solid barrier at the end points, so invaders just followed the wall until they reached the end and then walked around it.

Eventually, the Elamites outright invaded and destroyed the Sumerian city of Ur. In the ensuing power vacuum, the Amorites came in and took control of a bunch of cities. One of these cities was Babylon which would become the center of the Babylonian Empire (which we’ll take about next time). A really interesting side note: when the amorites came into Sumer, the area was suffering from a famine. Because of this, a bunch of them decided to leave after a short time. It’s thought that biblical figure Abraham was one of those people, who left Ur to go settle in Canaan.

So with the destruction of Ur and the increasing influence of Amorite leaders in the city of Babylon, the Sumerian civilization came to an end around 2000 BC.

The impact of the Sumerian civilization on the rest of mankind cannot be overstated. Not only was it the first civilization on Earth, but much of their customs and inventions are still around today. Samuel Noah Kramer in his book “History Begins at Sumer” lists 39 firsts in history from the region including schools, proverbs, sayings, love songs, funeral chants, and the concept of 60 second minutes and hours.

Next time, we’ll talk about the Babylonian Empire that rose up from the ruins of the Sumer civilization.

(By the way, Dinglebington is not a real city.)

Connections to Present Day

As you may know, I’ve undertaken this project to better understand the context of present day Middle Eastern affairs. It’s already paying off. A video recently surfaced of ISIS militants destroying ancient artifacts at a museum in Mosul. The statues date back to the Akkadian empire, which we know is well over 4,000 years old. The reasoning behind the destruction of the statues is that Islam prohibits polytheistic religions, such as those practiced by Akkadians. An Iraqi archaeologist said “It’s not only Iraq’s heritage; it’s the whole world’s.”

Fortunately, it appears that most of these statues were only replicas. The director of the museum has since told the public that the authentic versions are in safe storage. Still, not all of the destroyed relics were replicas, and it’s a sad example of how ISIS is destroying some of our only connections to the world’s earliest civilizations.