Situated in a vast expanse of delta between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers , Mesopotamia was the fountainhead from which modern guild emerged . Its hoi polloi learned to domesticize the dry land and draw sustenance from it . tank tread there now , and companiespump oilfrom beneath the ancient soil . Today , much of the area dwell in present - sidereal day Iraq . Were it not for the Mesopotamians , that state – or any other – perchance would n’t exist , at least not in a way we would recognize .
Mesopotamia is generally credited with being the first station where civilised societies rightfully set about to take shape . People around the creation had been develop the groundwork for civilisation for millennia : Agriculture was set up around 8000 B.C. The tameness of animals for labor and food developed at the same time [ source : Ohio State University ] . People had been create artistry for one thousand of years already . Early laws had been instal in the form of Sir Thomas More and folkways . All of these were constituent of human culture , but not civilization . Mesopotamians refine , added to and formalized these system , combine them to form a civilisation .
It ’s interesting to conceive about what might not subsist had the Mesopotamians not blazed the trails they did . The choices they made , the risks they took , the push they invested into their ideas and pursuits head to the world we know today . Would people have thought to organize oral traditions into spell collections of Page had the Mesopotamians not producedGilgamesh , the first book of account in recorded history ? Perhaps so , but who love how long it would have take if the Mesopotamians had n’t done it first ?
This achievement alone is significant , but their collection of write level is just the commencement . Read the next page to find out why else Mesopotamia is called the cradle of civilization .
The Foundation of Civilization
To understand why Mesopotamia is considered the place of origin of civilisation , it ’s authoritative have understand precisely what civilization is . This is more difficult than you might think . Scholars still debate just what must be present in a cultivation for it to be considered a culture .
For the most part , a group of people who survive together in a individual position , and have societal , political , economic and spiritual structure qualifies as a civilisation . The background is normally a metropolis , and the mass there utilize technology to carry out economic activity . The fruits of this labor are divided among thepopulationby a rule class , which may be religious in nature , political or both . The air division of goods is n’t necessarily even , which take to social class – the haves , the have - nots and those in the midsection .
Civilization , then , is the organization of all of the system people use to interact with one another – whether that ’s to the benefit of all , as in the security of an organized army , or to the hurt of the citizenry , for instance when a few are able to exploit the work of the good deal to grow more brawny . " If cultivation is behavior , civilization is structure , " explains scholarMatthias Tomczak .
By this definition , Mesopotamia was indeed a unfeigned civilization . Beginning around 4000 B.C. , city began to pop out up between the Tigris and Euphrates . Agriculturedrewthe earliest people to the banks of Mesopotamia ’s river . But as they figured out how to reroute some of the water through canals , they were able toirrigatefields farther forth . With a food supply capable of keep large bit of people , city began to recrudesce .
We might imagine these other city dwellers were seer . But the truth is much less spectacular . Mesopotamia became a civilized ball of fire for the most part out of necessity . Take , for example , their writing . The Sumerians produce some of the earliest writing discovered , on baked clay tablets . These pad captured the more mundane aspect of life , such as method of accounting and tax records .
This writing finally head tophonetic writing , which use symbols to represent sounds rather than objects . " With a phonetic system , scribes could now stand for word for which there were no images … thus making potential the write expression of nonfigurative ideas , " writes historianSteven Kreis .
This is a respectable example of how the civilization of Mesopotamia developed . Necessity bore invention , which after refinement , lead to the coordinate integration of these founding – civilization .
So now we acknowledge that the Sumerians and other Mesopotamians recrudesce written material and literature . But not everything refinement brings to the populace helps humanity . Read about more instauration – good and spoilt – on the next page .
Is Mesopotamia the Real Cradle of Civilization?
With a sedentary lifestyle based on agriculture , spiritual practices that once were spread out out became more centralized and refine , lead to organized religion . People built vast temples , and a priestly ruling class read its place high up up in the mightiness structure . After all , these were the people who knew the intentions of gods likeEnlil(wind ) andUtu(sun ) .
Organized religion also produced moral codes of conduct , which gave birth to formal laws . Legal concept like restitution , retaliation and punishment for false accusal were streamlined .
Freedom from the necessity of forage for intellectual nourishment also allowed other agricultural societies to engage in other pursuits with less touchable rewards . master among these is science . The Babylonians are believed to be the first civilisation to documenttime . They created moment and second , and produced a calendar . This breakthrough provided the foundation forastronomyand maths [ Britannica ] .
But Mesopotamian civilization is also accredit with negative innovations , like expansionism , empires , slavery and state of war . In 2300 B.C. , the main cities of Sumer were brought together under a single ruler . The Capitol Building city , Ur , was invaded and leveled by another Mesopotamian chemical group , the Elamites , just a few hundred year later . And epidemics andplagueswere now viable , since , with so many multitude living together in a small area , they could be transmitted easy from somebody to person . Prior to metropolis and agriculture , epidemic could n’t take handle among the hunter - collector bands that lived diffuse out and far apart .
For all the positivist and damaging contribution of Mesopotamian civilisation , some archaeologist believe there are other radical in contention for the rubric of cradle of civilization .
Read about these ancient groups on the next Thomas Nelson Page .
The First Civilization
If Mesopotamia was n’t the beginning of culture , then what was ? There are several candidates .
Gonur - depe , a vast city of about 1,000 straight miles settle in present - day Turkmenistan , has re - egress from a leave past . These mass farmed , build irrigation canals and palaces , and are trust to have traded with people as far away as Egypt [ source : Eurasianet ] .
Catal Huyukin southerly Turkey is another metropolis that some archeologist think may have been the rightful blood line of civilization . This city was home to about 10,000 hoi polloi who raised stock and farmed here about 7000 B.C. They also progress shrines for adoration and created art [ generator : Stockton ] . But there is no grounds of a pecking order or a social social stratification , which , unfortunately , is necessary for a civilization to exist .
If simply living in a city is the only standard for culture , then other grouping may have the Mesopotamians beaten . But there ’s more to civilization than build up cities , and until more grounds comes to light , Sumer , Assyria , Babylon and the other cities of Mesopotamia will resist as the groups who devote nascency to civilized life .
It ’s difficult to say whether civilization would have developed without the work of the Mesopotamians and anterior group . Do we as humans have a rude urge to dwell together in tumid groups ? It ’s interesting to observe that people seemed to have experienced the same impulse to band together in cities around the same clip in different place . But what do we make of the fact that for the first several million years of human universe , people lived together only in small wandering circle ? Is civilization a natural physical process of human phylogeny ? If so , what ’s our next step ?
