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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm editor Candice Ken. You're joined by staff writer Jane

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Speaker 1: Grant Taylor and Jane sadly is still suffering from her cold.

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Speaker 1: I have to apologize that I have faith that she's

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Speaker 1: going to shake it very very soon. So today we

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Speaker 1: are going to go back to basics with you guys.

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Speaker 1: We're not going to review all the fun definitions of

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Speaker 1: things like um isthmus and peninsula, but I think that

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Speaker 1: every now and then it is very helpful to think

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Speaker 1: about terms that we use very casually and consider where

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Speaker 1: they came from. And the one that we're going to

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Speaker 1: talk about today is civilization, because we're going to discuss

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Speaker 1: whether or not in Mesopotamia was in fact the cradle

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Speaker 1: of civilization as we like to refer to it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: a lot of people do refer to as the cradil

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Speaker 1: civilization because it's started a lot of things that we

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Speaker 1: now just consider part of the definition of civilization that

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Speaker 1: didn't exist beforehand, which, if I can pipe in and

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Speaker 1: be a total brown nose, you're actually have the definition

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Speaker 1: of civilization from Miriam Webster and again and back to

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Speaker 1: base experience, Alfred it for everyone out there, civilization a

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Speaker 1: relatively high level of cultural and technological development, specifically the

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Speaker 1: state of cultural development at which writing and the keeping

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Speaker 1: of written records is attained. Yeah, and there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of arguments about what makes civilization. Obviously, if you disagree

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Speaker 1: that the definition, you're not alone. There are a lot

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Speaker 1: of arguments from historians and archaeologists, and one archaeologist, V.

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Speaker 1: Gordon child Um suggests some criteria for what makes a civilization.

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Speaker 1: He says it has to be large, has a concentrated population,

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Speaker 1: specialized occupations, public buildings, social classes and rankings. Writing like that,

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Speaker 1: that definition mentioned government trade over long distances, and the

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Speaker 1: ability to produce and store food for a long period

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Speaker 1: of time. To think about a time when when this

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Speaker 1: didn't exist is good for for trying to wrap your

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Speaker 1: mind around the beginning of civilization and what it means

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Speaker 1: to have a civilization precisely, and if we look at

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Speaker 1: a timeline of ancient history, we can see that agricultural

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Speaker 1: practices really began an eight thousand b C. And prior

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Speaker 1: to this time, people primarily were nomads and they would

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Speaker 1: travel from place to place looking for food, and whether

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Speaker 1: they hunted animals or they foraged for vegetables and plants,

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Speaker 1: that was up to that particular tribe. Perhaps they did both,

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Speaker 1: but as far as actually being rooted and fixed to

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Speaker 1: a place, it meant much more than farming. It meant

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Speaker 1: that you had a cooperative society at that point, because

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Speaker 1: people in your tribe had to designate who would plant what,

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Speaker 1: how it would be harvested and when and how to

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Speaker 1: disseminate the bounty of your crops. And you see, and

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Speaker 1: this sort of cooperative society the very beginnings of what

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Speaker 1: civilization is right and they market thousand bc um is

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Speaker 1: sort of the beginning of agriculture. Obviously you need the

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Speaker 1: technology and the understanding to grow things and crops to

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Speaker 1: sustaining either a small tribe or large tribe. And also

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Speaker 1: the domestication of animals, which I know a little bit about.

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Speaker 1: Actually wrote How Domestication of Animals Works, which was one

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Speaker 1: of my favorite articles and exposes the dork that I am.

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Speaker 1: But it's just really interesting to think about all these

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Speaker 1: things that they that settled life offers a group, and

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Speaker 1: you know, the ability to use milk and meat and

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Speaker 1: have all this around you with not without having to

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Speaker 1: forage and hunt and gather. It frees you up to

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Speaker 1: do so much more like your life, like art and

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Speaker 1: practicing organized religion and building a fixed structure that's going

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Speaker 1: to be there for some time. And the people of

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Speaker 1: the Fertile Crescent were actually pretty lucky because they happened

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Speaker 1: upon some indigenous crop like wheat and wild barley, and

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Speaker 1: they were so plentiful that they settled there. And that's

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Speaker 1: when the Mesopotamians really began their civilization. That was sort

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Speaker 1: of again by happenstance that they found these indigenous bountiful

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Speaker 1: crops and they could actually become farmers using the land. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's not exactly an accident about where civilization began,

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Speaker 1: because we should mention Mesopotamia actually comes from the Greek

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Speaker 1: for between two rivers, and it was a very fertile place.

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Speaker 1: Even though not all of the area got a lot

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Speaker 1: of rainfall, the soil was very fertile from the Tigris

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Speaker 1: and Euphrates, right, the tigers and new fated I'm sorry, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we should mention that. And although originally civilization started like

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Speaker 1: very near these rivers, once the civilization started perfecting irrigation

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Speaker 1: and canals, they were able to expand this farming and

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Speaker 1: agriculture much farther out. And that's what's so huge, because

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Speaker 1: if you take up a farming plot near a very

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Speaker 1: fertile land, you can feed your tribe. Sure, But once

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Speaker 1: the people of Mesopotamia perfected the idea of irrigation and

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Speaker 1: building canals, they were able to experience a huge boom

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Speaker 1: in population and some instead of having one very concentrated

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Speaker 1: group of people in a specific area, they were able

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Speaker 1: to grow to the surrounding parts and could sustain and

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Speaker 1: you know, just provide food and everything for cities so

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Speaker 1: that not everyone needed to be a farmer. For instance,

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Speaker 1: Cities is one of the huge things that comes into

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Speaker 1: the definition of what makes a civilization. A lot of

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Speaker 1: people think that you have to have cities in order

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Speaker 1: to be civilization. Obviously, these were the first, so um

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Speaker 1: to think about it. This civilization of the Mesopotamians flourished

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Speaker 1: before you know, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans.

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Speaker 1: It was the predecessor to all of these. But also

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Speaker 1: we should distinguish this kind of civilization from those in

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Speaker 1: that it wasn't very unified. The Mesopotamians, they were usually

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Speaker 1: city states, just sort of cities that were you know,

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Speaker 1: they lived independently, They had their own structure, They weren't

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Speaker 1: ruled by anything bigger than them. Unlike the Egyptians and Romans,

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Speaker 1: there wasn't very unified at this point and consisted of

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Speaker 1: many languages and cultures as well. The Mesopotamians came so

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Speaker 1: many innovations and and things that also came to help

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Speaker 1: what civilization meant and just sustain the civilization in general.

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Speaker 1: And like we've mentioned before, there are basic differences between

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Speaker 1: pneumatic tribes. It had a sense of culture. Those who

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Speaker 1: created cave drawings or those who we have relics from

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Speaker 1: that showed that they obviously worship some sort of God

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Speaker 1: because they fashioned things and in that sort of shape

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Speaker 1: or form to allude to that fact. But as far

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Speaker 1: as being rooted in place, the Mesopotamians were able to

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Speaker 1: start building temples and really starting an organized religion around

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Speaker 1: their faith. So we see all these very sturdy and

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Speaker 1: cool cigarette structures throughout Mesopotamia and and Babylon, and we

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Speaker 1: can tell that they had organized religion. We know that

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Speaker 1: they developed cuneiform and then later a type of phonetic

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Speaker 1: writing and we we have records that showed that they

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Speaker 1: did things like accounting, and they kept track of their finances.

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Speaker 1: And it's indicators like these that show these people weren't

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Speaker 1: going anywhere. They were very much settled in a spot,

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Speaker 1: sort of like you wouldn't pay rent if you were

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Speaker 1: a bum who was just going to abandon talent. You know,

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Speaker 1: if you're gonna be living in a place for a while,

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Speaker 1: you pay rent, you pay your electricity bills, and you

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Speaker 1: probably keep an Italian your check buck of where this

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Speaker 1: money gears to ye and accounting is was one of

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Speaker 1: the most important things that our earliest records of known

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Speaker 1: writing has to do with accounting, obviously out of necessity,

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Speaker 1: but in addition to that, out of that came writing

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Speaker 1: that was more literary. They actually had epics, stories and poetry.

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Speaker 1: Even and which formed part of the first book was

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Speaker 1: actually a Gilgamesh, which is an epic story about a

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Speaker 1: Sumerian king quest for immortality. They also had relating to religion.

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Speaker 1: They had a story very like the Noah and the

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Speaker 1: arc story the Great Flood. Obviously writing is very connected

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Speaker 1: to religion, but these are both things that UM, once

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Speaker 1: they got formalized, were UM the first of their collead

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Speaker 1: of civilization. And so along with the idea of law

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Speaker 1: and society comes written code. And you'll probably remember the

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Speaker 1: podcast we did about the Code of Hammurabi, and some

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Speaker 1: important themes from hammer Abi's code are pretty evident. And

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Speaker 1: the Mesopotamian settlements too of the ideas of restitution and

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Speaker 1: retaliation and justice punishment for doing wrong to your neighbors.

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Speaker 1: And this shows that again this is a cooperative society.

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Speaker 1: And in addition to living lawfully and living spiritually, they

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Speaker 1: also created their own system of time. They had a calendar,

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Speaker 1: they did mathematics by which they kept their tax records

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Speaker 1: and accounting. Yeah, time is really interesting because they started

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Speaker 1: a system that we still used today, and that is

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Speaker 1: based on the number sixty. You know, we have sixty seconds,

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Speaker 1: we have um sixteen minutes in an hour, and and

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Speaker 1: so to think that that is existed to this day

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Speaker 1: is astounding. They also came up with the idea of

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Speaker 1: dividing a circle into three and sixty degrees. So you

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Speaker 1: definitely see the you know, the foundings of science in thisation.

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Speaker 1: But again, you know, there's a dark side to this

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Speaker 1: kind of massive technological advancement too. That's the idea that

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Speaker 1: when you have power and you have leisure time afforded

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Speaker 1: you by living in a place and having a very

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Speaker 1: you know, fixed system of farming and domestication of animals

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Speaker 1: and different trades around town, you get the idea that

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Speaker 1: you can go out and conquer other territories that may

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Speaker 1: be close by, and that perhaps your civilization of superiors.

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Speaker 1: So we see evidence of empiricism in ancient Mesopotamia with

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Speaker 1: people going out and expanding their empire and engaging in

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Speaker 1: wars and even instilling systems of slavery and their society. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's right. You have the first empire coming out of

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Speaker 1: this time, at least in the third millennium BC. The

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Speaker 1: city states which were often meddling each other, at this

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Speaker 1: point we're taken over and unified by the heads who

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Speaker 1: built the first empire like known to humanity. And if

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Speaker 1: you remember the podcast that we did about the Terra

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Speaker 1: Cotta Army and the first Emperor of China, you know

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Speaker 1: that amassing great wealth and power and land is you know,

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Speaker 1: as much of a curse as it is a blessing.

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Speaker 1: Because for instance, and BC, Sumor was unified under one

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Speaker 1: ruler before it had been multiple cities and I was

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Speaker 1: brought together. And with unification I think comes a great

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Speaker 1: deal of hostility. Sometimes people can sometimes balk at the

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Speaker 1: idea of their own culture being subjugated for another culture

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Speaker 1: coming in and any of this idea, I mean like

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Speaker 1: the you know, one race is better than another race

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Speaker 1: because you have the idea of slavery is well coming

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Speaker 1: out of this that you know, should be mentioned that

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Speaker 1: they had a particular class system, where as you know,

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Speaker 1: one of the archaeologists I mentioned that's one of the

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Speaker 1: criteria them. They had um an upper class with nobles

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Speaker 1: and landowners and government officials and priests and kings. In

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Speaker 1: the middle you had the merchants, you know, the farmers, artisans,

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Speaker 1: tradespeople can kind of see the middle class coming out

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Speaker 1: of there, and the lowest you had slaves and was

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Speaker 1: really the beginning of slavery as well. And classes are

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Speaker 1: further designated by the fact that the ruler at the

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Speaker 1: very top gets to disseminate the goods that are produced

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Speaker 1: in society. So it's very hard to move up in

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Speaker 1: this type of system when you're being dictated how to

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Speaker 1: live and you're given the sustenance you need to live

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Speaker 1: but many scholars would argue that while the Mesopotamian civilization

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Speaker 1: certainly did give birth to facets of civilization that we

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Speaker 1: still consider important to the definition today, there are other

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Speaker 1: ancient civilizations out there that could be even older. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: historians argue that Um other other city states and stuff,

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Speaker 1: should be the really the cradle civilization as we referred

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Speaker 1: to it today, and that existed about the late third

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Speaker 1: or early second millennia BC. Um It was a vast

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Speaker 1: city in now Turkmenistan, and it was about one thousand

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Speaker 1: square miles uh and uh it had canals and palaces

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Speaker 1: and so you can see obviously they had a civilization there.

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Speaker 1: They had irrigation systems in place, and there's even some

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Speaker 1: evidence that they traded with Egypt and then over in

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Speaker 1: Turkey and about seven thousand BC and Ktahyuk there's evidence

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Speaker 1: of ten thousand people living in a cooperative society, farming

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Speaker 1: and domesticating animals and not unlike the city in turkmenistown.

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Speaker 1: There are also shrines here and centers for religion Um.

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Speaker 1: So there's evidence that these people were settled in place.

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Speaker 1: They were spiritual people. However, the clincher, there's really no

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Speaker 1: evidentiary support that they had an organized government. Yeah. In

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Speaker 1: my favorite part, I think I'd rather call the Sumerians

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Speaker 1: the cradicle of civilization because I think like there's evidence

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Speaker 1: they invented the wheel, and it's like that's the ultimate invention,

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Speaker 1: you know, this um inventing the wheel. You know, in

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Speaker 1: addition to that, they had um mass production of pottery.

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Speaker 1: They brewed the first beer. It's very important to me. UM,

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Speaker 1: and they made the first glass. I think the Sumerians

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Speaker 1: just made so many I guess because their civilization actually

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Speaker 1: sustained throughout the years, they have so many claims to fame,

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Speaker 1: and I guess that's really why most people consider the

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Speaker 1: civilization And to me, it's just another argument of who

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Speaker 1: gets to be first. Jane and I have talked before

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Speaker 1: about who was first to America, you know, who invented

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Speaker 1: the first car or the first assembly line. And it's

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Speaker 1: a really silly squabble if you ask me, because every

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Speaker 1: society in history has really contributed something important, whether it's

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Speaker 1: a positive contribution that we've modeled and you know, infused

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Speaker 1: with our latest technology to improve to our standards today,

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Speaker 1: or it's a negative contribution that you know, helps us

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Speaker 1: use that age old maxim you have to learn from

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Speaker 1: history or will repeat itself. You know, we we learn

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Speaker 1: not to engage in certain types of warfare and discrimination.

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Speaker 1: So all contributions from all people have made some sort

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Speaker 1: of impastures. That is true. I have toically Devil's advocate,

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Speaker 1: though it is cool to see who was the first,

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Speaker 1: you know, to give credit where credit is due, and

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Speaker 1: just to know where ideas began and know how astoundingly

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Speaker 1: old they are really really gives you a conception of

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Speaker 1: of understanding. You know, you can really understand civilization when

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Speaker 1: you know where began. So that's true. I think there's

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Speaker 1: also something to be sad for being very fortunate for

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Speaker 1: settling in an area like the Fertile Crescent where the

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Speaker 1: land is obviously ripe for a civilization to grow out

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Speaker 1: of it. I wonder how many civilizations out there, or

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Speaker 1: almost could be civilizations, nomadic tribes of people tried and

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Speaker 1: failed because they were in the wrong type of land

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Speaker 1: and I couldn't support them. One interesting sign note to

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Speaker 1: this is I remember in my research for this podcast

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Speaker 1: that some historians think that the old myth of the

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Speaker 1: Garden of Eden actually the story actually um that that

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Speaker 1: Eden actually was located in Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent

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Speaker 1: and that kind of makes sense. Well, um, I could

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Speaker 1: keep this debate going forever, but all of you out

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Speaker 1: there are probably anxious to put your paws on your

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Speaker 1: own dictionary, so look up civilization and city and town

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Speaker 1: and other riveting definitions. So we will cut it short,

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Speaker 1: but I would like to encourage all of you, if

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Speaker 1: you have not already, to visit our brand new stuff

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Speaker 1: you missed in History Class blog Yeah okay, into Senna

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Speaker 1: each right on the blog every day, and that it

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Speaker 1: has to do with a range of subjects, stuff that

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Speaker 1: interests us that we think will interest you, and news

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Speaker 1: in the field of history and archaeology and everything like that.

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Speaker 1: We also address all of your questions on the Mondays

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Speaker 1: of every week as well, so check that out. And

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Speaker 1: on Friday's we dear a little podcast recap, so a

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Speaker 1: chance for you all to get your comments and about

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Speaker 1: the stuff we've been talking about on air with you.

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Speaker 1: And if you have a piece of feedback for us

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Speaker 1: or an idea for a future podcast, be sure to

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Speaker 1: email us at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: And if you would like to see the article on

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Speaker 1: much of this podcast was based called why was Mesopotamia

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Speaker 1: called the Creative Civilization? You can find it on our

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Speaker 1: website at how stuff works dot com. For more on

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Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, does that how stuff

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