Word: mesopotamia
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Near Eastern Languages and Literatures Department will gain Professor James Russel, a specialist in the history and culture of Mesopotamia...
These layers of sediment become pages in urban history, which, in large measure, is the history of civilization. The need to preserve foods and seeds at trading centers in ancient Mesopotamia and Anatolia focused human ingenuity on the problem of storage and led eventually to the development of armories, banks and libraries. Along a treacherous path paved with bloodshed and pestilence, cities evolved as the repositories of humanity's collective intelligence: the record of culture and science that enables a civilization to benefit from the lessons of the past...
...action was in Egypt and Mesopotamia...
...surrounding countryside, newly developed irrigation systems nourished the barley, wheat, flax and other crops that fed the growing cities. Period drawings from Sumer, part of Mesopotamia, provide the earliest known evidence of wheels -- essentially wooden planks rounded at the ends and fitted together in a circle -- which were used on ox-drawn carts and, later, chariots. Sailing ships embarked on distant trading missions. By 3000 B.C., the world's first written language, cuneiform, had appeared on small clay tablets, replacing the strings of marked clay tokens that merchants had previously used to keep track of their transactions. And at least...
...Mesopotamia's trading partners was the Chalcolithic people in what is now Israel -- a peaceful group who built houses of stone and planned their towns and streets in an orderly fashion. "They had excellent knowledge of animal behavior and of botany," says Israeli botanist Daniel Zohary, and had managed to domesticate and improve wild grapes, olives, dates and figs, which they traded throughout the region. Their elaborately designed churns were used to make a kind of yogurt and possibly for brewing beer...