Word: mesopotamia
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Archaeologists generally agree that writing first appeared in Mesopotamia around 3100 B.C. in the form of an elaborate system of symbols that were probably used for keeping temple records. But where did the ancients get the idea for their epochal invention? A University of Texas archaeologist may have at last provided the answer. Denise Schmandt-Besserat has found evidence that writing evolved from a much older record-keeping system that is still used in the Middle East. If her theory is correct, it pushes the roots of writing back at least 5,000 years...
...were toys or pieces from a still undiscovered prehistoric game. In 1966 Pierre Amiet, curator of Near Eastern art at the Louvre, suggested that the tokens were an ancient recording system. Schmandt-Besserat agrees. After comparing the tokens with samples of early writing discovered in Warka, a community in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), she concluded that they were part of a sophisticated system of record keeping that eventually evolved into writing. Said she: 'This is not writing at 8000 B.C., but a totally different process of written communication...
Darwin venerated Dickens and could recite Tom Brown's Schooldays by heart, but his taste in literature reflects his deeply ingrained Victorian sensibilities. Mostly Golf contains a rather moving essay entitle "Dickens in Time of War," written in 1915 before Darwin found himself running an Ordinance Depot in Mesopotamia. Darwin's stories are cluttered with chestnuts of wisdom from stories are cluttered with chestnuts of wisdom from Sam and Tony Weller while the cricket match between Dingley Dell and All Muggleton in the Pickwick Papers was for Darwin the penultimate tribute to the glories of English countrified society...
...useful, though not extenuating, to point out that Americans did not invent slavery. Their form of chattel slavery, however, was uniquely ugly. Still, slavery has a long, dishonorable history. The Sumerians of Mesopotamia kept slaves before 2000 B.C., and the Code of Hammurabi laid down rules governing the practice. In eight years, Caesar sent back some 500,000 slaves from Gaul to work mines, plantations and public projects; some, of course, became gladiators. The Domesday Book recorded 25,000 slaves in England. Races from the Mayans to the Muslims to, notably, black Africans have kept slaves for many centuries...
...cheered on charioteers as they raced in perilous Ben-Hur style. To supply those circuses, hunters fanned through the empire, caging behemoths and great wild cats. So many animals were rounded up that even then there were endangered species: the hippopotamus was made extinct in Nubia, the lion in Mesopotamia, the elephant in North Africa. Sport was the adult's amusement and the child's obsession. Rather like a querulous Harvard professor, Tacitus complained that few students of 1st century Rome "are to be found who talk of any other subjects in their homes, and whenever we enter...