Was Mesopotamia the Cradle of Civilization?

for it, I believe, my friend. Can I set the scene? Yes? Okay, So Chuck round about eleven thousand years ago, Okay, humanity did something you could say significant. Okay, we abandon our hunter gatherer ways, which entails jumping out of trees onto gazelles and butchering them. Small tribes picking berries. No more than thirty Apparently, anything over thirty you have too much

um interpersonal conflict. Really, and so I guess through trial and error, are early ancestors figured out that you couldn't have more than thirty in a band? That thirty first dude started killing people every time. Yeah, They're like, there's always one how to thirty? Right? And then they're like, oh wait, gotcha thirty. That's good. That was a hunter gatherer Joe. Yeah. Um, let's never get old the so yes, but we we so we spent all of our all

of humanity's history hunting and gathering wandering around. That was it. Yeah. And then eleven thousand years ago, during what's called the Neolithic Revolution, we stopped, we settled down, and we started raising crops. We turned to agriculture, which led to while not sitting around, clearly there's a lot of work to be done, but not moving around, a more sedentary, stable environment, right right. And it changed everything from this in fairly

quick fashion. Uh, civilization, developed, cities sprung up. Yeah. Um, And what we have now today all goes back to that period eleven thousand years ago where the where we adopted agriculture. Right, So that leads one to wonder, okay, well what was the first civilization? Then it leads me to wonder, Yeah, me too, which is why I wrote this article. And you did a fine job, sir. Is it just living in cities, Chuck? Is it just creating

a village based around agriculture? Is that your civilization? Huh no, Josh, But it does take a village. That's what Hill says, and that's what I say. Okay, uh, it takes a village, Josh, and let me let me break it down. It's funny for me to tell you even though you wrote this. It's a little awkward. But a civilization is uh, I like the way that one writer put it. Um. If culture is behavior, civilization is structure. Right there, there are

certain things that have to be present. Yeah, So what we're talking um a class structure um um upper class usually religious leaders, where the where the ruling party is a right, religious or political or both a lot of times both back then right and um laws. It would be nice. That's an indicator, right, Um living in one place obviously, that's another indicator, like a religious and economic structure, so like trade, commerce, that kind of thing. Is there

anything else? That's pretty much the basics for civilization. Okay, but it doesn't always have to be a city. But it just kind of made sense how it's always been, Yeah, because civilization has always been tied to agriculture. And agriculture means you have a you're growing crops and you have a bunch of people tending to these crops, so they're all living in the same area and generally they're all sharing this land in some way or another provide it up.

So that's a city. Yeah. It did give him more time though, Like I said, it was hard work, but it's clearly gives them more free time than say, hunting, hunting and gathering when you're constantly on the move. Not necessarily. Yeah. I remember one of my heroes, Dr Jared Diamond, who wrote that essay the greatest mistake in the history of mankind or human kind, the greatest mistake in the history

of the human race. Yes, Dr screech right, um. He argued that no, no, no, like you, you spend four hours out of your day hunting, hunting, and gathering, and the rest is leisure. I don't have anything to tend to. It was his big argument that that agriculture was a huge mistake. Well what's the deal though, with you saying then that science and art sprung out of the free time from the agricultural lifestyle. I'm very glad you asked that, Chuck,

because this is a very important point. Okay, because uh, and that that that um stood out to me too when I was back rereading this article. Right, Um, we were able because of the advent of civilization. We were able to pursue things like science, pursue things like math, create calendars and astronomy and all that um, because there were people who were toiling on behalf of others who weren't toiling. Uh to say, the ruling class were the ones who created science, who don't okay, because they make

half the toil. They didn't even have to go hunt and gather nothing but free time exactly. Okay, that makes sense. Well, and you mentioned the calendar in time that was specifically the Babylonians, which is part of Mesopotamia. They invented minutes and seconds, right did I? Well, come, I'm kidding Mesopotamia. Let's go ahead and let the cat out of the bag. They were the first civilization. Yeah, you'd think they had everything right there. Modern day Iraq is that right? Yes?

And a little I think a little bit of Iran between the tigers and the Euphrates River very fertile at land there wasn't it. It was thanks to the early farmers because they re routed the water, Is that right? Yeah? I mean they had a lot it was. It was fertile, you know, around the river. But these guys were building canals like twenty miles out in founding cities where they ended so long ago, it's amazing. Yeah, this is about

four thousand BC that Mesopotamia really started to grow up. Um. And Mesopotamia is Greek, I believe for land between two rivers Tigris and Euphrates. Right, Um. And it was actually a series of independent although affiliated city states Syria, Babylonia and Summer sumer sum Sumaria. I've seen both ways sumer and Sumeia. But remember Um in Ghostbusters, Gozo is a Sumerian god? Which one was Gozo or Gozer goes? Yes,

the lady in the suit is that a suit? It was some kind of suit alright, So Chuck, like you said, Um that that one scholar Matthias Tomzak said that if culture is behavior, then civilization is structured to that behavior, and that kind of underlie underscores the point that we had certain things, certain elements that that formed the basis of civilization floating out there in the ether, like hunter gatherer tribes engaged in religious ceremonies and rituals um and

and there were some sort of structure to their bands. From time to time, if there was a shaman present, he probably ran the show or she um. So there were these elements to civilization, but it was in Mesopotamia where they all came together, right, and they were structure I structured. Wow, organized, Yes, I think that's the word you're looking for. Uh. You know what was also really cool I thought that you pointed out was were they

the very first people to actually write things down on tablets? Yea. And this kind of shows how you would think like, oh, well, the Mesopotamians really had everything together and they like, we're gonna build humanity. Yeah, we're gonna write books because books are important. They didn't know that, no, not not at first. So yeah, in Sumeria, the first writing came about why Chuck, Well, like you point out here, it's a very boring things that they were keeping track of on on written record,

which like tax records and um accounting records. But that makes sense. They were smart enough early on to keep track of their financial business for with a permanent record and new necessity is the mother of invention. They needed to keep track of their stuff, so they created writing. But then that writing led to the phonetic alphabet to where now things UM could be depicted, where there was

no UM there was no picture for them. Right. It wasn't just like cal Sun Mountain, right, they could I think I think he just insulted somebody in in ancient Egypt, they could actually express abstract thought for the first time on paper, well not paper but clay tablets. Right. And that led actually to Gilgamesh, which is thought to be the first literary work in the entire world. Have you ever read it? Really? Yeah, so it's a real thing. Yeah, I mean, I know it's a real thing, but it's

a real book with the plot. Is it fiction? It is fiction, although there was supposedly a real king Gilgamesh. Um, and yeah, it's it's actually it's really interesting because it kind of depicts the struggle at the time between going towards civilization or remaining hunter gatherers. You have pretty much, Um, you have Gilgamesh. He's all about the city and he runs into Inky Do in ky Do. I've heard it both ways too, Is that your c o A. Now

I've heard it both ways? Write uh and incaduced like this wild man of the woods and Gilgamesh meets him, wrestles him, and uh, basically it's like, hey, you're my best friend now because you almost beat me. Let me take you to the city. So it's as much about gilgamesh Um as it is about him taming inky Do, bringing another human being out of the woods and into the city, out of our past as hunter gatherers, into civilization.

Because not everybody just subscribed to it at once, and a lot of people believe that Gilgamesh um is symbolic for this transition at this point in human history. It's the city mouse and the country mouse. Yeah, exactly, it's it's it's a struggle that still goes on today. It's weird, but um. Yeah, however you interpreted, Gilgamesh is arguably the first work of literature on the planet, and that came from Samaria, Okay, which was Mesopotamia, right, all right, So

that's a good that's a strike in their favor. You know what else was religion organized religion. It wasn't the first time it had happened, right, but the fact that they were all in one place all of a sudden, instead of hunting and gathering and having your own little religious ideals in small pockets of thirty, all of a sudden, you had large numbers of people worshiping the same gods and you had these people at the top of this

religious hierarchy. They were in charge. Who Yeah, they were in charge because they were the ones who knew what the gods we're thinking. And they could be like, you know this god um uh Utu, the sun god, or goes Er. You didn't want to mess a gozer. But let's say goes Er Um commands you to bring me a bunch of um wheat wheat, and uh, I'm supposed to eat it, and you're supposed to sit there and watch and not say anything. And that's why I'm a fat cat. But that's that's the hierarchy, you know, like

the the they this. These priests had control immediately over these people once organized religion started, Yes, and that led to moral codes of conduct, which eventually would lead to regular law, which is another little strike in their favorite. All these things are coming out of Mesopotamia. It's all forming a picture, josh Um. There's also some very overtly well, now there's there's some other great advances they made. Um.

We talked about the calendar. Apparently the um Babylonians were the first to actually mark time beyond the sun's up of the sun's down. Yeah, they came up with seconds and minutes. They created the calendar, and then this in turn gives rise to astronomy. You can't have astronomy without a calendar and math, right eventually, Yes, so science is coming out of Mesopotamia too. And art, Yes, they actually people have been creating art for ten thousand years at

that point, right, Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, that art was one of the first things that humans try their hand. I mean, think about like the prehistoric drawings in the caves in France. I remember which ones, but of like the people running around hunting bison, right, and they were also telling stories to write it. Isn't that art? Yeah? Oh man, look at you. What a sensitive guy. So, Josh, was it all like super awesome ideas that they were

like laying down on humanity? Surely they did some harm, right, definitely, because with advancement, it's hard not to step on a few toes along the way, right. And once you say, oh, I've got this group subjugated, but that group over there's got a lot of emmer wheat did I want to? So I'm gonna amass an army and you guys are going to go subjugate that other group, So war slaves expansion is um, all of this stuff came out of that too. Sure. And the other thing too is disease.

And uh, I guess plague. Now that you have or not plague, what would you call it? Epidemics? Yeah, an epidemics. Since you have people all living in one place, it's much easier to you know, pass that thing around all of a sudden that you have an epidemic on your hand. That was another point Jared Diamond made, like, you can't you can't have an epidemic if you just are living in groups of thirty that don't really contact one another.

Doctor screech exactly. Um, so chuck. It's pretty clear Mesopotamia is the creative civilization, although there are some other comer. There are definitely some settlements that have been discovered that are neolithic, um, that show signs of some sort of cohesion. Um in uh, let's see, there's some along the Yellow River in China that are pretty old. Yeah. Um, there's cattle Hoyak, which is one of my favorites. Yeah. Southern Turkey.

They had temples of worship, shrines, they had art, they raised livestock and farmed and they had about ten thousand people together doing this. But what strikes me is you point out that they didn't have a hierarchy or social stratification. But that's a ten thousand people back then with no hierarchy. It's communism. Well, it's hinky as what it is, it's utopia. I bet it didn't go so well though, you know, especially in those early like savage times. Sure, um or

else it did. I mean, they could have ended because of climate change or whatever. Um Or maybe they actually did have a social hierarchy. It's just not a it to researchers yet. But if if they did, they were That's really what they were lacking, was the social hierarchy that would have made them a civilization. And they had a good three thousand years on the Mesopotamians. What about Gonner Ganner Dept. That's in a Turkmenistan. Yeah, they sound

like they meet the thing. They farm, they built canals, palaces and traded. Yeah, you know what kept them out? Again, I think it was the hierarchy, class structure. And and isn't that sad that class structure is a It's one of the spaces of civilization. And I think about this, Chuck, we're we're talking about how civilization it's you know, um that keeping tax records gave rise to phonetic alphabets, which

gave rise to capturing abstract ideas. Right, UM, So we've we've you can see how civilization at one point when when we all of a sudden they're starting to settle down the whole there's a world of opportunity, of choices of available to us. Um. But with each block that we built upon and cemented, we also built our own. We built ourselves into a certain worldview that we can't it's tough to see out of sometimes now these days, you see what I'm saying, Like what what were the

choices that they mean? Like could they have been like well we're gonna go with cattle hiak and not have a social hierarchy. But now having a social hierarchy and class uh means that you're a civilization. We can't think of it without that. And there's also a lot of benefit to studying early civilization or what constitute of civilization because it sheds light on our own Like today we

have class structures. We have a ruling class that that um distributes wealth based on economic policies and tax breaks. And it's tough to see it like that because you just think it's Barack Obama, John McCain. But this is really you can look at it in that detached manner like this is a this is the class structure, and this is how they doll out the goods, and they don't dole it out equally. You know what Bob Marley said lively after yourself, Well, he said a lot of things.

Don't know your past, you don't know your future. That's true right there. I don't think he was the first guy to say that either. But Chuck, there's one question that's remained unanswered. This this is awesome. Tell me this

isn't awesome. It's pretty awesome. Why did we start farming? Well, Josh, there are different theories, but the one that you found that I love is from an archaeologist named Patrick McGovern, and he believes that once humans got their first little nip of that sweet, sweet alcohol from what fermented fruit or grain or something by accident, probably the first time. Once they got that taste of intoxication, they would stop

at nothing to recreate it. And he contends in a book Uncorking the Past Colon the Quest for wine, beer, and other alcoholic beverages. That the Neolithic Revolution happened and agriculture was born because people wanted to grow things to make alcohol. Yeah, and it makes a lot of sense, Chuck, because if you think about it as hunter gatherers, um, we had food already, and we had figured out that you could live in bands of thirty or less. There

isn't necessarily an urge to live in civilization. We're tied to a sedentary lifestyle through agriculture. But it leaves that door open, like why would we go, Well, I've got some food over here, and I have tons of leisure time, but I'd rather stick right here and spend all of my time farming for food. But this McGovern hypothesis about you know, alcohol providing the basis of agriculture, it makes

a lot of sense. It answers that question. Well, that's the age old question and archaeological circles is what came first? Beer or bread? Yeah, so you're growing these crops, what were they doing? Are they making bread with it? Or are they making beer? They were making neither. They were actually making a um fermented combination of me and some sort of fruit wine about ten percent alcohol is that

what they said? And this is we're talking like seven thousand BC, nine thousand years ago again along the Yellow River in China, people are making this some sort of fermented um alcoholic beverage. And they were so clever about this, chuck, you have to have some sort of malt sugar to to allow the fermentation process to take place, right, So

what did they do? This is what they did. They had obviously no knowledge of chemistry at the time none, so they would prehistoric humans would uh mixed clumps of rice with their saliva in their mouth. They chew it up, break down the starches in the grain in their mouth and convert it into malt sugar and then spit that up into the homebrew and apparently all the yeasty, foamy stuff would float to the top and they would use these really long party straws, crazy straws to drink the

alcohol from the bottom of the thing. And they still use similar uh jugs to drink out of in China. It bro Yeah, that's like making booze nine thousand years ago. And um McGovern would know, he's a molecular archaeologist. He pretty much pioneered the field. And if you have an old pottery shard that you want analyze to take it to him. And so he started noticing time after time that with all of these um shards of pottery, he kept finding tartaric acid, which is a UM. It's an

acid present in wine. UM. And he would find some other stuff too UM. And actually in Goner Deppie he found some vessels or he was asked to analyze some vessels and um. He found a contaminant of beer, a natural contaminant of beer. UM. And he also figured out that these little scratched, these cross hatch scratches in the bottom of the play pottery were designed to absorb this contaminant which occurs in crystal form, so it would just sink to the bottom, me get stuck in these cross hatches.

So he's like, these are beer bottles and this is like the four thousand years ago or six thousand years ago. That's awesome. You know what else, Uh Sumerians, which was part of Mesopotamia, they worshiped the goddess of fertility, Nina Harra, and they consider her to be the inventor of beer and the goddess of fertility too. That's pretty funny. That's funny because I thought Paul Massan was the goddess of fertility. That's good. And also, Josh, you know what we're saying.

And how they Sumerians wrote down things on clay tablets, some of the first folks to do that. They actually wrote down the recipe for beer was one of the things they wrote down. So they had like the first brewers handbook. Basically, they had tax records Gilgamesh and a good beer recipe you need and I don't know, that's pretty awesome. And his his hypothesis is also backed up by the really rapid spread around the world of fermentation.

Right um, after these I think the Chinese shards, uh that show that fruit and mead mixture are the oldest, and then after that it kind of spreads fairly quickly. Yeah, pretty cool. And if you look at their staple crops that that may that constituted early agriculture, you can brew from all of them. Yeah, there was some corn millet rice beer company was that some weer company had found some concient recipe and they for beer and they were able to recreate it. Sweet. Yeah, I wish I could

remember the name of it. Someone will tell me it's not flag Porter is it? I don't know. Maybe flag Porter great beer. I'll look into it. All right, Well, Chuck, that's about it. Uh, we still haven't quite gotten to the bottom of whether Mesopotamia was a credile of civilization or not. I say yes, I say yes, But as you point out, scholars still debate what is a civilization in the first place, So so who are we to say? Um, that's about it. I don't even recommend reading the article.

We pretty much covered it. But there is a search bar how stuff worth dot com all sorts of cool stuff. Um, how about listener mail Josh. This is a long one, but it's worth it because this is one of the best ones we've ever gotten. That's two full pages, well sixteen point for my old eyes, uh, Josh and Chuck. Strange as it may sound, I was. I actually discovered

a secluded tribe. A few years ago. While I was sailing solo around the world, somewhere around uh Vanua to Vanua too in the South Pacific, I was hit by a huge storm. Uh snapped my mass like a match stick and treated my boat like a bathtub toy. He had to strap himself in the boat, so he didn't get watched overboard, gets tossed around for what seems like days, ends up washed ashore like a castaway, not like a castaway. He was a castaway as a as a castaway. The

Little Mary Anne was his boat. It was completely wrecked. And uh, that was probably a mistake to name it after a Gilligan's Island episode. You're just asking for it. Uh. And so he did not know how long he'd been round And turns out he was there for about a month. Wow, castaway on an island, So listen to this. On the beach, A cargo container washes ashore from China. He was able to open it up eventually, and there was a plethora of Chinese consumer goods, look like dollar store type stuff.

He said. That's when he noticed behind me, turned and saw fifty mostly naked people standing on the beach and more emerging from the jungle. I was apprehensive. I had seen no signs of civilization, and I thought I was alone on the island. They approached me and they started to chant. As it turns out they were singing to me. I was dumb struck, and they formed a semi circle around me and chanted what sounded like Joe from So it's amazing. This better be real. If someone sends us

in like a Snopes thing that I'm gonna be really pissed. Uh. He They started holding out their hands and gesturing for the stuff in the container, so he started passing it out, obviously to be like, you know, here, I have things for you. Uh, come in peace, he said. It was like I was Santa Claus and this is their first Christmas. They were tearing into everything. It turns out he had been watched ashore and on island inhabited by a cargo cult and I was the first white person they had

seen for generations. The last ones were during the Second World War and had left behind modern conveniences like metal pots and knives and some broken walkie talkies who the elders used to communicate with each other. They learned how to use thesewakie talkies. He said. He lived among them for about a month until someone finally came and rescued me.

I was revered as a living god. They waited on me hand and foot, and the shaman would hand mi awaukie talkie occasionally and began chanting into this all I chanted into mine. It always made him laugh and seemed to heighten his status in the tribe. The rescue boat finally came. They helped going away party for me ceremony

and Uh discussed. He later discovered the island had been a staging ground for military ops during World War Two, and the military had won the heart to minds of these natives, so they weren't you know, aggressive toward toward white man. And the chance they greeted me with on the beach turned out was a derivation of Joe from USA, which is what their forefathers have called soldiers. There is no way this is true. You don't think so it can't.

This is from Barry, and Barry says, you know, it was nice being treated like a god for a little while, made for a great vacation. And he brought me back and said it was true, and that he still never completed his round the world trip. That is Yeah, that's the best one ever, definitely, even if it's not true. The creativity Barry. Someone writes back and says that was on a T shirt. He really upset. I forgot about that man. That kid took us, didn't Yeah, the Hiku kid.

We took him behind the woodshed, didn't wit yep. So if you have a non lie email that you want to send us, you can ship it off in a cargo container to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the how stuff works dot com home page. H