Stuff You Should Know - Was Mesopotamia the Cradle of Civilization?

Episode Date: March 3, 2010

In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, Josh and Chuck discuss the reasons why Mesopotamia is often considered the first civilization. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I like that. Straight ahead. Yeah. We're going to find out if that's the case. I think it is. The? Yeah, sure. There's a lot of evidence. You wrote a compelling argument for it, I believe, my friend. Can I set the scene?

Yes. Okay, so Chuck, we're on about 11,000 years ago. Okay. Humanity did something you could say significant. Okay. We abandoned our hunter gatherer ways, which entails jumping out of trees onto gazelles and butchering them. Small tribes. Picking berries. No more than 30, apparently.

Oh, really? Anything over 30, you have too much interpersonal conflict. Oh, really? And so I guess through trial and error, our early ancestors figured out that you couldn't have more than 30 in a band. That 31st dude started killing people every time. Right, yeah. They're like, there's always one out of 31, and then they're like, oh, wait. Gotcha.

So 30, that's good. That was a hunter gatherer joke. Yeah. It was never good old. So yes, but we spent all of humanity's history hunting and gathering, wandering around. That was it. Yeah. And then 11,000 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, well, not sitting around. Clearly, there was a lot of work to be done, but not moving around a more sedentary, stable environment. Right. Right. And it changed everything. Big time.

From this fairly quick fashion, civilization developed. City sprung up. What? Yeah. Yeah, and what we have now today all goes back to that period, 11,000 years ago, where we adopted agriculture. Right, yeah. 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. It takes a village, Josh, and let me break it down. It's funny for me to tell you, even though you wrote this, it's a little awkward. Don't worry. But a civilization is, I like the way that one writer put it. If culture is behavior, civilization is structure. Right, there are certain things that have to be present. Yeah, so we're talking a class structure.

Upper class, usually religious leaders were the ruling party, is that right? Religious or political or both. A lot of times both back then. Sure. And laws would be nice. That's an indicator. Right. Living in one place, obviously.

Yeah. That's another indicator. Like a city. Religious and economic structure. Right. So like trade, commerce, that kind of thing. Right. 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. That's how it's always been. Yeah. Because civilization has always been tied to agriculture, and agriculture means you have your 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, it's divided up, so that's a city.

Yeah, it did give them more time though. Like I said, it was hard work, but it clearly gives them more free time. It clearly gives them more free time than say hunting and gathering when you're constantly on the move. Not necessarily. Oh, really? Yeah, remember one of my heroes, Dr. Jared Diamond, he wrote that essay, The Greatest Mistake in the History of Mankind or Humankind?

Yes, Dr. Wait, The Greatest Mistake in the History of the Human Race. Ah. Yes, Dr. Screech, right. He argued that, no, no, like you spend four hours out of your day hunting and gathering, and the rest is leisure, because you don't have anything to take care of. You don't have anything to tend to. It was his big argument that agriculture was a huge mistake.

Well, what's the deal though with you saying 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, and that stood out to me too when I was back rereading this article. 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, because there were people who were toiling on behalf of others who weren't toiling. Ah, gotcha.

So, say the ruling class were the ones who created science, who dealt with it, because they didn't have to toil. They didn't even have to go hunt and gather. So, they had nothing but free time. Exactly. That makes sense. Well, and you mentioned the calendar and time. That was specifically the Babylonians, which is part of Mesopotamia.

They invented minutes and seconds, right? You gave it away. Did I? Yeah. Well, come on. I'm kidding, dude. I'm totally kidding. Mesopotamia, let's go ahead and let the cat out of the bag.

Okay. They were the first civilization. Yeah. You'd think they had everything right there. Modern-day Iraq. Is that right? Yes. And I think a little bit of Iran between the Tigris and the Euphrates River.

Very fertile land there, wasn't it? It was, thanks to the early farmers. Because they rerouted the water. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, they had a lot. It was fertile around the river, but these guys were building canals like 20 miles out in founding cities where they ended.

So long ago. That's amazing. Yeah. This was about 4,000 BC that Mesopotamia really started to grow up, and Mesopotamia is Greek, I believe, for land between two rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, right? And it was actually a series of independent, although affiliated, city-states, Syria, Babylonia, and Sumatra, Sumer, Sumeria. I've seen both ways, Sumer and Sumeria, but remember, in Ghostbusters, Gozo is a Sumerian

god. Really? Uh-huh. Which one was Gozo? Gozo. Yes. Okay. Yeah.

The lady. Yeah. Yeah. In the suit. Was that a suit? It was some kind of suit. Gotcha. All right.

So Chuck, like you said, that one scholar, Matthias Tomsack, said that if culture is behavior, then civilization is structured to that behavior. Yeah. And that kind of underscores the point that we had certain things, certain elements that formed the basis of civilization, floating out there in the ether, like hunter-gatherer tribes engaged in religious ceremonies and rituals, and there were some sort of structure to their bands from time to time. Right.

If there was a Shaman president, he probably ran the show. Sure. Or she. So there were these elements to civilization, but it was in Mesopotamia where they all came together, right, and they were structure-ized. Structured? Wow. Organized.

Yes. I think that's the word you're looking for. 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? Yeah. And this kind of shows how you would think like, oh, well, the Mesopotamians really had everything together. Right.

Super smart. And they knew like, we're going to build humanity. We're going to write books because books are important. They didn't know that. No. Not at first. Right. So, yeah, in Sumeria, the first writing came about why, Chuck?

Well, like you point out here, it's very boring things that they were keeping track of on written record, which like tax records and accounting records. But that makes sense. They were smart enough early on to keep track of their financial business with a permanent record. And necessity is the mother of invention. Well, yeah. They needed to keep track of their stuff.

So they created writing. But then that writing led to the phonetic alphabet, where now things could be depicted where there was no picture for them. Right. It wasn't just like cow, sun, mountain. Right. They could actually. I think you just insulted somebody 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. You ever read it? Uh-huh. 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 a plot. Is it fiction? It is fiction, although there was supposedly a real King Gilgamesh. Okay. And, yeah, 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. Cow or mountain. You have pretty much. You have Gilgamesh, right? Uh-huh. It was all about the city. Sure. And he runs into Inkidu in Kidu.

I've heard it both ways, too. Is that your COA now? I've heard it both ways. You're right. And Inkidu's like this wild man of the woods and Gilgamesh meets him, wrestles him, and basically is 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 as it is about him taming Inkidu, bringing another human

being out of the woods and into the city out of our past as hunter-gatherers into civilization. Because not everybody's just subscribed to it at once, and a lot of people believe that Gilgamesh is symbolic for this transition at this point in human history. It's the city mouse and the country mouse. Yeah, exactly. Pretty much. It's a struggle that still goes on today. Yeah, it's weird.

But yeah, however you interpret it, Gilgamesh is arguably the first work of literature on the planet. And that came from Sumeria. Okay, which was Mesopotamia. Right. All right, so that's a good, that's a strike in their favor. You know what else was? What?

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. Right. And you had these people at the top of this religious hierarchy.

They were in charge. Yeah, they were in charge because they were the ones who knew what the gods were thinking. And they could be like, you know, this god Utu, the sun god, or Gozer. You didn't want to mess with Gozer. But let's say Gozer commands you to bring me a bunch of wheat, emmer, wheat. And 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 the hierarchy, you know, like 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 favor. All these things are coming out of Mesopotamia, right? It's all forming a picture, Josh. There's also some very overtly, well, no, there's some other great advances they made. We talked about the calendar, apparently the Babylonians were the first to actually mark time beyond the sun's up or the sun's down.

Really? Yeah, they came up with seconds and minutes, right? 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 had been creating art for 10,000 years at that point, right? Yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah. That art was one of the first things that humans tried their hand at.

I mean, think about like the prehistoric drawings and the caves in France, I can't remember which ones, but of like the people running around hunting bison. Right. And they were also telling stories too, right? Sure. But isn't that art? Oh man. Look at you.

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river cruises and right now through January 30th use promo code heart 20 to receive 20% off your tour. That's promo code heart 20 through January 30th. Visit gate one travel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's gate the number one travel.com. Once again, use promo code heart 20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. So Josh, was it all like super awesome ideas that they were like laying down on humanity?

Surely they did some harm, right? Definitely. With advancement, it's hard not to step on a few toes along the way. Right. And once you say, well, I've got this group subjugated, but that group over there has got a lot of emmer wheat that I want too. So I'm going to amass an army and you guys are going to go subjugate that other group. So war, slaves, expansionism, all of this stuff came out of that too.

Sure. And the other thing too is disease and I guess plague now that you have or not plague, what would you call it? Epidemics? Yeah. 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 hands.

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 30 that don't really contact one another. Dr. Screech. Exactly. So Chuck, it's pretty clear Mesopotamia is the cradle of civilization, although there are some other comers. There are definitely some settlements that have been discovered that are Neolithic that show signs of some sort of cohesion.

Sure. And let's see, there's some along the Yellow River in China that are pretty old. Yeah. There's Kattahoyak, 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 10,000 people together doing this. Right.

And to me, as you point out that they didn't have a hierarchy or social stratification. Right. But that's 10,000 people back then with no hierarchy. It's communism. Well, it's hinky is 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.

Or else it did. I mean, they could have ended because of climate change or whatever. That's true. Or maybe they actually did have a social hierarchy. It's just not evident to researchers yet. But if they did, it's really what they were lacking was the social hierarchy that would have made them a civilization. And they had a good 3,000 years on the Mesopotamians.

What about Ganardep? That's in Turkmenistan. Yeah. They sound like they'd meet the thing. They farmed, they built canals, palaces, and traded. Yeah. You know what kept them out? Again, I think it was the hierarchy, the class structure.

Gotcha. And isn't that sad that class structure is one of the bases of civilization? Yeah. And think about this, Chuck. We're talking about how civilization, you know, keeping tax records gave rise to phonetic alphabets, which gave rise to capturing abstract ideas. Which led to fiction. Right.

So you can see how civilization, at one point, when we all of a sudden are starting to settle down, the whole, there's a world of opportunity of choices available to us. 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? What were the choices that they made? Could they have been like, well, we're going to go with Cato Hayek and not have a social

hierarchy, but now having a social hierarchy in class 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 constitutes a civilization because it sheds light on our own. Like today, we have class structures. We have a ruling class that distributes wealth based on economic policies and tax breaks. It's tough to see it like that because you just think, oh, it's Barack Obama and it's 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 dole out the goods and they don't dole it out equally. You know what Bob Marley said? Lively up yourself? Well, he said a lot of things. Don't know your past. You don't know your future.

That's true. Right there. True that. I don't think he was the first guy to say that either. But Chuck, there's one question that's remained unanswered. This is awesome. This is an awesome question. 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. Yeah. Probably the first time. Because of that taste of intoxication, they would stop at nothing to recreate it. And he contends in a book, Uncorking the Past, Colin, 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, we had food already, and we had figured out that you could live in bands of 30 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. 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 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? Were they making bread with it, or were they making beer?

They were making neither. They were actually making a fermented combination of mead and some sort of fruit wine. Yeah, about 10% alcohol. Yeah. Is that what they said? Yeah. They were talking like 7,000 BC, 9,000 years ago, again along the Yellow River in China. People are making this some sort of fermented alcoholic beverage, and they were so clever

about this, Chuck. You have to have some sort of malt sugar to allow the fermentation process to take place. 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 mix clumps of rice with their saliva in their mouth.

They would 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 jugs to drink out of in China. Yeah. So there you have it, bro. Yeah.

Case closed. That's like making booze 9,000 years ago. And 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 analyzed, you take it to him. And so he started noticing time after time that with all of these shards of pottery, he kept finding tartaric acid, which is an acid present in wine.

And he would find some other stuff too. And actually, in Goner Depe, he found some vessels, or he was asked to analyze some vessels. And he found a natural contaminant of beer. And he also figured out that these little scratch, these crosshatch scratches in the bottom of the pottery were designed to absorb this contaminant, which occurs in crystal form. So it would just sink to the bottom and get stuck in these crosshatches. So he's like, these are beer bottles. That's pretty advanced.

And this is like 4,000 years ago or 6,000 years ago. That's awesome. You know what else? What? Sumerians, which was part of Mesopotamia, they worshiped the goddess of fertility, Neenahara, 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 Masson was the goddess of fertility.

That's good. And also, Josh, you know, we're saying how the 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 Brewer's Handbook, basically. They had tax records, Gilgamesh, and a good beer recipe. What else do you need? I don't know.

That's pretty awesome. But his hypothesis is also backed up by the really rapid spread around the world of fermentation. After these, I think the Chinese shards that show that fruit and mead mixture are the oldest. And then after that, it kind of spreads fairly quickly. Sure. Yeah. Pretty cool. And if you look at the staple crops that constituted early agriculture, you can brew

from all of them. Yeah, there was some. Corn, millet, rice. What beer company was that? Some beer company had found some ancient recipe 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 a flag porter, is it? I don't know. Maybe. Flag porter. It's a great beer. I'll look into it. 2023 is already well underway, everybody, so don't wait any longer to level up your small business.

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postage rates just increased again, like up to 84% off of USPS and UPS. Plus, stamps.com automatically tells you your cheapest and fastest shipping options. You use stamps.com to print postage wherever you do business. All you need is that computer and printer. Set your business up for success. When you get started with stamps.com today, just use our promo code STUFF for a special offer that's going to include a four week trial plus free postage and that free digital scale.

No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the page and enter our code STUFF. You're ready to travel in 2023 and since 1981 Gate One Travel has been providing more of the world for less. Let Gate One handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours and European River Cruises. And right now through January 30th, use promo code HEART20 to receive 20% off your tour.

That's promo code HEART20 through January 30th. Visit gateonetravel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's gate the number one travel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. Alright, well Chuck, that's about it. We still haven't quite gotten to the bottom of whether Mesopotamia was the cradle of civilization or not.

I say yes. What's your say? I say yes, but as you point out, scholars still debate what is a civilization in the first place. So who are we to say? That's about it. I don't even recommend reading the article. We pretty much covered it, but there is a search bar at HowStuffWorks.com where we

do all sorts of cool stuff. 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, it's a 16 point for my old eyes. Josh and Chuck, strange as it may sound, I actually discovered a secluded tribe a few years ago while I was sailing solo around the world.

Sailing around Vanuatu, Vanuatu, in the South Pacific, I was hit by a huge storm. It snapped my mass like a matchstick and treated my boat like a bathtub toy. He had to strap himself in the boat so he didn't get washed 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 castaway. As a castaway. The little Marianne was his boat, it was completely wrecked, and that was probably a mistake to

name it after a Gilligan's Island, if you're just asking for it. And so he did not know how long he'd be marooned, 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.

Just when he noticed behind me, I turned and saw 50 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 dumbstruck and they formed a semi-circle around me and chanted what sounded like Joe from Suh. This amazing.

Yeah. This better be real. If someone sent this in like a snopes thing, then I'm going to be really pissed. 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. I come in peace. He said it was like I was Santa Claus and this was their first Christmas, they were tearing into everything.

It turns out he had been washed ashore on an 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 these walkie-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 me a walkie-talkie occasionally and begin chanting into this while I chanted into mine. It always made him laugh and seemed to heighten his status in the tribe. The rescue boat finally came. They held a going away party for me ceremony and later discovered the island had been a staging ground for military ops during World War II and the military had won the hearts and minds of these natives so they weren't, you know, aggressive toward white man. The chant they greeted me with on the beach turned out was a derivation of Joe from USA

which is what their forefathers had called soldiers. There is no way this is true. You don't think so? It can't be. 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 around the world trip.

That is, yeah. That's the best one ever. Definitely. Okay. Even if it's not true, the creativity, Barry, muah. If someone writes back and says that was on a t-shirt, it would be really upset. I forgot about that man. That kid took us, didn't he?

Yeah, the haiku kid. Yeah, we took him behind the woodshed, didn't we? Yep. So if you have a non-ly e-mail that you want to send us, you can ship it off in a cargo container to Stuff Podcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Want more howstuffworks? Check out our blogs on the howstuffworks.com homepage.

You're ready to travel in 2023 and since 1981, Gate One Travel has been providing more of the world for less. Let Gate One handle the planning for you with affordable escorted tours and European River Cruises and right now, through January 30th, use promo code HEART20 to receive 20% off your tour. That's promo code HEART20 through January 30th. Visit gateonetravel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's gatethenumberonetravel.com.

Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. The South Dakota Stories, Volume 2. I could see beyond the black hills and the way they called for exploration. I could feel the air. The way it paints against skin and fills hungry lungs. I could hear the way the water ran for miles and the way the bison grazed. The way our boots meet the earth as we step past expected.

I could imagine my time in South Dakota and I wish to go back because there's so much South Dakota, so little time.