Mesopotamia and the Urban Revolution

In archaeology and anthropology, the term urban revolution means the emergence of the urban life and the associated transformation of the human settlements from the agrarian-based sys­tems to hierarchical and complex systems of trade and manu­facturing.  The close of the Transitional Period at the end of the fourth millennium ushered in the first civilizations all over the ancient Near East. As the word "civilization" is derived from civitas, the Latin word for city, and despite the use of this word by some to include the Bushmen or Australian Aboriginals' cultures, we shall use this term strictly in its original sense, i.e. for urban cultures based on towns and cities. The first steps of incipient urbanization began in southern Mesopotamia as early as the Uruk period in the mid-fourth millennium B.C.E. and spread in a complex centrifugal movement, soon encompassing other great river basins, such as Egypt, the peripheral regions of Syria-Palestine and Anatolia and the Indus civilization. Sadly, we probably shall never understand the mechanism of this spread of urbanization from its home in southern Mesopotamia, because modern dams on the Tigris and the Euphrates are now drowning most of the archaeological evidence from this phase. The birth of the first cities in Mesopotamia proper is somewhat better understood due to the early onset of writing in the region whereas in other parts of the Near East, information on incipient development is scant.

Many parallel socioeconomic developments during the latter half of the fourth millennium B.C.E., created the conditions for many people to live in ever-larger conglomerations. Security concerns heightened as steadily growing rival populations began to compete for limited agricultural land and water resources and in response to raiders from the outside. The anxiety of primitive city dwellers led to an unprecedented flowering of rituals favoring sacrifices of all sorts to pacify the wrath of imagined deities and fostered aversion and even aggression against everyone outside the pale of their own territory. The inherent aggressiveness of the Mesopotamian urban culture and society was already observed in the 'Ubaid period and constituted an important element of the urban spread that was to be bequeathed to all its descendants.

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