Words for Board: Toynbee, Challenge-Response, Fluvial, Tigris-Euphrates, Mesopotamia, Sumerians, Cuneiform, Gilgamesh, Hammurabi

Hello again! For today's $68.00 question, we'd like to know: What is Civilization? (I doubt that any of you really stopped to think about it–I never did. And so, to prevent you from blowing a battery, Stockmyer has answered it for you. If you attend class, you'll notice Stockmyer always asks wonderful questions, but fortunately he answers them himself.) Stockmyer says there are 4 ingredients for Civilization: 1. Lots of People (How many is lots–at least over 2,000), 2. Big Government, 3. Big Buildings (grass huts don't cut it), and 4. Writing.

Why weren't primitives pulling their stuff together and making a civilization? They were just barely hanging in there, yet eventually they got their act together. How come? According to a "great" historian Arnold J. Toynbee, there is a theory as to why. It is the Challenge-Response theory. Primitives won't change unless they're challenged (by death, extinction, etc.) And then they respond by making the necessary changes. Primitive man was challenged by a change in climate. He had been living in an ice age cuz a big glacier was covering lots of territory. For some reason the glacier returned north. During the Ice Age Europe had been super cold and the area around the Sahara was nice, temperate, and that's were man had been living. But when the glacier went back north, it drew the weather with it. The desert tribes had to respond. They made changes in different ways: 1. Some died, 2. Some followed the animals to Africa, 3. Some became desert nomads and followed the waters holes, and 4. Others discovered water in the rivers and lumped up around them to use them for irrigation of the crops (the best response).

The 1st Civilization developed around the Tigris-Euphrates river in Mesopotamia ("land between the rivers"). Actually it was 2 rivers joined. The rivers in the old days looked like jungles. The 1st problem was to find the river. They had to chop down trees, etc. before they could live and plant crops. It required great organization. The rivers tamed the people into cooperation. The 1st civilizations were Fluvial ("river-centered"). The best soil was by the rivers with the river mud slopping out.

The Sumerians were the people of the Tigris-Euphrates river. They were traders and commercial people. They traded everywhere. They lived in separate individual cities and never got organized into one big government. They were Bronze Age people. Their land was really flat and wide open to attack from all sides from barbarians. To make matters worse they fought each other lots.

To be a civilization, you need big buildings. The Sumerians didn't had wood or big rocks. Their buildings were made out of mud/clay bricks. To make really good bricks you need to bake them but people couldn't afford the wood for fire. Their buildings were mostly made out of sun-dried bricks which return to mud when wet. A normal house was made with sun-dried bricks on the inside and kiln-dried bricks on the outside. But eventually cracks developed in the outside bricks and the sun bricks would get wet, which caused them to expand and the outside would slowly explode. So then you just know down the house, stomp it down, and rebuild over the old site. Over thousands of years of stomping down, the cities rose on the flat land cuz they were standing on their trash.

You also need writing. But 1st you need something to write on and it must be cheap. Sumerians had lots of mud which they turned into clay tablets. They wrote by drawing pictures but it's hard to draw on mud. Pretty soon they just made dents and wedges in a kind of shorthand of pictures. It's called Cuneiform ("wedge-shaped"). They wrote in any direction (right to left, left to right, top to bottom, etc.). Only professional people knew how to write. But the only reason Sumerians wanted to write was for business documents (they're a commercial people). Business documents require signatures. X's wouldn't do for everybody. Soon every businessman had a cylindrical seal of just their signature which they worse around their neck. You can read about forgery and other neat stuff in the Syllabus.

Sumerians were polytheistic (many gods). Their gods were conflicting. Sumerians were pessimistic and their gods were basically hostile. When monsters came, their gods ran and hid (nothing like confidence in your gods). They had a very hard life of war lots so they should be pessimistic. They believed in an afterlife. When they died, their souls went to an underground cave which was damp, dark and bad forever (just something to look forward to). They originated the 1st great religion of the world which was borrowed by other civilizations. They had an epic poem about a hero who didn't want to die called Gilgamesh. He went searching for the plant that would give immortality. He ran into monsters and people with stories. He ran into an old man who told him the story of a large flood which had happened long ago and some Sumerian built a large boat and gathered every manner of life into it, two by two (sound familiar?). It was the 1st original flood story which was out about 1,000 years before the Jews borrowed it. Gilgamesh did find the plant. It was in the middle of a river. He swam out and got it and while swimming back to the shore a big sea snake swallowed it and Gilgamesh didn't get to eat it (nothing like a happy ending! What I want to know is why he was taking it back to the shore–why not eat it where it was cuz you never know when your time's up??).

Eventually the Sumerians were conquered by a barbarian from the North named Hammurabi. He marched down the river and sacked them all. For the first time they were united. He is famous for his law code which was actually the Sumerian law code which he just had engraved on large stones in the middle of cities. It was a large improvement. Before that only the professionals and noble people knew the laws which made them win a lot more in court before the common crud. The laws were terribly just (eye for an eye type).

Hammurabi also built a new capital city on the Euphrates named Babylon. It was the only major city in that part of the world. After Hammurabi's death, the Sumerians couldn't make it. By 1500 BC, they were wiped out. They were in the way of a bunch of barbarians coming south. The barbarians had been drifting south for about 500 years cuz there was some big unknown problem up north causing them to run away from home. They finally took over the Sumerians.