The prehistorical cultures of Mesopotamia gave rise to literacy , bureaucracy , agriculture , and modern city . And now a nearly - untasted city in Syria will give us a peek at what urban life history was like 7000 years ago in the so - called Ubaid point .
The stiff of a metropolis name Tell Zaidan , or just Zaidan , are located in northern Syria on the banks of the Balikh River . A chemical group of archaeologists have just been give permission by the Syrian government to dig the metropolis , and are already discovering a hoarded wealth trove of artifacts – from pottery shards to basement storage suite – from a badly - understood geological era in human history call the Ubaid . The Ubaid stretches roughly from 5500 BC to 4000 BC , and was a time of acute transformation in human civilization .
It was , according to research worker , a period when social classes as we know them today first come out .
allot to the New York Times :
One of the most singing finds was a stone seal draw a cervid , presumably used to stomp a mark on goods to describe possession in a time before writing . About 2 - by 2- 1/2 in , the seal is unusually large and carved from a red stone not aboriginal to the area . In fact , archaeologists state , it was similar in design to a cachet found 185 mil to the Orient , at Tepe Gawra , near Mosul .
To archaeologist , a seal is not just a sealskin . Dr. [ Richard ] Zettler said it signify that “ somebody has the authority to restrict access to things – to close up and seal off jars , bags , doors – and so once you have these seals you must have had social stratification . ”
The existence of detailed seal with near - identical motif at such widely distant sites , Dr. [ Gil ] Stein tell , “ suggests that in this period , luxuriously - ranking elite were sham leaders positions across a very broad region , and those diffuse elites shared a coarse set of symbols and perhaps even a unwashed political theory of superior social status . ”
Other artifacts attest to the culture ’s shift from self - sufficient village life to specialized cunning production subordinate on trade and capable of acquire lavishness trade good , the archaeologists reported . Such a transition is assume to have ask some administrative social organisation and produced a wealthy class . The pleasure trip will be searching for corpse of temples and impose public buildings as confirmation of these political and social changes .
In what look to be the situation ’s industrial field , archeologist uncovered eight bombastic kiln for firing pottery , one of the most omnipresent Ubaid commodity over extensive trading areas . They discover blade made from the mellow - quality volcanic shabu obsidian . An abundance of obsidian chip showed that the blades were produce at the land site , and the cloth ’s colour and chemic musical composition indicated that it get from mines in what is now Turkey . . . Zeidan also had a smelting industry for making Cu pecker , the most advanced applied science of the fifth millenary B.C.
It ’s worth register the whole clause on this dig . The research worker are finding out a lot about how humankind learned to live in bombastic groups – and to trade in with other big groups across unbelievable distances .
viaNew York Times
Images via Gil Stein , Oriental Institute , University of Chicago
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