The whole is different from the sum of its parts. Source.

Summary of this post. As Ubaid settlements prospered in southern Mesopotamia, the Ubaid culture’s major contributions combined to form a culture that was more than https://experience.tripster.ru/experience/Novorossiysk/sights/, and also different from, a mere sum of the Ubaid inventions.

Review of Ubaid inventions. Over the past ten posts, we found numerous developments among the Ubaid which laid the foundation for a revolution in humanity’s progress away from the hardscrabble subsistence of Neolithic farmers and hunter-gatherers, and toward a division of labor that would take mankind into unsuspected breakthroughs and intellectual advances.

1. Large scale irrigated farming with excess production generating wealth and exports.
2. Dense housing protected by city walls supporting (1.) above, with surrounding farmland.
3. Organizational complexity to manage (1.) and (2.) above.
4. Tripartite architecture for houses, temples, and administrative structures.
5. Buttressed wall structures with recessed niches allowing monumental construction.
6. A sense of personal identity which shows in self-decoration and housing.
7. City craftsmen supported by excess food production.
8. Standardized pottery, slow wheel production, with low decoration as first consumer goods.
9. Widespread material culture fosters trade from Persian Gulf to Mediterranean.
10. Community cemeteries.
11. Chalcolithic beginnings of copper mining, smelting, casting, and working.

All of the above emerged slowly, but as the whole gained critical mass, it was repeated until a community of southern Mesopotamian proto-cities emerged, each with its own farmland and irrigation within range of a short daily round-trip walking commute. As these settlements grew, it becomes clear to us, at a great distance in time, and eventually to the inhabitants, that they were the first of something we now call city-states—something far different than their forebears had ever experienced. We are familiar with Gestalt Theory and can see how the 11 listed Ubaid inventions lost their identity as something larger emerged. That idea is illustrated by the above picture of four melanges of objects which reveal the existence of things far different than what we perceive when examining each black object singly, rather than contextually in its array.

Major paleoclimatic events. In today’s world, we are constantly bombarded by claims and rebuttals regarding global warming and hypothesized consequences. Fifty years ago, the talk was about global cooling into another ice age. Warming and cooling events and trends have shaped man’s surroundings as far back in the past as we can find factual evidence of the temperatures and collateral changes in environment. If our present 20,000 year global warming had not started, most of the developed world would still be under the Northern Hemisphere glacier of the last ice age—and I doubt any of us would have been born, because life expectancy would still be at Ice Age hunting-gathering levels, i.e. man’s population would still be hovering at the then-sustainable level with less than 30 year lifespans. Infant mortality would be horrendous, and world population would remain static until something improved.

Thankfully, something did improve: the weather.

Below are listed the sequence of the larger natural events which shaped man’s direction out of that last ice age and into the Holocene and agricultural revolution, then through the Halaf-Ubaid-Uruk-Flood sequence to produce the Sumerian culture. Study this list to grasp the enormity of climate’s impact upon man’s progress through the Holocene.

1. Dansgaard–Oeschger (DO) events. These are evidenced by cyclicality of short but intense warming trends, followed by longer cooling trends, and have been identified through the past ice age. Their periodicity has been estimated as every 1470 years. These phenomena track with the following events.
2. Bond Events. These are best described as DO events extending into the present global warming period and causing the following paleoclimatic events with their creative destruction, closing chapters, and opening new ones.
3. 8.2 kiloyear event. (6200 to 5900 BC). A 300-year aridification and cooling in Mesopotamia. Its accompanying meltwater pulse expands the Persian Gulf, isolating the Ubaid from cousins in Susiana, while concentrating early Ubaid as encroaching coastlines force them to flee to higher ground. Aridification gave a huge stimulus to Ubaid irrigation farming, and a severe blow to Halaf dry farming, driving refugees into Southern Mesopotamia.
4. 5.9 kiloyear event. (3900 to 3200 BC). Long-term desiccation of Mesopotamia. Famines in the dry farming zone. Mass immigration to Southern Mesopotamia, diluting while cross-pollinating the Ubaid culture, thus producing the Uruk period.
5. Piora Oscillation. (3200 to 2900 BC). The Uruk period ends in a “Dark Age of Floods.” The havoc of the floods served as a catalyst leading to Dynastic Mesopotamia and the Sumerian culture, as chronicled in the Sumerian Kings List.
6. 4.2 kiloyear event a.k.a. 22nd century BC event. (2200 to 2100 BC) A century of aridification of Mesopotamia, leading to the depopulation of Northern Mesopotamia. Refugees flooded Southern Mesopotamia, overwhelming the Sumer-Akkad civilization, and led to its takeover by Gutian tribes from the Zagros Mountains. This event also ended the Old Kingdom in Egypt.

Having studied the above, you can review, enrich, and fortify your new understanding by studying this paper, and then this Chart of Climate and Civilization Changes.

Uruk Period. (3900 through 2900 BC).  This cultural environment extended from the end of the Ubaid period (marked by the 5.9 kiloyear event) to the end of the Great Floods (marked by the Piora Oscillation). You can gain a solid introduction to the Uruk Period by studying this and this.

Sumerian Kings List. This clay tablet (document) was just the latest (ca. 2000 BC) update of an already ancient list. It identifies prehistoric Sumerian kings and their cities of the Uruk Period, “Then the flood swept over,” followed by the succeeding Sumerian dynasties and their cities following the flood up to the moment the document was written.

Cities Before the Flood (all)

1. Eridu
2. Bad-Tibira
3. Larsa
4. Sippar
5. Shuruppak

“Then the flood swept over”, picture

Cities After the Flood (first three of many)

1. First Dynasty of Kish
2. First Dynasty of Uruk
3. First Dynasty of Ur

This is a good place to end today’s post. We’ll resume digging into the Uruk Period in the next post.

Thanks for visiting,

R. E. J. Burke