The prehistory of Mesopotamia is the period between the Paleolithic and the emergence of writing in the area of the Fertile Crescent around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, as well as surrounding areas such as the Zagros foothills, southeastern Anatolia, and northwestern Syria.
In general, Paleolithic Mesopotamia is poorly documented, with the situation worsening in southern Mesopotamia for periods prior to the 4th millennium BC. Geological conditions meant that most of the remains were buried under a thick layer of alluvium or submerged beneath the waters of the Persian Gulf. The Middle Paleolithic witnessed the emergence of a population of hunter-gatherers who lived in the caves of the Zagros and, seasonally, in numerous open-air sites. They were producers of a lithic industry of the Mousterian type, and their funerary remains, found in the cave of Shanidar, indicate the existence of solidarity and the practice of healing between the members of a group. During the Upper Paleolithic, the Zagros was probably occupied by modern man. The Shanidar cave contains only tools made of bone or antler, typical of a local Aurignacian called "Baradostian" by specialists.
The late Epipaleolithic period, characterized by the Zarzian (c. 17,000–12,000 years BC), saw the appearance of the first temporary villages with circular permanent structures. The appearance of fixed objects such as sandstone or granite millstones and cylindrical basalt pestles indicated the beginning of sedentarization.
Between the 11th and 10th millennia BC, the first villages of sedentary hunter-gatherers are known in northern Iraq. Houses seem to have been built around a "hearth", a kind of family "property". The preservation of the skulls of the dead and artistic activity related to birds of prey have also been found. Around 10,000 to 7,000 BC, villages expanded in the Zagros and Upper Mesopotamia. The economy was mixed (hunting and the beginnings of agriculture). Houses became rectangular and the use of obsidian was recorded, which testifies to contacts with Anatolia where there were numerous deposits.
The 7th and 6th millennia BC saw the development of the so-called "ceramic" cultures known as "Hassuna", "Samarra", and "Halaf". They were characterized by the definitive introduction of agriculture and animal husbandry. Houses became more complex, with large communal dwellings built around a collective granary. The introduction of irrigation was another feature. While the Samarra culture shows signs of social inequality, the Halaf culture appears to be composed of small, disparate communities with little or no apparent hierarchy.
At the same time, the Ubaid culture developed in southern Mesopotamia at the end of the 7th millennium BC. Tell el-'Oueili is the oldest known site of this culture. Their architecture was elaborate and they practiced irrigation, essential in a region where agriculture was impossible without artificial water. In its greatest expansion, the Ubaid Culture spread peacefully, probably by acculturating the Halaf Culture, across northern Mesopotamia to southeastern Anatolia and northeastern Syria.
Villages, apparently not very hierarchical, expanded into cities, society became more complex, and an increasingly dominant fixed elite emerged toward the end of the 4th millennium BC. The most influential centers of Mesopotamia (Uruk and Tepe Gawra) saw the gradual emergence of writing and the state. Traditionally, this marks the end of prehistory.
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| After early starts in Jarmo (red dot, c. 7500 BC), the civilization of Mesopotamia in the 7th–5th millennium BC was centered around the Hassuna culture in the north, the Halaf culture in the northwest, the Samarra culture in central Mesopotamia and the Ubaid culture in the southeast, which later expanded to encompass the whole region. |
The prehistory of the Ancient Near East begins in the Lower Paleolithic period. Therein, writing emerged with a pictographic script, Proto-cuneiform, in the Uruk IV period (c. late 4th millennium BC). The documented record of actual historical events—and the ancient history of lower Mesopotamia—commenced in the early-third millennium BC with cuneiform records of early dynastic kings. This entire history ends with either the arrival of the Achaemenid Empire in the late 6th century BC or with the Muslim conquest and the establishment of the Caliphate in the late 7th century AD, from which point the region came to be known as Iraq. In the long span of this period, Mesopotamia housed some of the world's most ancient highly developed, and socially complex states.
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| A map of 15th century BC, showing the core territory of Assyria with its two major cities Assur and Nineveh wedged between Babylonia downstream. The states of Mitanni and Hatti are upstream. |
The region was home to one of the four riverine civilizations where writing was invented, along with the Nile valley in Ancient Egypt, the Indus Valley civilization in the Indian subcontinent, and the Yellow River in Ancient China. Mesopotamia housed historically important cities such as Uruk, Nippur, Nineveh, Assur and Babylon, as well as major territorial states such as the city of Eridu, the Akkadian kingdoms, the Third Dynasty of Ur, and the various Assyrian empires. Some of the important historical Mesopotamian leaders were Ur-Nammu (king of Ur), Sargon of Akkad (who established the Akkadian Empire), Hammurabi (who established the Old Babylonian state), Ashur-uballit I and Tiglath-Pileser I (who established the Assyrian Empire).
Scientists analysed DNA from the 8,000-year-old remains of early farmers found at an ancient graveyard in Germany. They compared the genetic signatures to those of modern populations and found similarities with the DNA of people living in today's Turkey and Iraq.
Periodization
- Pre- and protohistory
- Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (10,000–8700 BC)
- Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (8700–6800 BC)
- Jarmo (7500–5000 BC)
- Hassuna (~6000 BC)
- Samarra (~5700–4900 BC)
- Halaf cultures (~6000–5300 BC)
- Ubaid period (~6500–4000 BC)
- Uruk period (~4000–3100 BC)
- Jemdet Nasr period (~3100–2900 BC)[22]
- Early Bronze Age
- Early Dynastic period (~2900–2350 BC)
- Akkadian Empire (~2350–2100 BC)
- Third Dynasty of Ur (2112–2004 BC)
- Middle Bronze Age
- Isin-Larsa period (19th to 18th century BC)
- First Babylonian dynasty (18th to 17th century BC)
- Minoan eruption (c. 1620 BC)
- Late Bronze Age
- Old Assyrian period (16th to 11th century BC)
- Middle Assyrian period (c. 1365–1076 BC)
- Kassites in Babylon, (c. 1595–1155 BC)
- Late Bronze Age collapse (12th to 11th century BC)
- Iron Age
- Syro-Hittite states (11th to 7th century BC)
- Neo-Assyrian Empire (911 BC – 612 BC)
- Neo-Babylonian Empire (626 BC – 539 BC)
- Classical antiquity
- Fall of Babylon (539 BC)
- Achaemenid Babylonia, Achaemenid Assyria (539 BC – 331 BC)
- Seleucid Mesopotamia (4th to 3rd century BC)
- Parthian Babylonia (141 BC – 226 AD)
- Meshan (141 BC – 222 AD)
- Osroene (2nd century BC to 3rd century AD)
- Adiabene (1st to 2nd century AD)
- Hatra (1st to 2nd century AD)
- Roman Mesopotamia (2nd to 7th century AD), Roman Assyria (2nd century AD)
- Late Antiquity
- Asōristān (3rd to 7th century AD)
- Arbāyistān (3rd to 7th century AD)
- Muslim conquest (mid-7th century AD)
Book 1 of 3: The History of the World Series | by Susan Wise Bauer, John Lee, et al.
- Part I - Foundations: The Birth of the Sacred
- Essay 1 - Animism and the Living Cosmos
- Essay 2 - From Tribe to Totem
- Part II - The Age of Gods
- Essay 3 - The Mesopotamian Fertile Crescent
- Essay 4 - Egypt, Indus, and Minoa Sacred Cultures
- Essay 5 - From Polytheism to Henotheism
- Part III - Axial Awakenings
- Essay 6 - Ancient Israel, Persia, and Monotheism
- Essay 7 - India
- Essay 8 - Greece and the Birth of Reason
- Part IV - The Sacred Made Universal
- Essay 9 - The Age of Universal Religions
- Essay 10 - Modernity and the Eclipse of the Sacred
- Essay 11 - The Rebirth of the Sacred
- Part V - Supplementary Materials
- I - The Ancient History of Mesopotamia
- II - The History of Language in Ancient Mesopotamia
- III - The Ancient History of the Hebrew Language
- IV(A-C) How the Ancient Near East Gave Shape to Israel's God
- Why the ANE is Essential for Israel's Received Theology (I-II)
- Affecting Cultic Syncretism Across the Ancient Near East (III-V)
- Cultural Identity Formation & the Rejection of Syncretism (VI-IX)
- V (A-C) The History & Compilation of the Hebrew Bible
- From Oral Memory to Proto-Canon (I-II)
- Exile, Redaction, and the Birth of Scripture (III)
- Second Temple Scribalization to Canonization (IV-V)
- VI - The Unhelpful Oxymorons of "Biblical Authority" & "Inerrancy"
- VII - The Evolution of Inerrancy: From Ancient Plurality to Modern Certainty
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