Revisiting the Mesopotamian City: a Drawing of its Inhabitants' Mental- Image

Mesopotamian cities were formed sometime during the fourth millennium BCE, and many of them continued to be inhabited as much as 3000 years. While urban characteristics of these cities has been extensively studied, the current article is concerned with exploring the inhabitants' daily experience in the city; a subject that has not been sufficiently explored despite its importance in urban studies. The objective is to expand the understanding of the relation between the ancient city and its occupants. The paper adopts the concept of the City Image as introduced in the seminal work of Kevin Lunch "Image of The City" in investigating aspects of the Mesopotamian city that qualifies it to form a strong mental Image for her citizens, derived from the legibility of its elements and the structure they form. Using a descriptive analytical method in reviewing previous literature, the research first clarifies the shared characters of Mesopotamian cities, and addresses the stature of the city in Mesopotamians' culture. I then specify the five urban elements of the city image as categorised by Lynch; paths, nodes, edges, districts and landmarks, in addition to addressing manifestations of the citizens' urban life in the Mesopotamian city. Afterward, visualization of the citizen's daily experience through the urban fabric of the city is provided, to arrive at a conclusion of the Legibility of the mental image of the Mesopotamian city in the perception of its citizens.

Yak Domestication: A Review of Linguistic, Archaeological, and Genetic Evidence

Yak, a species of bovid uniquely adapted to high-altitude environments, plays a critical role in the life of the inhabitants of the Tibetan Plateau and neighboring areas. There is currently no consensus on when these animals may have been domesticated. In this paper, we review the archaeological, genetic, and linguistic evidence relevant to this question, and suggest that the domestication took place following hybridization with taurine cattle from the end of the fourth millennium BCE. This study also shows that the original domesticators of yaks included not only the ancestors of the Tibetans, but also Rgyalrongic speaking people from Eastern Tibet.

Eurasia and Ancient Egypt in the Fourth Millennium BCE

This article focuses on technical innovations, new interregional networks, and social upheavals in the fourth millennium BCE. Similar trends in the iconography of the lion, the heraldic animal of power, can be observed in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Caucasus. This indicates that a process of concentration of power in the hands of strong rulers or kings took place relatively synchronously in these regions. The exchange of coveted raw materials such as copper and silver was connected with the transfer of knowledge between these regions, which can be seen in metal objects such as daggers and knives.

Deposits of bodies in circular pits in the Neolithic period (mid-fifth to the mid-fourth millennium BCE)

Among the numerous human remains found in circular pits belonging to the fourth millennium BCE cultures north of the Alps, there are many examples of bodies laid in random (or unconventional) positions. Some of these remains in irregular configurations, interred alongside an individual in a conventional flexed position, can be considered as a ‘funerary accompaniment’. Other burials, of isolated individuals or multiple individuals buried in unconventional positions, suggest the existence of burial practices outside of the otherwise strict framework of funerary rites. The focus of this article is the evidence recently arising from excavation and anthropological studies from the Upper Rhine Plain (Michelsberg and Munzingen cultures). We assume that these bodies in unconventional positions were not dumped as trash, but that they were a part of the final act of a complex ritual. It is hypothesised that these bodies, interpreted here as ritual waste, were sacrificial victims, and a number of possible explanations, including ‘peripheral accompaniment’ or victims of acts of war, are debated.

Pivoting East

The investigation of ‘complex connectivities’ as defined by Tomlinson (1999) as a critical element in the understanding of how modern globalization works has been repurposed by archaeologists as a model to explain the mechanisms at work in the archaeological past. This study applies Tomlinson’s model to interpret evidence that such connectivities linked the vast Uruk system in Mesopotamia, the contemporary Kura-Araxes culture in Transcaucasia, and the north central Anatolian plateau in the second half of the fourth millennium BCE, known as the Late Chalcolithic period. We focus on the site of Çadır Höyük, on the north central Anatolian plateau. The occupants of this rural settlement experienced some dramatic changes in the later fourth millennium, including substantial reorganization of their village plan, expansions and contractions in socioeconomic activity and long-distance trade, more elaborate burials, and possibly the evolution of new sociopolitical and religious ideologies. Here we explore the increasing evidence that socioeconomic ‘complex connectivity,’ with both Mesopotamia and especially Transcaucasia, played some role in the substantial modifications and internal dynamics at Late Chalcolithic Çadır Höyük.

Pivoting East

The investigation of ‘complex connectivities’ as defined by Tomlinson (1999) as a critical element in the understanding of how modern globalization works has been repurposed by archaeologists as a model to explain the mechanisms at work in the archaeological past. This study applies Tomlinson’s model to interpret evidence that such connectivities linked the vast Uruk system in Mesopotamia, the contemporary Kura-Araxes culture in Transcaucasia, and the north central Anatolian plateau in the second half of the fourth millennium BCE, known as the Late Chalcolithic period. We focus on the site of Çadır Höyük, on the north central Anatolian plateau. The occupants of this rural settlement experienced some dramatic changes in the later fourth millennium, including substantial reorganization of their village plan, expansions and contractions in socioeconomic activity and long-distance trade, more elaborate burials, and possibly the evolution of new sociopolitical and religious ideologies. Here we explore the increasing evidence that socioeconomic ‘complex connectivity,’ with both Mesopotamia and especially Transcaucasia, played some role in the substantial modifications and internal dynamics at Late Chalcolithic Çadır Höyük.

Mesopotamian Mathematics

The chapter explores “Mesopotamian mathematics,” which arose in the late fourth millennium bce, alongside a logographic script, both of which served in accounting. Writing, accounting, and calculation were in the hands of the manager-priests of the temples, who used the techniques to calculate and control land distribution to high officials, rations in kind to workers, and ingredients necessary for products such as beer. Mathematical texts include problems that seem practical but which would never occur in actual scribal work: their function was to display professional identity by exploiting a professional tool. The place-value system was created to simplify accurate calculations. Central to Old Babylonian mathematics were problems concerned with the properties of the sexagesimal system, as well as “algebraic” problems based on a set of four problems about rectangles with a given area, and some linear constraint. Such geometrical riddles have left traces in the pseudo-Heronian Geometrica collections and in medieval Islamic and Indian practical geometry and are likely to have inspired Euclid’s Elements II.

Summary

This chapter summarizes key discussions in chapters 1 to 3. Writing was developed in Egypt at the end of the fourth millennium BCE. Therefore, it is not surprising to find representations of numbers among the earliest evidence of written material from Egypt. The evidence from the tomb U-j reflects the administrative function of script and numbers, which by then had been taken over into the funerary context (in form of the “administration,” i.e., the recording of grave goods). The number system was fully developed even before the First Dynasty. It used a set of seven distinct hieroglyphic signs to represent powers of 10 in a decimal, nonpositional number system. The evidence presented indicates the close connection between literacy and numeracy, which will resurface again at later times in the history of Egyptian mathematics.

The Invention of Writing and Number Notation

This chapter discusses the invention of writing and number notation in ancient Egypt. Writing is believed to have been invented in Egypt at the end of the fourth millennium BCE. Among the predynastic elite tombs, tomb U-j (assigned to King Scorpion around 3200 BCE) holds a significant place. Within the twelve rooms of the structure, the earliest evidence of hieroglyphic writing from ancient Egypt was discovered. Two types of objects with inscriptions were found in tomb U-j. On the one hand, almost 200 labels made from bone, ivory, or stone and on the other hand, ceramic vessels. If we presume that some basic assumptions about the earliest written objects from tomb U-j are correct, that is, if the abstract signs were indeed the representation of numbers or quantities and the labels were attached to some goods about which they held information (e.g., the indication of their quantities or their origin or owner) then, like in Mesopotamia, the earliest writing is linked to administrative needs, and the invention of a quantity/numerical notation along with the invention of script is almost a necessary consequence.