Ancient History

ANCIENT HISTORY


History begins at the near east, because this land had the appropriate requirements, land and climate make possible to accumulate food surpluses and other jobs were possible. This process can happen in a large areas with plenty people. Them the labour specialization and social diversification were possible so, different groups appeared, farmers, artisans, warriors, priest…In the near east these requirements were fulfilled around the end of the 4th millemium BC. Gordon Childe called this process urban revolution.
This new cities were located in Mesopotamia, cities like, Kazallu, Umma, Babylon…
The factor of geographical diversity was determination on the history of the near east.
Now we are going to start with the Egyptian empire. This was locater over the Nilevalley, divided into two by the river with the same name. The king, pharaon, a “god” unified this reign, this society lived quite isolated.
On the other hand we found the Mesopotamian city-states, each city had a patron god, a leader to look after the community who had extraordinary powers. The individual gods owned these cities, so the religious beliefs support this political situation. The citieswere oasis, irrigated lands, and separated by the desert and with communication routes for trade and war.
The unification of Egypt was around 3000BC, the unity of the nile river alow this. Upper and lower Egypt was unified. This political situation was possible because of the same culture along the country. The king, no city-states, controlled the economic and the politics. To control the riverwas a key aspect for Egypt. The idea of royalty supported this political situation, so pharaon was the god, a divine government. The economy was based on agriculture, rural populations and trade was not so important, so Egypt was less urbanized, so we can say that the history began at the end of the 4th millemium BC. First city-states appeared on the near east, Mesopotamia and Egypt show us thedifferent models of civilization.

Now we are going to talk about the Sumerian society at the lower Mesopotamia. The city-states in the lower Mesopotamia had different cultures:

Summer: at the southern area, until Nippur, with ethnic and linguistic origin unknown.
Akkad: at the northern area, until Mari, above all Semitic population.
This cultures had different phases of dominion, speakers ofboth languages, Sumerian & semitic population. The origins of this were at lower Mesopotamia, keep out of the early Neolithic. It becomes an important area from the late cooper age, Uruk and Jandet-Nasr was the cities were urbanization process began; Uruk had technological innovations as pottery, metallurgy, writing, complex buildings and trade routes. The population increased, so largersettlements were done. So that’s why we can speak about complex urban societies apparition. The division of the labour specialization was also a method used by the Sumerians to categorise different jobs. Jamdet Nasar was a community to regard Uruk, here first palaces appeared and a secular political system was developed. They used cuneiform writing spread. In the protodynastic age is more informationavailable. They used urban settlements system. Around 2500BC, 80 percent of the population lived in cities bigger than 40 hectares. Those city-states fight each other. The city was the centre of power and seat of specialized activities. These were agricultural states, with irrigation canals.
The urbanization process had different landowners, ones of family property and other, in increase; lands areproperty of the palace and temple. The kings played an important role at war, so the conflict were very common because of the frontiers, trade routes or the impose dominance.
Umma vs. Lagash was a well-known conflict; around 2600BC the border treat was broken. Lugalzagesi, ruler of Uruk conquered, Ur, Larsa, Umma, Nippur and Lagash. He controlled from lower sea to the upper sea.
So different...