March 2, 2010 • 27 mins
In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, Josh and Chuck discuss the reasons why Mesopotamia is often considered the first civilization.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know from house stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark with me as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Me,
Chuck and I are going to get to the bottom
(00:21):
today of whether or not Mesopotamia was the cradle of
civilization like that, straight ahead. We're gonna find out if
that's the case I think it is, do you Yeah, sure,
there's a lot of evidence. You wrote a compelling argument
for it, I believe, my friend. Can I set the scene? Yes? Okay,
So Chuck round about eleven thousand years ago, Okay, humanity
(00:44):
did something you could say significant. Okay, we abandon our
hunter gatherer ways, which entails jumping out of trees onto
gazelles and butchering them. Small tribes picking berries. No more
than thirty Apparently, anything over thirty you have too much
um interpersonal conflict. Really, and so I guess through trial
(01:07):
and error, are early ancestors figured out that you couldn't
have more than thirty in a band? That thirty first
dude started killing people every time. Yeah, They're like, there's
always one how to thirty? Right? And then they're like,
oh wait, gotcha thirty. That's good. That was a hunter
gatherer Joe. Yeah. Um, let's never get old the so yes,
but we we so we spent all of our all
(01:31):
of humanity's history hunting and gathering wandering around. That was it. Yeah.
And then eleven thousand years ago, during what's called the
Neolithic Revolution, we stopped, we settled down, and we started
raising crops. We turned to agriculture, which led to while
not sitting around, clearly there's a lot of work to
be done, but not moving around, a more sedentary, stable environment,
(01:56):
right right. And it changed everything from this in fairly
quick fashion. Uh, civilization, developed, cities sprung up. Yeah. Um,
And what we have now today all goes back to
that period eleven thousand years ago where the where we
adopted agriculture. Right, So that leads one to wonder, okay,
(02:20):
well what was the first civilization? Then it leads me
to wonder, Yeah, me too, which is why I wrote
this article. And you did a fine job, sir. Is
it just living in cities, Chuck? Is it just creating
a village based around agriculture? Is that your civilization? Huh no, Josh,
But it does take a village. That's what Hill says,
and that's what I say. Okay, uh, it takes a village, Josh,
(02:41):
and let me let me break it down. It's funny
for me to tell you even though you wrote this.
It's a little awkward. But a civilization is uh, I
like the way that one writer put it. Um. If
culture is behavior, civilization is structure. Right there, there are
certain things that have to be present. Yeah, So what
we're talking um a class structure um um upper class
(03:03):
usually religious leaders, where the where the ruling party is
a right, religious or political or both a lot of
times both back then right and um laws. It would
be nice. That's an indicator, right, Um living in one
place obviously, that's another indicator, like a religious and economic structure,
(03:24):
so like trade, commerce, that kind of thing. Is there
anything else? That's pretty much the basics for civilization. Okay,
but it doesn't always have to be a city. But
it just kind of made sense how it's always been, Yeah,
because civilization has always been tied to agriculture. And agriculture
means you have a you're growing crops and you have
(03:44):
a bunch of people tending to these crops, so they're
all living in the same area and generally they're all
sharing this land in some way or another provide it up.
So that's a city. Yeah. It did give him more
time though, Like I said, it was hard work, but
it's clearly gives them more free time than say, hunting,
hunting and gathering when you're constantly on the move. Not necessarily. Yeah.
I remember one of my heroes, Dr Jared Diamond, who
(04:06):
wrote that essay the greatest mistake in the history of
mankind or human kind, the greatest mistake in the history
of the human race. Yes, Dr screech right, um. He
argued that no, no, no, like you, you spend four
hours out of your day hunting, hunting, and gathering, and
the rest is leisure. I don't have anything to tend to.
(04:29):
It was his big argument that that agriculture was a
huge mistake. Well what's the deal though, with you saying
then that science and art sprung out of the free
time from the agricultural lifestyle. I'm very glad you asked that, Chuck,
because this is a very important point. Okay, because uh,
and that that that um stood out to me too
(04:49):
when I was back rereading this article. Right, Um, we
were able because of the advent of civilization. We were
able to pursue things like science, pursue things like math,
create calendars and astronomy and all that um, because there
were people who were toiling on behalf of others who
(05:10):
weren't toiling. Uh to say, the ruling class were the
ones who created science, who don't okay, because they make
half the toil. They didn't even have to go hunt
and gather nothing but free time exactly. Okay, that makes sense. Well,
and you mentioned the calendar in time that was specifically
the Babylonians, which is part of Mesopotamia. They invented minutes
(05:31):
and seconds, right did I? Well, come, I'm kidding Mesopotamia.
Let's go ahead and let the cat out of the bag.
They were the first civilization. Yeah, you'd think they had
everything right there. Modern day Iraq is that right? Yes?
And a little I think a little bit of Iran
between the tigers and the Euphrates River very fertile at
(05:52):
land there wasn't it. It was thanks to the early
farmers because they re routed the water, Is that right? Yeah?
I mean they had a lot it was. It was fertile,
you know, around the river. But these guys were building
canals like twenty miles out in founding cities where they
ended so long ago, it's amazing. Yeah, this is about
four thousand BC that Mesopotamia really started to grow up. Um.
(06:16):
And Mesopotamia is Greek, I believe for land between two
rivers Tigris and Euphrates. Right, Um. And it was actually
a series of independent although affiliated city states Syria, Babylonia
and Summer sumer sum Sumaria. I've seen both ways sumer
(06:37):
and Sumeia. But remember Um in Ghostbusters, Gozo is a
Sumerian god? Which one was Gozo or Gozer goes? Yes,
the lady in the suit is that a suit? It
was some kind of suit alright, So Chuck, like you said,
(06:57):
Um that that one scholar Matthias Tomzak said that if
culture is behavior, then civilization is structured to that behavior,
and that kind of underlie underscores the point that we
had certain things, certain elements that that formed the basis
of civilization floating out there in the ether, like hunter
(07:17):
gatherer tribes engaged in religious ceremonies and rituals um and
and there were some sort of structure to their bands.
From time to time, if there was a shaman present,
he probably ran the show or she um. So there
were these elements to civilization, but it was in Mesopotamia
(07:38):
where they all came together, right, and they were structure
I structured. Wow, organized, Yes, I think that's the word
you're looking for. Uh. You know what was also really
cool I thought that you pointed out was were they
the very first people to actually write things down on tablets? Yea.
(07:59):
And this kind of shows how you would think like, oh, well,
the Mesopotamians really had everything together and they like, we're
gonna build humanity. Yeah, we're gonna write books because books
are important. They didn't know that, no, not not at first.
So yeah, in Sumeria, the first writing came about why Chuck, Well,
like you point out here, it's a very boring things
(08:23):
that they were keeping track of on on written record,
which like tax records and um accounting records. But that
makes sense. They were smart enough early on to keep
track of their financial business for with a permanent record
and new necessity is the mother of invention. They needed
to keep track of their stuff, so they created writing.
(08:45):
But then that writing led to the phonetic alphabet to
where now things UM could be depicted, where there was
no UM there was no picture for them. Right. It
wasn't just like cal Sun Mountain, right, they could I
think I think he just insulted somebody in in ancient Egypt,
they could actually express abstract thought for the first time
(09:05):
on paper, well not paper but clay tablets. Right. And
that led actually to Gilgamesh, which is thought to be
the first literary work in the entire world. Have you
ever read it? Really? Yeah, so it's a real thing. Yeah,
I mean, I know it's a real thing, but it's
a real book with the plot. Is it fiction? It
is fiction, although there was supposedly a real king Gilgamesh. Um,
(09:27):
and yeah, it's it's actually it's really interesting because it
kind of depicts the struggle at the time between going
towards civilization or remaining hunter gatherers. You have pretty much, Um,
you have Gilgamesh. He's all about the city and he
(09:47):
runs into Inky Do in ky Do. I've heard it
both ways too, Is that your c o A. Now
I've heard it both ways? Write uh and incaduced like
this wild man of the woods and Gilgamesh meets him,
wrestles him, and uh, basically it's like, hey, you're my
best friend now because you almost beat me. Let me
take you to the city. So it's as much about
(10:09):
gilgamesh Um as it is about him taming inky Do,
bringing another human being out of the woods and into
the city, out of our past as hunter gatherers, into civilization.
Because not everybody just subscribed to it at once, and
a lot of people believe that Gilgamesh um is symbolic
for this transition at this point in human history. It's
(10:30):
the city mouse and the country mouse. Yeah, exactly, it's
it's it's a struggle that still goes on today. It's weird,
but um. Yeah, however you interpreted, Gilgamesh is arguably the
first work of literature on the planet, and that came
from Samaria, Okay, which was Mesopotamia, right, all right, So
that's a good that's a strike in their favor. You
(10:51):
know what else was religion organized religion. It wasn't the
first time it had happened, right, but the fact that
they were all in one place all of a sudden,
instead of hunting and gathering and having your own little
religious ideals in small pockets of thirty, all of a sudden,
you had large numbers of people worshiping the same gods
and you had these people at the top of this
(11:13):
religious hierarchy. They were in charge. Who Yeah, they were
in charge because they were the ones who knew what
the gods we're thinking. And they could be like, you
know this god um uh Utu, the sun god, or
goes Er. You didn't want to mess a gozer. But
let's say goes Er Um commands you to bring me
a bunch of um wheat wheat, and uh, I'm supposed
(11:38):
to eat it, and you're supposed to sit there and
watch and not say anything. And that's why I'm a
fat cat. But that's that's the hierarchy, you know, like
the the they this. These priests had control immediately over
these people once organized religion started, Yes, and that led
to moral codes of conduct, which eventually would lead to
regular law, which is another little strike in their favorite.
(11:59):
All these things are coming out of Mesopotamia. It's all
forming a picture, josh Um. There's also some very overtly well,
now there's there's some other great advances they made. Um.
We talked about the calendar. Apparently the um Babylonians were
the first to actually mark time beyond the sun's up
of the sun's down. Yeah, they came up with seconds
(12:22):
and minutes. They created the calendar, and then this in
turn gives rise to astronomy. You can't have astronomy without
a calendar and math, right eventually, Yes, so science is
coming out of Mesopotamia too. And art, Yes, they actually
people have been creating art for ten thousand years at
that point, right, Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, that art
was one of the first things that humans try their hand.
(12:43):
I mean, think about like the prehistoric drawings in the
caves in France. I remember which ones, but of like
the people running around hunting bison, right, and they were
also telling stories to write it. Isn't that art? Yeah?
Oh man, look at you. What a sensitive guy. So, Josh,
was it all like super awesome ideas that they were
like laying down on humanity? Surely they did some harm, right, definitely,
(13:07):
because with advancement, it's hard not to step on a
few toes along the way, right. And once you say, oh,
I've got this group subjugated, but that group over there's
got a lot of emmer wheat did I want to?
So I'm gonna amass an army and you guys are
going to go subjugate that other group, So war slaves
expansion is um, all of this stuff came out of
(13:28):
that too. Sure. And the other thing too is disease.
And uh, I guess plague. Now that you have or
not plague, what would you call it? Epidemics? Yeah, an epidemics.
Since you have people all living in one place, it's
much easier to you know, pass that thing around all
of a sudden that you have an epidemic on your hand.
That was another point Jared Diamond made, like, you can't
you can't have an epidemic if you just are living
(13:48):
in groups of thirty that don't really contact one another.
Doctor screech exactly. Um, so chuck. It's pretty clear Mesopotamia
is the creative civilization, although there are some other comer.
There are definitely some settlements that have been discovered that
are neolithic, um, that show signs of some sort of cohesion.
Um in uh, let's see, there's some along the Yellow
(14:11):
River in China that are pretty old. Yeah. Um, there's
cattle Hoyak, which is one of my favorites. Yeah. Southern Turkey.
They had temples of worship, shrines, they had art, they
raised livestock and farmed and they had about ten thousand
people together doing this. But what strikes me is you
point out that they didn't have a hierarchy or social stratification.
(14:36):
But that's a ten thousand people back then with no hierarchy.
It's communism. Well, it's hinky as what it is, it's utopia.
I bet it didn't go so well though, you know,
especially in those early like savage times. Sure, um or
else it did. I mean, they could have ended because
of climate change or whatever. Um Or maybe they actually
(14:57):
did have a social hierarchy. It's just not a it
to researchers yet. But if if they did, they were
That's really what they were lacking, was the social hierarchy
that would have made them a civilization. And they had
a good three thousand years on the Mesopotamians. What about
Gonner Ganner Dept. That's in a Turkmenistan. Yeah, they sound
like they meet the thing. They farm, they built canals,
(15:19):
palaces and traded. Yeah, you know what kept them out? Again,
I think it was the hierarchy, class structure. And and
isn't that sad that class structure is a It's one
of the spaces of civilization. And I think about this, Chuck,
we're we're talking about how civilization it's you know, um
that keeping tax records gave rise to phonetic alphabets, which
(15:43):
gave rise to capturing abstract ideas. Right, UM, So we've
we've you can see how civilization at one point when
when we all of a sudden they're starting to settle
down the whole there's a world of opportunity, of choices
of available to us. Um. But with each block that
(16:03):
we built upon and cemented, we also built our own.
We built ourselves into a certain worldview that we can't
it's tough to see out of sometimes now these days,
you see what I'm saying, Like what what were the
choices that they mean? Like could they have been like
well we're gonna go with cattle hiak and not have
a social hierarchy. But now having a social hierarchy and
(16:24):
class uh means that you're a civilization. We can't think
of it without that. And there's also a lot of
benefit to studying early civilization or what constitute of civilization
because it sheds light on our own Like today we
have class structures. We have a ruling class that that
um distributes wealth based on economic policies and tax breaks.
(16:47):
And it's tough to see it like that because you
just think it's Barack Obama, John McCain. But this is
really you can look at it in that detached manner
like this is a this is the class structure, and
this is how they doll out the goods, and they
don't dole it out equally. You know what Bob Marley
said lively after yourself, Well, he said a lot of things.
(17:07):
Don't know your past, you don't know your future. That's
true right there. I don't think he was the first
guy to say that either. But Chuck, there's one question
that's remained unanswered. This this is awesome. Tell me this
isn't awesome. It's pretty awesome. Why did we start farming? Well, Josh,
there are different theories, but the one that you found
that I love is from an archaeologist named Patrick McGovern,
(17:30):
and he believes that once humans got their first little
nip of that sweet, sweet alcohol from what fermented fruit
or grain or something by accident, probably the first time.
Once they got that taste of intoxication, they would stop
at nothing to recreate it. And he contends in a
book Uncorking the Past Colon the Quest for wine, beer,
(17:55):
and other alcoholic beverages. That the Neolithic Revolution happened and
agriculture was born because people wanted to grow things to
make alcohol. Yeah, and it makes a lot of sense, Chuck,
because if you think about it as hunter gatherers, um,
we had food already, and we had figured out that
you could live in bands of thirty or less. There
(18:17):
isn't necessarily an urge to live in civilization. We're tied
to a sedentary lifestyle through agriculture. But it leaves that
door open, like why would we go, Well, I've got
some food over here, and I have tons of leisure time,
but I'd rather stick right here and spend all of
my time farming for food. But this McGovern hypothesis about
(18:38):
you know, alcohol providing the basis of agriculture, it makes
a lot of sense. It answers that question. Well, that's
the age old question and archaeological circles is what came first?
Beer or bread? Yeah, so you're growing these crops, what
were they doing? Are they making bread with it? Or
are they making beer? They were making neither. They were
actually making a um fermented combination of me and some
(19:00):
sort of fruit wine about ten percent alcohol is that
what they said? And this is we're talking like seven
thousand BC, nine thousand years ago again along the Yellow
River in China, people are making this some sort of
fermented um alcoholic beverage. And they were so clever about this, chuck,
you have to have some sort of malt sugar to
(19:23):
to allow the fermentation process to take place, right, So
what did they do? This is what they did. They
had obviously no knowledge of chemistry at the time none,
so they would prehistoric humans would uh mixed clumps of
rice with their saliva in their mouth. They chew it up,
break down the starches in the grain in their mouth
and convert it into malt sugar and then spit that
(19:44):
up into the homebrew and apparently all the yeasty, foamy
stuff would float to the top and they would use
these really long party straws, crazy straws to drink the
alcohol from the bottom of the thing. And they still
use similar uh jugs to drink out of in China.
It bro Yeah, that's like making booze nine thousand years ago.
(20:09):
And um McGovern would know, he's a molecular archaeologist. He
pretty much pioneered the field. And if you have an
old pottery shard that you want analyze to take it
to him. And so he started noticing time after time
that with all of these um shards of pottery, he
kept finding tartaric acid, which is a UM. It's an
(20:30):
acid present in wine. UM. And he would find some
other stuff too UM. And actually in Goner Deppie he
found some vessels or he was asked to analyze some
vessels and um. He found a contaminant of beer, a
natural contaminant of beer. UM. And he also figured out
that these little scratched, these cross hatch scratches in the
(20:52):
bottom of the play pottery were designed to absorb this
contaminant which occurs in crystal form, so it would just
sink to the bottom, me get stuck in these cross hatches.
So he's like, these are beer bottles and this is
like the four thousand years ago or six thousand years ago.
That's awesome. You know what else, Uh Sumerians, which was
part of Mesopotamia, they worshiped the goddess of fertility, Nina Harra,
(21:16):
and they consider her to be the inventor of beer
and the goddess of fertility too. That's pretty funny. That's
funny because I thought Paul Massan was the goddess of fertility.
That's good. And also, Josh, you know what we're saying.
And how they Sumerians wrote down things on clay tablets,
some of the first folks to do that. They actually
wrote down the recipe for beer was one of the
(21:38):
things they wrote down. So they had like the first
brewers handbook. Basically, they had tax records Gilgamesh and a
good beer recipe you need and I don't know, that's
pretty awesome. And his his hypothesis is also backed up
by the really rapid spread around the world of fermentation.
Right um, after these I think the Chinese shards, uh
(22:00):
that show that fruit and mead mixture are the oldest,
and then after that it kind of spreads fairly quickly. Yeah,
pretty cool. And if you look at their staple crops
that that may that constituted early agriculture, you can brew
from all of them. Yeah, there was some corn millet
rice beer company was that some weer company had found
(22:21):
some concient recipe and they for beer and they were
able to recreate it. Sweet. Yeah, I wish I could
remember the name of it. Someone will tell me it's
not flag Porter is it? I don't know. Maybe flag
Porter great beer. I'll look into it. All right, Well, Chuck,
that's about it. Uh, we still haven't quite gotten to
the bottom of whether Mesopotamia was a credile of civilization
(22:43):
or not. I say yes, I say yes, But as
you point out, scholars still debate what is a civilization
in the first place, So so who are we to say? Um,
that's about it. I don't even recommend reading the article.
We pretty much covered it. But there is a search
bar how stuff worth dot com all sorts of cool stuff. Um,
how about listener mail Josh. This is a long one,
(23:08):
but it's worth it because this is one of the
best ones we've ever gotten. That's two full pages, well
sixteen point for my old eyes, uh, Josh and Chuck.
Strange as it may sound, I was. I actually discovered
a secluded tribe. A few years ago. While I was
sailing solo around the world, somewhere around uh Vanua to
Vanua too in the South Pacific, I was hit by
(23:31):
a huge storm. Uh snapped my mass like a match
stick and treated my boat like a bathtub toy. He
had to strap himself in the boat, so he didn't
get watched overboard, gets tossed around for what seems like days,
ends up washed ashore like a castaway, not like a castaway.
He was a castaway as a as a castaway. The
Little Mary Anne was his boat. It was completely wrecked.
(23:51):
And uh, that was probably a mistake to name it
after a Gilligan's Island episode. You're just asking for it. Uh.
And so he did not know how long he'd been
round And turns out he was there for about a month. Wow,
castaway on an island, So listen to this. On the beach,
A cargo container washes ashore from China. He was able
(24:12):
to open it up eventually, and there was a plethora
of Chinese consumer goods, look like dollar store type stuff.
He said. That's when he noticed behind me, turned and
saw fifty mostly naked people standing on the beach and
more emerging from the jungle. I was apprehensive. I had
seen no signs of civilization, and I thought I was
alone on the island. They approached me and they started
(24:34):
to chant. As it turns out they were singing to me.
I was dumb struck, and they formed a semi circle
around me and chanted what sounded like Joe from So
it's amazing. This better be real. If someone sends us
in like a Snopes thing that I'm gonna be really pissed. Uh.
He They started holding out their hands and gesturing for
the stuff in the container, so he started passing it out,
(24:56):
obviously to be like, you know, here, I have things
for you. Uh, come in peace, he said. It was
like I was Santa Claus and this is their first Christmas.
They were tearing into everything. It turns out he had
been watched ashore and on island inhabited by a cargo
cult and I was the first white person they had
seen for generations. The last ones were during the Second
World War and had left behind modern conveniences like metal
(25:18):
pots and knives and some broken walkie talkies who the
elders used to communicate with each other. They learned how
to use thesewakie talkies. He said. He lived among them
for about a month until someone finally came and rescued me.
I was revered as a living god. They waited on
me hand and foot, and the shaman would hand mi
awaukie talkie occasionally and began chanting into this all I
(25:40):
chanted into mine. It always made him laugh and seemed
to heighten his status in the tribe. The rescue boat
finally came. They helped going away party for me ceremony
and Uh discussed. He later discovered the island had been
a staging ground for military ops during World War Two,
and the military had won the heart to minds of
these natives, so they weren't you know, aggressive toward toward
(26:03):
white man. And the chance they greeted me with on
the beach turned out was a derivation of Joe from USA,
which is what their forefathers have called soldiers. There is
no way this is true. You don't think so it can't.
This is from Barry, and Barry says, you know, it
was nice being treated like a god for a little while,
made for a great vacation. And he brought me back
(26:25):
and said it was true, and that he still never
completed his round the world trip. That is Yeah, that's
the best one ever, definitely, even if it's not true.
The creativity Barry. Someone writes back and says that was
on a T shirt. He really upset. I forgot about
that man. That kid took us, didn't Yeah, the Hiku kid.
(26:45):
We took him behind the woodshed, didn't wit yep. So
if you have a non lie email that you want
to send us, you can ship it off in a
cargo container to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
(27:07):
how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the how stuff works dot
com home page. H
Welcome to Stuff you should know from house stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark with me as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Me,
Chuck and I are going to get to the bottom
(00:21):
today of whether or not Mesopotamia was the cradle of
civilization like that, straight ahead. We're gonna find out if
that's the case I think it is, do you Yeah, sure,
there's a lot of evidence. You wrote a compelling argument
for it, I believe, my friend. Can I set the scene? Yes? Okay,
So Chuck round about eleven thousand years ago, Okay, humanity
(00:44):
did something you could say significant. Okay, we abandon our
hunter gatherer ways, which entails jumping out of trees onto
gazelles and butchering them. Small tribes picking berries. No more
than thirty Apparently, anything over thirty you have too much
um interpersonal conflict. Really, and so I guess through trial
(01:07):
and error, are early ancestors figured out that you couldn't
have more than thirty in a band? That thirty first
dude started killing people every time. Yeah, They're like, there's
always one how to thirty? Right? And then they're like,
oh wait, gotcha thirty. That's good. That was a hunter
gatherer Joe. Yeah. Um, let's never get old the so yes,
but we we so we spent all of our all
(01:31):
of humanity's history hunting and gathering wandering around. That was it. Yeah.
And then eleven thousand years ago, during what's called the
Neolithic Revolution, we stopped, we settled down, and we started
raising crops. We turned to agriculture, which led to while
not sitting around, clearly there's a lot of work to
be done, but not moving around, a more sedentary, stable environment,
(01:56):
right right. And it changed everything from this in fairly
quick fashion. Uh, civilization, developed, cities sprung up. Yeah. Um,
And what we have now today all goes back to
that period eleven thousand years ago where the where we
adopted agriculture. Right, So that leads one to wonder, okay,
(02:20):
well what was the first civilization? Then it leads me
to wonder, Yeah, me too, which is why I wrote
this article. And you did a fine job, sir. Is
it just living in cities, Chuck? Is it just creating
a village based around agriculture? Is that your civilization? Huh no, Josh,
But it does take a village. That's what Hill says,
and that's what I say. Okay, uh, it takes a village, Josh,
(02:41):
and let me let me break it down. It's funny
for me to tell you even though you wrote this.
It's a little awkward. But a civilization is uh, I
like the way that one writer put it. Um. If
culture is behavior, civilization is structure. Right there, there are
certain things that have to be present. Yeah, So what
we're talking um a class structure um um upper class
(03:03):
usually religious leaders, where the where the ruling party is
a right, religious or political or both a lot of
times both back then right and um laws. It would
be nice. That's an indicator, right, Um living in one
place obviously, that's another indicator, like a religious and economic structure,
(03:24):
so like trade, commerce, that kind of thing. Is there
anything else? That's pretty much the basics for civilization. Okay,
but it doesn't always have to be a city. But
it just kind of made sense how it's always been, Yeah,
because civilization has always been tied to agriculture. And agriculture
means you have a you're growing crops and you have
(03:44):
a bunch of people tending to these crops, so they're
all living in the same area and generally they're all
sharing this land in some way or another provide it up.
So that's a city. Yeah. It did give him more
time though, Like I said, it was hard work, but
it's clearly gives them more free time than say, hunting,
hunting and gathering when you're constantly on the move. Not necessarily. Yeah.
I remember one of my heroes, Dr Jared Diamond, who
(04:06):
wrote that essay the greatest mistake in the history of
mankind or human kind, the greatest mistake in the history
of the human race. Yes, Dr screech right, um. He
argued that no, no, no, like you, you spend four
hours out of your day hunting, hunting, and gathering, and
the rest is leisure. I don't have anything to tend to.
(04:29):
It was his big argument that that agriculture was a
huge mistake. Well what's the deal though, with you saying
then that science and art sprung out of the free
time from the agricultural lifestyle. I'm very glad you asked that, Chuck,
because this is a very important point. Okay, because uh,
and that that that um stood out to me too
(04:49):
when I was back rereading this article. Right, Um, we
were able because of the advent of civilization. We were
able to pursue things like science, pursue things like math,
create calendars and astronomy and all that um, because there
were people who were toiling on behalf of others who
(05:10):
weren't toiling. Uh to say, the ruling class were the
ones who created science, who don't okay, because they make
half the toil. They didn't even have to go hunt
and gather nothing but free time exactly. Okay, that makes sense. Well,
and you mentioned the calendar in time that was specifically
the Babylonians, which is part of Mesopotamia. They invented minutes
(05:31):
and seconds, right did I? Well, come, I'm kidding Mesopotamia.
Let's go ahead and let the cat out of the bag.
They were the first civilization. Yeah, you'd think they had
everything right there. Modern day Iraq is that right? Yes?
And a little I think a little bit of Iran
between the tigers and the Euphrates River very fertile at
(05:52):
land there wasn't it. It was thanks to the early
farmers because they re routed the water, Is that right? Yeah?
I mean they had a lot it was. It was fertile,
you know, around the river. But these guys were building
canals like twenty miles out in founding cities where they
ended so long ago, it's amazing. Yeah, this is about
four thousand BC that Mesopotamia really started to grow up. Um.
(06:16):
And Mesopotamia is Greek, I believe for land between two
rivers Tigris and Euphrates. Right, Um. And it was actually
a series of independent although affiliated city states Syria, Babylonia
and Summer sumer sum Sumaria. I've seen both ways sumer
(06:37):
and Sumeia. But remember Um in Ghostbusters, Gozo is a
Sumerian god? Which one was Gozo or Gozer goes? Yes,
the lady in the suit is that a suit? It
was some kind of suit alright, So Chuck, like you said,
(06:57):
Um that that one scholar Matthias Tomzak said that if
culture is behavior, then civilization is structured to that behavior,
and that kind of underlie underscores the point that we
had certain things, certain elements that that formed the basis
of civilization floating out there in the ether, like hunter
(07:17):
gatherer tribes engaged in religious ceremonies and rituals um and
and there were some sort of structure to their bands.
From time to time, if there was a shaman present,
he probably ran the show or she um. So there
were these elements to civilization, but it was in Mesopotamia
(07:38):
where they all came together, right, and they were structure
I structured. Wow, organized, Yes, I think that's the word
you're looking for. Uh. You know what was also really
cool I thought that you pointed out was were they
the very first people to actually write things down on tablets? Yea.
(07:59):
And this kind of shows how you would think like, oh, well,
the Mesopotamians really had everything together and they like, we're
gonna build humanity. Yeah, we're gonna write books because books
are important. They didn't know that, no, not not at first.
So yeah, in Sumeria, the first writing came about why Chuck, Well,
like you point out here, it's a very boring things
(08:23):
that they were keeping track of on on written record,
which like tax records and um accounting records. But that
makes sense. They were smart enough early on to keep
track of their financial business for with a permanent record
and new necessity is the mother of invention. They needed
to keep track of their stuff, so they created writing.
(08:45):
But then that writing led to the phonetic alphabet to
where now things UM could be depicted, where there was
no UM there was no picture for them. Right. It
wasn't just like cal Sun Mountain, right, they could I
think I think he just insulted somebody in in ancient Egypt,
they could actually express abstract thought for the first time
(09:05):
on paper, well not paper but clay tablets. Right. And
that led actually to Gilgamesh, which is thought to be
the first literary work in the entire world. Have you
ever read it? Really? Yeah, so it's a real thing. Yeah,
I mean, I know it's a real thing, but it's
a real book with the plot. Is it fiction? It
is fiction, although there was supposedly a real king Gilgamesh. Um,
(09:27):
and yeah, it's it's actually it's really interesting because it
kind of depicts the struggle at the time between going
towards civilization or remaining hunter gatherers. You have pretty much, Um,
you have Gilgamesh. He's all about the city and he
(09:47):
runs into Inky Do in ky Do. I've heard it
both ways too, Is that your c o A. Now
I've heard it both ways? Write uh and incaduced like
this wild man of the woods and Gilgamesh meets him,
wrestles him, and uh, basically it's like, hey, you're my
best friend now because you almost beat me. Let me
take you to the city. So it's as much about
(10:09):
gilgamesh Um as it is about him taming inky Do,
bringing another human being out of the woods and into
the city, out of our past as hunter gatherers, into civilization.
Because not everybody just subscribed to it at once, and
a lot of people believe that Gilgamesh um is symbolic
for this transition at this point in human history. It's
(10:30):
the city mouse and the country mouse. Yeah, exactly, it's
it's it's a struggle that still goes on today. It's weird,
but um. Yeah, however you interpreted, Gilgamesh is arguably the
first work of literature on the planet, and that came
from Samaria, Okay, which was Mesopotamia, right, all right, So
that's a good that's a strike in their favor. You
(10:51):
know what else was religion organized religion. It wasn't the
first time it had happened, right, but the fact that
they were all in one place all of a sudden,
instead of hunting and gathering and having your own little
religious ideals in small pockets of thirty, all of a sudden,
you had large numbers of people worshiping the same gods
and you had these people at the top of this
(11:13):
religious hierarchy. They were in charge. Who Yeah, they were
in charge because they were the ones who knew what
the gods we're thinking. And they could be like, you
know this god um uh Utu, the sun god, or
goes Er. You didn't want to mess a gozer. But
let's say goes Er Um commands you to bring me
a bunch of um wheat wheat, and uh, I'm supposed
(11:38):
to eat it, and you're supposed to sit there and
watch and not say anything. And that's why I'm a
fat cat. But that's that's the hierarchy, you know, like
the the they this. These priests had control immediately over
these people once organized religion started, Yes, and that led
to moral codes of conduct, which eventually would lead to
regular law, which is another little strike in their favorite.
(11:59):
All these things are coming out of Mesopotamia. It's all
forming a picture, josh Um. There's also some very overtly well,
now there's there's some other great advances they made. Um.
We talked about the calendar. Apparently the um Babylonians were
the first to actually mark time beyond the sun's up
of the sun's down. Yeah, they came up with seconds
(12:22):
and minutes. They created the calendar, and then this in
turn gives rise to astronomy. You can't have astronomy without
a calendar and math, right eventually, Yes, so science is
coming out of Mesopotamia too. And art, Yes, they actually
people have been creating art for ten thousand years at
that point, right, Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, that art
was one of the first things that humans try their hand.
(12:43):
I mean, think about like the prehistoric drawings in the
caves in France. I remember which ones, but of like
the people running around hunting bison, right, and they were
also telling stories to write it. Isn't that art? Yeah?
Oh man, look at you. What a sensitive guy. So, Josh,
was it all like super awesome ideas that they were
like laying down on humanity? Surely they did some harm, right, definitely,
(13:07):
because with advancement, it's hard not to step on a
few toes along the way, right. And once you say, oh,
I've got this group subjugated, but that group over there's
got a lot of emmer wheat did I want to?
So I'm gonna amass an army and you guys are
going to go subjugate that other group, So war slaves
expansion is um, all of this stuff came out of
(13:28):
that too. Sure. And the other thing too is disease.
And uh, I guess plague. Now that you have or
not plague, what would you call it? Epidemics? Yeah, an epidemics.
Since you have people all living in one place, it's
much easier to you know, pass that thing around all
of a sudden that you have an epidemic on your hand.
That was another point Jared Diamond made, like, you can't
you can't have an epidemic if you just are living
(13:48):
in groups of thirty that don't really contact one another.
Doctor screech exactly. Um, so chuck. It's pretty clear Mesopotamia
is the creative civilization, although there are some other comer.
There are definitely some settlements that have been discovered that
are neolithic, um, that show signs of some sort of cohesion.
Um in uh, let's see, there's some along the Yellow
(14:11):
River in China that are pretty old. Yeah. Um, there's
cattle Hoyak, which is one of my favorites. Yeah. Southern Turkey.
They had temples of worship, shrines, they had art, they
raised livestock and farmed and they had about ten thousand
people together doing this. But what strikes me is you
point out that they didn't have a hierarchy or social stratification.
(14:36):
But that's a ten thousand people back then with no hierarchy.
It's communism. Well, it's hinky as what it is, it's utopia.
I bet it didn't go so well though, you know,
especially in those early like savage times. Sure, um or
else it did. I mean, they could have ended because
of climate change or whatever. Um Or maybe they actually
(14:57):
did have a social hierarchy. It's just not a it
to researchers yet. But if if they did, they were
That's really what they were lacking, was the social hierarchy
that would have made them a civilization. And they had
a good three thousand years on the Mesopotamians. What about
Gonner Ganner Dept. That's in a Turkmenistan. Yeah, they sound
like they meet the thing. They farm, they built canals,
(15:19):
palaces and traded. Yeah, you know what kept them out? Again,
I think it was the hierarchy, class structure. And and
isn't that sad that class structure is a It's one
of the spaces of civilization. And I think about this, Chuck,
we're we're talking about how civilization it's you know, um
that keeping tax records gave rise to phonetic alphabets, which
(15:43):
gave rise to capturing abstract ideas. Right, UM, So we've
we've you can see how civilization at one point when
when we all of a sudden they're starting to settle
down the whole there's a world of opportunity, of choices
of available to us. Um. But with each block that
(16:03):
we built upon and cemented, we also built our own.
We built ourselves into a certain worldview that we can't
it's tough to see out of sometimes now these days,
you see what I'm saying, Like what what were the
choices that they mean? Like could they have been like
well we're gonna go with cattle hiak and not have
a social hierarchy. But now having a social hierarchy and
(16:24):
class uh means that you're a civilization. We can't think
of it without that. And there's also a lot of
benefit to studying early civilization or what constitute of civilization
because it sheds light on our own Like today we
have class structures. We have a ruling class that that
um distributes wealth based on economic policies and tax breaks.
(16:47):
And it's tough to see it like that because you
just think it's Barack Obama, John McCain. But this is
really you can look at it in that detached manner
like this is a this is the class structure, and
this is how they doll out the goods, and they
don't dole it out equally. You know what Bob Marley
said lively after yourself, Well, he said a lot of things.
(17:07):
Don't know your past, you don't know your future. That's
true right there. I don't think he was the first
guy to say that either. But Chuck, there's one question
that's remained unanswered. This this is awesome. Tell me this
isn't awesome. It's pretty awesome. Why did we start farming? Well, Josh,
there are different theories, but the one that you found
that I love is from an archaeologist named Patrick McGovern,
(17:30):
and he believes that once humans got their first little
nip of that sweet, sweet alcohol from what fermented fruit
or grain or something by accident, probably the first time.
Once they got that taste of intoxication, they would stop
at nothing to recreate it. And he contends in a
book Uncorking the Past Colon the Quest for wine, beer,
(17:55):
and other alcoholic beverages. That the Neolithic Revolution happened and
agriculture was born because people wanted to grow things to
make alcohol. Yeah, and it makes a lot of sense, Chuck,
because if you think about it as hunter gatherers, um,
we had food already, and we had figured out that
you could live in bands of thirty or less. There
(18:17):
isn't necessarily an urge to live in civilization. We're tied
to a sedentary lifestyle through agriculture. But it leaves that
door open, like why would we go, Well, I've got
some food over here, and I have tons of leisure time,
but I'd rather stick right here and spend all of
my time farming for food. But this McGovern hypothesis about
(18:38):
you know, alcohol providing the basis of agriculture, it makes
a lot of sense. It answers that question. Well, that's
the age old question and archaeological circles is what came first?
Beer or bread? Yeah, so you're growing these crops, what
were they doing? Are they making bread with it? Or
are they making beer? They were making neither. They were
actually making a um fermented combination of me and some
(19:00):
sort of fruit wine about ten percent alcohol is that
what they said? And this is we're talking like seven
thousand BC, nine thousand years ago again along the Yellow
River in China, people are making this some sort of
fermented um alcoholic beverage. And they were so clever about this, chuck,
you have to have some sort of malt sugar to
(19:23):
to allow the fermentation process to take place, right, So
what did they do? This is what they did. They
had obviously no knowledge of chemistry at the time none,
so they would prehistoric humans would uh mixed clumps of
rice with their saliva in their mouth. They chew it up,
break down the starches in the grain in their mouth
and convert it into malt sugar and then spit that
(19:44):
up into the homebrew and apparently all the yeasty, foamy
stuff would float to the top and they would use
these really long party straws, crazy straws to drink the
alcohol from the bottom of the thing. And they still
use similar uh jugs to drink out of in China.
It bro Yeah, that's like making booze nine thousand years ago.
(20:09):
And um McGovern would know, he's a molecular archaeologist. He
pretty much pioneered the field. And if you have an
old pottery shard that you want analyze to take it
to him. And so he started noticing time after time
that with all of these um shards of pottery, he
kept finding tartaric acid, which is a UM. It's an
(20:30):
acid present in wine. UM. And he would find some
other stuff too UM. And actually in Goner Deppie he
found some vessels or he was asked to analyze some
vessels and um. He found a contaminant of beer, a
natural contaminant of beer. UM. And he also figured out
that these little scratched, these cross hatch scratches in the
(20:52):
bottom of the play pottery were designed to absorb this
contaminant which occurs in crystal form, so it would just
sink to the bottom, me get stuck in these cross hatches.
So he's like, these are beer bottles and this is
like the four thousand years ago or six thousand years ago.
That's awesome. You know what else, Uh Sumerians, which was
part of Mesopotamia, they worshiped the goddess of fertility, Nina Harra,
(21:16):
and they consider her to be the inventor of beer
and the goddess of fertility too. That's pretty funny. That's
funny because I thought Paul Massan was the goddess of fertility.
That's good. And also, Josh, you know what we're saying.
And how they Sumerians wrote down things on clay tablets,
some of the first folks to do that. They actually
wrote down the recipe for beer was one of the
(21:38):
things they wrote down. So they had like the first
brewers handbook. Basically, they had tax records Gilgamesh and a
good beer recipe you need and I don't know, that's
pretty awesome. And his his hypothesis is also backed up
by the really rapid spread around the world of fermentation.
Right um, after these I think the Chinese shards, uh
(22:00):
that show that fruit and mead mixture are the oldest,
and then after that it kind of spreads fairly quickly. Yeah,
pretty cool. And if you look at their staple crops
that that may that constituted early agriculture, you can brew
from all of them. Yeah, there was some corn millet
rice beer company was that some weer company had found
(22:21):
some concient recipe and they for beer and they were
able to recreate it. Sweet. Yeah, I wish I could
remember the name of it. Someone will tell me it's
not flag Porter is it? I don't know. Maybe flag
Porter great beer. I'll look into it. All right, Well, Chuck,
that's about it. Uh, we still haven't quite gotten to
the bottom of whether Mesopotamia was a credile of civilization
(22:43):
or not. I say yes, I say yes, But as
you point out, scholars still debate what is a civilization
in the first place, So so who are we to say? Um,
that's about it. I don't even recommend reading the article.
We pretty much covered it. But there is a search
bar how stuff worth dot com all sorts of cool stuff. Um,
how about listener mail Josh. This is a long one,
(23:08):
but it's worth it because this is one of the
best ones we've ever gotten. That's two full pages, well
sixteen point for my old eyes, uh, Josh and Chuck.
Strange as it may sound, I was. I actually discovered
a secluded tribe. A few years ago. While I was
sailing solo around the world, somewhere around uh Vanua to
Vanua too in the South Pacific, I was hit by
(23:31):
a huge storm. Uh snapped my mass like a match
stick and treated my boat like a bathtub toy. He
had to strap himself in the boat, so he didn't
get watched overboard, gets tossed around for what seems like days,
ends up washed ashore like a castaway, not like a castaway.
He was a castaway as a as a castaway. The
Little Mary Anne was his boat. It was completely wrecked.
(23:51):
And uh, that was probably a mistake to name it
after a Gilligan's Island episode. You're just asking for it. Uh.
And so he did not know how long he'd been
round And turns out he was there for about a month. Wow,
castaway on an island, So listen to this. On the beach,
A cargo container washes ashore from China. He was able
(24:12):
to open it up eventually, and there was a plethora
of Chinese consumer goods, look like dollar store type stuff.
He said. That's when he noticed behind me, turned and
saw fifty mostly naked people standing on the beach and
more emerging from the jungle. I was apprehensive. I had
seen no signs of civilization, and I thought I was
alone on the island. They approached me and they started
(24:34):
to chant. As it turns out they were singing to me.
I was dumb struck, and they formed a semi circle
around me and chanted what sounded like Joe from So
it's amazing. This better be real. If someone sends us
in like a Snopes thing that I'm gonna be really pissed. Uh.
He They started holding out their hands and gesturing for
the stuff in the container, so he started passing it out,
(24:56):
obviously to be like, you know, here, I have things
for you. Uh, come in peace, he said. It was
like I was Santa Claus and this is their first Christmas.
They were tearing into everything. It turns out he had
been watched ashore and on island inhabited by a cargo
cult and I was the first white person they had
seen for generations. The last ones were during the Second
World War and had left behind modern conveniences like metal
(25:18):
pots and knives and some broken walkie talkies who the
elders used to communicate with each other. They learned how
to use thesewakie talkies. He said. He lived among them
for about a month until someone finally came and rescued me.
I was revered as a living god. They waited on
me hand and foot, and the shaman would hand mi
awaukie talkie occasionally and began chanting into this all I
(25:40):
chanted into mine. It always made him laugh and seemed
to heighten his status in the tribe. The rescue boat
finally came. They helped going away party for me ceremony
and Uh discussed. He later discovered the island had been
a staging ground for military ops during World War Two,
and the military had won the heart to minds of
these natives, so they weren't you know, aggressive toward toward
(26:03):
white man. And the chance they greeted me with on
the beach turned out was a derivation of Joe from USA,
which is what their forefathers have called soldiers. There is
no way this is true. You don't think so it can't.
This is from Barry, and Barry says, you know, it
was nice being treated like a god for a little while,
made for a great vacation. And he brought me back
(26:25):
and said it was true, and that he still never
completed his round the world trip. That is Yeah, that's
the best one ever, definitely, even if it's not true.
The creativity Barry. Someone writes back and says that was
on a T shirt. He really upset. I forgot about
that man. That kid took us, didn't Yeah, the Hiku kid.
(26:45):
We took him behind the woodshed, didn't wit yep. So
if you have a non lie email that you want
to send us, you can ship it off in a
cargo container to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
(27:07):
how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the how stuff works dot
com home page. H
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