If the Urban Revolution peaked in Lower Mesopotamia between 3500 and 3200 bc, one may wonder why it took place there and then. Evidently, the necessary premises for this profound social change found this particular historical context appropriate for further developments. First of ah, as already mentioned, there must have been an availability of surplus able to support the great organisations and their specialised staff. In other words, agriculture had to be particularly developed. Agriculture in small ecological niches had been perfectly adequate for the initial stimulation of technical and economic progress, mostly favoured by the proximity of different eco-regions.
Lower Mesopotamia was a far larger ‘niche’. However, it was a niche that, if not properly equipped, could not allow the rise of human settlements. This was due to the presence of two large rivers (the Tigris and the Euphrates), whose meanders and seasonal floods created marshes and inaccessible lands. Its distance from the raw materials needed for the construction of tools (such as metal, semiprecious stones and timber) was a hindrance in the initial stages of development. After ah, long-distance journeys were expensive and largely unreliable. However, once properly organised, Lower Mesopotamia had its advantages in terms of size and quality. Once drained, its lands provided high yields and a network of economic relations via rivers and large spaces, which facilitated the evolution of villages into larger settlements.
Admittedly, Lower Mesopotamia experienced a unique progress. The area had initially remained on the margins of the general developmental trends of the Neolithic period. It only rose in the Ubaid period and in the transitional phase between the Chalcolithic and the Bronze Age. It is possible that the lower sea levels of the Persian Gulf at the time, either because of earthquakes or the increasing amount of sediments accumulated in the rivers, had been an important factor in this sudden rise. This led to the construction of canals, both to drain excess water from the marshes and to distribute it more evenly across the territory (Figure 4.2). Therefore, water began to be managed more effectively, minimising the differences both in its seasonal and annual availability.
Water management developed through various technical and organisational stages. Large canals carrying water on a regional level were for now still impossible to construct and would only appear several centuries later, as a result of political unification and increased mobility. The initial hydric interventions were strictly local in nature and required little technical expertise. However, these interventions already led to the creation and constant upkeep of drained stretches of land. Consequently, hydric factors began to heavily influence the development of relations between these drained stretches of land. For instance, land located higher up influenced the location of drained areas in the foothills, the creation of a canal, the deviation of a river and the use of a depression in the land as a basin. If these factors benefited certain areas, they hindered others. This situation led to an increased need for coordination between local initiatives, in order to avoid potential conflicts. Be that as it may, the first hydric interventions already took place in the Ubaid period. They moved at the same pace as the agricultural activities of the alluvial plain. Only by the mid-fourth millennium bc did these interventions increase in scale, and were then used to create a network of inter-regional connections, since river transport was less expensive than land transport.
Aside from the construction of canals, agricultural activities also benefited from the technological progress of the period. Due to the increased availability of water, irrigated agriculture provided higher and more regular yields than those in the surrounding foothills, which still relied on rainfed agriculture. For the cultivation of the alluvial plains, a tool was developed which would continue to be used in Mesopotamia for three millennia. This tool was the scratch plough (apin in Sumerian and epinnu in Akkadian), which allowed a significantly faster cultivation than hoe farming. The Mesopotamian scratch plough was
Figure 4.2 The occupation of Lower Mesopotamia in the Uruk period. Settlements and canals in the Early Uruk period (above, left) and Late Uruk period (above, right); simulation of cultivated areas in the Early Uruk period (below, left) and Late Uruk period (below, right).
A complex piece of equipment. It allowed a more precise type of sowing, placing the seeds deep in the ground, away from animals feeding on them. Naturally, the scratch plough required the availability of draught animals (four or six) able to pull the plough and specialised workmen. This kind of activity was best suited for agriculture on the plains, with long fields of similar size spread along irrigation canals (Figure 4.3). This division of the land indicates a planned and organised kind of agricultural production. Irrigation, the scratch plough, high yields in cereal cultivation (with a 1:30 — and higher — ratio between seeds sown and harvested) and long fields provided Lower Mesopotamia with a large and stable availability of surplus. The latter could then sustain a wide and diversified range of specialised workmen and administrators living in the cities.
Settlements were not uniformly distributed across an undifferentiated territory that pursued the same kinds of activities anymore. First of ah, settlements developed close to water resources, both for irrigation purposes and for transport. The latter became an essential aspect for the centralisation of surplus, which was delivered from the fields to the warehouses in the cities. Moreover, settlements began to be divided into a hierarchy of two and, soon after, three groups. The division into two groups included the villages, characterised by their small size and agro-pastoral activities, and the cities. The latter were responsible for the transformation of raw materials, trade and services. The size of cities did not depend on the degree of exploitation of the surrounding lands anymore. This is because they could benefit from their newly developed ability to gather resources on a regional level. The third group was made of intermediary centres, which performed urban kind of activities, both in terms of craftsmanship and administration, away from the centre.
The development of a hierarchy of settlements with different specialisations is only a marginal aspect of this new political organisation, which moved from a local scale to a regional one. This is visible from the rise of capitals as well as a number of centres in the periphery and a vast amount of tributary villages. Capitals were centres of political control (centred on the palace, the temple or temples, and the ruling class) and of the majority of specialised activities. This intricate structure was separated from other similar structures
Figure 4.3 Landscape of the southern Iraq region, with long fields on both sides of the river (NASA).
By stretches of land left untouched, covered with marshes, or arid steppes unreached by irrigation canals. These territories had a political function, keeping regional complexes separate, as well as an economic role, providing marginal, yet important resources through seasonal pastoralism, fishing and gathering activities.
Urbanisation developed alongside a rapid demographic growth. The latter was not due to immigration flows, as previously hypothesised, but to an internal demographic growth caused by the improvements in food production processes. However, within this overarching growth, which demonstrates the positive effects of the Urban Revolution (able to sustain a larger number of inhabitants living in the same territory), there were considerable differentiations and fluctuations. The rise of an urban centre led to the abandonment of the surrounding countryside. A case in point is Uruk, whose growth (of ca. 70 hectares) in the Early Uruk phase (levels XIV—VI of the Eanna, ca. 3500—3200 bc) led to the concentration of the population within its walls and to the disappearance of the nearby villages. Further north, in the area of Nippur and Adab, where urban concentration is less visible, demographic growth was spread across numerous villages. Later on, however, in the Late Uruk phase (levels V—III of the Eanna, ca. 3400—3000 bc) the opposite happened: the large centre of Uruk (ca. 100 hectares) also attracted people from the north, leading to a crisis of the villages in the Nippur-Adab area. It is hard to tell to what extent these demographic fluctuations were the result of actual movements of people or of different rates of growth in different areas. However, these rates, originally applied to populations with similar starting points, modify quantitative relations when applied over long periods of time.
Finally, it is worth bearing in mind that, in order to be effective and productive, the exploitation of the land through canals and allotments relied on demographic growth. The construction of a canal itself required the accumulation of food to cover the costs (in the form of food rations to be given to the workers). Moreover, it required the availability of a workforce able to take time off farming, as long as it was not damaging the cultivations already in process. Moreover, once the canal was completed, it was crucial to find families ready to settle and cultivate the new lands. This repopulation ensured the availability of resources (in terms of further surplus), a fact that would justify the creation of the canal in the first place. Therefore, the intervention becomes cyclical, requiring a surplus of people and food and increasing productivity and surplus. Internal political structures were equally cyclical, requiring a wide consensus and technical and economic expertise to plan the infrastructures needed, but at the same time building consensus and making the surrounding settlements more dependent on the centre. Therefore, demography, technology and politics did not develop independently from each other. This interconnection, then, prevents us from considering one aspect as more influential than the others.
The hierarchical and interdependent relations developing in the area also changed the urban and agricultural landscape on closer inspection. In the countryside, land began to be diversified on a legal level. In the pre-urban phase, all the lands had the same legal status, since they belonged to the families cultivating them. In those communities, there were mechanisms to guarantee that the land would continue to be owned by the family living in it (since land ownership was mainly passed on through inheritance). Moreover, there were plots of land managed by the village, namely, pasturelands and lands belonging to extinct family lines. Now, however, urbanisation brought a significant change to the legal status of land: some fields continued to be owned by ‘free’ families; others belonged to the temple or the palace. With time, the latter acquired an increasing amount of land, either through economic processes or by colonising new territories. After all, the long fields lined along irrigation canals would have been unthinkable without the intervention of these central structures.
The management of land belonging to the temple and the palace was organised in two ways. One part of the land was directly exploited by these organisations through servile labour, thus becoming part of a larger agricultural centre. The other part was divided into lots and allotted to individuals in exchange for their services to the organisation. Therefore, the lands owned by the temple and the palace created a new agricultural landscape. The latter began to characterise the immediate surroundings of the cities and the newly colonised land, thus causing a dispersion of the population and the marginalisation of villages mentioned above. The various types of land management of temple or palace land caused the tribute system to develop in different ways: villages had to pay a tithe (or anyway a low percentage); the lands directly linked to the organisations had to give up their whole produce (minus whatever was needed for the following cultivation and for the rations to be given to the workmen and livestock); and specialised services had to be provided in exchange of plots ofland. In addition to that, individual plots of land began to develop economic types of interactions. In the temple and the palace lands, seasonal tasks requiring a large workforce were performed by the inhabitants from the villages as an obligation (corvee). This system allowed the great organisation to cut costs.
A parallel diversification, though in a different form, also affected urban settlements. In villages, the equal status of family units was architecturally visible through the uniformity of household plans, which maintained a similar size and function. In the cities, however, social stratification and specialisation led to the development of a complex urban plan. The palace and the temple (characterised by a particular care for the exterior facades, meant to arouse the admiration of the population) constituted the centre of the settlement, along with other, often public, buildings such as warehouses, workshops and so on. The varying degrees of prestige and the economic means of family units led households to reflect the social status of the families living in them, both in terms of size and wealth. In this increasingly complex urban plan, the temple and its surrounding area (with many smaller temples, reflecting the polytheistic nature of each city’s pantheon) undoubtedly remained the core of the settlement. For instance, the Eanna at Uruk was characterised by many sacred buildings linked to each other by colonnades and courtyards, as well as the nearby artificial mound with the temple of Anu (Figure 4.4). It therefore constitutes a case of its own in terms of complexity and elaborateness, but not an unusual one.
Urbanisation also brought about a vast concentration of wealth, enough to require the construction of defensive walls. The costs of an endeavour of such magnitude were clearly meant to protect the wealth accumulated in the city. Defensive walls required many working days for the production of bricks and the erection of walls, as well as for the construction of the foundations and the accumulation of the soil needed. This wealth was not only made of food supplies gathered through taxation and of luxury goods that had reached the city through long distance trade. There were also the knowledge and technical expertise of the urban workshops, as well as the ideologies expressed through the temples and their furnishings. All these resources had to be protected from potential attacks from nearby cities or foreign invaders.
By contrast, villages were too numerous and small, and their wealth too modest to justify the construction of defensive walls. The real wealth of villages was their inhabitants, either as workforce for the palaces they depended upon, or for eventual invaders. In case of invasions, the population would have fled, rather than invest in fortification walls. The cities, then, were in marked contrast to the villages, which were located in the open countryside, sparsely inhabited with simple, non-durable houses. The cities’ fortification walls visibly separated urban settlements from their surroundings, creating a compact city plan. Moreover, their large and architecturally complex buildings were meant to last through time. They also had to be frequently restored and rebuilt, due to their functional and symbolic value for the entire community. Therefore, urbanisation also meant monumental architecture (from temples to city walls), aimed at protecting the community’s prosperity both physically and ideologically.
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