May 13, 2009 • 16 mins
Mesopotamia is often called the 'cradle of civilization,' but some scholars believe other ancient areas (such as Catal Huyuk) hold a better claim to the title. Tune in and learn more with this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Ken. You're joined by staff writer Jane
Grant Taylor and Jane sadly is still suffering from her cold.
I have to apologize that I have faith that she's
(00:22):
going to shake it very very soon. So today we
are going to go back to basics with you guys.
We're not going to review all the fun definitions of
things like um isthmus and peninsula, but I think that
every now and then it is very helpful to think
about terms that we use very casually and consider where
they came from. And the one that we're going to
(00:43):
talk about today is civilization, because we're going to discuss
whether or not in Mesopotamia was in fact the cradle
of civilization as we like to refer to it. Yeah,
a lot of people do refer to as the cradil
civilization because it's started a lot of things that we
now just consider part of the definition of civilization that
didn't exist beforehand, which, if I can pipe in and
(01:05):
be a total brown nose, you're actually have the definition
of civilization from Miriam Webster and again and back to
base experience, Alfred it for everyone out there, civilization a
relatively high level of cultural and technological development, specifically the
state of cultural development at which writing and the keeping
(01:27):
of written records is attained. Yeah, and there's a lot
of arguments about what makes civilization. Obviously, if you disagree
that the definition, you're not alone. There are a lot
of arguments from historians and archaeologists, and one archaeologist, V.
Gordon child Um suggests some criteria for what makes a civilization.
He says it has to be large, has a concentrated population,
(01:50):
specialized occupations, public buildings, social classes and rankings. Writing like that,
that definition mentioned government trade over long distances, and the
ability to produce and store food for a long period
of time. To think about a time when when this
didn't exist is good for for trying to wrap your
(02:11):
mind around the beginning of civilization and what it means
to have a civilization precisely, and if we look at
a timeline of ancient history, we can see that agricultural
practices really began an eight thousand b C. And prior
to this time, people primarily were nomads and they would
travel from place to place looking for food, and whether
(02:33):
they hunted animals or they foraged for vegetables and plants,
that was up to that particular tribe. Perhaps they did both,
but as far as actually being rooted and fixed to
a place, it meant much more than farming. It meant
that you had a cooperative society at that point, because
people in your tribe had to designate who would plant what,
(02:54):
how it would be harvested and when and how to
disseminate the bounty of your crops. And you see, and
this sort of cooperative society the very beginnings of what
civilization is right and they market thousand bc um is
sort of the beginning of agriculture. Obviously you need the
technology and the understanding to grow things and crops to
(03:14):
sustaining either a small tribe or large tribe. And also
the domestication of animals, which I know a little bit about.
Actually wrote How Domestication of Animals Works, which was one
of my favorite articles and exposes the dork that I am.
But it's just really interesting to think about all these
things that they that settled life offers a group, and
you know, the ability to use milk and meat and
(03:36):
have all this around you with not without having to
forage and hunt and gather. It frees you up to
do so much more like your life, like art and
practicing organized religion and building a fixed structure that's going
to be there for some time. And the people of
the Fertile Crescent were actually pretty lucky because they happened
(03:58):
upon some indigenous crop like wheat and wild barley, and
they were so plentiful that they settled there. And that's
when the Mesopotamians really began their civilization. That was sort
of again by happenstance that they found these indigenous bountiful
crops and they could actually become farmers using the land. Yeah,
and it's not exactly an accident about where civilization began,
(04:21):
because we should mention Mesopotamia actually comes from the Greek
for between two rivers, and it was a very fertile place.
Even though not all of the area got a lot
of rainfall, the soil was very fertile from the Tigris
and Euphrates, right, the tigers and new fated I'm sorry, Yeah,
we should mention that. And although originally civilization started like
very near these rivers, once the civilization started perfecting irrigation
(04:45):
and canals, they were able to expand this farming and
agriculture much farther out. And that's what's so huge, because
if you take up a farming plot near a very
fertile land, you can feed your tribe. Sure, But once
the people of Mesopotamia perfected the idea of irrigation and
building canals, they were able to experience a huge boom
(05:06):
in population and some instead of having one very concentrated
group of people in a specific area, they were able
to grow to the surrounding parts and could sustain and
you know, just provide food and everything for cities so
that not everyone needed to be a farmer. For instance,
Cities is one of the huge things that comes into
the definition of what makes a civilization. A lot of
(05:27):
people think that you have to have cities in order
to be civilization. Obviously, these were the first, so um
to think about it. This civilization of the Mesopotamians flourished
before you know, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans.
It was the predecessor to all of these. But also
we should distinguish this kind of civilization from those in
that it wasn't very unified. The Mesopotamians, they were usually
(05:51):
city states, just sort of cities that were you know,
they lived independently, They had their own structure, They weren't
ruled by anything bigger than them. Unlike the Egyptians and Romans,
there wasn't very unified at this point and consisted of
many languages and cultures as well. The Mesopotamians came so
many innovations and and things that also came to help
(06:12):
what civilization meant and just sustain the civilization in general.
And like we've mentioned before, there are basic differences between
pneumatic tribes. It had a sense of culture. Those who
created cave drawings or those who we have relics from
that showed that they obviously worship some sort of God
because they fashioned things and in that sort of shape
or form to allude to that fact. But as far
(06:34):
as being rooted in place, the Mesopotamians were able to
start building temples and really starting an organized religion around
their faith. So we see all these very sturdy and
cool cigarette structures throughout Mesopotamia and and Babylon, and we
can tell that they had organized religion. We know that
they developed cuneiform and then later a type of phonetic
(06:56):
writing and we we have records that showed that they
did things like accounting, and they kept track of their finances.
And it's indicators like these that show these people weren't
going anywhere. They were very much settled in a spot,
sort of like you wouldn't pay rent if you were
a bum who was just going to abandon talent. You know,
if you're gonna be living in a place for a while,
you pay rent, you pay your electricity bills, and you
(07:18):
probably keep an Italian your check buck of where this
money gears to ye and accounting is was one of
the most important things that our earliest records of known
writing has to do with accounting, obviously out of necessity,
but in addition to that, out of that came writing
that was more literary. They actually had epics, stories and poetry.
(07:39):
Even and which formed part of the first book was
actually a Gilgamesh, which is an epic story about a
Sumerian king quest for immortality. They also had relating to religion.
They had a story very like the Noah and the
arc story the Great Flood. Obviously writing is very connected
to religion, but these are both things that UM, once
they got formalized, were UM the first of their collead
(08:02):
of civilization. And so along with the idea of law
and society comes written code. And you'll probably remember the
podcast we did about the Code of Hammurabi, and some
important themes from hammer Abi's code are pretty evident. And
the Mesopotamian settlements too of the ideas of restitution and
retaliation and justice punishment for doing wrong to your neighbors.
(08:26):
And this shows that again this is a cooperative society.
And in addition to living lawfully and living spiritually, they
also created their own system of time. They had a calendar,
they did mathematics by which they kept their tax records
and accounting. Yeah, time is really interesting because they started
a system that we still used today, and that is
based on the number sixty. You know, we have sixty seconds,
(08:49):
we have um sixteen minutes in an hour, and and
so to think that that is existed to this day
is astounding. They also came up with the idea of
dividing a circle into three and sixty degrees. So you
definitely see the you know, the foundings of science in thisation.
But again, you know, there's a dark side to this
kind of massive technological advancement too. That's the idea that
(09:11):
when you have power and you have leisure time afforded
you by living in a place and having a very
you know, fixed system of farming and domestication of animals
and different trades around town, you get the idea that
you can go out and conquer other territories that may
be close by, and that perhaps your civilization of superiors.
(09:32):
So we see evidence of empiricism in ancient Mesopotamia with
people going out and expanding their empire and engaging in
wars and even instilling systems of slavery and their society. Yeah,
that's right. You have the first empire coming out of
this time, at least in the third millennium BC. The
city states which were often meddling each other, at this
point we're taken over and unified by the heads who
(09:53):
built the first empire like known to humanity. And if
you remember the podcast that we did about the Terra
Cotta Army and the first Emperor of China, you know
that amassing great wealth and power and land is you know,
as much of a curse as it is a blessing.
Because for instance, and BC, Sumor was unified under one
(10:14):
ruler before it had been multiple cities and I was
brought together. And with unification I think comes a great
deal of hostility. Sometimes people can sometimes balk at the
idea of their own culture being subjugated for another culture
coming in and any of this idea, I mean like
the you know, one race is better than another race
because you have the idea of slavery is well coming
(10:36):
out of this that you know, should be mentioned that
they had a particular class system, where as you know,
one of the archaeologists I mentioned that's one of the
criteria them. They had um an upper class with nobles
and landowners and government officials and priests and kings. In
the middle you had the merchants, you know, the farmers, artisans,
tradespeople can kind of see the middle class coming out
(10:58):
of there, and the lowest you had slaves and was
really the beginning of slavery as well. And classes are
further designated by the fact that the ruler at the
very top gets to disseminate the goods that are produced
in society. So it's very hard to move up in
this type of system when you're being dictated how to
live and you're given the sustenance you need to live
but many scholars would argue that while the Mesopotamian civilization
(11:23):
certainly did give birth to facets of civilization that we
still consider important to the definition today, there are other
ancient civilizations out there that could be even older. Yeah,
historians argue that Um other other city states and stuff,
should be the really the cradle civilization as we referred
to it today, and that existed about the late third
or early second millennia BC. Um It was a vast
(11:45):
city in now Turkmenistan, and it was about one thousand
square miles uh and uh it had canals and palaces
and so you can see obviously they had a civilization there.
They had irrigation systems in place, and there's even some
evidence that they traded with Egypt and then over in
Turkey and about seven thousand BC and Ktahyuk there's evidence
(12:06):
of ten thousand people living in a cooperative society, farming
and domesticating animals and not unlike the city in turkmenistown.
There are also shrines here and centers for religion Um.
So there's evidence that these people were settled in place.
They were spiritual people. However, the clincher, there's really no
evidentiary support that they had an organized government. Yeah. In
(12:29):
my favorite part, I think I'd rather call the Sumerians
the cradicle of civilization because I think like there's evidence
they invented the wheel, and it's like that's the ultimate invention,
you know, this um inventing the wheel. You know, in
addition to that, they had um mass production of pottery.
They brewed the first beer. It's very important to me. UM,
and they made the first glass. I think the Sumerians
(12:51):
just made so many I guess because their civilization actually
sustained throughout the years, they have so many claims to fame,
and I guess that's really why most people consider the
civilization And to me, it's just another argument of who
gets to be first. Jane and I have talked before
about who was first to America, you know, who invented
the first car or the first assembly line. And it's
(13:15):
a really silly squabble if you ask me, because every
society in history has really contributed something important, whether it's
a positive contribution that we've modeled and you know, infused
with our latest technology to improve to our standards today,
or it's a negative contribution that you know, helps us
use that age old maxim you have to learn from
history or will repeat itself. You know, we we learn
(13:36):
not to engage in certain types of warfare and discrimination.
So all contributions from all people have made some sort
of impastures. That is true. I have toically Devil's advocate,
though it is cool to see who was the first,
you know, to give credit where credit is due, and
just to know where ideas began and know how astoundingly
old they are really really gives you a conception of
(13:56):
of understanding. You know, you can really understand civilization when
you know where began. So that's true. I think there's
also something to be sad for being very fortunate for
settling in an area like the Fertile Crescent where the
land is obviously ripe for a civilization to grow out
of it. I wonder how many civilizations out there, or
almost could be civilizations, nomadic tribes of people tried and
(14:18):
failed because they were in the wrong type of land
and I couldn't support them. One interesting sign note to
this is I remember in my research for this podcast
that some historians think that the old myth of the
Garden of Eden actually the story actually um that that
Eden actually was located in Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent
and that kind of makes sense. Well, um, I could
(14:42):
keep this debate going forever, but all of you out
there are probably anxious to put your paws on your
own dictionary, so look up civilization and city and town
and other riveting definitions. So we will cut it short,
but I would like to encourage all of you, if
you have not already, to visit our brand new stuff
you missed in History Class blog Yeah okay, into Senna
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(15:03):
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(15:26):
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website at how stuff works dot com. For more on
(15:50):
this and thousands of other topics, does that how stuff
works dot com
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Ken. You're joined by staff writer Jane
Grant Taylor and Jane sadly is still suffering from her cold.
I have to apologize that I have faith that she's
(00:22):
going to shake it very very soon. So today we
are going to go back to basics with you guys.
We're not going to review all the fun definitions of
things like um isthmus and peninsula, but I think that
every now and then it is very helpful to think
about terms that we use very casually and consider where
they came from. And the one that we're going to
(00:43):
talk about today is civilization, because we're going to discuss
whether or not in Mesopotamia was in fact the cradle
of civilization as we like to refer to it. Yeah,
a lot of people do refer to as the cradil
civilization because it's started a lot of things that we
now just consider part of the definition of civilization that
didn't exist beforehand, which, if I can pipe in and
(01:05):
be a total brown nose, you're actually have the definition
of civilization from Miriam Webster and again and back to
base experience, Alfred it for everyone out there, civilization a
relatively high level of cultural and technological development, specifically the
state of cultural development at which writing and the keeping
(01:27):
of written records is attained. Yeah, and there's a lot
of arguments about what makes civilization. Obviously, if you disagree
that the definition, you're not alone. There are a lot
of arguments from historians and archaeologists, and one archaeologist, V.
Gordon child Um suggests some criteria for what makes a civilization.
He says it has to be large, has a concentrated population,
(01:50):
specialized occupations, public buildings, social classes and rankings. Writing like that,
that definition mentioned government trade over long distances, and the
ability to produce and store food for a long period
of time. To think about a time when when this
didn't exist is good for for trying to wrap your
(02:11):
mind around the beginning of civilization and what it means
to have a civilization precisely, and if we look at
a timeline of ancient history, we can see that agricultural
practices really began an eight thousand b C. And prior
to this time, people primarily were nomads and they would
travel from place to place looking for food, and whether
(02:33):
they hunted animals or they foraged for vegetables and plants,
that was up to that particular tribe. Perhaps they did both,
but as far as actually being rooted and fixed to
a place, it meant much more than farming. It meant
that you had a cooperative society at that point, because
people in your tribe had to designate who would plant what,
(02:54):
how it would be harvested and when and how to
disseminate the bounty of your crops. And you see, and
this sort of cooperative society the very beginnings of what
civilization is right and they market thousand bc um is
sort of the beginning of agriculture. Obviously you need the
technology and the understanding to grow things and crops to
(03:14):
sustaining either a small tribe or large tribe. And also
the domestication of animals, which I know a little bit about.
Actually wrote How Domestication of Animals Works, which was one
of my favorite articles and exposes the dork that I am.
But it's just really interesting to think about all these
things that they that settled life offers a group, and
you know, the ability to use milk and meat and
(03:36):
have all this around you with not without having to
forage and hunt and gather. It frees you up to
do so much more like your life, like art and
practicing organized religion and building a fixed structure that's going
to be there for some time. And the people of
the Fertile Crescent were actually pretty lucky because they happened
(03:58):
upon some indigenous crop like wheat and wild barley, and
they were so plentiful that they settled there. And that's
when the Mesopotamians really began their civilization. That was sort
of again by happenstance that they found these indigenous bountiful
crops and they could actually become farmers using the land. Yeah,
and it's not exactly an accident about where civilization began,
(04:21):
because we should mention Mesopotamia actually comes from the Greek
for between two rivers, and it was a very fertile place.
Even though not all of the area got a lot
of rainfall, the soil was very fertile from the Tigris
and Euphrates, right, the tigers and new fated I'm sorry, Yeah,
we should mention that. And although originally civilization started like
very near these rivers, once the civilization started perfecting irrigation
(04:45):
and canals, they were able to expand this farming and
agriculture much farther out. And that's what's so huge, because
if you take up a farming plot near a very
fertile land, you can feed your tribe. Sure, But once
the people of Mesopotamia perfected the idea of irrigation and
building canals, they were able to experience a huge boom
(05:06):
in population and some instead of having one very concentrated
group of people in a specific area, they were able
to grow to the surrounding parts and could sustain and
you know, just provide food and everything for cities so
that not everyone needed to be a farmer. For instance,
Cities is one of the huge things that comes into
the definition of what makes a civilization. A lot of
(05:27):
people think that you have to have cities in order
to be civilization. Obviously, these were the first, so um
to think about it. This civilization of the Mesopotamians flourished
before you know, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans.
It was the predecessor to all of these. But also
we should distinguish this kind of civilization from those in
that it wasn't very unified. The Mesopotamians, they were usually
(05:51):
city states, just sort of cities that were you know,
they lived independently, They had their own structure, They weren't
ruled by anything bigger than them. Unlike the Egyptians and Romans,
there wasn't very unified at this point and consisted of
many languages and cultures as well. The Mesopotamians came so
many innovations and and things that also came to help
(06:12):
what civilization meant and just sustain the civilization in general.
And like we've mentioned before, there are basic differences between
pneumatic tribes. It had a sense of culture. Those who
created cave drawings or those who we have relics from
that showed that they obviously worship some sort of God
because they fashioned things and in that sort of shape
or form to allude to that fact. But as far
(06:34):
as being rooted in place, the Mesopotamians were able to
start building temples and really starting an organized religion around
their faith. So we see all these very sturdy and
cool cigarette structures throughout Mesopotamia and and Babylon, and we
can tell that they had organized religion. We know that
they developed cuneiform and then later a type of phonetic
(06:56):
writing and we we have records that showed that they
did things like accounting, and they kept track of their finances.
And it's indicators like these that show these people weren't
going anywhere. They were very much settled in a spot,
sort of like you wouldn't pay rent if you were
a bum who was just going to abandon talent. You know,
if you're gonna be living in a place for a while,
you pay rent, you pay your electricity bills, and you
(07:18):
probably keep an Italian your check buck of where this
money gears to ye and accounting is was one of
the most important things that our earliest records of known
writing has to do with accounting, obviously out of necessity,
but in addition to that, out of that came writing
that was more literary. They actually had epics, stories and poetry.
(07:39):
Even and which formed part of the first book was
actually a Gilgamesh, which is an epic story about a
Sumerian king quest for immortality. They also had relating to religion.
They had a story very like the Noah and the
arc story the Great Flood. Obviously writing is very connected
to religion, but these are both things that UM, once
they got formalized, were UM the first of their collead
(08:02):
of civilization. And so along with the idea of law
and society comes written code. And you'll probably remember the
podcast we did about the Code of Hammurabi, and some
important themes from hammer Abi's code are pretty evident. And
the Mesopotamian settlements too of the ideas of restitution and
retaliation and justice punishment for doing wrong to your neighbors.
(08:26):
And this shows that again this is a cooperative society.
And in addition to living lawfully and living spiritually, they
also created their own system of time. They had a calendar,
they did mathematics by which they kept their tax records
and accounting. Yeah, time is really interesting because they started
a system that we still used today, and that is
based on the number sixty. You know, we have sixty seconds,
(08:49):
we have um sixteen minutes in an hour, and and
so to think that that is existed to this day
is astounding. They also came up with the idea of
dividing a circle into three and sixty degrees. So you
definitely see the you know, the foundings of science in thisation.
But again, you know, there's a dark side to this
kind of massive technological advancement too. That's the idea that
(09:11):
when you have power and you have leisure time afforded
you by living in a place and having a very
you know, fixed system of farming and domestication of animals
and different trades around town, you get the idea that
you can go out and conquer other territories that may
be close by, and that perhaps your civilization of superiors.
(09:32):
So we see evidence of empiricism in ancient Mesopotamia with
people going out and expanding their empire and engaging in
wars and even instilling systems of slavery and their society. Yeah,
that's right. You have the first empire coming out of
this time, at least in the third millennium BC. The
city states which were often meddling each other, at this
point we're taken over and unified by the heads who
(09:53):
built the first empire like known to humanity. And if
you remember the podcast that we did about the Terra
Cotta Army and the first Emperor of China, you know
that amassing great wealth and power and land is you know,
as much of a curse as it is a blessing.
Because for instance, and BC, Sumor was unified under one
(10:14):
ruler before it had been multiple cities and I was
brought together. And with unification I think comes a great
deal of hostility. Sometimes people can sometimes balk at the
idea of their own culture being subjugated for another culture
coming in and any of this idea, I mean like
the you know, one race is better than another race
because you have the idea of slavery is well coming
(10:36):
out of this that you know, should be mentioned that
they had a particular class system, where as you know,
one of the archaeologists I mentioned that's one of the
criteria them. They had um an upper class with nobles
and landowners and government officials and priests and kings. In
the middle you had the merchants, you know, the farmers, artisans,
tradespeople can kind of see the middle class coming out
(10:58):
of there, and the lowest you had slaves and was
really the beginning of slavery as well. And classes are
further designated by the fact that the ruler at the
very top gets to disseminate the goods that are produced
in society. So it's very hard to move up in
this type of system when you're being dictated how to
live and you're given the sustenance you need to live
but many scholars would argue that while the Mesopotamian civilization
(11:23):
certainly did give birth to facets of civilization that we
still consider important to the definition today, there are other
ancient civilizations out there that could be even older. Yeah,
historians argue that Um other other city states and stuff,
should be the really the cradle civilization as we referred
to it today, and that existed about the late third
or early second millennia BC. Um It was a vast
(11:45):
city in now Turkmenistan, and it was about one thousand
square miles uh and uh it had canals and palaces
and so you can see obviously they had a civilization there.
They had irrigation systems in place, and there's even some
evidence that they traded with Egypt and then over in
Turkey and about seven thousand BC and Ktahyuk there's evidence
(12:06):
of ten thousand people living in a cooperative society, farming
and domesticating animals and not unlike the city in turkmenistown.
There are also shrines here and centers for religion Um.
So there's evidence that these people were settled in place.
They were spiritual people. However, the clincher, there's really no
evidentiary support that they had an organized government. Yeah. In
(12:29):
my favorite part, I think I'd rather call the Sumerians
the cradicle of civilization because I think like there's evidence
they invented the wheel, and it's like that's the ultimate invention,
you know, this um inventing the wheel. You know, in
addition to that, they had um mass production of pottery.
They brewed the first beer. It's very important to me. UM,
and they made the first glass. I think the Sumerians
(12:51):
just made so many I guess because their civilization actually
sustained throughout the years, they have so many claims to fame,
and I guess that's really why most people consider the
civilization And to me, it's just another argument of who
gets to be first. Jane and I have talked before
about who was first to America, you know, who invented
the first car or the first assembly line. And it's
(13:15):
a really silly squabble if you ask me, because every
society in history has really contributed something important, whether it's
a positive contribution that we've modeled and you know, infused
with our latest technology to improve to our standards today,
or it's a negative contribution that you know, helps us
use that age old maxim you have to learn from
history or will repeat itself. You know, we we learn
(13:36):
not to engage in certain types of warfare and discrimination.
So all contributions from all people have made some sort
of impastures. That is true. I have toically Devil's advocate,
though it is cool to see who was the first,
you know, to give credit where credit is due, and
just to know where ideas began and know how astoundingly
old they are really really gives you a conception of
(13:56):
of understanding. You know, you can really understand civilization when
you know where began. So that's true. I think there's
also something to be sad for being very fortunate for
settling in an area like the Fertile Crescent where the
land is obviously ripe for a civilization to grow out
of it. I wonder how many civilizations out there, or
almost could be civilizations, nomadic tribes of people tried and
(14:18):
failed because they were in the wrong type of land
and I couldn't support them. One interesting sign note to
this is I remember in my research for this podcast
that some historians think that the old myth of the
Garden of Eden actually the story actually um that that
Eden actually was located in Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent
and that kind of makes sense. Well, um, I could
(14:42):
keep this debate going forever, but all of you out
there are probably anxious to put your paws on your
own dictionary, so look up civilization and city and town
and other riveting definitions. So we will cut it short,
but I would like to encourage all of you, if
you have not already, to visit our brand new stuff
you missed in History Class blog Yeah okay, into Senna
each right on the blog every day, and that it
(15:03):
has to do with a range of subjects, stuff that
interests us that we think will interest you, and news
in the field of history and archaeology and everything like that.
We also address all of your questions on the Mondays
of every week as well, so check that out. And
on Friday's we dear a little podcast recap, so a
chance for you all to get your comments and about
the stuff we've been talking about on air with you.
(15:26):
And if you have a piece of feedback for us
or an idea for a future podcast, be sure to
email us at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
And if you would like to see the article on
much of this podcast was based called why was Mesopotamia
called the Creative Civilization? You can find it on our
website at how stuff works dot com. For more on
(15:50):
this and thousands of other topics, does that how stuff
works dot com
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