A Cradle of Civilization Rocked by War - the city of Uruk at 3500 BC

About 9,000 BC. about 2,500 years before the first settlements in China and 6,000 years before the first ones in Western Europe, modern humans settled in Mesopotamian in what is now North Eastern Syria. Around 3500 BC the city-state called Uruk started a domination of the area that lasted 2000 years (until the Babylonians and the Assyrians), setting up colonies 400 to 600 miles away from their city, and conquering other cities with "sling bullets".

Now this deserves a PBS special!


http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-war16dec16,0,4508120.story?track=tottext

A Cradle of Civilization Rocked by War
By Thomas H. Maugh II
Times Staff Writer

December 16, 2005

Excavations at a ruined city on the plains of northeastern Syria have turned up the oldest known example of large-scale warfare — a massive campaign that pummeled the city into submission at the dawn of civilization more than 5,500 years ago, researchers said Thursday.

The discovery of the devastated remains of the ancient trading center suggests that the urge to attack and conquer cities is as old and basic as the need to build them, the researchers said.

"This clearly was no minor skirmish," said archeologist Clemens Reichel of the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, who led the joint U.S.-Syrian team that made the discovery. "This was 'shock and awe' in the 4th millennium BC."

The siege and destruction of the site, now known as Tell Hamoukar, was apparently an early step by Uruk, an ancient Mesopotamian city-state, to establish the world's earliest colonial system, said archeologist Guillermo Algaze of UC San Diego, who was not involved in the research.<snip>

Especially the part about the "sling bullets" - had never heard of those.

:-)

Actually, I am reminded of an editorial cartoon from decades ago ... it showed some scientists deciphering an ancient tablet. "It says, "Unrest reported in the Middle East ..."