War and Change

War is a devastating experience for any civilization, but it is also often an engine for change, a spur to the development of new technology, the source of stories and legends, an economic drain and an economic spur often at the same time, and generally a force that can be creative a well as destructive. War was very much a part of the life of ancient mesopotamia, a region whose geography encouraged invasion so that the leadership of the Mesopotamian region had to think constantly about defense and its ramifications. The social life, economy, religion, literature, and politics of Mesopotamia were shaped by the warfare and the demands it made on the people for centuries.

This experience is reflective of that of many civilizations throughout the ancient world. Civilization developed following a pattern based on the ability of the human population to learn to use different tools at different stages, different materials from which those tools were made, and different modes of food production. With the development of more sedentary habitats, urban centers eventually developed and produced civilizations with certain similar characteristics, though these developments may have taken place at different rates in different areas. One of the primary determinants of how a civilization develops is its environment, the geography and climate of the area in which people decided to settle. Duiker and Spielvogel note that the first civilizations that emerged in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indi

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Indus valley are more stable than Mesopotamia because their rivers are more predictable and because both were more isolated from external threat than was Mesopotamia. Sumer consisted first of small, open villages, but urban centers developed along the Euphrates and attracted more and more of the population, especially because of continuous wars between the city-states. To the north was another civilization under the Akkadians. Irrigation had to be used to produce sufficient food. There was fertile soil and an abundance of water at the time: Aided by these external conditions, the amount of cultivated land necessary to support an individual had become extremely small, so that the area around a settlement needed to support its population could be smaller than ever before. The urban city-states developed as the basic units of Sumerian civilization, and they consisted of three areas--an inner section of dwellings, an outer section containing fields and unfortified villages, and a harbor area. The cities were surrounded by walls. The most prominent architectural feature was the temple dedicated to the patron god or goddess of the city, and the temple would sit on a massive stepped tower called a ziggurat. Agriculture

Category: Philosophy - W