Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

5. Nissen, Op. cit., page 56. Scientists from the Universities of Georgia and of Maine reported in Science in 2002 that there was a sudden drop in temperature across the world 5,000 years ago, and that this may have encouraged the development of complex civilisations in both hemispheres. A study of ancient fish bones indicates that the temperature fall brought about the first El Niño, the periodic warming of the Pacific, which brings unusual weather patterns every two-to-seven years. Off South America, the fish population rocketed, which may have triggered people to build large temples (to maintain the catch through communal worship). But the change in weather and temperature would have dried out many areas, forcing people in the Old World in particular to congregate in river valleys. Daily Telegraph (London), 2 November 2002, page 10.

6. Nissen, Op. cit., page 67.

7. Ibid., page 56.

8. Ibid., page 69.

9. Leick, Op. cit., page 2.

10. Ibid., page 3.

11. Charvát, Op. cit., page 93.

12. Mason Hammond, The City in the Ancient World, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1972, page 38.

13. Nissen, Op. cit., 72.

14. Ibid., pages 130–131.

15. Ibid., pages 132–133. Charvát, Op. cit., page 134.

16. Hammond, Op. cit., pages 37–38. Charvát, Op. cit., page 134.

17. Ibid.

18. Hans Nissen cautions us that we know so little about the ‘temples’ and ‘palaces’ of Mesopotamian cities that we are not really justified in referring to them other than as ‘public buildings’. Nissen, Op. cit., page 98.

19. The use of this particular word has provoked the idea among some modern scholars that the ziggurats were an attempt to reproduce similar shrines that had been built on natural hills in the original homeland of the Sumerians. This would imply that they had moved down into the Mesopotamian delta from the highlands of Elam to the north and east. Hammond, Op. cit., page 39.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid., page 45.

22. D. Schmandt-Besserat, Before Writing, volume 1: From Counting to Cuneiform, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992.

23. Rudgley, Op. cit., page 50.

24. Ibid., page 53.

25. Ibid., page 54. The French scholar who has cast doubt on this reconstruction is: Jean-Jacques Glassner, in The Invention of the Cuneiform: Writing in Sumer, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

26. S. M. M. Winn, Pre-writing in South Eastern Europe: The Sign System of the Vinca Culture, circa 4000 BC, Calgary: Western Publishers, 1981.

27. Le Figaro (Paris), 3 June 1999, page 16.

28. Saggs, Op. cit. page 6.

29. Ibid., page 7.

30. Nissen, Op. cit., page 74.

31. Ibid., page 76.

32. Ibid., pages 78–79.

33. Saggs, Op. cit., page 83.

34. Rudgley, Op. cit., page 70.

35. Nissen, Op. cit., page 84.

36. Saggs, Op. cit., page 62.

37. Ibid., page 65.

38. Ibid., pages 66–68.

39. Ibid., pages 68–69.

40. G. Contenau, Everyday Life in Babylon and Assyria, London: Edward Arnold, 1954, page 158.

41. Ibid., page 160.

42. Ibid., pages 162–163.

43. Leick, Op. cit., page 66.

44. Nissen, Op. cit., page 138.

45. Leick, Op. cit., page 73.

46. Nissen, Op. cit., page 139.

47. Leick, Op. cit., page 75.

48. David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, page 12.

49. Nissen, Op. cit., page 140. Charvát, Op. cit., page 127.

50. Saggs, Op. cit., pages 78–84.

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid., page 81.

53. Nissen, Op. cit., page 136.

54. Saggs, Op. cit., page 98.

55. Ibid., page 104. Most scribes were men but by no means all. The daughter of Sargon of Agade, who was high-priestess of the Moon-god in Ur, became famous as a poet. When scribes signed documents, they often added the names and positions of their fathers, which confirms that they were usually the sons of city governors, temple administrators, army officers or priests. Literacy was confined to scribes and administrators.

56. Saggs, Op. cit., page 105.

57. Ibid.

58. Ibid., page 107.

59. Ibid., page 110.

60. Ibid., page 111.

61. Ibid., page 112.

62. Ibid., page 103.

63. Leick, Op. cit., page 214.

64. Ibid., page 82.

65. Contenau, Op. cit., page 196.

66. William B. F. Ryan et al., ‘An abrupt drowning of the Black Sea shelf’, Marine Geology, volume 38, 1997, pages 119–126. In October 2002 Marine Geology dedicated an entire issue to the Black Sea hypothesis. Most writers were negative.

67. George Roux, Ancient Iraq, London: Penguin, 1966, page 109.