Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Uruk, Chapters 1-2

In his book Uruk: The First City, Mario Liverani discusses the formation of the urban society in southern Mesopotamia that occurred thousands of years ago. In the first two chapters Liverani focuses on the economic forces during this time period and how other scholars theorized about the development of the city of Uruk. He brings up the works and findings of Vere Gordon Childe, Fritz Heichelheim, Karl Marx, and Karl Polanyi, and the interpretation that each had of the ancient society. Since there were new and improved methods to utilize fertile soil, a surplus of food was created. This surplus allowed for more economic specialization which led to new construction of buildings and temples, and thus urban development. The main point of disagreement between the theories lies with which type of economic models describes the urban development. Some believed it followed a more market based, classical economics model of private ownership and others believed it followed a more Marxist, socialistic model. The majority of this discussion is, however, irrelevant because Liverani goes on to argue against most of what these men were concluding with the emergence of new archeological evidence. One specific point he makes is the discovery of ancient texts in the 1930s. These texts took until 1990, however, to translate, and when they were brought to light, revealed a lot about the accounting mechanisms used by the people of Uruk.

Liverani also gives a lot of weight to his discussion of the label of “revolution”. The Urban Revolution, as he discusses about Uruk, was a complete transformation of society. Uruk, being the first city, is what he would consider a “real” revolution as people became concentrated in an urban setting for the first time. But this revolution took hundreds of years, so people today would not tie the process to that specific word. The modern connotation of a “revolution” usually refers to something that happens quickly and explosively. In the French Revolution, for example, a government that was centuries old, was completely changed over the course of a few years. I believe both a fast process and a slow process can both be considered revolutionary, as long as the change is of massive significance to humanity. The Urban Revolution, was greatly important because the rise of cities had undisputable impact on human history. The American Revolution, on the other hand, still had a great impact on the lives of Americans for generations.

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