The earliest sculpture takes the form of very crudely worked terra-cotta representations of women; the Ubaid Horizon, however, has figurines of both women and men, with very slender bodies, protruding features, arms akimbo, and the genitals accurately indicated, and also of women suckling children. It is uncertain whether it is correct to describe these statuettes as idols, whether the figures were cult objects, such as votive offerings, or whether they had a magical significance, such as fertility charms, or, indeed, what purpose they did fulfill.
Seals are first attested in the form of stamp seals at Tepe Gawra, north of Mosul. Geometric designs are found earlier than scenes with figures, such as men, animals, conflict between animals, copulation, or dance. Here again it is uncertain whether the scenes are intended to convey a deeper meaning. Nevertheless, unlike pottery, a seal has a direct relationship to a particular individual or group, for the seal identifies what it is used to seal (a vessel, sack, or other container) as the property or responsibility of a specific person. To that extent, seals represent the earliest pictorial representations of persons. The area of distribution of the stamp seal was northern Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Iran. Southern Mesopotamia, on the other hand, was the home of the cylinder seal, which was either an independent invention or was derived from stamp seals engraved on two faces. The cylinder seal, with its greater surface area and more practical application, remained in use into the 1st millennium bce. Because of the continuous changes in the style of the seal designs, cylinder seals are among the most valuable of chronological indicators for archaeologists.
Babylonian sealImpression from a cylinder seal from Babylonia, 8th century bce; in the Morgan Library & Museum, New York City.Courtesy of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City
In general, the prehistory of Mesopotamia can only be described by listing and comparing human achievements, not by recounting the interaction of individuals or peoples. There is no basis for reconstructing the movements and migrations of peoples unless one is prepared to equate the spread of particular archaeological types with the extent of a particular population, the change of types with a change of population, or the appearance of new types with an immigration.
The only certain evidence for the movement of peoples beyond their own territorial limits is provided at first by material finds that are not indigenous. The discovery of obsidian and lapis lazuli at sites in Mesopotamia or in its neighbouring lands is evidence for the existence of trade, whether consisting of direct caravan trade or of a succession of intermediate stages.
Just as no ethnic identity is recognizable, so nothing is known of the social organization of prehistoric settlements. It is not possible to deduce anything of the “government” in a village nor of any supraregional connections that may have existed under the domination of one centre. Constructions that could only have been accomplished by the organization of workers in large numbers are first found in Uruk Levels VI to IV: the dimensions of these buildings suggest that they were intended for gatherings of hundreds of people. As for artificial irrigation, which was indispensable for agriculture in south Mesopotamia, the earliest form was probably not the irrigation canal. It is assumed that at first floodwater was dammed up to collect in basins, near which the fields were located. Canals, which led the water farther from the river, would have become necessary when the land in the vicinity of the river could no longer supply the needs of the population. Mesopotamian protohistory
Attempts have been made by philologists to reach conclusions about the origin of the flowering of civilization in southern Mesopotamia by the analysis of Sumerian words. It has been thought possible to isolate an earlier, non-Sumerian substratum from the Sumerian vocabulary by assigning certain words on the basis of their endings to either a Neolithic or a Chalcolithic language stratum. These attempts are based on the phonetic character of Sumerian at the beginning of the 2nd millennium bce, which is at least 1,000 years later than the invention of writing. Quite apart, therefore, from the fact that the structure of Sumerian words themselves is far from adequately investigated, the enormous gap in time casts grave doubt on the criteria used to distinguish between Sumerian and “pre-Sumerian” vocabulary.
The earliest peoples of Mesopotamia who can be identified from inscribed monuments and written tradition—people in the sense of speakers of a common language—are, apart from the Sumerians, Semitic peoples (Akkadians or pre-Akkadians) and Subarians (identical with, or near relatives of, the Hurrians, who appear in northern Mesopotamia around the end of the 3rd millennium bce). Their presence is known, but no definite statements about their past or possible routes of immigration are possible.
At the turn of the 4th to 3rd millennium bce, the long span of prehistory is over, and the threshold of the historical era is gained, captured by the existence of writing. Names, speech, and actions are fixed in a system that is composed of signs representing complete words or syllables. The signs may consist of realistic pictures, abbreviated representations, and perhaps symbols selected at random. Since clay is not well suited to the drawing of curved lines, a tendency to use straight lines rapidly gained ground. When the writer pressed the reed in harder at the beginning of a stroke, it made a triangular “head,” and thus “wedges” were impressed into the clay. It is the Sumerians who are usually given the credit for the invention of this, the first system of writing in the Middle East. As far as they can be assigned to any language, the inscribed documents from before the dynasty of Akkad (c. 2334–c. 2154 bce) are almost exclusively in Sumerian. Moreover, the extension of the writing system to include the creation of syllabograms by the use of the sound of a logogram (sign representing a word), such as gi, “a reed stem,” used to render the verb gi, “to return,” can only be explained in terms of the Sumerian language. It is most probable, however, that Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium bce, just as in later times, was composed of many races. This makes it likely that, apart from the Sumerians, the interests and even initiatives of other language groups may have played their part in the formation of the writing system. Many scholars believe that certain clay objects or tokens that are found in prehistoric strata may have been used for some kind of primitive accounting. These tokens, some of which are incised and which have various forms, may thus be three-dimensional predecessors of writing.
Sumerian is an agglutinative language: prefixes and suffixes, which express various grammatical functions and relationships, are attached to a noun or verb root in a “chain.” Attempts to identify Sumerian more closely by comparative methods have as yet been unsuccessful and will very probably remain so, as languages of a comparable type are known only from 500 ce (Georgian) or 1000 ce (Basque)—that is, 3,000 years later. Over so long a time, the rate of change in a language, particularly one that is not fixed in a written norm, is so great that one can no longer determine whether apparent similarity between words goes back to an original relationship or is merely fortuitous. Consequently, it is impossible to obtain any more accurate information as to the language group to which Sumerian may once have belonged.
The most important development in the course of the 4th millennium bce was the birth of the city. There were precursors, such as the unwalled prepottery settlement at Jericho of about 7000 bce, but the beginning of cities with a more permanent character came only later. There is no generally accepted definition of a city. In this context, it means a settlement that serves as a centre for smaller settlements, one that possesses one or more shrines of one or more major deities, has extensive granaries, and, finally, displays an advanced stage of specialization in the crafts.