Cradles of Civ 1.3: History Begins at Sumer

http://www.drdavidneiman.com. In this third segment from Dr. David Neiman's lecture series, "Cradles of Civiliazation", Dr. Neiman describes how humans first developed the concept of the written word.

For more information about Dr. Neiman and for MP3 download of lectures, go to drdavidneiman.com.

Images courtesy of Wikipedia Commons:

Copper age image:

This Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons image is from the user Chris 73 and is freely available at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Copper_Ingot_Crete.jpg under the creative commons cc-by-sa 2.5 license.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• sumer
• babylonia
• akkad
• phoenicia
• civilization
• history
• ancient
• world
• humanities
• adobe
• cuneiform

[theroadupward]

These are good but with a Jewish bias-as if the Jews had much more influence than they actually did. We tend to think of intact pure races roaming around, but people mingled and interbred. We are all mongrels-time we just suck it up.

[tyniehawk]

@craigpsimpson haha this is why i do my best to never repeat information

[craigpsimpson]

@tyniehawk  You're Acadian, they were Akkadian.

[MultiParisian]

@ChuckSchuldinerRIP0 Uruk was a city of ancient Sumer.

[84Tyr]

Ooo nice funny hat he has:)

[ChuckSchuldinerRIP0]

Ubaid Period. You can't ignore Ubaid, and Uruk period, if it's a fact that they came first.

[tyniehawk]

I'm acadian.. is it the same as the old school acadian? lol i dunno crap

[ianwfirestone]

Iron wasn't of tremendous interest until very late in the Hittite empire, as bronze is actually superior (less brittle, doesn't corrode as dramatically). It took centuries of advances in mining and forging iron for it to begin replacing bronze.  Dr. Neiman is spot on with his statements on iron and Sumerian writing and law.

[vassephardi]

He just mentioned the Ural-Altaic languages.

[zgarbi]

@Jorell1000 long before Indo-European Hitites came to the land of Hatti, indigenous population of Anatolia, Caucasus and Syria had traded in metals. The theory that Hitites established some sort of monopoly over iron production has long been rejected.. There's plenty of scholarly resources on this subject, yet too much controversy & often misguiding information.