Archaeologists Unearth a War Zone 5,500 Years Old

NY Times ^ | December 16, 2005 | JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

[Pharmboy]

University of Chicago
Architectural remains in Syria from the fourth millennium B.C. Those at lower left were excavated in 2001,
and those at top center this year. The location is said to be the oldest known excavated site of a large battle.

In the ruins of an ancient city in northeastern Syria, archaeologists have uncovered what they say is substantial evidence of a fierce battle fought there in about 3500 B.C.

The archaeologists, who announced the find yesterday, described it as the oldest known excavated site of large-scale organized warfare. It was a clash of northern and southern cultures in ancient Mesopotamia, the land where urban civilization began, in a region that includes Iraq and parts of Syria.

snip... The ruins are in the upper fringes of the Tigris and Euphrates Valleys, near the Iraq border and within sight of the Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey.

"The whole area of our most recent excavation was a war zone," Dr. Reichel said in the announcement, made jointly by the University of Chicago and the Department of Antiquities in Syria.

snip...

It was previously thought that the culture had spread north through colonization, trade or conquest.

The new research revealed that relations between north and south were not without major conflict.

The archaeologists reported finding collapsed mud-brick walls that had undergone heavy bombardment and ensuing fire. All around, they collected more than 1,200 oval-shaped "bullets" used with slings and some 120 larger round clay balls. The layer of ruins from that time also held vast amounts of pottery from the Uruk culture of southern Mesopotamia.

"The picture is compelling," Dr. Reichel said. "If the Uruk people weren't the ones firing the sling bullets, they certainly benefited from it. They took over this place right after its destruction."

[Pharmboy]

Thank you...so I guess Hamoukar is a bit above the classic Fertile Crescent that we all learned about in high school.

[rochester_veteran]

True but the "pagan list" includes ALL non-muslims. In fact, the Hindus in present day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India were the ones who faced the worst Islamic invasions between 1100 and 1750 AD.

You're right, I didn't even think about those conquests. Add them to the list!

[Question_Assumptions]

I am afraid we may have to get into definitions of war here. Clearly humans go to war to defend themselves (or their resources). Can you provide an example of an organized group the represents a tribe, city-state or nation that have gone to war for, how did you put it, "satantic evil". In which the acquisition of resources was not the primary motivating factor?

If you define "resources" broadly enough, you can fit any war into that category, even an overty Satanic one (i.e., thinking of converts and subjects are "resources"). Do you consider sacrifices "resources"?

Also don't forget that the Romans not only sacked Carthage but they salted the ground so that nobody could live there again. Wars of extermination, not to conquer lands to take goods, can and have happened.

For me the only two instances where there is even a semblance of an argument that religion was the reason were the Muslims in the 700s and then the crusades. But those were just about power, plunder and control of resources as well.

Broaden your historical and geographic scope. In the New World, we have the Aztecs, Moche, and possibly others warring with others to take sacrifices for their (by our standards) evil and bloodthursty deities. The earliest Chinese writing consists of Shang oracle bones and quite a few contain inscriptions concerning the sacrifice of foreign captives to their deities. And there are plenty of other cases where we simply don't know why two societies went to war.

You might want to see Lawrence Keeley's book War Before Civilization. His observations suggest that the line between violence and warfare isn't all that clear and that there are plenty of reasons why two groups of humans go to war, some of which are counter-intuitive (e.g., trading, mingling, and intermarrying between two cultures often creates more reasons for the two cultures to go to war rather than lessening them).

Finally, you might want to see the behavior that's been observed with male chimpanzees going off into "enemy territory" for the sole purpose of hunting and violently killing a male from another tribe. Contrary to what a lot of people have been taught, animals can and do murder their own kind on purpose.

[Pharmboy]

Thanks for all your "digging;" most interesting.

[Pharmboy]

I think he was in Assyria that Christmas...

[SunkenCiv]

Okay, okay, the subthread is getting as interesting than the actual thread.

R. Scott: Warfare is a natural state of affairs – I’m hard pressed to think of a truly "peaceful" group of animals in nature.

I think you're onto something.

Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit: Other animals go to war only over access to resources. Do humans go to war for any other reasons?

I think that R. Scott is correct, that warfare (or more broadly, struggle, debate, and controversy) are the natural pasttime.

dsc: Satanic evil, and resisting same.

I think, in general, people go to battle to avoid something they perceive as worse. That could be a loss of prestige as well as a loss of livelihood. Resistance to an attack, IOW self-defense, is a great motivator.

Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit: For me the only two instances where there is even a semblance of an argument that religion was the reason were the Muslims in the 700s and then the crusades. But those were just about power, plunder and control of resources as well.

patton: Power is a resource - above all, hitler was out for power.

IMHO, politics is always and only about power. And, as CC and DSC wrote, the Moslems weren't chasing resources.

R. Scott: Even a purely defensive war – beating off invaders – comes down to protecting resources.

Some are motivated by that. The skillful leaders know how to motivate via lots of methods, to make sure everyone hears what they need to hear in order to be motivated to fight or even just support the war.

Constitutionalist Conservative: Which resources were Alexander, Napoleon and Hitler after? Sometimes war is driven solely by colossal egos.

I disagree. All politicians have colossal (and brittle) egos, and most don't go to war.

Alexander's conquest of the Persian Empire grew out of the Persian Empire's various invasions of Greece before the Peloponnesian War(s), and Persia's meddling in Greek city states (including the P War).

Napoleon tried to build French industry by requiring continental neighbors to buy French products, and France couldn't adequately supply the markets of Europe, so Nappy would march on capitals, try to invade Britain, and over time bring (as I've seen it described) sorrow to half the houses of Europe.

Hitler (and Napoleon before him) rose during a time when the nation he ruled was in economic and political turmoil. Once upon a time I had to study declassified documents from the US State Dep't from the period before WWII, and the constant litany was that Germany's trade with various countries in South America -- manufactured goods for raw materials by barter -- was growing, mostly at the expense of cash on the barrelhead US industries' trade with those same countries.

dsc: A hundred years after mohammed's death, the mooselimbs had conquered everything from Afghanistan to Greece. They didn't need to conquer that much to ensure plentiful resources... The Crusades were the first wars on terrorism. Included in the lands reduced under mooselimb tyranny were vast areas that had been Christian for hundreds of years. Christian pilgrims seeking to visit holy sites were murdered, raped, and enslaved (just like today).

I'd say, the Crusades were a war of self-defense. Islam is medieval fascism, and the Koran a medieval Mein Kampf, y'know, as long as we're all drawing parallels. :')

GingisK: Hitler was after numerous natural resources such as petroleum, chromium, and iron. He was also after "living space".

The struggle for living space is classically Malthusian, as was the European colonial expansion. It's an axiom of medieval (and earlier) economic systems that wealth is fixed. In a modern economy, wealth isn't a pile of loot in Unka Scrooge's basement, it's being made all the time, through work. The "hard money" mentality is also Malthusian in outlook. There were various scares over impending losses of resources at various times, and of course the occasional calamity (such as the Little Ice Age, and the Black Plague) which intermittently reinforced the fear.

Constitutionalist Conservative: Okay, I'll grant that these guys sought resources in the course of their military adventures. However, I maintain that the quest for resources was not the primary motivator for their adventures. Empire was (plus revenge, in Hitler's case).

I wholeheartedly agree, Hitler was consumed by a need for revenge. I do wonder what he thought he was owed, since Germany and his own country of that time, the empire of Austria-Hungary, had started the war in the first place (unless one counts the Serb who shot the Archduke). Perhaps his knickers were knitted up about having had his old country parted out more or less along ethnic lines and geographic features.

Of course, Hitler was just a nut, but he did have a real knack for self-aggrandizement. His favorite artist was Franz von Stuck, and one study of Hitler noted that Adolf modeled himself after a character in one of von Stuck's paintings ("The Wild Chase"), right down to the odd mustache and that cape he wore -- and the painting was a mythological subject, and painted in the year of Hitler's birth. Creepy.

patton: However, look at the german invasion of russia - purely motivated by Uncle Joe's offer to cut off the German oil supply.

While Stalin's inertia is easier to explain (the USSR was clearly not ready to fight a huge war; also, the Commies, despite the revisionism that began with Barbarossa, saw Hitler as the only choice for Germany and a partner; and Stalin was reluctant to mobilize a defense for some while after the invasion began, he literally couldn't believe the agreement would be broken), Hitler's opening of the eastern front is such a colossal blunder, one is tempted to agree with those who claim he was merely fighting out along the lines laid down in Mein Kampf.

In the recent book "Interrogations" one of the German generals made note of some inside info which illuminated the mystery of Hitler's Barbarossa. He noted that HItler was agitated by the constant (as he saw it) guerrilla war along the frontier in divided Poland. That was probably just local activity (Poles, plus hungry Soviet citizens) and definitely had nothing to do with Stalin's regime or the Red Army, but Hitler took it as something that had to be stopped, and used that as a rationale for launching Barbarossa, an invasion plan that was strenuously objected to by some military leaders (I think Guderian is one example; something got him suspended for a couple of years, right when his services could have been pretty handy).

patton: 2nd treaty of versailles required germany to pay war reparations to france, to the extent that it bankrupted the weimarer republic, and led to hitler's rise to power. Ipso facto, WWII was started to prevent a LOSS of resources.

Actually, not bad. But Hitler's rise to power was only made possible by Hindenberg, who needed just a few votes to create a working gov't, and assured his associates, "don't worry, I can control Hitler." Hitler was headed down the road to obscurity after the Nazis crushing election defeat, and a month or so later, he was running the country.

[wildbill]

The larger round clay balls raise serious questions about our understanding of ancient times, 5500 years ago.

If the small balls actually are designed to be used in slings for organized warfare, that is an important find.

And the larger balls COULD have been used in some kind of giant sling (Ref. giants in those days) or possibly a form of trebuchet invented long before the Middle Ages.

On the other hand, the little ones could be aggies for a neolithic game of marbles. And the larger balls could be a precurson of Ralph Cramden's bowling ball.

[patton]

well done. LOL.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks, but I'm kinda impressed by the next post, which is about the size of ancient balls. ;')

[patton]

Hey, I am not that old.

[SunkenCiv]

:'D

[Ciexyz]

Genesis 10:10 bump.

[Dustbunny]

Wow, that is a find.

[Berosus]

Now this is the most exciting news I've read this week. I'm planning on rewriting some of my history papers on India and the Middle East in the next few months. The oldest ones were written back in 1991, so they don't mention recent archaeological discoveries. What I wanted the most was some non-textual evidence behind the Tower of Babel story, something that would show a connection between Genesis 10-11 and the Sumerian city-states of the third millennium B.C. If Tel Hamoukar was the site of one of Nimrod's battles, as Ciexyz seems to suggest, than this will work very nicely. Now I can propose that the Uruk/Erech pottery is from the Babel culture, and that artifacts from the Ubaidian culture, which immediately preceded it, were made by Noah's children and grandchildren. Thanks! :)

[VOA]

bump

[MNJohnnie]

Read Mein Kampf. Heard the terms "Drang nach Osten" (March on the East) and "Lebensraum" ("living space")?

[porkchops 4 mahound]

Hand sling "bullets" are well known back into prehistory.

Those larger clay balls got my attention also. They are way too large for hand slings.

Maybe the larger balls were thrown by some sort of ballista?

They look like the Turkish, stone shot, trophy, at the shipyard at Norfolk, (although those are naval sized projectiles).

Interesting stuff.

[AndrewC]

Interesting stuff.

It'll really be interesting if they find an old rusted musket.

[GingisK]

Wasn't his quest for those resources related to fueling the war itself?

He was bent on ruling the world. All its natural resources would automatically belong to Germany. Germany was restricted from many facits of free trade as a result of losing WWI. They were really hurting for raw materials just to sustain a decent standard of living.

A major thrust of "Mein Kampf" was obtaining "leibenstraum" (living space) for the German people.

[SunkenCiv]

:') My pleasure. Of course (on a vaguely related note), I'm in agreement with Cyrus Gordon that Abraham's Ur was in the north, not the Ur in Sumeria.