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Five years ago an archaeological team broke news of a major find that forever changed our views about the history of the Middle East. Researchers from the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, and the Department of Antiquities in Syria, announced in a press release that they had found the “earliest evidence for large scale organized warfare in the Mesopotamian world.” They had discovered that a city in Syria, named Hamoukar, had been destroyed in a battle that took place ca. 3500 BC by a hostile force. Using slings and clay bullets these troops took over the city, burning...

Archaeologists tend to uncover puzzling questions along with ancient artifacts, and so it was when a team from the University of Chicago discovered a long-vanished city, virtually 6,000 years old, in eastern Syria. The problem was the city wasn't where it should have been. "A hundred years of scholarship taught that urban life began further south, in Mesopotamia," said Clemens Reichel of the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, referring to the name for ancient Iraq. And unlike the cities in that area, Hamoukar isn't on a waterway. Now Reichel thinks he's found a critical piece of the puzzle: obsidian. Though...

New details in the tragic end of one of the world's earliest cities as well as clues about how urban life may have begun there were revealed in a recent excavation in northeastern Syria that was conducted by the University of Chicago and the Syrian Department of Antiquities. "The attack must have been swift and intense. Buildings collapsed, burning out of control, burying everything in them under vast pile of rubble," said Clemens Reichel, the American co-director of the Syrian-American Archaeological Expedition to Hamoukar. Reichel, a Research Associate at the University's Oriental Institute, added that the assault probably left the...

Ancient weapons found in ruins in Syria By TARA BURGHART, Associated Press Writer Tue Jan 16, 12:29 PM ET CHICAGO - It was the ancient version of a last stand: Twelve clay bullets lined up and ready to be shot from slings in a desperate attempt to stop fierce invaders who soon would reduce much of the city to rubble. The discovery was made in the ruins of Hamoukar, an ancient settlement in northeastern Syria located just miles from the border with Iraq. Thought to be one of the world's earliest cities and located in northern Mesopotamia between the Tigris...

Archaeologists digging in Syria, in the upper reaches of what was ancient Mesopotamia, have found new evidence of how one of the world’s earliest cities met a violent end by fire, collapsing walls and roofs, and a fierce rain of clay bullets. The battle left some of the oldest known ruins of organized warfare. The excavations at the city, Tell Hamoukar, which was destroyed in about 3500 B.C., have also exposed remains suggesting its origins as a manufacturing center for obsidian tools and blades, perhaps as early as 4500 B.C... Expanded excavations at Tell Brak, Habuba Kabira, Hamoukar and elsewhere...

CHICAGO, IL, USA -- US and Syrian researchers say that a battle destroyed one of the world's earliest cities in Mesopotamia, at around 3500 BC but artifacts are left behind. The University of Chicago and Syria's Department of Antiquities say that the discovery provides the earliest evidence for large-scale organized warfare in the Mesopotamian world. "The whole area of our most recent excavation was a war zone," said Clemens Reichel, of the University of Chicago. Reichel was the co-director of the Syrian-American Archaeological Expedition to Hamoukar, an ancient site in northeastern Syria near the Iraqi border, in October and November....

Ancient citadel shows scars of mass warfare 11:42 16 December 2005 NewScientist.com news service Will Knight The shattered remains of a 5500-year-old citadel that stood on the modern-day border between Syria and Iraq provide some of the oldest evidence for organised and bloody warfare. The Mesopotamian settlement lies in Hamoukar, on the northernmost tip of Syria, 8 kilometres from the Iraqi border. In 3500 BC the 13-hectare development was subjected to a devastating attack, its edifices crumbling beneath a crushing hail of bullet-shaped projectiles. The evidence of the destruction was uncovered in October and November 2005 by an expedition coordinated...

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...

Contact: Carrie Golus (773) 702-8359 cgolus@uchicago.edu New discoveries in Syria confirm theory on spread of early civilization Unique artifacts unearthed this season in Syria will force historians and archaeologists to rewrite the history books, because the traditional view of how civilization developed is looking increasingly wrong. A cooperative expedition between the University of Chicago and the Syrian Directorate of Antiquities has uncovered the hallmarks of urban life in Syria a little after 4,000 B.C., a time when civilization was thought to be restricted to Mesopotamia. Already during initial excavations in 1999, discoveries at Hamoukar in northeastern Syria began to suggest...