Short Description:

 The earth where we are living, came into existence million and billion years ago. The human race, living in scattered way at different places on the earth, their forefathers came on it about 44 million years ago. 20 million years ago, any race or sect started making different things to meet their needs from stones. In course of gradual revolution living human race advanced. Keeping steps with development of civilization, advanced the culture, language society and religion. This book depicts that aspects chronologically.

You may not keep the book aside only after reading the Writer’s Forward. Deeply think the efforts of writer and his palatable presentation through his lucid writings and eye-catching printing. This is a book to keep in your collection.

 

Writer’s Foreword

We can’t ignore history. History is the chronological biography of developments of today’s world. The roots of our civilization lie in developments that took place more than six thousand years ago in the distant lands of western Asia. The region known to ancient authors as Mesopotamia – the “land between the rivers” of the Tigris and Euphrates – was home to one of the world’s great early civilizations, thieving at the eastern end of the so-called Fertile Crescent, which stretched westward toward Egypt. In this harsh landscape arose the first cities property of the gods, who granted kings the power to bring prosperity to the people. The need to administer and embellish the important institutions of the city – the temple and the palace – occasioned such significant inventions as writing, the creation of monumental architecture and the flowering of the arts in the service of gods and rulers. The extraordinary innovations effected in Mesopotamia have a profound impact on surrounding cultures in Anatolia, Syria-Levant, Iran and the Gulf. The desire for rare and precious materials – such as lapis lazuli, carnelian, diorite, gold, silver and ivory – encouraged long-distance trade and cultural exchanges across Iran, central and South Asia, the Gulf and the Arabian Sea.

This book explores the supreme historical achievements of this seminal period in world history in the Mesopotamian heartland and across the vast expense of Asia. During the succeeding early dynastic, Akkadian, and Ur III periods of the third millennium B.C., rival city–states and, for a short time, the first empire emerged in Mesopotamia. King glorified their rule by building temples to their gods and leading their armies in battle, celebrating their achievements with ritual banquets – all portrayed on finely carved monumental steles and smaller reliefs. Divine support was maintained by dedicating exceptional objects to the gods. These include status of rulers depicted as worshipers with clasped hands.

Because both the languages and the writing systems of the ancient Near East are imperfectly understood, scholars do not entirely agree on their transcription. In this book, names, facts, history spelled according to commonly used transcriptions. Most dates provided in this book are approximate. Years given for individual issues represent dates of known activity or, in the case of rulers, regal years.

Having crossed the threshold of a new millennium to stand, as we do in the midst of perhaps the most intensely urban environment in the world, one often feels disassociated from the ancient past and the great civilizations to which it gave rise. However, in exploring the first instances in which early cultures coalesced first into cities and then into states, one becomes acutely aware of the ancient foundations upon which all succeeding societies were built. The rich and varied artistic traditions of that are the focus of this book highlights both a common element and a great diversity in the approach to basic questions regarding nature of man, nature of religion and its vision of the world. This book also speaks of great leaps forward that characterize humanity’s advancement through time.

Although remote in time and place, the urban revolution represented by the formation of the cities of southern Mesopotamia must be looked upon as one of humanity’s defining moments. This complex center of civilization, which arose toward the end of the fourth millennium B.C. in fertile plains bordered by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, stimulated inventions, such as writing, and witnessed a flowering of artistic expression. Much of this development demonstrated devotion to the gods and celebrated the power of kings. Political religion and economic mechanism & were elaborated to procure, manufacture, secure and control the flow of materials and goods that sustained and embellished society. Party as a result of these advances in Mesopotamia, other major civilizations developed along the great maritime and land routes that connected them to one another.

This book attempts to portray some of the extraordinary developments in the cities of the near eastern heartland as well as their impact on and stimuli deriving from the contemporary civilizations to the east and west. In such an endeavor, however, we can at best glimpse only those aspects of the third millennium B.C. world that have been largely reconstructed from the materials recovered by archaeologists in the temples, palaces and tombs of its social elite. Fertility of Babylon, the richest grain bearing country in the world, and its enormous crops of wheat, millet and sesame that grew to unbelievable size. This land known as summer and Akkad and later named after the city of Babylon – encompasses the southern part of a diverse landscape that is raff referred to in later Greek sources as Mesopotamia.

Geography was one of the determining factors that promoted technological and cultural advancement in the southern Mesopotamian alluvium. The flat plains and river channels promoted unification and communication Approximately 1,800 miles east of the mouth of the Tigris; the Harappan civilization arose in another large alluvial plain, formed by the Indus river system. The Indus river is slightly longer than the Euphrates; it, too, traverses many lands, flowing from the northern mountains of Tibet to the marshy delta south of Karachi at its mouth on the Arabian Sea. Bringing fertility to the dry Punjab and Sindh plains, the Indus created an enormous agricultural area that supported cities such as Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa.

This book took help from many known sources including from many historical books and writings, different websites and old signs and figures. Sometimes help was remarkable, direct focus to the point. We have taken the very first dates of the world in its insertion to the pre-modern period. This book does say only the developments this world has achieved before modern history. It counts from the days of formation of human and its development in areas economy, religion, culture, language, property and behavior.

    In the late 1920s large quantities of unusual, extremely high quality objects began to appear in antiquities dealers’ shops in Baghdad. They were said to come from illicit excavations in the desert east of the Diyala River, just north of its confluence with Tigris. In 1929 the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago obtained a concession in excavating in the area. The Iraq Expedition worked from 1930 to 1937, and two additional short campaigns were undertaken in 1937 and 1938 under the joint auspices of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia and the American School of Oriental Research, Boston. The Oriental Institute conducted extensive horizontal and vertical excavation on four mounds: Khafajah Tell Asmar (ancient Eshnuma), Tell Agrab and Ishchali. The expedition uncovered temples, palaces, administrative buildings and private houses ranging in date from about 3100 to 1750 B.C. The work of the Oriental Institute, which included archaeological surveys and regional studies, was in many ways innovative for its time and provided a wealth of information that was – and still is – basic to the study of early Mesopotamian civilization.

Perhaps the greatest contribution of the Oriental Institute’s work in the Diyala region was the information it provided on what came to be called the early Dynastic period in Mesopotamian at the sites of Khafajah and Tell Asnay, six parallel series of stratified remains at those sites with the age of the Akkadian King Sargon (2300 – 2245 B.C). Using changes in material culture – architecture, ceramics, sculpture, cylinder seals – that would be traced over time, the excavators were able to divide these remains into three periods and to further subdivide those periods into phases. The process of establishing this chronology continues to serve as the basic organizational framework for similar materials uncovered at other sites in the Greater Mesopotamian area.