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Clay Bullets Used in a Battle 5,500 Years AgoA finding from ancient Syria |
By Stefan Anitei, Science Editor
17th of January 2007, 09:25 GMT
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Archaeologists dug the site of an ancient battle that molded the course of the Mesopotamian history.
Syrian-American researchers investigated in the ruins of Hamoukar, an ancient settlement in northeastern Syria, one of the world's earliest cities, located in northern ancient Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
The digging started in1999, bringing new evidence of the city's end and more clues about how urban life there may have begun.
The data point that approximately 3,500 B.C. Hamoukar's existence was ended by a battle that caused its buildings and walls to collapse and burn. 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.
Traces of that battle are found everywhere at the
site. A shallow water pit was used to soften clay sealings for reuse, as they sealed with them bags, jars and baskets to help ensure that the valuables or food inside had not been tampered with.
But near the basin, the archaeologists discovered neatly lined up along its edge 12 "clay bullets," oval-shaped weapons fired using slings.
More than 1,000 of the bullets were discovered in debris of collapsed walls in 2005. "You imagine the despair the people were in. They were using everything they could to throw back at the attacker," said Clemens Reichel, the American co-director of the expedition, from the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. "It looks like a desperate last attempt."
But the digging site indicates that the roof might have collapsed before the bullets could be used. "It's the content of 5,500 years ago no one has seen. There's an element of eeriness - almost a sacred element - when you do this," said Reichel.
The invaders could have been the Uruk people of southern Mesopotamia, or at least they conquered the area immediately afterwards. Scientists believe the region's raw materials attracted the invaders: obsidian, a type of rock used to produce tools and weapons. The city's remains "tell us that they are not just using these tools here, they are making them here," explained Salam al-Kuntar, the Syrian co-director of the expedition.
The area could have been a place of obsidian crafting hundreds of years before the ferocious battle. "The discovery could also help explain how civilizations developed in different regions of the Fertile Crescent," said Reichel.
South urban Mesopotamia is thought to have developed because of the necessity for organized labor to support the irrigation-based agriculture. Hamoukar, a key trade route between modern-day Turkey and southern Mesopotamia at that time, reveals that urban civilization could have emerged there as a market for mass-produced goods (like obsidian tools).
"The existence of Hamoukar and the nearby Syrian city of Tell Brak prove that early development of Mesopotamia occurred independently in the north and south, which is contrary to traditional scholastic belief. Previously, civilization in the north of the region was thought to have developed under the influence of urban areas in the south." said Guillermo Algaze, a professor of anthropology at the University of California at San Diego.
But after the battle at Hamoukar in 3,500 B.C., the southern Mesopotamia became the dominant force, home to ancient kingdoms such as Babylonia and Sumer till the rise of the Assyrians.
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