by Peter Watson
On the face of it, therefore, it does appear that there were important, basic differences in the trajectory by which Caral reached civilisation as compared with the Old World pristine civilisations (and, as we shall see presently) Mexico. Moreover, with the identification, and dating, of Aspero, Caral and other Norte Chico sites, we are at least in a situation where we can now compare some specific contemporaneous early sites in both the Old World and the New, and to enquire in detail what differences and what similarities they showed. In each location, the practices/institutions to be discussed were in place by the end of the fourth millennium BC. Given that early humans left Africa as early as 125,000 years ago, to people the world, a gap of 300–500 years in the emergence of civilisation in vastly difference parts of the globe, may be seen as neither here nor there. That in itself is a parallel which is remarkable and shouldn’t be overlooked.
RELIGION BECOMES MORE IMPORTANT?
In Mesopotamia there were some parallels in climate change with South America and some differences. In fact, the climate change went further than Mesopotamia: in the south-east Aegean, in the east Mediterranean (off Israel), in the Gulf of Aqaba, in the Red Sea and across the Saudi and Yemeni Peninsula, records show that the early Holocene, between 10000 and 6000 bp, was relatively more humid – between 10 and 32 per cent wetter than now, according to some – with a ‘pluvial maximum’ at 10000–7800 bp, and a weakening monsoon over Arabia from 7000–6500 bp on, producing drier conditions everywhere after that date. And, as happened off the South American coast at much the same time, there was a stabilisation of sea levels at about ~6300–6000 bp. From 15000–5500 bp, but mainly around 8000 bp, the Persian Gulf was progressively inundated from the Strait of Hormuz to Basra, the sea calculated to have encroached at an average of 100+ metres a year, over an area of land roughly the size of Great Britain, but then slowing down and all but stopping. This ‘transgression’ of the sea, as it is called, would have had a profound effect on ideas about settlement and may have given rise to notions of a ‘flood’ that were later incorporated into the bible. Areas of the gulf were settled – olive-pressing areas and shell middens have been identified offshore, and a ‘peak’ of around 40–60 archaeological sites – settlements – along the coast appear ‘virtually overnight’ at ~8000–7500 bp, according to Jeffrey Rose of the University of Birmingham. In the early-to-mid Holocene, Mesopotamian settlements show the fossils of many sea creatures and are not linear in layout, suggesting that there were plentiful marine resources, possibly a marine trade network and, as yet, no need of irrigation.
Until that point, agriculture had flourished in Mesopotamia for thousands of years. Irrigation had not been needed in the north of the country, because of plentiful rain, sufficient to create streams in the desert, and it only began in the south, along the Tigris and Euphrates, when climatic conditions turned drier. ‘The climatic variations documented for the middle of the fourth millennium [brought on by the weakening monsoon, according to Clift and Plumb] seem, within a space of two to three hundred years, to have stemmed the floods that regularly covered large tracts of land and to have drained such large areas that in a relatively short period of time, large parts of Babylonia became attractive for new permanent settlements.’13
Excavations show that, associated with this climate variation (which, according to Gunnar Heinsohn, remember, may have involved environmental catastrophe), there was a sudden change in settlement pattern, from very scattered and fairly small individual settlements to dense settlements of a much larger kind never seen before. These geographical conditions appear to have favoured the development of communal irrigation systems – systems that were not elaborate, not at that stage, but which nonetheless brought about a marked improvements in the yield of barley (which now evolved from the two-row to the six-row mutant), and at the same time taught people the advantages of cooperation.14
We must always be wary of assuming that, because events occur in close association, either temporally or location-wise, one causes the other. But it does seem that it was the particular climatic conditions of Mesopotamia – where irrigation could markedly improve crop yields and where there was enough water available (but in the wrong place) – that allowed this development fairly easily and obviously. The crucial point was that though the land was now habitable, there was still so much water available that nearly every arable plot had easy and direct access to it. ‘This fact . . . must have produced a “paradise”, with multiple, high-yield harvests each year.’ An added factor was that the southern alluvial plains of Mesopotamia were lacking in other commodities, such as timber, stone, mineral and metals. The food surplus of this ‘paradise’ could be traded for these commodities, making for a dense network of contacts, and provided conditions for the development of specialist workers in the cities themselves.15
This may have been a factor leading to the diverse populations that were such a feature of early city life, going beyond simple kin groups. And it was an exciting advance: for the first time people could become involved in activities not directly linked with food production. Yet such a development would have raised anxiety levels: citizens had to rely on others, not their kin, for essentials. This underlying anxiety may well explain the vast, unprecedented schemes and projects which were perhaps designed to foster a community spirit – monumental, labour-intensive architectural undertakings. For these same reasons, religion may well have become more important in cities than in previous configurations.16 Is this support for Heinsohn’s claim that civilisation was born in catastrophe?
The first city is generally held to have been Eridu, a site just over a hundred miles inland from the Persian Gulf and now called Aby Shahrein. Its actual location was unique, in that it occupied a transitional zone between sea and land. It was near an alluvial plain and close to marshes, which meant that it could easily benefit from three ecological systems – the alluvium, the desert and the marshes, and so profit from three different modes of subsistence: farming, nomadic pastoralism, and fishing. But there was also a religious reason for Eridu (recall Paul Wheatley’s Pivot of the Four Quarters, chapter five). The city was located on a small hill ringed by a depression, in which subterranean water collected. This surrounding area was never less than a swamp and in the rainy season formed a sizeable lake. It was thus a configuration that conformed neatly to (or was responsible for) Mesopotamian ideas of the cosmos, which pictured the earth as a disc surrounded by a huge body of water. In mirroring this configuration, Eridu became a sacred spot.17
The name, ‘Eridu’, means ‘mighty place’ and in Sumerian mythology was home of the Abzu temple of the god Enki, the water god. In Sumerian Ab means ‘water’ and zu means ‘far’ and the temple was known as the ‘House of subterranean waters’, from which the gifts of civilisation arose. Extensive deposits of fish bones were found there, showing perhaps an Abzu cult that endured for millennia, drawing its strength from an underground aquifer, the subterranean waters being the place where the gods lived before humans were created. Petr Charvát, the Czech prehistorian, says that Eridu – where the original chapel, existing over eighteen occupation levels, and embracing more than a thousand years, and dated to 4900 BC – was believed to contain the source of all wisdom and that it was the seat of the god of knowledge. He says the ‘first intelligible universal religion seems to have been born’ in Eridu, in which worship involved the use of a triad of colours in the local pottery. Earthly existence was affirmed by the use of red, death by the use of black, and eternal life (and purity) through white.
In the Norte Chico region there also seems to have been a significant climatic event which preceded the emergence of urban culture, but it was a different event – the stabilisation of sea levels. This would have had at least three effects that we can think of. It would have stabilised the types of food in the sea, enabling fishing techniques to evolve and consolidate. It would have stabilised the coastlines, making settlement more likely, and more permanent, in turn allowing living habits to eme
rge and mature. And it would have stabilised the gradients of the rivers flowing from the Andes to the Pacific, allowing their courses to settle, which in turn would make living alongside these rivers easier, including the building of irrigation channels. Delta regions would also have stabilised.
In each case, then, urbanisation didn’t ‘just happen’ – it was triggered by a specific climatic event. These events – the weakening monsoon in the Old World, and the increasing frequency of enso events in the New World – were described in chapter five.
Another parallel between the two locations arises from the fact that Caral also appears to have been regarded as a sacred site. Ruth Shady believes it was sacred – again, perhaps, because it was an easy location to irrigate, the inhabitants of Norte Chico seeing it as a favoured spot – i.e., favoured by the gods. In fact, what appears to be the oldest god known in the Americas was found in Norte Chico in 2003; it was a clear image on a fragment of a gourd bowl, carbon-dated to 2250 BC and shows a cartoon-like figure, with fanged teeth, holding a staff.18
At the same time, what the ideas of Heinsohn, Clift and Plumb have to recommend them is that marked environmental events, catastrophes, would have been sufficiently traumatic to have provoked sudden, large-scale change, which is what we see in the archaeological record associated with the origin of cities. It would also underline Wheatley’s point, that the earliest cities were religious entities.
A further difference between Eridu and Aspero/Caral was that in order to farm the area of Mesopotamia between the slow-running Tigris and Euphrates, fairly long communally built canals needed to be built, whereas in Norte Chico, with its fast-running short rivers, which cut deeply into the terrain, and are interspersed by arid desert, only short canals were possible or needed, canals moreover that could be dug and maintained by families, rather than wider communities.
It is difficult to know just how important this difference was. By the middle of the third millennium, Uruk was the centre of a ‘hinterland’, an essentially rural area under its influence, which extended roughly 12–15 kilometres around it. Next to this was an area some 2–3 kilometres wide which showed no influence, and then began the hinterland of the next city, in this case Umma. There were at least twenty cities of this kind in Mesopotamia. Was this arrangement, especially this proximity, the explanation for warfare? At one stage in the evolution of cities, it was assumed by archaeologists that their original purpose was for defence. But, as we have already seen, this argument can no longer be supported. First, even in the Middle East, where city walls were sometimes vast and very elaborate, the walls came after the initial settlement. At Uruk, for example, the city had been largely formed around 3200 BC, but the walls were not built until three hundred years later, at roughly 2900 BC.* This may mean that cities developed in tandem with communal irrigation, which in turn produced a rapid rise in population and it was this, after several generations, that caused fighting to break out, as competition for arable land intensified.19
This perhaps puts into context the fact that both Eridu and Caral were sacred sites – this was the original impulse for city life, some form of communal worship, as Paul Wheatley says, perhaps provoked by catastrophe. In Norte Chico, moreover, and in marked contrast to Mesopotamia, not only are there no walls around any of the cities, nor is there any sign of armed conflict. No weapons have been found, no mutilated bodies, no burned houses. Is this further evidence for the pre-eminence of fish as Norte Chico’s food resource? If they were not dependent on arable land, in the way that the Mesopotamian city-states were, then there would be no need to fight over it. Furthermore, the ocean cannot be owned as land can be owned, and the fish off the Peruvian coast were so plentiful, so abundant, that, again, fighting was unnecessary. Added to that, the physical layout of Norte Chico, with its relatively short, steep valleys, more than a day’s walk from each other, and interspersed by arid, inhospitable desert, meant that many of the city-states were not contiguous. Here too there would have been less direct contact and therefore less confrontation. Even today, easily watered land occupies barely 2 per cent of the arable coastal terrain in the area. One other difference between Mesopotamia and Norte Chico that has been insufficiently explored is the nature of the surplus each traded. Grain seeds last, not indefinitely but for a considerable period of time. Fish, on the other hand, are perishable unless techniques to preserve them can be found.
Excavations have shown that, in Mesopotamia, at least, these early urban areas were usually divided into three. There was an inner city with its own walls, inside which were found the temples of the city’s gods, plus the palace of the ruler/administrator/religious leader, and a number of private houses. The suburbs consisted of much smaller houses, communal gardens and cattle pens, providing day-to-day produce and support for the citizens. Finally, there was a commercial centre. Though called the ‘harbour’, this area was where overland commerce was handled and where foreign as well as native merchants lived. The very names of cities are believed in many cases to have referred to their visual appearance.20
Caral has a central, core zone, with monumental architecture. Around this central zone, even annexed to the mounds, are the elite residential quarters, of mason and mortar construction, with plastered and painted walls. Further out are what Michael Moseley calls the ‘lower class barrios’, where the houses are made of cane. Stone-built warehouses have been found in Norte Chico, though not at Caral, and plastered stone workshops producing jewellery. Caral also has what appears to be a sunken astronomical observatory and an amphitheatre where musicians played – flutes have been found, made from pelican bones. The fact that Norte Chico had no writing means we cannot be sure it had the same level of complexity as Mesopotamia, but its monumental architecture is every bit as impressive. The importance of monumental architecture lies partly in the evidence it gives for organised religion but also because it presupposes an organised work-force larger than several nuclear families – complex society.21
In these first cities, much life revolved around the temple, though they may not have been used as temples all the time. We can say this because they are often found filled with ‘ordinary rubbish’, unre-markable pottery, for example, and they do not appear always to have been kept clean, as if they were open to the general public at least some of the time. Many fish bones were found among the debris. People associated with the cult were the most prominent members of society. At Eridu and Uruk the existence of temple platforms shows that there was already sufficient communal organisation to construct such buildings – after the megaliths these are the next great examples of monumental architecture. As time went by, these platforms were raised ever higher, eventually becoming stepped or terraced towers crowned by shrines. These are known as ziggurats, a word based on the Assyrian, and probably on an earlier Akkadian term, zigguaratu, meaning summit or mountain top. This increasingly elaborate structure had to be maintained, which required a highly organised cult. The name ziggurat also recalls the cultural importance, in Mesopotamia at least, of mountains.
The temples were so important – and so large – that they played a central role in the economic life of the early cities. Records from the temple of Baba (or Bau), a goddess of Lagash, show that shortly before 2400 BC the temple estates were more than a square mile in extent. The land was used for every kind of agricultural use and supported as many as 1,200 people in the service of the temple. There were specialist bakers, brewers, wool workers, spinners and weavers, as well as slaves and an administrative staff. The tenant farmers were not slaves exactly; instead, their relation to the temple seems to have been an early form of feudalism. In addition to the new specialisations already mentioned, we may include the barber, the jeweller or metalworker, the costumier and cloth merchant, the laundryman, brick makers, the ornamental gardener, the ferryman, the ‘sellers of songs’ and the specialist that interests the archaeologist most – the scribe. Outside the temple area were the residential quarters and an extensive cemetery, where the elite
were buried, with never more than two adults to a grave, perhaps indicating monogamy.22
In layout, form, dimensions and variety, the monumental architecture of Sumer and Norte Chico was remarkably similar. Their large buildings, temples, appeared suddenly (supporting the argument that environmental catastrophe provoked this change), and both took pyramidal form though this may be the least interesting thing to say about them: without metal or concrete/cement, the pyramid – wide at the base, increasingly narrow at the top – is the only form possible for a large structure. In both Sumer and Norte Chico several pyramids were grouped together at sites – usually with a large pyramid surrounded by six or so smaller ones. In both places, it seems that the larger pyramids were dedicated to the more important gods, the smaller ones to lesser deities. It is possible that subordinate deities had to be placated before access to higher-ranked gods could be obtained.