Layard Tablet

[ewx]

Since it seems to be quiet today... Clay tablet identified as asteroid that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

Well, sort of. Other articles suggest that geologists date the Köfels landslide to 8-9K years ago (i.e. well before the Sumerians) and the connection to the story in Genesis 19 appears to be completely speculative.

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

What's your definition of civilization? Cities an agriculture seems to be a popular one, but not necessarily the only possibility. Were you thinking of Catal Huyuk or something else?

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

What's your definition of civilization? Cities an agriculture seems to be a popular one, but not necessarily the only possibility.

I hadn't actually pinned that down. I suppose things did take off in a big way from the thirty-second century BCE, when within a short period of time writing, the wheel and bronzeworking were all invented, but I was thinking more of the fact that when the Sumerian culture emerged from the mists of protohistory, there were a lot of cities in the Middle East with a history going back thousands of years, comprising cycle upon cycle of growth, trade, conquest and rebuilding.

It's not clear exactly when the Sumerian culture started; it's possible the people in Sumeria a thousand or more years before the Jemdat Nasr period (when writing was invented) were already Sumerians, but there's other cities outside the area with long histories, too: Jericho, for example, was founded 11,000 years ago. (And there's Çatal Hüyük, as you point out.)