Free A History of the World by Andrew Marr

there was a major flood. The next great city, Uruk, had begun at around the same time, and at its height had a population of around eighty thousand, which would have made it the world’s largest settlement, with ten times as many people as Catalhoyuk. Its king Gilgamesh is the subject of the first work of literature with a named hero – the first name in history. Gilgamesh may or may not have been a real king but his story, which incorporates a biblical-scale Flood, is a very human one of sex and betrayal, friendship and failure, journeying and death.
    We know this because eventually it was written down. At Uruk and other towns of the Mesopotamian plain, the symbols scratched on clay tablets, which represented quantities and ownership of corn, beer and other goods that were traded, developed so far that they became writing. Over many centuries a system of notation and recording evolved into a system that could record stories and ideas. The reason was identical to the one that created Uruk in the first place. Climate changes, in this case leading to an even hotter, drier environment, compelled the farmers to build much larger and more sophisticated waterways to keep their land productive. Individual families or villages were far too small, and had too little spare time, to achieve what was needed. Only by combining in large numbers, organized by managers, could they survive. The managers seem to have been priests, or at least to have been based in the temples, from where they oversaw vast irrigation projects.
    Once the system of manpower and specialized skills was in place, the managers had the brawn to build ever greater temples. The feedback from successful irrigation to the power of those who directed it is obvious: over time, the managers were able to claim they spoke for, with, and to, the gods. They were responsible for the settlement’s verysurvival. The original ruling class, high on their platforms, ears tilted to the heavens, had arrived. Below them, totting up the deliveries of grain, beer, meat and metals they required from the toilers, were the scribes or middle management. You cannot have a hierarchically organized society without the paperwork – or in this case, the clay-work.
    Feedback is an essential idea. It explains why, once people are organized and crammed together inside a city wall, the rate of development accelerates. For the Sumerians and after them the other people of ancient Mesopotamia, the Akkadians and Babylonians, experienced a speed of change completely unlike anything humans had known before. Priests demand their special places – intimidating, nearer the gods. This required huge numbers of workers and full-time craftsmen, as well as measuring and planning. That in turn meant detailed note-taking, indeed writing. Then, large tributes of food, beer and raw materials were called for, to keep the building workers alive.
    Making people pay what were in effect taxes would not have been pleasant; force would have been needed. At the same time, all the accumulating wealth would be a temptation to robbers and ultimately to rival cities. So walls were built and some men given the job of full-time protectors. A warrior class emerged. Nothing, sad to say, has advanced technical progress faster than war. The invention of bronze, replacing flint or bone as the cutting-edge technology, gave the Sumerians a brief advantage. Then came chariots, first slow and four-wheeled, later two-wheeled. (They may have developed first for that next novelty, leisure time, which the upper classes used for hunting.)
    Priests of religion. Large-scale building projects. Writing. Taxes. Soldiers. Kings. The ability to make war. All arrive in human history alongside one another, based on the first cities, which are really the first concentrations of stored wealth, themselves based on riverside farming cultures that needed to work together to tame nature. This is the shift that is more powerful than the old ties of clan, kin