Lying on the Konya plain in the south of modern day Turkey, Çatalhöyük is the world’s earliest known town. Founded roughly 9500 years ago, the settlement covered 35 acres — making it larger than the ancient city of Jericho, founded some 500 years later. Archaeological evidence unearthed at Çatalhöyük suggests that the town’s 5000 to 8000 residents lived in a society with no class system or gender barriers. They subsisted on cereal farming, the raising of livestock and, most importantly, the trading in black obsidian mined from the mountain Hasan Dag, located 87 miles to the east.
The town’s unique construction has allowed its contents to remain remarkably well protected over thousands of years. The 1961 excavation of Çatalhöyük, covering just one square acre, yielded 139 intact rooms. Of those, roughly 40 were classified as “shrines” by British archaeologist James Mellaart for their unique revelations about the religious beliefs of Neolithic man. 
There were other equally startling finds in other chambers. Some rooms proved to be mortuaries, where striking murals portrayed vultures picking the bones of human corpses. Skeletons later discovered buried in the same rooms indicate that this was how the dead were prepared for burial in Çatalhöyük.
More than 7,000 years ago, the Sumerians built several independent city states and the first civilization known to man in an area within the Fertile Crescent known as Mesopotamia. As commerce expanded in Mesopotamia, important Sumerian cities emerged across the network of trade routes along the fertile Tigris and Euphrates River valleys. These growing cities attracted a diverse group of traders who traveled from Egypt to India and brought with them a variety of exotic wares and skills from their journey. The Sumerians adapted to the challenges introduced with the increased trade activity by establishing well organized cities, some of which would last for 3,000 years.
The Sumerians organized their cities meticulously. Each city state included fine public buildings, vibrant market places, diverse workshops and water systems to service the city inhabitants. Each city also had a royal palace and a ziggurat from the top of which the Sumerians would dedicate a shrine to the god of the city. The impressive ziggurats, made from sun baked clay bricks, towered over the flat river plains and were a testament to the early architectural and engineering expertise of the Sumerians. The Sumerians surrounded their public buildings with houses and cultivated their farmlands beyond the dwelling area, a practice that later civilizations would follow closely in the centuries to come.
In approximately 3200 B.C., the Sumerians devised one of the earliest known writing systems called cuneiform, examples of which have survived in the form of thousands of clay tablets. Many of these clay cuneiform tablets contain records, accounts, sacred scripts and letters. The abundance of these tablets and the varied subject matter suggest that scribes and accountants held important roles in the mundane activities of Sumerian life including trade, law and religion.
The growing populations within each city and the increase in commercial activity between the city states caused the power to shift away from the priests and by 2900 B.C., commerce became more important than religion. The internal strife that ensued pushed the rival commercial factions to fight each other for control of the Mesopotamian region. During this time, outside invaders including tribes from Persia, Arabia and Turkey also sought to lay claim to the wealth and power of the dwindling Sumerian civilization.
In 2360 B.C., Sargon of Akkad invaded Mesopotamia and established the rival city state of Akkad. Soon, the instability that plagued Sumer led to the rise of Akkad as the more dominant city state in the region, and by 2334 B.C., Sargon had created the world’s first empire. Although Sargon of Akkad ruled effectively and brought order to his people, he nevertheless did so with a cruelty and violence that ultimately lead to the downfall of his empire. With the decline of Akkad, around 2100 B.C., the city of Ur replaced it as the most prominent power in the region for nearly one hundred years until Assyria and Babylon supplanted its role in the region as the more dominant powers.
Tags: Akkad, ancient commerce, Ancient History, ancient religion, Assyria, Babylon, cuneiform, cuneiform writing, Egypt, India, ishtar, Mesopotamia, Sargon, Sargon of Akkad, Sumer, Sumerians, Ur, World History, ziggurats
