5,000-year-old artifacts in Iraq hint at mysterious collapse of one of the world's 1st governments [View all]

By Tom Metcalfe published 13 hours ago

Newly analyzed 5,000-year-old clay bowls unearthed in Iraq may be evidence of early government-like rule, a new study finds.



Excavations at the Shakhi Kora archaeological site in northeastern Iraq have revealed a settlement that archaeologists think dates from the fifth millennium B.C. (Image credit: Copyright Sirwan Regional Project)


Dozens of clay bowls may be evidence of one of the earliest government institutions in the world, a new study finds. The bowls, which were unearthed at an early archaeological site in Iraq, are thought to have held savory meals given in exchange for labor in ancient Mesopotamia.

But the site was eventually abandoned, which might indicate that local people had rejected centralized authority, although the researchers are uncertain whether this was the case. After this early government fell, it took another 1,500 years for any centralized governing authority to return to the region, the authors wrote in the study.

The researchers made this discovery at Shakhi Kora, an archaeological site southwest of Kalar in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, which holds the remains of a settlement that's thought to date to the fifth millennium B.C.

"Our excavations at Shakhi Kora provide a unique, new regional window into the development, and ultimately the rejection, of some of the earliest experiments with centralised, and perhaps state-like, organisations," University of Glasgow archaeologist Claudia Glatz said in a statement. Glatz has led excavations at the site since 2019 and is the lead author of the new study, which was published Wednesday (Dec. 4) in the journal Antiquity.

Uruk expansion
The excavations by Glatz and her colleagues have revealed structures at Shakhi Kora that span several centuries, while pottery shards and other cultural items indicate a progression from the initial local traditions of the farming people who lived there, to the later domination of traditions from the early city of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia, more than 220 miles (355 kilometers) to the south. (According to archaeologists, the "Uruk period" is the earliest phase of the Sumerian civilization, between 4000 and 3100 B.C.)

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