Massive civilizations were coalescing and beginning to write, recording their own history, literature, songs, laws and tax codes. Wide spread slavery and warfare emerge, defining life for many people in these cities. This episode will cover what history classes refer to as the “Five Cradles of Civilization.”  Although we will dismantle each word in this phrase, we will borrow its framework to talk about the early civilizations in Mesopotamia, Peru, India, Egypt, and China.

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Note: Visit our site if you're after official episode sources. Links below are to peruse and to compliment the episode for more depth.

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Mesopotamia or the land “between the rivers.” 

• Fertile crescent.
• Sumerian is a “language isolate.”
• Enheduanna - history’s first named author. 
• Read her most famous work The Exaltation of Inana.
• Cool article from the New Yorker about the debate over Enheduanna. Is she a real person?
• Sargon the Great, one of history’s first rulers of an empire. He has a birth story very similar to the Biblical Moses.
• Cuneiform.
• The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest epic poem. Read a summary here.
• Behistun Inscription - serves as a Rosetta Stone for Cuneiform.
• Cuneiform recipes, literature, proverbs, hymns and even board games.
• Sexagesimal system, or a base 60 number system - where we get our modern 60 minute hours, sixty second minutes, and 360 degree circle.
• King Hammurabi’s law code.

Norte Chico or Caral Civilization

• Caral - Supe  most studied city. 
• Ruth Shady - Peruvian archeologist - largely responsible for our emerging knowledge of this ancient society.
• Large public works including pyramids and sunken round plazas. 
• These plazas were possibly used for the ceremonial game played throughout this part of the world in later societies. 
• We have discovered mummies in Caral.
• We have found art, figurines, and instruments as well the earliest known version of a Quipu.  

Egypt

• The Nile River is the life blood of Egypt - flooding and creating fertile, life giving “Black Land” in contrast with the dead “Red Land.”
• The Nile has several places where the narrow shallow waters make it impassable in a boat. These are know as Cataracts.
• Upper and Lower Egypt.
• King Menes/Narmer “united” the two kingdoms, and began wearing the double crown.
• Giza Pyramids.
• Despite Hollywood’s insistence, the pyramids were not built by slaves. 
• How were the pyramids built? - coolest part of this is leveling the base using water. “The base of Khufu's pyramid is level to 2 centimeters”!
• We May Finally Know How the Pyramids Were Built.
• The discovery of the Rosetta Stone allowed modern scholars to translate ancient hieroglyphs.
• Hieratic script  and Demotic script.

Indus Valley or Harappan Civilization

• Plumbing in the Indus.
• The “Priest-King.”
• City of Harappa gave the whole civilization its name.
• Great Bath.
• Harappan jewelry, figurines of animals, and pottery.
• Seals with animals, commonly unicorns, were used as signatures.
• People are trying to translate the writing system but we don’t have a Rosetta Stone. 
• The Indus Valley is know for its remarkable city planning.
• No one really knows what happened to the Indus. Climate change is a common theory.

Northern China along the Yellow River

• Huangdi or Huang-ti, also known as the Yellow Emperor  is credited with creating “Chinese culture.” 
• Among other things Huangdi is credited with the invention of Silk.
• His burial site is still a popular tourist attraction.
• The volume of silt in the Yellow River gives it a  yellow-brown color.
• Because of its tendency to flood catastrophically, the yellow river is also known as China’s Sorrow.
• Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors.
• Yu the Great or Yu the Engineer created systems to control the floods in the Huang He Valley.
• Credited as the first leader of the Xia Dynasty. 
• Probably mythological - but retroactively credited as beginning...

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