The Drumbeat Forever After

Guest: Annika

First, we start with the Sumerian flood story (which later inspired the flood stories in the Bible and the Epic of Gilgamesh), pieced together from fragmentary tablets. What does this have to do with the Arabian Neolithic?

Then, we meet the shepherds & fishers of the Arabian Neolithic during the Holocene Humid Period, living amidst forests, grasslands, rivers, and inland lakes large enough to support herds of hippopotami. 

Then, we look at the sea trade between the Ubaid alluvium and the Persian gulf. What can pottery tell us about the role of feasting in bringing together Mesopotamian sailors and Arabian shepherds?

Then, we visit as-Sabiya on the Kuwaiti coast, a settlement with intensive trade links with the alluvium and possibly an "ethnically Ubaid" population. What would that mean? Can we know for sure?

Finally, the Sumerian goddess Nanshe builds a home for her fish. Who's invited to the housewarming party? Which species of fish isn't allowed as a temple offering? The answer probably won't surprise you!

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Guests: Kelsey, Michaela

First, Enki, patron god of Eridu, creates the world, invents agriculture, blesses foreign lands, and produces the Tigris and the Euphrates as part of an extremely convoluted and mildly unsettling metaphor.

Then, a look at the Ubaid material culture, including pottery and figurines. Also, just for fun, head-shaping!

Then, we return to Eridu, the first city in Sumerian legendary history, and possibly the oldest continuously occupied settlement when the first historical texts were written. What can it tell us about life during the Ubaid?

Finally, Inanna confronts Enki about ignoring her in his cosmic plan, so he grants her the heaping up of human heads like piles of dust, among other blessings. How does she feel about that? We actually won't find out!

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Guest: Annika

First, we visit the chronological beginning of Sumerian cosmology again. As soon as Enki transforms the Tigris-Euphrates alluvial plain into marshland, our two combatants make themselves at home and immediately start insulting each other.

Then, an introduction to the Ubaid period in southern Mesopotamia (ca 6500-4200 BCE), specifically its climate and wetland ecosystem.

Then, we visit Tell el-Awayli (or Oueili, or Uwaili), the oldest known settlement in southern Mesopotamia, and explore its connections to the earlier Pottery Neolithic cultures in the north.

Then, we finish up by introducing Eridu, the first and oldest city in the Sumerian legendary tradition, and what may be the city's first temple to its patron god Enki.

Finally, Bird and Fish each engage in some light infanticide before they decide to take their case to the proper authority. 

Questions? Feedback? Email us at [email protected].

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(Re-recorded as of December 19, 2022)

Guests: Kirra, Sheila

First: Sumerian proverbs, encompassing both practical advice and obscure references to shepherds' staves. To stand and to sit, to spur on the donkeys, to support the prince: who has the breath for that?

Then, some Samarran towns in central Mesopotamia develop irrigation techniques to grow crops like flax outside the dry-farming belt. Before the end of the Neolithic, these peoples appear to have migrated both eastwards into Iran and southwards into the Mesopotamian alluvium; we'll deal with the latter next episode.

We also look at cattle in the eastern Fertile Crescent and the earliest evidence for wine in northwestern Iran and the Caucasus, both of which herald a new era during the 6th millennium BCE.

Then, we return to the river plain of Susiana (home to Chogha Bonut in episode 5) to track the history of Chogha Mish throughout the Late Neolithic, through various cycles of ebbing and flowing interregional interactions, until its fiery destruction around 4700 BCE.

Finally: more Sumerian proverbs. What has submitted will exhibit resistance!

Questions? Feedback? Email us at [email protected].

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(Re-recorded as of December 18, 2022)

Guests: Kirra, Victoria

First: Dumuzi, doomed by his wife Inanna to spend the rest of his life in the underworld, has a prophetic dream, and his sister Geshtinanna helps him interpret it. Can she save him from the galla-demons?

Then, we take a look at the entire Near East throughout the Pottery Neolithic, with a focus on the Halaf period (6250-5300 BCE), the period directly following the peak of the 8.2 kiloyear event.

Then, a day in the life of a Halaf-period villager, in a fictional median village somewhere in northern Mesopotamia during the early 6th millennium BCE. We talk about herding, agriculture, textiles, cooking, & brewing beer.

Finally, we finish this three-episode arc about Inanna & the underworld. Can she reach an understanding with the galla-demons that allows her to spend 100% of her time outside hell? How does this new arrangement affect her in-laws?

Questions? Feedback? Email us at [email protected].

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(Re-recorded as of December 18, 2022)

Guests: Kirra, Victoria

First, we continue the story of Inanna's descent to the underworld, from last episode. She's dead and hanging from a hook on a wall in hell, so her vizier Ninshubur takes charge of the rescue effort!

Then, we visit Sabi Abyad in northern Syria. What can this site cluster tell us about the state of Late Neolithic gender relations and political development?

Then, a look at gender across the world created by the widespread adoption of the Neolithic lifestyle: a transregional and disproportionate drop in life expectancy for women during the Neolithic, the use of newly domestic livestock as wedding gifts, and the incorporation of female figurines into early record-keeping practices.

Finally: Inanna can't escape from the underworld unless she finds someone to take her place. Who will she pick? And what did her husband do to deserve it?

Questions? Feedback? Email us at [email protected].

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(Re-recorded as of December 18, 2022)

Guests: Kirra, Victoria

First: Inanna, patron goddess of Unug, visits Enki in his hometown of Eridu and they start drinking. Will he make any ill-advised decisions vis-a-vis all the abstract concepts he's god of? Will he, having sobered up, send a cavalcade of mythical monsters after Inanna before she can get back home with all his stuff?

Then, an introduction to the Pottery Neolithic (or the Ceramic Neolithic, or the Late Neolithic), spanning roughly 7000-5300 BCE. We'll look at the complementary trends of village fragmentation and increased interactions between individual households.

Then, we visit Tell el-Kerkh, in northwestern Syria, to track its development from a PPNB megasite to a tiny hamlet during the Pottery Neolithic. About 280 burials from the Neolithic here cast a light on malnutrition and starvation during the transition to the Pottery Neolithic. We also see evidence of a feasting tradition shared with the broader region.

Then, now that pottery has become common in the Near East, we take a look at its historical context, its forerunners, and the culinary transformation that it enabled, as well as the chemical process of firing pottery.

Finally: we begin the story of Inanna's journey to the underworld to visit her sister Ereshkigal. Let's see how that goes for her!

Questions? Feedback? Email us at [email protected].

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(Re-recorded as of November 29, 2022)

Guests: Annika, Kelten

First, some Sumerian proverbs about animals, including written language's first merciful lion and Mr. Monkey's plaintive cry to his mother Lusalusa. Pigs, foxes, donkeys, mongeese, elephants— they're just like us!

Then, we learn how foragers' attempts to manage wild herds gradually transformed into a lifestyle centered around domestic livestock, and how Neolithic hunters permanently altered the genetics of wild sheep without even having to domesticate them first.

Then, we take a look at the process of domesticating wild herds of ruminants, focusing on goats in Ganj Dareh, in the highlands of western Iran. It turns out every domestic goat on the planet can trace its genealogy to a single lineage of wild male goats in the Zagros mountains in the late 9th millennium! We also visit the nearby sites of Ali Kosh and Chogha Bonut, to see how southwestern Iran adapts to new ways of life on the cusp of the Pottery Neolithic.

Finally, we meet Enkidu, Gilgamesh's enemy and future soulmate, as he roams the hills eating wild grass with the gazelles, makes a new friend, and finds out whether or not the instincts that served him so well as a wild animal might, in new circumstances, alter every aspect of his being and sever his connection with the wilderness altogether!

Questions? Feedback? Email us at [email protected].

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(Re-recorded as of November 29, 2022)

Guest: Kelten

First, we look at the Hebrew Bible's narrative about the destruction of Jericho: the Israelites cross the Jordan, an angel alludes to Moses's first theophany, and Joshua orders his soldiers to kill every man, woman, & child in the city (except Rahab & her family) and destroy all their property (except their precious metals).

Then, we move southwest to Pre-Pottery Neolithic Palestine, where we see many of the same historical trends as in the northern Fertile Crescent. By the PPNB, their society incorporated not only the dry-farming communities but also herders in the steppes east of the Jordan. What new kinds of work did the Neolithic revolution introduce, and who had to do it?

Then: humans' relationship with cultivated fig trees, barley, and flax.

Then, we visit Jericho, a Neolithic monumental site famous for other reasons. What should we make of its famous plaster skulls? Or its tower & wall, the first of their kind by thousands of years?

Finally, Satan tries to tempt Jesus in the desert, in the process of which he takes him up to the top of Jebel Quruntul (alias Mons Quarantana, alias the Mount of Temptation), where (from Jericho's point of view) the sun sets on the summer solstice!

Questions? Feedback? Email us at [email protected].

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Works cited

(Re-recorded as of November 28, 2022)

Guest: Jojo

First, we sing the wrath of Telipinu, which brought down countless ills upon the mortal world and ruined dinner in Hittite heaven.

Then, we continue our tour of the northern Fertile Crescent (alias Upper Mesopotamia, alias southeastern Anatolia, alias western Kurdistan), stopping in three villages: Hallan Çemi (to look at early pig management), Aşıklı Höyük (early sheep & goat herding), and Nevalı Çori (miscellaneous), as well as the earliest evidence for cattle herding in the same region.

Then: Pre-Pottery Neolithic villagers, having domesticated grain, apply the same logic to legumes: lentils, chickpeas, peas, & vetch.

Finally: Telipinu's miraculous return!

Questions? Feedback? Email us at [email protected].

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Works cited