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- [Narrator] The story of writing,
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The story of civilization
itself begins in one place.
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Not Egypt, not Greece, not Rome.
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Mesopotamia is an
exceedingly fertile plain
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situated between the Tigris
and the Euphrates Rivers.
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For five millennia,
the small strip of land
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situated in what is today
Iraq, Kuwait and Syria
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fostered innovations that
would change the world forever.
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Inhabited for nearly 12,000 years,
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Mesopotamia's stable climate, rich soil
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and steady supply of
fresh water made it ideal
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for agriculture to develop and thrive.
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About 6,000 years ago,
seemingly overnight,
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some of these agricultural
settlements blossomed
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into some of the world's first cities.
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In the period between 4,000 and 3,100 BC,
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Mesopotamia was dotted
with a constellation
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of competing city states.
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At one point, they were unified under
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the Akkadian Empire and then broke apart
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forming the empires of
Assyria and Babylon.
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Despite near constant warfare,
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innovation and development
thrived in ancient Mesopotamia.
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They built on a monumental scale
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from palaces to ziggurats,
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mammoth temples served as ritual locations
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to commune with the gods.
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They also developed advanced mathematics,
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including a base 60 system that created
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a 60-second minute, a 60-minute hour
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and a 360-degree circular angle.
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The Babylonians used
their sophisticated system
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of mathematics to map and study the sky.
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They divided one earth
year into 12 periods.
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Each was named after the
most prominent constellations
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in the heavens, a tradition
later adopted by the Greeks
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to create the zodiac.
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They also divided the
week into seven days,
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naming each after their seven gods
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embodied by the seven
observable planets in the sky.
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But perhaps the most impactful
innovation to come out
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of Mesopotamia is literacy.
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What began as simple pictures
scrawled onto wet clay
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to keep track of goods and wealth
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developed into a
sophisticated writing system
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by the year 3,200 BC.
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This writing system would
come to be called cuneiform
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in modern times and
proved so flexible that
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over the span of 3,000
years, it would be adapted
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for over a dozen different major languages
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and countless uses including
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recording the law of the
Babylonian king Hammurabi,
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which formed the basis of a
standardized justice system.
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But Mesopotamia's success
became its undoing.
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Babylon in particular
proved too rich a state
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to resist outside envy.
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In 539 BC, the Persian king
Cyrus conquered Babylon
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and sealed his control over
the entirety of Mesopotamia.
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For centuries, this
area became a territory
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Eventually, Mesopotamia
would fade like its kings
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into the mists of history.
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And its cities would sink
beneath the sands of Iraq.
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But its ideas would
prevail in literacy, law,
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math, astronomy and the
gift of civilization itself.
