Abstract
Although the earliest permanent settlements based on agriculture originated in Anatolia and Levant regions neighbouring to Mesopotamia and receiving sufficient rainfall, the first cities in the world history are seen in the southern Mesopotamia. In other words, the seeds which would establish the city had emerged in the neighbouring regions, but the place where this seeds turned into cities as we today know was Mesopotamian lands. In this context, Mesopotamia, which is accepted as the cradle of civilization, has been home of the second revolution humankind achieved, which is the Urbanization Revolution. Since Mesopotamia was the region where urbanization first emerged, it is generally accepted that the emergence of the first cities in this region was independent of other cultures and was the result of a local development. It has been found that the foundations of the developments that would lead to urban life were laid in the Ubayd period. The first city in its real sense and the city life related to this concept is found in the south of Mesopotamia but only in the Uruk Period. Thus, the process of urbanised life which started in southern Mesopotamia during the Ubeyd Period in the middle of the 6th millennium BC led to an urbanised world during the Uruk Period in 4th millennium BC. This procedure then characterised the Early Dynasty period in 3rd millennium BC, which was the golden age of the city-states. In this article, the traces of the developments outlined above will be examined and how this process took place in Mesopotamia will be detailed. In this sense, the chronological framework of the essay will cover a period that starts from the 6th millennium BC when the earliest settlements emerged in Southern Mesopotamia and that reaches out the 4th millennium BC when the cities were established and finally to the 3rd millennium BC when the city-states spread. This process will be presented by foregrounding Ubeyd and Uruk settlements where the findings that characterize these developments have first been revealed.
Highlights
Başka bir ifadeyle, şehri meydana getirecek olan nüve komşu bölgelerde yeşermiş, fakat bu nüvenin şehir anlamında ilk meyvesini verdiği yer, Mezopotamya toprakları olmuştur
Şehirli hayatı doğuracak olan gelişmelerin temellerinin Ubeyd Dönemi'nde atılmış olduğu görülür
Şehir Devrimi olarak adlandırılan gelişmelerin kökeninin Güney Mezopotamya’da Ubeyd Dönemi’nde başlayan ilk iskân aşamasına kadar uzandığı görülür
Summary
Şehri meydana getirecek olan nüve komşu bölgelerde yeşermiş, fakat bu nüvenin şehir anlamında ilk meyvesini verdiği yer, Mezopotamya toprakları olmuştur. Childe tarafından Şehir Devrimi2 olarak adlandırılan sürecin ve ilk sınıflı toplumun ortaya çıkışı sürecinin her ikisi de ekolojik ve sosyo-ekonomik etkenlerin bir bileşimiydi (Dolukhanov, 1998: 355). Dolayısı ile Geç Uruk Dönemi'nde önce silindir mühürlerin, daha sonra resimyazısının ortaya çıkması ve sonrasında ise, Sumer çiviyazısı olarak bilinen tam bir yazı sisteminin oluşumu, yönetici sınıfın kontrol araçlarının gelişimi olarak yorumlanmaktadır (Çevik, 2005: 36).
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