THE ROAD TO SUMER: A LOOK INTO THE DE- VELOPMENT OF MESOPOTAMIA’S EARLY CUL- TURES USING THE MULTILINEAR EVOLUTION THEORY

People in the western world today cannot imagine a life outside of the capitalist societies in which they live. Nor do they take into account the novelty of this subsistence. Considering the 200,000 years of our modern human exis-tence, the way we live today is incredibly unique. Even our decision to become agriculturalists, some 10,000 years ago, is a very modern advancement! We have spent the vast majority of our existence subsiding by hunting and gather-ing. This shift in subsistence methods is incredibly important. Living an agricul-tural, and therefore, sedentary life, is significantly more labor intensive, and re-quires a considerable amount of planning and organization. Our agriculturalist ways soon led to the development of villages, towns, cities, and eventually highly structured states, or “civilizations ” (Wenke, p.269; 1999). This phenomenon of “civilizations”, (besides the development of agri-culture itself), is one of the most mysterious events in all of human history. The question is this: why? Why did complex state level societies emerge? Why did we decide to settle down in large cities with a centralized, governmental rule