New research traces Mesopotamian origins of writing back to trade symbols, shedding light on the evolution of written ...

Photograph by Werner Forman, GTRES This story appears in the January/February 2017 issue of National Geographic History magazine. Mesopotamia—“the land between two rivers”—gave birth to ...

By 2500 B.C., these cities were thriving metropoli. 2371 B.C. (2379) Sargon of Akkad rises to power, establishing the first Assyrian kingdom in South Mesopotamia. 2000 B.C. (2750) Assyrian merchant ...

Researchers discover that ancient cylinder seals may hold the key to decoding undeciphered proto-cuneiform signs.

Designs on stone cylinders dating back six thousand years correspond to some signs of the proto-cuneiform script that emerged in the city of Uruk, in southern Iraq, around 3350–3000 BCE. This ...

Editor’s note: This is part of a series called “The Day Tomorrow Began,” which explores the history of breakthroughs at UChicago ... many other scholars of his era are still felt today. Mesopotamia, a ...

Better questions, like those raised in [this book], yield better research.' Thomas Burns, Ancient History Bulletin 1. Prelude to the Age of Ancient Empires 2. The rise of the Age of Ancient Empires 3.

The origins of writing in Mesopotamia lie in the images imprinted by ancient cylinder seals on clay tablets and other artifacts. A research group from the University of Bologna has identified a series ...

Researchers have found the origins of writing and explained that the world’s oldest writing system might have come from simple symbols used in trade. These symbols were carved onto small cylinders and ...

VEX.2020.1.2) In Mesopotamia: Civilization Begins, the new exhibition at the Getty Villa, the Getty does indeed start at the very beginning. At a place in what we now call Iraq, between the Tigris ...

In the arid desert of Saudi Arabia, the Khaybar Oasis holds a remarkable discovery: the ruins of an ancient town that tell a ...

He provides a fresh, interdisciplinary reading of significant periods in history, showing how global networks have shaped everyday life. Alongside grand architecture, art and literature, these ...