Sumer, Rod Fleming's World

Originally posted 2022-09-04 16:25:48.

The cities of Sumer had been established for over a thousand years by the time the Epic of Gilgamesh was written, circa 2500BC, but they did not control all of the land. Most of it remained uncultivated and taming the wilderness, to make more commercially productive farmland, became important to the cities. That required an ever-increasing labour force, which could only be achieved through the enslavement of men.

Civilisation depends on the enslavement of men.

Many early civilisations were built on the enslavement of men, in the sense that we now understand it, but others were either not slave states or were only partially so. So how could the enslavement of men be effected, other than by force?

One answer is illustrated in two great tales: The Epic of Gilgamesh and Genesis. The enslavement of men to the city was brought about not through violence, but through love, or at least, lust.

Continue reading “The enslavement of men: Enkidu and Shamhat.”

Originally posted 2023-06-14 18:38:33.

The suggestion that settlements and cities were a function of women’s desire to have better, safer and more comfortable places to raise children, is contrary to many assessments, which see these developments as masculine. The argument is that as men accumulated wealth, they decided to build settlements and cities to protect it.

There are a couple of problems with this. In the hunter-gatherer cultures we know of, wealth is a largely unknown concept. That was why the early colonists used valueless trinkets to seduce the peoples they encountered and would eventually enslave. Those people liked shiny pieces of coloured glass because they were pretty; they had no idea of relative material value. A gold doubloon or a worthless bauble, all were the same. The idea of personal property is similarly strange to them, so how could wealth possibly be amassed; and if it can’t be, because you don’t know what it is, then why would anyone need to protect it?

Continue reading “Settlements and Cities”

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