So THAT's Why - Part I

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London, ENGLAND
Dec.21-23, 2014

Does History Matter?
Civilization

Monday morning, I did not wake up with an aching jaw from gritting my teeth through the night, nor with 400 thoughts per minute flying through my head (with not even the good thoughts sticking around long enough to be remembered), nor with damaging acid in my stomach in apprehension of inane battles I was likely to have at work during the day, the week, the month, for the rest of my career.

Instead, Monday morning Colin and I took the bus and the underground from Newington Green, where we were staying with his brother, into London, with the plan to spend 1-2 (in Colin's mind) / a few (in Michelle's mind) hours at the British Museum.

Main entrance to the British Museum in London

The museum is enormous.  One has to pick a section (or two) of interest on which to focus - trying to see the whole place in one visit would be hard on both mental and physical health.  We agreed to go to Mesopotamia.

Mesopotamia refers to an area between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, encompassing what is now the southern part of Turkey, the Eastern part of Syria, the centre of Iraq, and a tiny bit of Southwest Iran.  Civilization development thrived under the Mesopotamians over a period covering 6000-539 BC, at which point it was conquered and taken over by the Persians [1].

Mesopotamia

The blip on the timeline of the universe which is "civilization" began roughly around 10,000-9,000 BC.  This is when we began living in stationary communities rather than nomadic groups, and developing agriculture.

Walking through these museum relics, reading the explanations (alas, Colin would not let me read every single description for every single piece), a common theme emerged:  people doing the best that they could at the time with what they knew at the time.

On the one hand, the innocent grinding stone, used to grind wheat, barley and lentils into flour, allowed communities to have a somewhat more dependable source of food relative to the hunter-gatherers, and thus increase survival rates with decreased likelihood of starvation.  On the other hand, some argue that flour is a primary source of today's health and obesity problems in populations around the world.

Innocent grinding stone from about 9500-9000 BC

Only once our hunger was consistently satisfied could we begin to think about the finer things in life:  the Mesopotamians developed their own writing, mathematics, irrigation, metal, games, and jewelry.  It wasn't until around 3000 BC that writing came about, initially as characters carved into stone tablets, and nearly another thousand years before the Mesopotamians produced what is possibly the first great piece of literature.  The 'book' (of stone tablets), called "The Epic of Gilgamesh" (2100 BC), tells of the life and adventures of real-life king Gilgamesh, and at one point references a great flood which was sent by an angry god to destroy the world [2].  (The Christian Bible AND the Islamic Koran both contain a similar account of the great flood, both telling the story of Noah and the animals.)

In Ronald Wright's recent book "A Short History of Progress" (2004), he discusses the fall of different civilizations due to "progress traps" - land clearing on the surrounding hills and mountains of the Mesopotamia area for use in urban development, along with extensive irrigation among other things, eventually resulted in mass erosion and desertification of the area.  And a great flood as well?  On the one hand, urban development and the ability to write and keep records brought organization of manpower and public administration, allowing for large-scale developments such as irrigation.  On the other hand, here is a foreboding example of unmitigated environmental destruction leading to quite the disaster.

The creation of these agrarian urban developments meant easy non-moving targets for potential marauders and conquerers.  On the one hand, this gave rise to great walled and strategically organized cities.  On the other hand, defence, weapons and warfare has grown into an exorbitant billion dollar industry, taking money and focus from so many other possible outlets (such as public education and parks - which promote well-being, not pain, gruesomeness and death).

Even the Lewis Chessmen (perhaps traded by Norwegian sailors in the twelfth century with the Scotsman of Lewis Island, where the chessmen were found, for whiskey??) show looks of existential angst concerning the state of their chess kingdoms.

Lewis Chessmen - King and Queen

Seems to me all public leaders and politicians - local, national, global - would benefit from putting in regular time at museums, learning and relearning history, forcing them to acknowledge the long-term potential of their policies and decisions.

Lewis Chessmen, found on Lewis Island, Scotland circa 1200-1150 AD