Discovery Challenges Urban Theory CHICAGO (AP) - The discovery of a 6,000-year-old city in Syria is challenging long-held beliefs about the beginning and spread of urban civilization. Archaeologists from the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute uncovered the settlement last year while excavating a huge mound known as Tell Hamoukar. A protective city wall and artifacts indicate a complex government was in place as early as 4,000 B.C. Scholars had long believed the development of cities began in Sumeria in southern Mesopotamia and then spread north around 3500-3100 B.C. That area, located between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq, is often dubbed the ``cradle of civilization.'' But the Hamoukar settlement apparently developed independently at the same time as its southern neighbors, researchers said. The new finding suggests civilization emerged earlier than previously believed in both southern Mesopotamia and Syria, said McGuire Gibson, a professor at the Oriental Institute and co-director of the expedition. ``We need to reconsider our ideas about the beginnings of civilization, pushing the time further back,'' said Gibson, who announced the finding on Monday at the International Conference on the Archaeology of the Ancient Middle East. ``This would mean that the development of kingdoms or early states occurred before writing was invented and before the appearance of several other criteria that we think of as marking civilization.'' Among the features indicating the site was a full-blown city, not just a town, were thin, porcelain-like pieces of pottery, indicating a sophisticated manufacturing technique, and huge cooking ovens, big enough to feed large numbers of people. There also were stamps to make impressions in wet clay - like primitive hieroglyphics - used to make tokens that served as records for trade transactions. The stamps were in the shapes of animals, including bears, dogs, rabbits, fish and birds. Gil Stein, a Northwestern University archaeologist who specializes in the same region and time period, said the find is significant. ``Hamoukar fits perfectly into this pattern that has been suggested for northern Mesopotamia, north Syria and southeast Turkey ... the idea that large regional centers of complex societies emerged more or less independently of southern Mesopotamia,'' he said. This summer, archaeologists will continue to dig at the 500- to 600-acre site in northeastern Syria in the hopes of finding portions of royal palaces and temples - structures that would confirm that the site is that of a previously unknown early civilization.
