History
Umm el-Marra probably had three to five thousand inhabitants between 2800 BCE and about 2100/2000 BCE, when Tuba and other cities in the Jabbul Plain experienced a mysterious collapse of central authority that lasted about 200 years. Partial answers to the question, why these early centers were so brittle, may lie in the effects of sustained drought on overstressed primitive agriculture. Dr Glenn Schwartz of Johns Hopkins, who has been doing field archaeology at Umm el-Marra, suggested in 1994 that "they placed extensive demands on their environments, continually intensifying their agriculture to feed more people. The added stress from a few dry years may have been the straw that broke the camel's back." Simple daily life went on in Tuba, for the site was never completely abandoned, but at the renaissance of the city in 1800 BCE, Amoritic names were now in control. Tuba went on to enjoy a second period of prosperity and power, as a "subsidiary capital" of the still shadowy kingdom of Yamkhad.
After a long period of abandonment, the site was re-occupied in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.
Read more about this topic: Umm El-Marra
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)