Mankind

by Pamela D. Toler

  In 2004 BCE, Sumer was conquered by invaders from Iran, the first of several waves of conquerors who overran Mesopotamia and built on the accomplishments of the first civilization. The Sumerian language died out, but cuneiform remained in use in international diplomacy and trade until the first century CE.

  More than thirty-five thousand people worked on a pyramid site—all at the same time, in synchronized, constant motion. This was organization on a scale never seen before.

  BY 3000 BCE, MANKIND WAS ready to add a new skill set to its résumé: complex engineering. The result was construction on a massive scale, both in the great civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and India and in the relatively undeveloped Bronze Age cultures of Western Europe. Armies of workers were organized to build temples, tombs, palaces, and great walls. Many of these constructions have fallen. Others, like Stonehenge in England and the Great Pyramid of Giza still stand–sources of wonder five thousand years later.

  We know very little about the purpose and construction methods of Stonehenge. The proximity of its massive stone monoliths to farming villages and the scientific precision of its alignment with the sun suggest the purposeful creation of a celestial calendar to mark the seasons. It is also thought to have been a ceremonial ground for burying the dead—but these are only informed guesses.

  We know much more about how the Great Pyramid of Giza was built, thanks to written records left behind by an ancient Egyptian civilization that lasted from around 3100 BCE until Cleopatra was vanquished by the Romans in 31 BCE. Egypt was born on the fertile strip of land created by the Nile in the North African desert. Egyptian culture was driven by two fundamental beliefs: the divinity of the pharaoh and the need to provide for life after death. These two beliefs were combined in the creation of Egypt’s most notable monuments, the pyramids, and were celebrated in ancient Egypt’s most well-known literary work, the Book of the Dead.

  The pyramids were the largest, and most expensive, attempts to provide comfort for an individual’s immortal soul. Influential officials and priests also built tombs that were meant to last and decorated the walls with hieroglyphic inscriptions and scenes of everyday life. Even a common man could hope for immortality if he could save the price of having his body properly treated for preservation. Much of what we know about daily life in Egypt comes from these tombs and their contents, providing the residents with a type of immortality after all.

  More than thirty-five thousand people worked on a pyramid site—all at the same time, in synchronized, constant motion. This was organization on a scale never seen before. All of these workers had to be fed, sheltered, given water, provided with tools, and managed down to the smallest details.

  AN AMAZING FEAT

  TWO TEAMS OF TEN WORKERS EACH ARE HAULING large stones over log tracks. The stone pullers are helped by people pouring oil on the logs for lubrication. To the workers with the logs and stones, the pyramid off in the distance seems impossibly far away.

  High up on a segment of the pyramid, a ramp goes around a tight 90-degree corner. From the perspective of a team member on the ramp, the view of the drop-off is breathtaking. But there’s not time for gawking. He turns back to focus his attention on his hands, one of twelve pairs hauling a giant stone up the ramp. The men work together unified in purpose.

  The top workmen building the pyramid belong to a professional class of men that split themselves into teams. This team consists of specialists in carving, moving, and placing stones. The pressure on them is intense; they need to place one giant stone after another on the structure according to a strict timetable. To do this they depend on the entire engineering project being orchestrated with military precision.

  Behind the stone handlers stands their leader, barking orders and writing down calculations. Around him workers are busy measuring, watering, chipping, and hauling. These Egyptian builders are capable of great accuracy in measuring large horizontal distances. Key to this ability is an important new tool in the story of all of us: a precise basis of calculation.

  BUILDING BLOCKS

  The Great Pyramid of Giza and Stonehenge were built at roughly the same time. Both are miracles of ancient engineering. Both have been the subject of what can only be called “imaginative speculation.” How do they add up?

  THE GREAT PYRAMID

  WHERE: Giza, Egypt

  WHEN: Between 2550 and 2530 BCE

  WHY: Final resting place of the pharaoh Khufu

  WHAT: The pyramid covers 13 acres. It is 481 feet high, and measures 756 feet on each side. It is made of roughly 2.3 million blocks of granite, weighing 2.5 tons each, with a facade of 144,000 white limestone blocks.

  HOW: As many as 100,000 workers, skilled and unskilled, free and slave, worked on the pyramid over a period of twenty years.

  WHO ORDERED THE WORK: Khufu

  STONEHENGE

  WHERE: Wiltshire, England

  WHEN: Between 3000 and 1500 BCE

  WHY: We don’t really know. The most popular theory is that it served as a ritual calendar, a speculation fueled by the alignment of its stones with sunrise and sunset at the summer and winter.

  WHAT: The first phase of Stonehenge is a large earthwork, some 300 feet in diameter. The outer stone circle measures 108 feet across. It is made up of thirty standing stones, with a ring of lintel stones resting on top of the standing stones. The standing stones weigh between 25 and 50 tons each. The inner stone circle is made up of eight standing stones, weighing up to 4 tons each.

  HOW: Built over hundreds of years, it was reworked at least four times.

  WHO ORDERED THE WORK: We have no idea.

  MEASURING AND LEVELING

  The basic unit of length for the Egyptians was the mH, which is referred to in English as the cubit. There were two types of cubit, with the longer cubit divided into seven palms and the shorter one divided into six palms. The palm was in turn divided into four fingers.

  The smaller of the cubits, around 45 centimeters in length, was based on the length from a man’s elbow to his fingertip. The larger of the two cubits, often called the “royal cubit,” was most widely used. The exact length of the royal cubit varied (very slightly) over time. When the great Pyramid was built, the cubit measured approximately 52.3 centimeters. The device the Egyptians created and used for this purpose was the cubit measuring rod, made of wood or stone. They also used rope of set cubit lengths, for longer measurements.

  Egyptian stonemasons were able to create very large, flat plane surfaces. It is not known exactly how the Egyptians established their base plain. It has been suggested that such accuracy was achieved by establishing an approximately flat surface, and then obtaining a very precise finish by flooding the surface with water.

  To test whether a stone surface was horizontal, the Egyptians used an “A frame.” This consisted of a small wooden frame in the shape of the letter A. A plumb line was suspended from the peak of the A, and the level was known to be horizontal when the string coincided with a vertical line drawn on the horizontal bar of the A.

  Proof of the Egyptians’ amazing accuracy is still there for all to see. The base pavement of the Great Pyramid deviates just fifteen millimeters (less than two centimeters!) between the northwest and southeast corners.

  AT THE SAME TIME THAT HUMANS began to build monumental structures in stone, we also discovered the use of a new material that would transform our lives, from agriculture to industry to warfare—metal. Copper was the first metal that humans used for utilitarian purposes. It was soft and simple to work with, but it was expensive and better suited for ornaments than for implements. Even hammered copper blades bent easily and couldn’t keep an edge.

  Metal didn’t really come into its own as a material for tools until around 3000 BCE when metalworkers in Western Asia discovered that copper is much stronger when it is mixed with tin. The resulting alloy, bronze, was not only stronger than either copper or tin alone; it kept an edge. Copper knives were pretty toys. Bronze knives were weapons. Suddenly new t
ools and weapons appeared, including chisels, punches, swords, battle-axes and primitive body armor.

  Any aspiring chieftain could easily see the value of having more effective weapons. It took thousands of years for the agricultural revolution to spread from its birthplace in the Middle East; the new technology of bronze spread in a fraction of the time. By 2000 BCE, Shang dynasty artisans were producing extraordinary bronze vessels in China. Thriving mining, metalworking, and trade centers had developed in Central Europe by 1800 BCE and in Scandinavia by the middle of the second millennium.

  Because copper and tin seldom appear in the same locations, the demand for bronze helped develop interlocking circles of regional trade networks that moved goods from the Baltic through the Mediterranean to northern India and back. Because tin was rare, it was the primary commodity in an international market that handled amber, furs, fine textiles, gold, faience beads, graphite, worked bronze, and salt. New cities and cultures rose along the trade routes. Those places where both copper and tin were easily available, such as the Unetice culture settlements near modern Prague, became centers for producing tools and weapons.

  The Bronze Age was a period of increasing wealth—and increasing insecurity. Bronze weapons were more lethal than those of stone or copper. They were also more expensive. A farmer could pick up a stone sickle and do battle against a man armed with a copper-tipped spear. He had no chance against a man armed with a bronze sword, wearing bronze body armor. A new class of military elites emerged. For the first time in history, weapons were specifically designed to kill humans instead of animals.

  By 1500 BCE, the Bronze Age of the Old World was at its glittering height. Bronze had made its way from Shang China to the wilds of Britain, where local chieftains were buried in stone chambers with elaborately worked bronze axes and helmets. Only a few thousand years after the first towns appeared in the Middle East, it looked as if civilization was here to stay.

  Early bronze axe head and spear point

  2

  THE AGE of IRON

  Mount Hekla, Iceland

  BILLIONS OF YEARS AGO, THE BIG BANG PLANTED SEEDS FOR THE BIRTH OF THE HUMAN RACE. THAT SAME COSMIC EXPLOSION CREATED ELEMENTS THAT HUMANS WILL LEARN TO USE FOR MANY PURPOSES, CHANGING OUR ENVIRONMENT AND SHAPING OUR HISTORY.

  Now, in the twelfth century BCE, humans enter a new era of history, shaped by the first alphabet, the new idea of democracy, and a new metal that gives the era its—Iron Age. Smelting iron will allow ordinary men to plow more fields, make new tools, and take arms against the military elite of mighty empires.

  But first, they must face down the forces of darkness set loose in the Iron Age.

  IN 1250 BCE THE HITTITES, Egyptians, Assyrians, and Mycenaeans were at the center of Bronze Age power and culture. With vast wealth derived from the fertile lands of Mesopotamia and the Nile Delta and robust trade throughout the Mediterranean and beyond, kings and pharaohs ruled as theocracies protected by military elites. But this social hierarchy proved fragile. The discovery of how to create weapons from iron made possible the violence of the period known as the Ancient Dark Age, extending from 1200 to 500 BCE.

  map of Mycenaean, Hittite, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian empires

  ATLANTIS?

  Sometime between 1610 and 1550 BCE, Mount Thera, on the island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea, blew with a force that geologists estimate was equivalent to several hundred atomic bombs going off in a fraction of a second. The eruption sent more than sixteen cubic miles of debris into the air, and up to forty times the volume of magma than the twentieth-century eruption of Mount St. Helens (see image), throwing a large portion of the island into the sea.

  The aftermath of tsunamis and underwater earthquakes throughout the region killed thousands of people. Some scientists believe the volcano may have caused the climate changes and crop failures that plagued the Mediterranean in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries BCE. Could this geologic event be the basis for the legend of the lost continent of Atlantis?

  In the fifty years between 1200 and 1150 BCE, calamities both natural and man-made brought down these empires. Geologic records suggest that earthquakes and a large volcanic eruption on Iceland wreaked havoc on northern and western Mediterranean settlements. Assyrian and Egyptian state documents tell of “scanty rains” and rising wheat prices, indicating that widespread drought and failed crops led to famine and mass migrations. Known to us only as the Sea People, desperate refugees, probably driven from their homelands by famine or invasion, donned wrought iron helmets and shields and armed themselves with foundry-formed iron javelins and swords. Population growth dropped. With trade routes disrupted, merchants stopped recording transactions; writing faded from civilization.

  Declining resources, natural disasters, and the breakdown of order contributed to the advent of the Ancient Dark Age. When nature acted as an enemy, humans also turned against one another, fighting tooth and nail to conquer and survive. However, it was man’s ingenuity in discovering a way to extract, smelt, and weaponize a new metal that led to the mayhem for which this period is better known. Iron ore transformed the “who” and “how” of warfare, taking armed conquest out of the exclusive domain of the rich and powerful and giving it to the hungry masses. And so we arrive at the point in human history when our taming of the earth’s most common metal merged with our need to prevail against threats from nature and other humans, setting loose violence on an unprecedented scale.

  early humans smelting and working iron

  IRON BREEDS CIVILIZATION

  Humans have used iron in one form or another since the beginning. Our prehistoric ancestors employed iron ochres to color their cave paintings and later as glazes on clay pottery. They placed chunks of meteoric iron in amulets. Still, it’s a long way from grinding ochre for paint to smelting iron for metal. Like many of mankind’s discoveries, the move from expensive bronze to cheap iron as the eleventh-century metal of choice was the result of an inventiveness born of desperation. When the tin required to make bronze was no longer available, the famed bronze smiths of Cyprus turned to the red and black iron ore found all over the Mediterranean. Iron cut better than bronze, so it was used in axes and swords. Iron nails built better ships. Within a century iron democratized agriculture and warfare.

  The most abundant of all Earth’s elements, iron makes up 90 percent of Earth’s core. As the planet spins on its axis, this iron generates Earth’s magnetic field, forming a protective layer that extends thousands of miles above our heads and keeps us safe from dangerous solar winds and sun spots. Without the earth’s iron core continuing to spin, life could not exist on this planet. Iron is so fundamental to our planet’s makeup that it can be found not only in vast deposits in the earth’s crust, but virtually everywhere beneath our feet.

  Africans in central Niger developed ironworking independently of Mediterranean smelters. Working with special high-temperature furnaces with tall “reverse chimneys,” they used the wind as a natural bellows to increase the heat of the fire. The remains of these furnaces still stand today throughout the grasslands south of the Sahara Desert. The earliest examples date from about 1500 BCE, well before iron smelting technology reached Egypt and Cyprus. Not only did African smiths discover the secrets of iron smelting earlier than their Mediterranean brethren, but archaeological evidence also suggests that their furnaces operated at a temperature hot enough to bond carbon atoms to the iron—allowing them to create the modern world’s preferred iron derivative: steel.

  Since 1000 BCE, when iron first challenged bronze for the role of the world’s dominant metal, the use of iron increased exponentially. We’ve used iron for swords and plowshares; for wagon wheels, railroad tracks, and automobile parts; for two-penny nails and the framework for skyscrapers. In some ways, we’re still in the Iron Age. Iron and steel account for 90 percent of the metal used in the world today, from cast iron skillets to nuclear reactors.

  ANNUAL IRON PRODUCTION

  7 BCE 150,000 metric t
ons a year

  1700 CE 300,000 metric tons a year

  1800 CE 500,000 metric tons a year

  1970 CE More than 1 billion metric tons a year

  2010 CE More than 2 billion metric tons a year

  iron tools and objects from the Byci skala Cave, Moravia, Czech Republic, circa fifth century BCE

  IRON IN WAR AND FARMING

  ON THE ISLAND OF CYPRUS, CIRCA 1200 BCE, metal craftsmen toil in a foundry. These men, like their forefathers, are famed for their bronze-making skills. But now, with diminished supplies of copper and tin, they smelt a new metal.

  Instead of using the wood and dung that traditionally fueled the fires for smelting copper for bronze, these workers have adapted. They now use charcoal to heat chunks of iron ore to temperatures hotter than 1150 degrees Celsius. Without exposure to the carbon in charcoal, iron is not strong enough to be an acceptable substitute for bronze. This discovery has transformed the two most important areas of their twelfth-century life: war and farming.

  As work goes on in this Cypriot foundry, one iron maker uses a bellows to pump air into a furnace filled with red-hot charcoal. Another man, his face dripping with sweat, repeatedly raises a muscular arm and brings down a hammer onto a molten piece of iron set at waist height on an anvil. With each strike of metal against metal, sparks fly, and the iron slowly bends to take its intended shape. When the hammer pauses, a third man uses a long fork to lift the hot iron from the anvil and place it into a vat of water, filling the workshop with steam. The brawny laborers repeat this firing, hammering, and cooling process several times until a glowing iron sword is fully formed. It will go to a member of the Cypriot king’s army to defend the island against the recurring threat of seaborne marauders.