Abu Tbeirah was probably Sumerian, south of Lagash and Ur as it was. I don't know if it was a canal city, but I am pretty sure it had a wharf until 3500 BC. What we do not know, yet, is what these Sumerians named their own city.
The period is 2900–2350 BC, which is called "Early Dynastic". They don't have documents, but they do have a menu. Usually we get some clue from bones - carbon and nitrogen isotopes get skewed for seafood-eaters (which famously annoys carbon-daters); ideal would be coprolites. But marshy lower Iraq tends to be bad at preserving either; and in a city context, likely the honey wagon is taking potential copro's back to the fields. So the scholars're looking at zinc in the teeth. Of course cereals were a big part of their diet, why else live here.
A surprise, to me, is that they didn't eat fish. They ate pork, and imported other meats from the hills. As to why no fish, uh. Maybe the swamps had been drained and the only fishwater was irrigation-water, which got fertilizer-runoff. Whatever fish could survive in what is basically a sewer, I'd not recommend frying up.
No comments:
Post a Comment