293
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_32
Chapter 32
Cave Paintings of the Mind
32.1 Provocative Bifurcations of Civilization
“Black-Headed People,” including the Sumerian chief, Gudea of Lagash, a sculpture from ca. 2150 BC, and another sculpture of his son, Ur-Ningirsu, created
approximately a half-century later, emerge several thousand years after the panSumerian civilizations, centered around Sumer, a city that had conquered wheat and
barley, composed the first inventories of surplus in a pre-cuneiform of immense
complexity on cylinder seals, and employed elaborate weaponry, music, and the
manipulation of water ways for sophisticated irrigation. Their naked priests laid
offerings before an abundance of deities. They avoided ghosts, and had grown up in
a hierarchy that affirmed a specific geographical understanding of the world wherein
death had its transcendental options: paradise or hell. Stark, pure ziggurat zeniths
dotted the horizons, an architecture devised to empower communication with the
Sumero-Akkadian gods and built of mudbrick over devoted generations, that gave
their millions of residents some grip on life. And all this enriched by an intensely
diverse diet. Sumerian technology, economic principles fueling trade throughout the
Levant, sophisticated expeditions and a cosmology as rich as any global culture has
ever seen, lends to Sumerian legacy its rightful claim as one the world’s foremost
ethnic centers.
1
Museum archaeologists for generations have seen to it that remnants of this
5000-year-old ensemble of human machinations are preserved, an instinct that
wants to somehow implicitly preserve itself; to marvel at how uniform and continuously expressive our species has always been. Some might view museums as the
height of a species’ arrogance; others as refuges for that nostalgia gene that dominates the will to live. Or, an immense, mysterious mirror, in which we both marvel
1 John Haywood, The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Civilizations, edited by Simon Hall,
Penguin, London 2005, p. 28.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_32
Chapter 32
Cave Paintings of the Mind
32.1 Provocative Bifurcations of Civilization
“Black-Headed People,” including the Sumerian chief, Gudea of Lagash, a sculpture from ca. 2150 BC, and another sculpture of his son, Ur-Ningirsu, created
approximately a half-century later, emerge several thousand years after the panSumerian civilizations, centered around Sumer, a city that had conquered wheat and
barley, composed the first inventories of surplus in a pre-cuneiform of immense
complexity on cylinder seals, and employed elaborate weaponry, music, and the
manipulation of water ways for sophisticated irrigation. Their naked priests laid
offerings before an abundance of deities. They avoided ghosts, and had grown up in
a hierarchy that affirmed a specific geographical understanding of the world wherein
death had its transcendental options: paradise or hell. Stark, pure ziggurat zeniths
dotted the horizons, an architecture devised to empower communication with the
Sumero-Akkadian gods and built of mudbrick over devoted generations, that gave
their millions of residents some grip on life. And all this enriched by an intensely
diverse diet. Sumerian technology, economic principles fueling trade throughout the
Levant, sophisticated expeditions and a cosmology as rich as any global culture has
ever seen, lends to Sumerian legacy its rightful claim as one the world’s foremost
ethnic centers.
1
Museum archaeologists for generations have seen to it that remnants of this
5000-year-old ensemble of human machinations are preserved, an instinct that
wants to somehow implicitly preserve itself; to marvel at how uniform and continuously expressive our species has always been. Some might view museums as the
height of a species’ arrogance; others as refuges for that nostalgia gene that dominates the will to live. Or, an immense, mysterious mirror, in which we both marvel
1 John Haywood, The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Civilizations, edited by Simon Hall,
Penguin, London 2005, p. 28.