Sumerian claypunk, innovation much earlier.

[carlton_bach]

Well, what would the Sumerians do with a steam engine if they made it in the first place?

Good question. I can't see any immediate application that waterpower couldn't do better. Bear in mind, early steam engines (and you won't start out with a Watt-style pressure system, let alone a forced-draft or multiple-expansion design) are inefficient and cranky devices, big, slow, fuel-hungry and very much stationary. What could they use one for? Mills, bellows and perhaps fulling mills, flax processing and papermaking, if you give them that invention. None of that sounds like it makes the investment worthwhile.

OTL the first application was draining deep-shaft coal mines, which ensured a supply of cheap and plentiful fuel on the spot and did not require much by way of reliability (a mine doesn't flood if the drainage is out for a few hours).

 

[carlton_bach]

Ah yes well, once we have bronze some wayward traveler might find iron and then they could build railroads to get this new, stronger metal. Maybe we can get a smarter king to enforce a literacy policy?

Two problems with that (even if we discount the incredibly unlikely railroad):

- cuneiform writing is very complicated. Not unlike modern Japanese, it is a combination of syllabic and iconic signs, with diacritic markers to distinguish isographs. It took years to learn. In the absence of printing, of any kind of 'public announcement' writing and very little legal application yet, I don't see how the majority of people would benefit from learning how to read and write, even if the economy could bear the expense.

- you don't just 'find' iron (other than meteoric). Making the connection between the very rare meteoric iron and the relatively common (though to Mesopotamians still exotic) iron ores needs a good deal of expertise with smelting and processing.

I would very strongly suggest going a different route. Paper, waterpower, printing, and an expansion of trade through increased demand for copper, tin, timber and fuel leading to impreovements in transport and navigation sounds much more believable to me. Add to that a more commercial mindset as traders and manufacturers play a greater social role and you get land ownership, chattel slavery, and perhaps even money. That would create a real revolution without requiring ASB intervention.

 

[Haggis]

Actually, the concept of chattel slavery seems to be a relatively recent (as in post-Neolithic) idea. I don't know the evidence, but there seems to be general agreement the Sumerians had a concept of personal dependence and subjection, but this could have been very different from what we associate with 'slavery'.

Well they had something of an idea of something remotely akin to slavery. IIRC the cuneiform word for concubine was a mountain and then a woman, cuneiform evolved from pictographs originally so they still had the basic pictographic designations for both, anyways the Sumerians associated a mountain with foreigners because their chief residence was on a relatively flat plain.

But yeah, their idea of slavery would be closest linked to our idea of an apprenticeship or possibly an indentured servant. Just if they commit a crime they get their head chopped off.

 

[Leo Caesius]

Well they had something of an idea of something remotely akin to slavery. IIRC the cuneiform word for concubine was a mountain and then a woman, cuneiform evolved from pictographs originally so they still had the basic pictographic designations for both, anyways the Sumerians associated a mountain with foreigners because their chief residence was on a relatively flat plain.

But yeah, their idea of slavery would be closest linked to our idea of an apprenticeship or possibly an indentured servant. Just if they commit a crime they get their head chopped off.

I haven't read these texts in a long time, but slaves did have rights, generally outlined in their contracts or ownership documents, albeit significantly fewer rights than free men. For example, if you kill a free man, your own life may be forfeit depending on the circumstances, but if you kill a slave, you merely have to reimburse his or her owner for the cost of his property. The children of slaves are generally slaves, whereas the children of a slave and her owner were often adopted into the family. Slaves were occasionally taken as wives, but rarely as the primary wife. Slaves were also manumitted and (IIRC) could buy their freedom.

Then again, most of my information comes from Standard Babylonian texts, not Sumerian (although I have studied Sumerian), so I can't be sure that this was also the case in their early history.

 

[ArKhan]

Well, what would the Sumerians do with a steam engine if they made it in the first place?

Farming, mining, maybe steamships/trains.

 

[carlton_bach]

Farming, mining, maybe steamships/trains.

Steam farming is not exactly an efficient proposition except on very large estates, and even there only maybe. Mining in Sumer is somewhat problematic, and trains require a very advanced engine design.

 

[Leo Caesius]

For steampunk you need a supply of fuel. There is no coal and you would quickly run out of trees for making charcoal from.

For this reason, the primary source of fuel in that region was (and continued to be up until quite recently) dung, both human and animal. This was a highly prized resource, to the extent that people would even fight over it.

 

[carlton_bach]

For this reason, the primary source of fuel in that region was (and continued to be up until quite recently) dung, both human and animal. This was a highly prized resource, to the extent that people would even fight over it.

Unfortunately, it is also likely to be rare (unless we somehow get extensive cattle husbandry going). But there is always oil - even crude can burn, and if you filter it through fuller's earth, you get a relatively clean-burning and, in the Gulf region, relatively plentiful fuel. I could see a major trade developing between the natural well fields in the Mosul area and the south.

As an aside, this should also create a boost to ceramic or glassmaking technology because unglazed earthenware and mineral oil derivatives don't mix well.

 

[robertp6165]

I rather think the Sumerians were busy enough with inventing stuff as things were, but paper is not really all that far-fetched. There is a whole lot of water and reeds and not a lot of other resources in Mesopotamia. If someone observed at some point that mashed dried reed dries into a kind of sheet, this could be developed as a substitute for more labour-intensive textiles.

Unfortunately, it won't have much of a future as a writing material for a while. Clay's cheaper

Yes. And we can be very glad that clay was cheaper. Otherwise just about everything the Sumerians ever wrote would be lost today. Paper (or more properly papyrus, which is what you are really talking about) doesn't survive well in Iraq, unlike in Egypt.

 

[MarkA]

Two problems with that (even if we discount the incredibly unlikely railroad):

- cuneiform writing is very complicated. Not unlike modern Japanese, it is a combination of syllabic and iconic signs, with diacritic markers to distinguish isographs. It took years to learn. In the absence of printing, of any kind of 'public announcement' writing and very little legal application yet, I don't see how the majority of people would benefit from learning how to read and write, even if the economy could bear the expense.

- you don't just 'find' iron (other than meteoric). Making the connection between the very rare meteoric iron and the relatively common (though to Mesopotamians still exotic) iron ores needs a good deal of expertise with smelting and processing.

I would very strongly suggest going a different route. Paper, waterpower, printing, and an expansion of trade through increased demand for copper, tin, timber and fuel leading to impreovements in transport and navigation sounds much more believable to me. Add to that a more commercial mindset as traders and manufacturers play a greater social role and you get land ownership, chattel slavery, and perhaps even money. That would create a real revolution without requiring ASB intervention.

Printing using movable type as opposed to applying a seal to clay is not really likely in such a society.

Inventing papyrus is possible but what would it be used for? A new fabric perhaps?

Waterpower is possible also but what would it be used for? Grinding grain was done by hand and seems to have been sufficent.

 

[carlton_bach]

Printing using movable type as opposed to applying a seal to clay is not really likely in such a society.

Inventing papyrus is possible but what would it be used for? A new fabric perhaps?

I'd say paper would be more useful than papyrus, thiough the latter, of course, could just be borrowed from Egypt. It would be useful for a number of applications, not lreasst to render long texts more portable than clay, but also for packaging, as material for sunshades and clothing, and for basic furniture and even armour (yes, you can). The prpoblem is getting people to make it.

BTW, Aramaic was usually written on leather or parchment with reed pens. It is not that far a leap to get the practice adopted once the material is there, though clay is likely to hold on for a long time through tradition.

Waterpower is possible also but what would it be used for? Grinding grain was done by hand and seems to have been sufficent.

So it continued to be well into the Middle Ages, but that doesn't mean a well-organised civilisation won't have uses for a proper waterwheel. I was mainly thinking irrigation - Mesopotamia is pretty flat and without a helpful seasonal inundation, anything that helps raise water is appreciated (by the oxen if noone else). Then consider the kind of concentrated labour needs created by a palace/harem or temple complex supply system. Fulling, grinding, hammering and running furnaces well above the scale of your typical family business. The situation is not unlike that in the Cistercian houses in medieval Europe, and it is not too far-fetched to see a similar solution in a more tech-minded world.

 

[Tyr]

Claypunk. Heh. I like it.

 

[Leo Caesius]

Wolfram von Soden offers in his Einfuehrung in die Altorientalistik the following remarks:

"The phase of trade in the ancient Orient which involved pure barter had been supplanted by the middle of third millennium at the latest. In Babylonia, where metal was scarce, buying and selling were conducted on the basis of grain exchanges. One might even speak of a 'grain standard' there. Sheep may also have served as a standard of value for trading goods. As the supply of metals, especially copper and silver, increased in the land in the third millennium, trade was conducted first on the basis of copper and later on the basis of silver. In this process, metal pieces which had to be weighed by the buyer in the presence of the seller came to serve as the means of payment. The verb for 'to weigh' or 'weigh out' (Sumerian la2; Akkadian shaqaalu) became the normal word for 'to pay.' Normally a person used metal pieces with an established standard weight, but the loss of weight through constant use as well as the filing down of the pieces with fraudulent intent necessitated repeated weightings. There was a sort of "Bureau of Standards" for the control of the weights: in Assyria the office was known as the Bit Khiburne. It is amazing that none of the peoples involved in intensive trade over so many centuries in the ancient Orient ever thought to stamp these metal pieces so as to make their loss of metal visible. Such stamped (or minted) pieces of metal would have greatly facilitated all procedures of payment."

 

[Michael B]

It is amazing that none of the peoples involved in intensive trade over so many centuries in the ancient Orient ever thought to stamp these metal pieces so as to make their loss of metal visible. Such stamped (or minted) pieces of metal would have greatly facilitated all procedures of payment.

Thinking about it, I agree. Whilst there is no particular financial advantage receiving one taxes or tribute in seven bezant coins as opposed to three bezants, there are political points to be made, namely that the sign of the king is on the coin. If you are going to build big statues for propaganda, then having little pics of his majesty seems equally logical.

Then again it might not be that logical. Going from barter of perishable items to barter of non perishable items is not so great a leap. Going from trade in baskets of items which are all different even if the differences are minor to baskets of items which are equal the same is bit more of a leap. At the start of the Industrial revolution, machined items were put together by fitters, who fitted the parts together to make the whole work. There was not the concept (partly because of the quality of manufacturing) of big tubs of parts of which you randomly take one part from each tub, put them together and voila you have a working revolver hand gun, steam engine or whatever.

 

[Leo Caesius]

Then again it might not be that logical. Going from barter of perishable items to barter of non perishable items is not so great a leap. Going from trade in baskets of items which are all different even if the differences are minor to baskets of items which are equal the same is bit more of a leap.

But they've already made that leap - or so von Soden seems to believe. He describes the Sumerian economy as having been "monetarized" - first to set weights of copper, and then silver (to the extent that the word for silver, kaspum, came to mean "money" in all of the Semitic languages of the time, even if they weren't stamped). I completely agree that stamping these coins would have been in keeping with what we know of the psychology of these rulers, and agree with von Soden that it seems strange, with hindsight, that they didn't attempt to stamp their currency (it fell to Lydia to do that, many centuries later).

I'm interested in pursuing this claypunk angle. But what do we have to work with? Let's make up a "wish list" which is more or less feasible:

• Waterpower: If there's one thing that the Sumerians have, it's water. Shadoofs, waterclocks, waterwheels for grindstones, and so on. I would imagine that the endless task of taming the rivers and maintaining the canals would provide an impetus towards innovation.
  
• Paper: an innovation that could easily be borrowed from surrounding people (and, for all we know, was, although it obviously never supplanted the use of clay tablets and probably would not so long as cuneiform languages remain prestigious). As carlton said, there is no shortage of river reeds and water in southern Iraq.
  
• Stamping: seems a natural development from a people who write by imprinting on clay tablets and use rolling cylinder seals to identify their property; could potentially lead to a sort of printing press, which will have limited application as long as literacy remains low.
  
• Alphabet: While Sumerian was probably a dead letter by the time the alphabet shows up, and other cuneiform languages don't seem to have made the transition, some of the Cuneiform word-lists (basically glossaries of words from different cuneiform languages arranged in columns, for the purpose of scribal education) sprout an extra column with Greek transcription in the Hellenistic era. I'm actually surprised that Akkadian was not transcribed into Aramaic letters previously; perhaps this was an issue of prestige.
  In any case, cuneiform is less well-suited to paper or papyrus (although IIRC Shaul Shaked mentions in one of his books on incantation texts that cuneiform signs found their way into some of the incantations that were written in ink on terracotta bowls), so perhaps the two systems of writing could coexist as they presumably did in Achaemenid times.​
• Currency: stamped coins, and a bureau of investigating weights and measures (which might become the nucleus of an actual police force - much like the muhtasib in Abbasid times was both the inspector of weights and measures and responsible for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
  
• Hygiene: hygienic measures are part and parcel of most purity laws. While I'm not expecting a science of hygiene, how can far can we pursue this?
  
• Transportation: Asphalt highways? Before the Achaemenid era, the "roads" of the region were little more than well-trodden dirt paths, which were impassable in times of bad weather. But asphalt is actually quite plentiful in the region, and the idea of a "highway" in a region prone to flooding seems reasonable enough. They already used asphalt to waterproof vessels, structures, and boats, so why not paths? This could tie into carlton's suggestion of an expansion of trade.
  
• Politics: There was already a system of "judges" in place who were responsible for settling most disputes. Most such decisions were made in a set location near the city gate. While any decision made by a judge could be appealed to the king, might not the judges serve as an embryonic system of representation? "Rule by jurist" would resemble Iran more than Switzerland, of course, but I would imagine that it would eventually result in the development of civil society institutions and larger and larger proportions of the population becoming enfranchised.

The question now becomes what effect these and other innovations have upon Sumerian society?

 

[Michael B]

Transportation: Asphalt highways? Before the Achaemenid era, the "roads" of the region were little more than well-trodden dirt paths, which were impassable in times of bad weather. But asphalt is actually quite plentiful in the region, and the idea of a "highway" in a region prone to flooding seems reasonable enough. They already used asphalt to waterproof vessels, structures, and boats, so why not paths? This could tie into carlton's suggestion of an expansion of trade.

Don't knock dirt roads. They are low in capital and maintenance costs and perfectly adequate for pack animals. Until the railway era water was the favoured means of long distance transportation of cargo, even after the invention of the horse collar. Moreover prior to the Middle Ages (and into it) roads were built primarily for the use by the army and ruling class.

The Sumerians would be better investing their limited capital in water power .