Building of a ziggurat, as imagined in a much, much, much later etching. (This etching seems to have been created to illustrate the biblical Book of Genesis, possibly representing the Tower of Babel.) Source: Wellcome Collection
Ziggurat of Chogha Zanbil, 1250 BCE, from the ancient city of Dur Untash in what is now Iran. Photo by Richard S. Ellis, Dec., 1959. Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.9117133
Select Sources
Environmental history
J.R. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001).
Most of this information can be found in any decent world history textbook. For more information see, e.g., Carol R. Ember, “Hunter-Gatherers” at Yale University, Human Relations Area Files: Explaining Human Culture, https://hraf.yale.edu/ehc/summaries/hunter-gatherers, accessed 10 Jul., 2024.
For one of the most recent translations of Gilgamesh, see Sophus Helle, Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023), Kindle Edition.
