SocietyThe Middle East

Uruk

3,101 BCE

The world's first great city, with fifty thousand inhabitants

In depth

Uruk solved a problem no one had faced: how to organise strangers. The answer was writing, seals, standardised measures and a priestly apparatus that could collect and redistribute. The city exported its model up the Euphrates and into Iran — the "Uruk expansion" — in what may be the world's first cultural imperialism, without an army.

For children

Uruk held more people than anyone had ever seen gathered before. It had temples of several storeys, a wall nine kilometres long, and a centre where nobody knew everybody. That last part was entirely new in human history.

Connects to

The first cities3,501 BCE
Writing is invented3,201 BCE
The Epic of Gilgamesh2,101 BCE

Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org