
Translation by José Riello, Ricardo Dorado, Antonio de Cabo
This groundbreaking book reviews, against the current of established opinion, what was thought to be known about the first civilizations in the Mesopotamian floodplain and elsewhere. It was believed that the domestication of plants and animals led to sedentary lifestyles and farming in fixed fields. However, sedentary lifestyle long predates any evidence of plant or animal domestication, and both sedentary and domestication existed nearly four millennia before an agricultural village emerged. It was believed that sedentary lifestyles and the emergence of cities were the typical effect of irrigation and states. But it turns out that both are, on the contrary, the result of the abundance of wetlands. It was thought that sedentary lifestyle and agriculture led to the formation of states, but it so happens that these only ...read more