5,000-year-old artifacts in Iraq hint at mysterious collapse of one of the world's 1st governments

Dozens of clay bowls may be evidence of one of the earliest government institutions in the world, a new study finds. The bowls, which were unearthed at an early archaeological site in Iraq, are thought to have held savory meals given in exchange for labor in ancient Mesopotamia.

But the site was eventually abandoned, which might indicate that local people had rejected centralized authority, although the researchers are uncertain whether this was the case. After this early government fell, it took another 1,500 years for any centralized governing authority to return to the region, the authors wrote in the study.

The researchers made this discovery at Shakhi Kora, an archaeological site southwest of Kalar in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, which holds the remains of a settlement that's thought to date to the fifth millennium B.C.

"Our excavations at Shakhi Kora provide a unique, new regional window into the development, and ultimately the rejection, of some of the earliest experiments with centralised, and perhaps state-like, organisations," University of Glasgow archaeologist Claudia Glatz said in a statement. Glatz has led excavations at the site since 2019 and is the lead author of the new study, which was published Wednesday (Dec. 4) in the journal Antiquity.

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Uruk expansion

The excavations by Glatz and her colleagues have revealed structures at Shakhi Kora that span several centuries, while pottery shards and other cultural items indicate a progression from the initial local traditions of the farming people who lived there, to the later domination of traditions from the early city of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia, more than 220 miles (355 kilometers) to the south. (According to archaeologists, the "Uruk period" is the earliest phase of the Sumerian civilization, between 4000 and 3100 B.C.)

Similar progressions have been seen at other sites in ancient Mesopotamia, and some archaeologists have suggested these are signs of an "Uruk expansion," in which the innovations of Uruk — including urbanization, interregional trade and early writing — were introduced to more distant regions by people who traveled there.

In particular, the excavations at Shakhi Kora have unearthed large numbers of distinctive pottery bowls, called beveled-rim bowls. The team thinks these bowls were used to supply food in return for labor — an early form of centralized authority, perhaps of the kind that led to the development of ancient Mesopotamian city-states. Analysis of the residues inside some of the bowls indicate many were used to serve meat, possibly as broths or stews, which suggests that herds of sheep and goats were kept near the ancient settlement for this purpose.

The researchers think this shows people traveled to Shakhi Kora to perform labor on behalf of "institutional households" there; and the excavations showed at least one of the household buildings featured pillars and drainage systems that were evidence of southern Mesopotamian influence.

But the excavations also show the site was abandoned in the late fourth millennium B.C. without any signs of violence or environmental pressures.The researchers think this indicates that local people had rejected the idea of a centralized system of authority and returned to their family farms.

"This reaffirms that top-down, hierarchical forms of government were not inevitable in the development of early complex societies," Glatz said. "Local communities found ways to resist and reject tendencies towards centralized power."

Early society

Susan Pollock, an archaeologist at the Free University of Berlin and an expert in the evolution of early states in Mesopotamia who was not involved in the new study, said "hundreds" of people likely gathered at Shakhi Kora to perform labor at any one time.

Other excavations indicate there were many small settlements in the region at this time, which suggests people there had not moved to live in centralized locations and that the expected trend toward urbanism was "not working out," she said. But further research was needed to establish whether that signified a deliberate rejection of centralized authority or if there was another reason for the larger settlement's decline, Pollock told Live Science.

Glenn Schwartz, an archaeologist at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in the study, said the limited size of the excavations at Shakhi Kora made it difficult to be certain whether they had revealed traces of an organized hierarchy.

The distinctive beveled-rim bowls found at Shakhi Kora have also been found at other archaeological sites from ancient Mesopotamia. "They were sort of the 'Styrofoam cup' of the Uruk period," he told Live Science.

Archaeologists had long debated what food the bowls may have contained, and the revelation that many had held meat or meat stew was an "exciting" result, Schwartz said.