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OUR effort in Iraq passed a major milestone today: Our troops are leaving the cities. Advisers remain in place. Joint patrols will still occur. And our forces will wait nearby to respond to Iraqi calls for support. But the last of the bases and US-only outposts within Iraq's urban centers will be vacated. Terrorists have already begun testing the new security arrangements. Iraqi forces won't always pass with flying colors. Yet this situation seemed a pipe dream not so long ago: Iraq's security forces, serving an elected government, assume primary responsibility for the good order of their own country. We...

BASRA — Iraqi Security Forces recently uncovered hundreds of historical artifacts during two raids in northern Basra. The 228 ancient artifacts included Sumerian and Babylonian sculpture, gold jewelry and other items from ancient Mesopotamia.“This is my favorite item,� said Iraqi Col. Ali Sabah, commander of the Basra Emergency Battalion that led the operation, holding a piece of gold jewelry. “It’s gold from the Babylon ages and about 6,000 years old. It doesn’t have a price.�“I’m very happy because this is my civilization’s heritage,� he said.The Basra Emergency Battalion led raid operated from tips that smugglers intended to remove the...

Here on the plains of the Tigris River lies the shrine of Ezra, the Jewish prophet, who returned to Jerusalem at the end of the Babylonian exile. According to biblical scholars, Ezra died years later back in the Mesopotamia at age 120 in what is now called Uzair. Locals believe Ezra passed away while roaming through the area with his donkey. His shrine still exists in this predominantly Shiite district of Amarah province filled with supporters of young cleric Muqtada's Sadr late father, a grand ayatollah assassinated in 1999. Bashir Zaalan is the custodian of Ezra's shrine. Zaalan inherited the...

This discovery offers a unique view of the social world nearly 4,300 years ago at Nagar, a city that belonged to Mesopotamia's Akkadian Empire, say Joan Oates of the University of Cambridge in England and her colleagues. Nagar's remnants lie within layers of mud-brick construction known collectively as Tell Brak (SN: 2/9/08, p. 90). The earliest layers date to more than 6,000 years ago. Evidence suggests that this Nagar sacrifice immediately followed a brief abandonment of the site because of some sort of natural disaster. Residents appeased their gods by surrendering valued individuals, animals and objects in a building formerly...

KIRKUK AIR BASE, Iraq (AFPN) -- An Airman and his team discovered fragments of pottery, possibly dating back as far back as 2,000 years during a recent job at Kirkuk Air Base. Tech. Sgt. Kelly Wayment, a heavy equipment operator with the 506th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron here, was carrying out a routine operation near a helicopter landing pad when he noticed something peculiar. Sergeant Wayment was spotting for fellow 506th ECES member Staff Sgt. Michael Massey as he drove a grader over the area. "I noticed something on the ground that looked kind of like a rock," said the...

Lion sculpture gets record price The Guennol Lioness was discovered at a site near Baghdad A tiny limestone figure of a lion from ancient Mesopotamia has sold at auction for $57m (£28m), almost double the previous record price for a sculpture. The 8.3cm (3.25in) tall Guennol Lioness is thought to have been carved 5,000 years ago in what is now Iraq and Iran. The lion, whose new owner has not been identified, had been on loan to the Brooklyn Museum of Art for 59 years. The previous record for a sculpture was set last month when Pablo Picasso's Tete de...

Mesopotamian city grew regardless of kingly rule 19:00 30 August 2007 NewScientist.com news service Roxanne Khamsi Changes in pottery over the years allowed researchers to develop a timeline for the Tell Brak's expansion Contrary to the assumption that ancient cities always grew outwards from a central point, the urban site of Tell Brak in north-eastern Syria appears to have emerged as several nearby settlements melded together, according to researchers' analysis of archaeological evidence. Experts say that the findings lend support to the theory that early Mesopotamian cities developed as a result of grassroots organisation, rather than a mandate from a...

New discoveries at dig sites in Middle Asia are rocking the archeological world and redefining the origins of modern civilization. Numerous sites in modern-day Iran and the surrounding region suggest that a vast network of societies together constituted the first cities, whose residents traded goods across hundreds of miles and forged parallel but strikingly independent cultures. Archaeologists have thought that modern civilization began in Mesopotamia, where the large Tigris and Euphrates rivers bounded a fertile valley that nurtured an increasingly complex society. The social structures, wealth and technologies of this society slowly spread along the Nile and then the Indus...

Public release date: 2-Aug-2007 Contact: Natasha Pinol npinol@aaas.org 202-326-7088 American Association for the Advancement of Science Beyond Mesopotamia: A radical new view of human civilization reported in ScienceMany urban centers crossed arc of Middle Asia 5,000 years ago A radically expanded view of the origin of civilization, extending far beyond Mesopotamia, is reported by journalist Andrew Lawler in the 3 August issue of Science. Mesopotamia is widely believed to be the cradle of civilization, but a growing body of evidence suggests that in addition to Mesopotamia, many civilized urban areas existed at the same time – about 5,000 years ago...

Epic HeroHow a self-taught British genius rediscovered the Mesopotamian saga of Gilgamesh—after 2,500 years By David Damrosch In November 1872, George Smith was working at the British Museum in a second-floor room overlooking the bare plane trees in Russell Square. On a long table were pieces of clay tablets, among the hundreds of thousands that archaeologists had shipped back to London from Nineveh, in present-day Iraq, a quarter-century before. Many of the fragments bore cuneiform hieroglyphs, and over the years scholars had managed to reassemble parts of some tablets, deciphering for the first time these records of daily life in...

Jiroft is lost link of chain of civilization: Majidzadeh TEHRAN, Jan. 12 (MNA) -- Iranian archaeologist Yusef Majidzadeh believes that Jiroft is the lost link of the chain of civilization and says it has such a significant civilization that he would be proud to be named an honorary citizen of the ancient site. In a seminar entitled “Jiroft, the Cradle of Oriental Civilization” held in Kerman on Thursday, he said, “The history of civilization in Jiroft dates back to 2700 BC and the third millennium civilization is the lost link of the chain of civilization which archaeologists have long sought....

New Discoveries in Jiroft May Change History of Civilization Jan 26, 2006 Latest archeological excavations in Jiroft, known as the hidden paradise of world archeologists, resulted in the discovery of a bronze statue depicting the head of goat which dates back to the third millennium BC. This statue was found in the historical cemetery of Jirof where recent excavations in the lower layers of this cemetery revealed that the history of the Halil Rud region dates back to the fourth millennium BC, a time that goes well beyond the age of civilization in Mesopotamia "One of the reasons the archeologists...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 11 - The story told by the two Iraqi guerrillas cut to the heart of the war that Iraqi and American officials now believe is raging inside the Iraqi insurgency. In October, the two insurgents said in interviews, a group of local fighters from the Islamic Army gathered for an open-air meeting on a street corner in Taji, a city north of Baghdad. Across from the Iraqis stood the men from Al Qaeda, mostly Arabs from outside Iraq. Some of them wore suicide belts. The men from the Islamic Army accused the Qaeda fighters of murdering their...

Tales of Iraq Soldier brings treasures, history to school By JOHN MOLSEED Messenger staff writer Fair Oaks Middle School sixth-graders learning about Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, had a special guest Friday — someone who had been there. Sgt. Tony Echevarria shared his experiences and visits to historic sites while stationed in Iraq with the students — one of them his son, Zak Echevarria. ‘‘This is believed to be the birthplace of Abraham,’’ Sgt. Echevarria said describing a Powerpoint slide showing the ancient brick structure. ‘‘He is the father of Judeo-Christian belief that we have today.’’ Echevarria has spent eight...

CHICAGO, IL, USA -- US and Syrian researchers say that a battle destroyed one of the world's earliest cities in Mesopotamia, at around 3500 BC but artifacts are left behind. The University of Chicago and Syria's Department of Antiquities say that the discovery provides the earliest evidence for large-scale organized warfare in the Mesopotamian world. "The whole area of our most recent excavation was a war zone," said Clemens Reichel, of the University of Chicago. Reichel was the co-director of the Syrian-American Archaeological Expedition to Hamoukar, an ancient site in northeastern Syria near the Iraqi border, in October and November....

Ancient citadel shows scars of mass warfare 11:42 16 December 2005 NewScientist.com news service Will Knight The shattered remains of a 5500-year-old citadel that stood on the modern-day border between Syria and Iraq provide some of the oldest evidence for organised and bloody warfare. The Mesopotamian settlement lies in Hamoukar, on the northernmost tip of Syria, 8 kilometres from the Iraqi border. In 3500 BC the 13-hectare development was subjected to a devastating attack, its edifices crumbling beneath a crushing hail of bullet-shaped projectiles. The evidence of the destruction was uncovered in October and November 2005 by an expedition coordinated...

University of Chicago Architectural remains in Syria from the fourth millennium B.C. Those at lower left were excavated in 2001, and those at top center this year. The location is said to be the oldest known excavated site of a large battle. In the ruins of an ancient city in northeastern Syria, archaeologists have uncovered what they say is substantial evidence of a fierce battle fought there in about 3500 B.C. The archaeologists, who announced the find yesterday, described it as the oldest known excavated site of large-scale organized warfare. It was a clash of northern and southern cultures...

1. The garden of Eden was in Iraq. (it sure doesn't look much like Paradise on earth today thanks to Saddam). 2. Mesopotamia which is now Iraq was the cradle of civilization! 3. Noah built the ark in Iraq. 4. The Tower of Babel was in Iraq. 5. Abraham was from Ur, which is in Southern Iraq! 6. Isaac's wife Rebekah is from Nahor which is in Iraq. 7. Jacob met Rachel in Iraq. 8. Jonah preached in Nineveh - which is in Iraq. 9. Assyria which is in Iraq conquered the ten tribes of Israel. 10. Amos cried out...

Globalterroralert.com (4/14/05): Sources in the Arabian Peninsula are now claiming that one of the four Al-Qaida suicide bombers who attacked a U.S. base in the western Iraqi town of Al-Qaim on April 11 was Saudi national Hadi bin Mubarak al-Qahtani. According to a statement marking his death, Hadi had grown "eager to martyr himself" after witnessing the example of the "19 heroes" and their "holy attack that demolished the foolish infidel Americans and caused many young men to awaken from their deep sleep." Click to view English translation c/o Globalterroralert.com

PARIS - The mystery of an ancient Mesopotamian city has finally been lifted after 25 years of meticulous work by a French archaeologist who has revealed it was one of the first "modern cities", purpose-built in the desert for the manufacture of copper arms and tools. In a new book entitled "Mari, the Metropolis of the Euphrates", Jean-Claude Margueron said the third millennium BC city, in modern day Syria, was "one of the first modern cities of humanity. Created from scratch in one phase of construction with the specific goal of becoming this (metallurgical) centre." This was an astounding concept...

Existence of major metallurgy center explains why Mari had been built PARIS, France: The mystery of an ancient Mesopotamian city has finally been lifted after 25 years of meticulous work by a French archaeologist who has revealed it was one of the first "modern cities," purpose-built in the desert for the manufacture of copper arms and tools. In a new book entitled "Mari, the Metropolis of the Euphrates," Jean-Claude Margueron said the third millennium B.C. city, in modern-day Syria, was "one of the first modern cities of humanity. Created from scratch in one phase of construction with the specific goal...

The fabled marshes of Mesopotamia, largely destroyed by Saddam Hussein in one of the worst pieces of ecological vandalism in recent history, can be partially restored, scientists said on Sunday. The first scientific assessment of the marshes in southern Iraq, al considered by some to have been the Biblical location of the Garden of Eden, was presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington. Saddam's drainage programme - accompanied by the persecution and forced relocation of the Marsh Arabs who had lived there for 5,000 years - reduced the wetlands to 7 per cent of...

The Eastern Question that haunted the chancelleries of 19th-century Europe has returned to haunt George Bush and Tony Blair; or rather, the consequences of the failure to find a satisfactory answer to it have blighted all attempts to create a new international order in the aftermath of the cold war. This book is required reading for anyone wanting to have an informed opinion on recent events in Iraq; the fact that its author worked for Blair's "Strategic Futures Unit" makes one wonder why the prime minister did not spend more time reading history and less commissioning dodgy dossiers. There are...

Ancient Iranian site shows Mesopotamia-like civilisation [World News]: Tehran, Nov 16 : Shellfish is not seen on most Iranians dining tables but it was part of the daily diet of the inhabitants of ancient Jiroft in southern Iran 5,000 years ago that showed the existence of an ancient civilisation. Jiroft, located in Kerman province, is one of the richest historical areas in the world, with ruins and artefacts dating back to the third millennium BC and with over 100 historical sites located along the approximately 400 km of the Halil Rood riverbank, according to Mehr news agency. Many Iranian and...

Editors' preface: A noted historian of the Middle East has said the following about the legacy of scholars who devoted their careers to the study of the region: The giants of the recent past tend to be largely forgotten as soon as they are dead if not before, especially if what they have written isn't what is now considered fashionable or central … They are criticized when they are in error, but their achievements are forgotten.[1] While this is largely true in the English-speaking countries, it is not true in France, where a few French "giants" of Islamic and Arab...

Globalterroralert.com 10/21/04http://www.globalterroralert.com/ansarsunnah1004-4.pdf "Those of us from the Ansar Al-Sunnah Army celebrate and congratulate the Muslims and all of our mujahideen brothers in the Tawheed wal-Jihad Movement on the occasion of their inclusion on the list of terrorists... Praise be to Allah, it increased the joy in our hearts that John Kerry, the presidential candidate, has criticized the Bush government for taking so long in making this declaration. The one who may become the president of America is already struck with terror by our brothers from the Tawheed wal-Jihad Movement. The repeated attacks that have targeted the evil Bush are now...

Introduction - Investigations of Bolivia Fuente Magna and the Monolith of Pokotia The following material is reprinted by permission from Bernardo Biadós Yacovazzo & Freddy Arce, OIIB - Omega Institute Investigations (Bolivia), INTI - NonGovernmental Organizacion (Bolivia). A large stone vessel, resembling a libation bowl, and now known as the Fuente Magna, was originally discovered in a rather casual fashion by a country peasant from the ex-hacienda CHUA, property of the Manjon family situated in the surrounding areas of Lake Titicaca about 75/80 km from the city of La Paz. The site where it was found has not been...

'Lost river' could rewrite history books February 19 2002 at 08:33AM Madras India, - The discovery of an ancient city on the seabed off India's western coast has scientists salivating at the prospect of a fundamental rewrite in the chronology of ancient human society. Preliminary tests have suggested the site in the Gulf of Cambay off Gujarat state could date as far back as 7 500 BC, several thousand years older than what were previously known to be the first significant urban settlements. The discovery was made purely by chance last year as oceanographers from the National Institute of ...

Rocking the Cradle In Iran, an archaeologist is racing to uncover a literate Bronze Age society he believes predates ancient Mesopotamia. Critics say he may be overreaching, but they concede his dig will likely change our view of the dawn of civilization Discoveries made during a dig in southeastern Iran have convinced archaeologist Yousef Madjidzadeh that a desolate valley here was once home to a thriving—and literate—community. He calls it nothing less than "the earliest Oriental civilization." It's a dramatic assertion, but if he's right, it would mean the site, near Iran's Halil River, is older than Mesopotamia, a thousand...

Submerged city may be older than Mesopotamia Utpal Parashar Dehra Dun, December 3 A submerged coastal city near Poompuhar in Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu, is the focus of a major expedition being conducted jointly by the Indian Naval Hydrographic Department (INHD) and the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). Both the organisations are trying to piece together the city's past, which some noted marine archaeologists consider to be the birthplace of modern civilisation. The once flourishing port city is located about one mile off the Nagapattinam coast. "We have been able to locate a section of the city at a depth of...

Stealth weapons vs. donkey carts Posted: November 25, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 David H. Hackworth Once again, "shock and awe" thundered across Iraq for two explosive weeks. Then the insurgents responded to our high-tech air and ground hammer with return fire from four donkey-drawn carts toting homemade rocket launchers that hit one of the most heavily defended zones in Baghdad. Which says it all about the nature of modern guerrilla warfare. The Have-Nots – the guerrillas – use whatever they have at hand, the simplest weapons and tactics, to go up against the Have-It-Alls. In Iraq, it has...

Iraq's most cherished antiquity, the 5,000-year-old Warka Mask, was returned home on Tuesday after being looted during the anarchy that accompanied the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in April. Captain Vance Kuhner said the mask was found after an intensive search by US troops and Iraqi police that led them to a farm just north of Baghdad where it was discovered buried under six inches of dirt. "A tip-off came to the museum, we were given an address that led us to a juvenile, then an older man and eventually the culprit. Then it took a week of negotiations," Kuhner...

Will we stay the course in Iraq? Posted: July 23, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc. After the suicide bombing of the Marine barracks, Ronald Reagan made a cold-blooded decision. Concluding America had no vital interest in Lebanon, he cut his losses and withdrew the Marines. It was a rare failure of Reagan foreign policy. Neoconservatives condemn him for not sending an army back into Beirut to deliver street justice and show Islamic radicals that the American Superpower could not be assaulted with impunity. Reagan's decision, say the neocons, convinced radicals that America lacked the courage and...

Should the U.S. Offer Iraq Statehood? By J. Neil Schulman © 2003 Despite the endless repetition from campus Trotskyists and unreconciled supporters of Ohio Senator Robert Taft’s 1952 presidential bid, the United States of America is not now, nor has it ever been, an empire. If the United States were an empire, the Stars and Stripes would today be flying over Ottawa, Mexico City, Havana, Panama City, Managua, San Salvador, Manila, Madrid, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul, Saigon, and Kuwait City. At least. The United States does not have colonial ambitions, and that defines imperialism. We back friendly foreign...

Douglas Anthony Cooper of Montreal chides me for a throwaway line in last week's column about the antiwar crowd's sudden interest in property crime: "Steal the photocopier from Baghdad's Ministry of Genital Clamping and they're pining for the smack of firm government." "Some matters reside beyond the domain of comedy," writes Cooper. "The rape of the National Museum of Iraq and the torching of the National Library will be lamented by historians for centuries." He concludes, "A man of Steyn's sensibilities beneath the sneer I detect a partisan of Western civilization ought to find this an occasion of immense sorrow."...

Volume 56 Number 3, May/June 2003 Editor's note: The following Special Report was written just before the war's outbreak. THE SPECTER OF WAR Protecting Iraq's museum collections and archaeological sites in the event of an invasion. BY JOANNE FARCHAKH The grand reliefs from the Assyrian palaces of Nimrud and Khorsabad--the pride of the Baghdad Museum--are housed in an exhibition hall across the street from the Ministry of Communication and a mere 300 feet from a television and radio station. These buildings, as experience has shown, are the first targets for air strikes, and Iraqi cultural officials fear that the reliefs,...

Baghdad archeological museum looted A Baghdad mob looted Iraq's largest archeological museum amid a breakdown in civil authority following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, an AFP reporter said. A dozen looters helped themselves in ground floor rooms at the National Museum of Iraq, where pottery artefacts and statues were seen broken or overturned, while administrative offices were wrecked. Two men were seen hauling an ancient portal out of the building, and empty wooden crates were scattered over the floor. Upstairs rooms seemed to have been spared for the time being. Iraq, among the earliest cradles of civilisation and home...

Patton's Sweep Is Cause for Confidence; While Bombings Didn't 'Awe' in VietnamBy Carla Anne Robbins, Greg Jaffe and Dan MorseWASHINGTON -- Gen. Tommy Franks, who is running the war against Iraq, says it's being fought "unlike any other in history." That may well be true of the overall war plan, which calls for a lightning drive to the capital, heavy reliance on precision bombing, a collapse of the Hussein regime and a mop up of remaining Iraqi forces afterward. But key elements of the campaign have echoes in other wars. The lessons from past conflicts -- some heartening, some sobering...

GOOD NEWS doesn't sell papers. Nor, it appears, does the idea of respect for human dignity. Recent flurried debates over how events in Iraq will unfold have dwelt almost exclusively on technical issues ? political and economic security. The salient omission in all discussions is the less media-friendly topic of how the exercise of power must engage with human values. While uncertainty grips virtually all parts of this fragile globe, thousands of Iraqi families whose ancestors represented the first flowering of human civilisation have lived for decades in deteriorating conditions under an arbitrary death sentence. There are options for the...

There seems to be some dispute about the date of the first Christmas. Part of that has to do with the Gregorian calendar, which is the one we use. At one time, Greek months had three ten day weeks. This forced them to add a month or two now and then. The ancient Hebrews, who alternated 29 and 30 day months, had the same problem. Our hour and minute divisions go all the way back to Mesopotamia. Our 24 hour day comes from pharaonic Egypt. The names we use for days and months come to us from the classical Greek,...

Sister Cecilia Hanna 1931-2002 No other Christian church gave as many martyrs for Christianity as the Apostolic Mesopotamian Church of the East did throughout its close to 2000 years of existence. For since its establishment at the hands of Saint Thomas (Mar Toma) the Apostle and St. Thaddeus (Mar Addai) (one of the 72 Apostles, who preached in Mesopotamia between 37-65 A.D) and the Church of the East never stopped giving one martyrs for the cause of Christianity after another.  Having been established in a hostile environment with no state to support her, the Church of the East struggled to...

August 23, 2002, 9:00 a.m.Kings for Mesopotamia? Don’t go there. By Claude Salhani In an article titled "A Time for Kings?" National Review's senior editor, David Pryce-Jones, proposes reinstalling the Hashemite kings in Baghdad, once a U.S.-led invasion force rids the world of Saddam Hussein. The author of the NR article even puts forward a name — Jordan's former Crown Prince Hassan — to become the new king of Iraq. Here are just a few words of caution to Pryce-Jones and others who follow his line of thinking: Colonialism is dead — long dead. It died sometime in the 1960s...

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada author Clive Douglas Campbell and Phoenix, Arizona, USA publisher Selah Publishing Group are pleased to announce the release of Messiah: 2030. Nobody knows the day and hour of the Second Coming, but the following years are on the front cover: Messiah: 2030 Cluny: 1030 Jesus: 30 David: 970 Abraham: 1970 Noah: 2970 Adam: 3970 Messiah: 2030 claims the Bible prophesies a sixth Arab-Israeli war will be over in 2003 and include the following: --the Palestinians will be deported to Jordan --Israel will go to war with Jordan, possess Jordanian land east of the Jordan River and King...