Uruk

Evidence found during archaeological explorations at the site of an ancient Mesopotamian settlement known as Shakhi Kora, located near the city of Kalar in Iraq’ s Kurdistan region, points to an early experimentation with urbanization in the mid- fourth millennium BC, one that had not been suspected before. This discovery is not altogether surprising, as the development of the world’s first city-oriented civilization in Sumer took place just to the south around the same time period . But the recently discovered site is most remarkable, because the city that was constructed there only lasted for a few centuries before its residents left it behind, perhaps to return to their roots as farmers in the countryside . This shows that attempts