Writing and City Life
NCERT Themes in World History, Class 11, Chapter 1 opens in Mesopotamia of the third millennium BCE with the rise of Uruk and other temple towns. It shows scribes pressing reed styluses into clay to make cuneiform lists of grain, labour, and taxes, the first writing. It describes ziggurats, kings, priests, crafts, and long distance trade in wood and metals. It asks how cities, specialisation, and records changed kinship life and what ruins and tablets still teach.
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