The world’s first cities emerged on the plains of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and Syria) in the fourth millennium BC. Attempts to understand this settlement process have assumed revolutionary social change, the disappearance of kinship as a structuring principle, and the appearance of a rational bureaucracy. Most assume cities and state-level social organization were deliberate functional adaptati...

During the advance to Bagdad it fell to my lot to treat a considerable number of wounded in the Indian General Hospital to which I was attached. We were situated about half-way down the lines of communication, and to a large extent our work was that of a clearing hospital, combined with some of the advantages in equipment and staff of a general hospital. The difficulties of transport in this co...

The world’s first cities emerged on the plains of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and Syria) in the fourth millennium BC. Attempts to understand this settlement process have assumed revolutionary social change, the disappearance of kinship as a structuring principle, and the appearance of a rational bureaucracy. Most assume cities and state-level social organization were deliberate functional adaptati...

The world’s first cities emerged on the plains of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and Syria) in the fourth millennium BC. Attempts to understand this settlement process have assumed revolutionary social change, the disappearance of kinship as a structuring principle, and the appearance of a rational bureaucracy. Most assume cities and state-level social organization were deliberate functional adaptati...

Prehistoric archaeological sites in the center of the Iranian Plateau suddenly disappeared around the end of the 4th millennium BCE. At Tepe Sialk, near Kashan, the last cultural period, namely Sialk IV - probably established around 3400 BCE after the last settlements of Sialk III6-7b - was abandoned approximately after 500 years. The material culture of this period, known as Proto-Elamite peri...

The modern metric system defines units of volume based on the cube. We propose that the ancient Egyptian system of measuring capacity employed a similar concept, but used the sphere instead. When considered in ancient Egyptian units, the volume of a sphere, whose circumference is one royal cubit, equals half a hekat. Using the measurements of large sets of ancient containers as a database, the ...

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In this paper, we discuss the presence of symmetries in images engraved on ancient seals, in particular on stamp seals. Mainly used to secure the containers from tampering and for owner's identification, these objects appeared during the 5th millennium BC in Mesopotamia. Usually the seals were engraved with simple images, suitable to communicate an immediate information. Rotational symmetries a...

The effective patterns and mechanisms of synoptic systems during the wet and dry spells in Midwest of Iran(MWI) analyzed and discussed on seasonal scales from 1974 to 2003. Synoptic Analysis is based on synoptic chartson Sea Level Pressure (SLP), 850 and 500 Hpa levels. The results of synoptic analysis show that dry spells in MWIare mostly corresponded to Azores High (AZH) intensifying and its ...