Mario Liverani (° 1939, Professor of Ancient Near East History at the University of Rome La Sapienza) was one of the great specialists of early Mesopotamian history. This book is kind of his spiritual testament. It sums up the state of affairs in this domain, at the time of publication (2017), with a special focus on the issues that still are debated. In this sense, it offers much more than a history of that first city, Uruk. First of all, we are not quite sure the south-Mesopotamian Uruk really was the first extended city in human history. All we know is that up until now it is the largest one that has been digged up, dating back to the 4th millennium BCE. It’s always possible that in the future other places will be unearthed that prove to have been much larger. Now, at the same time, it’s obvious Uruk must have been a prominent place in those times, given the amount of ceramics “in the style of Uruk” that were found throughout Mesopotamia and beyond. So, let’s state that Uruk was representative of the earliest complex human society, in which – for instance – writing had become a prominent feature of culture and society. “In the mature phase of this process (late Uruk phase, ca. 3500-3000 BC) we are witnessing the definitive explosion of the ongoing process, with urban concentrations of previously unthinkable dimensions (with the 100 hectares of Uruk), with a templar architecture of extraordinary grandeur and value (in particular the sacred area of the Eanna of Uruk), with the beginning of writing and therefore of a sophisticated and depersonalized administration." No small feat, indeed.

Liverani deals with a lot of issues that still surround the study of early Mesopotamian history: “What needs did the new political and economic organization respond to? Who were the authors (conscious or not) of the changes underway? Why was the process so early in Lower Mesopotamia? Was it a rapid revolution or a progressive adaptation? What was the weight of the ecological, technological, demographic, socio-economic, political and ideological factors? What was the success of the Uruk experiment, and what changes did it undergo in its spatial expansion and in its persistence over time?" That are a lot of issues, and Liverani is quite franc to state that not all of these questions can be answered in an equivocal way, not now and perhaps not ever.

Still, it is striking that the author makes a point in formulating his own view on all of these issues, based on a reasonable argumentation. For instance, he has a clear preference for speaking of a multi-factorial transition in the evolution to a complex society (or state), rather than an univocal urban revolution (term calibrated by Vere Gordon Childe). Liverani constantly emphasizes the diversity of developments: the dynamics that started in Uruk, for example, were very different from those in other city-states. This Uruk dynamic was mainly due to the introduction of the system of elongated fields that allowed for a fine-meshed system of irrigation (in grooves), rather than by flooding an entire field; this required central planning and coordination, as well as the use of corvee (volunteered or forced labor), factors that undoubtedly accelerated the evolution towards a complex society, in which the temple administration initially played a central role. This resulted in a food surplus based on the cultivation of barley (more resistant to salinization) and a commercial surplus through the massive processing of wool. But here too Liverani leaves room for a great deal of diversity, both in the geographical distribution, the centralization of agricultural and textile production, and in the social composition of the various urban centers.

This is perhaps more a book for specialists, people who are already more or less familiar with the various debates that are going on around the development of the earliest civilizations. Due to its theoretical content and the dense writing style, it will certainly deter the average reader. But if Liverani has made anything clear to me, it is that Graeber and Wengrow in their much lauded [b:The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity|56269264|The Dawn of Everything A New History of Humanity|David Graeber|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1617072525l/56269264._SX50_.jpg|87659801] are absolutely not the first ones to criticize the simple, univocal model of urban revolution. Rating 3.5 stars.