http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E73%257E1132351,00.html

As the nation comes ever closer to war with Iraq, Americans should take a
closer look at our prospective foe ...

The cradle of civilization

By Kit Miniclier
Denver Post staff writer

Sunday, January 26, 2003 - While President Bush describes Iraq as the "axis
of evil" and the lair of a defiant Saddam Hussein, young American military
cadets are learning that it is also the cradle of Western civilization.

At the same time, worried scholars are compiling a list of major Iraqi
archaeological sites - with their map coordinates - and urging the Pentagon
to avoid them.

"It is an ironic twist of fate to stand on the remains of a city in
southern Iraq where the civilized world began and realize it could all end
right there as well," cautions historian Bradley Parker.

"Iraq is the cradle of Western civilization. It is how we came to be what
we are. Mesopotamia was the center of the universe" 5,000 years ago, adds
Parker, who teaches ancient Near Eastern history and archaeology at the
University of Utah.

"Mesopotamia was the oldest civilization anywhere on this planet. It is
older than China or the Americas," adds history professor Michael Cook of
Princeton University.

The area produced the first form of writing in the Western world; wheeled
vehicles; cultivated and irrigated crops; domesticated livestock; the
calendar; mathematics; and astronomers and philosophers who laid the
groundwork for future Greek thinkers.

Some biblical scholars even suggest it is the site of Adam and Eve's Garden
of Eden and the birthplace of Abraham.

As combat troops once again leave nearby Fort Carson for the Persian Gulf,
freshman cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs are
receiving a thought-provoking lecture from their history teacher:
"President Bush speaks of the need to 'defend civilization,"' Lt. Col. Dave
Kirkham tells his students.

"Then I point out the irony of defending civilization against the cradle of
civilization," adds Kirkham, deputy director for international history at
the academy. Kirkham says ancient Mesopotamia, which covered modern-day
Iraq, "is deemed to be where it all started."

The city-states of antiquity flourished in Mesopotamia, in the Fertile
Crescent, the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that included
what is now Iraq.

The practice of growing grain had spread from the Fertile Crescent to the
north, then west to the Atlantic and east to the Pacific by the time of
Jesus Christ. Nomadic hunter-gatherers first settled in villages and began
raising crops in the area more than 1,100 years before the first pyramid
was built in Egypt.

Americans might "think twice about going to war with Iraq" if they realized
its historic significance, says veteran archaeologist McGuire Gibson of the
University of Chicago's Oriental Institute. "People don't understand that
Iraq is more important than Egypt in world heritage. The whole country is
an archaeological site."

Ur, believed to be the Western world's first city, flourished in
Mesopotamia about 5,500 years ago. Its famed temple, or ziggurat, to the
moon god was damaged during the Gulf War of 1991. Allied forces left four
massive bomb craters, including one within the temple complex, and 400
bullet holes in the temple walls, Gibson says.

Sumerians

The Sumerians, the earliest known inhabitants of Mesopotamia, were living
in independent city-states more than 6,000 years ago. By 3200 B.C., they
had invented the earliest form of Western writing - cuneiform - using a
sharp-pointed stylus to inscribe wedge-shaped characters in soft clay
tablets.

Mistakes could be corrected with a smudge of a finger. Upon completion, the
tablets were baked to preserve them. It took years to become an
accomplished scribe because the Sumerian alphabet had about 550 different
characters.

One of the oldest works of literature in existence is "The Epic of
Gilgamesh," a long, narrative Sumerian poem about Gilgamesh, a king of Uruk
in Babylonia about 2700 B.C.

For centuries, scholars hailed cuneiform as the world's first written
language. Now they believe writing, wheels, irrigation and other advances
were developed independently in China, India, Central America and Egypt,
perhaps coinciding with the development of cuneiform.

However, the Sumerians are still credited with dividing the hour into 60
minutes and a circle into 360 degrees while they were developing basic
algebra and geometry.

Babylon

The civilization of Mesopotamia flourished for about 2,600 years under an
ever-changing series of rulers.

The Babylonian King Hammurabi (1795-1750 B.C.) is best remembered for "The
Code of Hammurabi," believed to be the first major set of laws in recorded
history.

Proclaiming the principle of "an eye for an eye," it decreed the death
penalty for contractors whose buildings collapsed and killed anyone.
Surgeons also were held responsible. They faced the amputation of a hand if
a patient of high status died after surgery.

The code also set wages, limited interest rates on loans, permitted women
to own property and engage in business, and provided harsher punishments
for offenses against priests or members of the nobility.

Beer was one of ancient Mesopotamia's many inventions, dating back nearly
6,000 years. It was liberally rationed according to one's status in life.
The elite were permitted five liters a day, lesser folk only two.

Fifty years after Hammurabi's death, the Babylonian Empire was overthrown
by Hittites. More than 500 years later the Assyrians took over.

The most powerful, aggressive and creative ruler was King Nebuchadnezzar
(605-562 B.C.). His military leadership expanded the empire of Babylon from
the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. He captured Jerusalem, defeated
Egypt and conquered Syria and Palestine.

Nebuchadnezzar also oversaw the rebuilding of the mud brick walls and
buildings of old Babylon, as well as the rebuilding and strengthening of
its life-giving canals and waterways.

At the same time, he created the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Legend has it that the lush gardens,
fed by an elaborate irrigation system and towering 300 feet above the
ground, were created to please his wife, who came from a faraway, hilly
country.

In 539 B.C., the army of Cyrus the Great, which included fearful war
elephants and chariots equipped with leg-chopping scythes, captured
Babylon. Cyrus, founder of the Persian Empire, entered the walled city
without a fight.

More than 200 years later, in 331 B.C., history repeated itself as
Alexander the Great marched into Babylon unchallenged. Alexander, then just
33 years old, was pleased that he didn't need to besiege the city. Instead,
he led his troops over a road ceremoniously covered with welcoming flowers
and garlands. He died there eight years later.

Eleven years later, the Greek Seleucid Dynasty conquered Mesopotamia and
moved the commercial center from Babylon to Seleucia.

That touched off off more than 1,000 years of conflict over Mesopotamia
between Greeks, Romans and Persians before a new center of Mesopotamia was
created northeast of Babylon.

The birth of Baghdad

Founded in the year A.D. 762, Baghdad was sacked and looted in A.D. 1258,
234 years before Christopher Columbus reached the "new world." see map

Located in the middle of ancient Mesopotamia, Baghdad flourished for 496
years and was the biggest city in the world west of China. Christened
"Paris of the Orient" by latter-day historians, Baghdad was a major center
of learning and a crossroad of ideas and trade between East and West.

It quickly became the spiritual, political, intellectual and cultural hub
of the Islamic world, which had captured all of Mesopotamia, Iran and parts
of central Asia, Spain and Egypt by A.D. 711.

By the ninth century, when Europe was in the Dark Ages, the caliph of
Baghdad built a "House of Wisdom" for students, scholars and scribes. A
magnet for thinkers and scholars, it became the Oxford, Cambridge or
Harvard of its day.

In the House of Wisdom, ideas were freely discussed and literature from
across the known world, brought in by camel caravan or sailing dhow, was
preserved, studied and translated.

Cultural diversity was truly celebrated in what Iraqis refer to as the
Golden Age of Learning about A.D. 800. Christians, Jews, Muslims and
"infidels" discussed the merits of their religious, racial and ethnic
beliefs in public debates.

Debaters weren't permitted to read from scripture or shout down opponents.
Instead, they had to mount arguments based on reason, following a protocol
which pre-dated Roberts Rules of Order by eons.

Eventually, control of Baghdad became a bone of contention between warring
factions. In A.D. 945, people from the Caspian region known as Buyids took
control and left the old rulers to provide a powerless symbol of unity and
legitimate government for the Muslim community.

When the Mongols attacked the city in A.D. 1258, they slaughtered an
estimated 800,000 people, says Ahmad Dallal, associate professor of Middle
Eastern history at Stanford University.

During the slaughter, the Tigris River "ran black" with the ink from
hundreds of thousands of destroyed books, Dallal added.

Control of the area constantly changed for the next 400 years as Turks,
Mongols and Persians repeatedly captured and lost territory. The Ottoman
Empire finally conquered what is now Iraq in A.D. 1640.

Friend or foe?

Violent "regime change," invasions, wars, revolts and massacres have been a
way of life for 6,000 years in Mesopotamia.

When Turkey entered World War I on the side of Germany, the British invaded
Mesopotamia in 1914. When Britain marched on Baghdad in 1915 to protect
future oil fields from the Germans, its army was roundly defeated, twice.

England suffered 23,000 casualties in five months. An additional 10,000
British and Indian troops surrendered unconditionally in what was then the
most humiliating defeat of the British Empire.

It took three years, and disastrous defeats at Ctesiphon and Kut Al Amara,
before the British captured Baghdad.

During World War I, the British promised the Arabs national independence if
they revolted against the Turks. The Arabs agreed to fight the Turks - but
then the British reneged. Enraged by the betrayal and continued military
occupation, the Iraqis rebelled in 1920 and Britain rushed in
reinforcements from India, Iran and England.

Iraq was established as a pro-British monarchy in 1922 and gained
independence in 1932.

"The modern problems of the Middle East go back to a couple of bad
diplomatic decisions during World War I," says Melvin C. Smith, a civilian
instructor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. "The British and
French promised a Palestinian homeland, as well as a Jewish state," in
return for a second front against the Turks, Smith says.

Instead, the British and French took control of the Middle East, including
Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq. After putting down an anti-British
revolt in 1920, Britain effectively controlled Iraq for 38 years, until the
monarchy it installed was toppled in 1958.

The creation of the Jewish state of Israel in 1948, without the
long-promised Palestinian state, sparked a series of wars, beginning with
the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.

Eight years later, France, Great Britain and Israel invaded Egypt. Then
Israel attacked Egypt, Syria and Jordan in the Six-Day War of June 1967.

On Oct. 6, 1973, Egyptian and Syrian forces attacked Israel in the Ramadan,
or Yom Kippur, War. Then Israel invaded Lebanon in 1983. Iraq played a role
directly, or indirectly, in each of them.

Iraq's first commercial oil began flowing in the 1920s, but not before
British and American firms gained control of both oil production and
profits. The oil fields were seized by Iraq 45 years later.

Adjacent Kuwait, with the world's third-largest oil reserves after Saudi
Arabia and Iraq, was a British protectorate for 74 years before becoming an
independent sheikhdom in 1961.

Oil revenues helped Iraq build a modern education system to achieve a 70
percent literacy rate. At the same time, health care increased life
expectancy to 69 for women and 66 for men.

However, in 1980, within a year of seizing power, Saddam Hussein diverted
oil revenues to launch a war against Iran. Historians estimate there were
375,000 Iraqi casualties during that eight-year war.

Iraqi health authorities say more than 1.2 million citizens died during and
after the 1991 Gulf War, in part because of health problems caused or
aggravated by U.N. sanctions.

Washington doesn't talk about it, but the United States strongly supported
Hussein during his war against Iran.

"Iraq acquired the means to manufacture weapons of mass destruction and the
means to wage chemical and biological warfare because of the United States"
and others who supported Hussein at the time, notes British historian Peter
Sluglett.

Any American invasion must be followed by several years of occupation in
order to be as effective as the seven-year occupation of Japan after World
War II, Sluglett adds.

As Washington beats the drums of war, the world no longer sees the United
States as "the good guys," says Yitzhak Nakash, Israel-born director of
Islamic and Middle East Studies at Brandeis University.

Nor is modern-day Iraq a cradle of modern civilization. Saddam Hussein has
created "a culture of death" by elevating "the value of death over life,"
says David Kazzaz, a native Iraqi who is a research associate at the
University of Denver.

"The culture of death becomes a weapon of mass destruction. The
Palestinians, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden use it," adds Kazzaz.

The cradle of Western civilization

Historians and archaeologists agree that the cradle of Western civilization
is the Fertile Crescent, or the land between the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers known as Mesopotamia. It covered modern-day Iraq. Virtually all of
the requisites for Western civilization were developed in the city-states
of ancient Mesopotamia, beginning in 8000 to 6000 B.C. They spread north to
Greece, west to Rome and on to what became the British Isles, as well as
east to the Orient.

Although Mesopotamia was credited for centuries with producing the first
writing system, scholars have concluded that writing and other innovations
in science and the arts were being developed independently in ancient times
in China, India, Central America and Egypt.

Among the firsts:

Cultivation of grains (8000 B.C.)
Writing (cuneiform) (3200 B.C.)
Wheeled vehicles (3200-3100 B.C.)
Mathematics
Astronomy
Calendars
Dividing the day into 24 hours
Religion
Irrigation techniques, canals, dams
Domestication of livestock
Plows
Metal working
Beer
Architecture
City building
Urban plumbing
Legal system (The Code of Hammarubi)
Preservation of literature ("The Epic of Gilgamesh")
Medical writings (2100 B.C.)
Cobblestone streets
Laws regarding liability of surgeons (1700 B.C.)
Measuring and surveying instruments
Bleaching and dying of fabrics
Pottery

Christopher (Kit) Miniclier was Associated Press bureau chief in Cairo
during the Yom Kippur, or Ramadan, War of 1973. He worked in Africa, the
Middle East and Asia for AP before joining The Denver Post in 1978. He can
be reached at kminiclier@....