Historical Nonfiction

Sumerians: Not The Best Builders

Ancient Sumer, one of the dominant cities in ancient Mesopotamia, was on a floodplain with no natural minerals or lumber. All buildings were made with mud brick. These bricks were rounded, because apparently making rectangular bricks was just too difficult. Furthermore, they did not use mortar or anything more complicated than  reeds and prayers to hold the bricks together. Understandably, walls made with these bricks tended to be unstable. So every few rows, bricklayers were put in a layer of bricks perpendicular to the rest, and even that wasn’t enough. They buildings had to be periodically destroyed and rebuilt. This happened so much that the city of Sumer measurably rose on the debris. There are hills they created still stand today, and are called tells.

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    Please have someone edit these posts. This was painful to read.

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