Civilization One: The World is Not as You Thought it Was (10 page)

The Akkadian dynasty lasted about a century, after which a people from the Zagros Mountains known as the Gutians sacked the city of Agade and eventually laid waste to the whole of Sumer. After several generations the Sumerians finally threw off the Gutian yoke, and the once-important city of Lagash again achieved prominence during the reign of Gudea, between 2144–2124
BC
. Gudea was an extraordinarily pious and capable governor who left numerous statues of himself that still survive.

From about 2000
BC
there was a slow change of phase that saw the decline of the Sumerian culture and the rise of what is called the Babylonian civilization, which flourished until the 6th century
BC
. The Babylonians modified and transformed their Sumerian heritage to suit their own culture and ethos, resulting in a way of life that was so efficient that it underwent relatively little change for about 1,200 years. The area called Mesopotamia by the Greeks is known as ‘the cradle of civilization’ and was home to the Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Chaldean cultures across thousands of years. It is difficult to isolate which achievements were made by each group because there was a continuous stream of development, particularly between the Sumerian and the Babylonian cultures. In many respects it is unnecessary to attempt to put clear divisions between these civilizations because they represent an evolution of the same mind-set.

The Sumerians are attributed with the development of mathematics. They used a combination of the base 10 and base 60 (sexagesimal) systems of counting as opposed to the simple base 10 or decimal system we use today. We are accustomed to thinking of 60 seconds to a minute and 60 minutes to an hour because our system of time derives from that of the Sumerians/Babylonians. By general consensus, the Sumerians are also attributed with inventing the idea of having a 360-degree circle, with each degree being subdivided into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds.

Our first thought at this point was of how similar the breakdown of the circle was between the Megalithic 366 degrees and the Sumerian 360 degrees. We wondered whether the Sumerians originally used the 366-degree system but made a small downward adjustment when they invented their base 60 arithmetic. After all, being able to divide the circle into 6 lots of 60 must have been much more useful to them. However, we soon found that there was much more to it that a simple rounding down of someone else’s system.

We had to remember that the number 360 was already important to the Megalithic builders because they had ‘6 lots of 60’ in their Earth-related geometry, in which 366 degrees was subdivided into 60 minutes and then into 6 seconds. This had been the method that had produced a second of arc of the polar equator that was 366 Megalithic Yards in length, which was also equal to precisely 1,000 Minoan feet. So, we already had some sense of continuity between the Megalithic people of Britain and the Sumerians, who existed at about the same period but were thousands of miles distant from each other.

The next logical step was to look into what is known of Sumerian units of measurement, beginning with length. Today we have hundreds of different units for all kinds of specialized purposes, and the Sumerians were not so different to ourselves. Also, as with our civilization, units changed over hundreds of years but despite these complications there was always one unit that was central to a culture in the same way that the metre is to Europe and the foot is to the United States. The Mesopotamian cultures used a range of linear measurements at various times, depending on the item being measured, but there is a general consensus that a linear unit known as the ‘kush’ or ‘barley cubit’ was the main unit of length during Sumerian times.

The kush was made up of 180 ‘se’ (believed to be pronounced something like ‘shay’) meaning ‘barley seed’. Six se equalled one ‘shu-si’, or hand, and 30 shu-si equalled one kush. It is known that the kush was very close to half a metre in length and there is now an almost exact definition of their kush, thanks to two of the statues of the Sumerian King Gudea, mentioned above. A number of diorite statues were unearthed in Mesopotamia by Ernest de Sarzec in 1880 and two of these statues show King Gudea in a seated position with a tablet on his lap inscribed with plans for a temple. Along the side of the statue, opposite the figure, is a graduated rule, carefully executed and clearly intended to be a half-kush. The length of this first-hand example of a Sumerian half-kush has been gauged to be approximately 24.97 centimetres, which would mean the Sumerian kush was equivalent to 49.94 centimetres and the often used double-kush, which Professor Livio Stecchini believed should be 99.88 centimetres.
¹

Unfortunately, we do not have a finely-honed definition of the double kush because there are not enough samples available (compared to Thom’s work or even that of Professor Graham) to extract one. We therefore took Professor Stecchini’s value as possibly the best estimate that exists. However, we can be certain that the double-kush was remarkably close to being a modern metre and, while we might once have ignored this as a coincidence, we were now open to considering that there just might be a connection.

The fact that the kush was composed of 180 se, or barley seeds, was of immediate interest, bearing in mind our discoveries about grain and the avoirdupois pound. This also meant that there were 360 se in the double-kush, which was virtually a metre. We asked an expert (see p. 243–244) if there was any available information regarding the smallest unit of Sumerian linear measurement. The expert, a professor of mathematics, told us that ‘the barley seed referred to as a se was not to be taken as a genuine barley seed because it was merely a convenient terminology used by the Sumerian scribes’. He went on to suggest that genuine barley seeds would be a fairly useless basis for any measuring system. We decided to see if this was the case. As far as we could ascertain, the barley seed has not changed a great deal since ancient Mesopotamian times, so we stuck a number of barley seeds together in rows, on adhesive tape, to see what they would measure. With the seeds end to end, there are certainly far fewer than 180 barley seeds to a barley cubit. However, when they are arranged side by side
(see Colour Plate section)
they measure exactly what the se is supposed to measure, 180 barley seeds (on average) to the kush. We mention this little exercise to demonstrate the folly of failing to take the words of our ancient ancestors seriously. These people most certainly would not have referred to a barley seed if they had been talking about something completely different. (See Appendix 6 for more information on our experiments with barley seeds.) This also meant that there were 360 se (barley seeds) in a double-kush and, if the double-kush were turned into a circle, each se would therefore be equal to one degree.

The Sumerians had been familiar not only with the kush or barley cubit, but had also regularly used the half-kush (as depicted on the Gudea statues) and the double-kush – just as the Megalithic builders had regularly used half, whole and double Megalithic Yards in their constructions.

It is standard practice to assume that all units of length used prior to the metric system were approximate measures based on body parts, and the cubit is often said to have been the length from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. While this may have been used as a market trader’s rough measure it seemed patently absurd to believe that such a consistently accurate unit was derived from anyone’s body parts. Such an idea is an insult to a people who were obviously highly talented and intelligent individuals. The question then arose: ‘What was the origin of the half, full and double-kush?’

Having already identified a foolproof process underpinning the Megalithic Yard, the natural starting point was to consider the Venus method. It is known that the Sumerians were great astronomers and they certainly invented geometry (attested to by the mathematical problems written into hundreds of clay tablets from the period), so they certainly had the ability to use the Venus technique. Again, we were in the happy position of being able to reverse-engineer the process. We could start with the supposed length of the half-kush from the Gudea statue for our hypothetical pendulum and work backwards to find out the possible equation that would have produced the desired result. First we needed to know at what rate a half-kush pendulum would beat and, by now we were very familiar with the formula for arriving at the period of time taken for any pendulum of a given length to swing. Alan looked at the half-kush, ran the pendulum formula through his calculator, then did it again before picking up the phone to Chris:

‘I’ve just checked out the swing of a half-kush pendulum,’ Alan announced without any preamble when Chris picked up the phone.

‘Is it interesting?’ Chris enquired.

‘Interesting? You want interesting – I’ll give you something interesting alright.’

‘Go on then,’ said Chris.

‘One second! The pendulum period is one second!’ he shouted triumphantly. ‘Assuming that Stecchini’s length of 99.88 is bang on, the time interval is actually 1.003 seconds, which is pretty damn close, don’t you think.’

‘Wow!’ Chris replied. ‘The Sumerians invented the second of time, and it now seems we may have uncovered the way they did it.’

To come out with a figure
away from a modern second seemed much more than a mere coincidence. The double-kush of 99.88 centimetres also returned exactly the same near-perfect fit, though in this case for one beat of the pendulum. (The
period
of a pendulum is the swing from one side to the other and back again, whereas the
beat
is the single movement from one side to the other.)

We felt justified in rejecting any notion that these Sumerian primary units of length coincidentally produced such a good fit to the Sumerian-devised second of time when used as a pendulum. It looked as though the kush and the second were two halves of the same phenomenon: the time period and length that were brought together by the acceleration (due to gravity) of the Earth at the latitude of Sumer. This realization is of great significance. Modern physics accepts that time and space (meaning linear distance) can be seen as different expressions of the same thing, which both the Megalithic peoples and the Sumerians seem to have known, at least at a mathematical level.

It did indeed seem that the Sumerians must have used the Megalithic technique of measuring the spin of the Earth by tracking and timing Venus. The question was: ‘What part of a circle was used and how many beats were counted?’ This should be easy to work out because we knew a great deal more about the inhabitants of the land of Sumer than we do about those of the British Isles at that time. We started with the logical assumption that they would have used one Sumerian/Babylonian degree and therefore
part of a circle – just as we would today. It was then a straightforward calculation to establish that the double-kush pendulum would achieve 120 periods or 240 beats in the time it took Venus to move through one degree. Therefore, a Sumerian builder could check his half-kush or double-kush employing exactly the same methodology as the Megalithic builder, though inputting the numbers that were important to his own civilization. The result was to define the second of time that is incredibly close to the one that we still use today, producing a result that was to all intents and purpose, the same as the metre.

The numbers were once again too neat to be a random event. This experiment using the half-kush and one degree of the Sumerian circle could easily have produced in any odd number. However, this was not the case, and the result clearly showed that the originators of the system had employed the Sumerian base number of 60. This was evident because 120 is twice 60 and 240 is 4 times 60. Added together they produce 360 – the number of degrees in a circle.

While this calculation made perfect sense to us, we needed to know if there was any record of the Sumerians/Babylonians using a period of time equal to 240 seconds as marked out by 240 beats of a double-kush pendulum. We soon found that their basic division of a day was known as a ‘gesh’ and – amazingly – it was 240 seconds in length! Everything fitted like a beautiful jigsaw puzzle!