The most important lumps of dry mud in history

There's no two ways around it. This is a video about small pieces of clay and some pebbles. That's just what the video is about. No doubt the algorithm will love this.

But honestly, honestly, I have come to believe that these are the most important pieces of dry mud in all of human history. I don't think that's an exaggeration. Let me show you something. This is one of the earliest tablets, earliest pieces of writing we [music] have.

It's about 5,000 years old from Iraq. And it's written in a very early form of cuneaoiform. It seemingly [music] belonged to a person called Kushim, who might just be the earliest name ever recorded, which is crazy. The tablet records a transaction of 135,000 L of barley to be delivered over 37 months.

It's pretty crazy. Pretty incredible. How incredible is it to say the name of someone who lived over 5,000 years ago? I absolutely love that.

Now, although this tablet seems basic to us, it's already pretty advanced. There were so many symbols for different things and like this was written by a literate society. Something must have come first. Something must have been earlier.

Those little lumps of mud, those little lumps of clay is what archaeology believes [music] were earlier. Not only were they probably responsible for writing, but they might have invented other things that we've come to love, like board [music] games and powerful bureaucracies that govern every aspect of our lives. You know, the things we love. Let's see how these little lumps of mud changed the world because they really did.

[music] A place called Now I'm going to struggle with the pronunciation. For some reason, my mouth doesn't like making this sound. Is it Teepe Ga Ga? Ga.

>> Yes. Yep. Teepe Galra. It's one that Pen excavated.

So yeah, I want to talk about it because it's been a focus of my research in this kind of transitional period that I was talking about. So yeah, >> that's Dr. Brad Hafford. He's an expert in ancient trade and Mesopotamia, all cool things.

Uh he actually has his own archaeology YouTube channel. I'll put the link down below. We've made a companion video to this one all about the first standardized measurements. It just scratches the archaeology brain in just the right way.

Do go check it out. There's a ...