The Evolution of Sumerian Command Structure Around 4000 BC the whole community acted a bit like an extended family, probably answering to one man at the top. However by 3000 BC we were starting to see more complex civilization, with the population divided into more job-specific strata (farmers, artisans, priests, and soldiers for home-defense, and probably a ruling “family” and their extended in-laws). By 2000 BC they had become trading city-states --- they depended on things like tin coming in over the Tin Road from Afghanistan, to give them their Bronze alloys. They traded by sea with Dilmun, some 300 miles away. They would even mark tin up and resell it far to the north. One record of the time talks of 80 tons of tin, that went north as far as Anatolia. Tin, Gold, Lapis Lazuli and cedars (fine wood) were all worth about the same price per pound in those days.

But this doesn’t give us mean we should think of a city-state as being organized like a Republican Rome --- they were still more like an early version of a benign Italian City-state like Venice of 1500, with a central ruling family and a priestly caste that wanted their tithe. The pressures of a lot of people (comparatively speaking) living in a restricted space (the size of New Jersey, bordered as it was by two great rivers) triggered serious disputes that usually centered around land and water (or the irrigation canals). By 2000 BC there were about 30 such significant cities, which aligned themselves into one of a half-dozen master city-states (Larsa, Isin, Lagash, and Babylon, to name a few). The largest of these Sumerian city-states might have had a population of about 50,000 or so, which suggests they might have fielded a maximum of about 5000 soldiers for a cataclysmic battle, and probably fielded a lot less for any smaller battles.

Commands were passed along through various leaders --- leaders of 60, leaders of 10. This is thought to have been a hold-over from the work-gangs that the conscript soldiers belonged to. Yesterday we were a group of 10 canal-repair men, and today, we are a file in a 60-man Larsa battlegroup.