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"The Sumerian school was known as edubba, "tablet house." Its original goal was what we would term "professional," that is, it was established for the purpose of training the scribes necessary to satisfy the economic and administrative needs of the land, primarily, of course, those of temple and palace."
Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character, p. 230
(Citation for "Between the Rivers, Before the State.")
"Between 4500 and 4300 B.C. several Halafian settlements in northern Mesopotamia were abandoned, while in many others the tholoi and the painted pottery typical of the Halaf culture were gradually replaced by square houses and by another type of pottery which bears the name of Ubaid..."
"It has recently been proved by neutron activation analysis that this attractive pottery was manufactured in large quantities in certain specialized centers, such as Arpachiyah, Tell Brak, Chagar Bazar and Tell Halaf, and exported to specific settlements from which it gradually reached more distant places. The people who transported this ware (perhaps on the back of cattle or on ox-drawn sledges) presumably returned loaded with such 'luxury' goods as marine shells, gem stones and particularly obsidian, which is predominant in most Halafian sites."
Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq, p. 58
(Citation for "Between the Rivers, Before the State.")
"...in an area where rain is scarce they were the first to practice a primitive form of irrigation agriculture, using the Tigris floods to water their fields and grow wheat, barley and linseed. The yield must have been substantial if the large and empty buildings found at various levels were really 'granaries' as has been suggested."
Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq, p. 54. Section titled, "The Samarra Period."
(Citation for "Between the Rivers, Before the State.")
"...minute stone or clay discs with a loop at the back, engraved with straight lines or criss-cross patterns. These objects, probably worn on a string around the neck, may have been impressed as a mark of ownership on lumps of clay fastened to baskets or to jar stoppers, in which case they would represent the earliest examples of the stamp-seal, and the stamp-seal is the forerunner of the cylinder-seal, a significant element of Mesopotamian civilization."
Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq, p. 51. Section titled, "The Hassuna Period."
(Citation for "Between the Rivers, Before the State.")
"Thus, around 7000 B.C. in northern Iraq and in other parts of the Near East man ceases to be a wandering hunter depending for his living upon his luck and skill and becomes a farmer attached to the small piece of land from which he obtains a regular food supply" (...)
Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq, p. 45
"...coarse, lightly fire clay vessels have been found at Mureybet, in northern Syria, in a level dated c. 8000 B.C. by a radiocarbon sample, and at Ganj Dareh, an eight millennium site in western Iran. Similar vessels also occur at Jarmo [Iraq], c 6300 B.C., but they already coexist with a decorated pottery characterized by lines of oblique tadpole-shaped blobs painted in red on a pinkish-buff surface, also found at the contemporary site of Tepe Guran."
Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq, p. 46
(Citation for "Between the Rivers, Before the State.")
"At Tell Mureybet, located on the great bend of the Euphrates, American, then French archaeologists have revealed evidence of continuous occupation for more than 1,300 years (from before 8600 to 7300 B.C.) and divided into three phases. The phase I settlement was a camp of hunters and fishers using the 'Natufian' type of stone tools that was then common in the whole of Syria and Palestine. In Phase II, this camp had become a village of round houses built of pressed mud (tauf in Arabic), and in phase III these round houses had partly been replaced by wider, multi-roomed rectangular houses built of limestone blocks."
Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq, p. 41. Section titled "Mesolithic."
(Citation for "Between the Rivers, Before the State.")
"The Paleolithic men of Iraq were not isolated. Through the Syrian desert - where Stone Age artifacts have been found in various places - they were in contact with the Palaeolithic men of Syria-Palestine, and it is not by chance that the flint industries of the two countries have some features in common. They also had commercial intrcourse with the Anatolian plateau and the Iranian highlands."
George Roux, Ancient Iraq, p. 39.
(Citation for "Between the Rivers, Before the State.")