4 THINGS THAT SCARE ADULTS

3 THINGS THAT SCARE ADULTS

WORSE THAN GHOSTS When adults are worried and kids ask why, adults often reply, "You'll understand when you're older." How often have you been told that? Apparently, there are some scary things in the world that kids can't understand. That's a bit strange. After all, kids can see everything adults see and touch everything adults touch—so what are these things that kids can't see or touch that scare adults so much?

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Many of these things didn't exist in the time of ancient gatherers. When a gatherer worried about something and her kid asked, "Mom, why are you so worried?" the gatherer rarely replied, "You'll understand when you grow up" because most things that made gatherers worried could be explained to their kids: "I'm worried because your sister is sick. I'm worried because there's a storm coming. I'm worried because we saw a lion prowling nearby." Agriculture made life more complicated. When lots of people started living together, the villages and towns offered them protection from storms and lions, but this also created new worries— complicated ones! For example, one of the things that scare adults most is called taxes. Children are afraid of ghosts and monsters. Adults are scared of taxes. If you wanted to play a practical joke on your parents, you might dress up as a ghost and go "Wooo!" in the middle of the night. Your parents would probably just laugh. But if you said, "Mom, while you were away this guy called and said he wanted to talk with you. I think he said he was from the tax authority or something…." Watch out! Your mother might become very scared indeed! What exactly are taxes, and why are they so frightening? And why did adults develop fears they didn't have before? It has something to do with living in bigger places like cities and kingdoms and how that made life more complicated. You don't really have to grow up to understand these worries. But you do have to know a few things about how agriculture created the first cities and kingdoms. LUGAL-BANDA AND LUGAL-KINISHE-DUDU When people started farming, they lived in small villages. One village had 60 people, another had 100, and the really big villages had perhaps 300. As farmers burned more forests, sowed more fields,

raised more sheep, and had more kids, some villages grew into towns with thousands of people. The towns also grew bigger over time. In places such as the Middle East, India, China, and Mexico, cities with tens of thousands of people appeared. These cities often had strong walls, big temples, and a beautiful palace where a king lived. Some of the kings ruled not only one city but an entire kingdom, which included many towns and villages. Where did these kings come from? Some of the priests and chiefs of old times became more and more powerful, until they were kings. In an ancient village or small town, when an important decision had to be made, all the people would meet, and everybody would say what they thought about the matter. People respected what the local priests and chiefs said but didn't always agree with them. But in the big new cities, there were so many people that it was difficult for all of them to meet in one place and hear what each person had to say. One of the first cities in the world was called Uruk. It was on the banks of the Euphrates River, in the land of Sumer, which is now in southern Iraq. Some 50,000 people lived in Uruk… and it was difficult for 50,000 people to make decisions together. For example, suppose a group of warriors from another Sumerian city—Lagash—came to steal grain and sheep from the fields around Uruk. What should the Urukians do? Should they stay safely inside the city, defend its walls, and allow the Lagashians to steal what they want? Should they go out to fight the Lagashians? Or should they try to make peace with the Lagashians, offering them some grain and sheep? If each one of the 50,000 Urukians took five minutes to put

forward their view, just listening to all these ideas would take 250,000 minutes, which adds up to 173 days! By the time everybody finished explaining and discussing their ideas, the Lagashians would have taken every grain of wheat and every last lamb in Uruk. So when an important decision like this had to be made, the Urukians didn't let everybody speak. They chose a few wise people to lead them. These leaders met in a small council that could decide things quickly. But if these leaders quarreled and couldn't agree, they went to the big chief who led the warriors of Uruk in times of war, asked him what to do, and obeyed whatever he said. If that big chief made more and more decisions on his own, he might eventually become king. We know the names of many kings of Uruk. They had names like Lugal-banda, Lugal-kisalsi, and Lugal-kinishe-dudu. The kings of neighboring Sumerian cities had similar names, like Lugal-sha-engur of Lagash and Lugal-zage-si of Umma. Why were they all called lugal-something? In the language of Sumer, lu meant "man" and gal meant "big." So lugal meant "big man." NEFERIRKARE-KAKAI AND TUTANKHAMEN The lugals thought they were the biggest men in the world. Lugalzage-si of Umma even boasted that he ruled the entire world! That was nonsense. Most people in the world had never even heard of Sumer and all these lugals. Many people still lived in bands of gatherers or in small towns where everybody made all the decisions together and there was no lugal. Other people lived in kingdoms that existed far from Sumer, each with its own "big man." More than 1,000 kilometers to the west of Sumer, there was a particularly big kingdom called Egypt, which was ruled by "big men" called pharaohs.