The first known Democracies12.06.25

The Assyriologist and archaeologist Thorkild Jacobsen even spoke of forms of "primitive democracy" in ancient Mesopotamia. 150 In his detailed analyses of ancient Near Eastern myths and epics, as well as the political practices of the earliest Mesopotamian city-states, Jacobsen found evidence of local citizens' assemblies that were responsible for electing and removing officials, making judicial decisions, and debating and deciding issues of central importance to their community. These decentralized, horizontal forms of organization in the form of self-governing assemblies and citizens' councils spread from the Syrian-Mesopotamian region both eastward to the Indian subcontinent (where they were documented from 1600 BCE onwards), and westward to the Mediterranean coasts, particularly Phoenicia and Greece. 151
From a Eurocentric perspective, it is logical to locate the actual cradle of democracy in the Syrian-Mesopotamian region, since a rich repertoire of horizontal and grassroots forms of organization emerged here. From such a perspective, however, these self-governing assemblies and councils are only primitive precursors of a development that reached its culmination in ancient Athens with the concept of democracy.

https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL1138406A/Thorkild_Jacobsen

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The first known Democracies12.06.25

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