14. How does Wood characterize this civilization and why?

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Michael Wood characterized Sumer as "a center of economic and political life. It depended on international trade, on a diversified economy and on thoroughgoing control of the environment. It used writing and written law to record and order transactions involving large numbers of its population. Theirs was a pluralist society, as far as we can tell, multiracial from its earliest period. In tone, it was pessimistic civilization, albeit a confident pessimism: a vision deeply rooted in a harsh landscape where all the people worked for was often destroyed by war or nature, and still is." Wood refers to it as a huge driving force in history, and a civilizations that caused some of the biggest events in human history.

Michael Wood

Image Citation: http://www.alc.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/history/our-people/michael-wood/

Sources:

http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?ParagraphID=avf

Manual Pages 102