Other men and womenwent off to distant lands and set up smaller versions of Uruk,certainly keeping in touch with home through messengers, andpresumably sending goods that could be useful to their mothercities.
Can one discern specific colonialist policies that the Uruk had as their culture spread in the Ancient Near East?
The sign for “food” (also for“bread”) in proto-cuneiform is the shape of a beveled-rim bowl.
The people of Uruk started out with at least thirteen differentnumerical systems; they counted differently depending on what theywere counting, and the signs indicated different numbers fordifferent commodities. And about 30 percent of the signs they firstcreated to represent nouns had no later equivalents, so scholars donot know how to read them.