Mesopotamia - Return to Eden is part of the series Time Life's Lost Civilizations. Unlike other documentaries I've watched on Mesopotamia, this had a theme connecting Bible passages to actual events and places, leading up to the search for Eden.
I liked it. I felt, for some reason, melancholy after watching. Something spiritual. Of losing the garden, and hence losing paradise and innocence. Man within nature, becomes man outside of nature. Gilgamesh's story is very much like Adam's. The snake in the paradise that is Dilmun. The snake steals away the flower that bestows immortality, and so Gilgamesh had to leave the garden to die. There's speculation Dilmun must have been Bahrain. There are humans bones there, leaving evidence of bigger, healthier humans, living in lush paradise.
I can't help but think of agriculture, ecological degradation, permaculture. Humanity's awareness of itself, coinciding with the rise of agriculture. Agriculture giving the stability for the rise of civilization, and with civilization, is humanity's growing awareness of itself. It is the apple bitten, the flower taken.
The Sumerians and other ancient people were very religious. Then and now, people aspire for eternity. Our minds being able to plan and predict, something very few animals can do. And with this, we can predict our own demise. With our eyes open, there's sadness in the knowledge, that this will also end. And the grand burial chambers and hoards of all the great mighty ancient kings, merely showed their vulnerability, because they too feared of being taken back to the eternity of nonexistence.
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