Tonight, travel back more than six thousand years to the plains of ancient Mesopotamia, where a settlement beside the rivers slowly became something the human world had scarcely seen before: a true city.

This is the story of Uruk — one of the earliest and greatest urban centers in history.

Follow its long transformation from fields, canals, mud-brick houses, and small farming communities into a vast city of temples, craftsmen, administrators, merchants, and thousands of strangers learning to live together. Discover how the demands of urban life helped encourage new systems of organization, accounting, monumental architecture, and some of the earliest known writing.

We’ll wander through the temples of Inanna, the world of early scribes, the distant trade networks connected with Uruk, the rise of kingship, the legends surrounding  ...