Ur

music and vocals by David Byrne from 1991

Ur is the name of the most ancient urban civilization known to historians.

It was in existence around 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, in the fertile Mesopotamian Crescent, in what is now Iraq, and their culture endured for centuries.

Their spoken language is unknown, but they had symbolic writing, mathematics and advanced metalworking, as seen by the gold dagger. They constructed pyramid-like ziggurats as tributes to their many gods. We do not know where they came from, but they called themselves 'the people of black heads' suggesting either that they came from North Africa or Central Asia.

The vocals in this piece of music are not in any language and have no formal meaning, but represent the earliest primordial awakening of human civilization.