[wqaatwt]

I think it’s more about the cost and complexity of finding anything than trying to somehow imply that the societies living there were inferior.

We already know relatively little about Neolithic Europe despite there being major cities there that rivaled or eclipsed those in Mesopotamia in population. Yet we hardly know anything about them in comparison because they used perishable materials for almost everything (and it’s not only because of writing). Finding anything useful underwater makes that many times harder.

[nukem222]

> We already know relatively little about Neolithic Europe despite there being major cities there that rivaled or eclipsed those in Mesopotamia in population.

What are you referring to? I could certainly imagine such a thing but I can't say I've ever heard of someone finding evidence of a city that matches this description.

[wqaatwt]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Europe_(archaeology)

e.g. Maidanetske site could have had 20-40k inhabitants. Uruk possibly only reached that population centuries later.

But of course accurate estimates of this and other similar sites are very tricky.