Posted on Monday 28 October 2002

[link]

For decades, people have used computers to model present-day realities and fantasies. Engineers and scientists design cars and predict the weather with them, while video gamers have propelled the game The Sims, which allows the design of simulated human lives to play out on a screen, to become the best-selling computer game of the 21st century.

Now Tony Wilkinson, Research Associate and Associate Professor in the Oriental Institute and Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, along with colleagues spanning the sciences and humanities, wants to apply this technology to ancient Mesopotamia. If the simulations work as desired, his team will be able to test how and why the first civilizations were born, lived and died.

Wilkinson is a Briton whose soft-spoken manner is belied by the ambition of his project. “It will be a bit like Sim City, but real,” he said. The difference between the Oriental Institute project and a computer game lies not just in the sophistication of the model, but the fact that the database is history itself, and the results will be a new window into its causes. “We’ll run the model to see if we can grow Mesopotamian cities and test the results against archaeological data,” Wilkinson noted.

Read on...