As for the identity of the invaders, the researchers point to debris that indicates if members of the Uruk culture of southern Mesopotamia weren't the ones attacking, they certainly swooped in immediately afterward and took over the city. Either way, they were probably on a quest for the region's raw materials.
Elsewhere at the site, archaeologists believe they've found clues to why urban life began at Hamoukar.
A massive area, the size of a golf course, is scattered with thousands of pieces of obsidian, a type of rock used to produce tools and weapons. It also contains debris that "tells us that they are not just using these tools here, they are making them here," Salam al-Kuntar, the Syrian co-director of the expedition, said in a statement.
Using pottery fragments for dating purposes, the researchers theorize the area could have been a place where obsidian tools were produced hundreds of years before the ferocious battle.
The discovery could also help explain how civilizations developed in different regions of the Fertile Crescent, Reichel said.
It is accepted that in the south, urban society developed in response to the need for organized labor to support the irrigation-based agriculture. The findings from Hamoukar — which was on a key trade route linking modern-day Turkey to southern Mesopotamia — suggest that civilization could have developed there to tap into the market for mass-produced goods (such as obsidian tools).
Guillermo Algaze, a professor of anthropology at the University of California at San Diego, has researched Mesopotamian archaeology and early civilizations. He follows the findings at Hamoukar, but did not participate in the dig.
He said the existence of Hamoukar and the nearby Syrian city of Tell Brak prove that early development of Mesopotamia occurred independently in the north and south, which is contrary to traditional scholastic belief. Previously, civilization in the north of the region was thought to have developed under the influence of urban areas in the south.
Still, the outcome of the battle at Hamoukar in 3,500 B.C. helped change the trajectory of the region, with southern Mesopotamia becoming the dominant force, home to ancient kingdoms such as Babylonia.
