Neolithic HillbilliesGhost Writers in the SkyFertile Crescent Rising |
Neolithic Hillbillies LyricsNow, listen to a story 'bout a man named Ugh
He didn't have house or a lamp or a rug He hunted and he gathered every day for his food And the weapons that he used were wooden and crude Big wooden clubs, that is Stone tipped spears It's hard to have a household when your dinner runs away It's hard to start a city when you move from day to day It's hard to write down all the things you know that you should save When you're waking, eating, sleeping, living; holed up in a cave. Migratin', that is Following food One day Ugh decided that he'd finally had enough The hunting and the gathering was really rather rough He's had his fill of his last kill and left it for a vulture He found a fertile field and invented agriculture Farming, that is Food that stays put. He domesticated cattle so he'd have some milk and meat Made a house and clothes to wear in the times of cold and heat He dug a dozen ditches all to irrigate his farm Turned all his spears to plowshares and then built a big, brown barn For storing food, that is He had more than enough. Ghost Writers in the SkyWhen wedge-shaped writing first was born
They wrote it with a weed And it was called cuneiform They just used clay and reeds Egyptians needed holy writ Some carvings of their own And thus invented hieroglyphs To put on Rose Etta's Stone. Yippie-ki-oooohhhh Yippie-ki-yaaaaaay Ghost Writers in the sky The Chinese chose their letters well The future for to see They carved them into broken bones And inside fortune cookies The ancients wrote with images With pictographic words Then came phonetic alphabets For each symbol, sounds were heard. Semitic scribes inscribed their lines Without A, E, I, O or U The Phoenicians took their phonetics And papyrus from Byblos too. The Greeks grabbed the alpha-bet And added vowel signs The Latin warriors sacked the Greeks And made their Roman rhymes From Rome it spread the whole world o'er And comes to us today We use these signs in all our books In all we write and say. When u im or txt ur friends Or l-o-l ur laughs Remember, those emoticons Are only pictographs. Fertile Crescent Rising LyricsI see a fertile crescent rising
Right where Iraq is today Between the river's fertile fields Mesopotamia In ancient Sumer, walls were built Made of sun baked clay At Uruk, ruled by Gilgamesh Whose friend, Enkidu, passed away. Chorus: Sing with me if you're able Of civilization's cradle A fertile crescent's on the rise. Then came Akkad and Sargon sacked The Sumer city-state Knocked down the walls and made them thralls Or dealt a deadly fate. A ziggurat was made for Marduk In Babel he abode So he gave Lex Talionis And Hammurabi's Code The witty Hitties waged their wars With iron swords and spears In chariots they charged their foes Who wept great Turkey tears Beware the bold Assyrians They're torturers and crooks To Ashur take your nose and eyes To Ninevah your books Nebuchadnezzar the Chaldean First conquered Babylon Then built a wonder of the world To hang his gardens on. In Persia, Cyrus said, "I ran My empire's ends with ease, From Susa to Persepolis, With strapping satrapies." |