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Did tulips really grow in ancient Mesopotamia? (Yes, they did)
Was the land really as fertile as depicted, truly the land of milk and honey described in the bible? (Yes, it was)
Did people in 3158 BCE really sleep on beds? (No, probably not. Most would have slept on mats, probably woven from grass fibers, on the bare ground. But in telling the story, there were quite a few ‘bedroom’ scenes, so I made the assumption that the relatively well-to-do would have constructed wooden platforms for sleeping, just to get up off the floor. Besides, you don’t want your hero throwing his love interest down on the floor, while she whispers in his ear, “don’t forget the mat!”)
Was Akkad really the first walled city? (Probably not, but historians arent’t really sure about that one. Most vote for Ur as the first city they know to have a wall surrounding it.
Coins and gold and money! I get a lot of questions about that. It is a fact that a true system of currency (where so many silver coins equaled one gold one, etc.) didn’t come into existence until King Croesus established one in Lydia around 550 BC, although historians now believe true monetary systems were already in place in India. In Dawn of Empire, there is no real reference to a such an exact monetary system, just local merchants hammering out their own coins and setting whatever value they could extract for them. But it is quite likely that gold and silver were in use much earlier, as a way to adjust the usual barter economy. So I did take some leeway here, but only to avoid the lengthy negotiating that would have been required to “buy” a cup of ale - “I’ll give you a chicken for three cups of beer, etc.”
Horses are another touchy subject. Breakthroughs in breeding techniques eventually enabled our ancestors to breed larger and stronger horses that could carry a rider and his weapons, a significant accomplishment that contributed to the growth of empires. I'm aware that horses were much smaller in those days (as were people; even as late as the 5th century BC, the average Greek warrior was only five and a half feet tall). And the American Indians, perhaps the finest light cavalry ever, did quite well with 'pony' sized horses.
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