What was the history of Mesopotamian?

only after artificial irrigation had been invented, bringing water to large stretches of territory through a widely branching network of canals.

Since the ground is extremely fertile and, with irrigation and the necessary drainage,

will produce in abundance, southern Mesopotamia became a land of plenty that could support a considerable population. The cultural superiority of north Mesopotamia,

which may have lasted until about 4000 BCE, was finally overtaken by the south when the people there had responded to the challenge of their situation.

The present climatic conditions are fairly similar to those of 8,000 years ago. An English survey of ruined settlements in the area 30 miles around ancient Hatra

(180 miles northwest of Baghdad) has shown that the southern limits of the zone in which agriculture is possible without artificial irrigation

has remained unchanged since the first settlement of Al-Jazīrah.

The availability of raw materials is a historical factor of great importance

as is the dependence on those materials that had to be imported. I

In Mesopotamia, agricultural products and those from stock breeding, fisheries, date palm cultivation, and reed industries—in short, grain

vegetables, meat, leather, wool, horn, fish, dates, and reed and plant-fibre products

were available in plenty and could easily be produced in excess of home

requirements to be exported. There are bitumen springs at Hīt (90 miles northwest of Baghdad) on the Euphrates

On the other hand, wood, stone, and metal were rare or even entirely absent.

The date palm—virtually the national tree of Iraq—yields a wood suitable only for rough beams and not for finer work.

Stone is mostly lacking in southern Mesopotamia,

although limestone is quarried in the desert about 35 miles to the west and “Mosul marble” is found not far from the Tigris in its middle reaches

Metal can only be obtained in the mountains, and the same is true of precious and semiprecious stones. Consequently, southern

Mesopotamia in particular was destined to be a land of trade from the start

Only rarely could “empires” extending over a wider area guarantee themselves imports by plundering or by subjecting neighbouring regions.

The raw material that epitomizes Mesopotamian civilization is clay:

in the almost exclusively mud-brick architecture and in the number and variety of clay figurines and pottery artifacts, Mesopotamia bears the stamp of clay

as does no other civilization, and nowhere in the world

but in Mesopotamia and the regions over which its influence was

diffused was clay used as the vehicle for writing.