The Fertile Crescent: Irrigation, Salinity, and the Cost of Abundance
The Fertile Crescent: Irrigation, Salinity, and the Cost of Abundance The farmers of ancient Mesopotamia were remarkable engineers. In a region where...
The farmers of ancient Mesopotamia were remarkable engineers.
In a region where rainfall was too scarce and too seasonal to support reliable grain agriculture, they built a water management system that fed millions. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers, descending from the mountains of Anatolia, carried water through a flat and sun-baked plain. The farmers of Sumer and Akkad cut canals from the rivers into the fields, directing water where rain would not go.
At its height, the irrigation network of ancient Mesopotamia was one of the great engineering achievements of the ancient world. The cities it fed — Uruk, Ur, Nippur, Babylon — were among the largest and most complex human settlements that had ever existed.
And then, over centuries, the land began to fail.
How Irrigation Builds Salt
The problem was not visible at first. Water moves. Salts do not.
River water carries dissolved minerals — including...
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