Mesopotamia I

MESOPOTAMIA IRRIGATION SYSTEMS

Mereste Duvelsaint
EAP 0460
04/14/2011

                              Mesopotamia is also known as "Land of Rivers". On a map of Southern Mesopotamia the whole area is almost surrounded by water. The land between the Tigris and Euphrates River was a good region for farming. The irrigation systems of Mesopotamia were different from ones in modern day. They had some major one was: The canals, gated ditches, levees, and gates. These had a huge effect on the civilization of Mesopotamia, which were watered from the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. This invention had two main purposes: to protect Mesopotamia, and other ancient civilizations to the threat of flooding. Using flooding, however, with this system, can actually make the crops grow, instead of washing away crops. Irrigation systems helped keep crops fertile, the farmers would create ditches and trenches and then the water from the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers would go into the soil, creating fertile soil.
         
          To begin with, Irrigation has been an important base for agriculture in Mesopotamia for 6000 years. Mesopotamia has low rainfall. Although the rivers are smaller than of the Nile, they have much more dramatic spring floods, from snowmelt in the highlands of Anatolia, and they carry more silt. The plains of Mesopotamia are very flat, and poorly drained, so that the region has had problems with poor soil, drought, catastrophic flooding, and many more. The Mesopotamian people had to worry about water storage and flood control as well as irrigation. Silt built up quickly in the canals.   It was difficult to drain water off the fields, and there was always a habit of salt building up in the soil. Although the plain of Mesopotamia is very flat, the bed of the Euphrates is higher than that of the Tigris; Euphrates floods sometimes found their way across country into the Tigris. They used the Euphrates water as the supply, and the Tigris channel as a drain....