Mesopotamia – The land between two rivers

In two previous contributions to Flevolands Geheugen about Polders in the delta of the Euphrates and the Tigris and Polders in ancient Mesopotamia – the oldest in the world?, I mentioned that the oldest polder in the world must presumably have been located in this area in the vicinity of Ur.

Over the past few months, I have continued my search for this. I still haven't figured it out. However, I have gathered a great deal of information that strengthens my belief that the oldest polder must indeed have been located in Mesopotamia, but exactly where remains the question. This contribution is therefore essentially a kind of interim assessment.

A great deal of information is available about Mesopotamia. One of the reasons for this is that the region is regarded as the foundation of civilization. It was here that humanity began to read, write, make laws, and to live in cities under an organized administration.

Mesopotamia, or the Land Between Two Rivers, is primarily formed by the plain through which the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, both originating in present-day Turkey, flow into the Persian or Arabian Gulf. Over several millennia, there have been significant regressions and transgressions. These have been analysed by Sissakian et al. (2020), among others. They demonstrated various stages from 16050 BC through 1850. These changes were caused by water level fluctuations in the Persian Gulf, sediment deposition by the Euphrates and Tigris, changes in the course of the river branches, and, since approximately the 6^th millennium BC, by human influence.

Because precipitation in the area typically amounts to less than 250 millimetres per year and temperatures are very high, habitation was largely dependent on the water of the Euphrates and the Tigris. In addition, the supply of silt ensured very fertile soils.

In his dissertation Holocene avulsion history of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in the Mesopotamian floodplain (2016), Jotheri provides a detailed description of the changes in the course of the Euphrates and Tigris river branches through the Mesopotamian plain. Because the civilizations in the area were so dependent on these rivers, the changes that occurred within them could also lead to the relocation of civilizations.

In global water management, irrigation developed much earlier than drainage. In this context, the mention by Ariane Thomas (2021) is interesting; she described that the first evidence of irrigation with surface water occurred around 6000 BC at Choga Mami in the Mesopotamian Plain, in present-day Iraq near the border with Iran.

The city of Ur, northeast of present-day Baghdad, was originally built on an island in the swamps. In the 4^th millennium BC, the Sumerians drained the swamps and thereby created prehistoric polders. From this, I had deduced that the oldest polder may have been located near Ur.

Paul Wagret (1968) stated that a devastating sea flooding from the Persian Gulf occurred between 5000 BC and 3500 BC, which destroyed this civilization. In relation to this, Vanessa Heyvaert and Cecile Baeteman (2008) report four major flooding phases in the Mesopotamian Plain: the Ur floods (3600 - 3500 BC), the Kish floods (2900 - 2350 BC), the ed-Dër floods (approximately 2000–1025 BC), and the post-Neo-Babylonian floods (539 BC–300).

The consideration that the world's first polder may have been located near Ur also fits with what Stephanie Dalley described in her book Myths of Mesopotamia (1990):

"Atrahasis, the hero of the flood story, was a citizen of Shuruppak in lower Mesopotamia. An extensive flood as a natural event sometimes took place in that region, where the Euphrates in spate can overflow and spill across the intervening land into the lower-lying Tigris, which itself often breaks its own banks in sudden spate, but a flood would be impossible on a similar scale in Palestine, Syria, Anatolia, or Greece. Such floods occur quite commonly in Iraq, and strata of silt deposits on Early Dynastic sites of the fourth millennium BC, found there by archaeologists, can be interpreted as recording various different floods in remote antiquity. That evidence does not, however, disclose whether one particular flood was more catastrophic than others; it only shows that no unusual break in cultural continuity was caused by such a deposit, and that the layer of flood silt found in excavations at Ur is certainly much earlier in date than the flood deposit found at Shuruppak."

With regard to recent times, the publication by Jennifer Pournelle (2003) is of importance, which provides a summary of the large-scale canal construction and land reclamation that took place in the Mesopotamian Plain, particularly in the second half of the 20^th century. She referred to the map by William Willcocks, which showed approximately 2 million hectares of primary (year-round) and secondary (seasonal) flooded areas. Irrigation and drainage projects have reduced that area to less than 100,000 hectares of wetland. The majority of that reduction has taken place since 1990.

In that context, the event I experienced in 1988 is also worth mentioning. I was attending a conference of the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID) in Dubrovnik. Under a Turkish chairman, I was moderating a discussion on new developments in the field of irrigation. The Turkish chairman cut off anyone who wanted to speak even slightly too long. I thought: "He probably quickly wants to go to eat."

Thanks to his approach, we finished forty-five minutes before the scheduled end time. Then the chairman suddenly said: "Now I have something important to announce." He then took ample time to present the GAP programme in southeastern Turkey. This programme encompassed the development of irrigation, hydropower, agriculture, urban and rural infrastructure, forestry, education, and healthcare. As far as water management was concerned, the programme included the construction of 22 dams, 19 hydroelectric power plants, and irrigation systems covering an area of more than 1.7 million hectares, fed from the Euphrates and the Tigris. I immediately thought:

"Soon, virtually no water will cross the southern Turkish border anymore."

It has now been agreed that the base flow in the rivers from Turkey will be guaranteed, but in rivers flowing through (semi-)arid areas, this represents only a small percentage of the total flow.

So I will continue my search for the oldest polder in the world for a while longer, and I hope to be able to report in the coming time whether I have indeed found this polder. In the Mesopotamian Plain, problems with water management will unfortunately likely only increase.