Irrigation and tells in Mesopotamia

In several previous contributions to Flevolands Geheugen, including Mesopotamia - the land between two rivers, I informed on my search for the oldest polder on Earth. At the time, I mentioned that this polder was presumably located near Ur in Mesopotamia. Since then, I have made some further progress in my search; therefore, here the second interim assessment.

In his paper Lessen uit de geschiedenis, published in the journal Civiele en Bouwkundige Techniek in 1982, Adriaan Volker pointed out that the Japanese professor Hitoshi Fukuda (1976) regarded the endiked basins in Egypt, into which water was diverted during the high water of the Nile, as 'polders'. Through the intake, the soil became saturated with water and the groundwater was replenished, allowing a single crop to be grown. These basins indeed have something in common with the water management systems in present day polders.

If we accept Prof. Fukuda's definition, then the oldest 'polders' in the world could possibly have been endiked in Egypt as early as five thousand years ago. If we do not consider these flood basins along the Nile as polders, then we must look for other flood prone areas from antiquity where water management and flood protection was central.

Another interesting aspect in this context is that in these ancient civilizations, the first ‘urbanization’ also took place on the levees. In a number of cases, these first ‘cities’ were surrounded by stone walls or dikes to protect them against flooding, and perhaps also against invasions, but they actually had no water management system. Due to habitation, these ‘cities’ came to lie increasingly higher and thus essentially developed into a kind of artificial urban mounds. In a number of cases, they are called ‘tells’.

In this context, Jericho on the West Bank, where the original wall dates back to 8000 BC, is considered the first ‘city’. The archaeological site in the city centre, known as Tell es-Sultan, was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2023 and described as the oldest fortified city in the world.

In the ancient civilizations of Egypt, but also in Mesopotamia, in the downstream river valleys of the Indus and the Ganges, and in China, Peru, and Central America, dikes and irrigation canals were already constructed in a number of cases. However, it is not certain whether these works can be classified as 'polders' according to the current definition.

The French historical geographer Paul Wagret (1968) has drawn attention to the ‘reclamation’ of low-lying marshlands in the downstream part of Mesopotamia, 4^th or 3^rd millennium BC, by the Sumerians. In these 'prehistoric' polders, a dense network of ditches and canals was made. The fact that the watercourses are mentioned so explicitly suggests that the works encompassed more than just protection against flooding. They would therefore have been genuine polders. This reasoning seems to me the most logical, which would imply that it was the Sumerians who were the first to actually construct polders.

Wikipedia reports that Sumer is considered one of the first societies in the world to possess all the characteristics of a civilization. The Sumerian Empire consisted of a series of city-states, each with its own ruler. From the middle of the 4^th millennium BC, the leader of the most powerful city-state was recognized as the king of the region.

I will continue my search for the first polder on Earth in the coming period, whereby my search will be limited, at least for the time being, to the downstream part of Mesopotamia.