Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations - Kootenay Local Agricultural Society

Figure 4. Early Mesopotamian representation of a plow from a cylinder seal
(drawn from the photo of a cylinder seal rolling in Dominique Collon, First
Impressions: Cylinder Seals in the Ancient Near East [Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1987], 146, fig. 616).
tlements spread south along the floodplain, sandwiched between the Arabian
Desert and semiarid mountains poorly suited for agriculture. As the
population rose, small towns filled in the landscape, plowing and planting
more of the great floodplain.
This narrow strip of exceptionally fertile land produced bumper crops.
But the surpluses depended upon building, maintaining, and operating the
network of canals that watered the fields. Keeping the system going required
both technical expertise and considerable organizational control, spawning
the inseparable twins of bureaucracy and government. By about 5000 bc
people with a relatively common culture in which a religious elite oversaw
food production and distribution populated nearly all of Mesopotamia—
the land between two rivers.
All the good, fertile land in Mesopotamia was under cultivation by 4500
bc. There was nowhere else to expand once agriculture reached the coast.
Running out of new land only intensified efforts to increase food production
and keep pace with the growing population. About the time the whole
floodplain came under cultivation, the plow appeared on the Sumerian
plains near the Persian Gulf: it allowed greater food production from land
already farmed.
Towns began to coalesce into cities. The town of Uruk (Erech) absorbed
the surrounding villages and grew to about 50,000 people by 3000 bc.
Construction of huge temples attests to the ability of religious leaders to
marshal labor. In this initial burst of urbanization, eight major cities dom-
rivers of life 37