Although the flooding helped the land get fertile, the hunter-gatherers who settled there had problems.
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| Ancient Irrigation System in Mesopotamia. |
When the rivers flooded, the crops that the gatherers had planted all washed away with the flood. After the flood, the land turned dry and made it impossible for people to plant crops. They had this problem because they didn't know how to control the water.
Over years, these hunter-gatherers figured out how to control water. Mesopotamians developed irrigation systems, a way of supplying water to areas of land. These systems were built by digging large storage basins to hold water supplies. They then dug canals that led water from the storage basin to a system of ditches. Water was delivered to the fields by the ditches.
The Mesopotamians also built up the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates River. No matter how high the water rose, the water could not flood past the built up banks.
