Controlling Water in Ancient Mesopotamia

Although the flooding helped the land get fertile, the hunter-gatherers who settled there had problems.

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.

How Did the Fertile Crescent Get Its Name?

A Map of the Fertile Crescent
Also Called Mesopotamia

The Fertile Crescent was a place where a lot of hunter-gatherers settled in. The Fertile Crescent got its name because it had a fertile soil and the land that marked the Fertile Crescent was shaped like a moon.

Why was the soil fertile? It started from the Mediterranean Sea. Water evaporated from the Mediterranean Sea and evaporated and condensed into clouds. You all know the water cycle right? The wind blew those clouds over the Fertile Crescent where the clouds bumped into mountains. When the clouds bumped into mountains it started raining.

The Fertile Crescent had two rivers running through it called the Tigris and the Euphrates. You might not be able to see clearly in the map of the Fertile Crescent, but if you zoom in on the image you'll be able those two rivers.

When the rain started pouring down on the land, the rivers flooded. When the rivers flooded, they carried with them a rich material called silt. Silt gave nutrition to the soil and made it fertile.

(The Fertile Crescent was also called Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia means the land between the rivers.)

Nomadic Civilisation to Settled Civilisation

In Humanities class, we've been learning about how people changed from being a nomadic civilisation to becoming a settled civilisation.

Thousands of years ago, humans lived in groups of hunters and gatherers. In a group, some people were hunters and some were gatherers. The hunters would hunt for meat to eat and the gatherers will gather food to eat. The gatherers might pick berries to serve for a meal or they might collect wild carrots.

Don't think it's a comfortable thing to be a hunter or a gatherer. There was a responsibility as part of the group to feed all of the people in that group. If they didn't have enough food, some would starve to death. That's how it went.

This is an example of how they had to go
further away from the settlement to get
food. 

After some weeks, food will run out at that settlement. The gatherers will go further out to gather food and the hunters will also go further to hunt animals. This meant more work because these people had to walk long distances to get food. Therefore, they moved to another location to start another settle meant. It looked sort of like the one on the left side.

Soon enough, they had to walk out too much. So these people move their settlements over to somewhere with plenty of food and animals. They settle there again and start hunting. The same process of going out further for food continues here.

An example of how Nomads changed
settlements

These people were called Nomads. The word "nomad" means roaming people. These hunter-gatherers group that I've been explaining about were nomads because they roamed around from one settlement to another. Now, how did these nomads come to settle down in one place?

It began with the planting of a seed. These people finally found out that if they planted a seed, something would grow from it! To us in 2014, it's like, duh, but in those times, that was an amazing discovery. Now gatherers didn't need to go out to gather food. They could plant seeds and harvest them. They began agriculture.

The hunters still had to hunt for food and walk long distances to do so. They continued doing this until finally, they discovered that they could take a female animal and mate it to a male animal to get a baby animal. This changed their lives! They began domesticating animals.

Now that the gatherers could plant seeds to grow food and the hunters could domesticate animals, they didn't need to move anymore. The became a settled civilisation.