Water resources in Ancient Mesopotamia essays

Water resources in Ancient Mesopotamia essays Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt are two eras which helped mold the foundation for civilizations to come. The world that we live in now was built on their innovations in technology and through the use of the land and its natural resources. Now days water is something that we often take for granted, but in their time it was the essence of life. Without water, a food source cannot grow from the earth, a human could not fuel its body and animals would wither away like the dust of the Saudi desert. The people of Mesopotamia and Egypt understood this fact of life and built civilizations around it, which would bring success, kingdoms, great cities and eventually disparity. Through the next few passages I will attempt to bring to light the essential need of water and its effect on the people of both Mesopotamia and Egypt during a time when the world was just waking up. The land of Mesopotamia was located just north of the Persian Gulf and nestled between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Its southern region having access to the Persian Gulf made it a heavily populated area in Mesopotamia. To the east across the Arabian Desert runs the Nile River. The Nile River runs from the Mediterranean Sea with some of the richest soil in its riverbed in the world. The water resources in these two regions were vital in the agriculture of the land and in sustaining the people of these two civilizations. The name Mesopotamia comes from the Greek word meaning between rivers. Mesopotamia was centralized between the Tigris River and the Euphrates River. The two rivers were the basis for wealth in the land of Mesopotamia both economically and agriculturally. Water was not vast throughout the region of Mesopotamia and had to be drawn from the rivers through irrigation ditches dug by the settlers. Through recent satellite imagery we can correlate the irrigation flow from the two rivers to what we know were ...