Mesopotamia, Fertile Crescent, and Cradle of Civilization
The term “Cradle of Civilization” refers to an area of the world where civilization emerged without any outer influences. Mesopotamia is one of the six cradles of civilization known as of today: Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indus valley, China, Andes, and Mesoamerica. Mesopotamia predates all other cradles, as Sumer, the earliest known civilization, emerged in Mesopotamia from 4500 to 4000 BCE.
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Mesopotamia is a region in the Middle East where parts of Iran, Iraq, and Syria are located. What comes to people’s minds when they think of Mesopotamia may be an endless and arid desert with caravans riding camels looking for one oasis after another. However, Mesopotamia thousands of years ago was an entirely different place, with the Fertile Crescent stretching from the Persian Gulf to Turkey.
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As in the name, the Fertile Crescent is a crescent-shaped region that lies from Egypt to Canaan to Mesopotamia. Despite the name “fertile,” it is a desert. However, it differs from the Sahara desert or the Mojave desert because the Fertile Crescent is a silt desert – arid, yet composed of nutritious minerals and soils.
What made Mesopotamia (a combination of Greek, Meso, meaning “between,” and Potamus, meaning “river”) a silt desert are two rivers that ran through the crescent: the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The Tigris and the Euphrates flooded every spring, providing the land with silt and other rich soils that contain minerals to help the growth of crops and other agriculture. Fertile and quality soil was perfect to attract hunter-gatherers who sought to settle in one place with agriculture as the primary food source.
The Tigris and the Euphrates played a crucial role in the formation of cities and agricultural civilizations in ancient Mesopotamia. Agriculture ensured a stable supply of food, and as agriculture developed, more nomads and hunter-gatherers started to settle in one place and accompany the agricultural industry. People gathered and formed groups, maximizing food production and storing surplus crops. Thanks to the shortage of rainfall, they made an irrigation system that ran from the two rivers to cities. Rivers made it easier for people to travel and trade with other cities to exchange goods, E.g., agricultural products from southern Mesopotamian regions and timber and stone from northern Mesopotamian areas, etc. In time, settlements established walls to protect themselves and their crops from invaders and other hunter-gatherers. These then grew into cities. These people of Mesopotamia who built the first cities were the Sumerians.