Graveyard of Empires
We shall begin our reading of the record as it is written on the land in the Near
East. Here, civilization arose out of the mysteries of the stone age and gave rise to
cultures that moved eastward to China and westward through Europe and across the Atlantic
Ocean to the Americas. We are daily and hourly reminded of our debt to the Sumerian
peoples of Mesopotamia whenever we use the wheel that they invented more than 6,000 years
ago. We do homage to their mathematics each time we look at the clock or our watches to
tell time divided into units of 60.
Moreover, our calendar in use today is a revision of the method the ancient Egyptians
used in dividing the year. We inherit the experience and knowledge of the past more than
we know.
Agriculture had its beginning at least 7,000 years ago and developed in two great
centers--the fertile alluvial plains of Mesopotamia and the Valley of the Nile. We shall
leave the interesting question of the precise area in which agriculture originated to the
archaeologists. It is enough for us to know that it was in these alluvial plains in an and
climate that tillers of soil began to grow food crops by irrigation in quantities greater
than their own needs. This released their fellows for a division of labor that gave rise
to what we call civilization. We shall follow the vicissitudes of peoples recorded on the
land, as nations rose and fell in these fateful lands.
A survey of such an extensive area in the short time of 2 years called for simple but
fundamental methods of field study. With the aid of agricultural officials of other
countries, we hunted out fields that had been cultivated for a thousand years--the basis
of a permanent agriculture. Likewise, we tried to find the reasons why lands formerly
cultivated had been wasted or destroyed, as a warning to our farmers and our city folks of
a possible similar catastrophe in this new land of America. A simplified method of field
study enabled us to examine large areas rapidly.
In the Zagros Mountains that separate Persia from Mesopotamia, shepherds with their
flocks have lived from time immemorial, when "the memory of man runneth not to the
contrary." From time to time they have swept down into the plain to bring devastation
and destruction upon farming and city peoples of the plains. Such was the beginning of the
Cain and Abel struggle between the shepherd and the farmer, of which we shall have more to
say.
At Kish, we looked upon the first capital after the Great Flood that swept over
Mesopotamia in prehistoric times and left its record in a thick deposit of brown alluvium.
The layer of alluvium marked a break in the sequence of a former and a succeeding culture,
as recorded in artifacts. Above the alluvium deposits is the site of Kish (fig. 1)
FIGURE 1. Ruins of Kish, one of the world's most
important cities 6,000 years ago. Recently, archeologists excavated these ruins from
beneath the desert sands of Mesopotamia.
At the ruins of mighty Babylon we pondered the ruins of Nebuchadnezzar's stables (fig.
2), adorned by animal figures in bas-relief. We stood subdued as though at a funeral as we
recalled how this great ruler of Babylon had boasted:
That which no king before had done, I did--A wall like a mountain that cannot be
moved, I builded...great canals I dug and lined them with burnt brick laid in bitumen and
brought abundant waters to all the people...I paved the streets of Babylon with stone from
the mountains...magnificent palaces and temples I have built...Huge cedars from Mount
Lebanon I cut down...with radiant gold I overlaid them and with jewels I adorned them.
FIGURE 2. Ruins of the famous stables of
Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon built during the sixth century B.C. Babylon died and was buried
by the desert sands, not because it was sacked and razed but because the irrigation canals
that watered the land that supported the city were permitted to fill with silt.
Then came to mind the warnings of the Hebrew prophets that were thundered against the
wicked city. They warned that Babylon would become "A desolation, a dry land, and a
wilderness, a land wherein no man dwelleth...And wolves shall cry in their castles, and
jackals in the pleasant places." Believe it or not, the only living thing that we saw
in this desolation that once was Babylon was a lean gray wolf, shaking his head as if he
might have a tick in his ear, as he loped to his lair in the ruins of one of the seven
wonders of the ancient world--the Hanging Gardens of Babylon where air conditioning was in
use 2,600 years ago.
Mesopotamia, the traditional site of the Garden of Eden, out of which come the stories
of the Flood, of Noah and the Ark, of the "Tower of Babel" and the confusion of
tongues, of the fiery furnace which we found still burning today, is jotted full of
records of a glorious past, of dense populations, and of great cities that are now ruins
and desolation. For at least 11 empires have risen and fallen in this tragic land in 7,000
years. It is a story of a precarious agriculture practiced by people who lived and grew up
under the threat of raids and invasions from the denizens of grasslands and the desert,
and of the failure of their irrigation canals because of silt.
Agriculture was practiced in a very dry climate by canal irrigation with muddy water
from the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. This muddy water was the undoing of empire after
empire, As muddy river waters slowed down, they choked up the canals with silt. It was
necessary to keep this silt out of the canals year after year to supply life-giving waters
to farm lands and to cities of the plain.
As populations grew, canals were dug farther and farther from the rivers. This great
system of canals called for a great force of hand labor to keep them clean of silt. The
rulers of Babylon brought in war captives for this task. Now we understand why the captive
Israelites "sat down by the waters of Babylon and wept." They also were,
doubtless, required to dig silt out of canals of Mesopotamia.
As these great public works of cleaning silt out of canals were interrupted from time
to time by internal revolutions and by foreign invaders, the peoples of Mesopotamia were
brought face to face with disaster in canals choked with silt. Stoppage of canals by silt
depopulated villages and cities more effectively than the slaughter of people by an
invading army.
On the basis of an estimate that it was possible in times past to irrigate 21,000 of
the 35,000 square miles of the alluvium of Mesopotamia, the population of Mesopotamia at
its zenith was probably between 17 and 25 million. The present population of all Iraq is
estimated to be about 4 million, including nomadic peoples. Of this total, not more than
31/2 million live on the alluvial plain.
Decline in population in Mesopotamia is not due to loss of soil by erosion. The fertile
lands are still in place and life-giving waters still flow in the Tigris and Euphrates
Rivers, ready to be spread upon the lands today as in times past. Mesopotamia is capable
of supporting as great a population as it ever did and greater when modern engineering
makes use of reinforced concrete construction for irrigation works and powered machinery
to keep canal systems open.
A greater area of Mesopotamia thus might be farmed than ever before in the long history
of this tragic land. But erosion in the hinterlands aggravated the silt problem in waters
of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, as they were drawn off into the ancient canal systems.
Invasions of nomads out of the grasslands and the desert brought about the breakdown of
irrigation that spelled disaster after disaster.
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