[HN Gopher] Drone photos reveal an early Mesopotamian city made ...
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Drone photos reveal an early Mesopotamian city made of marsh
islands
Author : diodorus
Score : 62 points
Date : 2022-10-20 05:12 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencenews.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencenews.org)
| koheripbal wrote:
| ... and all of this is possible because Turkey took advantage of
| the disarray in Iraq and Syria over the last 20 years and built
| large dams and aqueducts on the upper Tigris and Euphrates
| rivers, drastically reducing their flows and causing water levels
| in Southern Iraqi marsh lands to almost entirely dry up.
|
| It's a humanitarian catastrophe.
|
| Not to say that we should not use this opportunity to do critical
| archeology. In fact, this situation may not last, so we should
| invest in digs asap.
|
| ...but it is still important to understand the nature of why
| these sites are being discovered now.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Dams don't 'dry up' rivers - they control them. The lake
| created doesn't have infinite capacity. Once filled, the flow
| downstream resumes normal levels. Just doesn't have floods like
| it used to.
| rhodorhoades wrote:
| This is untrue. You aren't thinking about the effects of
| sediment, usage, and erosion. When you build a dam and allow
| the riverbeds to dry, it changes the entire water table of
| the region.
| lostlogin wrote:
| It also blocks animal migration.
| hinkley wrote:
| The Mediterranean would dry up if the Straits of Gibraltar
| closed up. That's some very large fraction of all rivers in
| Europe plus the biggest in Africa that never actually make it
| to the Atlantic. Evaporation is the cause.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Where I live, we then drain those lakes regularly for the
| water of our cities so the water available down stream is
| greatly reduced except in tons of flood in which case it is
| unusually high.
| akamaka wrote:
| Do we fully understand why prehistoric human wanted to live on
| these watery sites? I find it so hard to understand, since living
| on dry land and avoiding marshes is a strongly ingrained idea
| now.
|
| But there are so many archeologic sites like this, is must have
| had a strong appeal. For example,
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Must_Farm_Bronze_Age_settlem...
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Every American midwest town is on a river. Because the pioneers
| needed water, every day. Carrying water is a huge chore.
| bioemerl wrote:
| We still need water, and living on the river is still the
| most sustainable source of it, plus the incredible amounts of
| transportation you can do inland with rivers out matches
| roads by a thousand times.
|
| I would never not live on a river. The ocean is cool and all,
| but it's full of salt and you can't drink that.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It is not only a huge chore, but you can only go a short
| distance from water before the time to transport is uses
| every productive hour of labor. No time to grow food or make
| things.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Because early agriculture was all about planting things in
| flood plains... If you live on a flood plain you get automatic
| irrigation, all the nutrients in the soil get replenished every
| year, you get some fish, etc...
|
| Most ancient civilizations (and certainly the ones that became
| the most populous) were built on flood plains. It took quite a
| few technological advances (Rome's aqueducts for example) and
| new agriculture techniques before civilizations thrived in
| other locations.
| brabel wrote:
| Cities are almost always built next to water, even today.
| Before long roads existed connecting distant places, waterways
| were also the only way to transport things faraway. It was
| much, much easier to load a boat with stuff and paddle it or
| use wind to move it, than it was to try to build much more
| complex horse-pulled vehicle that could move long distances in
| the absence of roads (imagine a charrot moved around on plant-
| covered terrain or even worse, sand).
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| Given how big shipping is for international trade, I'd say
| that being next to and having control of waterways is even
| more important today. Especially given this more or less
| global drought.
| pge wrote:
| Access to food sources, maybe? Compared to most terrestrial
| game, fish are easier to catch and provide a plentiful source
| of protein.
| malcolmwhite wrote:
| The Uros people moved from land to fabricated islands on Lake
| Titicaca to escape Incan conquest. The Aztecs created islands
| to have more productive farmland. Likewise the Incas when
| creating Cusco in a marshy valley.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| More consistent access to water and protection from large cats.
| But that is just a guess.
| [deleted]
| ultra_nick wrote:
| Atlantis?
| anm89 wrote:
| They really couldn't come up with a better name for that than
| "remote sensing"?
| jk_ra_el wrote:
| Vivec City (Morrowind / Elder Scrolls Online) vindicated. Ancient
| Mesopotamia is so fascinating. Isn't it?
| wanderingstan wrote:
| If you're interested in the history of Lagash and the wider
| Sumerian civilization, I highly recommend the _Fall of
| Civilizations Podcast_ episode 8.
|
| https://youtu.be/d2lJUOv0hLA
|
| At 2.5 hours it's more like an audiobook. During the pandemic
| this was my gateway into learning a ton about this ancient
| civilization, when humanity first began to write and thus be able
| to communicate with us thousands of years later.
| rjtavares wrote:
| Also highly recommended from the same podcast: the episode on
| the Han Dynasty. Chinese history is such a fascinating and
| underexplored topic in "the West", most of what's in that
| episode was new to me.
| lbhdc wrote:
| I second that recommendation. Fall of civilization is really
| well done, their Petra episode is another good one.
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