Agriculture of Ancient Mesopotamian civilization
The Mesopotamian economy, like
all pre-modern economies, was based primarily on agriculture.
The Mesopotamians grew a variety
of crops, including barley, wheat, onions, turnips, grapes, apples and dates.
They kept cattle, sheep and goats; they made beer and wine. Fish were also
plentiful in the rivers and canals.
The rivers Tigris and Euphrates,
and their numerous branches, made farming possible in Mesopotamia .
However, they could be wild rivers, and floods were frequent. At the same time,
the hot, dry climate meant that year-round irrigation was needed to grow crops.
The Euphrates river runs through
a hot and dry landscape in Mesopotamia
(Sergeant James McCauley, US
military)
Irrigation is needed to bring the
arid Mesopotamian landscape to life (photo: jamesdale10)
The Mesopotamians were the first
people to attempt to control water on a large scale by the use of an integrated
system of dykes, reservoirs, canals, drainage channels and aqueducts.
Maintaining, repairing and extending this system was seen as one of the prime
duties of a king. Scribes and overseers managed the projects, and the common
people were dragooned into working on them through the system of forced labour
(or corvee ). The water control system was built up generation by generation,
covering an ever wider area and involving an ever denser network of waterways.
As a result of the large and concentrated population which grew up in
Until the spread of the use of
iron, in the first millennium BC, farming implements were made of stone and
bone - as they had been during the Stone Age. Metals such as bronze were far
too expensive to use in this way, while copper was too soft for most uses. Wood
was also quite rare, as there is little tree cover in the region. However, the
soil of Mesopotamia , once watered, is easy to
work, and agriculture was highly productive.
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