An international group of archaeologists recently discovered a vast, well-preserved network of ancient irrigation canals from 5,000-6,000 BCE in southern Iraq, near Eridu, an early city. Quoting from the Factinate Media Group’s article on MSN, it described a “versatile system of waterworks that supported early agriculture and a thriving urban population” for some 5,000 years. Eridu, in the Euphrates floodplain south of Basra, Iraq, had “religious centers, temples, and canals to support a bustling, and growing urban population. The recent canal findings reinforce the importance of controlled water systems for thriving Mesopotamian cities.”
The project was spearheaded by geoarchaeologist Jaafar Jotheri and was aided by Durham University, Iraq’s University of Al-Qadisiyah, Newcastle University, and funded by the British Institute for the Study of Iraq. It combined “high-tech remote sensing with hands-on traditional excavation.”
The findings display that there was “a regular upkeep, seasonal cleaning, and structural ingenuity…. [T]his was a well-organized farming society. With irrigation, people could grow wheat, barley, legumes, and perhaps flax in amounts sufficient to feed urban populations.... Smart, well-designed irrigation systems are crucial in the rise of cities. The Eridu canal network supplied water and transport, supporting the growth of centralized administration and labor coordination.”
