🏛️ MESOPOTAMIA: FIRST CITIES
PAGE 1 OF 5, THE LAND BETWEEN TWO RIVERS
WHERE CIVILISATION WAS BORN
TIGRIS & EUPHRATES, THE FERTILE CRESCENT
The word Mesopotamia is ancient Greek for "the land between the rivers", the two great rivers being the Tigris and the Euphrates, which flow through what is today Iraq, eastern Syria and south-east Turkey. Around 10,000 years ago, people here stopped wandering and settled down. They noticed something amazing: if you dug channels from the river into the dry plain, the desert burst into wheat, barley, dates and flax. For the first time in history humans produced so much food that not everyone had to be a farmer. Some became potters, weavers, priests, traders and rulers. Small farming villages swelled into towns, and towns became walled cities. Historians call the wider region "the Fertile Crescent" and Mesopotamia is its beating heart, the very first place on Earth where human civilisation truly began.
⚡ DID YOU KNOW?
The word "Iraq" and the region's ancient name come from the city of Uruk, founded around 4000 BCE. Uruk may have been the largest city on Earth in 3200 BCE, home to around 40,000 people, bigger than London would be 4,000 years later!
CRADLE!
URUK · 4000 BCE
🏙️ World's first true city
🧱 Built of sun-dried mud bricks
🛕 Surrounded by thick walls
🧱 Built of sun-dried mud bricks
🛕 Surrounded by thick walls
ZIGGURATS
🛕 Stepped pyramid-temples
🙏 Homes of the city gods
🏞️ Rose above the flat plains
🙏 Homes of the city gods
🏞️ Rose above the flat plains