Foreign Correspondence

[fuagf]

ergo sum .. River of life

Issue 41 of Cosmos, November 2011

by Fiona MacDonald

The birthplace of both agriculture and civilisation, Syria's Euphrates River is again facing turmoil
and change - environmental as well as political. Fiona MacDonald travels to the ancient waterway.


Sheep along the Euphrates River in Syria.
Credit: Fiona MacDonald

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THE SUN HAD ALMOST dipped below the horizon as a shepherd brought his sheep to the banks of the great Euphrates River for a drink.

"Get your shoulders under the water," some of my companions called from the shore. Terrified of causing offence in my bikini, I dropped on my stomach and fought to stay submerged, kicking my legs and clinging to reeds on the river's rocky bottom to prevent being swept downstream by the deceptively strong current.

Some of my group bantered in Arabic with the shepherd as sheep faeces rushed past me, floating down towards the Iraqi border.

Once the last sheep had relieved itself and flicked its tail patronisingly towards me, I waded from the river, sat on the mat that would act as my bed and was quickly dried by Syria's hot, sandy air. I was camping in northeastern Syria, beside the river my archaeological guide Martin Makinson called the "lifeline of the Middle East".

Described in the Bible as one of the waters that flowed into the Garden of Eden, the Euphrates was agriculture's birthplace and one of the borders of Mesopotamia - long considered the cradle of civilisation. In Syria, the river is wide and shallow, but it changes drastically from its narrow, deep origins in the mountains of Turkey to its slow-flowing mouth in Iraq at the Persian Gulf.

Today it sustains flocks of shepherds who daily come to the river, but over millennia the Euphrates has supported many cultures. From the 1st century BC to the 6th century AD, the frontier of the great Roman and Byzantine Empires was just a few kilometres from where I now sat baking in the hot dry sun.

The river's once-verdant surroundings have been fought over by Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan's grandson and ruled by Babylonians, Assyrians, Persian Zoroastrians, Christians, and Muslims. In fact, many cultures have a history - through trade or conquest - that's intertwined with this region.

But now the land, and the river itself, is slowly transforming; damaged by changing climate, increasing human dominance of its resources, population growth and a long agricultural history. I came here to try to understand what had happened to the birthplace of civilisation and what the future might hold for this restless region.

The Euphrates' long history has littered its shores with an assortment of ruins, many of which show telltale signs of conquest and rebirth by various civilisations. From around 9000 BC until 700 AD, the shifting patch of land bordered on the north by the Tigris River and the south by the Euphrates - encompassing parts of modern-day Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran - was known as Sumer, Akkad and Assyria to the locals and Mesopotamia to the Greeks.

It's widely accepted as the birthplace of both agriculture and urban culture, where writing, administration, city-states and empires began. While the Euphrates has sustained countless armies and civilisations, it has always been more than just a water source. "The Euphrates was actually the lifeline of Mesopotamian civilisation, throughout which urban culture, writing, language and city life spread into Syria and Anatolia from its homeland in current southern Iraq, around 3500 BC" says Makinson, an archaeologist from the University of Geneva who has worked on many Middle Eastern sites.

But long before the rise of cities, the Euphrates played its most important role. Around 9000 BC, it provided the stable flow of water that allowed humans to stop hunting and gathering, and begin domesticating plants and animals. Some of the first evidence of domestic plants has been found at now-flooded Syrian sites Jerf el Ahmar and Tell Mureybet, upstream from our campsite, where the Euphrates is wide and allows for easy irrigation. Over the next few millennia, agriculture spread along the river to Turkey and Iraq. Villages sprang up as large groups of humans found they could bunker down in the same spot without exhausting food supplies.

page 2 of 5 .. http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/features/print/5177/river-life?page=0%2C1

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/features/print/5177/river-life

heh .. i had to go back to 2006 to find a Euphrates, thus this blast from the past .. :) .. off for milk now ..