Yes,The Tigris and Euphrates rivers made the soil of Mesopotamia good for grow- ing crops. The people of Mesopotamia developed an irrigation system to bring water to crops. Mesopotamia had few resources. People traded surplus crops to get what they needed.
Answers
Answer:
Agriculture was the main economic activity in ancient Mesopotamia. Operating under harsh constraints, notably the arid climate, the Mesopotamian farmers developed effective strategies that enabled them to support the development of the first states, the first cities, and then the first known empires, under the supervision of the institutions which dominated the economy: the royal and provincial palaces, the temples, and the domains of the elites. They focused above all on the cultivation of cereals (particularly barley) and sheep farming, but also farmed legumes, as well as date palms in the south and grapes in the north.
In reality, there were two types of Mesopotamian agriculture, corresponding to the two main ecological domains, which largely overlapped with cultural distinctions. The agriculture of southern or Lower Mesopotamia, the land of Sumer and Akkad, which later became Babylonia received almost no rain and required large scale irrigation works which were supervised by temple estates, but could produce high returns. The agriculture of Northern or Upper Mesopotamia, the land that would eventually become Assyria, had enough rainfall to allow dry agriculture most of the time so that irrigation and large institutional estates were less important, but the returns were also usually lower.this is about history of Mesopotamia civilization
When developing models to describe the early development of settled agriculture in the Near East, reconstructions of climate and vegetation are a subject of consideration. During the glacial period, it is thought that lower temperatures or higher aridity resulted in sparse or non-existent forest cover similar to steppe type terrain in the area of the Zagros Mountains and varying forest cover in the territories of modern-day Turkey and Syria. Northwest Syria, dominated in ancient times by deciduous oak, is thought to have been less arid between 10,000 BCE and 7000 BCE than it is today. Scholars believe that wild cereal grasses probably spread with the forest cover, out from the glacial refugia westward into the Zagros.[1]
Topography
Palm orchard in the lower Euphrates valley.
The societies of ancient Mesopotamia developed one of the most prosperous agricultural systems of the ancient world, under harsh constraints: rivers whose patterns had little relation to the growth cycle of domesticated cereals; a hot, dry climate with brutal interannual variations; and generally thin and saline soil. Conditions in the north may have been more favourable because the soil was more fertile and the rainfall was high enough for agriculture without irrigation, but the scale of rivers in the south and the flat plains which made it easy to cut irrigation channels and put large areas under cultivation gave advantages to the development of irrigated farms which were productive but required constant labour.
The native wild grasses in this region were densely growing, highly productive species, especially the varieties of wild wheat and barley. These grasses and wild legumes like pea and lentil were used as food sources in the hunter-gatherer societies for millennia before settled agriculture was widespread.[1]
Rivers
The Tigris flowing through the region of modern Mosul in Upper Mesopotamia.