Archaeologists have been stunned after discovering what is believed to be the cradle of civilization, dating back more than six millennia and challenging our understanding of how humans evolved.
Located mostly in present-day Iraq, Mesopotamia was part of the so-called Fertile Crescent, bordered by the Arabian Desert to the south and the Armenian Mountains to the north.
At one end of it, towards the Persian Gulf, were the two great powers Babylonia and Assyria and at the other, beside the Mediterranean Sea, were Israel and Egypt. For Christians worldwide, the Bible is the most important book and Saint’s text contains first-hand stories of Mesopotamia – the most famous being the Babylonian Exile.
Humans first settled in Mesopotamia in the Paleolithic, and it is believed that the Sumerian civilization first formed in southern Mesopotamia around 4000 BC, 6,000 years ago.
During the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of European political interest in the Middle East, explorers began to rediscover the world of ancient Mesopotamia and the History Channel’s ‘The Sumerians’ revealed how their ancient secrets came to light.
The narrator said: “In southern Iraq, a crushing silence hangs, the temperature is around the 50C mark, the climate has not changed for thousands of years.
“Yet men and women once lived here.
Sandwiched between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf is the area that the Greek historian Polybius called Mesopotamia, the country between two rivers.
“It was watered by Euphrates and Tigris. In the mid-19th century, all we knew about ancient Mesopotamia was what we read in the Bible.”
But the documentary reveals how things changed after French and British archaeologists discovered the “buried past” of what was once the “cradle of civilization”.
“The discovery of the Syro-Mesopotamian civilization just 150 years ago was special because we gradually realized that it was an extremely diverse civilization,” said French archaeologist Jean-Claude Margueron. form, extremely developed.
“It has known many different ways of life, has undergone many social experiments, in a world that we do not know.
“We believe it all started with the Greek civilization, but we saw before that something else influenced the development of classical civilization.
“The history of the Syro-Mesopotamian civilization matches that of the Syro-Mesopotamian geographic region, an area irrigated by the Tigris and Euphrates.”
He added: “Water is not only important for existence, agriculture and people, it is also important for transportation. “It was an area where waterways became shipping routes.
“And in a country like Mesopotamia, where there was agriculture, but lack of timber, stone, and metal-bearing ores, where copper or copper was needed, the river became the preferred transport route between two complementary economic sectors.”
