An Outlook On the Sumerian Agriculture
The article explains the problems of the Sumerian agriculture and describes its creative solutions. The achievements of Sumerian farmers allowed the authorities to ease population pressure and free several segments of the urban community from working the land.
The floodplain of southern Mesopotamia served as a terminal in a long journey of migrating agriculturists who accumulated necessary expertise and hardened their will in trials. They originated in one of the zones of rain-fed cultivation (the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates - further nicknamed the Twin Rivers - could be a leading clue). Though we are unaware of the reasons for this migration, we can assume that it had something to do with environmental deterioration: harsher climate, scarcity of fertile soils and population pressure.
While moving downstream in search of rich soils and grazing lands, they entered into an arid steppe where they had to learn the principle of irrigation agriculture as a substitute for insufficient rainfall. There was nowhere to go - only the Persian Gulf lay ahead - and they lacked sea-faring adventurers in their ranks. Of course, they had marshlands at their disposal with abundance of beasts, fish and waterfowl. However, natural resources alone could not sustain them. Their subsistence was primarily based on farming and herding. And they didn't have much room or time for experiments: a single crop failure could be fatal.
So why had they remained and never thought of abandoning this hard-to-survive environment? They should have felt divine surveillance. Their first non-farmers were priests who were commissioned to seek spiritual support. Their earliest communal buildings were temples, and their initial corporate property belonged to temple households.
Besides, they understood the basic principle of irrigation. Their salvation didn't depend anymore on the amount of rainfall; it was confined in the ability to control abundant water resources of the Twin Rivers.
Irrigation network is a huge time and labor-consuming enterprise which should be maintained on an annual basis. Canals ought to be dredged against silt which can stuck water flow leading to flooding and crop collapse. However, harvests on the alluvial plain had far exceeded yields in the uplands.
Initially, Neolithic societies in the region practiced rain agriculture, and the majority of population was scattered in the hills of Northern Mesopotamia. The transition of early farmers to the arid and semi-arid zone, where sporadic winter rains are insufficient for crop cultivation, demanded a shift to an opposite principle of irrigation husbandry. This 'principle' was disclosed by Ubaidians which allowed them to settle in otherwise inhospitable area of an alluvial plain. These first settlers laid the basis of traditional irrigation starting to monitor water resources. That included harnessing floodwaters, storage of excessive water and delivering it to the fields in due time.
According to 'The Sumerian King List' - the first Sumerian historiographic composition and a very arbitrary source of information - this 'principle' was revealed by gods to the king of Eridu, the earliest and the largest among Ubaidian sacred neighborhoods. In another composition, 'The Eridu Genesis', the first cities before the Flood are glorified for dredging canals and ditches; the success of their irrigation schemes resulted in food surplus. Modern research has acknowledged that the first practical steps in irrigation were taken in the vicinity of Eridu over 7,000 years from now.
When Sumerians mention the secrets of gods, they cite an enormous span of Dreamtime before the Early Dynastic period (2,900 - 2,350 BCE). The time when the power was in the hands of high priests running urban clerical states with the help of aristocratic councils.
Sumerians also believed that the 'secrets' of husbandry were disclosed to the human beings by divine revelation rather than acquired through painful experience of generations of farmers. They told a very weird legend about the origins of agriculture. The first irrigation canals had been dug by minor gods who became so exhausted that complained before the divine general assembly about their miserable fate. The assembly authorized the god of wisdom to work out the plan, and the humans were created to relieve the celestial beings of their burden. Since then the man's role had been to please the gods. Maybe the message was that the high authorities should be trusted in changing the individual's life for the better. An example of 'nice' political brainwashing since in reality the state administration rarely gazed beyond its nose.
The soil in Southern Mesopotamia suffers from dryness (most part of the year) and devastating floods in spring as a result of recent rains and snowmelt in the highlands. Water control needs to overcome such obstacles as drought during the growing season and floods in the course of the harvest season; both calamities can easily ruin crops.
Due to a low difference of heights, the Twin Rivers flow unhurriedly across the alluvial plain splitting into a few branches and forming an extended delta. Throughout the whole span of the Sumerian civilization, the Twin Rivers hadn't converged into a single waterway (called Shatt-al-Arab) like nowadays.
During the seasonal inundation, they carry fertile silt from the mountains. However, instead of settling on the fields, it builds up on the riverbed or accumulates at the banks. As a result, the rivers are raised above lowlands. Guarded by natural levees, they give out most of sediment to marshlands and swarms on the way to the Gulf. Sometimes the pressure of water is so intense that it breaks the levees and floods the plain. It could result in environmental calamity. Occasionally the entire cities were washed off by huge floods which left 1.5m-layer of clay sandwiched between earlier and later cultural horizons (which prompted the legend of the Deluge to enter the long-range human memory).
Floods serve both as a benefactor and a malefactor. Their sediment fertilizes the soil forming a potential for raising abundant crops. On the downside, when floodwater is trapped in the fields, it cannot be drained due to a flat profile of the land. It can disappear through evaporation or percolation.
Irrigation is basically redeployment of river water for cultivation. The elevation of liquid above the surrounding farmlands prompts the digging of ditches and canals but makes drainage of floodwaters impossible. Some water is absorbed by soil. However, a fast absorption raises the water table to the root zone leading to erosion of soil and water logging. The rest amount of liquid evaporates leaving white fingerprints of salt. Saline soil cannot produce expected yields and makes farmers shift to more salt-tolerated plants.
The large-scale irrigation included the use of feeder canals; initially, dried branches of the Euphrates and later artificial channels. These canals were cut in levee slopes; they allowed to expand cultivation area and promoted population resettlement. Smaller canals brought water to basins feeding the fields. These canals were equipped with sluices and weirs - low dams controlling water flow. At its peak, about 10, 000 square miles (or 2,590,000 ha) were under cultivation. All major cities were eventually linked by a united network of canals faced with burned brick and sealed up with bitumen.
The Achilles' heal of irrigation agriculture is salinity which is a by-product of flooding. After a few seasons, the soil becomes poisonous and unproductive. To avoid this, traditional agriculture relied on an alternate-year fallowing - a system which allows a field to rest for a year after cultivation.
The fallow year had a direct impact on lowering the water table. The soil would dry up due to lack of moisture; weeds would extract remaining drops of liquid from underground; seasonal rains would wash off deposits of salt; farm animals would graze the weeds fertilizing the field with their manure. The earth would repose dreaming of the next flooding.
Sumerians, who had to deal with a tough problem of population pressure due to continued urbanization, applied sophisticated irrigation schemes that helped them achieve abundance of foodstuffs. This abundance accounts for flourishing of the earliest urban complex society. As a result, the community could sustain a fast-growing number of non-farmers:
- Priests responsible for divine revelations and coordination of agricultural labor.
- Scribes who recorded business transactions and administrative procedures.
- Artisans producing craft objects.
- Merchants capable of delivering goods to distant lands and bringing luxurious items and building materials.
- Military officers who made a living at settling accounts with their neighbors.
The fate of these early urban communities depended on crops. The food surplus of corporate households was used as an instrument of power. It was stored in the state's barns and granaries on the temple premises as a visual sign of legitimate practice sanctified by heavenly authorities.
Part of this property was kept as the grain fund or served as the safety net in case of crop failure and a basis for brewing beer. Another part was redistributed between city professionals and workforce in the form of staple foodstuffs (barley, oil and beer). The rest was subjected to foreign trade for further enrichment of the elite. But, above all, a good crop was a sign of the divine blessing.
Cereal cultivation was not the farmers' only occupation. They were devoted gardeners who grew flax, fruit and vegetables in riverside gardens and orchards. They exploited every tract of grazing land to feed their families and flocks.
Oxen served as draft animals pulling plows. Crops were harvested with sickles. Grain was transported to warehouses by wagons being drawn by oxen or donkeys. These wagons had solid wheels protected by leather tires fastened with copper nails. Animals were harnessed by yokes and controlled by reins.
Sumerians were bright students who would soon surpass their Ubaidian teachers by upgrading their farming techniques to the most 'hi-tech' level accepted at that time.
While moving downstream in search of rich soils and grazing lands, they entered into an arid steppe where they had to learn the principle of irrigation agriculture as a substitute for insufficient rainfall. There was nowhere to go - only the Persian Gulf lay ahead - and they lacked sea-faring adventurers in their ranks. Of course, they had marshlands at their disposal with abundance of beasts, fish and waterfowl. However, natural resources alone could not sustain them. Their subsistence was primarily based on farming and herding. And they didn't have much room or time for experiments: a single crop failure could be fatal.
So why had they remained and never thought of abandoning this hard-to-survive environment? They should have felt divine surveillance. Their first non-farmers were priests who were commissioned to seek spiritual support. Their earliest communal buildings were temples, and their initial corporate property belonged to temple households.
Besides, they understood the basic principle of irrigation. Their salvation didn't depend anymore on the amount of rainfall; it was confined in the ability to control abundant water resources of the Twin Rivers.
Irrigation network is a huge time and labor-consuming enterprise which should be maintained on an annual basis. Canals ought to be dredged against silt which can stuck water flow leading to flooding and crop collapse. However, harvests on the alluvial plain had far exceeded yields in the uplands.
Initially, Neolithic societies in the region practiced rain agriculture, and the majority of population was scattered in the hills of Northern Mesopotamia. The transition of early farmers to the arid and semi-arid zone, where sporadic winter rains are insufficient for crop cultivation, demanded a shift to an opposite principle of irrigation husbandry. This 'principle' was disclosed by Ubaidians which allowed them to settle in otherwise inhospitable area of an alluvial plain. These first settlers laid the basis of traditional irrigation starting to monitor water resources. That included harnessing floodwaters, storage of excessive water and delivering it to the fields in due time.
According to 'The Sumerian King List' - the first Sumerian historiographic composition and a very arbitrary source of information - this 'principle' was revealed by gods to the king of Eridu, the earliest and the largest among Ubaidian sacred neighborhoods. In another composition, 'The Eridu Genesis', the first cities before the Flood are glorified for dredging canals and ditches; the success of their irrigation schemes resulted in food surplus. Modern research has acknowledged that the first practical steps in irrigation were taken in the vicinity of Eridu over 7,000 years from now.
When Sumerians mention the secrets of gods, they cite an enormous span of Dreamtime before the Early Dynastic period (2,900 - 2,350 BCE). The time when the power was in the hands of high priests running urban clerical states with the help of aristocratic councils.
Sumerians also believed that the 'secrets' of husbandry were disclosed to the human beings by divine revelation rather than acquired through painful experience of generations of farmers. They told a very weird legend about the origins of agriculture. The first irrigation canals had been dug by minor gods who became so exhausted that complained before the divine general assembly about their miserable fate. The assembly authorized the god of wisdom to work out the plan, and the humans were created to relieve the celestial beings of their burden. Since then the man's role had been to please the gods. Maybe the message was that the high authorities should be trusted in changing the individual's life for the better. An example of 'nice' political brainwashing since in reality the state administration rarely gazed beyond its nose.
The soil in Southern Mesopotamia suffers from dryness (most part of the year) and devastating floods in spring as a result of recent rains and snowmelt in the highlands. Water control needs to overcome such obstacles as drought during the growing season and floods in the course of the harvest season; both calamities can easily ruin crops.
Due to a low difference of heights, the Twin Rivers flow unhurriedly across the alluvial plain splitting into a few branches and forming an extended delta. Throughout the whole span of the Sumerian civilization, the Twin Rivers hadn't converged into a single waterway (called Shatt-al-Arab) like nowadays.
During the seasonal inundation, they carry fertile silt from the mountains. However, instead of settling on the fields, it builds up on the riverbed or accumulates at the banks. As a result, the rivers are raised above lowlands. Guarded by natural levees, they give out most of sediment to marshlands and swarms on the way to the Gulf. Sometimes the pressure of water is so intense that it breaks the levees and floods the plain. It could result in environmental calamity. Occasionally the entire cities were washed off by huge floods which left 1.5m-layer of clay sandwiched between earlier and later cultural horizons (which prompted the legend of the Deluge to enter the long-range human memory).
Floods serve both as a benefactor and a malefactor. Their sediment fertilizes the soil forming a potential for raising abundant crops. On the downside, when floodwater is trapped in the fields, it cannot be drained due to a flat profile of the land. It can disappear through evaporation or percolation.
Irrigation is basically redeployment of river water for cultivation. The elevation of liquid above the surrounding farmlands prompts the digging of ditches and canals but makes drainage of floodwaters impossible. Some water is absorbed by soil. However, a fast absorption raises the water table to the root zone leading to erosion of soil and water logging. The rest amount of liquid evaporates leaving white fingerprints of salt. Saline soil cannot produce expected yields and makes farmers shift to more salt-tolerated plants.
The large-scale irrigation included the use of feeder canals; initially, dried branches of the Euphrates and later artificial channels. These canals were cut in levee slopes; they allowed to expand cultivation area and promoted population resettlement. Smaller canals brought water to basins feeding the fields. These canals were equipped with sluices and weirs - low dams controlling water flow. At its peak, about 10, 000 square miles (or 2,590,000 ha) were under cultivation. All major cities were eventually linked by a united network of canals faced with burned brick and sealed up with bitumen.
The Achilles' heal of irrigation agriculture is salinity which is a by-product of flooding. After a few seasons, the soil becomes poisonous and unproductive. To avoid this, traditional agriculture relied on an alternate-year fallowing - a system which allows a field to rest for a year after cultivation.
The fallow year had a direct impact on lowering the water table. The soil would dry up due to lack of moisture; weeds would extract remaining drops of liquid from underground; seasonal rains would wash off deposits of salt; farm animals would graze the weeds fertilizing the field with their manure. The earth would repose dreaming of the next flooding.
Sumerians, who had to deal with a tough problem of population pressure due to continued urbanization, applied sophisticated irrigation schemes that helped them achieve abundance of foodstuffs. This abundance accounts for flourishing of the earliest urban complex society. As a result, the community could sustain a fast-growing number of non-farmers:
- Priests responsible for divine revelations and coordination of agricultural labor.
- Scribes who recorded business transactions and administrative procedures.
- Artisans producing craft objects.
- Merchants capable of delivering goods to distant lands and bringing luxurious items and building materials.
- Military officers who made a living at settling accounts with their neighbors.
The fate of these early urban communities depended on crops. The food surplus of corporate households was used as an instrument of power. It was stored in the state's barns and granaries on the temple premises as a visual sign of legitimate practice sanctified by heavenly authorities.
Part of this property was kept as the grain fund or served as the safety net in case of crop failure and a basis for brewing beer. Another part was redistributed between city professionals and workforce in the form of staple foodstuffs (barley, oil and beer). The rest was subjected to foreign trade for further enrichment of the elite. But, above all, a good crop was a sign of the divine blessing.
Cereal cultivation was not the farmers' only occupation. They were devoted gardeners who grew flax, fruit and vegetables in riverside gardens and orchards. They exploited every tract of grazing land to feed their families and flocks.
Oxen served as draft animals pulling plows. Crops were harvested with sickles. Grain was transported to warehouses by wagons being drawn by oxen or donkeys. These wagons had solid wheels protected by leather tires fastened with copper nails. Animals were harnessed by yokes and controlled by reins.
Sumerians were bright students who would soon surpass their Ubaidian teachers by upgrading their farming techniques to the most 'hi-tech' level accepted at that time.
Post Comment