Farming


 * Mesopotamia was home to many great political, economic, and cultural developments that were influenced by its climate and geography. Such developments include agriculture and irrigation. The geography of Mesopotamia is such that agriculture is possible only with irrigation and good drainage. During the time of Chaldea (612-539 BCE), methods of hunting and farming had already been established. This new Babylonian empire was able to gather barley, chickpeas, lentils, wheat, dates, onions, garlic, lettuce, leeks and mustard, as the Sumerians did. **
 * Also they domesticated animals such as oxen, equids and donkeys. All of these animals helped them on the farm and for traveling. They were used for ploughing, transportation, hauling cargo, threshing grain and irrigation. Oxen especially are known for their amazing strength and that is why they are used for hauling cargo and transportation. The donkeys were mainly used for transportation, farming tillage, threshing, raising water and milling. Other animals in the Equidae and Bovidae families were used for transportation, irrigation, farming and "basic need" resources like food, warmth and sometimes even companionship.**
 * Like all of the Mesopotamian empires, irrigation was the main reason agriculture expanded. A problem arose with the water supply: the soil in which crops were harvested contained salt and as the food increased for the civilization, the population grew which meant more water would be needed. The salt poisoned the plants and some communities died off or moved to a more fertile land. This meant new groups of people would arrive at new locations.**
 * Chaldea was part of an area called the Fertile Crescent, which was an ideal place for farming and agriculture. This arc of land stretched from the Persian Gulf to the Nile River. Silt, fine sand that was carried down the rivers Tigris and Euphrates and build up along the banks, made a perfect soil for harvesting crops. Rivers split into smaller streams up North, creating a marshy area called a delta. It attracted wildlife for hunting and fishing and the reeds from the bogs and swamps made an excellent material for building houses.**
 * Also, the climate was very hot and dry in the Middle East, so this was another reason why irrigation was such an important technique. At first, the plants did well with the climate and helped them thrive but they needed the rainfall. Mesopotamia had very low precipitation, and the farmers were worried their crops would die from lack of nutrition. In the spring, however, the fields flooded after the snow melted in the mountains and was carried down into the rivers. Then summer came again and the crops were baked in the hot, dry sun and the cycle continued. The biggest problem for farmers was to control the amount of water that the crops would get, and irrigation was born.**
 * There are many types of irrigation. They built dikes and carried water with buckets and poles but the Chaldeans main use of irrigation was the complex network of irrigation ditches and canals. This system forced people to work together because they had to maintain the canals for themselves and for their people. This method also brought towns together and brought better communication and cooperation among the Chaldeans.**




 * This a picture drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldean intaglio (which is a printmaking technique) reproduced in Layard.**


 * The Chaldeans got their resources from mainly outside of the area, where they would come back to make jewelry, cloth, pottery, wool, oil, leather work and metalwork. Around the area of Chaldea, there were pasture lands, vineyards, fields and groves of fig trees. Both of the rivers were polluted and brown but the wide rivers provided the broad highways between one town and another.**
 * In each city, there is a temple compound in which the harvest is stored. Workers and beasts from the vineyards and fields deliver the crops which would then by divided into shares and distributed to the people of the city. Also, the logs of the fig trees are sent off to trade for other goods. They trade with the Northern provinces, where mining and logging can be done in the mountain's forests. The sheep and goats would help carry the goods to the city or to the wharf told. Chaldea's resources also contributed to the inventions and innovations of Mesopotamia; astronomy, wheel, math and numbers, farming** **technology, laws, writing and animal domestication. Wooden wheels from the forest, writing and laws from the reeds near the rivers, animals with farming technology and domestication and the irrigation which helped all of Mesopotamia survive.** **Other Mesopotamian innovations include the control of water by dams and a printmaking technique the use of aqueducts**.
 * Early settlers of fertile land in Mesopotamia used wooden ploughs to soften the soil before planting crops.** **A region that can be irrigated on a long-term basis thus has an abundant supply of good water, well-drained soil, good regional drainage and supply of fertilizer for the soil. Chaldea did not start irrigation, because it was later that Chaldea emerged in Mesopotamia. Beer and wine was also a very big part of the Chaldean empire, and to make beer they used malted barley, wheat, corn, maize and rice to brew the beer. They acquired these resources from their pasture lands and wheat fields, and it primarily contained starch, sugar and carbohydrates which was a good resource for Chaldea. Wine was prepared from the vineyards, and others regularly had their own fields, like wheat and corn.**
 * In conclusion, Chaldea was a good source for agriculture, and though it required assistance and relied on other places to help them with gathering resources, they had to independent and find ways to help them survive. It was a very important thing because it was good for the villagers, farmers and of course the economy because the population would grow as the amount of nutrition there was.**

Bibliography:


 * __**http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17323/17323-h/images/325.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17323/17323-h/v3c.htm&usg=__1Nvw7mFARmBF9txU-6q7r7TcbaI=&h=380&w=677&sz=73&hl=en&start=3&tbnid=DELLU029XEbX6M:&tbnh=78&tbnw=139&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dchaldea%2Bfarming%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DG__** **__
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 * __**Ancient Worlds 7 Textbook **__**__