Study and exploration

As one of the world’s major ecosystems and a cradle of civilization, the Tigris-Euphrates system long has been a focus of scientific and historical research. A mass of data on the environment, soils, flora, fauna, land use, settlement patterns, and artifactual history of the entire region has become available through geomorphologic, hydrologic, and archaeological surveys. A full assessment of tectonic movement, sea-level oscillation, deposition of alluvium, river shifts, and long-term patterns of climatic change has been hampered by a lack of data from Iraq, although important information on some of those processes has been obtained by studying the Persian Gulf.

Different explanations, for example, have been given for the way in which the plains were formed and the present-day coastline created. From about 1900, it generally was accepted that the head of the gulf once extended as far north as Baghdad and had been pushed back to its present limits by silting over the course of millennia. In 1952, geologists concluded that the present coastline at the delta was much older than previously thought and that silting had occurred in conjunction with the subsidence of basal rock beneath the Euphrates estuary. Studies of sea-level oscillations conducted in the 1970s, however, have brought that formulation into question; and the cumulative impact of human intervention—in the form of massive irrigation and subsequent abandonment of cultivated tracts—on the delta-formation processes has yet to be taken sufficiently into account.

Pioneering surface surveys by the American geographer Robert McCormic Adams in the northern part of the alluvial plain (1956–57) and in the Diyālā region (1957–58) were followed by similar work in the Khūzestān plain of Iran (1961) and the southern alluvium (1967) and by a restudy of the central alluvium (1971–73). Other scholars have surveyed those and other areas, often in conjunction with archaeological salvage projects.

Aerial and satellite photographs and maps can only begin to show the intricate tangle of watercourses and ancient irrigation channels present in the alluvial plain. Archaeologists, in surface surveys, are able to separate discrete systems by period, through a study of potsherds found on sites that lie along the canals. In some areas, the tells of ancient towns remain above the alluvium and allow a reconstruction of the ancient canal patterns. Through such methods, especially when combined with geomorphologic techniques, it is possible to demonstrate that at no time in the past were all areas irrigated. In fact, a key to the continuity of Mesopotamian civilization seems to have been the possibility of shifting from a salinated area to a new one simply by extending a canal into the alluvial desert. The surveys make possible the correlation of changes in settlement patterns with historical records. They also provide information on major events, such as the abandonment of large areas, presumably because of shifts in water to other Euphrates courses, that receive no mention in texts from the period. Even though the surveys cover only a fraction of the alluvium, it is possible now to lay out in general the patterns of human occupation and exploitation of the region from the first delta settlements (c. 5000 bce) to the present day. Similar assessments also can be made in specific areas on both the Tigris and Euphrates in Syria and Turkey. But work of that kind is still relatively preliminary, and improved data will allow much more sophisticated reconstructions of the adaptations humanity has made to the Tigris-Euphrates system.