1. A PRESENTATION
ON
MESOPOTAMIAN SETTLEMENT
PRESENTED BY:•KUNWAR FAIZAN KHAN
•MOHAMMAD ASAD
•SAROSH IMAM

2. INTRODUCTION
• Mesopotamia is a Greek word that
means the land between two rivers
the Tigris and the Euphrates.
• Around 3500 B.C small
agricultural pottery making and
cloth weaving in villages were
transmitted through societies of
cities.
• Initial settlement on the northern
plains, with movement out to the
south and west from 6000 BC.
• Mesopotamia does not refer to any
particular civilization. Over the
course of several millennia, many
civilizations developed, collapsed,
and were replaced in this region
including the Sumerians,
Akkadians, Babylonians and
Assyrians.

3. EUROPE
Caspian
Sea
Black S ea
Aral
Sea
ASIA
Mesopotamia
Mediterranean
Sea
GEOGRAPHY
AFRICA
Red Sea
500 km
Jazira
Plateau
Arabian
Sea
•
Samarra
Dyala Fan
Ramadi
Fallujah
Zagros Mountains
Baghdad
Ti
gr
is
Kut
Diwanyiah
Najaf E
u
Amarah
ph
ra
te Samawah
s
Karun Fan
•
Nasyriyah
at
Sh
Basrah
lA
ta
Arabian Platform
areas outside
Mesopotamian
b
ra
Wadi Fan
100 km
Persian
Gulf
depression
alluvial plain
the zone of marshes
and lakes ('Ahwar')
estuary
alluvial fans
•
Alluvial plains surrounded on two
sides by better watered
mountainous zones. Summer
drought and winter rains although
the lowland plains receive minimal
rainfall. Where the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers join, the land is
flat and there are many marshy
areas.
This unecompassed spaced
presented no natural barrier to
invaders and indeed there was
continual warfare in the region.
Areas near rivers protected from
flooding - elevated above the
river.Within reach of irrigation
water and the closer they were to
the river the greater their
productivity.

4. CLIMATE
• The climate is exceedingly hot, but also very humid - the
floods often unpredictable. Mesopotamians were at the
mercy of their hostile environment, and believed
themselves to be at the mercy of angry and irrational gods.
The civilization which produced one of the seven wonders
of the ancient world; the hanging gardens of Babylon, also
compiled the Epic of Gilgamesh, a pessimistic portrayal of
the futile search for immortality and human meaning. City
states rose and fell, empires rose and fell, yet the human
spirit of the Mesopotamians endured.

5. FAVOURABLE CONDITION
• Favorable geographic circumstances allowed the peoples
of Mesopotamia to evolve from a hunter-gatherer culture to
a culture based on husbandry, agriculture, and permanent
settlements
• Trade with other regions also flourished, as indicated by
the presence in early burial sites of metals and precious
stones not locally available
• The rich wildlife was probably what first attracted humans to
the Mesopotamian plain. The Southern plain, outside the
area of rain, fed agriculture, but, over the millennia, the
rivers have laid down thick deposits of very fertile silt and,
once water is brought to this soil in ditches and canals, it
proves a very attractive area to farmers. For materials such
as wood, stone and metals, however, people have to look
North and East, to the mountains where the first settlers
had originated.

6. COMPARISON WITH EGYPTIAN
CIVILIZATION
•
Civilization developed in
Mesopotamia simultaneously
with Egypt and the two are
often called the 'Fertile
Crescent'.
• In contrast to the clear cut Nile
valley rich valley of Tigris and
Euphrates river had ill defined
edges. To the south and west
the areas faded into the
emptiness of Arabia to the west
to the north into the fertile plain
of Syria and to east foothill
merge with Persian and
Armenian highland.

7. SETTLEMENT PATTERN

8. SETTLEMENT PATTERN
Toward the end of the early dynastic period change in settlement
pattern. Small villages that surrounded the cities disappear and the cities
themselves grow in size. Many of the rural people moved to the new
fortified cities such as Uruk. In response to increased inter-city warfare
related to the dominance of the secular-based ruling elite.The growing
power of a military based authority could have been a crucial factor in
the rise of cities and state society
• Neolithic: No substantial settlement in southern Mesopotamia before
5500BC. From 6000BC to 4000BC settlement expanded from the
uplands to incorporate more and more of the Mesopotamian plain.
• The Ubaid :culture expands to northern Mesopotamia, seen by the
presence of shared material culture particularly painted pottery. The
Ubaid culture was the foundation culture of Mesopotamia with temple
centred settlements that administered exchange.
• Eridu: Eridu established by 5400 BC initially 1-2 ha for the whole site.
Located in the extreme south of the Mesopotamian plain. Agriculture
around Eridu is dependent on irrigation with wheat, barley, sheep, goats
and cattle. Possible that irrigation management is responsible for the
expansion and elaboration of the temple institution.

9. • Uruk: Uruk earliest urban centre to form a city state. A number of
cities develop at the same time. From the middle of the 4th millennium
BC one city in each of the proto-states becomes dominant, the most
important being Uruk. Development concentrated in the south. The
cities have large walls, and mud brick buildings that create tells
• At Uruk a precinct where several temples were adjacent. Temples
associated with ziggurats -stepped towers the temples have large
storage facilities. They are the redistributive centers for both
agricultural produce and craft goods. The temple joined by a palace
suggesting religion supporting secular control. Some temples built on
a large platform or ziggurat to make them even more impressive.
• Akkadian Empire. The city states only ever unified for short periods
of time before they collapsed back to individual cities. Sargon of
Agade conquered Kish and spread south from there. His success led to
the fall of the last of the Sumerian rulers and the establishment of the
Akkadian empire. The empire lasted from 2350-2150 BC. A more
integrated system of trade developed controlled by the palace. But it
did not create a long-lived political or economic system

10. FACTORS AFECTING SETTLEMENT
DISTRIBUTION
A’
avulsion
point
new ch
annel b
e
lt
A
avu
lsed
c ha
nne
l
bel
t
Avulsion is a major river diversion to a lower elevation
on the floodplain in which the older channel becomes
abandoned and a new channel is initiated.

11. FACTORS THAT MAY AFFECT SETTLEMENT
DISTRIBUTION
• Avulsion rate (abrupt vs gradual abandonment of
former channel)
• Avulsion frequency (number of avulsions during certain
period of time)
• Avulsion style (reoccupational vs progradational)
- reoccupation: flow occupies channel previously
existing channel on floodplain (e.g. former major
channel or smaller stream channel)
- progradation: avulsion belt is deposited
following avulsion, followed by formation of
a new single channel;
• Channel pattern following avulsion
(single channel or multiple channel system)

12. PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS
• Avulsions and resulting channel and sedimentation
patterns affected the distribution and sizes of irrigated
floodplain, quality of soils, and, therefore, settlement
patterns;
• Progradational avulsions with avulsion belts created
conditions for local increase in naturally-irrigated area
with well-drained soils, generation of food surpluses and
population migration toward area possibly leading to
appearance of urban settlements;
• During and after abandonment of avulsion belts and
multiple channel networks in favor of two-channel or
single-channel system, extensive canal construction was
required to maintain urban and many rural settlements,
eventually abandoned (probably due to increased
inefficiency) during mid-Islamic period.

13. GOVERNMENT
• Mesopotamia did not have protection from natural
boundaries. This led to constant migrations of
Indo-European people from the area between the
Black and Caspian seas. This lead to a constant
migration and 'Cultural Diffusion', or the process
where an existing culture adopts the traits of
another and the two eventually merge into a new
culture. As a result, a strong central government
failed to develop in Mesopotamia. The dominant
political unit was the 'City-State', a small area
surrounding a large, complex city.

14. ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIAN CITIES
•
•
•
Were located on river
banks and surrounded by
their countryside with
‘corona’ of irrigation
agriculture;
sustaining area per
individual was estimated
between 0.5-1.5 ha/person;
daily travel distances from
city to countryside did not
exceed 3-4 km for
maximum agricultural
productivity;

15. URUK
•
•
•
At the end of the fourth
millennium, Uruk was probably
the largest city in the world
(estimated by some scholars at
400 hectares - the size of Rome
in the first century of our
Common Era).
Centered on the important
temple (ziggurat) of Inanna (the
Great Goddess of Love and
War), the city has produced
beautiful stone sculptures
depicting the temple flocks of
sheep and goats
The city is believed to have
been surrounded by moats.

16. • Of more significance, however, is the discovery at
Uruk of the world's earliest recorded writing.
Using a reed stylus to draw on tablets of clay, the
temple administrators recorded the movement of
agricultural produce and out of the temple
storerooms including beer, bread and sheep.
• Initially the records took the form of pictures of
the objects being counted together with signs
representing numerals. Gradually, these
pictographs became more stylized and wedge-like
or cuneiform (Latin for wedge = cuneus) and
adapted to write the local language, or Sumerian.
• The ability to write allowed the Sumerians to
record not only lists of goods but also events
around them. This development therefore takes us
from pre-history to history.

17. THE CITY OF UR
• Around 2350 BCE the southern city states were united into
one empire by Sargon, king of the city of Akkad (also read as
Agade). The administration was centralised and the Semitic
language Akkadian (named after Sargon's capital) was
introduced as the official language in preference to Sumerian.
Akkad has not been located but the period produced some
astonishing works of art, including fine cylinder seals.
• Sargon and his sons ruled Mesopotamia for 150 years. The
Akkadian Empire had collapsed and Mesopotamia was in
turmoil. The southern cities began to reassert their
independence. Chief among these was the city of Ur. Under
king Ur-Nammu, the city established itself as the capital of
an empire that rivalled that of the Akkadian rulers.

18. • Ur-Nammu was a
prodigious builder. The
most impressive
monument of his reign
was the ziggurat at Ur.
Although similar in shape
to the pyramids of Egypt,
ziggurats were not tombs
but made of solid
brickwork.
• Often, as at Ur, three
staircases led up one side
of the tower to several
stages. At the summit was
a shrine to the god. `

19. BABYLONIA
• Around 1780 BCE as king of the small town of Babylon, Hammurapi
united Southern Mesopotamia into a single empire.
• Hammurapi is best remembered for his code of laws (the famous stela
of Hammurapi is now in the Louvre in Paris). Hammurapi's death
caused his empire to fall apart. Despite this, the city of Babylon was to
remain the capital of a Southern kingdom
• Sixty years of Babylonian supremacy was threatened during the reign
of king Nabonidus, when Mesopotamia was faced with the expansion
of yet another eastern power, the Persians. In 539 BCE, the armies of
the Persian king Cyrus (a member of the Achaemenid family) marched
upon Babylon and captured the city and with it all the Neo-Babylonian
Empire.
• This, in effect, brought to an end three thousand years of self-rule in
Mesopotamia. While many of the traditions and way of life in the
region continued under the new rulers, Mesopotamia was now part of
the much greater empire of the Persians which stretched from Egypt to
India
• Over the next 200 years the region would see the advance of Greek
civilisation and the eventual destruction of the Persian Empire at the
hand of the Macedonian king Alexander the Great.

20. LANGUAGE
• Mesopotamians had one of the first recorded languages.It was
invented to keep track of farming and trade.The form of writing,
called Pictograms that was used by the Mesopotamians was
very simple.
• One mark indicated a number, the other indicated what was
being counted. The writing was done by marking wet clay with
a reed. Efficient and easy as this was it became much more
difficult with higher numbers.
• Gradually this system became out-dated and indograms came
into use

21. PATTERNS IN URBAN PLANNING
•
•
•
•
Massive size compared to previous settlements
Complex central administration
Greater concentration of people
Size does not necessarily equal population. there were
space devoted to gardens, grazing land, etc.
• Location near rivers in order to control waterway
• New urban form--> citadel with closely-linked templepalace unit, separated from rest of town by height or
walls
• Mesopotamian tradition of seeing universe as square,
reflected in ground plans.

22. THANK YOU!