A recent discovery in eastern Siberia indicates that people were living in the Arctic region at least 30,000 years ago. A camping site found on the Yana river is 480 km north of the Artic circle is twice as old as anything found previously in that part of the world. At the time of occupation, most of the land in the higher latitudes was covered with glaciers but the Yana River area was free of ice. It was a dry flood plain which served as a habitat for mammoths, horses and other game that could be hunted for food.


Inevitably, this discovery has been used to bloster arguments about the feasibility of human migration across the Bering Strait land bridge into North America. It also supports arguments that migration may have been possible much earlier than previously thought and long before the last glacial maximum about 20,000 years ago.

"Getting people across to the New World was not the problem... The problem was getting people into that part of the world so they could cross."

But before we jump to conclusions, it's worth noting that the evidence for linking this particular group with the Clovis people of North America is still tentative. However despite the time gap of 18,000 years that separates them, evidence of human habitation this far north during the ice age certainly does improve the odds for this theory.





See also:


Paleoamericans
More evidence that Native Americans came by boats


Update: In the comments, PF (who also happens to write one of my favourite blogs) brings his considerable local knowledge to bear on the problem of early human migration in eastern Siberia.

This false-color, detailed, topographical map of the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter data shows in blue the area an enormous complex of lakes that are thought to have existed over three and a half billion years ago in the southern highlands of Mars. As the largest lake spilled over the low point in its boundary a torrential flood would have moved north, along the direction indicated by the arrow, carving the sinuous Ma'adim Vallis. At the north end of Ma'adim Vallis, the flood waters would have poured into large, round Gusev Crater. Standing bodies of surface water are thought to be favorable for ancient martian microbial life.

Over the weekend, NASA landed a probe at the bottom of the Gusev Crater.

(adapted from APOD)

Many of these stories were based on the writings of a Franciscan friar from Oxford who wrote a book called Inventio Fortunatae which made a detailed description of his travels to these northern lands at the behest of King Edward III. This book has been lost but this tale was related by another Franciscan at the court of the King of Norway in Bergen. This was then recorded in 1364 by Jacobus Cnoyen of Boise-le-Duc in his native Belgica Lingua. As with the original Inventio Fortunatae, Cnoyen's report of it was also lost however extracts of it were preserved in a letter by Mercator to the English polymath and mystic John Dee, astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I. John Dee was interested in Arthurian legends, partly because of his own Welsh background but also because he was trying to interest the Queen in his own modest proposal: to establish a "Brytish Impire" over most of North America.

In his letter to Dee, Mercator wrote

"we have taken [the Arctic geography] from the Itinerium of Jacobus Cnoyen of the Hague, who makes some citations from the Gesta of Arthur of Britain; however, the greater and most important part he learned from a certain priest at the court of the king of Norway in 1364. He was descended in the fifth generation from those whom Arthur had sent to inhabit these lands, and he related that in the year 1360 a certain Minorite, an Englishman from Oxford, a mathematician, went to those islands; and leaving them, advanced still farther by magic arts and mapped out all and measured them by an astrolabe in practically the subjoined figure, as we have learned from Jacobus. The four canals there pictured he said flow with such current to the inner whirlpool, that if vessels once enter they cannot be driven back by wind."

Mercator then quotes from Cnoyen

Anno Domini 1364 came 8 of these persons to Norway to the King. Among them were two clerics. One of them had an astrolabe who in the fifth generation was descended from Brusselites. These 8 were of the orginal party who had penetrated into the northern regions...

The priest who had the astrolabe related to the king of Norway that in AD 1360 there had come to these Northern Islands an English Minorite from Oxford who was a good astronomer etc. Leaving the rest of the party who had come to the Islands, he journeyed further through the whole of the North etc, and put into writing all the wonders of those Islands, and gave the King of England this book, which he called in Latin Inventio Fortunatae...

Writing about the North Pole:

In the midst of the four countries is a Whirlpool into which there empty these four Indrawing Seas which divide the North. And the water rushes round and descends into the earth just as if one were pouring it through a filter funnel. It is 4 degrees wide on every side of the Pole, that is to say eight degrees altogther. Except that right under the Pole there lies a bare rock in the midst of the Sea. Its circumference is almost 33 French miles, and it is all of magnetic stone. And is as high as the clouds, so the Priest said, who had received the astrolabe from this Minorite in exchange for a Testament. And the Minorite himself had heard that one can see all round it from the Sea, and that it is black and glistening.

Other curiosities included in Mercator's map are the mythical islands of Frysland (which is also shown as an inset in the top left corner) and Groclant (possibly Baffin island). A second magnetic rock appears north of the Straits of Aniam (the supposed but as yet undiscovered Bering Strait) and the legendary land of Gog and Magog is situated in north-eastern Siberia and is therefore explicitly associated with the Mongols.

Finally, the Spanish possession of "Califormia" is situated above the Arctic circle!

See also:
John Dees's Polar Map
Mercator's Projection
A completely different story about Gog and Magog

Part of the Circus Maximus including the Arch of Titus

While the Forma Urbis Romae, a city plan of third century Rome, may not have been the oldest street directory in the world, it must surely rank as one of the most extradordinary.

The plan was enormous, measuring over 18 metres in length and more than 13 metres in height (60 x 43 feet) and big enough to cover an entire wall inside the aula (main room) of the Templum Pacis in Rome. It was made of carved marble slabs 70 mm thick and would have weighed over 40 metric tons.

It was also astonishingly detailed, depicting all of the architectural features of the city at the time including all public buildings, monuments, palaces, temples, markets, streets, shops and private houses, all at a scale of 240 to 1. Third century Rome, with a population of over one million inhabitants, was unquestionably the largest city in the world and it lost that title only after being finally overtaken by London in the 1800s.

Unfortunately for the plan, as with so many treasures of antiquity, it was destroyed during the Middle Ages and over the following centuries the slabs of marble were robbed as a ready source of building materials. Slabs that hadn't been stolen eventually fell off the wall (now the outer wall of a church) by themselves only to be buried in pieces at its base.

In the sixteenth century, fragments of the plan were rediscovered and the renewal of interest in ancient Rome that began with the Renaissance stimulated the search to find more pieces. Eventually about fifteen percent of the plan was recovered but, alas, it was broken up into a 1,186 individual pieces. A lot of work, mostly done by Italian scholars, has gone into identifying pieces of the plan . Coupled with detailed surveys of ancient sites in Rome, this has led to some impressive results in reconstructing and understanding the plan. Nevertheless, there remain a great many pieces which have defied all attempts at identification and the positions of most of the recovered fragments still remain a mystery. The fragmented Forma Urbis Romae today constitutes one the most challenging jigsaw puzzles in the world.

Sennacherib, persuing Merodach-Baladan: "He fled like a bird to the swampland. I sent my warriors into the midst of the swamps … and they searched for five days'. But the King of Babylon could not be found. (703 BC) A Sumerian reed house Another Sumerian reed house A modern Iraqi reed house (called a mudhif) Marshland (Hawr) in Southern Iraq

All the lands were sea...
Gilimma bound reeds upon the face of the waters,
He formed soil and poured it out beside the reeds.
He filled in a dike by the side of the sea,
He made a swamp, he formed a marsh
and he brought it into existence,
Reeds he formed, trees he created.

Sumerian creation myth

fresh waters ran out of the ground for her.
The waters rose up from it into her great basins.
Her city drank water aplenty from them.
Dilmun drank water aplenty from them.
Her pools of salt water indeed became pools of fresh water.
Her fields, glebe and furrows indeed produced grain for her.
Her city indeed became an emporium on the quay for the Land.
Dilmun indeed became an emporium on the quay for the Land.
At that moment, on that day, and under that sun,
so it indeed happened.

Enki and Ninhursanga c. 2500 BC

Shuruppak, a city that you surely know,
situated on the banks of the Euphrates,
that city was very old, and there were gods inside it.
The hearts of the Great Gods moved them to inflict the Flood.
Their Father Anu uttered the oath of secrecy,
Valiant Enlil was their Adviser,
Ninurta was their Chamberlain,
Ennugi was their Minister of Canals.
Ea [Enki], the Clever Prince, was under oath with them
so he repeated their talk to the reed house:
'Reed house, reed house! Wall, wall!
O man of Shuruppak, son of Ubartutu:
Tear down the house and build a boat!
Abandon wealth and seek living beings!
Spurn possessions and keep alive living beings!
Make all living beings go up into the boat.
The boat which you are to build,
its dimensions must measure equal to each other:
its length must correspond to its width.
Roof it over like the Apsu.
I understood and spoke to my lord, Ea:
'My lord, thus is the command which you have uttered
I will heed and will do it.

The Epic of Gilgamesh (Tablet XI): The Story of the Flood

c. 700 BC but based on the much older myths of Ziusudra and Atrahasis.

Here's a summary of Atrahasis and a handy table with cross-references to the Noah flood myth.

The swamps are full of huge reeds, bordered with tamarisk jungles, and in its lower reaches, where the water stretches out into great marshes, the river is cloggedwith a growth of agrostis.

To obtain a correct idea of this-region it must be borne in mind also that the course of the river and the features of the country on both banks are subject to constant fluctuation. The Hindieh canal and the main stream, the ancient Sura, rejoin one another at Samawa. Down to this point, the bed of the Euphrates being higher than that of the Tigris, the canals run from the former to the latter, but below this the situation is reversed.

At Nasrieh the Shattel-Hal, at one time the bed of the Tigris, and still navigable during the greater part vf the year, joins the Euphrates. From this point downward, and to some extent above this as far as Samawa, the river forms a seccession of weedy lagoons of the most hopeless character, the Paludes Chaldaici of antiquity, el Batihlt of the Arabs. Along this part of its course the river is apt to be choked with reeds and, except where bordered by lines of palm trees, the channel loses itself in lakes and swamps.

The inhabitants of this region are wild and inhospitable and utterly beyond the control of the Turkish authorities, and navigation of the river between Korna and Suk-esh-Sheiukh is unsafe owing to the attacks of armed pirates.
Encyclopædia Britannica (1911 edition)


Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq, 1964. Reprinted in 1992

...Memories of that first visit to the Marshes have never left me...Firelight on a half-turned face, the crying of geese, duck flying in to feed, a boy's voice singing somewhere in the dark, canoes moving in procession down a waterway, the setting sun seen crimson through the smoke of burning reedbeds, narrow waterways that wound still deeper into the Marshes...

The Marsh Arabs, Wilfred Thesiger,1964

Now the Shamiyah is the garden of Mesopotamia, the pleasure ground, if you like. I had almost forgotten how lovely it is in winter. The willows and Euphrates poplars which edge the bank of river and canal are gold and golden green, and as a background forests of palms, all about 15 years old, i.e. at the most charming moment of their life before they become leggy. (It's curious to reflect that the palm acquires the physical peculiarities of a Backfisch with age.) It was dark when we reached our camp, which was pitched in open ground half way between the trees of two canals and about 2 miles from the river. Major Norbury is the most lavishly hospitable creature and the camp was luxurious - every comfort, carpets, baths, oil-stoves, excellent meals. Next morning when I woke and stepped out of my tent into the bright sun and saw all the trees and things I wondered how anyone could live in Baghdad, or anywhere but the Shamiyah.

But I must tell you the camp was pitched quite near the little village which is the headquarters of the principal shaikh of the district, Ibadi al Husain - I knew him before, of course. So after dinner he invited us to his mudhif, his guest house. Now a mudhif you can't picture till you've seen it. It's made of reeds, reed mats spread over reed bundles arching over and meeting at the top so that the whole is a huge, perfectly regular and exquisitely constructed yellow tunnel 50 yards long. In the middle is the coffee hearth, with great logs of willow burning. On either side of the hearth, against the reed walls of the mudhif, a row of brocade-covered cushions for us to sit on, the Arabs flanking us and the coffee-maker crouched over his pots. The whole lighted by the fire and a couple of small lamps, and the end of the mudhif fading away into a golden gloom. Glorious.

So there we sat and drank coffee and talked for an hour.

We spent next day in camp, Major N. and another man shooting - there's a mass of game - while Captain Mann and Wigan and I took horses from Ibadi and with the latter's brother rode down to the Hor, the marsh, half lake, into which all canals empty themselves. It's a rice country and they have had this year a bumper crop. The yellow reed villages lay fat and comfortable in the winter sun, banked up with rice straw. The great golden heaps of rice were not all housed or shipped away but lay on the harvest floors. Did I say glorious before? I'm afraid I did. When we reached the Hor we got into tiny sajahs, the local canoe-like boat, and rowed out by passageways through the reeds to the open water. There were thousands of duck and teal and other water birds. The osprey breeds here. The water was covered with the dying leaves of a small water lily on which buffaloes were peacefully browsing, standing belly-deep in the Hor. Of all incongruous diets for a buffalo, water lilies are certainly the most preposterous.

We rode home and lunched with Ibadi in his mudhif. The lunch wasn't ready till past 3 by which time we were hungry but we couldn't make so much as an impression on the mountains of food provided. All the tribe must have been fed that day from what was left. As a concession I was allowed a spoon for my rice - I do drop it about so. The others eat with their fingers.

Gertrude Bell in a letter to her father dated 4th January, 1920

Telegrams and reports come in from the provinces all saying that Sir Percy's action [his brutal suppression of the 1920 revolt] is universally approved. Sharp action has been taken in Diwaniyah and Shamiyah to establish law and order, and after bombing raids by air all the extremist tribal leaders have made submission - except 'Abdul Wahid who has no tribal following and will probably give way in the the next day or two. In fact it has been decisively proved that we were right and the King wrong when we said that firm action with the extremists would bring them instantly to heel. Sir Percy's greatest triumph has been with the two dangerous 'alims of Kadhimain, Saiyid Muhammad Sadr and Shaikh Muhammad Mahdi al Khalisi. He sent them word that he was ever careful to safeguard the honour of religious dignitaries and that to save him from the painful duty of exiling them by force, he advised them to travel to Persia (they are Persian subjects.) They left on the night of the 29th.

Gertrude Bell in a letter to her father dated 31st August, 1922
(this quote I originally spotted over at Juan Cole's excellent site: Informed Comment)

Photograph taken by Wilfred Thesiger

The Zair [one who has made the pilgrimage to the tomb of the eighth Imam at Meshed in Iran in Shi'a Islam] fetched the tea things and sat beside the fire, washing the glasses, saucers and spoons in an enamelled bowl. The tea was in a screw of paper and the sugar in a small tin. While the Zair and Sadam discussed the levy of reeds which Falih had demanded for his father's new mudhif [guest house], the Zair's son arrived back. He unloaded the hashish [animal fodder], feeding some of it to the buffaloes and then piling the rest just inside the house. He looked about twenty, was bare-headed, his short hair cut in a pudding-bowl style, and was naked except for a cloak wrapped around his waist. Leaning his fishing spear in a corner, he put on a shirt before joining us.

"I will go to Bu Mughaifat and see Sahain tomorrow," Sadam said. "He must produce two more boatloads of reeds from his village."

"Yes, by God, Sadam, so far we have produced it all," the Zair exclaimed.

"Sahain's people always get out of everything," his son added. "It is the same with the Feraigat. All they can do is to make trouble."

That evening, back at Sadam's mudhif, I stood watching the sun go down behind reedbeds that stretched to the world's end. High overhead, banks of cirrus cloud, blown to tattered streams, ranged from ebony to flaming gold and the colour of old ivory, against a background of vermilion and orange, violet, mauve, and palest green. From all around, as if the Marshes breathed, came the massed voices of frogs, an all-pervading pulse of sound, so sustained that the mind ceased to take note of it. More than any other, even the crying of geese in winter, this was the sound of the Marshes. A dog barked; a buffalo grunted with a noise surprisingly like a camel's; a man called out a long, and to me, unintelligible message; a pause, and someone answered. More buffaloes swam across the open water towards the village, only their heads showing and each leaving a wake. Among the houses columns of dense smoke spread upwards from small fires, lit to keep the mosquitoes away from the herds. A boy, late back from the reedbeds, paddled down a waterway, a path of shining gold leading from the setting sun. He sang softly as he came towards me, the notes lingering in the air.

Sadam called and I went inside.

The Marsh Arabs, Wilfred Thesiger,1964

And who's this little fellow in his itty-bitty robe?
That's tiny baby Adolf, the Hitlers' little boy!
Will he grow up to be an L.L.D.?
Or a tenor in Vienna's Opera House?
Whose teensy hand is this, whose little ear and eye and nose?
Whose tummy full of milk, we just don't know:
printer's, doctor's, merchant's, priest's?
Where will those tootsy-wootsies finally wander?
To a garden, to a school, to an office, to a bride?
Maybe to the Buergermeister's daughter?

Precious little angel, mommy's sunshine, honey bun.
While he was being born, a year ago,
there was no dearth of signs on the earth and in the sky:
spring sun, geraniums in windows,
the organ-grinder's music in the yard,
a lucky fortune wrapped in rosy paper.
Then just before the labor his mother's fateful dream.
A dove seen in a dream means joyful news--
if it is caught, a long-awaited guest will come.
Knock knock, who's there, it's Adolf's heartschen knocking.

A little pacifier, diaper, rattle, bib,
our bouncing boy, thank God and knock on wood, is well,
looks just like his folks, like a kitten in a basket,
like the tots in every other family album.
Sh-h-h, let's not start crying, sugar,
The camera will click from under that black hood.

The Klinger Atelier, Grabenstrasse, Braunen.
And Braunen is a small but worthy town--
honest businesses, obliging neighbors,
smell of yeast dough, of gray soap.
No one hears howling dogs, or fate's footsteps.
A history teacher loosens his collar
and yawns over homework.

Hitler's First Photograph
by Wislawa Szymborska
Translated by: Baranczak and Cavanagh
View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems

Continued from Part I of this article

In 1968, archaeologists digging at the mound of al-Hiba in Iraq were struck by the fact that the people living in the surrounding area depended on many of the same resources, and seemed to use them in the same way, as the people who had lived there in the 3rd millennium BC. So while archaeological excavations continued, they initiated an ethnographic study of the modern villages around the mound. The ethnoarchaeology project was carried out under my direction and lasted twenty years. Its goal was to cast light on the use of locally available raw materials, and on the function and manufacturing technology of the same or similar artifacts in antiquity. The materials we focused on were mud or clay, reeds, wood, cattle, and sheep. We eventually added bitumen–a natural tarlike hydrocarbon–to the list because it appeared so often in conjunction with wood, reeds, and mud in the villages, as well as in the archaeological record. There was abundant evidence that many of the details of village life had parallels in the archaeological record. We hoped that knowing how people in the present day made and used the objects they needed for survival could help us make sense of the isolated bits of archaeological evidence and weave them into a coherent tapestry of ancient life.

The 2-mile-long mound of al-Hiba was in antiquity the ancient city-state of Lagash (see map on p. 3). It stood on the edge of a permanent marsh bordering a tributary of the Tigris, in southern Iraq, and lay about 75 kilometers north of Ur. Like Ur, Lagash was a major Sumerian city. It reached its greatest size in the Early Dynastic III period (2600-2350 BC), at the same time as the Royal Cemetery of Ur was in use. At that time Lagash was the capital of the Sumerian empire and probably the largest early Sumerian city.

The early years of the project were marked by the on-going removal of the sheikhs (local hereditary leaders) by the central government of Iraq. As a result of the inevitable disruption in the management of the farmlands, these were times of unbelievable poverty for the people of al-Hiba. With the draining of the marshlands initiated in 1992, many thousands of marshland residents moved deeper into the swamps or fled to Iran. The way of life that we documented, and that I describe briefl y here, no longer exists in the area around al-Hiba.

MUDHIF UNDER CONSTRUCTION. Reeds had the same physical properties in the past as they do today, requiring similar innovations for structural soundness. For instance, if arches were made from bundles of fresh reeds, the structure would collapse in short order. For maximum soundness the core of a new arch bundle was made up of reeds taken from an older structure. From studying the physical properties of reeds used today, we have learned a great deal about the details of their use in the past.

CARVED GYPSUM TROUGH FROM URUK. Two lambs exit a reed structure identical to the present-day mudhif on this ceremonial trough from the site of Uruk in southern Iraq. Neither the leaves or plumes have been removed from the reeds which are tied together to form the arch. As a result, the crossed-over, leathered reeds create a decorative pattern along the length of the roof, a style most often seen in modern animal shelters built by the Mi'dan. Dating to ca. 3000 BC, the trough documents the extraordinary length of time such arched reed buildings have been in use.

Life on the Edge of the Marshes, Edward Ochsenschlager, 1998

"Fire in a reed house cannot be extinguished!" Gilgamesh and Huwawa

Growing Hardship The marshes provided ample refuge for rebellious tribes increasingly at odds with outside authorities, from British colonial rulers to Saddam Hussein's Republican Guards. One day during Ochsenschlager's first year at the excavation site, the crew heard faraway drum sounds, a warning from a neighboring tribe of the approach of outsiders.

"The entire group of local men who worked for us dropped what they were doing, picked up their guns and cloaks and disappeared into the marshes," he said. Men who were drawn to cities for work often returned to the marshes after running into trouble with the government

Threats from outside were starting to take a toll by the time of Ochsenschlager's first encounter with the Ma'adan in 1968. The government was in the midst of a campaign to get rid of sheiks, eroding traditional leadership. Traders were increasingly demanding money for some commodities and refusing barter.

Dam and irrigation projects executed in the 1970s cut the annual flow of water in the Euphrates by more than one-third. That began the depletion of the marshes, reducing permanent wetlands and spring floods that had carried nutrient-laden sediments.

The coup de grace came after the 1991 Gulf War, when Shiite Muslims in the south rose up against Saddam. After their defeat, the regime's soldiers burned and bombed marsh villages, while its engineers completed massive dikes and canals to divert the entire flow of the Euphrates away from the marshes.

Satellites beamed ghastly images of the unfolding ecological catastrophe. By 2000, marshes that had covered nearly 4,000 square miles – comparable to Florida's Everglades – had almost disappeared.

Iraq's Marsh Arabs, Modern Sumerians

The Marshlands of Lower Mesopotamia

The extensive but shallow marshlands of the lower Tigris-Euphrates basin represent an outstanding natural landmark of Mesopotamia. They comprise the largest wetland ecosystem in the Middle East and Western Eurasia. A rare aquatic landscape in desert milieu, the marshlands are home to ancient communities rooted in the dawn of human history. They also provide habitat for important populations of wildlife, including endemic and endangered species. The key role played by the marshlands in the inter-continental flyway of migratory birds, and in supporting coastal fisheries endows them with a truly global dimension. For these reasons, the Mesopotamian marshlands (called Al Ahwar in Arabic) have long been recognised to constitute one of the world's most significant wetlands and an exceptional natural heritage of the Earth. Most recently, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) placed the Mesopotamian marshlands in its select list of two hundred exceptional ecoregions in the world for priority conservation (the Global 200).

Situated for the main part in southern Iraq (29°55' to 32°45' N and 45°25' to 48°30' E), the wetlands covered in 1970 an estimated area ranging from 15,000 - 20,000 square kilometres. The eastern margins of the marshlands extend over the border into southwestern Iran. In terms of custodianship, they therefore constitute a transboundary ecosystem under shared responsibility. 3.1 Formation of the Marshlands Understanding how the marshlands of lower Mesopotamia were formed historically is crucial to grasping how they have been affected by water management projects. The topography of the lower Tigris-Euphrates

Space view of the Mesopotamian Marshlands taken by the earth observation satellite Landsat in 1973-76. Dense marsh vegetation (mainly Phragmites) appears as dark red patches, while red elongated patches long river banks are date palms. The marshlands support the inter-continental migration of birds. Pelicans congregate in marshland lagoon.

valley is distinguished by an extremely flat alluvial plain. The Euphrates falls only 4 cm/ km over the last 300 km, while the Tigris has a slope of 8 cm/km (Scott, 1995). As a result of the level terrain, both rivers deviate from a straight course, meandering in sinuous loops and eventually divide into distributaries that dissipate into a vast inland delta. This is particularly true of the Euphrates, whose velocity rapidly diminishes as it lacks tributaries along its lengthy course, and begins to develop a braided pattern nearly 520 km upstream of the Gulf. Immediately south of Al Nasiriyah, the Euphrates main channel dissolves into the marshes, only to re-emerge shortly before its confluence with the Tigris at Al Qurnah. The Tigris, which is drained along its eastern flank by several tributaries from the mountains and hills of the Zagros chain, has a relatively stronger hydraulic force, enabling it to maintain a more stable course. Nonetheless, in its lower stretches around Al Amarah, the Tigris also rapidly begins to lose its velocity and flares out into multiple distributary channels feeding directly into the marshes. Water extraction by an elaborate irrigation network criss-crossing the alluvial plain between the two rivers significantly reduces water flow, and contributes to the rivers' splitting into a diffuse array of shallow waters in their final stretches.

Another important factor contributing to the formation of the marshlands is that the lower Mesopotamian plain becomes very narrow towards the Gulf. This is created by the large alluvial fan of Wadi Batin and the Al Dibdibah plain drawing in from the Nejid in the west, and the Karkheh and Karun river systems descending from the Zagros Mountains in the east. The Karkheh disperses into the marshes on the eastern bank of the Tigris, whose waters eventually overflow into the Shatt-al-Arab via Al Suwaib River. For its part, the Karun joins the Tigris-Euphrates system below their confluence in the lower section of the Shatt-al-Arab, at the port city of Khorramshahr 72 km from the Gulf. Both rivers, but particularly the latter, carry a large sediment load. By fanning out at the head of the Gulf, the Wadi Batin/Al Dibdibah, the Karkheh and Karun constrict the lower Mesopotamian valley to a width of less than 45 km and prevent the twin rivers from flowing directly into the sea (Rzóska, 1980). In so doing, the natural drainage of the Tigris and Euphrates is impeded and they are forced to deposit their sediment loads inland. This results in the creation of a double delta composed of a continental marshland complex and a marine estuary. As mentioned earlier, a notable feature of both the Tigris and Euphrates is the large fluctuation in their water discharge volumes. Spring floods, occurring form February to May, are caused by snowmelt in the headwater region in Turkey and the Zagros Mountains in Iran and northern Iraq. These short-lived but intense seasonal floods, which formerly have been on the order of 1.5 to 3 meters (with a record of 9 meters on the Tigris in 1954) cause large-scale inundations (Scott, 1995). As a result of the flat topography, the flood pulses are able to maintain an extensive complex of interconnected shallow lakes, backswamps and marshlands in the lower Mesopotamian plain. The marshlands, which are of great though changing extent, may dry up completely in shallower areas under the influence of high summer temperatures, leaving salt flats and reverting back to desert conditions. This highly dynamic ecosystem is therefore dependent on spring floods for its replenishment and very existence.

The Mesopotamian Marshlands: Demise of an Ecosystem, United Nations Environment Programme, 2001

Diversion of Euphrates waters downstream of Al Nasiryah by the twin canals of the‘Third River' and ‘Mother of Battles River'. (May 2000). Clearly visible in this SPOT image recorded in December 1993 is the 2-km wide and 50 km long ‘Prosperity River' which captures the waters of Tigris distributaries and channels them across the marshes to the Euphrates near its junction with the Tigris at Al Qurnah. This satellite image taken in 2000 shows most of the Central Marshes as olive to grayish-brown patches indicating low vegetation on moist to dry ground. The very light to grey patches are bare areas with no vegetation and may actually be salt evaporites of former lakes.

The idea of draining the marshlands of southern Iraq is not a new concept, and certainly not the first time the Tigris-Euphrates river system has been harnessed for man's use. The delta/marsh area "was probably the first region of the world where humans gained mastery over major rivers. Irrigation and flood protection were vital to the farmers who fed the inhabitants of the world's first known cities, built in Mesopotamia more than 5,000 years ago." The marshlands region was part of this development. Dams were built to harness water and energy for irrigation and electricity. Within Iraq, there are at least four dams on the Euphrates and three major dams on the Tigris, which are contributing heavily to a water shortage in the area.

The first major marsh-draining scheme was proposed in the 1951 Haigh Report, "Control of the Rivers of Iraq," drafted by British engineers working for the Iraqi government. "The report describes an array of sluices, embankments and canals on the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates that would be needed to 'reclaim' the marshes." The study's senior engineer, Frank Haigh, felt that the standing marsh water was being wasted, so he "proposed concentrating the flow of the Tigris [River] into a few embanked channels that would not overflow into the marshes. He proposed one large canal through the main `Amara marsh." In this way, Iraq would be able to "capture the marsh water for irrigation" purposes to aid in feeding the newly created State of Iraq.

Construction of the large canal, called the Third River, began in 1953. Further construction took place in the 1960's. It was not until the 1980's, however, during the Iran-Iraq War, that major work was resumed. Today, many of the water projects in the marsh area bear a striking resemblance to the Haigh Plan – the only problem is that the projects are not being used for agricultural improvement!

Various international organizations such as the U.N. Human Rights Commission, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the International Wildfowl and Wetlands Research Bureau, and Middle East Watch have been monitoring the Iraqi situation. All have found evidence to indicate that the Iraqi Government has been attempting to force the Ma'dan people from their homes through water diversion tactics copied from the Haigh Report. Iraq's majority Sunni government is attempting to weaken the Ma'dan because they are Shiite Muslims, maintaining religious links with Iran's Shiite leadership. They have also been accused by the government of harboring refugees from oppression in Baghdad.

Since the end of the Gulf War, the above-mentioned organizations have uncovered the following intelligence: 1) By 1993, the Iraqi Government was able to prevent water from reaching two-thirds of the marshlands. 2) The flow of the Euphrates River has almost been entirely diverted to the Third River Canal, bypassing most of the marshes. 3) The flow of the Tigris River has been channeled into tributary rivers (with artificially high banks), prohibiting the tributary water from seeping into the marshlands.

As a result, the environmental effects are thought to be "irreversible with disastrous ecological, social and human consequences for the region." The sparse water remaining has contributed to the salinization of the land. "Over-irrigation and poor drainage compound the problem: as the stagnant water evaporates, it leaves behind a crust of salt." The future for wildlife in the region looks bleak, as well. The marshes are home to fish and migratory birds from western Eurasia such as pelicans, herons and flamingos. Without fresh water, the ecosystem will easily become damaged.

In economic terms, the effects are just as severe. The marshlands region, is home to various crops, trees and livestock. The staple crops of the region are rice and millet. Date palms from the area have played an important part in Iraqi exports as well as the weaved reed mats and harvested cereals from the Ma'dan people. The marshes are also home to cows, oxen, and water buffalo. The recent scarcity of water in the marshlands has contributed to transport problems, which has all but put a stop to economic movement in the region. "Instead of moving...goods by boat the Ma'dan are often having to struggle through hip-deep mud on foot...in addition, hundreds of thousands of inhabitants have fled their areas. If this process continues, Saddam Hussein will become responsible for destroying not only the environment and culture, but one of the oldest and most important links with Iraq's past – the people of the marshlands.

Marsh Arabs, Water Diversion, and Cultural Survival, The Inventory of Conflict & Environment , 2001

In addition to the array of military and security techniques being deployed against the people of the marshes, the campaign with bulldozers and cranes was proceeding apace. What became strikingly clear in the second half of 1992 was the impact of the drainage works: ‘The Third River is draining the marshes', said Emma Nicholson in September. ‘I can give you first-hand visual evidence. I've seen it myself. For the first time ever, the level of water in the marshes has sunk. I was previously there in early June, and three days ago I was in Iraq, and in those weeks this Third River has started to achieve its objective of draining the marshes.' Not only the Third River: by November, according to SCIRI sources, engineering units around Amara had completed their blockade of the rivers coming off the Tigris and diverted their waters from the marshes. Six of the feeder rivers had been completely drained and were now passable on foot; ‘these atrocities took place when rice was being harvested and resulted in the total destruction of the crop'
That month, a team from the Organisation for Human Rights in Iraq became the first observers since the imposition of the no-fly zone to go deep inside the marshes. In the eastern Hawizeh marsh they found that because of the draining, ‘wide stretches of marshland have been reduced to a crazy paving of mud inimical to water buffalo'. The Third River was nearing completion, and the observers found that increasing dryness in many areas was making it more difficult to plant traditional crops. ‘"We saw a white line that extended like chalk on the reeds for dozens of miles"' said the team's leader. ‘"It was the old water level - at least three feet higher than the present level. Many, many people told us there is something wrong with the water, too."'

On 7 December 1992, Baghdad announced the completion, at 565 kilometres and after almost four decades' work, of the Third River. The Iraqi government would soon be able to prevent water from reaching two-thirds of the marshlands. The flow of the Euphrates at its seaward end was diverted to the Third River, thus bypassing the Hammar marsh, while the flow of the rivers and streams running southwards from the Tigris into the Central marshes was channelled into the ‘moat'. As the marshlands dried out, it was much easier for the Iraqi military to advance their land-based attacks on the villages. In January 1993 a number of villages in Amara marsh were reported burned to the ground; in April, government forces burned homes in two villages in Misan governorate; in June, villages in the Hammar marshes were bombarded for four days, and what was left of the inhabitants' homes was then flattened by tanks and armoured vehicles.

...the Observer journalist Shyam Bhatia became the first foreign journalist to be taken deep inside the marshes by the Shi'a resistance. He spent 10 days in the area, under constant threat of capture, or death by shelling, before bringing back a lengthy eyewitness account. He could see that water levels had dropped ‘alarmingly' and confirmed earlier accounts of the impact of the drainage scheme: ‘Massive earthen dykes erected in the north near the town of Amara have succeeded in turning the tributaries of the Tigris so that their precious water is now channelled into the massive new canal, Anfal 3 water levels in the northern marshes have dropped by as much as two metres, making it easier for the Iraqi army to move in. In the southern marshes, the Euphrates has been dammed, its lifegiving water channelled to flow uselessly into the Gulf at Khor Zubair.' Bhatia also heard about the dumping of toxic chemicals in the waters (referred to above), and he saw at first-hand the effects of the continued artillery bombardment of marsh villages: ‘The army's favourite tactic is to blow up villages selectively and then sow mines in the water before retreating. In Chabaish village they even planted butterfly mines disguised as toys, pens and cigarette lighters.'

Iraqi Marshlands: Prospects 2001 (AMAR)

Marshes: North of Basrah, 100,000 "Marsh Arabs" used to live in this swampy region short before Euphrates and Tigris merge. For a long time, Iran-backed rebels have used its treacherous waters as a safe haven. To put an end to their uprising (which finds little approval among the majority), Saddam has decided to drain the region. The result is an immense ecological and cultural tragedy. The Marsh Arabs had to flee to reservoirs in cities or across the Iranian border. Many of their villages were destroyed, few inhabitants remain.

The picture shows an empty ditch and a "mudhif" on the left, ie. an oblong reed hut.

All but desert. I gape incredulously at what is supposed to be marshes, according to my tourist map printed in Iraq only five years ago. Miles after miles of flat, barren, hostile nothingness. It does not even have the beauty of sand deserts, endless steppes or cracked earth. Why ?

- To favour agriculture! the army officers of Jubaiesh told me.

Only few areas show actually scarce wheat. And this does not explain the several destroyed houses along the road from Al-Qurna. The children in the school bus from Jubaiesh to Nassiriya do know the reason: the marshes were drained to deprive the Shia rebels of a safe den.

- How many Marsh Arabs were living here ?

- Don't know... 100,000 ? They now live in reservoirs in cities, but many have fled abroad, especially to nearby Iran.

- Why is there a soldier guarding at each bridge? (many such bridges from the time there was water).

- They control the road and arrest those who smoke hash.

A few nice reed houses (mudhif) are still standing. Many villages have been abandoned, only larger ones are still inhabited. Speak of a cultural genocide, of an ecological tragedy!

The marshes, now.

"To eradicate terrorism, we don't just catch one mosquito or another, we rather have to drain the whole swamp"; we all remember the radical stance of the Wolfowitz-cabal after Sept. 11. Little do they know that Saddam had long complied with their incitement...

Trip to Iraq: Marshes and Rebels 2001 Daniel B. Grünberg

after An had frowned upon all the lands... after Enki had altered the course of the Tigris and Euphrates... [so] that the marshes should be so dry as to be full of cracks and have no new seed, that sickly-headed reeds should grow in the reed-beds, that they should be covered by a stinking morass, that there should be no new growth in the orchards, that it should all collapse by itself Lament for Sumer and Urim (Ur) c. 1950 BC

In mid-April [2003], a few days after Hussein's government fell, Ali Shaheen returned to his job as director of the Irrigation Department in Nasiriyah. Located about 25 miles northwest of Zayad, Nasiriyah was the scene of some of the heaviest fighting during the war. But with the hostilities over and Shiites firmly in control of the local government, he decided to try to reverse the damage Hussein had wrought. With a U.S. military escort, he drove to Garmat Bani Hassan, a town a mile away from Zayad. There, he ordered creaky metal gates on the Euphrates to be cranked open for the first time since 1991.

Shaheen, a short, balding civil engineer with a stubble-covered face, did the same thing with two other gates before embarking on a bigger engineering challenge – redirecting the Euphrates. He requisitioned several Irrigation Department bulldozers and smashed the dam Hussein had constructed to divert water to the Mother of All Battles River. For good measure, he had Hussein's river blocked off with a mountain of dirt.

He had no orders to redirect the rivers. There was no functioning Irrigation Ministry at the time. But he assumed he was doing what the Marsh Arabs wanted.

"Drying the marshes was a crime," said Shaheen, who joined the Irrigation Department in 1998, after the canals and dams were built. "I felt I needed to do whatever I could to restore what Saddam destroyed."

As the Euphrates returned to its original course, water surged toward Zayad and other villages on the western side of the marshes that are closest to the river's mouth. The arid flats were covered with more than three feet of water, swallowing the scrub brush and a few homes that were built after the marshes were dried.

Shaheen calculated that more than 1 quadrillion gallons – a 1 followed by 15 zeroes – were needed to fill the Euphrates side of the marshes. But the flow at Nasiriyah, which had been 106,000 gallons per second before 1991, was down to 21,000 gallons per second because of new dams and irrigation canals built in Iraq, Syria and Turkey over the past decade. "The water we have is not enough," he said.

'A Gift From God' Renews a Village

Luckily, Saddam didn't quite finish the job. The easternmost of the three main wetland areas, the Hawizeh marsh, was damaged in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War, and parts are still mined and dangerous. But a section of it remains pristine and could provide a valuable model for restoration efforts, says Suzie Alwash, senior project adviser for Eden Again.
Another bright spot: Because the damage to the land is relatively recent, even parched areas may have intact sediment beds, which could hold seeds from the vanished marshes. This ecological legacy could be supplemented, says Alwash, by seeds and plants from the Hawizeh marsh. And because Saddam drained the marshes rather than filling them in, the original depressions and channels remain, ready to be reflooded. The marshes' dominant species–reed–is as tough as nails and may be easy to reintroduce to newly inundated lands, says Jeanne Christie, executive director of the Association of State Wetland Managers.

Yet a shattered ecosystem can never be fully reconstructed, wetlands experts say. "I prefer the term 'rehabilitated' to 'restored,' " says Thomas Crisman, director of the Howard T. Odum Center for Wetlands at the University of Florida. " 'Restored' means putting it back the way it was–and that's unrealistic." He believes success should be defined as rebuilding a landscape that performs the same basic ecological functions as its predecessor, such as providing habitat for birds and fishes.

That's starting to happen in a few newly reflooded areas, although scientists worry that the meager flows in some spots could do more harm than good by creating lifeless ponds. But it will take determination–and a lot more water–to go further. "It's a great cause," says Duke's Richardson, "but it will take the political will of the new Iraqi government, the United States, and international organizations to make it happen."

Water World: Can Iraq's vast marshes be brought back to life?

"Saddam Hussein was a master 'brown field generator,'" said Richardson, referring to a term for environmental decimation. "He churned that country upside down. It looks like you let a child loose in a sand box with hand grenades." Of the three remnant marsh areas, he found the Central Marsh to be in the worst shape. "It's just a complete dust bowl," he said. Locals had broken a Hussein-built drainage dike in one area in an effort to return some water, but "nothing was growing there yet," except for a few remaining desert plants, he added. In another recently re-flooded area, too much salt had been drawn out of the long-dry soils to support freshwater vegetation, and this area was now turning into a salt-flat

His group found the Hammar Marsh area, nearest Basra, to still have some remaining lush areas where some stately date palms are still in cultivation. But Richardson said Hussein, in his vendetta against the Marsh Arabs, "basically wiped out" the local date palm industry, once the world's largest exporter. The largest remaining wetland areas are the Haweizeh Marshes along Iraq's border with Iran. That's where Richardson and his colleagues reached a place where locals had reintroduced their traditional water buffalos and were seen fishing.

While Marsh Arab villages are beginning to be reconstituted in areas adjacent to the Haweizeh marsh, in some cases reoccupying still-roofless former dwellings, "all of the communities we talked to are desperate for clean water," he reports. That's because rivers feeding the marsh areas are currently contaminated, and upstream utilities could take years to repair.

"They're having all these problems with poor water, and they're surrounded by the answer," he said. That's because, with the proper knowledge, Iraqi scientists and engineers could build special "constructed wetlands" within marsh areas, he added. By so engineering nature there, the filtering properties of natural vegetation could be harnessed to clean some of the polluted water.

Duke Ecologist Finds Devastation, Hope in Iraqi Marshes

That the Tigris and Euphrates should again carry water: may An not change it. That there should be rain in the skies and on the ground speckled barley: may An not change it. That there should be watercourses with water and fields with grain: may An not change it. That the marshes should support fish and fowl: may An not change it. That old reeds and fresh reeds should grow in the reed-beds: may An not change it. May An and Enlil not change it. May Enki and Ninmah not change it. Lament for Sumer and Urim (Ur) c. 1950 BC

Back to Part I of this article

Back in November 2002 I blogged about the photography of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii.

Thirty years before the advent of three layer colour film, Prokudin-Gorskii developed a technique for taking colour photographs. His approach was to take three images in succession each one through a different colour filter (red, green and blue) and by using a special "magic lantern" projector he was then able to recombine the three plates onto a projection screen.

The results were truly remarkable and must have greatly impressed his contemporary viewers (accustomed as they would have been to monochrome photography) in faithfully capturing colours from the natural world.

They remain pretty damned remarkable to this day.