Climate:

A desert climate dominates the landscape between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea in Southwest Asia. Yet within this dry region lies an arc of land that provided some of the best farming in Southwest Asia. The region’s curved shape and the richness of its land led scholars to call it the Fertile Crescent. It includes the lands facing the Mediterranean Sea and a plain that became known as Mesopotamia. The word in Greek means “land between the rivers.”

Rivers:

The rivers framing Mesopotamia are the Tigris and Euphrates. They flow southeastward to the Persian Gulf. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers flooded Mesopotamia at least once a year. As the floodwater receded, it left a thick bed of mud called silt. Farmers planted grain in this rich, new soil and irrigated the fields with river water. However, annual floods were unpredictable and came sometime between April and June. Farmers could not know when to plant or how big flood would be. This made it hard to water crops; people starved if crops failed. If there were large quantities of wheat and barley at harvest time, the surpluses from harvests allowed villages to grow.

Mountains:

The Fertile Crescent had few mountains or natural barriers so it was easy to invade. The land in between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers is steppe terrain. Steppe is a plain without trees with short growing grasses littered throughout the area. People from other regions often stole from or conquered the people of Mesopotamia. Because there were few resources, the Mesopotamians traded with their neighbors for their needs. Mesopotamians traded their surplus grain for stone, wood, and metals. Trade was easy since there were few natural barriers to prevent it.

Natural Resources:

The availability of raw materials is a historical factor of great importance, as is the dependence on those materials that had to be imported. In Mesopotamia, agricultural products were available in plenty and could easily be produced in excess of home requirements to be exported. On the other hand, wood, stone, and metal were rare or even entirely absent.

The materials used to build a Mesopotamian house were the same as those used today: mud brick, mud plaster and wooden doors, which were all naturally available round the city, although wood could not be naturally made very well during the particular time period described. Mud plaster was readily available after the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers overflowed, depositing mud on the shores of the great rivers. Most houses had a square center room with other rooms attached to it, but a great variation in the size and materials used to build the houses suggest they were built by the inhabitants themselves.