Ancient River Beds and Dead Cities

Extract

Close acquaintance with the geographical situation of the ancient sites of Iraq, and also of the Indus Valley, inevitably leaves two questions to haunt the mind. C Why did early man choose such inconvenient and inaccessible places, as many of them now are, for his settlements when he gave up nomad life ? And why after a site had been deliberately chosen for a city was it so frequently abandoned, though its occupation might already have extended through several centuries ?

These questions were first brought home to the writer in vivid fashion by a visit twenty years ago to the lonely and insignificant little mounds of Jemdet Nasr, some twenty-five miles from the ruins of Babylon and about halfway across the wide unin- habited desert between the lower Euphrates and Tigris rivers.