II. Agricultural Products

At the center of life in ancient Mesopotamia was agriculture. When the first farmers in upper Mesopotamia migrated to the south well before 4000 bc, they had to adapt their skills to the special conditions of the southern plain where rain was scarce. Crops had to be irrigated by digging a network of canals and using a simple bucket-shaped water-lifting mechanism called ‘dalu’ (also Arabic for ‘bucket’).