I finally started reading Georges Roux’ Ancient Iraq, a scholarly book on the old hydraulic Mesopotamian civilizations (thanks Glenn!). It is written in the style of the 1950-60s Annals school of historiography, a path first blazed by Ferdnand Braudel with his epic two-volume The Mediterranean in the Age of Philip II.
Wonderfully deep books, they try to talk about everything in a seamless web – from high diplomacy, to war both organized and petite, to urban and rural life, to food supplies, crops, agricultural cycles, religion, seasonal trade winds, piracy and the role of salt cod in keeping down inflation – in order to synthesize an image of life “as it really was”, to paraphrase Ranke (my apologies Ray).
Like Braudel, Roux begins with a long discussion of geography, a favorite subject of mine. Maps and the physical environment have always fascinated me; I remember poring over highway maps every summer during our family “vacation” to see the relatives in Minnesota (it never quite seemed restful, now did it?). And to this day I can get lost in an atlas for hours, particularly when I'm supposed to be vacuuming or something.
Anyway, at one point in Roux’s discussion of geography, he writes about the great alluvial plain between the lower Tigris and Euphrates (ancient Sumeria in middle Iraq – Baghdad and environs; not the Akkadian-Assyrian grassland steppe of Mosul-Kurdistan) and how tapping into the water flow required extensive pro-active irrigation projects to grow crops. One of the unfortunate by-products of canals, reservoirs and dykes, however, is the accumulation of water in flat, low-lying pools. The standing water leeches salt from the water table upwards, slowly contaminating the soil on the surface. Without systems of artificial drainage – which were relatively unknown in antiquity – fertile fields could become salty and sterile in a few generations.
Apparently this problem was also true in the far south – such as Nasiriyah and al-Amarrah (Basra still being underwater 3,500 years ago) – as the great southern marshes grew brackish over time, encouraging a lifestyle of fishing and growing small patches of vegetables and barley, as the latter tolerates a more saline soil than wheat or millet.
I bring up this long digression as explanation for the attached photographs, which are snapshots of a standing pool of water near one of the camps here at the base. In the first photo (SaltPond), one sees a pool of algae-rich water with green vegetation. Other than the barbed wire, rock-hard baked earth and the 120 degree oven wind blowing into your face, it looks rather inviting.
But take a closer look (SaltWave). Those are clumps of salt crystals, formed into veritable ridges and covering the dry, cracked soil like snow over barren tundra. Whether it was caused by the sea receding from the Basrah area thousands of years ago or the destruction of the marshes by Saddam’s huge anti-Shia canalization projects of the 1980-90s, the soil around the air station here seems as saline as it gets. That probably explains why one can taste salt on any dusty wind. The surprising thing is that green algae, which must be incredibly salt resistant, as the concentration (one assumes) must be many times that of sea water.
Finally there are places where even algae will not grow, as shown in this close up view of a drainage ditch (Salt). Like an aerial view of a glacier, the salt is laid out in ripples and pillars, brought to the surface of water pools, seemingly frozen in lattices of saline that slowly evaporate into the scorching sky.
Fair Winds and Following Sands!
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