The river valley between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris is known as Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia is often called ‘the cradle of human civilization’, because it is actually the birthplace of a number of civilizations in history. One of the reasons why the earliest humans decided to settle here was that the land was very, very fertile indeed. Even before the civilizations of Rome, Greece or Egypt came into being, there existed a much more advanced civilization in this region in 4000 BC, known as the Sumerian civilization.
Agriculture first drew the earliest people to the banks of Mesopotamia’s rivers. But, as they figured out how to reroute some of the water through canals, they were able to irrigate fields farther away. When the food supply became capable of supporting large numbers of people, cities began to develop. As cities grew, and food became plentiful, it became necessary to keep records and this led to the invention of writing, which was a very important step in the development of civilization.