Sheep along the Euphrates River in Syria.
Credit: Fiona MacDonald
THE SUN HAD ALMOST dipped below the horizon as a shepherd brought his sheep to the banks of the great Euphrates River for a drink.
"Get your shoulders under the water," some of my companions called from the shore. Terrified of causing offence in my bikini, I dropped on my stomach and fought to stay submerged, kicking my legs and clinging to reeds on the river's rocky bottom to prevent being swept downstream by the deceptively strong current.
Some of my group bantered in Arabic with the shepherd as sheep faeces rushed past me, floating down towards the Iraqi border.
Once the last sheep had relieved itself and flicked its tail patronisingly towards me, I waded from the river, sat on the mat that would act as my bed and was quickly dried by Syria's hot, sandy air. I was camping in northeastern Syria, beside the river my archaeological guide Martin Makinson called the "lifeline of the Middle East".
Described in the Bible as one of the waters that flowed into the Garden of Eden, the Euphrates was agriculture's birthplace and one of the borders of Mesopotamia - long considered the cradle of civilisation. In Syria, the river is wide and shallow, but it changes drastically from its narrow, deep origins in the mountains of Turkey to its slow-flowing mouth in Iraq at the Persian Gulf.
Today it sustains flocks of shepherds who daily come to the river, but over millennia the Euphrates has supported many cultures. From the 1st century BC to the 6th century AD, the frontier of the great Roman and Byzantine Empires was just a few kilometres from where I now sat baking in the hot dry sun.
The river's once-verdant surroundings have been fought over by Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan's grandson and ruled by Babylonians, Assyrians, Persian Zoroastrians, Christians, and Muslims. In fact, many cultures have a history - through trade or conquest - that's intertwined with this region.
But now the land, and the river itself, is slowly transforming; damaged by changing climate, increasing human dominance of its resources, population growth and a long agricultural history. I came here to try to understand what had happened to the birthplace of civilisation and what the future might hold for this restless region.
The Euphrates' long history has littered its shores with an assortment of ruins, many of which show telltale signs of conquest and rebirth by various civilisations. From around 9000 BC until 700 AD, the shifting patch of land bordered on the north by the Tigris River and the south by the Euphrates - encompassing parts of modern-day Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran - was known as Sumer, Akkad and Assyria to the locals and Mesopotamia to the Greeks.
It's widely accepted as the birthplace of both agriculture and urban culture, where writing, administration, city-states and empires began. While the Euphrates has sustained countless armies and civilisations, it has always been more than just a water source. "The Euphrates was actually the lifeline of Mesopotamian civilisation, throughout which urban culture, writing, language and city life spread into Syria and Anatolia from its homeland in current southern Iraq, around 3500 BC" says Makinson, an archaeologist from the University of Geneva who has worked on many Middle Eastern sites.
But long before the rise of cities, the Euphrates played its most important role. Around 9000 BC, it provided the stable flow of water that allowed humans to stop hunting and gathering, and begin domesticating plants and animals. Some of the first evidence of domestic plants has been found at now-flooded Syrian sites Jerf el Ahmar and Tell Mureybet, upstream from our campsite, where the Euphrates is wide and allows for easy irrigation. Over the next few millennia, agriculture spread along the river to Turkey and Iraq. Villages sprang up as large groups of humans found they could bunker down in the same spot without exhausting food supplies.
Possibly the world's first city - Uruk - appeared on the banks of the Euphrates around 3900 BC in southern Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). From here, cities spread upstream along the Euphrates and Tigris, and Mesopotamia began to grow.
Poor in resources other than mud and water, Uruk and its neighbours began founding outposts at regular stages on the Euphrates, a major thoroughfare into Anatolia. Some of these, the direct result of Uruk's expansion, were 'colonies' in every sense of the word, and are the earliest Syrian cities. Habuba Kabira and its high-perched neighbour, Jebel Aruda, are examples: houses identical to Uruk's, fortifications, temples and numerical tablets were found at both sites in the 1970s.
For 3,000 years, Mesopotamia was fought over by Sumerian and Semitic city-states like Ur, Uruk, Umma, Larsa, Isin and Mari. The Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian Empires annexed the region in stages of their expansion, before the first Persian Empire - the Achaemenid Empire - conquered the area in 539 BC.
In 322 BC it fell to Macedonian Greek Alexander the Great, creator of one of ancient history's largest empires, stretching from the Ionian Sea to the Hindu Kush. In 117 BC, Persia's Parthian Empire seized control of the region, and for almost 450 years it became a battleground between the Roman Empire, the Parthian Empire and the Sassanian, or New Persian Empire. For much of this time, the Roman Byzantine Empire controlled large parts of modern-day Syria, and most of the ruins still standing are Byzantine.
The Islamic Sassanid Empire conquered the entire region in the 7th century AD, putting an end to Mesopotamia and turning it into an Arab land. Syria was later ruled by the Ottomans, then the French, before independence in 1946.
Now, restlessness has returned to the region as the 'Arab Spring' - the wave of Middle East uprisings that has led to regimes toppling in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya - has also played out in Syria. Some of the researchers I travelled with for this story have since moved overseas, at least temporarily. Others are difficult to contact. And when I do reach them, they speak of the region uneasily. The revolutionary violence is escalating and casualties already number in the thousands. Syria is again, it's clear, a land in turmoil.
I was in the country in September 2010, six months before the unrest erupted, for a story on arid agriculture. But the undercurrent of dissatisfaction was already present, and the many locals I interviewed would readily bring up politics, but hastily retreat at the end of the discussion.
"We just don't talk about politics" (ma am nahki siyasa) was a phrase I heard a lot. I flew into the capital, Damascus; as one of only three Western women in the terminal, I was rushed through customs. It was a warm welcome followed by a slap of hot, dusty air as I left the airport for the minivan that would carry me north across the desert for three cramped, jet-lagged hours. Driving out of Damascus was manic. Although it was hot, the sun couldn't pierce the city's hazy sky, and for at least an hour beyond the city all I could see was poverty and rubbish blowing around in the loose sand.
We reached Aleppo at dusk. The ancient city was breathtaking. Crowded and disorganised, beautiful golden mosques peeked out between apartment blocks that looked like they'd been hurriedly assembled. Ancient buildings sat beside neon signs, and the traffic was overwhelming. But I could see the stars, and the breeze coming off the desert was intoxicating. I spent the next week working at the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) near Aleppo, learning how we might feed the world in coming decades. In this dry region scientists are working with farmers to breed more robust crops and improve agricultural techniques so less water is needed and food can be produced more efficiently.
In the bare, sandy Syrian countryside, I met with farmers who were embracing sustainable farming, and who earned more money and improved their crop yields as a result. But, in spite of the positive stories, I still saw many examples of poor water use. There were hectares of green cotton crops in the almost-red desert, being showered by sprinklers in the hottest part of the day, and fed by many irrigation canals. Typically, whole fields are flooded at a time, resulting in significant water loss from evaporation off the arid ground, which is hard due to high gypsum concentrations. Cotton-growing has also lowered the water table by 150 m in areas next to the Euphrates catchment.
Around 13,000 years ago - and even up until a few centuries ago - this region was much more verdant. But with the advance of agriculture and the establishment of cities, the land has become increasingly depleted, dry and salty. Before I left, my editor had asked me to explore a question that had puzzled him for years - does farming ultimately destroy productive land?
Seeing the way farming practices operate in the region today, I was beginning to suspect agriculture had indeed sucked the life from the Euphrates' surrounds. But I was only seeing the end result; there was more to the story. I needed to explore where it had all begun. And so, three days before I left Syria, I set out for the Euphrates to see what had become of the cradle of farming.
Camping by the river with me was a mixed group: there was Makinson, our Australian-French archaeologist; Ken Street, an Australian crop geneticist who has lived in Syria for more than a decade; and an assortment of ICARDA scientists from the U.S., Belgium, Mongolia and Syria.
The drive through the steppe was beautiful, but aside from a few little mounds (which Makinson assured me were not graves, but buried archaeological sites called 'tells'), there wasn't much to see. Then, from out of the sand loomed the ruins of Resafa - also known as the ancient city of Sergiopolis, an important pilgrimage site in the desert, 20 km to
the south of the Euphrates.
After a childhood obsession with Indiana Jones, it was an overwhelming experience, but I had little time to dwell on its significance. Makinson led us to the top of one of the crumbling pink gypsum walls surrounding the ancient city to give us the lay of the land.
Resafa came into existence as a military camp, but soon found itself in the centre of the Roman-Persian wars and became a well-defended Roman Byzantine city. In the 4th century AD, it became a pilgrimage town for Christians to worship Saint Sergius (hence 'Sergiopolis'), a Christian Roman soldier who was martyred for refusing to sacrifice to the Emperor Diocletian around 300 AD.
Looking at the fallen, sand-covered ruins pitted with trenches dug by looters, it was hard to imagine that 1,500 years ago, this was the centre of a growing civilisation. Situated 20 km from the mighty river, Resafa was not close enough to draw water from it. Instead, the town relied on huge plastered subterranean cisterns - which our group climbed into. Back in the 5th century AD, they would have regularly been filled; walking through the dry sand, it was hard to imagine them ever seeing water.
I began to feel nervous as we moved on towards the famous Euphrates, as though I was on my way to meet a very old and respected celebrity. More farms cropped up, and we began to pass through bustling but simple villages. Donkeys carrying baskets of food and clothes squeezed past our 4WD, and children waved at us.
Climbing slowly up a steep hill, suddenly, dramatically, the mighty Euphrates snaked into view; brown, wide, powerful. I was at the river's narrowest point in Syria, known as 'the strangling' or al-Khanuqa. And yet, it was still wider than I'd imagined. The surface was deceptively glassy and flat, betraying no hint of the dangerous currents I had been warned about.
Reeds cropped up on a little island in the middle of the river, but the banks on either side were flat and sandy - this is where we would sleep for the night, on reed mats under the stars. After all I'd heard of its influence on civilisation and the change it had driven in the world, the river seemed more serene than I'd imagined. And, after a day in a hot car driving through the desert, it also looked very welcoming. As soon as we'd made it down the hill to the campsite, we raced into the water to attempt to scrub away the sand that had embedded itself in our skin. That's when the sheep arrived.
The next morning, Street told us that during the night, he had awoken to an eerie sight: a group of men paddling towards us in a traditional long boat. Apparently they had been about to land on our bank when they noticed him, pushed off and continued silently down the river. It was a reminder that, no matter how the country has developed and changed over the millennia, the river is, as it always has been, a shared road. I suddenly felt joltingly out of place in the ancient land.
Packing up, we set out early to explore the nearby ruins of Halabiye and Zalabiye - fortresses that were once the eastern-most point of the Roman Empire. First fortified by the famous Queen of Palmyra, Zenobia, and then expanded and reconstructed by the Byzantine emperor Justinian, these two strongholds gaze at each other from cliff tops across the narrowest part of the Euphrates, where they once controlled passage and secured the border between Roman and Sassanian land.
The Syrians had planned to build a dam at this point, which would flood the lower parts of Halabiye, something that archaeologists have been up in arms about. "Halabiye is a site that deserves to get on the World Heritage List, the fortress is still very much undiscovered, despite recent work at
the site," said Makinson.
Sylvie Blétry, a French archaeologist who has led expeditions there since 2006, understands Syria's need for more dams, but feels the loss of ruins would be a disaster. "We have discovered houses and public structures there from the Late Byzantine and early Umayyad period, which are not very well known. The site offers a great opportunity to find out about the sociology of the inhabitants in the town at that time."
With all the unrest, no-one's sure plans for the dam will now proceed. But excavations cannot continue either, so the sites will remain a mystery for a little longer.
After exploring the two fortresses, we began our journey home, driving back along the northern bank of the river, in Mesopotamia proper. Although the Euphrates was once the birthplace of cities, there are now hardly any towns along that stretch of river between Deir ez Zor, in eastern Syria and the Turkish border.
When I got back to Australia, archaeologist David Kennedy from the University of Western Australia explained that this was a result of dams flooding local regions. The structures have also made it possible to access the Euphrates' water from further away by irrigation, allowing major towns to develop far from the river bank.
But the effects that the dams and irrigation are having on the river are severe. During dry years, the river doesn't reach the Gulf of Persia anymore, and Iraq, furthest downstream, is suffering severe droughts as a result. There is now also the concern of how climate change will affect the region.
One significant problem is that the river is shared by three nations, and it's predictably become a political issue, says Jason Evans, a hydrologist and climatologist from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, who has worked with the Euphrates River system.
"Over the last 20 or 30 years, pretty much every country on the system has gone a little crazy building dams. The result of this is a large decrease in flow for Syria and Iraq. I believe at one stage Syria and Turkey had their armies either side of the border having threatening words."
Indeed, when I crossed Syria's largest dam at Tabqa, I was surprised - and then a little tense - when I discovered that this was the most heavily militarised patch I'd visited in the rigorously policed country. There were uniformed men with machine guns every few metres, repeated passport checks and constant camera surveillance.
According to Evans, dams are not efficient in Syria because the river here is shallow and wide with a high surface area. "They could spend the same amount of money on infrastructure to improve efficiency on current irrigation and receive the same or better water returns than with a dam," he said. "But the conflict between the government and its own people in Syria, and the never-ending unrest in Iraq, really means the chances of any serious investment in distributed infrastructure is minimal."
As the dam disappeared behind me, my final glimpse of the Euphrates was far less majestic then the first - here the river flowed out meekly from the dammed Lake Assad. There were no thriving cities or verdant farmlands on either side - just desert and poverty.
I asked Evans whether human interference with the Euphrates could ever dry it up completely. He told me the current political instability makes it too hard to predict what will happen next. "But populations continue to grow, so the demand will continue to grow, and if things don't change, then they're in trouble," he said.
It seems without the stability needed to focus on the health of the Euphrates - there is a real risk of draining the lifeline for good. But is farming - and the subsequent need for irrigation - to blame for changing this ecosystem from fertile and green to semi-arid? Or did the land dry out as a result of gradual climate change? Evans says the factors are too complex and interlinked to untangle.
"Maybe it's not fundamentally or innately bad for the landscape, but you can overdose on farming. With the level of population increase that the region has had and the lack of consideration for the environment, they've caused changes they didn't intend to, and that they can't reverse now."
It wouldn't be the first time the region has spurred change. After all, this is where civilisation began - and the idea quickly took off. Within a few thousand years, the population had boomed and there were diverse empires fighting
over the land. It was a race to conquer the region and survive, with no thought of the long-term prospects - and why worry about the land a century down the track, let alone the next millennia, when someone else might steal the land from under you?
After getting to know the river, it seems to me that this transient nature of the region was perhaps the real reason Mesopotamia is now semi-arid. This is a land that was always being taken. It was lost and won again, but never owned long enough to have its people give anything back.
The future of the region, and the river, is uncertain, but then again, it always has been. The one constant is that the Euphrates has always brought about change and progress and, at the moment, the time seems right once more for revolution.
Fiona MacDonald is an award-winning science writer and the education editor of Cosmos. She travelled to Syria with the assistance of the non-profit Crawford Fund and the Council for Australian-Arab Relations.
