Now As Then, Rivers Are Crucial to Our Prosperity

One of the first civilizations to arise after humankind left Africa was in a nearby region that is in present-day Iraq and parts of neighboring countries stretching to the Mediterranean Sea. It has been dubbed by chroniclers Mesopotamia, Greek for “the land between two rivers.” The Tigris and Euphrates valley was the setting for the biblical Garden of Eden and is aptly named the Fertile Crescent in history books today.