Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Silt is detritus (fragments of weathered and eroded rock) with properties intermediate between sand and clay. A more precise definition of silt used by geologists is that it is detrital particles with sizes between 1/256 and 1/16 mm (about 4 to 63 microns). [2] This corresponds to particles between 8 and 4 phi units on the Krumbein phi scale.
Agriculture was the main economic activity in ancient Mesopotamia.Operating under harsh constraints, notably the arid climate, the Mesopotamian farmers developed effective strategies that enabled them to support the development of the first known empires, under the supervision of the institutions which dominated the economy: the royal and provincial palaces, the temples, and the domains of the ...
Many tribes settled along the river, sixth-longest in the world, which was distinguished by its heavy load of yellow silt and its periodic devastating floods. A major impetus for the tribes to unite into a single kingdom by around 1700 BCE (Erlitou culture, a Yellow River civilization) was the desire to find a solution to the frequent deadly ...
The primary features of Nile silt, as revealed by a petrographic microscope, include: [1] Composed of poorly sorted sand to silt-sized quartz particles, in widely varying quantities and size range A high proportion of accessory and heavy minerals, mainly including opaques and minerals of the mica , amphibole, pyroxene and feldspar groups.
Mesopotamia [a] is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq .
This yearly flooding of the river is known as inundation. As the floodwaters receded in October, farmers were left with well-watered and fertile soil in which to plant their crops. The soil left behind by the flooding is known as silt and was brought from Ethiopian Highlands by the Nile.
Agricultural land was divided into large fields surrounded by dams and dykes and equipped with intake and exit canals. The basins were flooded and then closed for about 45 days to saturate the soil with moisture and allow the silt to deposit. Then the water was discharged to lower fields or back into the Nile.
Map showing the extent of Mesopotamia. The Civilization of Mesopotamia ranges from the earliest human occupation in the Paleolithic period up to Late antiquity.This history is pieced together from evidence retrieved from archaeological excavations and, after the introduction of writing in the late 4th millennium BC, an increasing amount of historical sources.