The River Basin as the Basis of Water Control for Agriculture in Antiquity

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Water control for agriculture is probably the earliest form of regulation of rivers and lakes, and its development gave rise to the so-called fluvial or irrigation civilizations in the basins of the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, Indus, Yellow, Yangtze, and lesser rivers of the Old World, as well as in Mexico, coastal Peru, and other scattered localities of the New World. It was practiced as early as 4,000 B.C. at least in Mesopotamia,1 and its significance is attested to by the fact that stories of the origins of society in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China all refer to some legendary figure who controlled the rivers and made the land fruitful. In the Babylonian epic of creation this legendary being was the god Marduk, who “laid reeds in the face of the waters” and piled up earthen banks sheltered by the reeds “in order to master the Euphrates flowing wide like a sea.”2 In the Nile valley the controller was Menes (a composite of two or more early kings), who united Upper and Lower Egypt (c. 3400 B.C.) and reclaimed the river’s left bank by the construction of canals and dikes.3 In China a similar role was performed in legend by Yu, founder of the Hsia dynasty (at about the beginning of the second millenium B.C.).4 Modern research has shown that the original works were undertaken by small communities or lesser rulers, rather than by a single individual.5