Kenny Hensley, age 14, of Freeport, I11., for his question:
WHERE WAS MESOPOTAMIA?
Mesopotamia was an area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now known as Iraq, eastern Syria and southeastern Turkey. In Greek, Mesopotamia means "between the rivers." Several ancient civilizations grew there.
The need for self defense and irrigation led the ancient Mesopotamians to organize and build canals and walled settlements. After 6000 B.C., the settlements grew, becoming large cities by the fourth millennium B.C.
Uruk (Erech) was located in the south. Mud brick temples were decorated with fine metalwork and stonework. A growing administrative need stimulated the invention of a form of writing known as cuneiform. The Sumerians were probably responsible for this early urban culture, which spread up the Euphrates to Syria.
About 2330 B.C. the region was conquered by the Akkadians, a Semitic people from central Mesopotamia. Their king, Sargon, founded the dynasty of Akkad, and at this time the Akkadian language began to replace Sumerian.
The Gutians, tribesmen from the eastern hills, ended Akkadian rule about 2118 B.C. and, after an interval, the third dynasty of Ur arose to rule much of Mesopotamia. In Ur, Sumerian traditions had their final flower.
Influxes of Amorites (Semites from the northwest) eventually broke Ur's power about 2004 B.C. These tribes took over the ancient cities and mixed with the local people, no single city having overall control until Hammurabi of Babylon united the country for a few years.
In 539 B.C., the Persians made Mesopotamia part of their empire. Alexander the Great conquered the Persians in 331 B.C. Later the Romans, Sassanids, Arabs, Mongols and Turks ruled Mesopotamia.
Iraq was created at the end of World War I, when the Ottoman Empire broke up.
The mountains of Iran and Turkey rise east and north of the Mesopotamian region. The great Syrian desert lies to the west and the Persian Gulf lies directly south of it. North of the city of Baghdad, the region is a fertile plateau that has cool temperatures and receives some rain. But the southern part, a plain of silt left behind by the rivers, is now being covered with sand and saturated with salt.
As the Tigris and Euphrates flow south out of Turkey, they are 250 miles apart. The Euphrates runs south and east for 800 miles and the Tigris flows south for 550 miles before they join, reaching the Persian Gulf as the Shatt al Arab.
The river valleys and plains of Mesopotamia were open to attack from the rivers, the northern and eastern hills and the Arabian Desert and Syrian steppe to the west.
Mesopotamia's richness always attracted its poorer neighbors and its history was a pattern of infiltration and invasion.