Hydraulic control structures, including dikes and natural or artificial breaches in river dikes, allowed the controlled distribution of water in the floodplain. Long ago, the Euphrates River ...

The system, with over 200 major canals and 4,000 smaller ones, was used to divert Euphrates River water to farms. Researchers traced the canals using satellite imagery and geological mapping.

Researchers have identified an extensive Mesopotamian canal network that supplied ancient farms in the Eridu region with water from the Euphrates river before the first millennium B.C.

The research team found that the canals irrigated more than 700 farms in the region, which was inhabited between the sixth until the early first millennium B.C. Fed by the Euphrates River ...

Al-Monitor is an award-winning media outlet covering the Middle East, valued for its independence, diversity and analysis. It is read widely by US, international and Middle East decision makers at the ...

Al-Monitor is an award-winning media outlet covering the Middle East, valued for its independence, diversity and analysis. It is read widely by US, international and Middle East decision makers at the ...

A river is divided up into three sections called courses. There is the upper, middle and a lower course. A river starts in the upper course, usually an elevated section of land such as a mountain ...

The irrigation network consists of over 200 primary canals, some of which stretch up to nine kilometers in length and are between two and five meters wide.