Problems and Solutions

Mesopotamia faced many problems during the time of the civilization. One of them was the food shortages in the hills. There was a growing population and not enough land to fulfill the food needs for everyone. Also, sometimes the plains didn't have fertile soil. What they would do was start farms in bigger, more resourceful areas to feed the growing population. Eventually, they would expand the plains to feed enough people for a long time and last through the winter.

Another problem was that in the spring, it would rain and flood the fields. That was an extremely important problem because they needed to have enough food to feed the population. What they did was build irrigation systems to take the water up to areas that needed it while getting rid of some of the water that was extra. To keep lots of water from getting in to the fields, farmers built levees to keep it all out. They would poke holes in the levees to water the plains if they needed it.

One of the other problems facing Mesopotamian people was that they had difficulty maintaining the irrigation systems (don't you see the chain reaction?). What they would do to solve that problem was gather all the farmers, make them stop what they were doing, and get them to dig out all of the silt that clogged the irrigation systems and made them keep an eye out for how much water the crops were getting.

The last problems were attacks from neighboring communities. The people of Mesopotamia wanted to keep their people safe and under control, so what they did was build strong walls made of sun-baked bricks. That helped from surprise attacks. They also put moats around the walls to make it difficult for people to cross. Some people in Mesopotamia lived outside the wall, so they had a door for them to flee in if they were under attack.