Uruk, the world\u2019s first metropolis and the birthplace of written language, was nourished by the Euphrates River, as was Babylon, ancient \u200bMesopotamia\u2019s grandest city. The fertile plain between the Euphrates and its companion waterway, the Tigris River, was one of humankind\u2019s cradles of civilization.<\/p>\n
Researchers now have \u200cdeciphered how the Euphrates first formed, looking much further back in time than the era of these great urban centers that arose mere millennia ago. Guided by seismic images of buried sediments and other data, they said the Euphrates appears to have been born between 3.6 million and 1.6 million years ago as two earlier river systems merged due to tectonic activity in the Taurus Mountains in the southern part of modern-day Turkey.<\/p>\n
The \u200bEuphrates, the longest river in southwest Asia, extends about 1,700 miles (2,800 km), originating in Turkey and flowing through Syria and Iraq before emptying into the Gulf. Present-day \u200bcities on the banks of the Euphrates include Birecik in Turkey, Raqqa in Syria and Ramadi, Fallujah and Nasiriyah in Iraq. Ancient cities on \u2060the Euphrates also included Ur and Mari.<\/p>\n
While the Euphrates has long shaped the region\u2019s geology, the timing of its origin and the evolution of its present course had remained enigmatic. \u200bThe researchers said decoding the river\u2019s backstory was important for understanding the milestones in human culture in agriculture, writing, urban development and other areas that occurred on its floodplains.<\/p>\n
Geologists using subsurface seismic \u200bdata while trying to identify possible gas reserves under the Mediterranean spotted buried channel-like features dating to a time more than 5 million years ago when large parts of the sea had dried up, an event called the Messinian salinity crisis.<\/p>\n
They determined that two separate rivers \u2013 predecessors to the modern-day Karasu and Murat rivers in Turkey \u2013 flowed across a region spanning Turkey and Syria and emptied into the Mediterranean basin.<\/p>\n
The scientists \u200bbelieve tectonic activity in this earthquake-prone region caused the Murat predecessor to divert toward the Gulf, with the Karasu predecessor later joining it. This, they said, formed a powerful single river \u200bsystem that became the Euphrates.<\/p>\n
A key tool used by the scientists was seismic imaging, a technique that creates detailed two- and three-dimensional maps of Earth\u2019s subsurface by recording how sound waves travel through and \u200cbounce off \u2060underground rock layers. It was through seismic imaging that they detected the features that were ancient river channels hidden beneath the seabed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis technology is the equivalent of using ultrasound to image fine details of a developing baby or an arthritic knee, but in this case we use it to image buried gravels, sands, mud, limestone and salt that have been compacted and turned into rock,\u201d said University of Western Australia geoscientist Simon Lang, who helped with the study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, along with geologist Andrew Madof of Chevron.<\/p>\n
The scientists, through modeling of the \u200bunderground features, determined that these two ancient rivers \u200bhad flow rates exceeding the modern-day Nile \u2060and Tigris-Euphrates.<\/p>\n
Working backward, the scientists traced the two ancient rivers to onshore Turkey. By examining geological data from sediments in valleys and coal deposits now uplifted into the Taurus Mountains, they determined that the present-day Karasu and Murat rivers were likely the original sources of those buried \u200bchannels.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut somehow they had got cut off from their western lower valley reaches, and had joined together to form what is now \u200bthe modern-day Euphrates River. \u2060That \u2018somehow\u2019 was, of course, tectonic activity across eastern Anatolia,\u201d Lang said.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, the waters along the Euphrates and the Tigris join near Basra to form a huge delta at the head of the Persian Gulf. They have filled in a large area of Mesopotamian plain upon which early agriculture developed including early city-states, and the development of cuneiform writing so vital to early human development,\u201d Lang said.<\/p>\n
The flow \u2060of even \u200bthe mightiest rivers can be changed by dramatic geological events.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest river on the planet \u2013 the Amazon \u2013 used to \u200bflow west towards modern-day Colombia and Peru towards its paleo-Pacific deltaic coast before the rise of the Andes. As the Andes grew with huge uplifts, all the former distributaries reversed direction over millions of years, and now the \u200bAmazon flows into the Atlantic,\u201d Lang said.<\/p>\n
\u200bUruk, the world\u2019s first metropolis and the birthplace of written language, was nourished by the Euphrates River, as was Babylon, ancient \u200bMesopotamia\u2019s grandest city. The fertile plain between the Euphrates and its companion waterway, the Tigris River, was one of humankind\u2019s cradles of civilization. Researchers now have \u200cdeciphered how the Euphrates first formed, looking much\u00a0\u00a0Tech & Science\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Uruk, the world\u2019s first metropolis and the birthplace of written language, was nourished by the Euphrates River, as was Babylon, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":83727,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aftoforo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aftoforo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aftoforo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aftoforo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aftoforo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aftoforo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aftoforo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aftoforo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aftoforo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aftoforo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}