The southern Mesopotamian city of Uruk is often described as the first city in human history. It was a port on the Euphrates River. Like most Mesopotamian cities, it depended on complex, well-managed irrigation systems fed by the major rivers. But it also bordered the swamps of the southern river delta. Indeed, it may have grown in a period of drying climates, which forced people from outlying villages to migrate into the cities with their well-maintained irrigation systems. Fifty-five hundred years ago, Uruk had a population of ten thousand people living on opposite banks of the river
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