The Babylonians once re-routed the water of the Euphrates River into a basin, which they had excavated in order to create an artificial lake. After filling the artificial basin, the water of the Euphrates was once again allowed to return to its channel. Barely a generation later, the lake that had been created no longer existed, since it had become a marsh, an ecosystem that perpetually sought to establish itself throughout the ancient Middle East, in opposition to the humans who sought to establish dominance over the waters and the land.In an attempt to avoid the floods that occurred when the Euphrates overflowed and covered the plain on which the city of Babylon rested, Babylonian rulers raised embankments to control the river. By raising the embankments, the ecosystem that might have established itself on the plain, in the form of bogs, swamps and marshes, was never given the opportunity to become established. The benefit of a swamp/marsh ecosystem is usually rejected by those who view it as an uninhabitable environment. Swamps and marshes, however, represent nature’s attempt to reclaim land before it becomes barren. If a healthy swamp/marsh ecosystem is established and allowed to thrive, there should be an increase in the amount of rainfall, a by-product of the standing water. As the water from the swamps and marshes slowly dries up, natural selection, in the form of species replacement, would encourage other green ecosystems to replace it, such as grasslands with trees, which would not easily thrive initially in an arid environment without the mediation of a swamp/marsh ecosystem. It takes a long time to establish a viable ecosystem.In Babylon, the rulers further eroded the establishment of a swamp/marsh ecosystem by reducing the power of the flow of the Euphrates River’s current. In an attempt to increase the defenses of the city of Babylon, the channel of the Euphrates River was deliberately extended by creating a very winding course to replace the straight course that nature had created.
Not only reducing the flow of the river, it also greatly increased the distance traveled for those approaching Babylon by boat. The slower moving water was much less likely to create swamps and marshes, unlike the river Araxes, which had thirty-nine mouths that ended in bogs and swamps.To explain the attitude towards rivers by those who lived in the ancient world, a world in which the concept of ecosystem was unknown, it is necessary to understand the action that Cyrus, King of Persia, inflicted upon the Gyndes River, after one of this sacred horses drowned trying to cross it unattended. First, the river was described as insolent, as if it were a person who had deliberately killed. Cyrus then threatened to break its strength so that, in the future, even women crossing the river on foot would not wet their knees. Delaying a planned attack on the city of Babylon for almost one year, Cyrus instructed his army to dig trenches to drain the Gyndes River, a total of 360 trenches, until the portion of the river that he faced had become a trickle. Even in an arid environment, water was not respected, except in conquest.If a swamp/marsh ecosystem had become established in the ancient Middle East, not only would the rainfall in the region possibly have increased, over time, a greener ecosystem would probably have resulted.