The college of arts at the University of Baghdad issued a book entitled “Settlement and Architecture in the Southern Mesopotamia ” by Dr. Jumaa Hariz al-Talibi, that dealt with the first settlement patterns and their development with a presentation of the architecture models in these settlements and their development, in the southern part of Mesopotamia in the ancient Near East region.
The book also talked about the settlements on waterways, either on the Tigris or Euphrates rivers or on small canals and streams because the rains were not enough for agriculture, so communities that have lived in the southern plain since ancient times have developed complex social systems that have been able to spread at a large scale, but at the same time it is a dignified environment giving areas capable of producing a huge agricultural surplus with excellent roads linking them to areas rich in natural materials. The book also shed light on the birth of settlements, cities and major kingdoms, which developed complex and large administrative and political systems that witnessed technical and technological developments, the most important of which was writing, as well as the development of agricultural and industrial machinery, pottery, ploughs, mining, seals and arts.
