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IslandChillin OP t1_iwgnyth wrote

"Around 3,800 years ago, traders in the ancient city of Zakhiku would wait for wooden beams, cut down from the forests in the mountains in the north and east of Mesopotamia – spanning what is today Iraq, Kuwait and parts of Turkey, Iran and Syria – to float down the Tigris River. Once the logs reached Zakhiku, they were collected and taken to storehouses.

From the same mountainous regions in what is present-day Turkey and Iran, merchants transporting metals and minerals such as gold, silver, tin and copper would travel by donkey or camel to Zakhiku. To protect against bandits, they would make the difficult journey as caravans of travellers. After selling their wares in Zakhiku, the merchants would cross the Tigris before continuing on to the borderlands."

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Whoknows_nmn t1_iwirpby wrote

Thank you for sharing friend :-) I'd love to know more about it

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aWheatgeMcgee t1_iwjpldj wrote

Zakhiku was founded around 1,800 BC by the Old Babylonian Empire that ruled Mesopotamia between the 19th and 15th centuries BC. With only water and soil in the area, Zakhiku was established to take advantage of the traffic of caravans and a flourishing trade route in the Near East, which includes the present-day Middle East, Turkey and Egypt.

The trading post grew into an important commercial city in the region for about 600 years before it was hit by an earthquake and later abandoned.

Zakhiku disappeared altogether in the 1980s, when – as part of the Mosul Dam project, built under the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein – it was flooded and submerged. Previously known as Saddam Dam, it is Iraq’s largest and most important water reservoir used for downstream irrigation.

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creampielegacy t1_iwky0fq wrote

So Iraq’s largest and most important water reservoir is receding due to drought? That’s not good, huh?

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Whoknows_nmn t1_iwkh8ru wrote

Wow, thank you. This spot was important,I'm glad I learned about it thanks to you.

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nostalgichero t1_iwk3vr2 wrote

Were the trees larger then? I feel like I never see pictures of large trees and forests in Iraq.

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WolfDoc t1_iwkrbct wrote

About 1.8% of Iraq is forested (slightly up since 1990), but much of Iraq and the surrounding lands were forested a few thousand years ago. However, 6000 + years of land clearance for farming, logging and grazing together with climate getting drier and hotter has reduced the former forests to a shadow of what they were.

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ProfessorCal_ t1_iwkzjif wrote

it’s amazing to me how long modern human life has been around for. people four thousand years ago were really trading goods together, maybe shaking hands, sharing food, having a laugh and joking about taxes the way we do today. absolutely fascinating. makes you wonder where we’ll be in another four thousand

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CaptainObfuscation t1_iwl078n wrote

If I remember correctly handshakes were an ancient Persian custom, so yes, probably shaking hands. Maybe even playing chess.

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ProfessorCal_ t1_iwl0avg wrote

damn, chess has been around for that long too??

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MeatballDom t1_iwn9szu wrote

"Checkmate" comes from Persian

>شاه مات‎ (šâh mât, “the king [is] amazed”). Perhaps conflated with Arabic مَاتَ‎ (māta, “to die”).

The origins of the game itself are a bit blurrier, but not four thousand years old blurry. But, there were games four thousand years old that if we went back in time and saw people playing we would probably describe them as "like chess" as they had similar elements.

There's a lot of games from antiquity that we would recognise or be somewhat familiar with, and probably pick up the rules of relatively quickly. https://www.joshobrouwers.com/articles/ancient-greek-heroes-play/

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