Iraq, The Cradle of Civilization (1991)

Part of Legacy: The Origins of Civilization. The documentary made around the first Gulf War, highlighting comparison of present Iraq and earlier Mesopotamia. Focuses on the Sumers as opposed to later inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia.

I liked it. I've been on this obsession to learn more about the effects of earlier forms of agriculture on the land. The facts are not pretty. It ties in with what I heard from lectures by either Michael Pollan or Toby Hemenway, as well as Geoff Lawton's projects close to the Dead Sea.

Interested in its demise of the ancient Sumerians, due to ecological degradation. Why is the Fertile Crescent so not fertile? Earlier methods of farming and irrigation had laid waste to the land, making it too saline for agriculture. It made most things impossible to grow, and so the desert took over. When the wheat could no longer tolerate the salted land, barley was grown, until barley too could no longer grow. If anything, it showed me the fragility of civilization. No matter how eminent it may seem, the factors to its demise (irrationality, arrogance, greed, ignorance) is ever present.