An Agricultural Civilization. Ancient Mesopotamia was fundamentally an agricultural civilization. By far, the great majority of people living there were engaged in some form of food production. Two technological innovations, canals that carried water to the fields and the seeder-plow—which in one pass broke up dry, hard turf and deposited seed—enabled ancient farmers to optimize their use of the alluvial plain, the fertile, flat area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The most important crops these farmers raised were cereals: barley and emmer, a form of wheat native to Eurasia. Legumes, chiefly lentils and hummus (chickpeas), and flax were also significant crops in the economy. Levees that formed along the banks of the canals were exploited for the cultivation of date palms, a valuable source of sugar and shade. Vegetables such as cucumbers, onions, and garlic, as...