Photos of the Region Some Believe Was the Biblical Garden of Eden
Tamara Abdul Hadi
Apr 9 2018, 10:00am
Where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers meet, in what used to be the center of ancient Mesopotamia, is an area of wetland known as the Ahwar of southern Iraq. The locals glide down the waterways on handmade boats, and water buffalo move through the water. It was on this spot, between the fourth and third millennia BCE, where Sumerians built their houses from reeds, a practice still followed today. Some even believe that this region, also referred to as the Iraqi marshlands, was once the location of the world’s first and only utopia: the biblical Garden of Eden. If that were true, though, much has happened since the fall of man. In the 1950s, the government started draining the land to create profitable farmland, but oil drilling began not long after. And then in the 1980s and 90s, while at war with Iran, Saddam Hussein destroyed some of it in order to prevent his enemies from hiding out there. It wasn’t until he was overthrown during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 that efforts to repair the ecosystem finally took hold—the locals toppled the dams, people returned. And it took more than a decade after that, in 2016, for UNESCO to at last name the area—“three archaeological sites and four wetland marsh[es]â€â€”a world heritage site. According to World Heritage Outlook, however, “three out of four components are still not designated as protected areas,†and with government funds still going toward oil drilling, and not conservation, water remains not so readily available. But the people here—the Marsh Arabs—have not given up hope for what this was for their ancestors: a paradise.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59jdy8/photos-of-the-region-some-believe-was-the-biblical-garden-of-eden-v25n1
