Lessons from history: from Mittani to sustainability

I have always loved history. While most people of my age back in school found it incredibly boring, even after a decade of finishing school, I tend to go back through my history books and extensively read about it. From Harappa to Mesopotamia, the Mittani empire to the Indus civilization - my love for history spans from ancient India to sapiens, Africa and Scandinavia - which also led me to wonder - how were our modern day battles, comforts for the people of the time.

To be noted that this article is written with curiosity and open-endedness, excerpts from history can often be taken as lessons for the future.

I am also a student of geomatics and a lover of archaeology, as I took the weekend to read more upon the combination of both, it led to some really interesting paths.

Mesopotamia is often known to be the cradle of civilization, and it is fascinating to think of how humanity was just discovering how to structure thought and action into something known as ‘society’, and somehow things were still so organised. Modern-day Iraq was yesteryear’s Mesopotamia which spanned between the rivers of Tigris and Euphrates. With the region having an extreme climate in general, summers saw minimal rain and the people built their lives revolving around such situations. Crop rotation, urban farming practices and the inspiration to a lot of modern day irrigation systems comes from Mesopotamia. Their seasonal harvests and then deployed technology often comes in everything that we have today. The invention of the wheel, of cursive writing - it all happened back then and there, so were invented ploughs, urban planning, a city and a societal structure. There have also been discovered techniques to control flooding, prevent soil erosion, create and use fertilisers for better yields and great resource utilisation.

Research suggests how all ancient civilisations have left something that we today are on the verge of losing. Ancient Greece gave us architectural breakthroughs like structures designed to let in natural light and facilitate ventilation, the Maya Civilisation brought in the concept of terraces and landscapes for water management and prevention of erosion, Ancient Egypt utilised the Nile’s flooding and tide cycles for a fertile soil and it built indescribable marvels like the Pyramids and structures to endure the harsh desert climate. Our own Indus Valley Civilisation taught us so much, including the world’s first sophisticated drainage systems and waste management techniques in Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro apart from multiple wells and reservoirs.

A research suggests how climate change could have been a major factor  in the collapse of the Harappan civilisation. Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro were thriving civilisations that had even established trade with Mesopotamia, but by 1800 BCE they were moving out. Geologist Liviu Giosan and his team found that temperature and weather changes caused the summer monsoon rains in the Indus Valley to dry up, making agriculture difficult in Harappan cities. At the same time, there were storms during the winter from the Mediterranean that brought rain to the Himalayan foothills, replenishing water needs. At its peak, the Indus Valley Civilization may have had a population of over five million people. The Indus cities, as we discussed, were noted for their urban planning, a technical and political process concerned with the use of land and design of the urban environment. Apart from their baked brick houses, elaborate drainage systems, water supply systems, and clusters of large, nonresidential buildings.

Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, and the recently partially-excavated Rakhigarhi demonstrate the world's first known urban sanitation systems. The ancient Indus systems of sewage and drainage developed and used in cities throughout the Indus region were far more advanced than any found in contemporary urban sites in the Middle East and even more efficient than those in many areas of Pakistan and India today. Individual homes drew water from wells, while wastewater was directed to covered drains on the main streets. Houses opened only to inner courtyards and smaller lanes, and even the smallest homes on the city outskirts were believed to have been connected to the system.

In a world as advanced as the one that we currently live in, many basic facilities are often taken for granted, so much so that we accept a lot and their redundancy is not felt. We are okay with life going on as is, even if as a citizen we do not hold ourselves or the ones around us as accountable for very fundamental needs and necessities.

It is also very sad that the dialogue of ‘Clean Tigris’ has brought major cities together in Iraq - because the marshlands of Iraq in 2016 were listed as a UNESCO world heritage site, but the same rivers of Tigris and Euphrates that introduced society to humanity is on the brink of fading and drying up. The underlying issue being even grave, how these two rivers serve as important food and water sources for the Iraqi population: be it as an economic livelihood for fishermen, buffalo herders, or families who harvest reed. The population living along the rivers realised that the cultural heritage of the Marshlands is drying out and the surfaces are polluted with plastic waste. In several communities along the rivers, governors and local NGOs are already running initiatives to improve the situation. But since the water flows from North to South, a joint effort from all communities is needed to improve the situation.

Sustainability and environmental stewardship is not one thing, or one vision, or one movement - it is the combination of global redirected efforts to think about what really matters. What should be an era of peace, has become an era of conflict and turbulence. All major ancient civilisations that formed humanity, society and whatever we are built on today, are today regions of massive unrest seeing no light of the day. Though you and I cannot actively change things for those in Iraq or those in Afghanistan, or even those caught in local and regional conflict, it is only lessons from the past that can be lessons for the future. What we can collectively carry forward. That is why History exists in the first place, for the same mistakes to not be repeated and for a tomorrow to be better and forward, not go backwards.

Again, sustainability is not one thing, it is a culmination - of effort, understanding, thought and commitment. From then to now, and from now to then onwards.

This article is also published on the author's blog. illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.