Babylonians

The people of ancient Mesopotamia, who settled in the 'fertile crescent' between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers before the fourth millennium BC, laid the foundations of Western civilization. Some of the earliest experiments in agriculture and irrigation, the invention of writing, the birth of mathematics and the development of urban life began there. Many fundamental developments in human society - from hunter-gatherer to farmer, from village to city-state - first occurred in this area. Biblical associations also are numerous, from Nineveh to the Tower of Babel and the Flood. Professor H. W.…