Iraq's ancient buildings are being destroyed by climate change | Iraq | The Guardian - 0 views
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Some of the world’s most ancient buildings are being destroyed by climate change, as rising concentrations of salt in Iraq eat away at mud brick and more frequent sandstorms erode ancient wonders.
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Iraq is known as the cradle of civilisation. It was here that agriculture was born, some of the world’s oldest cities were built, such as the Sumerian capital Ur, and one of the first writing systems was developed – cuneiform. The country has “tens of thousands of sites from the Palaeolithic through Islamic eras”, explained Augusta McMahon, professor of Mesopotamian archaeology at the University of Cambridge.
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Damage to sites such as the legendary Babylon “will leave gaps in our knowledge of human evolution, of the development of early cities, of the management of empires, and of the dynamic changes in the political landscape of the Islamic era”,
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