Climate change uncovers ancient ruins in Iraq

Miyo McGinn

July 13, 2022

As Iraq’s Mosul reservoir dwindled, scientists uncovered the center of a Bronze Age empire beneath the surface.

These days, you don’t have to look very far for examples of climate change reshaping the world, often in pretty unsettling and scary ways. But recently, a climate change-fueled drought in Iraq brought a peek into the past instead of the future.

Enter: an ancient lost city, re-emerging.

According to the University of Tübingen, Iraq is one of the countries in the world most affected by climate change. The south of the country has been suffering from extreme drought for months, and large amounts of water have been drawn down from the Mosul reservoir—Iraq’s most important water storage—since December.

As farmers in the Kurdistan region of Iraq have drawn water from the Mosul reservoir on the Tigris River to water their parched crops, the increased pressure irrigation placed on the reservoir caused massive drops in water levels. And as those water levels ebbed, they revealed the ruins of a Bronze Age city.

Submerged for decades and never before studied by archaeologists, researchers from Germany and Iraq arrived to the reservoir to study the rediscovered ruins. They believe that the palace, large buildings, storage area, and walls they found comprised the city of Zakhiku. Zakhiku is believed to be the center of the Mittani Empire until it was buried by an earthquake around 1350 BC.

One of the vessels with cuneiform tablets at the excavation site is inspected before being recovered. Photos: Universities of Freiburg and Tübingen, KAO

Since the site will re-flood when rain returns and water levels rise, the team of archaeologists has been working against the clock to make their discoveries. (The ruins had been accessible in the decades since the Mosul dam was built, but never for this long). And they were able to unearth quite a bit while the ruins are exposed.

With the water reduced to drought levels, researchers were able to map out the walls and towers of a large fortification and a massive, multi-story storage building.

“The excavation results show that the site was an important center in the Mittani Empire,” Kurdish archaeologist Hasan Qasim said in a press release. Other members of the team suggest that the large storage building would have housed goods from around the empire, which included much of Mesopotamia and northern Syria.

Researchers were particularly excited to find over 100 cuneiform tablets (small slabs of clay engraved with writing, sometimes sent as letters). In fact, one tablet was found in an intact clay envelope.

“It is close to a miracle that cuneiform tablets made of unfired clay survived so many decades underwater,” Peter Pfälzner, one of the German archaeologists leading the project, says.

The tablets are from slightly after the earthquake that destroyed the city, and researchers are eagerly deciphering them for clues about the transition from Mittani to Assyrian control of the region more than 3,000 years ago.

In the weeks since the excavation project, the Zakhiku site has already been re-submerged by the Tigris, this time covered by a layer of gravel and plastic to protect the ruins from the waters. For those who want to get a peek at what scientists found while the city was exposed, you’ll be pleased to know that scientists are currently working in hopes to create an exhibit at the Dohok National Museum.

Climate change is reshaping the way we think about the future, and exposing the past. And Zakhiku isn’t the first. A whole new field, glacial archaeology, has sprung up to study the ancient shoes, weapons, and even human remains emerging from melting glaciers around the world. Thawing permafrost has allowed Alaska Natives to uncover traces of their own ancient history. And Qasim told The Art Newspaper that along the Eastern Tigris are 100 underwater archaeological sites, flooded and unexplored until the next shift in climate and circumstance. If we get the chance to discover them, that is.

Miyo McGinn

Miyo McGinn is a writer, fact-checker, and self-described aspiring ski bum based in Washington. Her bylines can be found at Grist, High Country News, and Outside. She covers US and global news stories for Adventure.com.