The remains of a 150,000-year-old settlement has been found in Arbil, north Iraq. It is, so far, the oldest uncovered settlement found in that part of Mesopotamia.

The archaeologists revealed a high number of items, mainly prehistoric stone tools, about nine metres under the ground in Arbil, capital of the Kurdish autonomous region, said archaeologist Novacek, from the University of West Bohemia in Plzen.

The eight-member expedition returned from Iraq at the end of last year. The team comprised experts from the University of West Bohemia, academic and university institutions in Prague and two companies.

Czech experts have succeeded in finding evidence of the oldest human settlement in the locality as all other finds of American expeditions working there 50 years ago are probably younger.

“We have been the first foreign expedition in this area since the second Gulf War in 2006,” Novacek added.

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We can expect an influx of remarkable findings as archaeologists are beginning to working again on the ancient city of Ur in war torn Iraq.

“When the (large-scale) excavations restart, tons of antiquities will see the light of day, filling entire museum wings,” enthused Dhaif Moussin, who is in charge of protecting a site that has been prone to looting.

“This site will become perhaps more important than Giza,” he added, referring to the plateau outside the Egyptian capital of Cairo where some of mankind’s most treasured antiquities have been unearthed, including the Sphinx and several notable pyramids.

That may not be just an idle boast.

In the early 1900s, American archaeologist Charles Leonard Woolley made some stunning finds when he unearthed 16 tombs of Ur’s elite.

Inside he found some of the greatest treasures of antiquity, including a golden dagger encrusted with lapis lazuli, an intricately carved golden statue of a ram caught in a thicket, a lyre decorated with a bull’s head and the gold headdress of a Sumerian queen.

Those treasures have been compared to the riches from the tomb of the Egyptian boy-king, Tutankhamun, but they excite archaeologists even more because the graves at Ur are more than 1,000 years older.

Archaeologically, the most astonishing find of Ur has been a remarkably well-preserved stepped platform, or ziggurat, which dates back to the third millennium BC, when it was part of a temple complex that served as the administrative centre of the Sumerian capital.

To date, hardly 20 percent of the site has been excavated, mainly by American and British archaeologists.

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An ancient Sumerian settlement has been found in southern Iraq.

The site, in the southern province of Dhi Qar, is in the desert near ancient Ur, the biblical birthplace of Abraham.

“There are walls and cornerstones carrying Sumerian writings, dating back to the era of the third Sumerian dynasty,” said Abdul Amir al-Hamdani, head of the provincial government’s archaeology department.

Hamdani said the artefacts, which included sickles and knives, largely dated back to around 2000 BC, during the rule of King Amarsin, the third king of the third Sumerian dynasty.

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Iraq’s Tall Harmal, site of the old Babylonian city of Shadupum, has been left unguarded since 2003 resulting in damage to the site and illegal digs.

The site, in the outskirts of Baghdad, was fenced and seen as one of the country’s most important ancient landmarks prior to the invasion.

Only recently the Antiquities Department has remember Harmal, where Iraq’s most renowned archaeologist Taha Baqer had unearthed an ancient library of about 300 cuneiform documents in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Baqer did not only excavate the city but reconstructed some of its most important buildings where visitors could feel, touch and even smell the grandeur of a Babylonian site.

This highly significant site was left unattended “because of lack of financial resources”, according to Abdulzahra al-Talaqani, the department’s spokesman.

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Bloomberg has an interesting article on how archaeological sites are translating into tourist dollars for Iraq.

Ancient Babylon, dating back to 2,300 B.C., lies about 50 miles south of Baghdad, near the town of Al-Hillah. It was one of many civilizations of Mesopotamia, which is Greek for “between the rivers,” the Tigris and Euphrates.

Babylon is best known for the Tower of Babel and King Nebuchadnezzar II, who destroyed Jerusalem. Reigning from about 605 to 562 B.C., he created the gardens for his wife, Amytis of Media, a mountainous region of modern-day Iran, to remind her of home. Shortly after his death, the empire fell to invading Persians.

Like most ruins, Babylon isn’t much more than piles of mud bricks. Imagination and a desire to connect with history make the site. Unless, of course, you’re a demented dictator who believed himself Nebuchadnezzar’s reincarnation.

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