The origins of civilization contain a chicken and egg problem: If large scale irrigation projects made complex Mesopotamian states possible, who organized and built all those canals? A new study by @whoi.edu's @geosan.bsky.social and co-author Reed Goodman may have solved the riddle: @science.org

Beautiful!!! It's surprising that first 40m cores took so long to be obtained and studied. This explanation, though the cycle would be every 12h instead of yearly, would be analogous to the Nile phenomenon and the rise of Egyptian civilization, which it predated.

Hot off the presses! Here’s a new article that I co-authored with my Lagash Archaeological Project colleagues on a geoarchaeological study of what we believe to be evidence of hydrological warfare in the Third Millennium BCE. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Far from being impossible, or a violation of academic freedom (Stanford!), academic institutions can, in fact, reject sponsorship from fossil fuel companies who are using them to greenwash their appalling environmental record.