ABSTRACT
Inhabitants of the remote reaches of the once extensive marshes in southern Mesopotamia/Iraq used more or less the same type of bitumen-covered boats for over seven millennia (Pournelle 2003; Ochsenschlager 2004; France 2007). Transport, however, between cities and along the margins of the large wetland has always been by roads (Young 1977), the oldest such structures in existence anywhere in the world.
