Erbil: 10,000 years of civilization

Here (NYTimes - may require subscription, but I think Google's RSS feed bypasses it...)

What seems clear, said John Malcolm Russell of the Massachusetts College of Art, is that with its location in a rain-fed plain near the confluence of two rivers and the foothills of the Zagros Mountains, Erbil "could have been the site of one of the earliest villages in the world." The first hunter-gatherer settlement could have started as early as 9300 B.C., followed by early pottery makers, the proto-Hassuna, by 7000 B.C. And unlike the arid regions to the south, the rain remained relatively steady in Erbil over the millennia, so there was no compelling reason to abandon a settlement. By 1400 B.C., as cultures came and went, Erbil became one of the most important cities of the Assyrian Empire, said Dr. Russell, who is an authority on the period.

Look at the pattern in this aerial photo - the concentric rings of the city, the eccentric spiral of roads leading up to the "crater" in the center: the Citadel at the heart of this ancient city, a city within a city... A closer view of the Citadel itself: If you put up with an ad you can see the whole slide show on the NYT's site - the full-size version of the picture above puts this smaller one to shame. In the larger one, you get a very visceral impression of how organic this city's structure is. It's worth the click, even if the article is somewhat annoying at times...