At www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-ancient-cities-spring-marshes.html is a new theory on the Sumerian cities – presumably on the basis they did not originally require an irrigation system but that was a development that came about after environmental downturns. It seems that early cities did not spring up along the banks of rivers but spread across the delta zone within and along the margins of the marshlands. So says a press release from the University of South Carolina. The rise of cities around 3000BC, they contest, was due in part to their proximity to the marshes – and its food and material resources (mud and grasses for buildings and fowl and wild animals).
At www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110225091019.html … it seems the Bamiyan Buddhas, destroyed by the Afghan Taliban fundamentalists, were constructed in the 6th century AD. Strange, but it may be the same events in the sky were common both to the Buddha figures as they were to the rise of Islam at the same point in time.