Mesopotamia's Terrain Challenge
Mesopotamia (means the land between two rivers) was impacted by the land that it was built on.
The civilization was built between two rivers (as one might rightly guess), and thus presented some interesting challenges. For instance, sometimes the river might overflow, villages would be flooded, people might die, in short, bad things would happen.
But other times, the rivers would dry up, the grain would stop growing, and the people would starve. More bad things.
The solution, however, was to build the city farther away from the water, but use irrigation and store water when it was dry.
More information about Mesopotamia: