(Since then, the river, and pretty much the entire peninsula, has dried up - the river-bed only having been discovered with the advent of satelites.) I had heard about that recently..I think its on the show Restless Planet, where they talked about the Sahara and that whole desert region. They showed what the dried up basin looked like with the sattelit imagry.

Many traditional holiday foods have their origins in Mesopotamia- like the ever loving Fruit cake! LOL well not the cake perse, but the fruits that go in it. Persoanlly I can't stand Fruit Cakes. The fruits on their own are a different matter.