While Mesopotamia's soil was fertile, the region's semiarid climate didn't have much rainfall (less than ten inches annually) which made farming really difficult.
Explanation:
One of the main feature of Mesopotamia is that it's a land between two rivers: Euphrates (to the west) and Tigris (to the east). They flow from hills and mountains, down to marshland in the south, then into the Persian Gulf.
They needed to trade with other countries so as to acquire the resources which they needed to live. Grain, oils and textiles were taken from Babylonia to foreign cities and exchanged for timber, wine, precious metals and stones.
