He demonstrated its reach by showing on-screen the change in the ecology of the Tigris-Euphrates basin in southern Iraq, as recorded by satellite photographs, from 1973 to 2000.

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The museum is home to archaeological artifacts from thousands of years of history in the Tigris-Euphrates basin, widely held to be the site of the world's earliest civilizations.

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The public version of the report did not list specific countries but only watersheds of concern (Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, Mekong, Jordan, Indus, Brahmaputra, and Amu Darya) that corresponded with nations that are strategically important to the United States, illustrating the intersections between water challenges and U.S. national security.

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But it clearly occurred to some of these displaced farmers that the slow-moving waters of the lower Tigris and Euphrates, near sea level, could be diverted using canals and used to water crops.

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Weiss believes this climate change initiated a mass migration away from dry-land farming to the creation of irrigated fields along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, allowing the people to build some of the earliest institutions of civilization.

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