### L1885 description of a marsh society that requires boats for everything > When the Englishman Wilfred Thesiger lived among the Marsh Arabs of the south during the 1930s and ’40s, he found himself in an isolated world governed entirely by water. Anyone wanting to go anywhere had to step from their hut into a reed boat, even when just visiting a neighbor, let alone a nearby village. Reed boats thrived in the marshes and swamps of the south from the very earliest days of human occupation, perhaps as early as nine thousand years ago, when farmers moved onto the southern plains of Mesopotamia. Many communities made use of natural outcrops of asphalt to waterproof their boats, for the glutinous tar smeared on reeds makes for a waterproof seal. In the south, the marshes gave way to the Persian Gulf, a dynamic stretch of water whose shores changed constantly as sea levels rose after the Ice Age, when it had been little more than a narrow gulch. Anyone who lived along its shores would have been familiar with inshore waters, given that boats were about the only way of staying in contact with others with such harsh desert on land. Certainly, reed vessels with pitch-coated hulls could have paddled along the desolate Gulf shorelines and inside islands lying close offshore. Useful reference for [[Arais Delta]] - [[Beyond the Blue Horizon by Brian Fagan#L1885 description of a marsh society that requires boats for everything|View in Vault]]