Word on the street is that the Chaldeans and Babylonians have, in their surviving art, portrayed their men as having long beards with curly strings.
How did they get beards like that? Was it some genetic unusual strain, or (my guess) don’t on purpose? Did they somehow have curling equipment? What?
You don’t see men do this these days . . .
And lastly, what would happen if an American man today did this babylonian beard style?
About what I would have guessed. Curling irons aren’t exactly advanced technology:
He might burn himself before he got the hang of it?
It’s not the beards which are in a style unfamiliar to you.
It’s the art which is in a style unfamiliar to you.
Ever heard of ZZ Top?
I was reading a manga the other day and I wondered, gosh, how do the Japanese get that wild sticky-up hair and those giant doe eyes?
Scissorjack, maybe you are joking, but it’s hard to tell. I think the Japanese hairstyle that you are talking about is a wig. The doe-eyed look is done with makeup. But maybe you are speaking of something else.
I think **Scissorjack **is pointing out that with any work of art it’s a mistake to automatically assume that it’s realistic. If you had never met someone from Japan but had seen a lot of manga, you might assume that Japanese people naturally have spiky hair and enormous eyes, but that assumption would be false.
But, of course, Japanese hair is pink, blue, green – every possible colour except black.
Karen Rhea Nemet-Nejat’s Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia doesn’t have much beyond what yabob cited in post #2. I don’t think there’s any reason to assume it’s an artistic convention that does NOT reflect the reality of the time. It does add that beards were “meticulously waxed” in the Old Akkadian period, and that “greying hair was treated by a lotion and an incantation.” (p. 155)
That’s how my hairdresser does it. 
I have a good friend who curls his beard into 4 curls. He’s a wonderfully odd person.
My beard grows in curly, although to reach Babylonian lengths I would have had to start growing it in Babylonian times.
So where does this guy fit in the "wonderfully odd’ spectrum?
The beards were dipped in water and then wrung out. That’s also how the irrigation problem mentioned in this thread was solved: