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Fertile Crescent

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Geography of the Middle
East

   The Fertile Crescent ( Arabic,الهلال الخصيب )is a historical
   crescent-shape region in the Middle East incorporating the Levant,
   Ancient Mesopotamia, and Ancient Egypt. The term "Fertile Crescent" was
   coined by University of Chicago archaeologist James Henry Breasted.

   Watered by the Nile, Jordan, Euphrates and Tigris rivers and covering
   some 400-500,000 square kilometers, the region extends from the eastern
   shore of the Mediterranean Sea around the north of the Syrian Desert
   and through the Jazirah and Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf. These
   areas correspond to the present-day Egypt, Israel, West Bank, Gaza
   strip, and Lebanon and parts of Jordan, Syria, Iraq, south-eastern
   Turkey and south-western Iran. The population of the Nile River Basin
   is about 70 million, the Jordan River Basin about 20 million, and the
   Tigris and Euphrates Basins about 30 million, giving the present-day
   Fertile Crescent a total population of approximately 120 million, or at
   least a quarter of the population of the Middle East.
   This map shows the extent of the Fertile Crescent.
   This map shows the extent of the Fertile Crescent.

   The Fertile Crescent has an impressive record of past human activity.
   As well as possessing many sites with the skeletal and cultural remains
   of both pre-modern and early modern humans (e.g. at Kebara Cave in
   Israel), later Pleistocene hunter-gatherers and Epipalaeolithic
   semi-sedentary hunter-gatherers (the Natufians), this area is most
   famous for its sites related to the origins of agriculture. The western
   zone around the Jordan and upper Euphrates rivers gave rise to the
   first known Neolithic farming settlements (referred to as Pre-Pottery
   Neolithic A ( PPNA)), which date to around 9,000 BCE (and includes
   sites such as Jericho). This region, alongside Mesopotamia (which lies
   to the east of the Fertile Crescent, between the rivers Tigris and
   Euphrates), also saw the emergence of early complex societies during
   the succeeding Bronze Age. There is also early evidence from this
   region for writing, and the formation of state-level societies. This
   has earned the region the nickname "The Cradle of Civilisation."

   Since the Bronze Age, the region's natural fertility has been greatly
   extended by irrigation works, upon which much of its agricultural
   production continues to depend. The last two millennia have seen
   repeated cycles of decline and recovery as past works have fallen into
   disrepair through the replacement of states, to be replaced under their
   successors. Another ongoing problem has been salination — the seepage
   of salt water into irrigated farmland.

   As crucial as rivers were to the rise of civilisation in the Fertile
   Crescent, they were not the only factor in the area's precocity. The
   Fertile Crescent had a climate which encouraged the evolution of many
   annual plants, which produce more edible seeds than perennial plants,
   and the region's dramatic variety of elevation gave rise to many
   species of edible plants for early experiments in cultivation. Most
   importantly, the Fertile Crescent possessed the wild progenitors of the
   eight Neolithic founder crops important in early agriculture (i.e. wild
   progenitors to emmer wheat, einkorn, barley, flax, chick pea, pea,
   lentil, bitter vetch), and four of the five most important species of
   domesticated animals — cows, goats, sheep, and pigs — and the fifth
   species, the horse, lived nearby. These considerations are a major area
   of focus and analysis in the book Guns, Germs, and Steel.

   In the contemporary era, river waters remain a potential source of
   friction in the region. The Jordan lies on the borders of Israel, the
   kingdom of Jordan and the areas administered by the Palestinian
   Authority. Turkey and Syria each control about a quarter of the length
   of the Euphrates, on whose lower reaches Iraq is still heavily
   dependent.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertile_Crescent"
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