The Fertile Crescent

The Fertile Crescent is most often referred to as being the “cradle of civilisation”, by different western and eastern writers. Geographically, the region is perfect, and is one of the numerous suspected locations for the Garden of Eden, –which also includes Atlantis, so don’t get your hopes up. The area was so named because of its sustainability, both for the weather, and other environmental aspects, that made it a perfect place for Neolithic families to settle down and have a bunch of babies. Naturally, the place has its name because of its geographical shape; –like a crescent, and the “fertile” part, comes from its rich soils.

The area is so fertile because of it’s perfect location; both the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers wind all around and through the area, though the rest is bordered by gradually declining lands, and then further out, desert. The Fertile Crescent is now comprised of the modern locations, Israel and Lebanon and parts of Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, south-eastern Turkey and south-western Iran. So many unique and interesting cultures also make the Fertile Crescent a melting pot of interesting and vibrant ethnicity. But that’s not all there is to interest the scientists and historians.

The area called the “cradle of civilisation” is also the final resting place of some of the earliest upright human civilizations, and even some ruins of their earliest homes. There are examples and relics of both pre-modern and early modern humans, found in the Kebara Cave in Israel. Also the hunter-gatherer races, Pleistocene, and Epipaleolithic semi-sedentary hunter-gatherers. Around the Jordan rive and the upper Euphrates river are the very first known locations, the earliest Neolithic farming settlements, dating back over 11,000 years ago. Then there’s also the evidence of the earliest forms of writing, and organised societies.