History Īrea of the fertile crescent, circa 7500 BCE, with main sites of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period. These plants, called " selfers", were one of the geographical advantages of the area because they did not depend on other plants for reproduction. The Fertile Crescent flora comprises a high percentage of plants that can self-pollinate, but may also be cross-pollinated. Most importantly, the Fertile Crescent was home to 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 the fifth species, the horse, lived nearby. The region's dramatic variety in elevation gave rise to many species of edible plants for early experiments in cultivation. The Fertile Crescent had many diverse climates, and major climatic changes encouraged the evolution of many "r" type annual plants, which produce more edible seeds than "K" type perennial plants. The area has borne the brunt of the tectonic divergence between the African and Arabian plates and the converging Arabian and Eurasian plates, which has made the region a very diverse zone of high snow-covered mountains. The Saharan pump theory posits that this Middle Eastern land bridge was extremely important to the modern distribution of Old World flora and fauna, including the spread of humanity. The area is geographically important as the "bridge" between North Africa and Eurasia, which has allowed it to retain a greater amount of biodiversity than either Europe or North Africa, where climate changes during the Ice Age led to repeated extinction events when ecosystems became squeezed against the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.
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Biodiversity and climate Īs crucial as rivers and marshlands were to the rise of civilization in the Fertile Crescent, they were not the only factor. Around the outer boundary are the Anatolian and Armenian highlands to the north, the Sahara Desert to the west, Sudan to the south, and the Iranian Plateau to the east. The inner boundary is delimited by the dry climate of the Syrian Desert to the south. In addition to the Tigris and Euphrates, riverwater sources include the Jordan River. In current usage, the Fertile Crescent includes Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan, as well as the surrounding portions of Turkey and Iran. Hence we are obliged to coin a term and call it the Fertile Crescent. The history of Western Asia may be described as an age-long struggle between the mountain peoples of the north and the desert wanderers of these grasslands-a struggle which is still going on-for the possession of the Fertile Crescent, the shores of the desert-bay.ġ There is no name, either geographical or political, which includes all of this great semicircle (see map, p. Nevertheless, after the meager winter rains, wide tracts of the northern desert-bay are clothed with scanty grass, and spring thus turns the region for a short time into grasslands. This desert-bay is a limestone plateau of some height-too high indeed to be watered by the Tigris and Euphrates, which have cut cañons obliquely across it.
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1 It may also be likened to the shores of a desert-bay, upon which the mountains behind look down-a bay not of water but of sandy waste, some eight hundred kilometres across, forming a northern extension of the Arabian desert and sweeping as far north as the latitude of the northeast corner of the Mediterranean. This great semicircle, for lack of a name, may be called the Fertile Crescent. The end of the western wing is Palestine Assyria makes up a large part of the center while the end of the eastern wing is Babylonia. It lies like an army facing south, with one wing stretching along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and the other reaching out to the Persian Gulf, while the center has its back against the northern mountains. This fertile crescent is approximately a semicircle, with the open side toward the south, having the west end at the southeast corner of the Mediterranean, the center directly north of Arabia, and the east end at the north end of the Persian Gulf (see map, p.
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The term "Fertile Crescent" was popularized by archaeologist James Henry Breasted in Outlines of European History (1914) and Ancient Times, A History of the Early World (1916). 1916 map of the Fertile Crescent by James Henry Breasted, who popularised usage of the phrase.