What was the Fertile Crescent?

The Fertile Crescent is a crescent-shaped region of productive land curving from the eastern Mediterranean coast (modern Lebanon, Syria, and Israel) through southeastern Turkey and down through the Tigris-Euphrates valley to the Persian Gulf (modern Iraq). The term was coined by archaeologist James Henry Breasted in 1916 to describe the arc of land where many of civilization's most important innovations first appeared.

The region's importance stemmed from a fortunate combination of geography and biology. The Fertile Crescent had an unusually high concentration of wild plants and animals suitable for domestication — wheat, barley, lentils, sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs all originated there. The diverse terrain provided multiple environments where early farmers could experiment with different techniques.

Virtually every foundational development in early civilization occurred in or near the Fertile Crescent: the first permanent settlements (Jericho, c. 9000 BCE), the first cities (Uruk, c. 4000 BCE), the first writing system (cuneiform, c. 3400 BCE), the first law codes (Ur-Nammu, c. 2100 BCE), and the first empires (Akkad, c. 2334 BCE).

It's important to note that the Fertile Crescent was not the only cradle of civilization. Agriculture, writing, and complex societies developed independently in China, Mesoamerica, and elsewhere. But the Fertile Crescent's head start — combined with its geographic connections to Africa, Europe, and Asia — gave it an outsized influence on world history.