The Fertile Crescent
Explore the Fertile Crescent — the arc of productive land from Egypt to Mesopotamia where agriculture, writing, and civilization first emerged.
The Fertile Crescent is a crescent-shaped region of relatively fertile land stretching from the eastern Mediterranean coast through modern-day Lebanon, Syria, and southern Turkey, then curving southeast through the Tigris-Euphrates valley to the Persian Gulf. This region — coined and named by archaeologist James Henry Breasted in 1916 — was the birthplace of agriculture, writing, urbanization, and many of civilization's foundational technologies.
The Fertile Crescent's importance stems from a fortunate convergence of geography and biology. The region had an unusually high concentration of wild plants and animals suitable for domestication — including wheat, barley, lentils, sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs. The diverse terrain, ranging from coastal plains to river valleys to semi-arid grasslands, provided multiple ecological niches where early farmers could experiment with different crops and techniques.
Virtually every major development in the early chapters of human 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 (cuneiform, c. 3400 BCE), the first law codes (Ur-Nammu, c. 2100 BCE), and the first empires (Akkad, c. 2334 BCE). Understanding why this particular region was so productive is central to understanding how civilization began.
Lessons covering this topic
Browse all lessons →The Agricultural Transition
How farming began independently in the Fertile Crescent, Yangtze, and Mesoamerica.
The Birth of Settlement
Catalhoyuk, Jericho, and the first permanent communities.
Mesopotamia
Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, Assyria — civilization between two rivers.