Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. This section needs additional citations for verification. 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. Biodiversity and climateĪs 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. Historian Thomas Scheffler has noted that Breasted was following a trend in Western geography to "overwrite the classical geographical distinctions between continents, countries and landscapes with large, abstract spaces", drawing parallels with the work of Halford Mackinder, who conceptualised Eurasia as a 'pivot area' surrounded by an 'inner crescent', Alfred Thayer Mahan's Middle East, and Friedrich Naumann's Mitteleuropa. At the time that Breasted was writing, it roughly corresponded with the territories of the Ottoman Empire ceded to Britain and France in the Sykes–Picot Agreement. There is no single term for this region in antiquity. 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. 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). Breasted, who popularised usage of the phrase. Terminology 1916 map of the Fertile Crescent by James H. Technological advances in the region include the development of agriculture and the use of irrigation, of writing, the wheel, and glass, most emerging first in Mesopotamia. Early human civilizations such as Sumer in Mesopotamia flourished as a result. The Fertile Crescent is believed to be the very first region where settled farming emerged as people started the process of clearance and modification of natural vegetation to grow newly domesticated plants as crops. Some authors also include Cyprus and northern Egypt. The Fertile Crescent ( Arabic: الهلال الخصيب, Hebrew: הסהר הפורה) is a crescent-shaped region in the Middle East, spanning modern-day Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, together with northern Kuwait, south-eastern Turkey, and western Iran. Map of the Fertile Crescent A 15th century copy of Ptolemy's fourth Asian map, depicting the area known as the Fertile Crescent Further information: History of the Middle East
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