Fertile Crescent

   The earliest inhabited zone of the Near East - often referred to as the Cradle of Civilization - in which agriculture and the ancestors of the Mesopotamian peoples first developed. The term Fertile Crescent was coined in the early twentieth century by the noted University of Chicago scholar James Henry Breasted. The so-called crescent ran through the wide belt of foothills stretching from Palestine, northward through Syria, and across the northern rim of the Mesopotamian plains (modern Iraq) to the northeastern shores of the Persian Gulf. Exactly who the earliest inhabitants of this region were and where they came from remains uncertain. It seems clear, though, that they made the crucial transition from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural ones, beginning perhaps in about 9000 B.c.orsomewhat earlier. The crescent's low, hilly terrain provided the minimum of 12 inches (30cm) of rainfall a year needed to sustain rain-fed farming (as opposed to farming that requires supplemental irrigation). In the centuries that followed, the farmers of the region developed or domesticated the progenitors, or earliest forms, of the future staple crops of Mesopotamia, including barley, emmer wheat, flax, chick peas, and lentils. The inhabitants also raised domesticated animals, particularly cattle, sheep, and goats. Many of these people may have remained seminomadic at first, but by about 7000 b.c. permanent settlements were more common, among them villages with houses having stone foundations. Surviving examples include Jarmo (or Qalat Jarmo), situated not far north of the Sumerian plains, and Jericho (Tell-es-Sultan) in Palestine.

   Over time successful agriculture and herding provided more food. This, in turn, stimulated population growth and increased the size and complexity of human settlements. By about 6000 to 5500 B.c.or so, the population of the upland regions of the Fertile Crescent had grown enough to stimulate expansion southward into the Tigris and Euphrates plains. Modern scholars call this pivotal era the Hassunah period; they refer to the early inhabitants of the northern alluvial plains, typified by the residents of the village of Choga Mami, the Hassunah culture. It is possible, though still unproven, that the great migration onto the plains was stimulated in part by the arrival in the crescent of refugees displaced by a huge natural disaster that struck northern Anatolia near the start of the Hassunah period.

   See also: Choga Mami; farming; flood legends