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Where was the Fertile Crescent located?

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Farm in Saskatchewan — Origins of agriculture Harvesting wheat on a farm in the grain belt near Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. A potash mine appears in the distant background.

The Fertile Crescent is a roughly crescent-shaped region in the Middle East historically significant as the site where the first settled agricultural communities originated.12

Situated between the Arabian Desert to the south and the Armenian Highland to the north, the region extends from Babylonia and Elam in the east, follows the Tigris and Euphrates rivers through Assyria, and continues westward across Syria to the Mediterranean coast. It further extends southward into Palestine. The Nile valley of Egypt is also frequently included as a western extension of this arc.12

This area provided the necessary environment for early agriculture due to its fertile soil and the availability of water, which supported the development of some of the world's earliest complex societies.13