Fertile Crescent
The Fertile Crescent is a historically significant region in the Middle East, extending northward from the Persian Gulf through parts of modern Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, and southward along the Mediterranean coast to areas in Israel and Jordan. This area is marked by a rain-fed climate with varied topography, including deserts and river systems formed by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It is renowned as one of the earliest centers of agriculture, where the domestication of key crops such as emmer wheat and barley, as well as animals like sheep and goats, began.
Culturally, the Fertile Crescent was home to the Natufian culture, which emerged around 11,000 to 8,300 BCE, known for its transition from nomadic lifestyles to more sedentary communities based on intensive gathering and preliminary farming practices. Over time, this area saw the rise of complex societies exemplified by monumental building projects in places like Jericho, where significant advancements in social organization and agriculture occurred.
As time progressed, the region experienced changes in settlement patterns, agricultural techniques, and pottery usage, reflecting a dynamic cultural evolution. By the late Neolithic period, the introduction of metallurgy and larger, more organized settlements highlighted the region's development as a cradle of civilization, influencing subsequent cultures across the Near East.
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Fertile Crescent
Related civilizations: Natufian culture, Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and B cultures, Halafian culture, Chalcolithic period cultures.
Date: 8000-3900 b.c.e.
Locale: Near East
Fertile Crescent
The Fertile Crescent extends northward in a great arc from the Persian Gulf, through the foothills of the Zagros Mountains in modern Iran, through Iraq, westward through the Taurus Mountains, and then southward along the Mediterranean coast to southern Israel and Jordan. It is a rain-fed region exhibiting a wet and dry, two-season climate. The topography is variable, occasionally rugged, and complex: desert, woodland steppe, and the alluvial system created by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Both rainfall and soil fertility have decreased in the Middle East ecosystem over the past five millennia. Much of the region does not exhibit the conditions that prevailed when domestication and village communities were evolving.
The ancestors of humankind’s first cultivated cereals and legumes are native to the region, including emmer and einkorn wheat, barley, rye, and lentils. Similarly, the region was home to a range of fauna, including the first domesticated animals: sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs.
Subsistence and settlement patterns deviating from traditional hunters and foragers are evident in the pre-Neolithic Natufian culture (11,000-8300 b.c.e.). The Natufians, while probably not initiating cereal cultivation, developed a sedentary lifestyle in the Levant. Archaeological evidence suggests an economy based on intensive gathering of wild vegetal foods, particularly cereals, and hunting. The Natufians, situated in the southwestern corner of the Fertile Crescent, elaborated a stone-tool technology of mortars, pestles, and sickles that had been gradually developing among earlier Mesolithic hunters and gatherers. In addition, the Natufians used lined storage pits to preserve vegetal surplus.
Early farming cultures that succeed the Natufians are known as Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA). At Jericho in the Jordan Valley, PPNA levels reveal a Natufian foundation of intensive collecting (to about 8300 b.c.e.) followed by the emergence of cereal cultivation. All early farming cultures continued to practice hunting or fishing.
Spectacular features at PPNA Jericho were the massive 12-foot-high (3.7-meter-high) walls and a 28-foot-tall (8.5-meter) stone tower. These works may have functioned for either defense or water control. Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) at Jericho documents an agrarian economy, which included domesticated sheep and goats by circa 7300-6000 b.c.e. The massive walls were not maintained during this period. Complex social organization and social stratification are inferred from burials and monumental building projects that required labor coordination and a leadership hierarchy. Hence, by PPNA times, the productivity of the Fertile Crescent fostered occupational specialization and centralized authority, prerequisites for monumental building, town planning, and surplus food management.
In the Zagros region, the site of AliKosh (c. 7500 b.c.e.) documents a progression from hunting and foraging to cereal cultivation. Simple village life was tied to these economic pursuits, and circa 7000-6500 b.c.e., the population at AliKosh was cultivating emmer wheat and barley.
Neolithic archaeological sites within the Fertile Crescent demonstrate considerable economic, organizational, and architectural variability. For example, Jarmo (c. 6750-5000 b.c.e.), a farming village located in the eastern Fertile Crescent (modern Iraqi Kurdistan), contrasts sharply with Jericho. Monumental building projects, such as fortifications, are absent at Jarmo, as are burials, suggesting no status differentiation. The members of this village of perhaps two hundred to three hundred individuals grew lentils, peas, wheat, and barley; raised goats; and perhaps domesticated the pig. Hunting, as in other Neolithic farming communities, supplemented the diet. Although production appears to have been primarily for consumption, Jarmo’s population possessed ceramic technology and a substantial tool kit, with many types being made from obsidian.
Early Neolithic (PPNA) archaeological sites lack evidence for domesticated animals. However, by late PPNB times (c. 7500-6500 b.c.e.), sheep and goats had been domesticated and were followed by cattle and pigs. The later Neolithic (PPNB) evidence indicates interest in cult activity. Plastered skulls and mother-goddess figurines suggest perhaps ancestor worship and social concerns over fertility.
Archaeological sites from the PPNB can be found over much of the Fertile Crescent. Archaeological evidence suggests trade in both shells and lithic materials had increased. The need for various agricultural tools may have fostered exchange in lithic material. Within the Fertile Crescent, fairly large settlements emerged during PPNB times. The site of Ain Ghazal (c. 6900 b.c.e.) in modern Jordan, for example, is larger than thirty acres. Controversy surrounds the cause of the demise of the large Neolithic (PPNB) sites in the Levant: deliberate deforestation or draught? Late Neolithic village sites are characterized by small settlements of less than three acres (c. 6500 b.c.e.).
By 6500 b.c.e., the manufacture of pottery had become common in agricultural communities within the Fertile Crescent. The use of ceramic wares such as vessels for storage, cooking, brewing, and ceremonial use is of great importance in sedentary agrarian settlements. Ceramics and agriculture diffused together into the alluvial regions of the Tigris-Euphrates drainage.
By the sixth millennium b.c.e., the “secondary products revolution” was in effect: Animal traction was employed for plowing and transport in northern Mesopotamia. In the northern Fertile Crescent, the Halafian culture (c. 5700-5600 b.c.e.) produced impressive ceramics that enjoyed a widespread distribution throughout the Near East. This culture, of which there is limited knowledge, was based on cereal cultivation and stock breeding.
The archaeology of the Chalcolithic period suggests a centralized chiefdom level of political organization. Settlements had enlarged to PPNA dimensions (twenty-five acres). The introduction of metallurgy is an attribute of this period. Tools manufactured from copper (axes, adzes, chisels) are found, as are items that imply ritual and elite usage. Chalcolithic sites in modern Israel have produced crowns and maceheads dating to about 4500-3500 b.c.e.
Bibliography
Harris, D. R., and G. Hillman, eds. Foraging and Farming: The Evolution of Plant Domestication. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989.
Levy, Thomas E., ed. The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land. New York: Facts On File, 1995.
Mellaart, James. The Neolithic of the Near East. London: Thames and Hudson, 1975.