The rich, fertile soil of the Middle East led early civilizations to settle, domesticate plants and animals, and thrive. The Fertile Crescent between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers known as Mesopotamia (now modern Iraq, and extending north into Syria and Turkey) was the home of the world’s first urban culture, the Sumerians, 6,000 years ago. The Sumerians’ Egyptian rivals took advantage of the annual flooding of the Nile for their regular harvest, later exporting a large portion of their produce to the Roman Empire. Some time later, the Hittites settled in the golden, rolling hills of Anatolia (modern Turkey) and the Phoenicians of the eastern Mediterranean loaded olive oil and spices into their merchant ships to trade throughout the Mediterranean.
