What is the Fertile Crescent?
Q: What is the Fertile Crescent?
A: The Fertile Crescent is a historical region in the Middle East that includes the Levant, Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. It is shaped like a crescent on a map and covers some 400-500,000 square kilometers.
Q: What rivers are found in this region?
A: The Fertile Crescent is watered by important rivers such as the Nile, Jordan, Euphrates and Tigris.
Q: What countries does it cover?
A: The Fertile Crescent covers present-day Egypt, Israel, West Bank, Gaza strip, Lebanon and parts of Jordan, Syria, Iraq, south-eastern Turkey and south-western Iran.
Q: How many people live in this region?
A: The population of the Nile River basin is about 70 million people; the Jordan River basin about 20 million; and the Tigris and Euphrates basins about 30 million. This gives the present-day Fertile Crescent a total population of around 120 million or at least a quarter of the population of the Middle East.
Q: Who coined the term "Fertile Crescent"?
A: Archaeologist James Henry Breasted coined the term "Fertile Crescent" to show how similar these cultures were in ancient times.
Q: How long has human activity been recorded in this region?
A: The Fertile Crescent has had a very long record of past human activity.
