Fertile Crescent

American  

noun

1. an agricultural region extending from the Levant to Iraq.

2. an area in the Middle East: formerly fertile, now partly desert.

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Fertile Crescent British  

noun

1. an area of fertile land in the Middle East, extending around the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates in a semicircle from Israel to the Persian Gulf, where the Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Phoenician, and Hebrew civilizations flourished

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Etymology

Origin of Fertile Crescent

First recorded in 1910–15

Example Sentences

By examining genetic material preserved in bones and teeth, his team is tracing how domesticated animals such as cattle, goats and sheep spread from the Fertile Crescent across Eurasia.

From Science Daily • Mar. 7, 2026

To start, they’re believed to be the first domesticated food crop, with their earliest cultivation dating back 10,000 years in the Fertile Crescent.

From Salon • May 14, 2025

This practice of ritual burial is believed to have originated among early Neolithic groups in the "Fertile Crescent" - a region encompassing parts of modern-day Turkey, Israel, Syria and Lebanon - before gradually spreading westward.

From BBC • Dec. 29, 2024

Human-made climate change is driving a yearslong extreme drought in Iran, Iraq and Syria, an area that encompasses a region known as the Fertile Crescent and a cradle of civilization, scientists said on Wednesday.

From New York Times • Nov. 8, 2023

Thanks to this availability of suitable wild mammals and plants, early peoples of the Fertile Crescent could quickly assemble a potent and balanced biological package for intensive food production.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond