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.

---

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

---

Etymology

Origin of Fertile Crescent

First recorded in 1910–15

Example Sentences

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

Two-thousand years ago, forts were constructed by the Roman Empire across the northern Fertile Crescent, spanning from what is now western Syria to northwestern Iraq.

From Science Daily • Oct. 27, 2023

Civilization began in the Fertile Crescent about 10,000 years ago, when people first settled into villages and started growing food.

From Salon • Aug. 11, 2023

First, no cereal crops were domesticated in New Guinea, whereas several vitally important ones were domesticated in the Fertile Crescent, Sahel, and China.

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