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

See Examples For:

Fertile Crescent

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

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

High temperatures and scarce water are drying out swaths of Iraq that were once part of a verdant region known as the Fertile Crescent.

From New York Times ● Aug. 1, 2023

Thus, the high percentage of hermaphroditic selfers in the Fertile Crescent flora aided early farmers, because it meant that a high percentage of the wild flora had a reproductive biology convenient for humans.

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