page_title: Fertile Crescent
section_title: Cosmopolitan diffusion
hierarchical_section_title: Fertile Crescent / Cosmopolitan diffusion
caption_attribution_description: English: Diffusion of agriculture from the Fertile Crescent after 9000 BC
context_page_description: The Fertile Crescent is a crescent-shaped region in the Middle East, spanning modern-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, together with the southeastern region of Turkey and the western fringes of Iran. Some authors also include Cyprus.
  The region has been called the "cradle of civilization" because it is where settled farming first emerged as people started the process of clearance and modification of natural vegetation in order to grow newly domesticated plants as crops. Early human civilizations such as Sumer in Mesopotamia flourished as a result. Technological advances in the region include the development of agriculture and the use of irrigation, of writing, the wheel, and glass, most emerging first in Mesopotamia.
context_section_description: Modern analyses comparing 24 craniofacial measurements reveal a relatively diverse population within the pre-Neolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age Fertile Crescent, supporting the view that several populations occupied this region during these time periods. Similar arguments do not hold true, however, for the Basques and Canary Islanders of the same time period, as the studies demonstrate those ancient peoples to be "clearly associated with modern Europeans". Additionally, no evidence from the studies demonstrates Cro-Magnon influence, contrary to former suggestions.
  The studies further suggest a diffusion of this diverse population away from the Fertile Crescent, with the early migrants moving away from the Near East—westward into Europe and North Africa, northward to Crimea, and eastward to Mongolia. They took their agricultural practices with them and interbred with the hunter-gatherers whom they subsequently came in contact with while perpetuating their farming practices. This supports prior genetic and archaeological studies which have all arrived at the same conclusion.
  Consequently contemporary in-situ peoples absorbed the agricultural way of life of those early migrants who ventured out of the Fertile Crescent. This is contrary to the suggestion that the spread of agriculture disseminated out of the Fertile Crescent by way of sharing of knowledge. Instead the view now supported by a preponderance of the evidence is that it occurred by actual migration out of the region, coupled with subsequent interbreeding with indigenous local populations whom the migrants came in contact with.
  The studies show also that not all present day Europeans share strong genetic affinities to the Neolithic and Bronze Age inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent; instead the closest ties to the Fertile Crescent rest with Southern Europeans. The same study further demonstrates all present-day Europeans to be closely related.
caption: Diffusion of agriculture from the Fertile Crescent after 9000 BCE
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