Beginning in the 9000BCE, early Neolithic civilization arose in the Fertile Crescent. After about 7000 BCE, many different peoples successively conquered and dominated Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). Well before farming communities arose in Europe, agriculture emerged in the ancient Near East in an area known as the “Fertile Crescent”. The “crescent” stretched along the Mediterranean coast through modern Jordan, Israel, Lebanon and Syria, arched into central Turkey and descended along the fertile plains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (ancient Mesopotamia, “the land between the rivers”) sweeping through Iraq and a slice of western Iran to the Persian Gulf