Figure 6.12: The Fertile Crescent, one of the earliest known agricultural sites. About 10,000 years ago, people in the Fertile Crescent began domesticating cereal grains, legumes, and animals, especially sheep and goats. The uses of domesticated animals spread into Europe and Africa as agricultural peoples traded their surpluses for other goods or moved into other regions. Three major empires developed successively in the eastern part of the Fertile Crescent: the Sumerian, the Babylonian, and the Assyrian.
[Source consulted: Bruce Smith, The Emergence of Agriculture (New York: Scientific American Library, 1995), p. 50]