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History
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The Near and the Middle East is the cradle of the human culture. Between 18th and 10th millennium BC in Palestine, Asia Minor and on the western slopes of the Plateau of Iran arable crop farming and cattle breeding appeared; one began to sow barley and corn (Wadi en-Natuf) in Palestine, domesticated the sheep and the goat, the pig and the donkey. In the 8th - 6th millennium BC the craftsmanship emerged. One began to produce burnt clay dishware, fabrics, stone weapons and instruments. There came into being settlements, surrounded by walls - Jericho in Palestine, Çatalhüyük in Asia Minor. Between the 6th and the 3rd millennium BC the Nile Valley in Egypt was cultivated, as well as the valleys of the Southern Euphrates and the Karun (Persian Rūd-e Kārūn , ancient Ulai, or Eulaeus river), Kerkhe (ancient Elam) to the East of Modern Iraq, the seasonal floods were used for irrigation purposes. In the 4th - 3rd millennium BC in the Nile Valley (Egypt) and the Lower Mesopotamia (Sumer) the first states take shape with peculiar cults, developed trade, written script, calendar and the rudiments of art, literature and science. The history of the region of the last four millenniums - is an endless chain of upheavals and collapses of the cities and kingdoms. Babylon collapsed under the strikes of the Khatti kingdom of Asia Minor and revived once again; and the traces of the kingdom-the conqueror were discovered by archeologists only in the beginning of the 20th century. Assyria conquered practically the whole of Eastern Mediterranean, but then its capital Nineveh upon the Tigris was destroyed, turned into ruins. The texts and the archeological findings show, how undertaking Phoenician traders sailed to the Pillars of Hercules, the Western border of the Old World and founded Carthage, the rival of Rome. They tell about the Jewish Exodus from the Babylonian and Egyptian captivity, about the construction and destruction of the Temple, testify of the Greek-Persian wars and of the legendary Asian campaign of Alexander the Great, of the battle of Rome and later that of Byzantium against Persia, affixed in the 7th century AD to the Muslim state; of the impetuous upheaval of the Arabs under the banner of Islam, which in the 15th century was taken over by the Ottoman Turks, who destroyed Byzantium, and at last, of the colonial conquests of the new time; of the two world wars and the events of the latest dozens of years, utterly reshaping the political map of the Near and the Middle East.
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