Was the ancient Middle East of early man a similar biome to what it is today?
Was the ancient Middle East of early man a similar biome to what it is today?
I can't speak to all of the Mesopotamia but Egypt was pretty much what it is now that's why so much of ancient Egypt is so close the Nile or the Mediterranean
But also like Mesopotamia is right in the Tigris-Euphrates river system which is part of why it was so fertile
The older the settlement the better your odds are that it was close to a river or some body of water
The region known as the Fertile Crescent was a good deal more fertile than it is now, and extensive irrigation works were carried out through the Bronze Age. And mobile though humans might be, if you don't actually know where you're going and you can make things work where you are, you stay there.
The whole region used to be much more fertile. Swamps and big ceder forests stretched for many miles. The region was/is called the Fertile Crescent. If you look up that name it will answer any question you might have. In terms of the crops, they just so happened to also be living there natively, too.
Omg I forgot about the Fertile Crescent I feel so goofy now
It’s not about choice. It’s about it being better than they had. Evidence suggests early humans emerged from Africa. Africa is swell and all, but Northern Africa is lots of desert and the parts that aren’t are rife with dangerous animals. So they left. When you leave North Africa, the Arabian peninsula is the first bit you hit. After that is Mesopotamia, the so called Fertile Crescent. The region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is/was very…fertile. Much more so than North Africa. Is it the most fertile? No. But it was fertile and close enough that it birthed agricultural and cities. People would continue to move on, and take what they learned, but it took time, so that area had a head start on everything for a while.
I do recall reading something at some point that it is now less fertile than it used to be, for a variety of reasons. Also, keep in mind, modern crops have been bred over millennia into what we now recognize as food. The stuff they were growing back then did not require the water or nutrients that modern crops do.