8 • 1 INTRODUCTIONbeen found in the western Sahara. What happened? It seems that as the
polar ice caps (from the last, great Ice Age) retreated some 10,000 years
ago, rainfall diminished in North Africa and Southwest Asia. Hunting and
food-gathering peoples, living in lands that could once have been like the
Garden of Eden, had to learn how to control their sources of sustenance.
Rain-watered areas became farther and farther apart. Some peoples
moved into the marshy valleys of the great rivers: the Nile, the Tigris, and
the Euphrates. By 3500 B.C.E. ("before the common era," that is, the equiv¬
alent of B.c.) or so, they had learned how to tame the annual floods to wa¬
ter their fields. Other peoples became nomads; they learned how to move
up and down mountains or among desert oases to find forage for their
sheep, goats, asses, and eventually camels and horses.
The sedentary farmers who tamed the rivers needed governments to or¬
ganize the building of dams, dikes, and canals for large-scale irrigation
that would regulate the distribution of the floodwaters. They also needed
protection from wandering animal herders. The latter group, the nomads,
sometimes helped the settled peoples as soldiers, merchants, and purvey¬
ors of meat and other animal products. But at times they also became the
bane of the farmers and their governors when they pillaged the farms and
sacked the cities. Herders and farmers often fought, like Cain and Abel,
and yet they also needed each other. In arid lands characterized by long
hot summers and cold winter nights, both groups had to coexist in order
to survive.Location
The Middle East is the natural crossroads of the Afro-Eurasian landmass. It
is also the "land of the seven seas." It lies athwart the water route from
southern Ukraine to the Mediterranean, via the Black Sea, the Bosporus,
the Sea of Marmara, the Dardanelles, and the Aegean Sea. In various eras
an area between the Nile Delta and the Sinai Peninsula has been adapted to
facilitate shipping between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. Ever since
the taming of the one-humped camel around 3000 BCE, men and women
have crossed the deserts with their merchandise, flocks, and household
goods. Even the high mountains of Anatolia and Persia did not bar passage
to people with horses, donkeys, or two-humped camels. Invaders and
traders have entered the Middle East from Central Asia, Europe, and Africa
since prehistoric times. Rarely in the past 4,000 years have Middle Eastern
peoples known any respite from outside pressures or influences.
Consider what this accessibility means for the Middle East, compared
with some other parts of the world. Chinese civilization developed in rela-