that crescent-shaped area of Southwest Asia from Jordan north to southeastern Turkey and then east to Iran. From that region came the world’s first crops and domestic animals and wheeled transport, the mastery of copper and then of bronze and iron, and the rise of towns and cities, chiefdoms and kingdoms, and organized religions. All of those elements gradually spread to and transformed Europe from southeast to northwest, beginning with the arrival of agriculture in Greece from Anatolia around 7000 B.C. Scandinavia, the corner of Europe farthest from the Fertile Crescent, was the last part of
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