But fewer people realize that, in addition to creating the map of the modern ... There was a certain geographic and strategic logic to this division. The Near East was, well, nearer than the ...

beautiful maps and ugly ones — and bizarre maps whenever possible. *** There used to be a Near East. It stretched from the Balkans across Anatolia, down through the Levant and possibly into Egypt.

Cereal domestication occurred in the Fertile Crescent — a region of the Near East in which wild progenitors of modern cereals still occur. New geographical and genetic evidence point to a ...