Often called the birthplace of human civilization, the “the fertile crescent” because of its lush soil, the “crescent” of land mostly includes modern-day Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and Israel-Palestine. (Some definitions also include the Nile River valley in Egypt.) People started farming here in 9000 BC, and by around 2500 BC the Sumerians formed the first complex society that resembles what we’d now call a “country,” complete with written laws and a political system.

Here in this wonderful post from Max Fisher on Vox there are great maps on

• Fertile Crescent

• Phoenicians spread from Lebanon across the Mediterranean

• How the East gave Europe religion, three times

• When Islamic Forces conquered the Middle East

• Rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire

• The Sykes-Picot treaty that carved up the Middle East

• The complete history of Islamic states

• The 2011 Arab Spring

• The Sunni-Shia divide

• Israel’s 1947 founding and the 1948 Israeli-Arab War

• Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank

• Iran’s nuclear sites and possible Israeli strike plans

• How the colonial “Durand Line” set up Afghanistan’s conflict

• The 1989 war that tore up Afghanistan

• What Saudi Arabia and its neighbors looked like 100 years ago

• Oil and Gas in the Middle East

• Oil, trade, and militarism in the Strait of Hormuz

• Why Egypt’s Suez Canal is so important for the world economy

• The ethnic cleansing of Baghdad during the Iraq War

• Where the Kurds are and what Kurdistan might look like

• Mapped by Internet connections (top) and by tweets (bottom)

and many More here