Portal:Ancient Near East/Intro
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The ancient Near East refers to early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and Syria), Persia (modern Iran), Anatolia (modern Turkey), the Levant (modern Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan), and Ancient Egypt, from the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC until the region's conquest by Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC, or covering both the Bronze Age and the Iron Age in the region.
The Ancient Near East is considered the cradle of civilization. It was the first to practice intensive year-round agriculture; it gave us the first writing system, invented the potter's wheel and then the vehicular- and mill wheels, created the first centralized governments, law codes and empires, as well as introducing social stratification, slavery and organized warfare, and it laid the foundation for the fields of astronomy and mathematics.
