Origins of agriculture in West Asia in the context of "Selective breeding"

The Fertile Crescent (Arabic: الهلال الخصيب al-hilāl al-ḵaṣīb) is a crescent-shaped region in the Middle East, spanning modern-day Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, together with northern Kuwait, south-eastern Turkey, and western Iran. Some authors also include Cyprus and northern Egypt.

The Fertile Crescent is believed to be the first region where settled farming emerged as people started the process of clearance and modification of natural vegetation to grow newly domesticated plants as crops. Early human civilizations such as Sumer in Mesopotamia flourished as a result. Technological advances in the region include the development of agriculture and the use of irrigation, of writing, the wheel, and glass, most emerging first in Mesopotamia.

The Middle East, or the Near East, was one of the cradles of civilization: after the Neolithic Revolution and the adoption of agriculture, many of the world's oldest cultures and civilizations were created there. Since ancient times, the Middle East has had several lingua franca: Akkadian, Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Arabic. The Sumerians, around the 5th millennium BC, were among the first to develop a civilization. By 3150 BC, Egyptian civilization unified under its first pharaoh. Mesopotamia hosted powerful empires, notably Assyria which lasted for 1,500 years. For centuries after the 7th century BC, the region was dominated by Persian powers like the Achaemenid Empire.

In the 1st century BC, the Roman Republic conquered most of the region, and its successor, the Roman Empire, that ruled from the 6th to 15th centuries AD referred to as the Byzantine Empire, grew significantly more. Roman pagan religions were replaced by Christianity in the 4th century AD. From the 3rd to 7th centuries, Rome ruled alongside the Sasanian Empire. From the 7th century, Islam spread rapidly, expanding Arab identity in the region. The Seljuk dynasty displaced Arab dominance in the 11th century, followed by the Mongol Empire in the 13th century.

The Neolithic in the Near East is a period in the prehistory of Western Asia that began with the transition from a Paleolithic to a Neolithic way of life and continued with its consolidation and expansion. It took place between the Levant and the western Zagros, including part of Anatolia, at the beginning of the Holocene, between around 10000 and 5500 BCE (Before the Common Era), or 12000–7500 BP (Before Present).

This period was marked primarily by the adoption of agriculture, particularly cereal cultivation, and the domestication of animals, gradually replacing hunting and gathering. The first elements of the Neolithic way of life emerged during the final phase of the Paleolithic, known in the Near Eastern context as the Epipaleolithic, notably during the Natufian period in the Levant (c. 14,500–10,000 BCE), which saw the development of a sedentary lifestyle. The Neolithic process in the Near East began in the 10th millennium BCE and ended around 7500/7000 BCE. This initial stage is referred to as the "pre-ceramic" Neolithic, characterized by the absence of pottery but the presence of agriculture, animal husbandry, and widespread sedentism. The subsequent phases, known as the Ceramic or Late Neolithic, lasted until around the middle of the 6th millennium BCE. These phases saw the emergence of regional cultures and the spread of the Neolithic way of life to new areas. The period concludes with the development of metallurgy, which marks the beginning of the Metal Ages.

The Natufian culture (/nəˈtuːfiən/ nə-TOO-fee-ən) is an archaeological culture of the late Epipalaeolithic Near East in West Asia from 15–11,500 Before Present. The culture was unusual in that it supported a sedentary or semi-sedentary population even before the introduction of agriculture. Natufian communities may be the ancestors of the builders of the region's first Neolithic settlements, which may have been the earliest in the world. Some evidence suggests deliberate cultivation of cereals, specifically rye, by the Natufian culture at Tell Abu Hureyra, the site of the earliest evidence of agriculture in the world.

The world's oldest known evidence of the production of bread-like foodstuff has been found at Shubayqa 1, a 14,400-year-old site in Jordan's northeastern desert, 4,000 years before the emergence of agriculture in Southwest Asia. In addition, the oldest known evidence of possible beer-brewing, dating to approximately 13,000 BP, was found in Raqefet Cave on Mount Carmel, although the beer-related residues may be a result of spontaneous fermentation.