1. Humans became food producers rather than food gatherers some 13,000 years ago with the development of agriculture, the essential step in the creation of complex civilizations.
2. As cities were established in the river valleys of Mesopotamia, the early Sumerian and Babylonian civilizations emerged.
3. Egyptians developed a prosperous, long-lasting, religious society along the Nile between about 3000 and 300 b.c.
4. In Palestine, the Phoenicians created a sophisticated urban civilization, while the Israelites developed a short-lived kingdom but an enduring religious and cultural tradition.
5. The Assyrians--followed by the Chaldeans, the Medes, and the Persians--established powerful unifying empires in the Near East.
