Early farming communities characterized the Fertile Crescent. Some of the first irrigation systems were developed in this area, which led to an increase in food supply and, in turn, population. The Fertile Crescent was located in Mesopotamia (which is in the Middle East), not Mesoamerica or along the Yellow River. Finally, the Fertile Crescent area, which came to be known as Sumer, was governed by hereditary kings rather than democratically elected officials.

The Fertile Crescent is an area of land in the Middle East and Asia Minor. Due to the Euphrates and Tigris rivers it is extremely fertile and arable. It is where many of the earliest civilizations settled down and began farming and grew powerful. All of these empires, as well as the Phonecians, the Hittites, the Israelites, the Persians and several others arose in the Fertile Crescent. 

"The Fertile Crescent," often also called "Mesopotamia," is a region of the Middle East and Asia Minor that is (compared to the dry, arid land around it) extremely fertile and favorable to agriculture. It is the part of the world where many of the oldest civilizations arose and remains relevant today. Modern nations that have at least some territory in the Fertile Crescent are Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Iran, Palestine, and Iraq. The climate and terrain of Afghanistan is very different; it is mountainous and drier. 

The Nile river, which one runs for a few thousand miles through Northeast Africa, was the center of the ancient Egyptian civilization. They began farming in the fecund lands of the Nile River Basin around 3000 B.C.E. and would survive as an independent civilization for almost three thousand years.

Menes is credited by most historians with uniting the Upper and Lower Egyptian civilizations into one empire. This occurred around 2900 B.C.E. and is the beginning of ancient Egypt as we know it.

The Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia resides between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. "Mesopotamia" literally means land between two rivers. The Fertile Crescent is an important part of the early story of human civilization because it was in the abundant flood plains of Mesopotamia that the agricultural revolution took place.

The Phoenicians invented the first alphabetic script in ancient times, in the late second millennium BCE. The Greeks and Romans simply adopted and changed this alphabet. The Egyptians and Sumerians developed hieroglyphic and cuneiform scripts, neither of which were alphabetic.

Hammurabi's Code of Laws is the earliest known written-down legal system. Hammurabi was a Babylonian king circa 1800 BCE. The Babylonian civilization existed in various forms for roughly 1500 years from 2000 BCE to 500 BCE. 

The Babylon Captivity is a period of Jewish history when many Jewish citizens of the Kingdom of Judah were captured and forced into exile in ancient Babylon by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar.

The "Babylonian Captivity" of the sixth century BCE involved the forced imprisonment of much of the population of the Kingdom of Judah within the city of Babylon. It ended when Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon in 539 BCE and founded the Achaemenid Dynasty of Persia. Cyrus freed the Jewish people and they mostly returned to Judaea.