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Curated category

Countries in West Asia

  • Saudi ArabiaHuman habitation in the Arabian Peninsula dates back to about 125,000 years ago. A 2011 study found that the first modern humans to spread east across Asia…
  • KuwaitThe Mesolithic era, around 8000 BC, left the first human traces in what is now Kuwait. Archaeologists found evidence of early habitation at site H3 and Bahra…
  • JordanThe oldest known evidence of hominid habitation in Jordan dates back at least 200,000 years. Scientists have found the world's oldest known evidence of…
  • AbkhaziaBetween the 9th and 6th centuries BC, the territory of modern Abkhazia formed part of the ancient Kingdom of Colchis. Around the 6th century BC, Greek…
  • Georgia (country)The oldest traces of archaic humans in what is now Georgia date from approximately 1.8 million years ago. These remains belong to the Dmanisi hominins, a…
  • South OssetiaIn the 13th century, a nomadic Iranian tribe known as the Alans faced destruction from Mongol armies. Survivors fled south across the Caucasus Mountains into…
  • SyriaThe Natufian culture became the first to settle permanently around the 11th millennium BC. This shift marked the beginning of agriculture and cattle breeding…
  • QatarThe Qatari peninsula juts into the Persian Gulf, a flat, low-lying plain of sand that stretches between latitudes 24 and 27 degrees north.
  • AzerbaijanThe name Azerbaijan traces back to Atropates, a Persian satrap under the Achaemenid Empire who was reinstated as the satrap of Media under Alexander the…
  • United Arab EmiratesThe United Arab Emirates stretches across 83,600 square kilometers of the Arabian Peninsula. Its landscape shifts from salt pans along the Persian Gulf to…
  • IraqThe fertile plains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers fostered the rise of early cities, civilisations, and empires including Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia…
  • IsraelThe Merneptah Stele, an ancient Egyptian monument dated to the late 13th century BCE, bears the earliest known archaeological reference to Israel as a…
  • IranThe earliest known presence of hominins in Iran dates to around 800,000 BP. Middle Paleolithic sites have been discovered mainly in the Zagros Mountains.
  • EgyptThe Nile River flows through a landscape that has supported human life for over ten thousand years. Evidence of rock carvings along the banks and in…
  • TurkeyGöbekli Tepe stands as a stone monument older than Stonehenge, with some henges erected around 9600 BC. This site in southeastern Turkey predates the…