How did we get here? Why is there so much strife in the Middle East? Why are there so many deadly competing cultural, national, political and economic interests there? What is the history behind it all? How can we understand it all without spending years and years becoming becoming scholars of Comparative Religion or Historians?
There is no easy way, but the following two 90 second animated Flash maps, courtesy of Maps Of War, can help to give us a good nutshell summary of answers to questions that have perplexed and caused untold misery and death for centuries.
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over the dates above and below the yellow bar in the first one. There are pop up descriptive balloons.
I particularly love the religion one watching the birth of everyone’s man of God pop up. It’s sort of funny.
or whatever the big blank space is 🙁
perspective. We seem to be going backwards! Interesting coalitions between religions and Empire. To bad our progress seem limited to technology, and our warlike tendencies get tethered to religion.
With Baghdad as its center?
…it is because the majority of domesticated crops and animals happen to have their origins there.
Which led to the early move from hunter-gathering to specialization and greater population density. Which led to the early emergence of closely quartered civilizations with the ability to organize for war.