Tom Johnson, age 129 of Rockford, Illinois, for his question:

What is meant by the Fertile Crescent?

Geographically, the Fertile Crescent was a wide arc of flattish land centered around the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Historically, it provided the cradle of man's earliest struggles toward civilization. Its story began soon after the last ice age, when several large rivers flooded and left muddy deposits of rich soil in their valleys. More than 6,000 years of man's early history were crowded into this fertile crescent. Here, the same old wisdoms and follies were repeated time after time.

James Henry Breasted named it the Fertile Crescent early in the 1900s. This American historian sought the deep basic roots that made man's early civilization possible. Other scholars knew that the story began when Neolithic hunters settled in communities. Breasted saw that the cradles of civilization had to be established in rich soil and that one such region provided a sprawling fertile crescent, where several settlements could prosper and their people meet to share their knowledge and experiences.

The Neolithic settlers found fertile river valleys by chance. Before the dawn of history, they established communities along the muddy Nile. Others settled farther north along the lazy Euphrates and the swift Tigris rivers of Mesopotamia. The early communities lived in harmony with the generous earth. They prospered and multiplied, irrigated and extended their lands. In time their Fertile Crescent extended from the Upper. Nile to the Mediterranean, north through Palestine and looped east, then south with the Mesopotamian rivers to the Persian Gulf.

Here in this region lie buried the records of ancient nations    some long gone    Akkad and Assyria, Elam and Sumer, Egypt and Palestine, Syria, Phoenicia and Persia. Here lie buried the ruins of fabulous past cities    Luxur and Thebes, Jericho, Tyre and Sidon, Damascus and Bagdad, Samarra and Ur, scholarly Babylon and military Nineveh. Here the same old successes and failures of history were repeated again and again.

Each early settlement prospered in partnership with the rich and fertile earth. Then human nature, being what it is, hungered for more. Communities battled their neighbors while neglecting their partnership with natures empires rose and fell, the fertile farms declined. At last the war weary armies returned home, where the patient earth helped them to rebuild their former prosperity. But, once again, this triggered the urge to invest their prosperity in warfaring empires    and the same old cycle was repeated.

If this grim cycle were the whole story, civilization in the Fertile Crescent would have died in its cradle. It was saved because prosperity brought time to ponder and improve the quality of life. Each community developed the arts and crafts of pottery and weaving, building and metal work. Writing and numbers were invented and there was time to study the stars. Social laws were organized, gods were invented to relate mankind to aspects of nature. But these people failed to grasp the fact that their survival is rooted in respect for the earth. We call this ecology and    after more than 6,000 years    we are just beginning to grasp it.