The area which Europeans call the Near East (and Americans the Middle East) is an ecologically complex area, characterised by the intimate admixture of mountains and plains, marshes and deserts, land and water. It is the bridge between Africa and Eurasia, and sits between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. It was where farming first began, and also city life; it saw the first empires, and the first maritime trading-centres; it gave rise to three or four of the great world-religions. It is a rather special place.

At the time of the dinosaurs, it was an island-studded ocean, the Tethys Sea; but as the African plate moved closer to Eurasia during the Age of Mammals, the gap was slowly closed until the two continental masses made contact, creating the line of mountains which runs along the northern edge of the Mediterranean, through Turkey and Iran, and forms the northern margin of the Persian Gulf. This view, created by Robert Stacey of WorldSat International, looks north-westwards along this great suture between Africa and Eurasia, separating highlands from lowlands, and dividing the deserts by mountain-ranges which catch the moisture-bearing winds, and whose rivers create unexpected oases in the dust. It is a region which, through the human communities who grew up there, has had a profound effect on every other part of the world.

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