The Fertile Crescent, named so after its lunate silhouette, spans from Khuzestan Province in Iran, across the Zagros Mountains in western Iran (Kurdistan), to the river valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris in Iraq, south-eastern Turkey and northern Syria, and then westwards towards Lebanon, the Mediterranean zone of Israel and Jordan and finally spanning southwards towards the Nile (see Figure Introduction 1). Geologically, most of the Fertile Crescent is covered by rocks that were formed at the bottom of the Tethys Ocean millions of years ago and soils that eroded from these rocks. Additional geological formations include extensive basalt flows characterized by the fertile soils they generate, outcrops of igneous rocks such as granites that are hundreds of millions of years old, and the sandstone deposits formed in the coastal areas of the ocean mostly during the Lower Cretaceous. Valleys of the region are characterized by deep alluvial soils and colluvial deposits from mountains, especially after humans cut down forests, thereby accelerating soil erosion. The coastal plains of the eastern Mediterranean are characterized by low ridges of beach-rocks (kurkar, solidified dunes), sandy loam soils (ḥamra) and dunes originating from quartz particles that eroded from the granite rocks of East Africa, and which were transported to the Mediterranean by the Nile and pushed further to the eastern coast of the Mediterranean by sea currents.