The Middle East has been a region of conflict for over 5,000 years, with many empires rising and falling through warfare and conquest. Religious conflicts were historically rare in the region, as peoples were more concerned with survival and developing civilization along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. In more recent centuries, Western involvement through the Crusades and colonialism introduced new violence and instability. While the Ottoman Empire brought some unity, the region has faced continuous changes in power and borders over millennia of its history.

1. THE MIDDLE EAST FOR DUMMIES: 5,000 YEARS IN LESS THAN 500 WORDS
To understand current events in the Middle East you need to know its history. In a
140-character world, that’s challenging but here goes:
Usually dubbed “the cradle of civilization,” the Middle East is also “the cradle of
warfare.”
(“Cradle of Warfare,” incidentally, would make a great name for an Xbox game.)
Anyway, for most of the past 5,000 years, the region once known as Mesopotamia
has been a combat zone. The Babylonians, the Hittites, the Phoenicians, the
Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Sumerians, the Ottomans and about a dozen other
empires all went out of their way to make a Mess-o-Potamia.
Each empire slaughtered its way to power. Surprisingly, none of them knew a thing
about petroleum reserves.
Today’s Twittersphere might not realize it, but religious conflicts used to be
relatively rare in the region.
Long before Jesus Christ or the prophet Muhammad, Mesopotamia was up to its ass
in alligators – or possibly crocodiles - trying to drain the swamps of the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers. People simply didn’t have the time to go all “Westboro Baptist
Church” on their neighbors.
(This was so long ago that the definition of a weapon of mass destruction was, “two
guys with sticks.” It would be thousands of years later before Dick Cheney would
re-define that term as “three or more guys with sticks.”)
Anyway, the ancient people of Israel weren’t exactly regional pacifists here, either.
According to the Book of Joshua, they schlepped out of Egypt and into the land of
Canaan where, apparently, the Canaanites hadn’t gotten the tweets about giving up
their real estate holdings to a bunch of marching trumpet players.
All we really do know is that when the walls of Jericho came tumbling down, the
Israelites were the first people to ever use the expression “Shofar, so good.”
Things then took a turn for the worse when the western world got involved.
In 1098, knights of the first crusade hacked and bludgeoned to death the entire
population of Jerusalem. This proved to be so popular back home in Europe that six
more crusades followed. Then in the 15th
century, Europeans discovered an entirely
new population to slaughter. These new people had a seemingly limitless supply of

2. Aztec and Inca gold bars stashed in pyramid-shaped ATM machines AND they had
tacos!
The Ottoman Empire stepped into the Middle East void, taking Constantinople and
Baghdad and ruling for almost 600 years before Super Panavision cinematography
led to “Lawrence of Arabia” and temporarily moved the region’s battlefields into
air-conditioned theatres everywhere.
In the meantime, new empires, (British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell and Standard
Oil), took over and ran things until someone inadvertently posted a photo of three
Iraqi lacrosse players on Dick Cheney’s Facebook wall which is what led to the
latest Middle Eastern war.
That’s it. 5,000 years of history in just 494 words.
Now, lets Mecca deal! I’ll stop Tehran through history if someone else will tackle
the next article: Afghanistan For Dummies!
Tom Lloyd
2811 Ruleme Street
Apt. 806
Eustis, FL 32726
Chipshot410@yahoo.com
www.linkedin.com/pub/tom-lloyd/12/3b/29b/
352-272-0949
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