"The earliest known civilization, the Sumerian, was in the Fertile Crescent, in what is now Iraq."
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That is correct. That is agreed to be the oldest;
Historically, the ancient city states of Mesopotamia in the fertile crescent are most cited by Western and Middle Eastern scholars as the cradle of civilization. The convergence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers produced rich fertile soil and a supply of water for irrigation. The civilizations that emerged around these rivers are among the earliest known non-nomadic agrarian societies. Because Ubaid, Sumer, Akkad,Assyria and Babylon civilizations all emerged around the Tigris-Euphrates, the theory that Mesopotamia is the cradle of civilization is widely accepted.
The Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer emerges in the Ubaid period (6500-3800 BC) and Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BC), culminating in the mid-3rd millennium before giving rise to the Akkadian Empire in the 24th century BC. This is often identified as the first empire in history.
But civilizations in Egypt are recognized to be the second oldest in that part of the world;
The rise of dynastic Egypt in the Nile Valley occurred with the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt in approximately 3200 BC, and ended at around 343 BC, at the start of the Achaemenid dynasty's control of Egypt. It is one of the oldest civilizations in the world. Evidence also indicates human habitation in the southwestern corner of Egypt, near the Sudan border, before 8000 BC. From around 7000 BC to 3000 BC the climate of the Sahara was much moister, offering good grazing land even in areas that are now very arid. Natural climate change after 3000 BC led to progressive arification of the region. It has been suggested that as a result of these changes, around 2500 BC early tribes from the Sahara were forced to concentrate along theNile river where they developed a settled agricultural economy and more centralizedsociety. However it should be borne in mind that indigenous tribes would always have been present in the fertile Nile Valley and may have developed complex societies by themselves. Domesticated animals had already been imported fromAsia between 7500 BC and 4000 BC (see Sahara: History, Cattle period), and there is evidence of pastoralism and cultivation of cereals in the East Sahara in the 7th millennium BC.
It says in this preceding article that Egypt used to be more moist. But the climate changed around 3,000 BC. Why would they stay there if the climate became desert like ?
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