Southwest Asia is also known as the middle east and it covered modern day Turkey, Iraq Iran,Saudi Arabia, Syria. In each of the regions it covers different climates, for example in Iraq about 70% was a desert, 30% was grassy and good for cultivation. Turkey was a great region for agriculture and large amount of the land was covered in forest. There were regions in Turkey where they grew vineyards and and large area where there was mainly agriculture and fruits and vegetables were grown. This time period was when the era was spreading much geographically. New civilizations appeared everywhere and they traded among each other. The environment definitely affected the trade and what spread. Because there were so many different climates some were easier to travel through than others. People went on long vast walks through a variety of different climates to accomplish tasks such as trading and communicating. There were three main climates of southwest Asia they were arid, semi-arid and temperate.
Throughout the different climates there were many obstacles like mountains, rivers, lakes, and ponds. People had to find other ways to go different places, which affected the trade. Because the distances were so long they used animals to help them cover the area faster. For desserts people used camels both for riding and as pack animals, and they used horses for the other climates. The camels have adapted to the heat and low water availability of the desert. They have a way of keeping water in their body stored as fat, can travel far distances without getting very tired, can drink up to 50 gallons of water at a time, and their bodies have adapted to the point that sandstorms barely affected them. The camels were the most popular animal to choose to go through the desert for trade, and in fact there were some caravans that had up to twelve thousand camels. When different peoples traded they shared many things that were foreign to other regions, such as different fruits and vegetables. These produce then spread from Southwest Asia to the regions of Europe, Africa, and even South and North America. Ideas for technologies and diseases spread. Technologies such as dams traveled to Southwest Asia and that helped the people create lakes, ponds, or rivers to help irrigate their agriculture. This expanded their stockpiles of food to help the native populations grow and become a stronger community, as well as have more products to trade. Although it was great that they could share what they had with other communities there were some downfalls to it as well. Foreign bugs, diseases, and animals traveled as well. The bugs infected native plants of other regions and killed them off, the diseases came from the bugs, fruits, or people and natives from new lands who were not immune to the diseases would die as well as animals. Because technologies weren't as advanced as they are now, there were downfalls too. The technology of indoor plumbing had not been developed yet, so all of their bodily waste contaminated their water sources. Since this was a facto,r they did not drink water as often and instead resorted to beer and wine. Since people drank so much beer and wine there were many vineyards to supply this demand. The vineyards tookmany of the regions that could handle growing vegetation, and the regions that couldn't handle the crop load gained these products through trade.