The crale of civilization is any of the possible locations for the emergence of civilization. These include the fertile crescent in the Middle East which contained both Mesopotamia in modern day Iraq and the Nile delta in Egypt; large river valleys, most notably the Indus River in the Indian subcontinent, and the Yellow River in China; and a number of other locations, such as Çatalhöyük on the Carsamba river in Anatolia (modern Turkey). Of these locations, the fertile crescent is the area most often cited by historians as the cradle of civilization because the earliest civilizations emerged there.