The two-river basin refers to Mesopotamia (Greek, meaning "between the two rivers", now Iraq) between the Tigris River and the Euphrates River. It is bordered by the Armenian Plateau in the north, the Persian Gulf in the south, the Iranian mountains in the west, the Syrian grassland and the Arabian desert in the west. Crescent fertile soil refers to a series of fertile land in the two river basins and nearby areas. The regular flooding of the two river basins makes fertile soil suitable for farming accumulate along the two rivers because of the flooding of the rivers. Including today's Palestine, Jordan, Syria and the two river basins, because it looks like a crescent moon on the map, James Brested, an archaeologist at the University of Chicago in the United States, called this vast land "fertile land for the crescent moon". There are three rivers on the fertile crescent, namely Jordan River, Tigris River and Euphrates River, covering an area of about 400,000-500,000 square kilometers.