History of the ancient Levant
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Near East today is an ambiguous term that covers different countries for archeologists and historians, on one hand, and for political scientists, economists, and journalists, on the other. The term originally applied to the Balkan states in Southeast Europe, but now it generally describes the countries of Southwest Asia between the Mediterranean and Iran, especially in historical contexts. The term "near east" is still used in intellectual circles though the terms "mideast" or "middle east" are popular in the prolific U.S. media.
The term as used by Western archaeologists, geographers, and historians refers to the region encompassing Anatolia (the Asian portion of modern Turkey), the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories), Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Transcaucasia (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan). In modern political and journalistic contexts, this region is usually subsumed into the wider Middle East while the terms Near East or Southwest Asia are preferred in archaeological, geographic, historical and population genetic contexts.
