Anatolia Considered The Cradle Of Civilization?

How can it be so that Anatolia is considered the cradle of civilization, instead of Mesopotamia? I mean the first cities, the first settled civilizations etc.
 
It is in Turkeys Anatolia Region, not in actual Anatolia.
You'd need fewer spectacular archaeological finds in Lower Mesopotamia-the Royal Graves of Ur need to be excavated later, and probably cuneiform needs to be deciphered later(it being deciphered at some point is probably inevitable given just how absurdly huge the written corpus is, but it'd take rather longer without Behistun). This could at least get the Hittites, Urartians, and Luwians more prominence and more and earlier excavations would flesh out them and Old Assyrian anatolia more, although it's hard to say if we could have Hittite cuneiform deciphered before Akkadian cuneiform.
 
The cradle of civilization is often the fertile crescent and although Anatolia is quite a historically old region of development for being near to this centre I haven't heard it being called the "Cradle of Civilization" before.
 
You'd need fewer spectacular archaeological finds in Lower Mesopotamia-the Royal Graves of Ur need to be excavated later, and probably cuneiform needs to be deciphered later(it being deciphered at some point is probably inevitable given just how absurdly huge the written corpus is, but it'd take rather longer without Behistun). This could at least get the Hittites, Urartians, and Luwians more prominence and more and earlier excavations would flesh out them and Old Assyrian anatolia more, although it's hard to say if we could have Hittite cuneiform deciphered before Akkadian cuneiform.

I think I worded it wrongly, the question should be "Make Anatolia the Cradle of Civilization". Although it should be considered it as well.

The cradle of civilization is often the fertile crescent and although Anatolia is quite a historically old region of development for being near to this centre I haven't heard it being called the "Cradle of Civilization" before.

I know, but how you can it happen?
 
You basically need to have the more recent findings* in Turkey and Syria be discovered before the wave of stuff in Iraq.


*The oldest signs of civilization and the beginnings of town in the Western world have been found in a region encompassing Northern Syria and Southern-Central Turkey, and are thought to have gone on to influence Mesopotamian civilization.
 
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Well, as Iori said, the area roughly between Syria and Turkey was probably the first place in the world where the kind of agriculture the modern one comes from was consistently developed. At least, this is what is understood today. It sould be remembered that our picture of such a remote past depends largely on what we find where.
However, Mesopotamia has just a better environment for the development of urban and state life in the proper sense, and it is most likely the place where writing was invented (possibly together with Egypt, which offers comparable conditions in this regard).
Simply, alluvial plain offer so higher agricultural yields if compared with the (probably earlier) pluvial agriculture of the Levant and Anatolia. At least, this is the case with the domesticated grains we know.
 
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