ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Timeline of Middle Eastern history

Okay, so a long long time ago, thousands of years ago, there were some people who lived in the Middle East. They had kingdoms and empires and they all had different names like the Babylonians, the Persians, and the Egyptians. These people were very powerful and they built really big buildings and monuments like the pyramids.

Then, many years later, a man named Muhammad was born in a city called Mecca. He became very important because he started a religion called Islam. His teachings spread all over the Middle East and people started following Islam.

After that, there were some really powerful empires like the Ottomans, who controlled a lot of the Middle East for a long time. They were really into art and architecture and built a lot of beautiful mosques and palaces.

In the 1900s, there were some really big wars all over the world, like World War I and II. During these wars, countries like Britain and France had control over the Middle East and started to divide it up into smaller parts. This led to a lot of conflicts between different groups of people.

Today, the Middle East is still really important because there are many countries with different cultures, languages and religions. Some of these countries have a lot of oil, which is really valuable. People are still trying to solve problems and get along with each other in the Middle East.