Herding Family, Turkey

Photograph by Vincent J. Musi, National Geographic

This herding family has been tending livestock in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent for a century. The countryside where they herd, on the slopes of Karaca Da , is just 60 miles from the archaeological site of G bekli Tepe, where geneticists believe one variety of modern wheat was first domesticated. Sheep and goat were also domesticated in this region.