The history of the Mediterranean region is the history of the interaction of the cultures and people of the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea —the central superhighway of transport, trade and cultural exchange between diverse peoples. Its history is important to understanding the origin and development of the Israel and Judah, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Canaanites, Greek, Roman, Carthaginian, Byzantine, Ottoman, Christian, and Islamic cultures.

Its origins can be thought to have been with the Zanclean flood of 5.33 million years ago, described in more detail under Mediterranean basin. Two of the first commonly noted human civilizations began near the eastern Mediterranean sea. Common rhetoric suggests that Civilization first developed in Mesopotamia beginning with Sumer in the 4th millennium BC. Soon after, the Nile River valley of ancient Egypt was unified under the Pharaohs in the 4th millennium BC, and civilization quickly spread through the Fertile Crescent to the east coast of the sea and throughout the Levant, which happens to make the Mediterranean countries of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Israel part of the cradle of civilization. These areas shared similar climates and geographies, but it was more difficult to spread technologies and crops, such as flax, lentil, peas, barley, and cotton to other portions of the Mediterranean basin.

In biogeography, the Mediterranean Basin (also known as the Mediterranean region) refers to the lands around the Mediterranean Sea that have a Mediterranean climate, with mild, rainy winters and hot, dry summers, which supports characteristic Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub vegetation. As a rule of thumb, the Mediterranean Basin is the Old World region where olive trees grow. However olive trees grow in other corners of the world which have a Mediterranean climate, and there are many areas around the Mediterranean Sea which do not have Mediterranean climate and where olive trees cannot grow.

The Mediterranean basin covers portions of three continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Europe lies to the north, and three large Southern European peninsulas, the Iberian Peninsula, Italian Peninsula, and the Balkan Peninsula, extend into the Mediterranean-climate zone. A system of folded mountains, including the Pyrenees dividing Spain from France, the Alps dividing Italy from Central Europe, the Dinaric Alps along the eastern Adriatic, and the Balkan and Rhodope mountains of the Balkan Peninsula divide the Mediterranean from the temperate climate regions of Western and Central Europe.