In this video we're going to use the RGIS geography visualizer to visualise the location of the Middle East. Now, to do this, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to change the base map. We could use this imagery hybrid base map, but it's a little bit easier if we use a chartered territory map just because it's a touch easy to see the countries. I'm then going to drag the map so the middle is focused around Saudi Arabia and Iran, and around this area here. Now there are some complications with visualising the location of the Middle East. The first is that the Middle East is not, like, is not a continent like Asia or Europe or North America, it's a term used for a region of the world. Now that term, the Middle East was actually given by Europeans a couple of hundred years ago to define a region of the world which was east of Europe, but not as far east as countries like China. And therefore some people say it's a term that shouldn't be used because it's what people would define as Eurocentric. It's been given by Europeans and it's not necessarily a name given by people who are within this region themselves. So that's one complication. The second complication is it's not actually an agreed upon area. Not everybody puts the same countries within that term the Middle East. So there are some countries which are always put into that bracket and there are others which are often sometimes put in but not always. So what we're going to do here is I'm going to use the sketch tool in the bottom toolbar to just draw a line around areas that are commonly referred to as being part of the Middle East. So I'm just going to, I've chosen this line at the top and I've changed the size to 4 so it's a little bit easier to see. I'm going to zoom in a little bit so we can see the names of the countries and then I've lost that line, there we go, I've clicked the line again and I'll change the size to 4. And I'm now just going to draw a rough line around these countries. So Oman and Yemen are usually regarded as part of the Middle East. I'm then going to include Egypt. Some people would include Sudan, south of Egypt, and they would include Libya as part of the definition of the Middle East. I'm not, but I could have done, Cypress is a little bit complicated 'cause it's spread between Greece and Turkey, but I'm going to include Turkey as part of the Middle East and is usually regarded within this region. And then going to, I might have to zoom in a little bit here. Usually these countries here, like Armenia and Azerbaijan and Georgia are not considered part of the Middle East, but some people do put them into that bracket. And I'm going to very quickly include Iran. And Iran is, tends to be seen as on the eastern edge of the Middle East. I'll just do this nice and quick. However, some people would include countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan as being part of the Middle East. But roughly speaking, this line that I've drawn is a reasonable definition of where people mean when they're talking about a region of the Middle East. It's kind of centred around Iraq and Saudi Arabia, but it includes countries in three continents, essentially. It's mainly in Asia, but Egypt is in North Africa and Turkey is actually split between Europe and Asia. So an important thing for us to do as geographers, when we describe a location of places is to use directional language like northeast, south and west, but also geographical reference points. So if we think about the Middle East, we can see, for example, if we look careful at this map that it's north of the equator, isn't it? So it's in the Northern Hemisphere. We can see that the Tropic of Cancer runs through the centre of the Middle East. We can see that the Indian Ocean is to the southeast of the Middle East. We can see that Mediterranean is seen as on the West and the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea are to the north of the Middle East. So it is important to look carefully at this map to pick out geographical reference points that are going to help you to describe carefully where the Middle East is.