Mesopotamia
Modern day Iraq. The birthplace of civilization. This is where writing and history began. That's why it's significant. The Tigris and Euphrates fertilize the area, making it reasonably fruitful, especially where the Tigris and Euphrates come a lot closer together . . . Which is where the great city of Babylon was. The Tower of Babel was (you guessed it) in Babylon. This is where the very first civilizations emerged. And yes, it is normally the front-runner among scholars who try to figure out where the Garden of Eden would have existed, both due to Genesis referring to streams coming together and, well, this is where the first civilized humans were found. If Neanderthals were suddenly endowed with a soul, thereby turning them from animals into rational creatures, but without jeeps to drive them far, it makes sense we'd find them in the same region a few thousand years later, building cities.
