Looking at the list of the world's ten oldest surviving human constructed buildings, many are in Europe while the oldest building in what (with a generous interpretation of the concept) could be called the Fertile Crescent (FC) is at place 21, and 1650 years younger than the oldest entry on the list. There is even an American entry on the list above (at position 11) the first FC entry
Why is this odd? Let me quote another Wikipedia page: The region [FC] has been called the "cradle of civilization", because it is where settled farming first began to emerge as people started the process of clearance and modification of natural vegetation in order to grow newly domesticated plants as crops. Early human civilizations such as Sumer flourished as a result.
Civilizations, that could construct complex buildings, cities and similar appeared in this area several millenniums before they appeared in Europe and even if it might have been hunter-gather stone age cultures that built several of the European constructions on the list, similar stone age cultures existed in the FC tens of thousands of years before they did in Europe.
Furthermore, generally the FC is arid and dry compared to France and other parts of Europe where you can find old buildings (admittedly, most of these buildings are constructed using rocks which isn't very affected by weather but, ceteris paribus, the FC should be more favourable for preserving buildings).
Finally, according to Wikipedia the population density of the Middle East (as an approximation of the FC) is around 50 people/km2 while France and Western/Southern Europe is around 100/km2 so "wear-and-tear" due to high population doesn't speak to the FC's "advantage" either.
I haven't looked into war or migration but intuitively I don't think the FC are significantly worse of than Europe in these respects.
Considering all this, the oldest buildings "should" be found in the FC rather than in Europe. Why isn't this so?
(Compare to how it looks "internally" in Europe: the oldest buildings are approximately in the locations that have been populated for the longest time while e.g., the oldest buildings in Northern Europe, that became populated far later than France, are much younger, which makes a lot of sense!).