Sumer was the first great civilization of mankind. Even in today’s society, traces of Sumerian inventions in agriculture, language, mathematics, religion and astronomy can still be found.

Sumer was the first great civilization of mankind. Even in today’s society, traces of Sumerian inventions in agriculture, language, mathematics, religion and astronomy can still be found.

A Sumerian king of Ur recorded around 2600 BC (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The ancient Sumerians created one of humanity’s first great civilizations. Their homeland in Mesopotamia, called Sumeria, emerged approximately 6,000 years ago along the alluvial plains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq and Syria.

The Sumerians learned to farm on a large scale in the so-called Fertile Crescent, a thin, crescent-shaped strip of Mesopotamia often linked to the dawn of agriculture, writing, mathematics and astronomy.

And while the arid, ancient landscapes of the Middle East may not seem like the most likely place for an agricultural breakthrough, Sumer actually had a huge advantage. By settling between two major rivers, the Sumerians benefited from rich floodplain soil and abundant water to irrigate crops. Their success was accelerated by Sumerian technological innovations like canals and plows. Over time, Sumer became so good at growing food that they began to have enough resources to focus on building cities and temples.

Archaeologists walk through the Sumerian city of Kish during excavations in 1932. (Credit: Matson Collection-Library of Congress Catalog/Wikimedia Commons)

Appearance of Sumerian cities

Around 10,000 years ago, villages began to appear throughout Mesopotamia. The people living in the region raised animals and grew grain crops, while continuing to hunt and gather. Over time, those villages expanded and their people became increasingly dependent on agriculture.

Archaeologists are still unsure exactly what life was like in these early cultures. However, similarities in pottery styles and seals placed on a variety of containers suggest that some level of administrative control emerged between 6,000 and 7,000 years ago.

Meanwhile, people began to build a series of temples using mud bricks at a site called Eridu. The city appears to have been founded around 5400 BC and was occupied for thousands of years until it was finally abandoned for good around 600 BC.

Eridu’s status was legendary even in ancient times. The Babylonians actually believed that Eridu was the oldest city on Earth, created by the gods themselves. That kind of reverence attracted modern researchers as well. Even before archaeologists discovered Eridu, they had read about its existence in ancient texts.

“After kinship descended from heaven, Eridu became (the seat) of royalty,” reads a Sumerian tablet.

The area around Eridu was excavated several times between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries, finding the remains of a once sprawling metropolis that saw successive buildings constructed over the remains of temples and other structures that had existed before.

Those excavations confirmed that Eridu was a real, truly ancient metropolis. At around 7,400 years old, Eridu is among humanity’s oldest cities, but it’s not even close to the oldest. The current front-runner for Earth’s first city is Çatalhöyük, which lies just north of the commonly accepted edge of the Fertile Crescent in modern-day Turkey. Çatalhöyük was founded 9,600 years ago and also survived for millennia, disappearing just centuries before Eridu was founded.

However, Eridu was only the beginning for Sumer. The civilization quickly grew to include dozens of cities, such as Ur, Kish, and Uruk. As Sumerian cities grew in size, Sumer emerged as one of the world’s first great agricultural societies. Over time, Eridu’s influence would fade, and Uruk would take on an outsized role. At its peak, some 4,800 years ago, Uruk was the largest city in the world. Some estimates suggest the city was home to as many as 80,000 people at a time when the total human population was around 15 million.

A map of the cities of ancient Sumer, which covered much of present-day Iraq. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Sumerian technological innovations

Innovation was one of the key factors in the Sumerians’ efforts to turn the desert into an oasis. And one of their most beneficial innovations was also among the simplest: the plow.

The first plow appeared around 3500 BC. And by 1500 BC, the Sumerians had also invented a seeding plow, which allowed farmers to use beasts of burden to till and plant at the same time. The devices even came with instructions, courtesy of the Sumerian Farmer’s Almanac, which told farmers how to increase their crop yields through tillage and irrigation.

All of the efficiencies helped support a growing population, as well as a growing system of rulers and religion. And as their cities grew, so did their efforts in writing, mathematics, and religion. As early as 5,000 years ago, the Sumerians had developed cuneiform writing, one of the earliest forms of writing. Sumerian inscriptions on clay and stone tracked the trade and movement of grain and other goods, recorded Sumerian history, and even included cooking recipes and pornography. Thousands of Sumerian tablets still await translation in museums around the world. The Sumerians also invented or used a wide range of other, seemingly more modern innovations, such as wheeled chariots, the 60-minute hour, and even possibly the first written literary work: The Epic of Gilgamesh.

These proto-cuneiform tablets were discovered in the Sumerian city of Uruk. (Credit: CDLI:Wiki)

A clay tablet discovered in Eridu, as well as others found elsewhere in Sumeria, also tells the story of a flood that mirrors the one found in the Bible’s Old Testament. Biblical historians call it the “Eridu Genesis” story. According to the tablets, it was the gods who first told humans to begin living in the cities of Sumer. But eventually the gods decided to wipe out the human race with a flood. According to the myth, one god in particular, Enki, warned a Sumerian king named Ziusudra that he should build a ship to save his people.

The idea that the flood story was passed down through the generations by the Sumerians makes sense for other reasons, too. In modern times, Sumer has captivated everyone from archaeologists to ancient alien conspiracy theorists. But fascination with Sumerian society goes back much further in human history. Both the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, which came to control parts of the Middle East as Sumer disappeared, continued to use the Sumerian language in their religious rituals for millennia. Excavations of Babylonian homes have uncovered tablets inscribed in the Sumerian language long after the civilization itself disappeared.

And the Babylonians, who created the first star maps, seem to have inherited some of their astronomy knowledge from the Sumerians as well. The Babylonian people had two sets of constellations: one for tracking agricultural dates and another for recognizing the gods. The latter came down to us today thanks to the Greeks and formed the basis of the 12 constellations of the zodiac. And the star names they used seem to date back to the Sumerian people, implying that this ancient civilization had a very sophisticated knowledge of much more than just the Earth beneath its feet.

So while the Sumerians may have disappeared thousands of years ago, their influence and intrigue have continued into the present, shaping aspects of modern society that we all take for granted today.