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Assassinations in History
Who
got slain, almost slain, when, how,
why, and by whom?
Go to the
Assassination Archive
Online History Dictionary A - Z
Voyages in History
When did what
vessel arrive with whom onboard and where
did it sink if it didn't?
Go to the
Passage-Chart
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The Sumerians
The Sumerians hailed from Sumer, also
called Sumeria.
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And here is Sumer on a map:
Map Location of
Ancient Sumer
Click to enlarge
Before the Sumerians, the
Ubaidians lived in the area.
The Ubaidians shuffled direction
northwest (approx. where you can see the word Mesopotamia on
the map) and new folks settled in the neighborhood. These
people were the Sumerians.
The year?
Around 3300 BC.
When people use the word
Mesopotamia,
they usually refer to the entire area between Euphrates and Tigris,
all the way down to the Persian Gulf. Hence, the terms Mesopotamia
and Sumer are used interchangeably. But if you want to be exact,
Sumer is the southern part of Mesopotamia.
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And speaking of different terms
referring to the same thing, Old Babylonia often equals ancient
Mesopotamia, because Sumer later became Babylonia.
The main cities of the Sumerians were:
Kish, Erech (also called
Uruk,)
Ur, Sippar, Akshak, Larak,
Nippur, Adab, Umma, Lagash, Bad-tibira, and Larsa.
Achievements of the
Sumerians
The big achievement of the Sumerians,
and their legacy, was the wheel, their writings on clay tablets in
cuneiform, and the general concept of law codes and city-states.
According to the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of
Oxford,
Sumerian is
the first language for which we have written
evidence and its literature the earliest
known.
When Was the Wheel
Invented?
Good question. Nobody took a picture.
But we know that around 3000 BC, the Sumerians darted across
their soil in chariots.
What Else?
Probably the most famous Sumerian was
Gilgamesh.
And speaking of Sumerian literature:
Provided by the University of Oxford, here are nearly 400 literary
works composed in the Sumerian language in ancient Mesopotamia
during the late third and early second millennia BC.
Check it out.
What Happened to the
Sumerians?
After the Sumerians, the Elamites, the
Akkadians, the Gutians, and finally the
Amorites took over.
The year 1900 BC roughly marks the
end of the Sumerian civilization.
By 1600 BC, the Babylonian
Empire dominated.
For periods and eras of the Sumerian civilization, and their kings,
check
Governments
of Sumer.
More History
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