Sumerians

Hello! We are the Sumerians, and we built one of the world's very first civilizations more than 5,000 years ago. Our home was in a land called Sumer, a part of a larger region known as Mesopotamia. The name Mesopotamia means "land between the rivers," and that’s exactly where we lived—in the fertile area between the great Tigris and Euphrates rivers. These rivers gave our land rich soil, but they could also be unpredictable, sometimes flooding and sometimes running too low. To solve this problem, we learned to work with the water. We dug long channels called canals to guide the river water to our fields. This system of irrigation allowed us to control when and how much our crops were watered, which meant we could grow more than enough food for everyone. With so much food, not everyone had to be a farmer. People could learn other skills, and our small villages grew into the world's first large, bustling cities, like our famous cities of Uruk and Ur.

As our cities grew, life became more complicated. We needed a way to keep track of all the grain we harvested, the goods we traded, and the rules we lived by. To solve this, we invented one of the first systems of writing, which we call cuneiform. At first, our writing was made of simple pictures that stood for objects or ideas. Over time, these pictures changed into a system of wedge-shaped marks. We made these marks by pressing the tip of a cut reed into tablets of soft, wet clay. When the clay dried in the sun, it became a hard, permanent record. We made thousands and thousands of these clay tablets. We used them for everything from keeping track of goods to creating some of the world’s first written laws. We also used cuneiform to write down our stories and beliefs, including our famous myth, the Epic of Gilgamesh, which tells of a legendary hero's great adventures.

Life in our cities revolved around giant, incredible structures that reached toward the sky. At the heart of each city, we built a huge temple called a ziggurat. A ziggurat was a massive pyramid, but not with smooth sides. It was built with large steps or terraces, getting smaller and smaller as it rose. At the very top, we placed a special shrine. We believed that this shrine was the home of our city's most important god or goddess, a sacred place where they could live among us. The ziggurat wasn't just a place for religious ceremonies; it was the center of our entire society. It served as the main office for the government, a storage place for grain, and the hub of city life. Everything important that happened in the city was connected to the ziggurat, our grand home for the gods.

We were always thinking of new ways to solve problems, and our ideas led to many inventions that changed the world forever. For example, we were among the very first people to use the wheel. At first, we used it to help us make pottery more quickly and evenly. But soon, we realized it could do so much more. We attached wheels to carts, which made it possible to move heavy loads of grain or building materials from one place to another. This invention made trade and construction much easier. We also developed a clever system for math and measuring. Our system was based on the number 60. This idea might sound familiar, because it is still used all around the world today. The reason you measure time with 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour is because of the mathematical system we created so long ago.

Our civilization was made up of many independent cities, and each one wanted to be the most powerful. Because of this, our cities often fought one another for control of precious resources like land and water. Over time, our great civilization was conquered by other peoples who moved into Mesopotamia. But even though our cities fell, our ideas did not disappear. The things we invented and discovered were too important to be forgotten. Our system of writing, our use of the wheel, and our discoveries in math and astronomy were learned and used by the civilizations that came after us. They passed these ideas on, and in this way, our legacy continues to influence the world you live in today.