The Sumerians, a mysterious civilisation whose roots reach deep into the past, laid the foundations for many aspects of the modern world. Their origins and their influence on human development are a fascinating subject that reveals a complex network of innovation, culture and social structures. This ancient civilisation lived in what is now southern Iraq and left a legacy that still influences and inspires us today. In this article, we look at where the Sumerians came from and at the invaluable contributions they made to human history.
Where the Sumerians came from
Sumerian civilisation was a pioneer, especially in writing, urbanisation, religion and law. The Sumerians lived in a land that the ancient Greeks called Mesopotamia, squeezed between two rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris. Today we know it as Iraq. When they arrived, Mesopotamia was not an empty land. The so-called Ubaid culture was flourishing there. It belonged to a people unknown to us today, who had arrived about a thousand years before the Sumerians. The Sumerians learned a great deal from these native people and then turned that knowledge into their own inventions.
Contrary to the very common misconception that Sumer was a single unified state, it was rather a region of city-states, each with its own independent king. One of them was the famous Gilgamesh.
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Sumerian inventions
It took them roughly half a millennium to surpass their teachers, and the first true cities emerged. Eridu and Uruk are among the oldest cities in the world. The Sumerians did not found them, as others had done so before them. However, they were the pioneers of urban planning, and some of their plans have even survived. They also equipped their cities with innovations such as sewers and paved streets.
They supported trade and devised a system of weights and measures based on official standards, which were kept in temples. The Sumerians were also the first to introduce wheeled vehicles, which made trade and communication easier.
They greatly improved agriculture. The Sumerians were masters of irrigation. They built systems of canals and dams that allowed fields to be watered efficiently, which increased harvests and made it possible to sustain densely populated city-states. They used the plough and even invented a seed plough with a special funnel filled with grain.
They arranged the stars into constellations, some of which we still know in unchanged form today. In mathematics, they created the first number system based on the sexagesimal (base 60) system and divided the day into 24 hours and the hour into sixty minutes.
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The Sumerians and literature
The Sumerians developed cuneiform script, one of the first writing systems in the world. They used clay tablets and small clay plates to record information, business transactions, religious texts and other records.
Because of their very intensive bureaucracy, the Sumerians needed a way to verify who had produced a document or confirmed an important fact. So they began to use seals, and later cylinder seals. Even people who could not read or write could use them. They also invented a way to protect the privacy of letters. A written tablet was dried, wrapped in a thin layer of clay and marked with a cylinder seal. Nobody could read the tablet without breaking the casing.
The civilisation excelled in culture, including literature, music and many other areas (pottery, debating contests, philosophy). We all surely remember the Epic of Gilgamesh from school, the oldest epic work in world literature. It tells the story of King Gilgamesh, who tried to achieve immortality.
The Sumerians are known for the world’s first law codes and court trials. The oldest known law code is the Code of Ur-Nammu, created at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. These codes contained rules for civil and criminal matters and set standards of behaviour and penalties for breaking them. The vast majority of offences were punished only with a fine, and just a few of the most serious crimes meant death.
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Were the Sumerians really pioneers?
The Sumerian empire supposedly gave the world its first known planned cities. Its people took art and craft production to a new level. Writing, and with it a new era of history, is also said to have been born here.
However, modern discoveries raise more than one question, and some even suggest that this theory may not be true: Sumer was probably preceded by a perhaps even more advanced civilisation, known as Arratu.
In 2001, in Iran’s Kerman province, a site known today as Jiroft was discovered by a lucky chance. A flood uncovered thousands of ancient graves.
Objects from Jiroft matched those we know from ancient Sumer, almost 2,000 km away. They were made of the same material, and the craftsmanship and the themes depicted were also similar.
According to archaeologist Yousef Madjizadeh, these could be the remains of the Arratu empire, which preceded Sumerian civilisation. The ziggurat there resembles those we know from Mesopotamia, but it is considerably larger. Jiroft has also yielded a number of inscribed tablets. The script has not yet been deciphered and differs fundamentally from the cuneiform signs used in Sumer. Some archaeologists do not rule out that it could be older.
No organic remains have been found at the site that would allow a more precise dating using the radiocarbon method. There is much debate and controversy about who the people of Jiroft were and how they related to other ancient civilisations, such as the Sumerians. Some historians argue that Jiroft may have been an independent civilisation, while others believe it may have been part of a larger cultural complex.
The excavations at Jiroft, often interrupted by political upheaval in the country, are still in their early stages, and it may take decades before the whole site is fully uncovered. What is more, the site covers a much larger area than expected, roughly the size of Austria.
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