Somewhere in the sun-baked flatlands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, something extraordinary happened. Around 4500 BCE, a people called the Sumerians began transforming scattered agricultural ...

The Sumerians are often credited with creating one of the world’s earliest civilizations, developing cities, writing, and complex social systems in southern Mesopotamia. Yet despite their importance, ...

Up until the last lecture, we have studied the history of Mesopotamian civilization, from the Sumerians to the Assyrians and ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. New research shows the origins of Sumerian civilization were shaped by tides, rivers, and shifting Mesopotamian landscapes.

The ancient Sumerians developed this writing system more than 5,000 years ago. Tens of thousands of cuneiform tablets still await translation. It’s not a language. It’s not an alphabet, either, ...

Humor has evolved over millennia, with ancient Sumerian jokes offering a glimpse into the past. Could jokes be part of our evolutionary process? Some jokes are like a fine wine and age well with time; ...

Miguel Civil, a scholar and researcher at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, was a leading expert on the Sumerian language, the earliest known written language. “No one has known Sumerian ...