Sumer
From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sumer was an ancient civilization located in the southern part of Mesopotamia (modern day southeastern Iraq) that came into being around 3500 BC. The Sumerian civilization grew on the fertile banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that flow into the Persian Gulf. Their culture is famous for its written cuneiform script - where letters were formed by pressing a triangle shaped reed into wet-clay tiles. They are also credited with dividing a day into 24 hours, and each hour into 60 minutes.
Sumerian communities were organized into city states, each ruled by a priest or king. One of the most famous Sumerian cities was Ur.
The Sumerians lost their identity with their language around 2000 BC, because a large group of different people, the Amorites, moved into their region.
