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Sumer was one of the ancient civilizations and historical regions in southern Mesopotamia, modern-day southern Iraq during the Chalcolithic and the Early Bronze ages.
The Samarra bowl, at the Pergamonmuseum, Berlin. The swastika in the center of the design is a reconstruction.
Although the earliest specimens of writing in the region do not go back much further than c.2500 BC, modern historians have suggested that Sumer was first permanently settled between c.5500 and 4000 BC by a non-Semitic people who spoke the Sumerian language (pointing to the names of cities, rivers, basic occupations, etc., as evidence).
These conjectured, prehistoric people are now called 'proto-Euphrateans' or 'Ubaidians' and are theorised to have evolved from the Samarra culture of northern Mesopotamia (Assyria)... The Ubaidians, though never mentioned by the Sumerians themselves are assumed, by modern day scholars to have been the first civilizing force in Sumer, draining the marshes for agriculture, developing trade, and establishing industries, including weaving, leatherwork, metalwork, masonry, and pottery.
However, some scholars contest the idea of a 'proto-Euphratean-language' or one substrate language... It has been suggested by them and others, that the Sumerian language was originally that of the hunter and fisher peoples, who lived in the marshland and the Eastern Arabia littoral region, and were part of the Arabian bifacial culture.
Reliable historical records begin much later... There are none in Sumer of any kind that have been dated before Enmebaragesi (c. 26th century BC).
Professor Juris Zarins believes the Sumerians were settled along the coast of Eastern Arabia, today's Persian Gulf region, before it flooded at the end of the Ice Age... Sumerian literature speaks of their homeland being Dilmun.
Sumerian civilization took form in the Uruk period... 4th millennium BC, continuing into the Jemdat Nasr and Early Dynastic periods.
During the 3rd millennium BC, a close cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians, who spoke a language no relatives of which are known today and the Semitic Akkadian speakers, which included widespread bilingualism.
The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian and vice versa, is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a massive scale, to syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence... This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the 3rd millennium BC as a Sprachbund
Sumer was conquered by the Semitic-speaking kings of the Akkadian Empire around 2270 BC (short chronology), but Sumerian continued as a sacred language.
Native Sumerian rule re-emerged for about a century in the Third Dynasty of Ur (Sumerian Renaissance) approximately 2100-2000 BC, but the Akkadian language also remained in use.
The Sumerian city of Eridu, on the coast of the Persian Gulf, was the world's first city, where three separate cultures may have fused... that of peasant Ubaidian farmers, living in mud-brick huts and practising irrigation... that of mobile nomadic Semitic pastoralists living in black tents and following herds of sheep and goats... and that of fisher folk, living in reed huts in the marshlands, who may have been the ancestors of the Sumerians.
The irrigated farming together with annual replenishment of soil fertility and the surplus of storable food in temple granaries created by this economy allowed the population of this region to rise to levels never before seen, unlike those found in earlier cultures of shifting cultivators.
This much greater population density in turn, created and required an extensive labour force and division of labour with many specialised arts and crafts... At the same time, historic overuse of the irrigated soils led to progressive salinization, and a Malthusian crisis which led to depopulation of the Sumerian region over time, leading to its progressive eclipse by the Akkadians of middle Mesopotamia.
Sumer was also the site of early development of writing, progressing from a stage of proto-writing in the mid 4th millennium BC to writing proper in the 3rd millennium BC. <source>
LEGACY:
Evidence of wheeled vehicles appeared in the mid 4th millennium BC, near-simultaneously in Mesopotamia, the Northern Caucasus (Maykop culture) and Central Europe.
The wheel initially took the form of the potter's wheel... The new concept quickly led to wheeled vehicles and mill wheels.
The Sumerians' cuneiform writing system is the oldest (or second oldest after the Egyptian hieroglyphs) which has been deciphered (the status of even older inscriptions such as the Jiahu symbols and Tartaria tablets is controversial).
The Sumerians were among the first astronomers, mapping the stars into sets of constellations, many of which survived in the zodiac and were also recognized by the ancient Greeks... They were also aware of the five planets that are easily visible to the naked eye.
They invented and developed arithmetic by using several different number systems including a mixed radix system with an alternating base 10 and base 6... This sexagesimal system became the standard number system in Sumer and Babylonia.
They may have invented military formations and introduced the basic divisions between infantry, cavalry, and archers.
They developed the first known codified legal and administrative systems, complete with courts, jails, and government records.
The first true city-states arose in Sumer, roughly contemporaneously with similar entities in what are now Syria and Lebanon.
Several centuries after the invention of cuneiform, the use of writing expanded beyond debt/payment certificates and inventory lists to be applied for the first time, about 2600 BC, to messages and mail delivery, history, legend, mathematics, astronomical records, and other pursuits.
Conjointly with the spread of writing, the first formal schools were established, usually under the auspices of a city-state's primary temple.
Finally, the Sumerians ushered in domestication with intensive agriculture and irrigation... Emmer wheat, barley, sheep (starting as mouflon), and cattle (starting as aurochs) were foremost among the species cultivated and raised for the first time on a grand scale. <source>
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