New research uncovers how ancient tides shaped the rise of Sumer. A newly released study questions established beliefs about how urban civilization first emerged in ancient Mesopotamia, proposing that ...

The story of how the first cities rose from southern Mesopotamia has long fascinated scientists and historians. Many explanations point to fertile soil, farming, and trade networks as the engines of ...

Millennia ago, in the Fertile Crescent, the land nestled between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is now present-day Iran, the ancient Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer arose. Sumerians ...

Out of the many incredible artifacts that have been recovered from sites in Iraq where flourishing Sumerian cities once stood, few have been more intriguing than the Sumerian King List. An ancient ...

Writing, laws, cities, and science—these and other innovations were devised by the enterprising peoples living in Sumer, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, some 5,000 years ago. High ...

UMM AL-AJARIB, Iraq — Iraqi archeologists are striving to bring to light what they describe as Mesopotamia’s largest “city of graves,” where the Sumerians buried their dead nearly 5,000 years ago. The ...

When historians look back into time to name the first civilized people, they usually pick the Sumerians, who built imposing cities, including Abraham’s Ur of the Chaldees, in southern Mesopotamia ...

Beneath the rugged mountains of southeastern Iran, archaeologists are carefully unearthing traces of a Bronze Age society that could upend the accepted narrative of where writing and urban life began.

A scholar has recently discovered a previously unknown Sumerian myth inscribed on a long-overlooked 4,400-year-old tablet. Although the story is incomplete, due to the tablet’s fractured nature, there ...

This is the first episode of a two-part series on the origin of jokes and humor. The story appears in podcast feeds under the title, "Jokes, Part I: Sumer Funny, Sumer Not." Listen to part two here.