The Great Ziggurat of Ur dedicated to the Moon god. Ziggurats were massive structure typical for Mesopotamia. Sumerians believed that the gods lived in the temple at the top of the ziggurats. Woods ...

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A recent study is changing the understanding of how urbanization developed in ancient Mesopotamia. According to the analysis, the emergence of the Sumerian civilization was not only the result of ...

Research shows that ancient tides shaped the rise of Sumer, the world’s first civilization. Shifting deltas and tidal rhythms ...

This is the first episode of a two-part series on the origin of jokes and humor. Listen to part two here. This episode originally aired on August 5, 2022. In the late 1800s, archeologists in Iraq ...

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 ...

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 ...

The civilisation weakened when city rulers began fighting with each other. Flooding meant that crops weren't growing as well. Cities began to struggle. In the end, Sumer was invaded by the Elamites ...

If asked to list the most important civilisations of the ancient world, many people of the west would mention Greece, Rome and Egypt. After that, if pressed, some might hazard a guess at Mesopotamia, ...