The Sumerians were a people that inhabited the southern part of the alluvial basin formed by the River Tigris and the River Euphrates (in what is now Iraq). Their civilisation started in the fourth millennium BC when the first cities with monumental mud-brick architecture appeared. The economic basis for this civilisation was agriculture, mainly producing grain on irrigated land, as well as livestock. The surplus agriculture was traded for materials lacking in the region. most notably metal, timber and precious stones, which stimulated long-distance trade. The characteristic political unit was the city with its surrounding arable land. In the second half of the third millennium attempts were made to unify the country and impose a centralised political and administrative control. The most successful Sumerian state was that ruled by the Third Dynasty of Ur from around 2113 to 4 BC. In the eighteenth century BC Semitic-speaking groups (known as the Amorites) formed a new state, Babylonia, and
Sumerian ceased to be a spoken language, although written Sumerian continued to be used for religious purposes for another thousand years. Research Sumerian
Abbreviations
People
Research Sumerian