Ancient Sumerians Research Paper

Carlos Perez Hum 10 Laura Musselman T/T 2:00 PM-3:15PM Ancient Sumer The topic on which I chose to research paper on was the, Agriculture and economy in Ancient Sumer. When I was doing my research paper on Sumerian civilization I came across many interesting facts that before I was unware of. The Sumerian people were very educated and religious. Sumerian civilization happened somewhere between 5400 BCE to 1750 BCE. The Sumerian people came from the Ubaidian, which were a farming civilizations and had many farming techniques advanced for their time period. The Ubaidian civilizations came from the Caspian Sea. Since the Ubaidian lived in Sumer they were recognized as Sumerians, since Sumer was the language most common in Sumer. The Sumerian people

could have also been the first civilization in the world to develop a writing system for their language, from drawings. Soon their writing system would be borrowed by neighboring and upcoming civilizations. Sumerians scholars and scribes were the only ones that could read and write in their language, but later on Sumerian people learned to read and write in Sumer.

The climate Sumerians lived in was a harsh environment. The Sumerian people believed their gods were merciless because of the harsh conditions. Most of the Sumerian people were located between two rivers, the Euphrates and Tigris, now known as Iraq. Which is where the Sumerians would develop into an enormous state with many cities. Each of the cities had its own ruler, which could have been considered a king. Each city had an approximate population of 10,000 people. Each city was centered around a temple. The Sumerian people lived in mud brick huts. They had sheep and goats, some of the people were fishermen, farmers, and pastors. The Sumerians developed trade routes along the two rivers. The trade between Sumerians, soon started attracting other civilizations with their cultures. With that many civilizations adopted Sumerian culture and mixed with their own. At the time the location seemed perfect, but an unpredictable flood would soon happen in the upper portion of the state called the Fertile Crescent. The Fertile Crescent had small waterways, which provided an excellent irrigation and

transportation. The irrigated farming allowed plenty of food to be harvested and stored. That irrigated farming also caused trouble when the soil contained to much salt and was not useable to farm. The Sumerians population slowly decreased due to soil becoming unusable for farming. Especially after the major flood occurred. The flood would result in ruined crops, causing the Sumerian people to move outward into different regions or down south in search of food. Colonies of Sumerians have been found over in Turkey and the Mediterranean Sea. There are many cultures or ancient civilizations