Sumer- The Birth of Civilisation
Writing, Agriculture and the Wheel all Stem from the Sumerians
By 4,000 BCE they had a thriving existence in what is now Southern Iraq. They had a well-established culture that had cities, specialised craftsmen, irrigation works, ceremonial centres and written records. The Sumerians developed excellent farming techniques and it has been calculated from texts that their yield of wheat 4,4000 years ago would compare favourably with the modern wheat fields of Canada.
Besides establishing a highly efficient agriculture, the Sumerians invented new materials including glass and became outstanding glaziers. They were also metal- workers using gold, silver, copper and bronze. But without doubt the most important invention of these competent people was the wheel.
The Cities of Sumer
There were as many as twenty cities in the land of Sumer, the most important of which were Ur, Kish, Eridu, Lagash and Nippur. Each was politically autonomous, with a king and a priesthood. For the Sumerians the land was God's; the king was a lesser, earthbound god whose responsibility was to ensure the productivity of the community. At the centre of each city was their god's house - the temple. From which the priests controlled every aspect of life in the community, including the dispensing of justice, land administration, scientific and theological learning and religious ritual.
The schools, known as edubba, produced professional classes who would start their education from a young age. They were expected to become proficient in writing and then to study a range of subjects including mathematics, music, law, accountancy, surveying and quantity surveying. Their developement was orientated to produce well-read leaders of men. Whilst elements of the Sumerian language remain in use today, surprisingly it was not the origin of Proto- Indo- European; the first language from which virtually all subsequent tongues from the Old World sprang from.
Early Writing
From the ruins of Nippur archaeologists have recoverd many thousands of tablets that record the history of its people. It is believed their early writing started out around 3,500 BCE and began in much the same way as language developed. Objects such as head, hand, leg were the first items to be identified. These were simple, easily recognisable pictures of the object, but soon more symbolic words were created. The marks they made were created by pushing a stick into wet clay and this tended to give a broader indentation and deposit where the writing instrument started and finished a line.
It is not just the stylistic treatment of our letters that stems from the land of Sumer; our alphabet owes it much. The letter A, for example, derives from the image of a bull's head. A near triangle with two of the sides extended to give the impression of horns. As the Greeks developed capitals in their alphabet the letter A was rotated another ninety degrees and became alpha, a character very similar to our modern day capital A, which is essentially a bull's head upside down. Today, the English Language still contains a few almost pure Sumerian words, such as alcohol, cane, gypsum, myrrh and saffron.
The Sumerians were a highly competent and advanced race of people who attracted travellers from distant lands who sought to trade their simple goods for the wonderful produce of this civilisation. They not only became a wealthy nation but also are attributed to being the first recorded civilisation.
Sources
Knight,Christopher,and Lomas,Robert, The Hiram Key, Arrow Books, London,1997
Ancient cuneiform writing
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