The Sumerian people was one of the first people in history to use writing, and you know what we know about it, they were the first people ever to invent writing, thus marking the end of prehistory and the beginning of "History" .
There is not much information on the origins of the Sumerian people, but according to some highly credited hypotheses, it is likely that around the fourth millennium BC they left their homelands somewhere between the mountains of modern Turkey and Iran. , to settle in Mesopotamia , a vast and fertile plain, rich in water and vegetation, in the Middle East between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates , whose territory partly coincides with today's Iraq. The great fertility of the land made agriculture and livestock extremely simple, furthermore the presence of the two rivers that acted as natural borders made life in that area particularly safe and the villages then cities could develop without particular fear of any invasions or aggressions. foreign.
The Sumerian civilization is considered, together with the Egyptian civilization, to be one of the first urban civilizations , the individual villages grew into impressive cities, at the center of which usually stood a temple called Ziqqurat , at the top of which stood a shrine, the actual temple, accessible via an external staircase that symbolized the communication between heaven and earth and between man and the gods. The Sumerian civilization is generally divided into various eras, the first of which is called the 'Ubaid Period , in this first phase there is not much information, but what we do know is that at this time the city-state of Ubaid would have enjoyed a certain centrality in the network of Sumerian city-states. The Ubaid era is usually divided into two phases called Ancient Ubaid and Late Ubaid , the last of which would end around the middle of the fourth millennium with the rise of the city of Uruk.
According to some theorists, the rise of Uruk marks the actual beginning of the Sumerian civilization, while according to others, the age of Ubaid is already part of "Sumerian history". In this same period, the invention of the wheel is also dated, which seems to have been the key to Uruk's power in supplanting Ubaid, however this hypothesis has never been proved.
The age of Uruk is followed by a brief period between the end of the fourth millennium and the beginning of the third millennium, (around 3100 - 2900) in which we would have witnessed the rise of the city of Gemdet Nasr , which would be followed by an epoch called "proto dynastic", divided in turn into four phases governed by king priests who, according to mythology, were direct descendants of the deities.
The proto dynastic age ends around 2350 BC. when Sargon of Akkad would have created a real empire, erasing the autonomy and independence of the Sumerian city-states and bringing all the cities back under a single imperial banner.
The Akkadian dynasty would be followed around 2200 by the rise of the Gutei people and later, around 2120, the dynasty of Ur would be established , established by Ur III of the city of Ur.
After the dynasty of Ur, the Sumerian civilization would have fallen into decline due to the numerous interferences caused by the arrival in Mesopotamia of Assyrians and Babylonians, two populations of Akkadian-Semitic origin.
Around 1900 BC the Babylonians, led by Sumu-abum would have established a royal dynasty in the southern area of the region, making Babylon his own capital and among his descendants, about a century later, around 1792, Hammurabi would come to power, who would write down the city laws creating the " Code of Hammurabi “, One of the oldest collections of written laws that has come down to us.
Simultaneously with the Babylonian rise and the conquest of southern Mesopotamia by Sumar-abum, Sargon I king of Assyria he would have extended his power from the northern area of Mesopotamia to southern Armenia.