Ancient Sumeria

The amazing Sumerian people, origins unknown, created one of the earliest civilizations in human history more than 5000 years ago, in the Land of Sumer between the life-giving Euphrates and Tigris rivers (Mesopotamia), in what is now modern Iraq and Kuwait. These two rivers, originating with the melting snow in the mountains of Armenia, deposited rich and fertile soil all the way to the Persian Gulf. Their population grew quickly and steadily advanced culturally. 

Often called the Cradle of Civilization, these imaginative Sumerians, living in the first city-states, gave us almost  countless inventions and innovations. They invented the wheel, the sailboat, metallurgical processes, and the first war chariot. They opened up the first far-reaching caravan trade routes and pioneered a writing system on clay tablets called cuneiform that dominated the middle east for two thousand years. These ancient thinkers also gave us the Lunar calendar and a constantly improving understanding of early arithmetic and geometry. Dividing the circle into 360 degrees and assigning 60 seconds per minute and 60 minutes per hour are examples of Sumerian ingenuity adopted throughout the modern world. They invented beer brewing (which they drank through long straws) and even game playing, including checkers and a more primitive form of our Sumerian Chess® game.

They were also expert farmers who invented the plow and could systematically redirect their rivers and streams into life-giving canals that irrigated their wheat and barley fields. They did this so efficiently that their society would soon become a diversified and highly developed civilization that influenced the rest of the classical world for cen

Eventually, climate change and drought slowly but surely forced them from the region after several thousand years, around 2000 BC. The Sumerians had either died off or got absorbed by nearby Semitic tribes from the west. And yet, almost all we know today about Sumeria was rediscovered just 150 years ago. The ancient Sumerians were also highly religious. The had a complex creation myth complete with the original Garden of Eden, thought to be located, according to legend, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers merge. They believed that their history began after a catastrophic Great Flood that swept away a more ancient and primitive world, much like Noah’s flood in the Judeo-Christian bible tradition.

The ancient Sumerians built numerous and sometimes massive city-states like the famed Ur and Uruk, that were characterized by a ruling king and queen, priests and priestesses, and protective soldiers and heroic charioteers. They often went to war, sometimes against each other, more often against outside invaders jealous of their wealth and advanced culture. At the center of each city was a huge pyramid-like temple called a ziggurat to honor their gods. When you play an exciting game of Sumerian Chess®, imagine that one city-state is battling another for supremacy over the magical lands between the two great rivers.