WEBVTT 00:00:07.689 --> 00:00:13.007 History’s first empire rose out of a hot, dry landscape, 00:00:13.007 --> 00:00:18.787 without rainfall to nourish crops, without trees or stones for building. 00:00:18.787 --> 00:00:24.140 In spite of all this, its inhabitants built the world’s first cities, 00:00:24.140 --> 00:00:28.226 with monumental architecture and large populations— 00:00:28.226 --> 00:00:32.542 and they built them entirely out of mud. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:32.542 --> 00:00:36.052 Sumer occupied the southern part of modern Iraq 00:00:36.052 --> 00:00:38.752 in the region called Mesopotamia. 00:00:38.752 --> 00:00:41.932 Mesopotamia means “between two rivers”— 00:00:41.932 --> 00:00:44.892 the Tigris and the Euphrates. 00:00:44.892 --> 00:00:52.033 Around 5000 BCE, early Sumerians used irrigation channels, dams, and reservoirs 00:00:52.033 --> 00:00:58.460 to redirect river water and farm large areas of previously bone-dry land. 00:00:58.460 --> 00:01:02.976 Agricultural communities like this were slowly springing up around the world. 00:01:02.976 --> 00:01:06.766 But Sumerians were the first to take the next step. 00:01:06.766 --> 00:01:09.336 Using clay bricks made from river mud, 00:01:09.336 --> 00:01:13.336 they began to build multi-storied homes and temples. 00:01:13.336 --> 00:01:14.596 They invented the wheel— 00:01:14.596 --> 00:01:19.609 a potter’s wheel, for turning mud into household goods and tools. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:19.609 --> 00:01:23.903 Those clay bricks gave rise to the world’s first cities, 00:01:23.903 --> 00:01:27.693 probably around 4500 BCE. 00:01:27.693 --> 00:01:32.249 At the top of the city’s social ladder were priests and priestesses, 00:01:32.249 --> 00:01:34.382 who were considered nobility, 00:01:34.382 --> 00:01:40.056 then merchants, craftspeople, farmers, and enslaved people. 00:01:40.056 --> 00:01:43.896 The Sumerian empire consisted of distinct city-states 00:01:43.896 --> 00:01:46.506 that operated like small nations. 00:01:46.506 --> 00:01:49.886 They were loosely linked by language and spiritual belief 00:01:49.886 --> 00:01:52.526 but lacked centralized control. 00:01:52.526 --> 00:01:56.881 The earliest cities were Uruk, Ur, and Eridu, 00:01:56.881 --> 00:01:59.721 and eventually there were a dozen cities. 00:01:59.721 --> 00:02:04.636 Each had a king who served a role somewhere between a priest and a ruler. 00:02:04.636 --> 00:02:09.033 Sometimes they fought against each other to conquer new territories. 00:02:09.033 --> 00:02:14.736 Each city was dedicated to a patron deity, considered the city’s founder. 00:02:14.736 --> 00:02:19.898 The largest and most important building in the city was this patron god’s home: 00:02:19.898 --> 00:02:24.485 the ziggurat, a temple designed as a stepped pyramid. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:24.485 --> 00:02:30.029 Around 3200 BCE, Sumerians began to expand their reach. 00:02:30.029 --> 00:02:34.295 The potter’s wheel found a new home on chariots and wagons. 00:02:34.295 --> 00:02:37.785 They built boats out of reeds and date palm leaves, 00:02:37.785 --> 00:02:42.984 with linen sails that carried them vast distances by river and sea. 00:02:42.984 --> 00:02:46.542 To supplement scarce resources, they built a trade network 00:02:46.542 --> 00:02:51.180 with the rising kingdoms in Egypt, Anatolia, and Ethiopia, 00:02:51.180 --> 00:02:57.785 importing gold, silver, lapis lazuli, and cedar wood. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:57.785 --> 00:03:00.235 Trade was the unlikely impetus 00:03:00.235 --> 00:03:03.985 for the invention of the world’s first writing system. 00:03:03.985 --> 00:03:07.185 It started as a system of accounting for Sumerian merchants 00:03:07.185 --> 00:03:09.885 conducting business with traders abroad. 00:03:09.885 --> 00:03:13.735 After a few hundred years, the early pictogram system 00:03:13.735 --> 00:03:17.085 called cuneiform turned into a script. 00:03:17.085 --> 00:03:20.025 The Sumerians drafted up the first written laws 00:03:20.025 --> 00:03:24.814 and created the first school system, designed to teach the craft of writing— 00:03:24.814 --> 00:03:31.317 and pioneered some less exciting innovations, like bureaucracy and taxes. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:31.317 --> 00:03:34.837 In the schools, scribes studying from dawn to dusk, 00:03:34.837 --> 00:03:37.627 from childhood well into adulthood. 00:03:37.627 --> 00:03:42.004 They learned accounting, mathematics, and copied works of literature— 00:03:42.004 --> 00:03:47.415 hymns, myths, proverbs, animal fables, magic spells, 00:03:47.415 --> 00:03:50.845 and the first epics on clay tablets. 00:03:50.845 --> 00:03:54.145 Some of those tablets told the story of Gilgamesh, 00:03:54.145 --> 00:03:59.770 a king of the city of Uruk who was also the subject of mythical tales. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:59.770 --> 00:04:05.887 But by the third millennium BCE, Sumer was no longer the only empire around, 00:04:05.887 --> 00:04:08.117 or even in Mesopotamia. 00:04:08.117 --> 00:04:13.661 Waves of nomadic tribes poured into the region from the north and east. 00:04:13.661 --> 00:04:17.661 Some newcomers looked up to the Sumerians, adopting their way of life 00:04:17.661 --> 00:04:21.661 and using the cuneiform script to express their own languages. 00:04:21.661 --> 00:04:29.026 In 2300 BCE, the Akkadian king Sargon conquered the Sumerian city-states. 00:04:29.026 --> 00:04:31.696 But Sargon respected Sumerian culture, 00:04:31.696 --> 00:04:37.262 and Akkadians and Sumerians existed side-by-side for centuries. 00:04:37.262 --> 00:04:41.382 Other invading groups focused only on looting and destruction. 00:04:41.382 --> 00:04:43.842 Even as Sumerian culture spread, 00:04:43.842 --> 00:04:51.738 a steady onslaught of invasions killed off the Sumerian people by 1750 BCE. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:51.738 --> 00:04:55.944 Afterward, Sumer disappeared back into the desert dirt, 00:04:55.944 --> 00:05:00.037 not to be rediscovered until the 19th century. 00:05:00.037 --> 00:05:04.037 But Sumerian culture lived on for thousands of years— 00:05:04.037 --> 00:05:09.155 first through the Akkadians, then the Assyrians, then the Babylonians. 00:05:09.155 --> 00:05:13.045 The Babylonians passed Sumerian inventions and traditions through 00:05:13.045 --> 00:05:16.798 along Hebrew, Greek, and Roman cultures. 00:05:16.798 --> 00:05:19.208 Some persist today.