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Sumer, the earliest known civilization, flourished in southern Mesopotamia from about 3300 to 1900 BC, then was forgotten until 19th century excavations in Iraq. The Sumerians called their land Kengir and their language Emegir, a language isolate with no known relatives, and they built on marshland first drained by the Ubaidians. Eridu blended farmers, Semitic herders and marsh dwellers, and Uruk grew past 50,000 people. Beer served as food and wages, early women could own property and inherit, and childless entu high priestesses held great economic power.

Temple accounting gave rise to cuneiform, which moved from pictograms to sound signs through the rebus principle and eventually carried the Epic of Gilgamesh. Base-60 math gave us 60-minute hours and 360-degree circles, and trade reached Afghanistan, Lebanon and Meluhha in the Indus Valley. Their gods made humans from clay to do their labor, and the dead ate dust in Ereshkigal’s underworld. Warfare, Sargon of Akkad’s conquest and, above all, salt left by irrigation water ruined the soil, and the population fell by nearly three-fifths between 2100 and 1700 BC.

• In the Gilgamesh epic, the wild man Enkidu becomes human after bread and seven jugs of beer.
• Sixty divides evenly by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30, easing ration math.
• Lapis lazuli in Sumerian tombs came from Badakhshan in Afghanistan.
• The Stele of the Vultures shows Eannatum of Lagash with a spear-and-shield phalanx.
• Farmers switched from wheat to salt-tolerant barley before yields still collapsed.