The existence of the Sumerian civilization was not even suspected until the middle of the 19th century CE. It was then that archaeologists excavating the Assyrian sites of Nineveh, Dur Sharrukin, and Calah discovered thousands of clay tablets dating from the first millennium BCE and inscribed in Akkadian cuneiform. Others were in an unknown language. The French archaeologist Jules Oppert named the unknown language Sumerian because of the frequent mention of the king of Sumer. Further knowledge of Sumerian history was gleaned from clay tablets and artifacts found at other Sumerian cities.
There remains a perennial problem with dating these finds accurately. Because the inhabitants of southern Mesopotamia did not have natural stone for building, they had to rely on bricks made of clay. These clay bricks would eventually fuse with a building's foundations, leaving only a single compact mass of clay. A very refined technique
Is thus required to identify the original layers. The ancient practice of constructing new buildings directly on top of the remains of the old ones further complicates matters.
The same practice of building new on top of old was used for entire cities, so building levels became increasingly higher, forming hills known as tells. Although many of these tells have been explored, no one has yet been able to reach the remains of the earliest human settlements in the region because the groundwater level has risen. The deepest layers reached to date reveal evidence of a people who had complex belief systems and social organization and who used a primitive pictographic system of writing. These earliest inhabitants arrived around 5000 BCE and were the ancestors of the Sumerians.
Archaeologist Leonard Woolley carries an ancient harp discovered in the royal tombs at Ur in 1929 CE.
World History
