Their settlements of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, for instance, housed approximately 40,000 to 50,000 individuals and featured baked-brick buildings. Although the Sumerians invented cities, the people of the Indus Valley perfected them. Starting around 3300 B.C., these settlements grew particularly bustling. to 1300 B.C.)Īround 7000 B.C., agriculturalists began building small villages throughout the Indus River Valley in present-day India and Pakistan. These innovations secured Mesopotamia’s modern title: the “Cradle of Civilization.” The Sumerians also pioneered mathematics, astronomy and astrology, invented irrigation, started the first schools, codified the first codes of law and fashioned our current conceptions of time by dividing the day into hours, minutes and seconds. This system allowed them to track the movement of grain throughout their territory, share stories and myths, and spread advice on agriculture and cooking, among other purposes.

The ancient Sumerians are also credited with creating the written word: As many as 5,000 years ago, they scratched clay tablets with a writing system called cuneiform. Sumerian cities such as Eridu, Uruk and Ur contained tall temple and palace complexes. By about 4500 B.C., these communities (who we currently call the Sumerians), could cultivate crops in such excess that they could forge the world’s first cities without feeling peckish. Around 10000 B.C., Mesopotamia’s “Fertile Crescent” allowed ancient populations to settle and support themselves with farming. to 1900 B.C.)Īncient Sumer, an area in Mesopotamia above the shared floodplains of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, is famous for fostering the first civilizations in human history.

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