Sumerians

Sumer (Wiki) - It is the earliest known civilization in the world and is known as the Cradle of Civilization
Earliest civilization DOES NOT equal earliest people or earliest culture. Earliest peoples / culture = from Africa.

Standard_of_Ur (Wiki) - Object highlight - Standard_of_ur (British Museum)
Sumerian social classes (Beter Iraq) - Interactive up close analysis (Mesopotamia - British Museum)

Our earliest civilization had a social class structure as illustrated in these box carvings. We still have the same class structure.
That civilization failed. We keep trying in vain to make the same system work. Now it is time to learn from history for the "final time" in this regard.
There is a better way. And that is TO BE.

http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/gaddis/HST210/Sept4/Default.htm - History_of_Sumer (Wiki) - 2007 - Discovery of Middle Asia Cities Recasts Ancient History (Live Science)

civilization (Merriam Webster)
1 a : a relatively high level of cultural and technological development; specifically :
the stage of cultural development at which writing and the keeping of written records is attained b : the culture characteristic of a particular time or place

Earlier peoples used agriculture and maintained urban settlements (Relatively speaking, we would call them rural now) - but the Sumerians had the 1st writing system that
became integral to their affairs. Numerous groups had pictorial writing systems but did not advance beyond that. More on Early Writing below.
This is what is accepted as history, but further investigation shows that integral writing cropped up in other far flung places at about the same time? Perhaps
even befoe -- we just haven't found it yet  Why? There are FOUR accepted places, noted below  - it may help to learn about Number DNA of FOUR / 4.

Ancient Mesopotamia (Sumerians, first civilization on earth)

 
Nice introduction to Sumer! -- Same video here (Youtube)

CUNeiform writing - CON / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-Nammu - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urukagina

Turning Points in History - Hammurabi's Code of Laws

Civilisations- Mesopotamia [1/6] - Sumerians

 
A few parts are in French - interviews with some historian. The rest is in English. Find other 5 parts online.

Notable Points

- World trade - 3500BC - trading as far as Peshawar, Pakistan for Lapis Azul. Before silk road.
- Invention of CONtracts.
- Obtained wood from Lebanon, Syria, Turkey -Cedar trees -- copied by others
- Tar for sealing boats and houses. Also sealing bricks and foundations of public buildings.
June 2009 - Bizarre tar lakes-an-oddity-of-nature (Travelvideo.tv)
 The two largest ones are the Pitch Lake in Trinidad and the Guanoco Lake in Venezuela.

- Art and religious worship = externalizing problems onto someone /thing else.

 - Agriculture - brings up salt from earth which dries up the ground

- Sumerian codes ---> CODe of Hammurabi. GODe

Early Writing

2009 - Which language is older Egyptian or Sumerian? Is Chinese derived from these languages? (Yahoo! Answers)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin%C4%8Da_culture - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinca_%28Tell%29

http://ezinearticles.com/?Was-the-Vinca-Culture-Writing-Before-the-Sumerians?&id=261781

Vinca AID intro (Youtube) - A short film showing the present day state of 7000 years old Neolithic site of Vinca, Belgrade, Serbia

Ziggurat of Ur (City-state of Sumeria)

Ziggurat of UR ---- Royal Tombs of UR

Ziggurat of UR slideshow to hard rock music (Youtube) - Zigurat de Ur (Youtube)- Spanish commentary, but good photos