Sumer, the site of the oldest known civilization, situated in the southernmost piece of Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates river, in the space that later became Babylonia and is presently southern Iraq, from around Baghdad to the Persian Gulf.

Sumer was first settled somewhere in the range of 4500 and 4000 BCE by non-Semitic individuals who didn’t communicate in the Sumerian language. These individuals presently are called proto-Euphrateans or Ubaidians, for the town Al-ʿUbayd, where their remaining parts were first found. The Ubaidians were the first socializing power in Sumer, depleting the swamps for agribusiness, creating an exchange, and setting up ventures, including weaving, leatherwork, metalwork, stonework, and ceramics. After the Ubaidian movement to Mesopotamia, different Semitic people groups invaded their region, adding their societies to the Ubaidian culture and making a high pre-Sumerian civilization.

Individuals called Sumerians, whose language turned into the predominant language of the domain, likely came from around Anatolia, showing up in Sumer around 3300 BCE. By the third thousand years BCE, the nation was the site of at any rate 12 separate city-states: Kish, Erech (Uruk), Ur, Sippar, Akshak, Larak, Nippur, Adab, Umma, Lagash, Bad-tibia, and Larsa. Every one of these states contained a walled city and its encompassing towns and land, and each revered its own god, whose sanctuary was the focal design of the city. The political force initially had a place with the residents, at the same time, as contention between the different city-states expanded, each embraced the foundation of authority. A surviving archive, The Sumerian King List, records that eight lords ruled before the incomparable Flood.

After the Flood, different city-states and their lines of lords briefly acquired control over the others. The principal lord to join the different city-states was Etana, leader of Kish (2800 BCE). From that point, Kish, Erech, Ur, and Lagash competed for power for many years, delivering Sumer defenseless against outside champions, first, the Elamites (2530–2450 BCE) and later the Akkadians, driven by their ruler Sargon (ruled 2334–2279 BCE). Despite the fact that Sargon’s line kept going for just around 100 years, it joined the city-states and made a model of government that affected all of Middle Eastern civilization.