Sumer
Earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia , emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. It is one of the first civilizations in the world, along with ancient Egypt, Elam, the Caral-Supe civilization, the Indus Valley Civilisation, the Minoan civilization, and ancient China.
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Elam
Ancient civilization centered in the far west and southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of what is now Khuzestan and Ilam Province as well as a small part of southern Iraq.
The emergence of written records from around 3000 BC also parallels Sumerian history, where slightly earlier records have been found.
Akkadian Empire
The Akkadian Empire was the first ancient empire of Mesopotamia after the long-lived civilization of Sumer.
Bronze Age
Historic period, approximately 3300 BC to 1200 BC, that was characterized by the use of bronze, in some areas writing, and other early features of urban civilization.
Western Asia and the Near East were the first regions to enter the Bronze Age, which began with the rise of the Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer in the mid-4th millennium BC. Cultures in the ancient Near East (often called one of "the cradles of civilization") practiced intensive year-round agriculture, developed writing systems, invented the potter's wheel, created centralized governments (usually in form of hereditary monarchies), written law codes, city-states and nation-states and empires, embarked on advanced architectural projects, introduced social stratification, economic and civil administration, slavery, and practiced organized warfare, medicine and religion.
Tigris
Easternmost of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates.
In ancient times, many of the great cities of Mesopotamia stood on or near the Tigris, drawing water from it to irrigate the civilization of the Sumerians.
Iraq
Country in Western Asia.
During ancient times, lands that now constitute Iraq were known as Mesopotamia (“Land Between the Rivers”), a region whose extensive alluvial plains gave rise to some of the world's earliest civilizations and empires since the 6th millennium BC, including those of Akkad, Babylon, Assyria and Sumer, the earliest known civilisation.
Fertile Crescent
Crescent-shaped region in the Middle East, spanning modern-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, and Northern Egypt, together with the northern region of Kuwait, southeastern region of Turkey and the western portion of Iran.
Early human civilizations such as Sumer in Mesopotamia flourished as a result.
Caral-Supe civilization
Complex pre-Columbian-era society that included as many as thirty major population centers in what is now the Caral region of north-central coastal Peru.
Complex society in Caral-Supe arose a millennium after Sumer in Mesopotamia, was contemporaneous with the Egyptian pyramids, and predated the Mesoamerican Olmec by nearly two millennia.
Third Dynasty of Ur
The Third Dynasty of Ur, also called the Neo-Sumerian Empire, refers to a 22nd to 21st century BC (middle chronology) Sumerian ruling dynasty based in the city of Ur and a short-lived territorial-political state which some historians consider to have been a nascent empire.
Early Dynastic Period (Mesopotamia)
Archaeological culture in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) that is generally dated to c. 2900–2350 BC and was preceded by the Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods.
Sumerian cities such as Uruk, Ur, Lagash, Umma, and Nippur located in Lower Mesopotamia were very powerful and influential.
Sumerian King List
Ancient literary composition written in Sumerian that was likely created and redacted to legitimize the claims to power of various city-states and kingdoms in southern Mesopotamia during the late third and early second millennium BC.
It does so by repetitively listing Sumerian cities, the kings that ruled there, and the lengths of their reigns.