▓░▓░▓
LOST CIVILIZATION
Sumer
What Is Known
Invented writing, the wheel, the plow, the sailboat, irrigation, cities, schools, law codes, and beer. The first civilization to record its own literature — the Epic of Gilgamesh. City-states like Ur, Uruk, and Eridu competed and traded. Their base-60 mathematics gave us 60-second minutes.
What Was Lost
Their ethnic and linguistic identity. Sumerian is a language isolate — related to nothing else known. Where they came from is unknown. They called themselves 'the black-headed people' and their land 'the civilized land.' After 1900 BC, Sumerian ceased to be spoken, surviving only as a learned language.
Evidence
Hundreds of thousands of cuneiform tablets. The Standard of Ur. The Royal Tombs of Ur. The Ziggurat of Ur. The Weld-Blundell Prism (Sumerian King List). The city of Uruk, possibly the world's first city.