A symposium on Sumerian civilization and literature was recently held at Peking University, bringing together scholars and experts from leading universities and research institutions across China to ...

The ancient Sumerians invented cuneiform, shown here on a clay tablet documenting barley rations issued monthly to adults and children. The language may have died out as a result of a 200-year drought ...

Recent events in Iraq, Iran, and Turkey recall ancient and equally dramatic events in Babylon and Mesopotamia, whose lands these countries now occupy. A magnificent storyteller and a careful historian ...

Every work dealing with the history of beer, it seems, starts out talking blithely about the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia as the first brewers, the inventors of beer, some eight to ten thousand ...

SAN FRANCISCO — A 200-year-long drought 4,200 years ago may have killed off the ancient Sumerian language, one geologist says. Because no written accounts explicitly mention drought as the reason for ...

Today, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers is a barren desert. But centuries ago, this area in modern-day Iraq and southern Syria was known as Mesopotamia, a fertile plain that served as ...

A new interdisciplinary study shows that the rise of the first urban civilization was not solely a product of human ingenuity, but a complex response to coastal dynamics and the predictable rhythms of ...