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 ...

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 ...

In ancient times, Mesopotamia, meaning 'land between two rivers', was a vast region that lay between the Tigris and Euphrates river systems, and it is where civilization emerged over 7,000 years ago.

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 ...

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 ...

As Iraq fitfully rebuilds, a groundbreaking exhibition is showcasing that nation’s rich roots in Mesopotamia, the region that gave birth to the world’s first urban civilization some 5,000 years ago.

About 4,500 years ago, an image of the Sumerian storm god Ningirsu was engraved on a silver vessel now on view in the Getty Villa Museum exhibition “Mesopotamia: Civilization Begins.” ...

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 ...