At

first, the Sumerians lived in the foothills of the Mesopotamia. There, they faced the problem of having no more space to plant their crops, so they didnt have a stable food supply. They decided to move to the river valley, which they called Sumer, where they had a very big place to plant their crops. The population was very big, and a place can only thrive if its members have the food that they need to eat to be healthy and survive. They invented two key things that helped them have a stable food supply. One was the complex irrigation system, which provided their crops a regular supply of water. The other one was the plow, which was a tool used for tilling, or turning the soil to prepare it for planting.

Creating a Stable Food Supply

The Sumerians finally had the amount of food that they needed to feed the whole population of people in Sumer. Nobody would starve of hunger anymore.

The Development of Irrigation System

After the Sumerians moved to the river valley, in spring, the rain and melted snow flowed into the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which are the rivers that surround Sumer, causing the river valley to flood. That was a very big problem for the Sumerians, which they later solved by creating the irrigation system that also helped them with many things including getting water for their crops. Like that, they accomplished to solve the problem of an uncontrolled water supply in Sumer.

The Sumerians built networks of canals, dams, and reservoirs to provide their crops with a regular supply of water; that is the complex irrigation system. The irrigation system was a great invention that solved the problem of an uncontrolled water supply, but with it, they faced another problem: It was how to maintain it. All of the villages had to work together to maintain the irrigation system, since it needed constant repairs, and that is what they did. Like that, they finally had a controllable water supply, and reliable place to get water.

Development of a modern writing system

The Sumerians writing system was a very highly developed written language. It was called cuneiform. That name comes from the Latin word for wedge. The Sumerians used a wedge-shaped stylus (a very sharp-pointed tool) to engrave the symbols of their writing in clay. They developed cuneiform in about 2400 B.C.E., and its earliest examples show that it was used to record information of the goods that they exchanged with each other. When the Sumerians first started to use cuneiform, the writing system contained about 2,000 symbols to stand for ideas and sounds. After time past, from 2,000 symbols it reduced to approximately 700. This writing system was based on an earlier and simpler type of writing, pictographs. A pictograph is a symbol that stands for a real object like for example a dog. People used a sharpened reed to draw the symbols in wet clay that when dried, the marks would become a permanent record.

Cultural Achievements in Arts

Sumerians created and developed many different types of arts as a part of their culture. They created many helpful elements for the arts that were the start and base of some of the things that we have today. The Sumerians artistic achievements included beautiful works of many materials like gold, wood or stone such as sculptures, cups, golden daggers, weapons, mirrors, and jewelry. The Sumerian architects designed big rectangular temples called ziggurats; they were the first in Mesopotamia to create these. Another cultural achievement has to do with music, which was a very important part of their culture. They invented the lyre to accompany the other instruments in the musical songs. The lyre was like a small, wooden harp made of a sound box and strings. At the top, there was a wooden bar that held the strings in place. The lyre makers made some decorations to it to show how music was so valuable for them. These decorations were carvings made of horn, and some precious stones.

Technological Advances
The Sumerians were a very advanced civilization in technology, like in many other ways. They had many technological advances but the wheel was the most important, even though that the arch was another very important and valuable invention. Archeologists have found remnants of the wheel that date back to 3500 B.C.E. At first, pottery makers used the wheel as a surface for shaping clay into pots. After some time, the Sumerians discovered that if they rolled the wheel into its edge, it could be rolled forward. When they discovered that, they started to create wheeled carts for farmers, and chariots for the army. When the Sumerians didnt have the wheel yet, the farmers had to drag the crops on flat-bottomed carts called sledges that constantly got stuck in the mud to the city. The oxen, which were the ones that dragged the sledges, could carry three times more weight on wheeled carts than on sledges. In the other side, the arch was like a U or V-shaped structure built on top of the doorways. To make these arches, the Sumerians stacked bricks made out of clay and straw to go up like if they were steps until they met in the center. What the arch does is that it gives strength and beauty to their buildings, and it became a very common thing on temple and upper class home entrances. This invention was so important that historians say that it was one of their greatest architectural achievements.

 The Sumerians faced a variety of problems, which they solved all with a very practical solution for each. Solving all of those problems took them to rise and to become a very advanced civilization. The first problem that the Sumerians had was that there was no more space for food storage in the foothills. They solved it by moving down to the river valley where there was much more space. Then, they faced an uncontrolled water supply from the river. They solved it by inventing the complex irrigation system. After, the Sumerians had the problem of how to maintain their complex irrigation system. They accomplished to solve it by making all of the villages cooperate by cleaning the silt from the canals to keep them open. And last, the poor Sumerians had to face ANOTHER problem, which were the attacks by neighboring communities. They solved it very intelligently, just like the other problems they solved. They built big, strong walls and dug moats that surrounded the city so that the attackers couldnt enter.

The Impact of Physical Geography on Early Sumerian City-States

Something from Ancient Sumers History that Affected my Life

The Sumerians have affected my life in MANY ways. I think that the most important way that they have affected not only mine but the life of everybody in the world, has been by inventing the wheel. If it wasnt for the invention of the wheel, we wouldnt been able to travel to other countries in less than one day, because the air planes would of not been able to land, or take off, since they wouldnt have wheels. Adults couldnt of gone to work quickly if it was far away from where they are, since there would be no cars, motorcycles, or buses. Also, today, everything would be much more slower, since it would take so much time to get to other places.