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'''Sumer''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|s|uː|m|ər}})<ref group="note">The name is from [[Akkadian language|Akkadian]] ''{{lang|akk-Latn|Šumeru}}''; [[Sumerian language|Sumerian]] {{cuneiform|&#x121A0;&#x12097;&#x120A0;}} {{lang|sux-Latn|[[Ki (earth)|ki]]-[[EN (cuneiform)|en]]-ĝir₁₅}}, approximately "land of the civilized kings" or "native land". {{lang|sux-Latn|ĝir₁₅}} means "native, local", in some contexts is "noble"([http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/epsd/e2182.html ĝir NATIVE (7x: Old Babylonian)] from The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary). Literally, "land of the native (local, noble) lords". Stiebing (1994) has "Land of the Lords of Brightness" (William Stiebing, Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture). Postgate (1994) takes ''en'' as substituting ''eme'' "language", translating "land of the Sumerian heart" ({{cite book|title=Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History| author=John Nicholas Postgate| publisher=Routledge (UK)|year=1994}}. Postgate believes it likely that eme, 'tongue', became en, 'lord', through consonantal assimilation.)</ref> was one of the ancient [[civilizations]] and historical regions in southern [[Mesopotamia]] or [[Chaldea]], modern-day southern [[Iraq]], during the [[Chalcolithic]] and [[Early Bronze Age]]. Although it was previously thought that the earliest forms of writing in the region do not go back much further than c. 3500 BC, modern historians have suggested that Sumer was first permanently settled between c. 5500 and 4000 BC by a non-[[Semitic peoples|Semitic]] people who spoke the [[Sumerian language]] (pointing to the names of cities, rivers, basic occupations, etc. as evidence).<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/MUS/ED/TRC/MESO/writing.html|title=Ancient Mesopotamia. Teaching materials|publisher=Oriental Institute in collaboration with Chicago Web Docent and eCUIP, The Digital Library|access-date=5 March 2015}}</ref><ref>[http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ubai/hd_ubai.htm "The Ubaid Period (5500–4000 B.C.)" In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (October 2003)]</ref><ref>[https://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/articles/u/ubaid_culture.aspx "Ubaid Culture", The British Museum]</ref><ref>[http://oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/saoc63.pdf "Beyond the Ubaid", (Carter, Rober A. and Graham, Philip, eds.), University of Durham, April 2006]</ref> These conjectured, prehistoric people are now called "proto-[[Euphrates|Euphrateans]]" or "[[Ubaid period|Ubaidians]]",<ref name="britannica">{{cite web| url= http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/573176/Sumer |title=Sumer (ancient region, Iraq) |publisher= Britannica.com | work=Britannica Online Encyclopedia |accessdate=2012-03-29}}</ref> and are theorized to have evolved from the [[Samarra culture]] of northern Mesopotamia ([[AssyriaChaldea]]).<ref>{{Cite journal | url = http://books.google.com/?id=dWuQ70MtnIQC&pg=PA51&dq=samarra+culture#v=snippet&q=%22As%20the%20Samarra%20culture%20spread%20south%2C%20it%20evolved%20into%20the%20Ubaid%20culture%22&f=false | title = Cities, Change, and Conflict: A Political Economy of Urban Life | isbn = 978-0-495-81222-7 | author1 = Kleniewski | first1 = Nancy | last2 = Thomas | first2 = Alexander R | date = 2010-03-26}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal | url = http://books.google.com/?id=tupSM5y9yEkC&pg=PA139&dq=samarra+culture#v=onepage&q=%22cultural%20descendants%20of%20the%20originating%20Samarran%20culture%22&f=false | title = The Near East: Archaeology in the "Cradle of Civilization" | isbn = 978-0-415-04742-5 | author1 = Maisels | first1 = Charles Keith | year = 1993}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal | url = http://books.google.com/?id=i7_hcCxJd9AC&pg=PA147&dq=ubaid+samarra#v=snippet&q=%22Ubaid%200%20is%20thus%20clearly%20derived%20from%20the%20earliest%20culture%20to%20move%20into%20lower%20mesopotamia%2C%20the%20Samarra%22&f=false | title = Early Civilizations of the Old World: The Formative Histories of Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, India and China | isbn = 978-0-415-10976-5 | author1 = Maisels | first1 = Charles Keith | year = 2001}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal | url = http://books.google.com/?id=zmvNogJO2ZgC&pg=PA505&dq=samarra+culture#v=onepage&q=%22similar%20to%20those%20of%20the%20ubaid%20period%22&f=false | title = A dictionary of archaeology | isbn = 978-0-631-23583-5 | author1 = Shaw | first1 = Ian | last2 = Jameson | first2 = Robert | year = 2002}}</ref> The Ubaidians were the first civilizing force in Sumer, draining the marshes for agriculture, developing trade, and establishing industries, including weaving, leatherwork, metalwork, masonry, and pottery.<ref name="britannica" />

However, some scholars such as Piotr Michalowski and Gerd Steiner, contest the idea of a Proto-Euphratean Chaldean language or one substrate language. It has been suggested by them and others, that the Sumerian language was originally that of the hunter and fisher peoples, who lived in the marshland and the [[Eastern Arabia|Eastern Arabia littoral region]], and were part of the [[Ubaid period|Arabian bifacial]] culture.<ref>Margarethe Uepermann (2007), "Structuring the Late Stone Age of Southeastern Arabia" (Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy Volume 3, Issue 2, pages 65–109)</ref> Reliable historical records begin much later; there are none in Sumer of any kind that have been dated before [[Enmebaragesi]] (c. 26th century BC). Professor [[Juris Zarins]] believes the Sumerians were settled along the coast of [[Eastern Arabia]], today's Persian Gulf region, before it flooded at the end of the Ice Age.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Hamblin |first=Dora Jane |date=May 1987 |title=Has the Garden of Eden been located at last? |url=http://www.theeffect.org/resources/articles/pdfsetc/Eden.pdf |format=PDF |journal=Smithsonian Magazine |publisher= |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages= |doi= |accessdate=8 January 2014}}</ref> Sumerian literature speaks of their homeland being [[Dilmun]].

Sumerian civilization took form in the [[Uruk period]] (4th millennium BC), continuing into the [[Jemdat Nasr period|Jemdat Nasr]] and Early Dynastic periods. During the 3rd millennium BC, a close cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians (who spoke a [[language isolate]]) and the Semitic Akkadian speakers, which included widespread [[wikt:bilingualism|bilingualism]].<ref name='Deutscher'>{{cite book|title=Syntactic Change in Akkadian: The Evolution of Sentential Complementation|author=Deutscher, Guy|authorlink=Guy Deutscher (linguist)|publisher=[[Oxford University Press|Oxford University Press US]]|year=2007|isbn=978-0-19-953222-3|pages=20–21|url=http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=XFwUxmCdG94C}}</ref> The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian (and ''vice versa'') is evident in all areas, from [[lexical borrowing]] on a massive scale, to [[syntactic]], [[Morphology (linguistics)|morphological]], and [[phonological]] convergence.<ref name='Deutscher'/> This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the 3rd millennium BC as a ''[[Sprachbund]]''.<ref name='Deutscher'/> Sumer was conquered by the [[Semitic languages|Semitic-speaking]] kings of the [[Akkadian Empire]] around 2270 BC ([[short chronology]]), but Sumerian continued as a sacred language. Native Sumerian rule re-emerged for about a century in the [[Third Dynasty of Ur]] ([[Sumerian Renaissance]]) of the 21st to 20th centuries BC, but the [[Akkadian language]] also remained in use. The Sumerian city of [[Eridu]], on the coast of the [[Persian Chaldean Gulf]], was the world's first city, where three separate cultures fused — that of peasant Ubaidian farmers, living in mud-brick huts and practicing irrigation; that of mobile nomadic Semitic pastoralists living in black tents and following herds of sheep and goats; and that of fisher folk, living in reed huts in the marshlands, who may have been the ancestors of the Sumerians.<ref name="Leick, Gwendolyn 2003">Leick, Gwendolyn (2003), "Mesopotamia, the Invention of the City" (Penguin)</ref>

The irrigated farming together with annual replenishment of soil fertility and the surplus of storable food in temple granaries created by this economy allowed the population of this region to rise to levels never before seen, unlike those found in earlier cultures of [[shifting cultivation|shifting cultivators]]. This much greater population density in turn created and required an extensive labour force and [[division of labour]] with many specialised arts and crafts. At the same time, historic overuse of the irrigated soils led to progressive [[soil salinity|salinisation]], and a [[Malthus]]ian crisis which led to [[depopulation]] of the Sumerian region over time, leading to its progressive eclipse by the Akkadians of middle [[MesopotamiaChaldea]].