The Sumerians were the first people to inhabit the region of Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The reason for their arrival is still unknown, but it was probably a lack of food and water, as the Sumerians lived as nomads wandering the Highlands of Iran and high in the Zagros Mountains.
In addition to the water and food found in abundance in the region, another factor that explains the sedentarization of the Sumerians was the security with which they lived in Mesopotamia, as that area is surrounded by some mountain ranges to the north and west, by the Persian Gulf to the southwest, and across the Syrian desert to the south and east. This gave them great protection from attacks by other peoples who lived nearby.
The people responsible for the first monumental temples and palaces, the founding of the first city-states, and probably the invention of writing (all from 3100 to 3000 BC) are the Sumerians. The first written signs are pictographic so they can be read in any language and it cannot be inferred which language they came from specifically. A pictogram for arrow, for example, means arrow in any language. A few centuries later, however, these signs were used to represent Sumerian phonetic values and Sumerian words. The pictogram for an arrow is now used to represent 'ti', the Sumerian word for arrow, and also for the phonetic sound 'ti' in non-arrow related words. Therefore, it is generally assumed that the Sumerians were also responsible for pictographic signs, possibly with great influence from the Elamites. If the Sumerians are not the ones who actually invented writing, then at the very least they are responsible for quickly adopting and expanding the invention of writing to suit their accounting needs (the early tables are predominantly economic in nature).
The name Sumeria is derived from the Babylonian name for Southern Babylon. The Sumerians called their country 'ken.gi(r)' - civilized land - their language 'eme.gir' and called themselves 'sag.gi 6.ga' - dark-headed. The Sumerian language is not Semitic, being an agglutinating language, like Finnish and Japanese. In other words, this term designates a typology of languages that contrasts with inflectional languages, such as Indo-European languages. quite long. In inflected languages, the base element (root) of the word can vary, hence it is called an inflection.
Sumerian has no known relationship to any other language. There seems to be a remote relationship with Dravidian languages (such as that spoken by the Tamils in South India). There is evidence that Dravidian languages were spoken in North India, having been displaced by Indo-European invaders around 1500 BC. India.
We can cite as Sumerian/Elamite inventions the cylinder seals. Cylindrical seals are small stone cylinders (between 2 and 6 cm) carved with carved designs. The cylinder was rolled over clay tablets, envelopes, ceramics and bricks to mark or identify them. Its use coincides with the beginning of the use of clay writing tablets at the end of the Fourth Millennium BC. until the end of the First Millennium BC. Such seals were used as a signature, confirmation of receipt, or to mark building blocks.
Evidence indicates that possibly during the Neolithic, the inhabitants of the subcontinent were assimilated by the invading Dravid tribes, who probably came from the west. According to the archaeological discoveries of the Indus Valley, the civilization developed by the Dravidians is comparable in s