MESOPOTAMIA
a. Location : Primitive people settled down on the banks of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. The area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is known as Mesopotamia.
Earliest Inhabitants : Ancient Sumer was a small tract of land on the Tigris-Euphrates delta. It was a new land only recently raised above the waters of the Persian Gulf by the silt carried down by the two rivers. The fertile soil of Sumer attracted primitive people to settle there. The swamps and lakes of Sumer, overgrown with reeds and alive with wild fowl, wild pigs, and other games appeared to be a paradise to the early settlers.
The origin of the Sumerians is not known for certain. It is not known when the first settlers appeared in the land. It is highly probable that several thousand years before the birth of Jesus Christ settlements sprang up here and there. But it is not before 3000 BC that we get a full view of the people who settled in the stretch of land that they called Sumer. The early settlers went in for cattle-breeding and hunting, Gradually, by persistent labour they transformed Sumer into a flowering land.