Editing Sumer (section)

==Population==
Uruk, one of Sumer's largest cities, has been estimated to have had a population of 50,000–80,000 at its height.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://proteus.brown.edu/mesopotamianarchaeology/Home|archive-url=https://archive.today/20150411005800/http://proteus.brown.edu/mesopotamianarchaeology/Home|url-status=dead|title=The Archaeology of Mesopotamia: Home |access-date=2019-07-21|archive-date=2015-04-11}}</ref> Given the other cities in Sumer, and the large agricultural population, a rough estimate for Sumer's population might be 0.8 million to 1.5 million. The [[world population]] at this time has been estimated at 27 million.<ref>Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones, 1978, ''Atlas of World Population History'', Facts on File, New York, {{ISBN|0-7139-1031-3}}.</ref>

[[File:Drawing of the Ziggurat of Ur, Iraq, by Marjorie V. Duffell for C. L. Woolley, 1937.jpg|thumb|The [[Great Ziggurat of Ur]], c. 2100 BC, near [[Nasiriyah]], [[Iraq]]]]
The Sumerians spoke a [[language isolate]]. A number of linguists have claimed to be able to detect a [[substrate language]] of unknown classification beneath Sumerian, because names of some of Sumer's major cities are not Sumerian, revealing influences of earlier inhabitants.<ref name="Nemet-Nejat1998">{{cite book |author=Nemet-Nejat |first=Karen Rhea |url=https://archive.org/details/dailylifeinancie00neme |title=Daily life in ancient Mesopotamia |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-313-29497-6 |page=[https://archive.org/details/dailylifeinancie00neme/page/13 13] |access-date=29 November 2011 |url-access=registration}}</ref> However, the [[archaeological record]] shows clear uninterrupted cultural continuity from the time of the early [[Ubaid period]] (5300–4700 BC [[Radiocarbon dating|C-14]]) settlements in southern Mesopotamia. The Sumerian people who settled here, farmed the lands in this region that were made fertile by silt deposited by the [[Tigris]] and the [[Euphrates]].

Some archaeologists have speculated that the original speakers of ancient Sumerian may have been farmers, who moved down from the north of Mesopotamia after perfecting irrigation agriculture there. The Ubaid period pottery of southern Mesopotamia has been connected via [[Choga Mami]] transitional ware, to the pottery of the [[Samarra]] period culture ({{circa|5700}}–4900 BC [[Radiocarbon dating|C-14]]) in the north, who were the first to practice a primitive form of irrigation agriculture along the middle Tigris River and its tributaries. The connection is most clearly seen at [[Tell el-'Oueili]] near [[Larsa]], excavated by the French in the 1980s, where eight levels yielded pre-Ubaid pottery resembling Samarran ware. According to this theory, farming peoples spread down into southern Mesopotamia because they had developed a temple-centered social organization for mobilizing labor and technology for water control, enabling them to survive and prosper in a difficult environment.{{Citation needed|date=June 2011}}

Others have suggested a continuity of Sumerians, from the indigenous hunter-fisherfolk traditions, associated with the bifacial assemblages found on the Arabian littoral. [[Juris Zarins]] believes the Sumerians may have been the people living in the Persian Gulf region before it flooded at the end of the last Ice Age.{{citation needed|date=July 2022}}