Paragraph 1：Before about 4500 B.C., lower Mesopotamia, the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers just north of the Persian Gulf, was much less densely populated than other inhabited regions of the Near and Middle East. Its marshy soil, subject to annual inundations (floods) from the rivers, was not suited to the primitive hoe culture of early agriculture, in which land was cultivated without domestic animals or beasts. Moreover, the land was virtually treeless and lacked building stone and mineral resources. During the next thousand years, however, this unpromising area became the seat of Sumer, the first great civilization known to history, with large concentrations of people, bustling cities, monumental architecture, and a wealth of religious, artistic, and literary traditions that influenced other ancient civilizations for thousands of years. The exact sequence of events that led to this culmination is unknown, but it is clear that the economic basis of this first civilization lay in its highly productive agriculture.
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