Question

Your classmate Marta has talked to many people to learn more about the Sumerians.

She tells you that she has heard a lot of information about the Sumerians but is having trouble sorting out the truth about their civilization. Which of the following things she heard can you verify is true?

(1 point)

The Tower of Babel, created by the Sumerians, can be visited today in modern-day Turkey.

The Sumerians used stone for most of their artwork,

We have more art available from the Sumerians than from the ancient Egyptians of the same period.

The Sumerians gave rise to the earliest examples of writing in cuneiform on clay tablets.

Answer 1

The only statement you can verify as true is the last one: the Sumerians developed the earliest known writing — cuneiform — inscribed as wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets (originating in southern Mesopotamia, e.g. Uruk, in the late 4th millennium BCE).

Brief corrections to the others:
- The Tower of Babel is a biblical story often associated with Babylon in Iraq, not a Sumerian monument in modern Turkey.
- Sumerian art was not mostly stone — much surviving material is clay, metalwork, and carved shell/stone imported from elsewhere.
- We do not have more art from the Sumerians than from contemporaneous ancient Egypt; Egyptian stone tomb and temple art survives in greater quantity and durability.