Before Sumer: The Ubaid Culture and the Dawn of Civilization

The First Known Civilization Series Article 1

The Sumerians are widely known as the world's first urban civilization, but their remarkable rise was not spontaneous. Beneath the foundation of Sumer lies an earlier, lesser-known culture that quietly sowed the seeds of everything that would follow: the Ubaid culture. Lasting from approximately 6500 to 3800 BCE, the Ubaid period is the forgotten prologue to Mesopotamian history, and without it, the cities of Ur, Uruk, and Eridu might never have emerged.

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( John D. Croft/NordNordWest/Wikimedia Commons)

The Timeline and Geography of Ubaid Origins

The Ubaid culture began in the southern regions of Mesopotamia—modern-day Iraq—specifically in the area that would later become Sumer. The earliest Ubaid settlements were located at Tell al-‘Ubaid, near the city of Ur, and later spread northward as far as Syria and western Iran[1].

• Ubaid I (c. 6500–5400 BCE): Centered in Eridu, the earliest temple town

• Ubaid II–IV (c. 5400–4000 BCE): Expansion and cultural unification of southern Mesopotamia

These phases laid the structural and cultural foundations for the eventual emergence of Sumerian civilization.

Note: Unlike the earlier Neolithic cultures such as Hassuna and Samarra, Ubaid culture demonstrated long-term settlement planning, complex irrigation, and centralized religious institutions.

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(The Enki Temple at Eridu)