Sumerian Cities of Southern Mesopotamia
In southern Mesopotamia, urban centres such as Uruk grew by the end of the fourth millennium BCE. City-states developed in the Sumerian region, with their own administrative and economic structures. For recording goods in Uruk, one of the earliest known writing systems—proto-cuneiform—emerged and later developed into cuneiform. Over the following millennia, cuneiform was used to write several languages of the Near East.
Mathematics, record-keeping, and trade developed alongside urban administration. Wheeled transport spread over roughly the same broad period, but early evidence from Mesopotamia and Europe is nearly contemporary; archaeologists continue to debate the sequence and possible centres of its emergence. Sumerian cities strongly influenced later Near Eastern history, but they were not the sole foundation of all world civilizations.