Until now, it was believed that mathematical thinking only began once people gained the knowledge of numbers and writing.

8,000-year-old pottery shards reveal ancient Mesopotamians understood maths before numbers invented - Decoration of pottery and seals in Halafian culture reflects high level of mathematical awareness, ...

More than 5,000 years ago, the world’s oldest known writing system emerged in what is now Iraq, establishing the country as the epicenter of recorded human history. […] ...

After the Elamites shattered Ur, Mesopotamia splintered into rival kingdoms, ambitious warlords, and fragile survivor states fighting over the ruins of Sumer. This chapter follows Shamshi-Adad’s ...

A radically expanded view of the origin of civilization, extending far beyond Mesopotamia is being proposed. Mesopotamia is widely believed to be the cradle of civilization, but a growing body of ...

Archaeologists have uncovered rare artifacts from the Paleolithic era at Ulukoy Cave in Türkiye’s southeastern Mardin province, revealing the earliest known evidence of human activity in northern ...

Learn how the first civilization in Mesopotamia depended on tides and how it responded when faced with a major environmental challenge. Many millennia ago, the tides turned for ancient Sumerians who ...

Driving north out of Samawa towards Baghdad, a short way beyond the Euphrates bridge, a tarmac track leaves the main road, heading eastwards into a scarred, dun-coloured wasteland. Soon you enter the ...

Although many of the more than 4,000 years old cuneiform texts contain records of deliveries of emmer, barley and malt to breweries, as well as documentation of the activities, there is hardly any ...

The idea of Mesopotamia has intoxicated the West for centuries. Alastair Sooke takes a look at a civilisation where much of modern culture took form. “Everybody has heard of the Hanging Gardens of ...

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or ...