But only in this century have scholars come to know the Sumerians with any thoroughness, chipping away at the sites of such ancient city-states as Ur, Lagash and Mari. Last week a U.S. expedition ...

Flooding meant that crops weren't growing as well. Cities began to struggle. In the end, Sumer was invaded by the Elamites who came from modern-day Iran. Narrator: Hello, future people of the UK.

He maintains that Menes was at one and the same time the Sumerian emperor in Mesopotamia and the first dynastic king of Egypt, a crown-colony of his world-empire.