Sumeria
From RationalWiki
The Sumerians were the first known civilization in the Middle East, possibly the first in the world, and definitely the first known to be literate; their original homeland, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, is known as Mesopotamia and now makes up a large part of the modern country of Iraq. Their Epic of Gilgamesh contains, among other things, the plot outline for what might have been the very first buddy road flick as well as the most significant attestation of the ancient Sumerian creation myth. While the Sumerian culture was eventually subsumed by the Semitic Akkadians (first the Assyrians, then the Babylonians) and later the Indo-European Persians, their culture, which included some of the very first organized agriculture and the origins of the ancient Middle Eastern temple-state, proved to be highly influential on the development of ancient civilizations.
The modern descendants of the Sumerians, to the extent that Sumerian genes can be picked out of the background noise of the many groups to inhabit and commingle in the Middle East, make up much of the population of Kuwait. Noted astronomy crank Zechariah Sitchin has a peculiar fascination with the Sumerians, doing for them what Immanuel Velikovsky did for Greek mythology.
