Who Are These Guys?

I came across a documentary on a popular video website about the Sumerians.
It was very interesting and I wanted to know more.
Who were these guys I thought? and where do they fit into the bigger scheme of things?
And Babylon? And the mesopotamians, the Hittites?
Who came first, second and where were they on the map?

I decided to put them into chronological order by year and found maps to pinpoint their location.
Now I had two anchors, year and place. With these, I could memorise the year and visualise the location.
In my new found interest it wasn't long before Egypt came into the timeline, then the Hebrews and Canin. With these two came exposure to Biblical scripture.