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It's a great irony that Israel was more secure as an idea than its ever been as a nation with an army. In AD 70, when the Second Temple was destroyed, a handful of visionaries saved Judaism by reinventing it - by taking what had been a national religion, identified with a particular place, and turning it into an idea. Jews no longer needed Jerusalem to be Jews.

Dating to the fifth millennium BC, Sumerian civilization emerged seemingly out of nowhere, with no predecessor, in the land that is now southern Iraq. It has been known as Mesopotamia, Babylon, and Akkadia, but the Sumerians were the first culture to inhabit the land. We attribute to the Sumerians over 100 of the firsts needed for an advanced civilization.