Sumer

A 3,500-year-old clay tablet discovered over a century ago in Iraq has been revealed as one of humanity's earliest examples of urban planning. The ancient map of Nippur, etched into a hand-sized tablet between 1500 and 1300 BC, displays remarkable accuracy that challenges modern assumptions about ancient cartographic capabilities and may represent the world's oldest city blueprint. Nippur: The Great Mesopotamian Holy City That Gave Early Ideas Of God History of Maps: From Ancient Artifacts to Modern Marvels Decades of Debate Over Ancient Precision When archaeologists first unearthed the tablet during an 1899 excavation in what is now modern-day Iraq, they struggled to interpret its purpose. According to National Geographic, the map depicts distances between gates in the wall surrounding