"A narrative history of the early Near East is virtually impossible," confessed archaeologist Paul Collins, the curator for the ancient Near East at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, in his 2016 study, Mountains and Lowlands: Ancient Iran and Mesopotamia. The Sumerians, Collins's latest contribution to the Lost Civilizations series, eschews narrative in favor of separate chapters on, for example, "The first cities" and "The first writing." Even the book's opening chronology refers to "Sumerian" only as a descriptor of language and script, not as a people, state, dynasty, or empire.

中文翻译：

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文明曙光中的人民

考古学家保罗·柯林斯（Paul Collins）承认：“近东早期的叙事历史几乎是不可能的，”牛津阿什莫林博物馆（Ashmolean Museum）古代近东的策展人在他2016年的研究《山脉与低地：古代伊朗和美索不达米亚》中承认。苏美尔人，柯林斯对《失落的文明》系列的最新贡献，避免了叙事，而倾向于使用单独的章节，例如“第一批城市”和“第一批著作”。甚至该书的开篇年表也仅将“苏美尔人”作为语言和文字的描述，而不是作为一个人，一个州，一个王朝或一个帝国。