Silver shekels are approximately 1/3 the weight of an ounce. For each month of work, one shekel was paid. As soon as people who broke the law were fined in shekels, rulers began charging them fines.

Save guides, add subjects and pick up where you left off with your BBC account. Narrator: Hello, future people of the UK. Would you like to visit me at the dawn of civilisation in ancient Sumer?

Excavations on unpromising mounds in the Iraqi desert revealed Sumer’s earliest city. Surviving relics and a rebuilt temple ...

Marked with the administrative details of government, the tablets have illuminated the complicated bureaucracy of an ancient ...

LIMA (Reuters) -Archaeologists in coastal Peru have discovered the 5,000-year-old remains of a woman who may have belonged to the upper echelons of the ancient Caral civilization, a find they say ...