World History Lesson from Lt. Jason Nunn, Guest Blogger

One of the coolest things that I have gotten to do while I have been deployed is to learn about the history of the world and be located very close to where it started.  The area I am in is part of ancient Sumerian settlements that were around thousands of years ago.  Visiting the Ziggurat of Ur was awesome and just imagining that it was located on the coast a long time ago and the sheer size of it was incredible.  Taking into account that it was built by hand and is still around today is amazing.   
     
Ur was a city in ancient Sumer, located at the site of modern Tell el-Mukayyar in Iraq's Dhi Qar province.  Once a coastal city near the mouth of the then Euphrates River on the Persian Gulf, Ur is now well inland, south of the Euphrates on its right bank, 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from Nasiriyah, Iraq. It is close to the site of ancient Eridu. Ur was a Sumerian city-state. The city's patron deity was Nanna, the Sumerian moon god, and the name of the city is in origin derived from the god's name.  The site is marked by the ruins of the Great Ziggurat of Ur, which contained the shrine of Nanna, excavated in the 1930s. The temple was built in the 21st century BC, during the reign of Ur-Nammu and was reconstructed in the 6th century BC by Nabonidus.


(Jason Nunn, a Northwood High School and Greensboro College graduate, is a guest blogger in honor of Veterans Day.  He is a First Lieutenant in the United States Army and is currently stationed in Iraq.  We've asked him to give our Hot Topics Blog readers a first-hand account of his experience as the American Armed Forces wind down their mission in Iraq.  We are encouraging social studies classes to participate in order to help them make a real-life connection to history and current events.)