Sumerians

Apart from being generally considered the first developed civilization in human history, the Sumerians were first in many other important ways. In fact, Sumer was the fountainhead of what some scholars refer to as "the thirty-nine firsts." These civilizational breakthroughs included educational institutions and professions as we know them today, the functional wheel incorporated into a vehicle, the first libraries, aquariums, organized religion, forms of democracy, and much else. The Sumerians were also the creators of the oldest known piece of literature, which is the famous Epic of Gilgamesh.