- Archaic Sumerian – c.2900 BC to c.2600 BC
- Old or Classical Sumerian – c.2600 BC to c.2100 BC
- Neo-Sumerian – c.2100 BC to c.1700 BC
- Post-Sumerian – after c.1700 BC.
Later fell to, but absorbed akkadians; and later chaldeans.
Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary, and scientific language in Babylonia and Assyria until the 1st century AD.