Side question ... what exactly did the Sumerians do that "shifted the paradigm of how humans would and should live"?

"Civilization" or state-level society independently developed in many places in the Old World, not to mention the New World (though much later). Mesopotamian states didn't inspire the development of states elsewhere. Their development is a product of increasing social stratification, increasing divisions of wealth, increasing craft specialization, population aggregation, trade, resource surplus, etc. All these things had been developing over long periods in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and the Indus valley at roughly the same time, even if state-level organization appeared in Mesopotamia first.