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Semitic languages were probably introduced in Mesopatamia by early semitic speakers, but to what extend did they influence the indigeneous civilization. Is there some similarities between the neolithic farming revolution in the Levant and Southern Europe and that of Mesopotamia since they occur roughly less than 10,000 years ago?
quote:Palestine is not a part of mesopotamia which refers to areas now a part of the tigres and euphrates [iraq].
That's precisely, why I'm asking that question, and also because the early inhabitants of Mesopotamia developed the following:
The Sumerian language of ancient Sumer was spoken in Southern Mesopotamia from at least the 4th millennium BC. Sumerian was replaced by Akkadian as a spoken language around 2000 BC, but continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial and scientific language in Mesopotamia until about 1 AD. Then, it was forgotten until the 19th century. Sumerian is distinguished from other languages of the area such as Hebrew, Akkadian, which also comprises Babylonian and Assyrian, and Aramaic, which are Semitic languages, and Elamite, which may be an Elamo-Dravidian language.
From the beginning of the second millennium, Babylonians and Assyrians maintained and utilized the extinct Sumerian language in much the same way that ancient Greek and Latin are used for artistic, religious and scholarly purposes today.
Many technical innovations are attributed to the Sumerians. Among these are:
Writing (the cuneiform script on clay tablets) and systematic record keeping the Plow Social and economic organization Units of time (the division of a day into 24 hours and one hour into 60 minutes)
posted
^^You need to keep pace with up-to-date sourcing rathering lingering on out-of-date material or their holdouts.
Very familiar excerpt:
WHC: How does a small group of Semites coming in from Africa transform the language of a region in which they are a minority?
Ehret: One of the archaeological possibilities is a group called the Mushabaeans. This group moves in on another group that's Middle Eastern. Out of this, you get the Natufian people. Now, we can see in the archaeology that people were using wild grains the Middle East very early, back into the late glacial age, about 18,000 years ago. But they were just using these seeds as they were. At the same time, in this northeastern corner of Africa, another people the Mushabaeans? are using grindstones along the Nile, grinding the tubers of sedges. Somewhere along the way, they began to grind grain as well. Now, it's in the Mushabian period that grindstones come into the Middle East.
Conceivably, with a fuller utilization of grains, they're making bread. We can reconstruct a word for "flatbread," like Ethiopian injira. This is before proto-Semitic divided into Ethiopian and ancient Egyptian languages. So, maybe, the grindstone increases how fully you use the land. This is the kind of thing we need to see more evidence for. We need to get people arguing about this.
And by the way: we can reconstruct the word for "grindstone" back to the earliest stage of Afrasan. Even the Omati have it. And there are a lot of common words for using grasses and seeds.
quote:Africa: Now to what extent Natufians influenced Mesopotamia civilization?
I think you are grasping at straws here. It is not about influencing "Mesopotamian civilization", which in itself makes no sense, it is about establishing agriculture in an entire region, the Levant in this case, and flow of new technology (new microlithic tools) and cultural elements (like language), and ultimately allowing for population expansions. With population expansions/growth and settled communities, social complexes eventually developed more complex systems of social hierarchy and social institutions to deal with the 'sustainance' of a given community. This includes the development of trade routes between communities where people come into contact and exchange material and ideas.
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You tell me; whoever they were, they were the resultant of the ensuing population growth and expansions as a result of agriculture developed in the region. Today, the entire region of southwest Asia almost universally speak Afrasan languages, which likely developed from proto-Afrasan/pre-proto-Semitic!
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quote:It is not about influencing "Mesopotamian civilization", which in itself makes no sense
Indeed by wary of the conceptualisation of 'mesopotamia' which is not a nation, yet is often compared to actual nations - Km.t, China, India etc. in terms of priority of development of 'civilisation'.
Because Mesopotamia, and civilisation are both so vaguely defined, Eurocentrists are free to play with the meaning of both in order to create a de-facto dialectic of - mesopotamia is cradle of civilisation.
Early farmers may have sown social upheavals from the Middle East to Europe Nearly 80 years ago, the British archaeologist V. Gordon Childe championed a theory of what he called a revolution in food production during the Neolithic age. Childe proposed that hunting- and-gathering groups in the Middle East had been the first people to grow crops, raise animals for food, and live year-round in villages- around 10,000 years ago. In his scenario, farmers then spread into prehistoric Europe, where they spurred the equally revolutionary rise of modern civilization.
Childe's ideas triggered a scientific squabble over the roots of agriculture that has produced two polarized camps. Childe-friendly researchers hold that expanding populations of Middle Eastern farmers moved across Europe and replaced hunter-gatherers already living there. This massive migration is often portrayed as a wave of advance, in which farming populations inexorably annexed new chunks of land at a rate of about 1 kilometer annually as they cut a path northwest through Europe. In the process, they overwhelmed any hunter-gatherers who happened to be in their way.
A contrasting approach, which has arisen over the past 20 years, pegs the Neolithic transition to a movement largely of ideas, not people. In this scenario, European hunter-gatherers slowly adopted agricultural practices on their own or after brief encounters with encroaching Middle Eastern farmers. Thus, over millennia, the Europeans picked up farming techniques as they continued their nomadic ways. Proponents of this theory suspect that crops and livestock initially were eaten in Europe only on special occasions or during rituals.
This debate has now taken a novel turn. Some anthropologists are proposing that farmers spread from the Middle East into Europe via a convoluted series of prehistoric migrations. Those population pulses often covered much larger swaths of land in much shorter periods than would have been possible with a single, slowly advancing wave of cultivators.
Rapid shifts to agriculture then revolutionized social life across Europe. As cultivators came to occupy the stomping grounds of people who had long thrived as hunter-gatherers, the choice became a stark one: Farm or die.
The seeds of agriculture's eventual dominance may have been sown surprisingly early. Evidence at a Stone Age site in Israel shows that the people who lived there began to lay the groundwork for farming at least 23,000 years ago, although crop cultivation in that region didn't begin until roughly 13,000 years later. Agriculture's ancient forerunners gathered and ate seeds from grasses and wild cereals such as wheat and barley (SAT; 7/24/04, p. 61), as a substantial part of their diets. These Stone Age people didn't plant seeds, though.
Archaeological finds indicate that as conditions became colder and drier between 11,000 and 10,200 years ago, Middle Eastern groups that had founded large settlements a few millennia earlier left those outposts for a mobile, foraging lifestyle. When the weather finally turned warmer and wetter, they quickly built villages and cultivated an array of crops.
According to the new theories on agriculture's roots, this is when crop-savvy populations in the East launched a succession of smallscale treks into Europe. They often sailed vessels along the northern Mediterranean coast before reaching islands such as Cyprus or heading up major rivers such as the Danube. In some regions, farmers replaced hunter-gatherers; in other areas, natives and newcomers lived side by side.
Around 6,000 years ago, farming reached northwestern Europe and quickly reshaped the social landscape. Within a century or two, the farmers' way of life became dominant. Many hunter-gatherers who had long inhabited the region faced a wrenching change as they adopted the strange new culture of agriculture.
"The idea that foragers made a seamless, gradual transition to farming is unrealistic and has no sound evidence to support it," says Harvard University archaeologist Ofer Bar-Yosef, who contributed to a special supplement of the Aug.-Oct. 2004 Current Anthropology on the topic of agricultural revolutions of Neolithic Europe and the Middle East. Those transformations triggered the growth of complex societies and religious beliefs, Bar-Yosef contends.
GAME FOR CHANGE The immediate ancestors of the first farmers in the Middle East belonged to the Natufian culture, which lasted from about 12,800 to 10,200 years ago. The remains of game animals at four Natufian sites in Israel provide clues to what was apparently a bumpy transition to agriculture, says anthropologist Natalie D. Munro of the University of Connecticut in Storrs.
Throughout much of their existence, Natufians avidly hunted gazelle as well as small animals such as tortoises, partridges, and hares. Natufians inhabited permanent settlements or base camps in numbers large enough to necessitate hunting a wide variety of animals, in Munro's view.
The Natufians' hunting preferences changed around 11,000 years ago, as an 800-year stretch of cold, dry weather winnowed the populations of many animals in their home regions. Natufian numbers also fell with the temperature, Munro proposes. The region's inhabitants, who had congregated in large settlements, returned to their old ways of foraging from a series of temporary camps. Animal remains at these sites bolster that scenario, indicating that ancient residents still ate gazelle when they could find them, but that small prey had disappeared from their menu.
As many Middle Easterners had done for millennia, the Natufians continued to collect and eat wild cereals. Intimate knowledge of these plants and their growing seasons set the stage for cultivation, says Munro. "When climatic conditions improved around 10,000 years ago, cereal agriculture was adopted immediately," she contends.
Emily L. Jones of the University of Washington in Seattle calls this theory "an elegant and realistic alternative" to the assumption by many Childe-influenced researchers that people stabilized food supplies amid harsh weather by moving directly from foraging to farming.
Brian Hayden of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, suspects that social and political changes, not climate change, prompted the move to agriculture in the Middle East. He notes that during the cold, dry conditions, Natufians apparently organized hunting parties to nab gazelles. This indicates that communities still needed to feed large numbers of people, Hayden says. Meat was primarily consumed at ritual feasts, in his view. Prehistoric Native Americans often hunted to stock up on meat for feasts, he notes.
As climate conditions improved, expanding Natufian societies eventually became laboratories of agriculture and animal domestication, Hayden theorizes.
GROWTH INDUSTRY - New research suggest that agriculture, including wheat cultivation, made rapid advances in the ancient Middle East and Europe.
WESTWARD HO After thus sprouting on the Mediterranean's eastern edge, agriculture set in motion the search for new expanses of land, according to the latest thinking. Early farmers had no master plan for migrating into Europe. Different groups simply moved into the continent in a haphazard fashion
One new line of evidence for such migrations comes from an analysis, directed by Sue Colledge of University College London, of preserved crops and weeds at early farming sites. Colledge's team examined data from 166 sites in the Middle East and Europe, many of which have been dated to the agricultural transition period. So-called founder crops of Neolithic fanners appeared more than 10,000 years ago in the Middle East, according to Colledge's team. These crops consisted of three domesticated cereals-emmer, einkorn, and hulled barley-together with flax and four bean varieties- lentil, pea, bitter vetch, and chickpea.
Over the next 3,000 years, local variations on this basic crop repertoire appeared in central Turkey and then in Cyprus, Crete, and Greece. Agricultural colonists of those areas must have transported grains that they then sowed in fields cleared of wild plants, Colledge asserts. Unlike the weed-strewn farming sites in the Middle East, European sites reveal remains of few weeds.
An increasingly varied set of crops moving from east to west, as documented by Colledge's team, suggests that the migration of early farmers "was not an organized one but more like an infiltration from all parts of the core to all parts of the new area," remarks Mehmet zdogan of Istanbul (Turkey) University. A new analysis of human skulls excavated at various Neolithic settlements throws an anatomical spotlight on farmers' infiltrations into Europe. Two British researchers, Ron Pinhasi of the University of Surrey Roehampton in London and Mark Pluciennik of the University of Leicester, measured and compared the shapes of 231 adult skulls from 54 sites in the Middle East and Europe.
Initial farming groups in the Middle East and Turkey differed considerably from each other in cranial shape, Pinhasi and Pluciennik find. Signature physical traits in prehistoric communities across that region reflect the growth of largely independent agricultural populations, they assert.
A small core of cultivators from central Turkey first tookagriculture westward, the researchers propose. Striking anatomical similarities link early farmers in central Turkey to people who, around 8,000 years ago, began growing crops in Greece and nearby parts of southeastern Europe.
Agriculture then gradually caught on in Mediterranean regions farther to the west, as local foragers mingled with various bands of incoming farmers, Pinhasi and Pluciennik contend. This process yielded many variations in cranial shape among these farmers as well as some commonalities between their skulls and those of hunter- gatherers who lived in the region, they say.
The new cranial findings are consistent with many simultaneous incursions of farmers into Europe, remarks Joo Zilho of the Portuguese Institute of Archaeology in Lisbon. In 2001, Zilho's analysis of farming settlements in western Europe indicated that the most-securely dated ones were built in a period lasting just 100 years or so approximately 7,400 years ago. From that narrow window of time, he estimates that it took no more than six generations for farming to spread to Portugal from what's now central Italy. Only colonists who sailed vessels along the Mediterranean coast and up European rivers could have settled such a vast area so rapidly, in Zilho's opinion.
In the past several years, other researchers have uncovered a geographic patchwork of genetic types among modern Europeans. These researchers have generally interpreted this evidence as reflecting the replacement of Neolithic hunter-gatherers by many different groups of farmers. Such genetic data could instead have resulted from breeding within geographically isolated populations of both hunter-gatherers and farmers, Pinhasi and Pluciennik caution. That possibility would support the gradual-change scenario.
A NEW WORLD Agriculture's spread may have ignited social revolutions from southeastern Europe to the continent's northwestern fringes. Archaeological evidence now shows that, about 6,000 years ago, a village lifestyle of farming and animal raising swept through what are now England, Ireland, and southern Scandinavia, says Peter Rowley-Conwy of the University of Durham in England.
"The rapidity of change must have been traumatic for huntergatherers who inhabited those regions," he says. "Agriculture's appearance in northwestern Europe represented a massive social and economic wave of disruption."
Rowly-Conwy's view clashes with a theory popular among archaeologists, many of whom regard Neolithic farm life as having gradually emerged among local hunter-gatherers throughout much of Europe. As these people grew more numerous and expanded their efforts to obtain food, social classes formed and new religious beliefs appeared, according to this view. That led to early attempts to cultivate fields as well as the construction of ceremonial structures and elaborate graves beginning around 6,000 years ago. However, no archaeological finding indicates that hunter- gatherers in northwestern Europe gradually increased in numbers or in social complexity, Rowley-Conwy asserts. Various lines of evidence instead suggest that agricultural settlements sprang up at that time throughout northwestern Europe, he says.
Newly arrived farmers first felled trees in small patches of forest. In clearings framed by stone walls, they built wooden houses, cultivated fields, and raised animals for meat and daily products (SN: 2/1/03, p. 67). Northwestern Europe's hunter- gatherers took up farming, fled the region, or starved, Rowley- Conwy proposes.
He notes that at least 175 wooden houses dating to between 6,000 and 4,000 years ago have now been identified in England, Ireland, Denmark, and southern Sweden. The remains of one or more houses typically are among the vestiges of stone walls, irrigation ditches, and tilled fields. Many of the prehistoric dwellings include storage areas holding cultivated cereal grains and remnants of foraged foods such as hazelnuts and wild apples. Other finds suggest that a similarly rapid move to agriculture occurred farther south, along the coast of what's now Portugal and Spain, says Lawrence G. Straus of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
Still, the evidence cited of agricultural revolutions in Europe draws criticism. For instance, Julian Thomas of the University of Manchester in England doubts that anyone lived in the ancient structures labeled as houses by Rowley-Conwy. Many burned down, probably as part of a Neolithic practice of torching ceremonial buildings that held special foods such as cereal grains and cattle meat, Thomas theorizes. That fits with the theory of agriculture being slowly incorporated into hunter-gatherer culture. Despite the wealth of new data, Childe's agricultural revolution continues to stand on contested ground.
"The rapidity of change must have been traumatic for hunter- gatherers." - PETER ROWLEY-CONWY, UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM
Copyright Science Service, Incorporated Feb 5, 2005
posted
Yes I agree. Middle East is ambiguous and vague in this context and does little to explain the origins of Agriculture, let alone what role Africans may have had in it.
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BONES OF CANNIBALS A PALESTINE RIDDLE Wireless to THE NEW YORK TIMES. New York Times 1857; Aug 4, 1932; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2003) pg. 21
Negroid people of 5000 B. C.Unlike Any Modern Race Described by Keith.
ATE BODIES OF ENEMIES Men, Short of Stature, Burned Bones of Dead After Burial, London Session Hears. TEETH OF WOMEN DRAWN Linking relics to Burnt Skeletons from Ur scientist speculate an old cremation custom.
Wireless to NEW YORK TIMES London Aug. 3
Seven or eight thousand years ago in what geologist call modern times a race of negroid cannibals lived In Palestine, burned the bones of their dead after burial, and devoured the bodies of their enemies. Skulls and thighbones of this race were unearthed within the last four years, first at Shukbah near Jerusalem and later in caves at Mount Carmel, and because they puzzled the excavators who found them they received the new name “Natufians.” Today the first authoritative account of them was given by Sir Arthur Keith to the congress of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences and showed them to be one of the greatest riddles of archaeology. They were clearly a Negroid people, said Sir Arthur, with wide faces flat- noses and long large heads. They were short of stature 5 feet 3 or 4 inches tall-and their thighs and legs were remarkably strong. While their arms and shoulders were weak. Alone Among prehistoric peoples they had a custom of extracting the two upper central incisor teeth of their women. Jagged holes in the fronts of their skulls indicate that they ate human brains.
Unlike Any present Race.
They may have been ancestors or the Arabs or Semites of biblical times, in Sir Arthur's opinion. They had some facial characteristics like those of the Neolithic or late Stone Age men of Malta and the remoter Aurignacian men of Southern Europe. But whatever the similarities sir Arthur declared, they lived between 5000 and 6000 B. C. and cannot be identified with any race on earth today. In addition to all these riddles, Sir Arthur propounded another linking them unaccountably to ancient Ur of the Chaldees and the prehistoric man of South Africa. From piles of charred and fragmented bones found in Palestine-mostly women's bones- Sir Arthur concluded they did not cremate their dead, but burned them long after burial. "By a strange coincidence," he said. "At the time the burnt remains came to me Leonard Woolley sent me a box of human remains from under the foundations of Ur. These burnt bones from Ur-of about the third dynasty also represented not ordinary cremation-cremation of dead bodies clothed with flesh-but Cremation of dried skeletons. In the remains from Ur women's bones were preponderant. “Two years ago Miss Gertrude Catton-Thompson sent me burned bones from under the foundations of Zimbabwe in Southern Rhodesia. These represented the skulls of two women which had been burned long after the flesh had disappeared from them. Was there once a custom in ancient times of digging up the bones of ancestors and then subjecting them to an ordeal of fire?” Boxes of charred bones from Palestine were on the table while Sir Arthur spoke, together with a dozen curiously shaped reddish skulls that stared across the lecture room. Scientists who listened were startled and bewildered. Miss Dorothy Garrod, British Archaeologist, who had found the remains while working for the British School of Archaeology and the American School of Prehistoric Studies, assured the audience that they were comparatively modern and they were of the Mesolithic period. Natufian remains, it should be remembered, are in no way connected with the more recent discoveries of a new race of fossil men, also in caves, near Mt Carmel. The fossil men, so remarkably different from all others yet found, became extinct in the remotely distant past, while the Natufians may still have been living when the first city-states of Sumeria arose. Sir Arthur based his conclusions today on twenty comparatively complete skulls of eighty-seven found by Miss Garrod.
Cites Features of Race
“Several features stand out quite definitely'' he asserted; first the Natufians were a long-headed people - they had cap-shaped occiputs (the lower back part of the head). Secondly, the dimensions or their heads were greater than in the pre-dynastic Egyptians. Thirdly, their faces were short and wide. Fourthly, they were prognathous (with projecting jaws). Fifthly, their nasal bones were not narrow and high, but formed a wide, low arch. Sixthly, their chins were not prominent, but were masked by the fullness of the teeth-bearing parts of the jaw. “The Natufians at Shukbah seem to have practiced cannibalism, for it is only by making this supposition that one can explain the cutting and fracturing of bones. The characters of the cuts and the broken surfaces show the bones were still in a fresh state when the damage was done. I believe the Shukbah people ate human brains.” The cannibalism theory was strongly disputed by Professor Elliott smith, eminent geologist, who said he was entirely skeptical of it. Also Professor Smith said it was not uncommon in Egypt to find burned bones in graves. “But it is a question of remarkable interest to know what these charred bones mean,” he said. “And if it should be shown that cutting teeth was in vogue it will make us revise all our knowledge, for the earliest instance we know is in 300 B.C.” Professor Smith objected, too, that it was hardly possible that these people had had Negro blood, but Sir Arthur speedily corrected him. By the word Negroid he meant merely Negro-like characteristics such as are found throughout Europe and even in Scandinavia. Sir Arthur drew the inference that the Natufians had carried Aurignacian culture into Palestine after the last glacier age, which was approximately 35000 years ago. Later Sir Arthur read and discussed a paper form Lewis S. B. Leakey, British Archaeologist working in East Africa, announcing the discovery of a new kind of anthropoid ape from an imaginary far-off Lower Pliocene period of perhaps a million years ago. It was just a fragment of bone that Sir Arthur held up for the audience to see – a piece of limb bone, he said, of a great ape like the chimpanzee. “Maybe this is the Miocene ancestor of the chimpanzee,” he said, “or the common ancestor of the gorilla and the chimpanzee.” Unlike Dr. Leakey’s announcement of Oldoway man, now thoroughly discredited, his latest find made a deep impression on the scientists present.Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
Whether Natufians lived in the Levant is not the issue Djehuti, read the whole thread...Doug M was referring to the definition of "Middle East" in the article...I hope someone will clarify that article definition in terms of the geography of that region and the following:
The term "Middle East" is fluidly utilized when the 'politically-driven' occasion necessitates it. In contemporary geopolitics, there is tendency to include "Egypt" in this, with the endorsement of Egyptian ruling elites, who identify with "Arabism" and are part of the Arab League. In Eurocentric circles, in academia, there is tendency to general use this as a euphemism for "southwest Asia" not including "Egypt", while in other instances, "Egypt" is included.
"Middle East" is not a continent; Africa is a continent, as is Asia. Kemet lay in Africa, and even today, geopolitically and geographically, entire portions of Egypt, barring the tiny little junction with Asia at the Sinai peninsula, rests in Africa. Undoubtedly, this junction was instrumental in the pre-historic out-of-Africa migrations, and subsequent back-migrations.
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posted
Thank you for the clarification. How is it used in the article you posted? What area does it cover. And since you're a very resourceful person, do you have any information regarding this quote:
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From the looks of it, here [the article I re-posted] context is placing the term in "southwest Asia", being that the Natufians are a central subject. However, as we know, the Natufians are connected to the Nile Valley, biologically and culturally. I provided a link to an Egyptsearch discussion along with the article for a reason: It puts this subject into broader context.
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I am not sure what this question has to do with the "Neolithic" spread of agriculture? I mean, on the one hand, you talk about "Neolithic farmers" and early "Semitic", and on the other, about who the "Sumerians" supposedly were. What gives? The Sumerians were the product of earlier farming settlements in southwest Asia, but the culture in itself marks a post-Neolithic Holocene period. So I am not sure where you are going with this.
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Is it possible that the Sumerians developped farming independently, since they were culturally different from other Southwest farmers and the presence of semitic only occur after the development of a complex society in that region?
What is your source for this claim? That the Sumerians preceded the "Semitic" speaking groups in southwest Asia?
As for the issue of their farming background, that would depend on whether they were native to southwest Asia or not.
quote:Africa:
Another reason that's intriguing is that modern scholars don't really know where they originated, unless you have some sources.
May well be the case, but the way you presented your earlier claim, I have a feeling you have a source that suggests where they originated. Even their language, while claimed to have affinities with the Dravidian type, is still not a certain thing.
Actually, the onus is on you to provide a source that states that if, as you put it, the "Sumerians" preceded Semitic speaking groups in the region, that they developed agriculture "independently" in that region, of that of the proto-Afrasan/pre-proto-Semitic speaking early farmers [Natufians] in the Levantine region. The majority of the folk who live in this region, are still largely Afrasan speaking groups.
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Among the earliest civilizations were the diverse peoples living in the fertile valleys lying between the Tigris and Euphrates valley, or Mesopotamia, which in Greek means, "between the rivers." In the south of this region, in an area now in Kuwait and northern Saudi Arabia, a mysterious group of people, speaking a language unrelated to any other human language we know of[b], began to live in cities, which were ruled by some sort of monarch, and began to write. [b]These were the Sumerians, and around 3000 BC they began to form large city-states in southern Mesopotamia that controlled areas of several hundred square miles. The names of these cities speak from a distant and foggy past: Ur, Lagash, Eridu. These Sumerians were constantly at war with one another and other peoples, for water was a scarce and valuable resource. The result over time of these wars was the growth of larger city-states as the more powerful swallowed up the smaller city-states. Eventually, the Sumerians would have to battle another peoples, the Akkadians, who migrated up from the Arabian Peninsula. The Akkadians were a Semitic people, that is, they spoke a Semitic language related to languages such as Hebrew and Arabic. When the two peoples clashed, the Sumerians gradually lost control over the city-states they had so brilliantly created and fell under the hegemony of the Akkadian kingdom which was based in Akkad, the city that was later to become Babylon.
But that was not the end of the Sumerians. The Akkadians abandoned much of their culture and absorbed vast amounts of Sumerian culture, including their religion, writing, government structure, literature, and law. But the Sumerians retained nominal control over many of their defeated city-states, and in 2125, the Sumerian city of Ur rose up against the Akkadians and gained for their daring control over the city-states of southern Mesopotamia. But the revival of Sumerian fortune was to be short-lived, for after a short century, another wave of Semitic migrations signed the end of the original creators of Mesopotamian culture.
But history sometimes plays paradoxical games and human cultures sometimes persist in strange ways. For the great experiment of the Sumerians was civilization, a culture transformed by the practical effects of urbanization, writing, and monarchy. While the Sumerians disappear from the human story around 2000 BC, the invaders that overthrew them adopted their culture and became, more or less, Sumerian. They adopted the government, economy, city-living, writing, law, religion, and stories of the original peoples. Why? What would inspire a people to deliberately adopt foreign ways? For whatever reason, the culture the later Semites inherited from the Sumerians consisted of the following:
And from anothe source that indicates that there might not be continuity between the Natufian culture and proto Sumerian culture:
The Chaldeo-Elamite region had, like Egypt, been a seat of prehistoric civilization and of powerful states. Around 3500 B.C., Chaldea appears to have been already divided into two regions, that of the Sumerian race and language and that of the Semitic. The language of the former was spoken in southern Chaldean cities such as Ur, Lagash and others. The race was characterized by a round, brachycephalic skull and an eagle-beaked nose, the face and head being shaven. The Chaldean cuneiform writing may have been created for the Sumerian language. The Akkadian language, spoken in northern Chaldean cities such as Kish, Agade and Babylon, was Semitic. The profiles of the people of that area exhibited a straight nose, somewhat enlarged at its lower extremity. They were long-haired and bearded. Disclaimer: I wouldn't use the term "race".
That's one of the reasons I would like to have more substantial material linking Afrasian Natufians (who spread mainly in the fertile crescent and further in Southern Europe and some other parts of West Asia) and the Sumerians.
posted
First of all, you need to get into the habit of at least giving credit to the author, if not the link to the source of the citation. Secondly, this is simply your rehashing of this notion that "Akkadians" , "Semitic" speakers, coming to the scene after the Sumerians, but how about addressing my questions posed to you, which will undoubtedly help us come to the logical conclusion a.s.a.p.
I've addressed your questions; only fair, that you now address mine, isn't it?
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We here to learn, but we need accurate information, that's why I'm trying to see if someone can address the subject of this thread...
And we do this learning, by abiding to rules of civil discourse, by citing "sources" of citations, and "addressing the issues" at hand. The fallacies of the term "Mesopotomia", as placed in your intro notes, has already been relayed to you.
The concerns you present here, is contingent on your engagement in rules of civil discourse. Now, you've raised some issues, and I addressed them. For some reason, you think you are above addressing mine? Those questions were by design a response to claims you made. Any logical conclusion to the discussion at hand, is dependent on your engagement in the flow of the discussion.
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P.S.: Supercar, I will reply to your posts tomorrow...I have to go...have a good night!!!
Think about timeline issues when you reply, like how the spread of "Neolithic" farmers [Natufians] predates the appearance of the "Sumerians" in the region, and how linguistics and genetics interact with archeology to tell us that the movement of the relatives of these early farmers from the Nile Valley into the Levant and their subsequent co-habitation with in situ populations of those regions, was in association with the spread of proto-Afrasan languages. Out of these proto-Afrasan languages, the Semitic languages in the region developed.
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Thanks Supercar, I enjoyed our chit chat, altough I forgot to bring some cookies to our tea party...just joking...I was just looking for the following answer that I found after some research...thanks anyway...I'm looking forward to further debates: Report
Y-Chromosome Lineages Trace Diffusion of People and Languages in Southwestern Asia
Lluís Quintana-Murci,1 Csilla Krausz,1 Tatiana Zerjal,2 S. Hamid Sayar,3 Michael F. Hammer,4 S. Qasim Mehdi,5 Qasim Ayub,5 Raheel Qamar,5 Aisha Mohyuddin,5 Uppala Radhakrishna,6 Mark A. Jobling,7 Chris Tyler-Smith,2 and Ken McElreavey1
Farming and animal domestication are recent phenomena in human history, occurring from 10,000 years before present (YBP) onward. Farming arose independently in several parts of the world, including in a region in the Middle East known as the "Fertile Crescent," which extends from Israel through northern Syria to western Iran. From this region, agriculture expanded in both western and eastern directions. The expansion toward Europe is the most thoroughly studied (Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza 1984) and began 9,000 YBP. The spread of the farming economy toward the east, into the area from Iran to India, started a little later, between the 6th and the 5th millennia B.C. The Neolithic revolution in the Iranian region and in the Indus valley reached its zenith by 6,000 YBP and involved strong urban civilizations such as the Sumerian, the Elamite, and the Harappan.
posted
Does this now mean that you acknowledge that...
[*]Semitic speaking folks in the region descend from gene flow between Neolithic "proto-Afrasan" speaking immigrants from Africa via the Nile Valley and in situ Levantine populations, and hence, that Semitic speaking groups are native to the region in question. Naturally, this would also imply that Semitic speaking groups didn't proceed "Sumerians" in the region, since the "Sumerians" appeared in that region long after the aforemention "Neolithic" movement of people from the Nile Valley into the Levant.
[*]you no longer think that "Sumerians" independently developed agriculture in that region, i.e. southwest Asia, from that of the early "Neolithic farmers" (Natufians)?
[*]Cultural complexes in the region predate the appearance of "Sumerians" in the region?
Posts: 5964 | Registered: Jan 2005
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quote:[*]you no longer think that "Sumerians" independently developed agriculture in that region, i.e. southwest Asia, from that of the early "Neolithic farmers" (Natufians)?
quote:[*]you no longer think that "Sumerians" independently developed agriculture in that region, i.e. southwest Asia, from that of the early "Neolithic farmers" (Natufians)?
I assume that even though you cited only a portion of my post, that you acknowledge the rest of it, correct?
Posts: 5964 | Registered: Jan 2005
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The 'Neolithic Revolution' is a Eurocentric ruse. The 'Neolithic' was a process not an event. When Eurocentrics are allowed to define the terms of the debate the debate is a non-starter. The term neolithic means new stone-age. It relates to the use of microliths. The earliest microliths originate in Africa and diffuse into Eurasia at the end of the last ice-age. This migration of technology and people was the spark that led to complex societies around the circum-mediteranean basin.
-------------------- Black Roots. Posts: 2007 | From: Washington State | Registered: Oct 2006
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posted
^^Of couse, but make note that agriculture developed in several different ares of Africa as well as other parts of Eurasia and the Americas.
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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