The sumerians

[The Glorious Moldovan]

The most underrated and underexplored civilization to this day in my opinion, considering they invented the most important things we have today.

I know little about them and all i have is a book with some theories regarding their origins and DNA roots, and would like to learn more if someone's willing to share some books/reading material

So anyways, the reason i made the thread was that i came to the conclusion that every civilization had to "borrow" technology and knowledge from a previous civilization. Rome from the ethruscs,carthaginians, ancient greece from Egypt, egypt from sumer. Yet, how on earth were the sumerians able to build ziggurats, invent soap the sewer system, mathematics all by themselves? and if not, how and where did they meet new civilizations to interact and absorb the said knowlege to implement them in sumer?

Patiently awaiting someone that knows to answear.

[PikeStance]

The most underrated and underexplored civilization to this day in my opinion, considering they invented the most important things we have today.

I know little about them and all i have is a book with some theories regarding their origins and DNA roots, and would like to learn more if someone's willing to share some books/reading material

So anyways, the reason i made the thread was that i came to the conclusion that every civilization had to "borrow" technology and knowledge from a previous civilization. Rome from the ethruscs,carthaginians, ancient greece from Egypt, egypt from sumer. Yet, how on earth were the sumerians able to build ziggurats, invent soap the sewer system, mathematics all by themselves? and if not, how and where did they meet new civilizations to interact and absorb the said knowlege to implement them in sumer?

Patiently awaiting someone that knows to answear.

I started off primarily focus on history. So much so, I manage to get a degree in history. Through teaching, I have been pressed into teaching geography, anthropology, and other social studies courses. I have over time gained an appreciation to the development of early civilizations. An interesting book I read recently was A Brief History of the Human Race by Michael Cook. It dealt with the development of early societies as well as unique cultural identities for select peoples. You are correct that cultures developed through interactions, even as hunters and gatherers. We know this because technology "moves" from one area to the next.

If we consider the Sumerians; it is possible that they "borrowed" ideas from other people. It is also possible that they may have developed themselves. The region is fertile and can sustain a large population. A larger population means more possibilities for ideas. It is also possible that they "borrowed" small ideas and then turned them into larger ideas. We may never know. Its unfortunate that they wrote on clay tablets robbing us of knowing them better.

[The Glorious Moldovan]

Oh wow, guess i ended up researching them all by myself afterall


Im going to dump what resources i found and make your own conclusions

The Origin of Sumerians

^This papper suggests that their origins are being analised separatly, but nontheless " The only possible and provable location of their original homeland, “based on the analysis” is; between the Caspian Sea and the Hindu Kush and Kopet Mountains, which is in Turkmenistan."

http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/~asahala...an_and_pie.pdf

And in this papper, where Aleksi tries to establish a link between Indo-Europeans and Sumerian's language, Samuel Kramer is cited and his theory that sumerians migrated south from the caucasian mountains, while the sumerians themselves in the clay tablets claimed kinship with the people of Dilmun

BMC Evolutionary Biology | Full text | In search of the genetic footprints of Sumerians: a survey of Y-chromosome and mtDNA variation in the Marsh Arabs of Iraq.

^This genetic survey tried to trace the genetic footprints of sumerians trying to corelate them with the Marsh Arabs, resulting that the sumerians were natives

http://www.livescience.com/10340-los...sian-gulf.html
^This research says that before the end of the last ice-age the then dried persian gulf already had humans dwelling in that region, this also might explain the flood myth wrote by the sumerians on the clay tablets


New Light on Human Prehistory in the Arabo-Persian Gulf Oasis

Early State Formation in Southern Mesopotamia: Sea Levels, Shorelines and Climate Change

Shoreline reconstructions for the Persian Gulf since the last glacial maximum