No to Sumeria.

From: John Croft

The recovery of sacred objects beneath the waters all appear to stem
from a Sumerian source.  I would refer you to the Epic of Gilgamesh
in which Utunapishtim informs Gilgamesh that the flower of
immortality blooms beneath the waters.  There is a description of how
the hero ties boulders around his ankles to retreive the blossom,
that seems to have been the source for later myths such as that of
Theseus.

A Sumerian source? There seems to have been something like this going on in the New World too with the Mayas. Waters have a universal fascination; and objects lost or retrieved, either accidentally or deliberately (even ritually) have the same attraction as tossing coins into a wishing well or public fountain.

 

Accepting a Pontic homeland, the PIEs were religiously at the shamanistic level, with medicine men a la Sitting Bull. What fragments of this we can retrieve (and we really can, it seems) have NOTHING to do with Sumeria. Even with a Middle European homeland, the Old Europeans were separated from whoever became the Sumerians by a good 2000-3000 years.

 

Mark.