Re: Basque/Georgian

Gerry wrote in reply to my post

> John: I don't see Ubaid as synonymous with Sumerian. Rather I see

Ubaid

> as a development of the pre-Sumerian substratum peoples.
>
> Gerry: OK. So Ubaid is pre-Sumerian.

Spot on

> John: Extending the cultural realm down the Persian gulf brought them
> into contact with the Bahreini aboriginals (Sumerians), who

subsequently

> migrated northwards, settling first at Eridu, but hardly getting

further

> north than Kish.
>
> Gerry: And Bahreini aboriginals are the Sumerians. Absolutely
> fascinating! And it was the Sumerians who migrated north to Eridu and
> Kish.

Spot on again!

> John: As for when the nomads, (probably Semites), they probably also
> penetrated Mesopotamia in the north too (where they were to emerge as
> Akkadians). Whether they "pushed" the Sumerians out of Dilmun, or the
> Sumerians had decamped earlier (as a result of increasing dessication
> of the Arabian mainland), I think is too close to call... Perhaps a
> mixture of both.
>
> Gerry: I knew the Akkadians were Semitic. What does the

archaeological

> evidence show for displacement in Dilmun? Was there warfare or not?

Yes there is evidence that during the Jemdet Nasr phase Dilmun seems to
have been abandonned by its previous inhabitants (which would have
occurred if they had en masse decamped to Southern Mesopotamia).
Mesopotamian contact with Dilmun was re-established during Early
Dynastic times. The spot seems to have been a preferred location for
the burrial of upper class Sumerians, and Dilmun and the surrounding
areas was covered with cemetries and cenotaphs (monuments celebrating
the dead burried elsewhere) of Sumerian people who died in Southern
Mesopotamia.

The Epic of Gilgamesh contains a reference to Uta-Napishtim the Faraway
- who was granted immortality by the gods for saving humanity from
Enlil's flood, and who lived in Dilmun. The Sumerian creation myth
spoke about how the world was created out of a mingling of salt and
sweet waters. It was the creation of sky and air that separated the
salt (oceans) from the sweet (rainfall). Bahrein gets its name from
freshwater springs that appear in the ocean - and this evidence was the
archetypal "pre-creation" state of the Sumerians.

Sumerians all claim to have come from Dilmun - and to have settled
first at Eridu - it is in their own words. "Kingship descended first
at Eridu" - and in the Sumerian kinglist Eridu was the first. This
would obviously have been the case if the Sumerians came from the south
over the sea, on high-prowed read boats similar to those used by their
(genetic - not linguistic descendents) the Marsh Arabs of today.

> > John: Thus there was a greater distance between the Bahreini

Sumerians

> > and the Elamite-Dravidian dialect chain, stretching from the Zagros

to

> > the Indus and possibly beyond.
> >
> > Gerry: Hmmmm. We're now talking language rather than people?
>
> Gerry - I suspect the answer to this is "both".
>
> > Gerry: YES. Thank you. Do you have more?
>
> John: Certainly more on a proposed Dilmun/Bahreini origin of the
> Sumerians - yes. I'll send more on later if you want.

I dig it out and send it to you. It may take a little time.

Regards

John