Glen wrote
> "The earliest recorded language was Sumerian - the Sumerians were
located in
> CENTRAL and southern Mesopotamia. Semitic people were located in
the
> immediate NORTH and west. The earliest recorded Semitic language
was
> Akkadian. Further north, in modern-day TURKEY, Caucasian languages
were
> spoken."
>
> Just redraw the map, John.
Glen Sumerian was not spoken in Central Mesopotamia. In fact the
city
of Nippur well below Bagdad was the linguistic frontier between
Semitic Akkadian and Sumerian from early Dynastic times and probably
before. The Sumerians themselves claimed to come from Dilmun and
acknowledged Eridu as their first settlement. Dilmun in Sumerian has
been continuously associated with Bahrein, and was the site of a well
developed Ubaid colony. Eridu was on the head of the Persian Gulf as
it was 5,000 years ago (3,000 BCE).
Akkadian was spoken in Kish, so that the first Dynasty of Kish all
have Akkadian (not sumerian) names, Akkadian was also spoken
therefore in Southern Mesopotamia, but not as far south as Sumerian.
In Assyria, the chief language spoken was Subartu - a language
probably related to Hurrian. Akkadian was only ever a court
language, and Sumerian was a language of the scribes, never a
vernacular. It only became completely Semitised with the Amorite
Invasion and the rise of the dynasty of Shamshi Adad. The
Amorites spoke a West Semitic language but as a superstratum it
was fully absorbed into Akkadian until Babylonian times. Hurrian is,
even you agree, a NE Caucasian language. Assyria is in central
Mesopotamia. It has never been in Turkey to my knowledge.
Regards
John