From: João Simões Lopes Filho
Message: 3211
Date: 2000-08-17
----- Original Message -----
From: John Croft <jdcroft@...>
To: <cybalist@egroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2000 9:36 AM
Subject: [tied] Sumerian, Nostratic or Austric?
> The linguistic position of Sumerian is a difficlt one. It is clearly
> not Semitic, although a Sumerian substratum seems to exist beneath
> Akkadian. In form Sumerian is clearly an agglutinative language, and
> as such has sometimes been placed with Altaic - particularly Turkic.
> Despite attempts to demonstrate Turkic-Sumerian connections, these
> have not been accepted by most linguists. More recently, Glen on
> this
> list has included Sumerian (in Bomhardian fashion) within the
> Nostratic family as one of the early splits within the Eurasiatic
> branch (after Kartvellian and before Elamo-Dravidian).
>
> The question as to where Sumerian began also has a bearing on the
> debates about the affiliation of the Sumerian tongue.
>
> There are a number of different theories here
>
> 1. Sumerian began in situ: This is disputed by the fact that many of
> the arts and crafts, words for agriculture and placenames (toponomy)
> have a non Sumerian form. It has been proposed that there is a
> non-Sumerian substratum. For example "Some professional names and
> agricultural implements in Sumerian show that agriculture and the
> economic use of metals existed before the arrival of the Sumerians.
> Sumerian words with a pre-Sumerian origin are:
>
> * professional names such as simug 'blacksmith' and tibira 'copper
> smith', 'metal-manifacturer' are not in origin Sumerian words.
> * agricultural terms, like engar 'farmer', apin 'plow' and absin
> 'furrow', are neither of Sumerian origin.
> * craftsman like nangar 'carpenter', agab 'leather worker'
> * religious terms like sanga 'priest'
> * some of the most ancient cities, like Kish, have names that are
> not
> Sumerian in origin.
> * the Sumerian names for the Tigris and Euphrates are not Sumerian
> words
>
> These words must have been loan words from a substrate language. The
> words show how far the division in labor had progressed even before
> the Sumerians arrived.
>
> Some craftsmen have Sumerian names.
>
> * Some professions are typically Sumerian: za.dim 'stonecutter',
> from
> za '(precious) stone' and dim 'to build', 'to cut', 'to make'. The
> stonecutter makes cylinder seals which are a typical Sumerian
> invention. These activities are characteristic for the growing urban
> society.
> * Also other terminology is typical Sumerian, like en.si(k) 'city
> king' is derived form en 'lord' and si 'region', 'country'; lu.gal
> meaning 'military authority', later 'king'; the word is derived from
> lu 'man', 'someone' and gal 'great': 'great man'.
> (see http://saturn.sron.ruu.nl/~jheise/akkadian/mesopotamia.html)
>
> This shows just how far the division of labour had progressed when
> the
> Sumerians arrived. Archaeologically this period seems to best
> describe the characteristics of the Late Ubaid. (See site at
> http://www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/ant/105-101old/lecture16/slide5.html)
>
> 2. The Sumerians began in the mountains to the East: If the
> Sumerians
> were not the original inhabitants it has been suggested that they
> came
> from the East. The Sumerian creatrix, the Mother Goddess Ki (=Earth)
> was from an early period called Ninhursag (=Lady Mountain). Sumerian
> temples or ziggurats were built on hills, supposedly to remind the
> Sumerians of their mountain origin. But the custom of ziggurats
> began
> after a long tradition in which previous temples were leveled, and
> new
> temples built upon them. This slowly raised the level of the temple
> mound until within historic times they were built on a ziggurat. The
> White Temple at Uruk for example shows 16 successive structures, in
> which the first, the oldest was of the same level of the rest of the
> town. Also the Sumerians claimed they did not come from the
> mountains, but from the Sea. Specfically from the Island of Dilmun.
>
> 3: The Sumerians began in Bahrein: This was the Sumerians own claim.
> They called their origin the Island of Dilmun, and treated it as a
> lost Garden of Eden (from the Sumerian "Edin" meaning "garden").
> Certainly the City of Eridu, in the extreme south of the country was
> claimed by the Sumerians as the "place where kingship descended", and
> the site was the oldest settled Hadji Muhammed (the first neolithic
> culture) site. Eridu culture is confined to the city, although Eridu
> pottery is found also in Dilmun. Secondly, for centuries, upper
> class
> Sumerians went to significant expense to secure a burial in the
> "island of the ancestors" on the Island of Bahrein. Sumerian grave
> mounds dot the island to the present day. Sumerians would scarcely
> go
> to such expense if the isalnd of Bahrein was not linked strongly to
> Sumerian origins. Finally, the Sumerians believed the primary
> element
> of the Universe was water. Their creation myths tell of the watery
> chaos preceeding the Universe was a mingling of sweat and salt water.
> Eventually the "coupling" of sweat (Abzu) with salt (Taimat) lead to
> the Birth of Anu (sky) and Ki (Earth). Sumerian divinities were
> their
> children "Anunaki" (Anu and Ki). Finally the coupling of the Sky
> with
> the Earth created the Air (Enlil) which separated the heavens from
> the
> ground. Various writers have found that the emergence of land from
> the waters of chaos at the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
> What they fail to notice however, is that around Bahrein, fresh water
> springs appear in the ocean - Bahrein (which takes its Arab name from
> this phenomenon) is literally the place where sweat and salt waters
> mingle.
>
> If the Sumerian homeland was the pre-Semitic Bahrein and the Gulf
> States area of Arabia, what caused them to move from there to
> Southern
> Iraq? A number of factors may have been involved.
>
> Firstly, there was the arrival of the first farmers. Travelling down
> from the Samara culture to the mouth of the Mesopotamian Rivers and
> beyond had creatly widened the horizons of the Bahreini
> Proto-Sumerians. The world was a bigger place and in the expansion
> of
> the maritime traffic of the Persian Gulf, Sumerians from Dilmun
> propsered.
>
> Secondly there was the arrival of the "tent dwellers". Early
> Sumerian
> discussions of the trade routes from Dilmun mention the "tent
> dwellers" and their herds of sheep and goats. It is very probable
> that this was the arrival of the first Semites, coming from the Hejaz
> and the shores of the Red Sea. Although struggles are not mentioned
> in Dilmun, pastoral people are not noted for their passivity, and
> intergroup violence may have been a factor.
>
> Thirdly was the great drought of the beginning of the sixth
> millennium
> BC. In fact it was this drought which prompted once sedentary
> farmers
> to assume a more nomadic lifestyle. It drastically increased
> population demographic pressures upon fragile environments. The
> "Empty Quarter" of Arabia, the eiptome of shifting sand dunes that
> lies behind Oman and the Gulf States today was the result. Once a
> land of running rivers, their wadi's dried up to force the people who
> lived in the area to emigrate to more favourable locations.
>
> Archaeology shows that there was a close cultural connection in the
> earlest phases of Mesopotamian agricultural settlement. Eridu
> blossomed into Hadji Muhammed, associated with a full complement to
> irrigated fields. This in turn led to a huge population increase in
> southern villages and the newly developing towns. The widespread
> Ubaid culture was the result. However, during the Ubaid period, the
> last phase of glacial water from the Ice Age caused a widespread
> inundation of the area of southern Iraq. Ubaid horizons at Ur were
> suddenly under water. (see the Sumerian King-list record at
> http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/sumking.html) Bahrein was fully
> abandonned. In fact Dilmun became the homeland of the immortals, in
> particular, Utunapishtim, the Sumerian Noah, king from the City of
> Sharrupak who is supposed to have saved humanity from the flood. It
> was only during the increasing wealth following Jemdet Nasr and Uruk
> phases that the Sumerians re-established their link with
> Dilmin/Bahrein. Dilmun/Bahrein henceforth was the leading entrepot
> and trade city linking the Sumerians with the people of the Indus
> Valley and probably with the people of Yemen and the Egyptian Red Sea
> Coast as well.
>
> If the Sumerians came from Dilmun, as is suggested, then their
> origins
> are more obscure than before. Their connection with either the
> Hurro-Urartuean languages of the Zagros or the Nostratic Eurasian
> family is made even more remote. There is also another intriguing
> possibility.
>
> Chris stringer at a recent inernational symposium on the origins of
> modern humanity on "New data on modern human origins"
> (http://zetaserver.ivsla.unive.it/Istituto/Convegni/Origini/Stringer.h
> tm) suggested that it was not just one ethic group that left Africa,
> but in fact two waves. The first, probably crossed from Ethiopia to
> Yemen with the opening of a land bridge across the mouth of the Red
> Sea, with the sudden cooling of global climates which followed the
> Lake Toba volcanic explosion in Sumatra (See
> http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/1029/NaturalDisasters.html
> which states "The greatest volcanic disaster in recent geologic
> history, in the region, occurred in the Quaternary period of Ice Age,
> approximately 75,000 years ago. This volcanic explosion devastated
> the
> center of the island of Sumatra. The volume of tephra discharge from
> this eruption is estimated at 2,000 cubic km, a tremendous quantity
> considering that the Krakatau catastrophic eruption of 1883, only
> resulted in 15-20 cubic km of ejected tephra. The collapse crater,
> the
> caldera, formed by this giant eruption which must have lasted for
> several months or even years, is filled presently with the waters of
> lake Toba, on that island. The caldera is 100 km long.")
>
> This raises an intriguing possibility. Which of the two really early
> "out of Africa" waves did the Sumerians belong to. Did they leave at
> the 73,000 BCE wave, or did they leave later, at 40,000 BCE with the
> Aurignancian culture (or even later with the 15,000 BCE Nostratic
> peoples?) If the former could the Sumerians agglutinative tongue be
> related to the agglutinative Proto-Austric languages of India and
> South East Asia. I have not got the linguistic skills to answer such
> a question but readers may like to check the site at
>
> http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/9845/sumer.htm
>
> which explores precisely such a hypothesis.
>
> Regards
>
> John
>
>
>
>
>
>