Who Were the Sumerians?

Who Were the Sumerians? | Part II of Obscuring the Sumerian Heritage

Finding the Clues To Discovering Sumerian Origins

Scholars of course do not agree as to where the Sumerians come from. Some scholars say they descended from the marshlands people of extreme South Mesopotamia [Iraq, Kuwait] or farther south from the Arabian Peninsula or Bahrain. Others have come up with bold claims so as to say the Sumerians came from the later Turks of Asia Minor or even the people from Central Asia. However, in lack of evidence to support any particulars of their theories, these scholars still label the Sumerians as a “mystery”.

For them, the Sumerians rather be aliens from a not so distant world. And for much that these History Channel theories of alien origins look attractive to the naïve reader, one who wants to find out the true origins of Sumerians will resist these SciFi claims. For the truth may be of a much more Earthling nature.

But let’s accept for a second that the Sumerians’ origins are a “deep unsolvable mystery”. When one has such a mystery, the first thing one would look for is clues. Where do we find clues as to the procedence of an unknown person? Today we have photographs, video or film, and electronic records, social media, DNA testing, etc. Sumerians, of course, did not have any of that. So we would want to find out what they looked like in Sumerian art such as paintings, murals, figurines, pottery, and of course, their writing. Let us begin with finding clues of what they looked like in the Sumerian art. The first reaction of the inexperienced reader might be performing a web search and ending up in popular websites such as Wikipedia or About dot com and other similar non-scholarly sources that reflect consent rather than research. But if we should find any clues at all to solve the “unsolvable mystery”, we need to dig much deeper.

More often than not, scholars from the 1800s, and even 1900s, found damaged artifacts dating thousands of years old and it then was the work of European museum curators to put the artifacts together. And in doing so, those Europeans replaced broken noses, missing heads, or damaged paintings with their view of the world. It is therefore of prime importance that we find clues of what Sumerians looked like in artifacts that have not been touched by curators of the 1800s or 1900s.

Despite of looting and lack of interest of some to preserve the Sumerian heritage, there are Sumerian artifacts that were not touched by curators, or if they were, did not go through  massive reconstruction. Some of those Sumerian artifacts remain in museums of the Middle East and some are in Europe.

The Sumerian Civilizations rose anytime before 4500 BC and continued up to ~2020 BC, when they suddenly vanished from southern Mesopotamia [Iraq]. There was a Sumerian renaissance past 2000 BC and several attempts to restore Sumerian rule from south Mesopotamia; however, those attempts were performed by Mesopotamian people who more than likely had already mixed with multiple invaders (Akkadiands, Elamites, Assyrians and such). Therefore we would want to pay close attention to figurines, stellaes, and cylinder seals which are dated at ~2270BC or earlier and that show how the Sumerians depicted themselves before they suffered massive losses by war, disease and the like.

Lord EN.KI

Read Part III, How the Real Sumerians Looked Like, here.

  By J.J. Del Mar | KI.EN.GIR Part I | Part II | Part III

Part IV will come soon…