The MYSTERIOUS ORIGIN of the SUMERIANS 

I was already a big history geek but Prof Miano's enthusiasm always gets me going

Has anyone told you that you'd be GREAT teaching children? Your expressions, and non-threatening demeanor, wrapped in a thoroughly enchanting appearance - FULL of fun! Your character, expression and hand gestures are FULL of color! At least I see that. This is what makes me believe, you would be able to interest children deeply in ancient history, and some, into that very field. Maybe I think like a child? Probably! Lol! It is just something which I have noticed from you since I first found your channel. God Bless and carry on, O GREAT Teacher! ;)

That the Sumerians evolved as an amalgamation of several existing cultures kinda makes sense to me. It's not as if the geographic area was totally empty and void of habitation and suddenly bands of "Sumerians" suddenly wandered in. The area surely must have had some populations from the diaspora of early hominids out of Africa between 60,000 and 90,000 years ago. The discoveries at Göbekli Tepe and similar sites indicate there were some sorts of well developed cultures in Anatolia and the neighboring areas from about 10,000 BCE. It seems feasible that the Sumerians could have evolved from this pool of humanity.

Thank you, I've been obsessed with the Sumerians for some days now and your theory made me understand more of what we know of their origin than in any other videos I've watched so far, you put it simple yet mind-blowing

Good format for a series!

I love with how much glee and passion you present your topics, it's simply joy to listen to you.

just found your channel and i’m loving it already! could you please make some more videos on this fascinating culture?

It would be interesting to look at the development of trading centers by nomadic groups in gradual contact into more permanent settlements.

The Sumerian religion suggests they came from mountainous region, for certain major deities such as Enlil (who might be Semitic though) or Ninhursang are connected with mountains. Since Mesopotamia is a flat land, this importance of mountains is rather surprising. Or it is simply because mountains are spiritually charged areas where gods live?

Another fascinating video!

I think the idea that Sumerian was a Lingua Franca to make communication easier between people of various cultures, is probably the best explanation. Afterall that is what the Phoenician language was for as well

love to see how your channel has grown

Nice one! Thanks for your detailed synopsis of where current knowledge stands on the issue.

Don’t know if you meant to imply it but the way you phrased it suggested Chukchi was no longer an extant language when it’s still kicking.

Excellent talk- no BS. Peace, love and bellbottoms from Canada.

This was fascinating. It’s the first time I’ve heard about Sumerian words appearing to be from another language. I’m curious about further reading or videos on this.

I'm going with the third option. makes a lot more sense. there is another option !, that the farming community changed words to distinguish themselves from the pasturalists and even invented new words to show how sophisticated they were. Shakesp[ear invented words all the time. yea, I'm going with my own theory thanks.

One search I did a yr ago (& again now), after viewing prev Vlog on Sumeria here, As to the Name: Ur/oor/ore, As I've known & have been in, few towns/ cities name ending with this word, Ur/Ore, then per my map searches all around S & SE Asia starting in India, Pak, SL to Malaysia, I noted, India, Pak & SL alone got some few100s towns & cities, while others have few, e.g, just a few well known ones+ 1-2 others : Bangalore, Jaipur, Kanpur, Kolalampur, Lahore, Nagpur, Nallur, Putthur Singapore, Tanjavur,..,..,.. etc Also note, in Dravidian, namely Tamil & Malayalam, oor/ ur means town or place or area, e.g, they'll say which ur you're from? or which ur you're going to? So all this made me wonder this word Originated in Sumeria, India, Iran, Egypt or even Africa, any ideas any one?

This is my favorite history channel ❤ thank you for your work

Fantastic job! Thank for making this.

Considering Sumarians' non- Semitic langauge, facility with irrigation, their location, and their antiquity, the simplest explanation is they originally occupied the Persian Gulf basin prior to the end of the ice age. As the ice melted and sea levels rose, they were forced northwards as the Persain Gulf basin flooded and ended up in Mesopotamia once sea levels stabilized.

I love this video! Do you have any videos pertaining to ancient sumeria and how it ties into Christianity?

Edifying as usual, thank u

nice overview of all the current theories

Sumerian looks so amazing! Apparently they look very intelligent

It's interesting that in modern Persian we have words similar to the ancient Sumerian language. We have "ordu" which is similar to Eridu and it means "a place for settlement." Also, in southern Iran, we have a city named "Isin" and an island named "Kish" and an ancient village named "Keshar" that reminds me of the Sumerian city of "Kishar."

He’s not that old, I don’t think I’d call him an ancient historian.

Super thanks 👍

I think that the sumerians saw a need for written language. Something happened that was SO IMPORTANT that the idea of recording what was happening needed to be written down and recorded. Whatever it was that inspired this made such an impression that recorded ideas and historical events were written down that has lasted to this very day (Reference written religious beliefs of the area that are still used.). With that said it's also very important to note that without an understanding of Sumeria that modern times superficially mistake sumeria as babylonian. Two seperate cultures that cannot be mistaken for each other.

I love learning about the Sumerians! They developed so many things we use today. I asked chat gpt and they suggested that there's some evidence that they are decendants from the people of Turkey. They got pushed down from the mountains. A lot of earlier evidence of smaller civilization but still building structures etc. They probably intermixed with the aboriginal who were already there and from the various directions like you mentioned.

Thanks!

Fantastic, thanks very much from a new subscriber.

My best guess (and I want to stress the word "guess") is that they were originally the aboriginal inhabitants of the eastern Arabian gulf (indeed perhaps the whole Arabian peninsula). Up to 8,000 year ago or so North Africa and the Arabian peninsula were a lot wetter and more lush than they are now. The Afro-Asiatic or Hamito-Semitic language speakers spread out across this vast area spilling (as Semitic) into Mesopotamia and down into the Arabian peninsula. They would have absorbed and replaced much of its previous inhabitants who presumably in their previous geographic isolation would have developed a unique language. The last holdouts would have been in the eastern Arabian Gulf. From there these Emegir-speakers went on to colonize southern Mesopotamia possibly displacing the Haltamti (Elamites) who were thereafter only found to their east as traditional enemies. The Kengir or Sumerians maintained in their legends an origin on the island and adjacent territory of Dilmun modern Bahrain and Qatar.

I think that the long period between the earliest agriculture, 9000-7000 BC, and Sumerian culture after 4000 BC, resulted in numerous relatively isolated areas where agriculturalist settled, and since there were no reasons to travel a lot, a lot of divergent languages could emerge, as we see in Northern Caucasus. The spread of agriculture is fast through areas with similar ecology, and periodically stops on ecological boundaries like hill country of Iran and northern Mesopotamia, similar to earliest agricultural ecology, and lowlands, requiring new crop strains, new cultivation calendars etc. But these innovations could easily spread, resulting in farmers from linguistically different group coming to the area of people making their living from hunting, gathering and fishing.

after years of falling asleep to videos about ancient Mesopotamian civilizations, looking closely at images of statues and pondering this subject. I have come to the conclusion that the black headed people ( what they called themselves ) with what looks like tightly curled beards and hair and aquiline noses would have originated on the east cost of Africa most likely Ethiopia.

From words not recorded... like summer, winter, spring, or autumn, must be Axiomatic? There's not much to work with, but it's a great video.

This is the history I love, the darkest, most mysterious parts.

Thanks

Their language is isolated because when Nimrod built the tower of Babel, God changed the language of the people to many languages. The oldest text on earth is the book of Job (the Bible).

I would follow the ancient trade routes. Maybe that and DNA may help narrow it down

There are seals in Lake Baikal, so it is likely that Lake Baikal is a place of human origin. The Baikal seal apparently came from the Arctic Ocean. But Caspian seals probably came from the Black Sea. Arctic Ocean, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean Sea... The genetic origins of Central Asia could be complex.

Conquest theory of state formation! Late arrival of Sumerians could mean they were a language isolate because they were warlike nomads who conquered some proto-cities and just set themselves up as the upper caste!

I learned about the Sumerians several years ago but THIS post was extremely informative. One thing that perplexed me is how the Sumerian language was able to be deciphered YET the language of Rongo-Rongo from Easter Island is not. My point is - how can any interpretation be believed? Even interpreting modern language (ex. German or Spanish into English) has its variations and thus meaning can be misinterpreted. So how can we be sure if what the squiggles of Sumerian Texts actually say?. And, if we can, why can't all languages be deciphered?.

Very interesting! Did you realize that the isolated situation of the sumerians concerning their unique language and origin parallels with the stories in the bible? According to genesis early people were speaking the same language and wanted to build the highest tower for their fame - the famous babylonian tower. On this event god came down and scrambled the language of this people so they couldn't understand each other. And - accordingly - the first people ever lived in the garden eden, which is believed to be in mesopotamia 🙂 Although i doubt the historicality of those biblical stories they might be legends with a true center story. Anyway i found these parallels noteworthy :-)

This was great and ended too soon. Can you talk about Assyrian origins? Were they an Akkadian tribe or independent?

Are these dates as old as Gobekli Tepi Civilisation? If so there might have been many people in the past who were already developing as a civilisation at the same time! Cynthia Allen-McLaglen

Some of Ben Stiller's best work.

my Sumerian friend saw this video on his clay tablet and he said: 𒈗𒆠𒉌𒂠𒌌𒌌𒈗𒆠𒉌𒂠𒌌𒌌𒈗𒆠𒉌𒂠𒌌𒌌

I liked this. I love ancient history because it gets me away from the bs and insanity - and it's fun. I am seventy one. Didn't have the internet until three years ago. I was homeless and a guy told me a story about someone named Vercingetorix. I looked him up and - It is now one of the greatest things in my life. Cannot get enough. I can't believe I have the Library of Alexandria in my hand.

Very informative, and clearly communicated. Presenting the three hypotheses gives insight into what real historians do. This channel is a great resource for anybody to understand the work of proper historians. It's a great service to everybody

I really love your channel. I'm glad to see the direction you are going. It's smart to lean a little bit more into the concept of "mystery" and the unknown. Lots of channels you have debunked do nothing but that and capitalize greatly so it's nice to see you fight fire with fire so to speak. I also like that this content is not divisive or alienating in any way and I think that is needed in the historical and archeological community. No finger pointing just telling the story of what we know so far. Anyway great job and I think this content series will do very well and maybe even change some minds along the way. So many people are getting into ancient history now that it's become a content type that the content farms are producing relentlessly. I even discussed it with a random stranger at the airport which blew my mind that we would even talk about it. And he also parroted a lot of misinformation I know he heard on Joe Rogan and UnchartedX like the ancients couldn't have produced the artifacts we found in their graves etc. It's sad that narrative is sticking because it's so disrespectful of our ancient human ancestors. Like somehow we are superior to them because of 3000 years. Anyway great work I'm here for it.

One of my favourite channels! Thanks for all your hard work!

Archaeologists HIDE amazing facts: Sumer was Alien Atlantis 24,537.21 years ago. Source: Chinese map from 1581 and also my arse

Obviously aliens. At least the History Channel says. lmao

You might not see this, but your videos really get me going. I get super excited whenever you upload! The videos are always so well made and informative, and I really love that the research is always very up to date with the latest discoveries. It really makes me happy, and reminds me that there is still so much we don't know, and that knowledge is not stagnant, especially in this field. Thank you so much for your work!

I got an A+ for an assignment on 'Ancient Sumer' in my year-nine history class, back in 1979. While my written information was reasonably factual, it was my illustrations that won the day. (Our history teacher was big fan of illustrations and had himself produced sketches for published works). My recollection is that the Sumerians were a people made up of migrated groups to the area, from surrounding regions.

Could Sumerians and Indus Valley be related/same people who migrated to different places?

Dr Irving Finkle got me hooked on Sumerians when I was a young wee lad and visited the British Museum. He was kind enough to spend about 20 minutes answering my very, very dumb and very, very frequent questions about cuneiform. He was funny and sarcastic and eccentric and I fell in love with the subject. If you want to learn about the Sumerians and cuneiform, there is no better source than Dr Finkle, and hes got plenty of talks on RU-vid! Thanks for covering this Dr M, you are doing Lord Clapton's work.

the ''foreign'' words in the Sumerian language, perhaps they were words that had to be created to describe a thing, in modern English we have words now that would have been considered 'foreign' 150 years ago, ie., selfie, snapshot, noob, techy, just a thought, a view from the outside of Academia.

Wow, very interesting stuff here. Can you make a video about where the Harappans came from and the Indian subcontinent during that time? Great video as always.

We'll find out, Sumer than later. Yes, I'm sorry. Thank you.

Great video! I am always interested to hear anything about the Sumerians, they are absolutely fascinating. I heard a theory that the Sumerians could have possibly been immigrants who were gradually forced inland from the Persian Gulf as a result of rising sea levels due to melting glaciers after the last ice age. Have you heard of this theory, and do you think it is a real possibility? I found it very intriguing, but I would love to hear your thoughts on whether it is a valid theory or not! I love your work, thank you so much!!

The excavations at Eridu, who many believe to be the earliest Sumerian city state unveiled a culture created out of a mixture of three elements: a fisher-hunter culture of people living in reed houses who came from the south, that is the Arabian littoral of the Persian Gulf, representatives of the Samarra culture who lived in rectangular brick houses and who came from the north, from central Mesopotamia and nomads living in tents who likely came from semi-desert areas, could have been the east, south or west. It is interesting to see that while until about 5400 BC when the Ubaid culture arose in southern Mesopotamia areas in what is now central and northern Iraq were more technologically developed but than the center stage of economic and cultural development shifts to were Sumer would be in the future. It is clear that an influx of Samarra elements around that time contributed to this, that is a significant contributor to the rise of the Ubaid culture was the northern Samarra one. David, what do you think is the best book or study ever written on Sumerian history? And would you recommend a particular one on Sumerian origins?

What about theory that the Sumerians were from the drowned Persian Gulf as the waters rose up? I know it was a couple thousand years before, but is there any traction at all?

Akam (Tamil) - Ekim (Sumerian): "Inside" or "interior" Muruku (Tamil) - Muru (Sumerian): "To be abundant" or "plenty" Ur (Tamil) - Ur (Sumerian): "City" or "town" Kal (Tamil) - Gal (Sumerian): "Stone" or "rock" Naram (Tamil) - Naram (Sumerian): "Human" or "man" Iru (Tamil) - Eru (Sumerian): "To exist" or "to be" Mun (Tamil) - Mun (Sumerian): "Before" or "in front of" Val (Tamil) - Bal (Sumerian): "Strength" or "power" Mulai (Tamil) - Mulu (Sumerian): "Breast" or "chest" Kaasu (Tamil) - Ka (Sumerian): "Silver" or "money"

I believe the Yazidi people indigenous to Mesopotamia are probably the most likely candidates for modern-day descendants of the Sumerians. They display the trait of green or blue eyes which is more or less unique to them in that specific part of the world, and when you look at depictions of Sumerian kings, they almost always have blue eyes of lapis lazuli. They may well have descendants around the world, but in the Middle East itself I think the people with the most Sumerian DNA are the Yazidis. You could claim the Sumerians simply liked lapis lazuli and depicted their kings with this feature to make them look divine or something, but I think that conclusion is mostly fueled by the incorrect popular assumption that everyone that was ever indigenous to the Middle East looked Semitic. Ethnography goes through vast geographic shifts over time, like back in Antiquity and the Bronze Age there were actually lots of white people in North Africa, like the Ptolemaic dynasty set up by Alexander the Great, the Carthaginians, the Romans (Africa is named after the Roman general Scipio Africanus for his victories over the Carthaginians in what is today Tunisia) and the Vandalic Kingdom of North Africa, which was again succeeded by the Romans, this time led by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, and the Limes Arabicus were Roman fortifications build in Arabia, and you can still see plenty of Roman ruins in the Levant and Egypt, not to mention Greco-Bactrian ruins all the way to hell and gone in Afghanistan, the remnants of Alexander the Great's empire, or rather one of the empires his massive empire broke into when he died. The average normie that is only aware of pop history would call you crazy if you said there were Greeks living in ancient Afghanistan or that not everyone that ever lived in the Middle East was "brown", just as few people that live or have lived in North Africa are actually black, yet according to normies the other continents were always totally homogenous until the white devils arrived. I wouldn't call ancient Egyptians white, but they were more or less Caucasian, with varying amounts of Nubian and Cushite blood mixed in. A DNA study on King Tut found that something like 80% of British men are thought to be related to him, maybe not direct descendants but relatives (by descent, not just by having prehistoric common ancestors like everyone does) nonetheless. I don't think it's all that far-fetched to suggest some of the Sumerians could have had blue eyes, once you let go of the assumptions about the Middle East and ethnography over vast stretches of time that have been promoted by pop culture and poor education. Prior to the expansion of the Arab population throughout the Islamic world and conquest, potential enslavement and possible genocide of the countless ethnic groups they encountered, the racial demographics of that part of the world were vastly different, way more diverse than today. Ancient Persians were more or less white, as you can still occasionally see in an Iranian that doesn't have much Arab ancestry, and as you can see from their portraits, some Ottoman Sultans of Aryan descent were basically white, with fair hair and skin and light-colored irises. The name "Iran" means "Land of the Aryans", and it was found that the origin point of the Indo-European languages and Caucasian DNA is thought to be somewhere around the Black Sea, roughly corresponding to the horseback-riding, pastoral Andronovo culture, which is more or less proto-Scythian, and the Scythian-adjacent Saka people lived around what is today Iran, between the Caspian and Black Sea, where the Caucus Mountain range is, hence the terms "Aryan" and "Caucasian" and their associations with whiteness. Caucasian people are thought to have come about around 40,000 years ago, but presumably they didn't start really spreading out and forming the civilizations we know today until the late Neolithic or Chalcolithic. The Aryans invaded the Indian subcontinent, and to this day the Brahmin-descended and Kshitrya-descended Indians tend to have lighter skin, and northern Indians tend to be lighter-skinned than southern Indians, possessing less Dravidian blood, which is what makes Indians so dark. Most people basically believe and continue to perpetuate the misconception that white people were confined to Europe up until the Age of Sail, when they suddenly invented imperialism, colonialism, and slavery. This mistaken belief is often paired with a complete absence of knowledge about other civilizations, which leads to them filling in the details with people holding hands and singing Kumbaya up until the wicked white devils arrived on their shores, inducing inter-racial conflict for the first time in history. I can only imagine how much less anti-white sentiment would be popularized by academia and the media if the average person simply bothered to fact-check and study history in earnest for themselves. Public school curricula and Hollywood and TV and breadtubers all churn out anti-white propaganda characterized by lies of omission, like harping on the gritty, horrific details of the trans-Atlantic slave trade ad nauseum but failing to ever so much as mention the much older, longer-lasting, and far more prolific trans-Saharan slave trade. Stepping back for a second, i think it's so hilariously ironic how white people didn't invent slavery, but instead pioneered the global abolition of slavery, THAT'S what makes our civilization unique, not our slavery but the lack of it, and yet we are the only race that gets shamed for having practiced slavery in the past. There's no excuse for the anti-white bigotry and ignorance about these subjects in this time and place where everyone has access to a smartphone. Sorry, went off on a tangent there, but I feel passionately about history and politics and wish more people put the effort in to learn about this amazing world we live in rather than spouting racist bullshit blaming all the world's supposed problems on white people, which I see on TikTok and RU-vid every damn day, even when I try to avoid it. I open Google and bam: the articles listed will be whinging about "whiteness", which they find some way to relate to practically every current event. Wish this stuff didn't have to be said, but every year I hear more and more genocidal rhetoric, dehumanizing whites as though all we do all the time is go around finding ways to oppress people, all without even being cognizant of what we are doing. They talk about whites like they are demons, not part of humanity, as though they are collectively animated by this eldritch, destructive, all-consuming force they call "whiteness", driving us to ruin everything for everyone all the time. And we're not alone in being the targets of genocidal sentiments in spades. Sadly, Islamic extremists are waging a genocidal campaign against the Yazidis to this very day, with their women routinely being targeted for r@pe. These hard-line Muslims demand complete ideological conformity, despising the Yazidis for practicing their ancestral faith, and low-key promoting Arab supremacist sentiments. Muslims may tell you race isn't a factor in the islamic world, but the facts of the matter aren't so pretty. Black people are still regularly referred to by the epiphet "abeed" meaning "slaves", in fact the common name Abdullah was a name given to one of Mohammad's black slaves, it means "slave of Allah", conferred to him because of his obedience. The Yazidi people are in dire straits, I hope they can survive this genocidal onslaught and someday live in peace in their homelands. The violent process of Islamification is still ongoing in many parts of the world, in fact some places, such as central Afghanistan, in the highlands, were only turned Muslim as recently as the 19th century, where they still retain some pre-Islamic practices. And oh man, don't get me started on how most people think of the Crusades as though Arabs had always owned that part of the world, totally ignoring the fact that it was in Byzantine Christian hands up until the Rashidun Caliphate took their territories in West Asia a few centuries prior. It's absurd to hold it against a people for trying to take back their territory from the people that took it in the first place. Now the Northern Crusades, THEY were aggressive and uncalled for holy wars against people that simply wanted to continue practicing their ancestral Baltic Pagan faith. But from a purely geopolitical stance the Crusades were pretty understandable, let alone the religious significance of the Levant.

The language conglomerate thesis is what I thought of as well. It’s like a reverse Tower of Babel thesis where different languages blended into a functionally new one. A unifying trade language can easily become a unifying imperial self-image. If this empowered an ordering elite, as “owning” language narratives tends to do for tyrants, then a relatively “new” identity could emerge for those who could speak this conglomerated language. When Judaic ideology forms a retrospective lens to establish its authority, we can see how an observation of language commonalities AFTER Sumerian had been lost when Semitic Akkadians fell out of power. As we know, Sumerian was preserved by Akkadians as a scholastic/ritual relic like Latin or Sanskrit is today and Judaism is a very late summary ideology of these cultures, which were considered ancient to the early kingdom of Judah. There is the idea of first urbanized networks built up around Temple complexes around the globe, tying nomadic tribes together, forming a generally conglomerated paradigm network. This means that temple complexes helped form an ideological paradigm wherein certain temples specialized in, as well as shared and stored, particular wisdom. This is the “Priest-King” era of humanity. One can see how trading networks, where certain tribal migrations empowered certain tribes with specific cultural identities based on materials along their migration territories, fed temple wisdom traditions. Raiders along these routes would need to be defended against, giving rise to the Warrior class from which the Temple (“on high”) empowered kings…and early Sumerians talk about how kingship was brought from Heaven (the Temple). This is just my thoughts on the topic.

Would such a creole have developed into a language without leaving more traces of which family structure it came from? Don't languages often use the grammar of one of the elite classes and the vocab base of what more people speak with, so if it were a PIE or Semitic Language even if it were one created through this type of influx and cultural creation and assimilation, would it truly be seen as a language isolate? Massively fascinating though! I think I first learned about the Marsh Arab people DNA through Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages (RIP Nick) a couple years ago, always down to learn more, Dr. Miano! Also that intro would've totally grabbed like 8-14 year old me super hard lol

Do the marsh Arabs have any oral history relating back to the time of Sumer?

i saw a lecture on RU-vid by Peter Revesz, a Hungarian-American professor of computational linguistics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who claims to have begun to decipher Linear A on the basis that it is a Finno-Ugric language. He says that there is a Finno-Ugric substrate to some of the vocabulary of ancient Greek. He also said in passing that Sumerian was a hybrid language, with Finno-Ugric and Dravidian origins. That's explaining one unknown by two other unknowns.

This guy should have way more subs he does a killer Job ❤!!!!

I appreciate your presentation style. That said, I was ready to come in breathing hot coal fire because your title made it seem like another hot take ancient aliens type video. Anyways, it’s worth considering that linguists also don’t have an obvious language family for the Elamites, a nearby and influential peoples. It’s entirely possible that there are many very ancient, small language families that we just don’t have much physical evidence for.

I like it that you present the facts and opinions without trying to prove something but rather by admitting that we simply don’t know

If I remember correctly, the Sumerians mentioned Dilmun as their starting point. Maybe it’s related to the current Dilmun, maybe not…..but I find it VERY strange that we are scouring the furthest Northern regions, and not look to the south/SE where there was a high culture (Harappan) which the Sumerians traded with. Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro is by far more interesting

Dr. Miano, i must confess that i have been in love with ancient sumeria for close to 20 years, and its because of zecharia sitchen. I have since come back down to earth as far as believing the anunaki stories which fascinated me when i was more impressionable. But i wanted to say that not all alternative research and theories bare bad fruit. While i did once believe all the crazy stuff. I, today, being older and wiser am still left with a love of ancient civilizations and people. So, some good can come out of that stuff.

I have determined the the Bible and other ancient works are written entirely in an allegoric language and interpretation of this allegory contains some hidden history related to Sumer. First of all, "man" was first created from the dust of Sumerian clay tablets (flat with four corners) and the story of the Tree of Good and Evil is the story of the discovery of allegory. "Water" serves as a metaphor for "writings" and therefore Noah's "flood" represents a torrent of new writings, such as we can assume occurred when Sargon of Akkad changed the official language of Sumer to Akkadian. Since Noah's "Ark" clearly carried at least one Sumerian legend, it seems safe to suspect that the other passengers aboard the Ark represented other ideas and legends preserved by the author of the Books of Moses. The story of the infant Moses being placed in his personal ark and sent down the Nile is a retelling of the story of Noah but from a different perspective, and again a Sumerian legend (Sargon's infancy story) was carried with it. The name "Moses" in literally interpreted to mean "drawn from (water)" so it is an appropriate name attached to a set of writings that appear to be derived from the writings of others. The fact that Sumer is not literally mentioned by the authors of Old Testament works suggests that they held a strong animosity toward the Sumerians and based on the Moses/Sargon parallel it seems likely that the original authors had ties to the Akkadians. If the employment of coded writing is actually this ancient, then the idea that the entire Sumerian language was a code employed by an elite to help suppress an enslaved population does not seem that far fetched. (If there were no obvious racial differences, they would need some other way to determine who were members of which class.) The Akkadians, who as victims, saw the advantages of coded language would naturally want to create their own system to maintain control and this idea was then passed through to many other civilizations.

LOVE these videos on the Sumerians! Thank you for producing such high quality content.

Ever since the 4th Millenium BC.....We've taken so much from them. Glad no one has to pay royalties on that stuff.

I suspect they originated in the Persian/Arabian Gulf basin. If any of those words actually have origins in non-Sumerian languages, they may have been picked up from contact with other peoples in that basin -- before it flooded to the level it was at at the founding of Eridu. Surely people lived in that basin as the ice sheets began to retreat. It would have been a very nice place to live, with a large river, lakes, and so forth, and better weather than surrounding regions. The Sumerians may have moved slowly ahead of the advancing waters over many centuries, following the river. This origin is compatible with some of their old myths, and the fact of their language being an isolate.

They came from space, more specifically from the planet Tellus.

Please look up the Harappan culture. They likely had trade routes with the Sumerians.

A pleasure to listen to! Prof. M. is utterly articulate. So many public speakers these days fill their speech with temporizations such as, "y'know" and "um". Such cluttered speech is agonizing to hear. The good prof. is a pure unbridled delight to listen to. Thank you!

I have long believed that the Ice Age played a role in the subsequent rise of human civilization. Think about what transpired: 1 - for tens of thousands of years much of the northern latitudes were enveloped with glaciated areas. This would have denuded much of the flora and drove the fauna south towards warmer climes. 2 - simultaneously what were otherwise disparate groupings of humans would have also sought in cases new areas of habitation as well as followed their food source herds. 3 - so "where" do we see the rise of civilizations such as the Sumerians??? Answer: in the warmer part of the planet - usually are the equatorial belt. Hence as groups of humans were driven south owing to the northern climates being increasingly inhospitable = they came into contact with others ------> and in time settled down to begin to form communities --------> which facilitated exchanges of information/beliefs/technologies ------> which in what is tantamount to a positive feedback loop would begin to amplify understanding. Moral of the story: it is certainly possible that otherwise separate groups can on their own eventually increase their knowledge and technology. Most of the time however such takes place owing to = interaction with others - either through war and/or trade. Human history is not unlike a brick wall whereby newer cultures build upon what previous ones did and believed. While the Egyptians as an example created their own "unique" culture and technologies = some of what they did was nevertheless also seen in others - such as the Sumerians. There are as an example predynastic Egyptian scroll seals which mimic those seen centuries earlier in Sumer. So clearly they were copying to an extent what others did. The Egyptians also created mud brick buildings as others did - BUT - lacking forested areas while having an abundance of stone they developed the skill to work that ubiquitous material. So a culture arising seeing what others do might build upon that - adding their own twists along the way - to incorporate that into their own specific history. The Ice Age would have acted to = drive humans together into the same geographic areas - thus setting the stage for interaction. 🤔

A question I have is how it supposed that those names were loanwords? And amalgamation is also how all cultures and ethnicities form.

The most developed region at that times was Meluha or Harappan civilization. Also the phenotype of the iconography at that time was very India like. Plus many Indian generic evidence has been find

Not one of these theories mentioned aliens. How can we trust a historian who doesn't immediately assume aliens? ;)

It's very possible that all of our historical records could be lost in some future cataclysm leaving our descendants wondering just from where we originated. It is fun to speculate but how humans detest the unknowable! Thanks, Dr. Miano, for your enjoyable and thought-provoking video. ❤

I have long wondered ( & please excuse the spelling here) if the first Egyptian pyramid was inspired from Sumer. Did Imhotep see an imported drawing of a Sumer temple & so inspired stack mastavas up like a wedding cake?

I think Sumerian demonstrates that there were probably many early cultures with their own language that shared language when they came in contact with others. Then there were some languages that so were so dominant that the local languages were lost. We still have Sumerian because they were one of the earliest cultures with writing.

By their own art work depictions I’d say they strongly resemble northern Indians, and would suggest they come from that region. Also considering that large parts of ancient Indian civilizations are under water and have yet to be explored I’d gander that they came from there.

there is no super thanks button

I think a distinction should be made between Sumerian civilization and Sumerians has an ethnic group. As an ethnic group we are refering to those people who spoke Sumerian but where Sumerian speakers the only practitioners of Sumerian civilization? Likely not. If you examine the Sumerian King List it is interesting that during the first dynasty recorded in the list and thus the alleged earliest dynasty, (First Dynasty of Kish.), many of the Kings have Semitic names and also of interest is the early apperance in Sumerian cuniform texts of a fair number of Semitic loanwords. It appears that rigght at the beginning of Sumerian civilization it may have been to some extent a bilingual culture with two ethnic groups speaking quite different languages. (Sumerian is a language isolate, not related, it appears, to any other known language.) If I remember correctly the surviving documents do not seem to record any particular tension between Sumerian speakers and speakers of the Akkadian language, (A Semitic language.). So was Sumerian civilization a joint project by two different ethnic groups? Maybe.

It definitely looks like they’d mastered the art of shaving (or waxing, the scary alternative). So were they shaving with acute copper or bronze blades? The Minoans are also depicted, in murals, as having hair but no beards; no razors found so far as I know, but tweezers have been identified. Can you make a razor with copper? I can’t imagine pulling my hair out with tweezers.

What about a theory that Bantu...Kushitic similarities in language?...an "out of Africa" theory...including ancient roots of Marsh Arabs? Loved the lesson.

WAIT, are you trying to say it wasn't aliens?????? I'M SHOOKETH

I like the idea of sttreams of immigrants. Very often, these streams, as now, are "created" by circumstances such as a tyrant people want to escape from, or climate catastrophes. Has any research been done regarding such a catastrophe around 2000BCE somewhere but not around the mediterranean (Caucasus, Ural etc?)

This is great thank you. It boggles my mind that we know the age of the buildings these civilisations leave behind but we don’t know how long they were just hanging around beforehand. Feels like it could be a long time before deciding to build something significant

When you have mentioned that the language of Sumerians are not semitic or Indo-European. There is a language,which scholars & liguists mention now a days..it's called proto Tamil, proto Dravidian & Brahui. The language people in the IVC suspected speaking. So Sumerians can come from IVC.This language has similarities with a Southern language called Tamil. Besides,in Indian mythology,there are stories about Sumeru mountains, Meru mountains.

Thank you for all your hard work producing these videos. They are great and a nice change from all the channels that default to 'the aliens did it'.

The southern mesopotamian civiliation came from... northern mesopotamia.