Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: Renfield; blam; SunkenCiv

7000 BC would have been Semitic still, right? The Akkadians moved into Sumeria around 3000 BC, but were they in Canaan in 7000 BC? or were these people Hurrians?


19 posted on 03/09/2014 5:07:36 AM PDT by Cronos (ObamaÂ’s dislike of Assad is not based on AssadÂ’s brutality but that he isn't a jihadi Moslem)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]


To: Cronos

None of the above; the Sumerians (by their own account) arrived from the sea, as immigrants from somewhere (perhaps the Indus Valley or elsewhere in India), and the placenames they used for rivers and cities were borrowed from the previous dominant population; the only trace of that lost language consists of those placenames preserved by the Sumerians. While not the earliest writing system, their cuneiform is the earliest writing system that can be read. These masks go back to those unknown people, or (as seems likely) their unknown neighbors.

The Semites appear to have come from Africa, based on the distribution of that language family (nearly 400 million speakers of Afroasiatic languages, most of them Arabic speakers; as you noted, Akkadian is an extinct Semitic tongue, as is its descendant Assyrian tongue, ancient Egyptian, ancient Aramaic, etc). It is not unlikely that the people who made these masks have living descendants, but the culture (and probably the language) is long gone and forgotten, as well as unrecorded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroasiatic_languages

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2857949/replies?c=4


22 posted on 03/09/2014 1:36:04 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson