Stick insect forces evolutionary rethink

NewScientist.com news service ^ | 19:00 15 January 2003 | Nicola Jones

[muawiyah]

You'll have to look that up. I thought your question was about how ancient Sumerian civilization was. Since it appears to be the FIRST civilization, then all the others are later.

These guys had records buried in the mud hip deep a full thousand years before Abraham came along.

Google shows 5.6 million references under "SUMER", with an additional 2.7 million under "SUMERIAN".

I'm sure there's something in there to answer just about any question you want.

[dangus]

Actually, this quote suggests there ARE no contemporary sources for the 3rd millennium BC:

"The list is central, for lack of a more accurate source, to the chronology of the 3rd millennium BC. "

The list referred to is merely a listing of kings.

Of course, that leaves 1300 years between Abraham and the Babylonian exile during which I supposed that the Babylonians would have been motivated to co-opt elements of the Judaic stories.

[dangus]

Oh, thanks, no... I was wondering if there was anything to establish that the Legend of Gilgamesh and similar Sumerian writings pre-existed the Mosaic books of the Old Testament... "who stole from who," as I wrote.

The bible is quite clear that Abraham was Sumerian.

[dangus]

>> Google shows 5.6 million references under "SUMER", with an additional 2.7 million under "SUMERIAN". <<

Yeah, that's why I was hoping you may have known of a reference. I didn't have time to investigate 5.6 million references :^D.

[Right Wing Professor]

The earliest clay tablets containing parts of the epic of Gilgamesh are dated to around 2000 BCE. I think that's the information you wanted.

[muawiyah]

And that Moses was Semitic and lived in Egypt.

Remember, the specialists in studying the origins of the oldest parts of the Bible have said for ever and a day that there are two primary sources. They were saying that hundreds of years ago (shortly after people quit cutting off your head for questioning the Bible of course).

Sumer was unknown to history or science. Then, one day, it was discovered in the mud in Mesopotamia.

It's pretty clear that the Sumerians had a religious tradition, and some ancient stories, that the followers of Abraham knew about.

[dangus]

BTW... I just looked up muawiyah on Wikipedia. Did your friends in college inform you that it means "howling bitch in heat"? No kidding. But I'll never call you that. Promise. :^D

[muawiyah]

It's the name of a fellow who put the need for civil government ahead of the need to have an hereditary religious leadership.

I think if you read that name in Syriac-Aramaic it has a quite different meaning.

[dangus]

I know, I know... I was just teasing. You may want to read the Wikipedia article, however.

[muawiyah]

As a matter of fact I did read the Wikipedia article. Now, the name "Schmidlap" ~ what does it mean and in what language.

Hunted for that one for years and did find out there were several accepted spellings, usually for the same person ~ Schmiddllap, Schmidelap, Schmidllap, Schmidlapp, and so on ~ with single or double letters.

It looks very German doesn't it?

Turns out that most folks with that name pronounce it "Schmi de lap", with the "Schmi" part coming directly from Latin's "schmei", or "smear", or "paint", or "dye". "de" is "of" or "from", and "lap" is simply Latin "lapu" for "cloth" or "sheet".

What looks to be a German name is actually a Ladino name ~ applicable to a fellow who cuts cloth, or makes and cuts sheets of paper, or who dyes cloth. No doubt these were allied occupations in the same guild in Medieval Spain.

Muawiyah, however, has a totally different source. It has purely Semitic origins and is more in the nature of a sentence than just a word. Plus, it's really great for use on the internet because, when you do a search, the syllable "mua" is virtually unused except in that name! It can give you an edge in any chatroom. Plus, almost no one uses it.

[muawiyah]

Oh, BTW, there are no contemporary non-Sumerian accounts for ancient Sumerian matrials. They were quite alone in the world at the time. Only archaology can cooborate what their tablets tell us.

One of the most ancient Sumerian devices is a character that looks like a miniature Santa Claus. Then there are the flying reindeer they were fond of making ~ small bronze and copper figures.

You just know the archaeologists dropped a load when they found those items the first time. Using Google/Image doesn't find one of them very fast, but there are both a Santa and a flying reindeer at the Indiana University art museum in Bloomington, Indiana.

[dangus]

REINDEER in SUMERIA? Wow. The ice age must've been something! If there's any similarity between Santa Claus and any Sumerian figures, blame Thomas Nast. While St. Nicholas has long figured in Christmastime gift-giving, Thomas Nast (and Coca-cola!) gave him his current look, which, other than his beard, has little to do with the Old Country's St. Nick.

[muawiyah]

Actually, Saint Nick came along many centuries AFTER "Little Red Man", "Reindeer Man" and "Herb Woman".

The Sa'ami had the imagery all put together, and it was picked up by Christians, right down to the dwarves who live "at the North Pole" and make toys for children all year long (a common wintertime Sa'ami pursuit).

Now, concerning where the reindeer live, their range, at the moment, is a big chunk of the 1/4 of the Earth's land surface given over to reindeer and muskox. During periods of cooling, it expands to the South, and the reindeer follow it. During periods of warming, it retreats to the North, and the reindeer follow it that way.

There are regular retreats and advances of both cold weather and reindeer.

There have been, from ancient times, moist, cold upland areas where reindeer can live.

Human beings follow the reindeer, and from time to time the range has extended into the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and even down into Mesopotamia itself ~ The Sumerians were, in fact, primarily herdsmen, and not farmers. Over a long period of time their herding lifestyle was displaced by the farmers, as was their language and elements of their religion(s).

Hence, the little reindeer statue found along the Euphrates river and then rescued to reside on a large plastic board in a museum in Indiana.

During the Ice Age the reindeer range was much larger, of course!

[dangus]

>> Oh, BTW, there are no contemporary non-Sumerian accounts for ancient Sumerian matrials. They were quite alone in the world at the time. Only archaology can cooborate what their tablets tell us. <<

This is not what I asked and it is plainly false. Sumeria refers to a civilization which lasted until the 17th century BC, well after the founding of the Jewish, Egyptian, and other civilizations.

I did find from an Oxford University site that there exists almost nothing written down from Sumerian civilization prior to the 17th century BC, long after Abraham. Therefore, there is no basis whatsoever to suppose that Sumerian myth predates Abrahamic legend. Of course, there also exists no extant Hebrew texts, so this does't prove anything other than that the existence of the Assyrian/Babylonian creation myths provide no basis for presuming that the Mosaic creation myth is derivative. And THAT was my interest.

The Epic of Gilgamesh appears to have roots as old as 2000 BC, but the "standard version" appears to date to no earlier than 1300 BC... After Moses, for sure, but -- and this answers my other interest -- before the Babylonian exile of the Jews. I had wondered whether the epic could have been a response to the presence of the exilic Jews since I had known that the surviving text is 700 years old.

[muawiyah]

You missed a seminal event in Sumeria. The ORIGINAL non-semitic Sumerians, who invented writing, were in business long before Abraham. They were ultimately supplanted by settled agriculturalists who were semitic language speakers. This later group adopted the Sumerian written language and much of their religion.

There are, basically, two different civilizations to keep your eye on.

[muawiyah]

The date given for the Sumerian invention of writing is about 3500 BC. Spoken Sumerian lasted until 3000 BC. At that time it was supplanted by a Semitic language. Written Sumerian persisted until about 1000 AD.

3500 BC is 1800 years BEFORE 1700 BC.

Civilized people in Mesopotamia, in Abraham's day, spoke semitic languages but they wrote things down in Sumerian.

[djf]

Yup. This ain't no rule I ever heard of. Darwin himself talks about the blind cave fish that have only remnants of eyes.

[muawiyah]

There's also another ancient "comparative source" for stories we find in the Bible. That's India ~ particularly the Indus valley where the Harappan civilization/culture came along in 3300 BC (or thereabouts).

These people had a very detailed "Flood Story" that included Noah (Ma-Nu).

Their civilization lasted until about 1600 BC, barely toeing over into Abraham's time.

No doubt, later "Babylonian" versions of the much more ancient Sumerian myths have been popularized, most likely because the writing is better and more entertaining.

[Larry Lucido]

Somebody is making up rules on the fly.

Yeah, but this one may stick.

[dangus]

Again, I think you don't understand what I am sa. I don't care when the Sumerians learned how to write. I care when it can be established that they wrote a given work. So what if they learned how to write in 3500 BC? It's got nothing to do with what we are discussing.