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Drought May Have Killed Sumerian Language Tia Ghose LiveScience Staff Writer Date: 04 December 2012 Time: 11:35 AM ETThe ancient Sumerians invented cuneiform, shown here on a clay tablet documenting barley rations issued monthly to adults and children. The language may have died out as a result of a 200-year drought 4,200 years ago. CREDIT: Public Domain SAN FRANCISCO — A 200-year-long drought 4,200 years ago may have killed off the ancient Sumerian language, one geologist says. Because no written accounts explicitly mention drought as the reason for the Sumerian demise, the conclusions rely on indirect clues. But several pieces...

A team of archaeologists from the Iraqi German Mission of the State Board of Antiquities and the Orient Department of the German Archaeological Institute have excavated a 4000-year-old boat near the ancient city of Uruk.Uruk, also known as Warka was an ancient city of Sumer (and later of Babylonia), situated on the dried-up ancient channel of the Euphrates River.Uruk played a leading role in the early urbanisation of Sumer in the mid-4th millennium BC, emerging as a major population centre until it was abandoned shortly before or after the Islamic conquest of AD 633–638.The boat was first discovered during a...

Sumerians settled in Mesopotamia, an area of modern Iraq known as the cradle of civilization, more than 6,000 years ago, where they invented writing, the wheel, the plough, irrigation, the 24-hour day and the first city-states. Mission co-leaders Licia Romano and Franco D'Agostino of Rome's Sapienza University said Tuesday they discovered one of their ancient ports in Abu Tbeirah, a desert site about 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) south of the town of Nasiriyah. The port's basin, measuring 130 meters (142 yards) in length and 40 meters (44 yards) wide, with a capacity equal to nine Olympics-sized pools, may have also...

A 200-year-long drought 4,200 years ago may have killed off the ancient Sumerian language, one geologist says. Because no written accounts explicitly mention drought as the reason for the Sumerian demise, the conclusions rely on indirect clues. But several pieces of archaeological and geological evidence tie the gradual decline of the Sumerian civilization to a drought. The findings, which were presented Monday here at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, show how vulnerable human society may be to climate change, including human-caused change....

Panaji, Feb 07: Renowned German Indologist and scientist of religion, Egbert Richter Ushanas today claimed that he has unravelled the mystery of Indus Valley scripts by decoding major seals and tablets found during various archaeological excavations. "Already 1,000-odd seals are decoded and of them, 300-odd are printed in monography -- the message of Indus seals and tablets," stated Richter, who has also decoded tablets from Easter Island in Pacific Ocean and disc of Phaistos on Island of Crete in Meditarrenean Sea. "All the seals are based on Vedas -- Rig Veda and Atharva Veda," Richter told a news agency here....

From Iraqthemodel.blogspot.com: Al-Witwity reports about the confiscation of many Iraqi Sumerian artifacts in Diwaniya after arresting a Syrian mukhabarat officer who was trying to smuggle these priceless artifacts out to Syria in cooperation with some local thugs. Experts estimate the total price of these artistic historic pieces to be around 35 million dollars.Click here for pictures of the retreived artifacts.

Introduction - Investigations of Bolivia Fuente Magna and the Monolith of Pokotia The following material is reprinted by permission from Bernardo Biadós Yacovazzo & Freddy Arce, OIIB - Omega Institute Investigations (Bolivia), INTI - NonGovernmental Organizacion (Bolivia). A large stone vessel, resembling a libation bowl, and now known as the Fuente Magna, was originally discovered in a rather casual fashion by a country peasant from the ex-hacienda CHUA, property of the Manjon family situated in the surrounding areas of Lake Titicaca about 75/80 km from the city of La Paz. The site where it was found has not been...

...my friends like Asko Parpola, Professor Mahadevan, and the Russians Professors who have worked on this subject. They have all been working on the assumption that the language of the Indus people was Dravidian, that the people who build the Indus Civilization are Dravidian. But unfortunately I, as well as my friend Prof. B.B. Lal in India, have not been able to agree with this... On the other hand, I have been talking to Prof. Parpola that certainly this is an agglutinative language, there is no doubt. That has been accepted by all of us. Dravidian is an agglutinative language....

An Impact Event in 3114BC? The Beginning of a Turbulent Millennium. Recurring Phenomenon: The Cosmic DisasterThe Mayan CalendarStonehengeA Possible Source for the 3100 BC Event Collected and commented by Timo Niroma, Helsinki, Finland Go to the Evidence of Astronomical Aspects of Mankind's Past and Recent Climate Homepage Recurring Phenomenon: The Cosmic Disaster Besides the most evident cosmic catastrophes ca. 2200 BC and 2345 BC there are other events during the Holocene that are so widely global and difficult to explain by only the Earth's own mechanisms that a cosmic explanation must evidently be taken into account. The first so-called...

Meteor clue to end of Middle East civilisations By Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent (Filed: 04/11/2001) SCIENTISTS have found the first evidence that a devastating meteor impact in the Middle East might have triggered the mysterious collapse of civilisations more than 4,000 years ago. satellite images of southern Iraq have revealed a two-mile-wide impact crater caused by a meteor Studies of satellite images of southern Iraq have revealed a two-mile-wide circular depression which scientists say bears all the hallmarks of an impact crater. If confirmed, it would point to the Middle East being struck by a meteor with the violence equivalent ...

CJTF-7 Public AffairsBAGHDAD, IraqRelease #040102d Task force 1st Armored Division distributes food to “New Baghdad” community BAGHDAD, Iraq – Since coming to Baghdad in April, the Dragoons of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR) have been reaching out to their Iraqi communities. They provide a safe and secure environment for their Iraqi neighbors and bring Baghdad’s southeast side food and school supplies. The units associated with this part of Baghdad and the positive relationship with the Iraqi people are the War Eagle Squadron of 2nd ACR and 2nd Battalion 37th Armor Regiment – “the Iron Dukes” of 1st Armored Division. These units...

Online dictionary helps unravel Sumerian language Digital technology facilitates research Kyle Cassidy Special to The Daily Star Scholars studying ancient writing systems to reconstruct the societies they belonged to are increasingly turning to digital dictionaries in an effort to accelerate their work. Among the institutions taking advantage of the considerable benefits offered by the digitizing process is the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, which is drawing on the latest digital technology to write a Sumerian dictionary. Four thousand years ago, in the Sumerian city of Nippur, scribes were attending classes to learn a relatively new and privileged...

Marsh Arabs, modern Sumerians 05/14/03 JOE ROJAS-BURKE Amid the ruined temples of a civilization abandoned 4,000 years ago in southern Iraq, archaeologists on a 1968 expedition noted a striking parallel: Fragments of the long-extinct Sumerian civilization they were unearthing seemed to depict the present-day lives of the nearby tribal people. From Our Advertiser They speared fish from slender wooden boats, herded water buffalo and fashioned fantastic vaulted houses from the few building materials the marshes had to offer: reeds, clay and buffalo dung. Their secluded villages dotted the vast marshes and stream-braided lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers....

<p>The U.S. military expedition into Iraq has skirted ancient sites named in Jewish and Christian scriptures and apparently avoided sacred turf where Shi'ite Muslims had their historic and bloody showdown with rival Sunnis.</p> <p>Troops that invaded from the south crossed territory called the cradle of civilization and traditionally considered the site of the Garden of Eden. The troops passed by Abraham's birthplace of Ur and the heart of ancient Sumer, whose poetry told of a creation and flood like that in the book of Genesis.</p>