Looking for more information on the Sumerians if anyone can enlighten me more on Sumeria and their city-states.

Go here and type in "Sumerian city-states."

http://www.google.com/images/logo.gif

Look up the 'Musarus Nommo' - Nommo the Fishman, predecessor and proto-typic father and guide of the Sumerians accordingto Sumerian clay Coony-form (Cuneiform) tablets deciphered by Vladimir Sitchin in his kosher but excellent factual book 'The Twelfth Planet'.

Visit the Island of Bahrain home to a Sumerian necropolis and Sumerian Temple and hug the multi thousand year old free standing votive column dedicated to Enki and see the Sumerian artefacts in th'Bahrain Museum next to the Yacht Club (excellent range of cool beers on tap).

It worked for me ;) .

Here is a free boardgame to play as a Sumerian city state with a map of them:

http://www.angelfire.com/games2/warpspawn/Sumer.html

Sumerians had an Iranian ruler caste!
:D

Sumerians had an Iranian ruler caste!
:D

I don't know about that but they talked like Tagalogs :

The Sumerian language has thus far not been linked with any other large family of languages. This web page is dedicated to showing a relationship between Sumerian and the Austric languages.

Sumerian is an agglutinative language like those in the Austric family. Like those languages it uses liberally both suffixes and prefixes in its morphology. In this sense, it differs from other Asiatic agglutinative languages like Ural-Altaic (Uralic and Altaic), Dravidian, Japanese and Korean, which use almost exclusively suffixes in the conjugation of the verb and declension of nouns and pronouns.


"Racial" Types in Sumer

According to many experts, the Al-Ubaid people were ancestral to the Sumerians, or at least, to their culture. The Al-Ubaid skulls show a chaemaerrhine index with a mean value of 49.2. In other words, they had very broad noses. The skulls had both subnasal and alveolar prognathism, or fullness of the lower and upper lips. The average linear projection was 8 mm. for the skulls. Their heads were long and narrow.

Buxton and Rice found that of 26 Sumerian crania 17 were Australoid, five Austrics and four Armenoid. According to Penniman who studied skulls from Kish and other Sumerian sites, these three: the Australoid (Eurafrican), Austric and Armenoid were the "racial" types associated with the Sumerians. Here is Penniman's description of the Austric type found at Sumer:

"These people are of medium stature, with complexion and
hair like those of the Eurafrican, to which race they are
allied, dark eyes, and oval faces. They have small ill-filled
dolichocephalic skulls, with browridges poorly developed or
absent, bulging occiputs, orbits usually horizontal ellipses,
broad noses, rather feeble jaws, and slight sinewy bodies."


Both the Australoid and Austric type are found in India, where the former is known as Dravidian in its less extreme variety. Like all the different populations of India, both Dravidian and Austric are long-headed like most of the skulls at Sumer. As one goes further East, Austrics become mostly round-headed due possibly to the greater proportion of Mongoloid blood, and the Austronesians of the South Seas are primarily round-headed. Formerly, it was popular to ascribe the Australoid and Austric types to "dark Caucasoid" origin in the Mediterranean area. Indeed, some archaeologists, anthropologists, geneticists, linguists etc., still subscribe to this theory. However, skeletons of both types have now been found in Sri Lanka, Australia and parts of Southeast Asia that are significantly older than those of the Mediterranean. Also, the recent finds of very early hominids in Java and China, predating those to the west, and the obvious tropical nature of the two types themselves, make such theories unnecessary and forced.

Przyluski and Autran carried out a very preliminary comparison of Sumerian and Austric earlier this century in which they showed some sound correspondences between the two.

While Sumerian is primarily SOV, it also has instances of SVO, VO and VS. Other Austric languages are also mostly SVO, for example, the Munda languages in Austro-Asiatic/Miao, many of the Austronesian languages of Papua, and Japanese according to Benedict's Japanese/Austro-Tai theory. So, lets start with our comparison of the languages.

Just what I needed info on Sumer...very precise Abzug.

"Racial" Types in Sumer

Which Sumer?

There was the original civilization (Sumer A), there was the Semitic inundation (Sumer B), and then there was a late-era revival which was a third folk entirely, with a large Semite gene-pool remaining (Sumer C).

And those are just the big divisions. To which Sumer does this genetic/linguistic rummaging refer?

(Answer: "The last and most debased Sumer standing", for anyone who has to guess.)

I don't know about that but they talked like Tagalogs :

Sumerian is an agglutinative language ........

I also have that problem .

My own language starts to agglutinate after imbibing the first six-pack of Coors.

:p

The Sumerians invented the writing. No mean feat.

The Gilgamesh story is good. The real name in Sumerian was Bill Gamesh, I kid you not (OK, I doubled the l to conform with english spelling).

Which Sumer?

There was the original civilization (Sumer A), there was the Semitic inundation (Sumer B), and then there was a late-era revival which was a third folk entirely, with a large Semite gene-pool remaining (Sumer C).

And those are just the big divisions. To which Sumer does this genetic/linguistic rummaging refer?

(Answer: "The last and most debased Sumer standing", for anyone who has to guess.)

Dunno, but I thought he meant the original group. They look like jews in their artwork.

The Gilgamesh story is good. The real name in Sumerian was Bill Gamesh, I kid you not (OK, I doubled the l to conform with english spelling).

Amazing. Enkidu might want to know that. I'd like it if his name turned out to mean something like "Elvis Kiddo" or somesuch.

Seriously, I could never figure out how they translated all that scribble out in Mesopotamia. It all looked like tree bark patterns to me, but they found history in it. The people who did that impress me lots.

I

Przyluski and Autran carried out a very preliminary comparison of Sumerian and Austric earlier this century in which they showed some sound correspondences between the two.

While Sumerian is primarily SOV, it also has instances of SVO, VO and VS. Other Austric languages are also mostly SVO, for example, the Munda languages in Austro-Asiatic/Miao, many of the Austronesian languages of Papua, and Japanese according to Benedict's Japanese/Austro-Tai theory. So, lets start with our comparison of the languages.

Was it kosher orwas it junk science?.

Arguably you can put two disparate groups of Simian fruit-eaters in a room and identify 'sound correspondences between the two' groups.

As no original Sumerian speakers exist! (Sumeria disappeared many millenia ago) anyone trying to recreate the Sumerian spoken language today will be biased (subconsciously or otherwise) by his own mother tongue.

If you take a tagalog speaker from the jungles of Mindanao and teach him to read a Scottish Poem in English, will there be 'sound correspondences' between English/Scottish idiom and Tagalog?.

Given enough time, the 'gook' will be able to speak a language in a manner that superfically may sound 'Scottish' - and any outside observer trying to link the Scottish brogue with Tagalog would immediately be ably to (Wrongly!) then 'discover' that 'there are sound correspondences between the two' .

Using Przyulski and the other guy's flawed research technique they could wrongly conclude that Gaelic / English is linked to the hybridised Hispanic/Chinese/Jungle indian/Arab amalgam that comprises Tagalog !

Any objective analysis of Przyulski and the other guy's conclusions may show that they were doing a 'Margaret Meade' with their research, ie Cooking the Results to generate spurious conclusions!.

Reasonable comment?

:)
JJT

Amazing. Enkidu might want to know that. I'd like it if his name turned out to mean something like "Elvis Kiddo" or somesuch.

Seriously, I could never figure out how they translated all that scribble out in Mesopotamia. It all looked like tree bark patterns to me, but they found history in it. The people who did that impress me lots.

Enkiddu meant "Naked". It if sounds the same it IS the same. The Sumerians were speaking English!

And this is weird - their word for "city ruler" was en-si or in English, Nazi.

http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/index.html is a collection of all sumerian texts, some of them translated. When you read them, you read the oldest texts. It is a strange and glorious feeling to be able to read and understand what was written 5000 years ago.

The decipherment of Sumerian is a remarkable example of Aryan genius. Although Sumerian doesn't have a connection to other known languages, there were bilingual texts in known languages to start from.

Hey, my name is there (almost).

WHAT ABZU MEANS

The most frequently asked question from users of Abzu is about the meaning of the word "Abzu". The publication in the early Summer of 1995 of the third fascicle of the Pennsylvania Assyrian Dictionary

Sjöberg, Åke, [Editor]. The Sumerian Dictionary of the University of Pennsylvania. Volume 1: A, Part II. With the collaboration of Hermann Behrens, Antoine Cavigneaux , Barry L. Eichler, Margaret W. Green, Erle Leichty, Darlene M. Loding, Steve Tinney. Philadelphia: The Babylonian Section of the University Museum; 1995. 1 volume (xlii + 202 pages). ISBN: 0-924171-35-9.

offers the opportunity to give an explanation. That volume defines the word Abzu in an extended article running from page 184 to page 202. Their heading reads as follows:

abzu wr. ab-su, ab-zu, ab2-zu, absu(SU.AB), abzu(ZU.AB), abzu2(DE2)

1. the abzu as Enki's shrine / temple in Eridu 2. the abzu in locations other than Eridu 3. the abzu as a (partly?) subterranean structure 4. the abzu as a mythical place where the life influencing powers reside and where their results, as well as the means to influence their effects, originate 5. the abzu described as incomprehensible, unfathomable, secret 6. the abzu as a place producing raw materials 7. abzu in DN 8. abzu in TN 9. abzu in PN; Archaic, Presarg., Gudea, Ur III, OB, Post-OB


http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/index.html is a collection of all sumerian texts, some of them translated. When you read them, you read the oldest texts. It is a strange and glorious feeling to be able to read and understand what was written 5000 years ago.

The decipherment of Sumerian is a remarkable example of Aryan genius. Although Sumerian doesn't have a connection to other known languages, there were bilingual texts in known languages to start from.

The decipherment of Sumerian is a remarkable example of Aryan genius. Although Sumerian doesn't have a connection to other known languages, there were bilingual texts in known languages to start from.

Agree, pure genius.

I'm not sure if it's online, but there are linguists who insist that Old Sumerian and modern Hungarian have some points of similarity. All I have seen is a list of word-comparisons that are pretty provocative, but that's been a long time back.

Yes, I read that in http://www.acronet.net/~magyar/english/96-07/baraeast.html

Convincing, but I don't know anything about either Hungarian or Sumerian so it is very easy to convince me here.

Hungarian, Finnish, Korean and Japanese are supposedly remnants of the same languagegroup (and that would include Sumerian then).

On the far far south eastern edge of the region of Sumerian influence is the Hili fort from 3500 BC.

The jointed megalithic stones of the Um-man-Ar are similar to what is encountered in Peru.

http://www.aam.gov.ae/important_discoveries/photo/hili_tomb_side.htm
http://www.aam.gov.ae/related_sites/hili_grand_tomb.htm