What About The Sumerians?

[pfw]

The Sumerians predate Ancient Egypt by quite a bit,invented writing, accounting (bad, bad people), were the first to combine farming with permanat settlements, invented irrigation and cities... (ok, the Indus Vally may have beaten them to that but the evidence I've seen isn't amazingly convincing). And to top it all off they did all this slowly by trial and error with no suddden, hard to explain, explosion of technology...What I'd like to know is why do they so often get ignored in discusions about were/why the (for example) Egyptions suddenly got all their writing and building skills from- when Egypt suddenly learnt to write and build- the building technique was remarkably similar to the Sumerian technique and architecture. The written language is extreamly similar to the Sumerian when you take into account the different mediums used...Why go for a long, convoluted route via ice ages, lost civilisations somehow retaining (but not using ????) their skills etc? Surely Sumeria, via trade, invasion or whatever other means, is a much neater, believable and realistic proposition? (David Rohl's 'LEGEND' suggests this very point but it seems to get lost in this clamour to 'prove' Atlantis or whatever...)Just wondering...

[Prober]

I loved the Epic of Gilgamesh. I found it fascination for many reasons. I don't know why they don't get more credit.

[pfw]

The Epic Of Gilgamesh-my favorite piece of epic poety and probably the oldest know book/novel. It's a total mystery to me as to why the Sumerians are so often overlooked and rarely given the credit they (probably) deserve.

[Prober]

I believe they even describe (in their terms) the Gods flying in airplanes or spaceships and shooting missiles at each other.

[Thomas]

Apologies in advance for interrupting this discourse with a purely nonsensical aside, but the topic title reminded me of a piece of graffiti, written on the wall of, I think, Holborn Tube Station.

"I like grils!"

To which someone had added: "You means 'girls', stupid!"

To which someone else had added: "Hey, what about us grils?"

Sorry everyone, pray continue ...

Thomas

[pfw]

Originally Posted by Prober

I believe they even describe (in their terms) the Gods flying in airplanes or spaceships and shooting missiles at each other.

possibly but I'm deeply suspicious of those interpritations. Gods, by definition, are supposed to be able to do amazing things so why not fly around in chariots etc blasting eachother with lightening bolts? And what about the ones who lived under the sea or in the Abyz? Although most (not all) of their gods were described, one way or another as winged or feathered in some way and a good few of them seem to me human/animal hybreds... maybe rather than spacemen they had realy advanced genetic manipulation skills (passed down to them by the Atlantians) which we've lost somehow-it's only a matter of time before we find the clay tablets they wrote the instructions down on and the surgeries with the highly specialised equipment needed I'm sure... Or is that just silly and the answer more likely lies with human imagination and a few too many halucinagenics???