Sumer thread

Don't forget the oldest surviving musical compositions are Sumerian in origin.
youtube.com/watch?v=QpxN2VXPMLc

>mfw reading Inanna by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer

>Hurrian
>1400 bc
>Sumerian
Son...

if they were a superior people then why did they get replaced

>5:00
>breakdown
Will we ever be free of this cancerous hardcore menace

>Phenotypically they didn't look Middle-easterners but where swarthy ie black hair brown eyes, tan skin.

>People with brown eyes, black hair, tan skin, hooked noses and monobrows don't look Middle Eastern

/pol/ please, fuck off

samefagging tripfag please fuck off

>Not being able to distinguish tripfags from namefags
I keep seeing more and more of your ilk lately, lurk more before posting faggot.

Sumerians were irl anime

prefer winter personally

youtube.com/watch?v=QUcTsFe1PVs

overrated

>many places

*three places.

I love Sumer but I hate Wintter ahahahahaha

That's a god, not a Sumerian.

Meet

Four technically.

Hieroglyphics are based on cuneiform.

Mesoamerica also had its own writing system.
Hotly debated, no conclusive evidence.

The archeological evidence has pretty much BTFO this notion over the last few decades.

Protowriting in Egypt and Sumer developed contemporaneously.

In fact, it'd almost make more sense to describe Egyptian civilization and Mesopotamian civilization as manifestations of the same phenomenon.

Cuneiform predates hieroglyphs by centuries, and we know there was significant contact between Sumer and Egypt. If Egypt didn't outright base their writing off of cuneiform, they at least got the idea for writing from Sumer.

>Dreyer's findings at Tomb UJ at Abydos in Upper Egypt clearly show place names written in hieroglyphs (up to four in number) recognizable as signs, which persisted and were employed during later periods and which are written and read phonetically. The tomb is dated to c. 3250 BC and demonstrates that such writing (on bone and ivory labels) is a more advanced form of writing than was evident in Sumer at that date. It is argued, therefore, that the Egyptian writing system, which is in any case very different from the Mesopotamian, could not have been the result of influence from a less-developed system existing at that date in Sumer.[19]

Cuneiform appears by 3400 BCE, no? Proto-hieroglyphics appeared in 4000 BCE which would make it older. Also by your logic might as well claim that Hangul is based on the chinese script.

The oldest examples of cuneiform are older than the oldest examples of hieroglyphs. You can say "but there must have been proto-heiroglyphs before full hieroglyphs!" but that's just as true for cuneiform.

No, There was Not direct contact in 3150 BC, only non direct, and hieroglyphs have nothing to do with cuneiform

>hieroglyphs have nothing to do with cuneiform

Earliest cuneiform was pictographic, and cuneiform uses the rebus principle to spell words, exactly like hieroglyphs but unlike any other writing system known.

The symbols are completely different, both in number and form

>unlike any other writing system known

I'm not sure I can think of a single culture that invented writing and didn't start out on the rebus principle.

That's like how a language comes into being, it goes from pictures, to motifs, to runes, to logographic characters.

People were doing rebus style runic systems with the Vinca Signs and the Jiahu shells like 8,000 years ago. That's universal.

And this proves that the Egyptians didn't learn how to write from Sumer how, exactly? Or should I point out how different in form and number the Latin alphabet is from the hieratic adjab, as "proof" that our alphabet isn't based on that of the Egyptians?

Hieroglyphs and cuneiform both have the method of "double writing", that is of using a determinant, then a syllabic sound, then spelling out the syllabic sound with alphabetic letters. No other language does this, it is unique to these two systems.

This is The most retards thing I have ever read

Because there's more than a thousand years between those two languages, and at most 200 years between Egyptian and Sumerian.

So? What the fuck kind of an answer is that? Moron.

A correct answer.

Languages evolve slowly.

You wouldn't expect changes that dramatic to happen over a short distance and a short timeframe.

We have other examples where cultures definitely did adopt writing systems wholesale from other cultures, such as the Japanese and the Chinese, and they definitely started out using the same symbol.s.

Not him but There were many intermidiate abjads and alphabets between hieratic and Latin alphabet. No internediate forms between cuneiform and Eg hieroglyphs

Because it's a direct inspiration. Monkey see, money do. Egyptians saw cuneiform, grokked the utility of writing, and implemented their own take on it. It's not a coincidence that these systems are so similar.

Those changes took place over a thousand years and with many proven intermediary scripts, not over 200 and between scripts that evolved but didn't pass through entirely several other types of scripts along the way.

Hittite hieroglyphic writing uses a completely different basis than the Egyptian, as well as different symbols. Do you imagine the Hittites invented their system without knowledge of Egyptian writing?

Yes, 1,000 years is longer than 200. You already said this, I'm still waiting for your point.

No.

But proto-Egyptian is older than the finished Sumerian language is.

How would the people writing proto-Egyptian be influenced by a language that didn't exist yet? Were they somehow aware of the runes that the Sumerians were writing?

Honest question, not rhetorical.

Yes, They did, also They used mainly cuneiform

>But proto-Egyptian is older than the finished Sumerian language is.

And proto-cuneiform, which was PICTOGRAPHIC, is older than Hieroglyphs.

Wasn't me, I was pointing out what that user seemed to be implying. That while it's true that Latin and Egyptian scripts are radically different, they had over 1000 years of evolution between them passed through a myriad of scripts, while Egyptian and Cuneiform scripts only had roughly 200 years separating them and are radically different in their own ways. In other words, it makes sense as to why Latin would be so different from Egyptian, but makes little sense as to why Egyptian would be so different from Cuneiform.

If Egyptians started out with cuneiform then yes it would be surprising how different their system became. If, on the other hand, they were inspired to write by exposure to cuneiform then it would not be at all surprising, just as it is not surprising that Hittite glyphs are unlike Egyptian ones, even tho we know the one was inspired by the other.

>Mesoamerica also had its own writing system.

Just for you user.

Suuure they were inspired to write in 3200 BC by Sumerians with whom they had next to no direct contacts with at The time, but Levantines and Anatolians didn't start writing until 1000 years later despite being much closer to Sumerians

>oracle bone script 3100 BC

Lol

Why do you imagine they had no direct contact? Is it because you're a moron, or because you;re just totally ignorant?

...

You
I like you

Are you claiming Ogham was independently invented, and not inspired by knowledge of Greek?

Because There is no proof they did so far back in time, also it's funny how you immediately start insulting as soon as you notice you're starting to lose the argument, what a manchild, must be sad to be a weak little virgin like you who's only capable of venting his frustrations from behind a screen

I'm not losing anything, I'm irritated by morons who simply repeat the same dopey bullshit over and over with zero thought.

>Because There is no proof they did so far back in time

So you're completely ignorant? Good to now, opinion disregarded.

How do we know this is what it sounded like?

I was going by the earliest proto-systems, do you have any better date?

I love you too, user.

Now that you are Insulting me without providing any real argument you've convinced me...

...That you are a frustrated manchild who comes here to vent his frustrations and who's in desperate need of a social life

We have archaeological finds of instruments. There's no way to ow it sounded exactly like this, but it's as authentic as possible.

>HURR

Whatever you say moron.

Manchild

>I was going by the earliest proto-systems, do you have any better date?

Oracle bone script dates back to 1200-1050 bc according to Wikipedia, there were early sins in China but they were proto writing, not writing and were dated back to like 8-7,000 bc, there's a gap of over 6,000 years between the two and they are very different anyway

I like how the Canadian aboriginal script was influenced by Devanagari

Let's go with it then.

Good job, I don't wanna be too pedantic but doesn't the Fibula praenestina date back to 600 bc?

Also you're missing the Etruscan script

It's also based on pitman shorthand.

I thought about putting, should it be Etruscan or Old Italic? Also depends where you start, if you go with archaic, old or classical latin. As I mentioned earlier I just went with whatever earlier system,

that's clearly an ayylmao not a god

>Why do you imagine they had no direct contact?
You do realize there's a significant difference between direct and indirect contact, right? There very well may have been trade between the regions - hell, with trade going as far as the Baltic and Afghanistan I'd be surprised if there wasn't. But there's no evidence of any direct contact, so such trade was almost surely through middle-men.

>implying sumerians didn't just appropiate the culture of the banana language speakers who were a previous civilization making them the genuine first nation before Sumer

Last revision hopefully.

What about the akkads?

Etruscan is from 700 bc and Latin from 600-550 bc but otherwise it's ok

Final final, well this was a very productive thread on the Sumerian people.

Maya was independent from olmec?

As far as we know yes, there's a possible intermediary between Olmec and Maya called Epi-Olmec but it's all speculation for now.

Fuck it, for simplicity's sake.

Not so fast fag
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rongorongo

I'd say Phoenician belongs around 1100-1050 bc but ok...

Not confirmed writing and too bad the legend hides Easter Island.

What I wouldn't do for my fans.

and still greeks got it in 800 BC

In 750 BC*

Phoenicians only started trading with Europe regularly after colonozing Cyprus in 900-850 BC

Not all middle easterners have hooked nose.

Cool drawing

why does every board have to turn into /pol/

>Be a bunch of city states
>City states beat the shit out of eachother
>Akkad comes on top
>BTFO later by Assyria, Babylonia, etc

The Sumerians did in most of not all of their sculptures and reliefs

bullshit

Assyria is akkad and babylonia too

Can some Veeky Forumstorian give a summary of Sumer, it's people, and language to someone who knows nothing about it?

They were either the first literate culture ever, or tied for that feat with the Egyptians.

They emerged in modern day Iraq.

Their language was a linguistic isolate, and we're pretty sure they weren't related to anyone else in the region; their origin is a mystery.

They lived in the extremely fertile riverbanks of the Tigris and Euphrates, growing mainly wheat and living off of mainly bread and beer.

For the most part, they lived in city-states, they were the first urban civilization in recorded history.

They were eventually subsumed into the empire of their more militaristic neighbors, the Akkadians, but Sumerian continued to be used as a religious language like Latin up until the 1800s BC

Are you blind?