The Sumerians were Black…

Rawlinson was convinced that there was a relationship between the Sumerians and Africans. As a result he used two African languages: one Semitic and the other Cushitic to decipher the cuneiform writing. Rawlinson was sure that the ancient Nubians and Puntites founded Mesopotamian civilization.(1)

The Sumerians came from the Sahara before it became a desert. Affinities exist between Nubia ware and pottery from Ennedi and Tibesti.

These Saharan people were round-headed ancient Mediterranean type. They were often referred to as Cafsa or Capsians; a group of people not devoid of negroid characteristics according to J Desanges.(11) Wyatt MacGaffey, claims that the term “Mediterranean” is an anthropological euphemism for “Negro”.

The boats of the Saharan people are similar to those found on ancient engravings of boats in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. Many of the boats found in the eastern desert of Egypt and among the Red Sea Hills show affinities to Mesopotamian models.

S.N. Kramer in The Sumerians, claimed that Makan was Egypt, Mekluhha was Nubia-Punt, and the Indus Valley was Dilmun. Today Dilmun is believed to be found near Arabia. But the archaeological evidence suggest that the Indus Valley which was settled by Dravidian speakers was the source of the lapis lazuli , which made Dilmun famous .(2)

Archaeological research has confirmed that cultural interaction existed between the contemporary civilizations of the 4th and 3rd millenia B.C. Extensive trade routes connected the Proto-Dravidians of the Indus Valley, with African people in Egypto-Nubia, and the Elamites and Sumerians. P. Kohl discovered that vessels from IVBI worshop at Tepe Yahya, have a uniform shape and design. Vessels sharing this style are distributed from Soviet Uzbekistan to the Indus Valley, and Sumerian, Elamite and Egyptian sites. (2) In addition, we find common arrowheads at Harappan sites, and sites in Iran, Egypt, Minoan Crete and Heladic Greece.

It appears that the locus for this distribution of cultural traditions and technology was the Saharan-Nubian zone or Kush. This would explain why the Sumerians and Elamites often referred to themselves as “ksh”. For example the ancient Sumerians called their dynasty “Kish”. The words “kish”, “kesh” and “kush” were also names for ancient Nubia-Sudan.

The Elamites also came from Kush. According to the classical writer Strabo, Susa the centre of the Elamite civilization was founded by Tithonus, king of Kush.

B.B. Lal has shown conclusively that the Dravidians came from Nubia and were related to the C-Group people who founded the Kerma dynasty.(3) They both used a common black-and-red ware (BRW) which Lal found was analogous to ceramics used by the megalithic people in India who also used analogous pottery signs identical to those found in the corpus of Indus Valley writing. (4)

Singh believes that this pottery spread from Nubia, through Mesopotamia and Iran southward into India.(5) The earliest examples of this BRW date to the Amratian period (c4000-3500 B.C.).

This same BRW was found at the lowest levels of Harappan sites at Lothal and Rangpur. After 1700 B.C. This ceramic tradition spread southward into megalithic India.(6) It is also found in Uzbekistan and China. (12)

Dilmun was an important source of lapis lazuli. If the Indus Valley civilization was Dilmun as hypothesized by Kramer, it would explain the control of the Harappans/ or Dilmunites of this important metal.

The Indus Valley people spoke a Dravidian language.(7) The Harappans controlled the lazurite region of Badakhshan, and the routes to the tin and copper fields of central Asia.(8)

The major city of the Harappans/Dilmunites in the lapis lazuli region was Shortughai. Francefort believes that many lapis lazuli works were transported to Iran and Mesopotamia from Shortughai.(9) The BRW at Shortughai is typically Harappan.

When we put all of this evidence together we must agree that there is some historical evidence for a connection between the NKSD people. These people used similar arrow heads, red-and-black pottery, and intercultural vessels.This shows the common culture of these people.

Footnotes

(1)C.B. Rawlinson, “Notes on the early history of Babylon”, Jour. Royal Asiatic Society (First Series) 15, p.230.

(2). Philip L. Kohl, “The balance of trade in the mid-Third millenium BC”, Current Anthropology, 19 (1978), pp.463-492.

(3)B.B. Lal, “From megalithic to the Harappan: Tracing back the graffiti on pottery”, Ancient India, 16 (1960).

(4)B.B. Lal, “The only Asian mission in threatened Nubia”, The Illustrated London Times, 20 April 1963.

(5) H.N. Singh, History and Archaeology of Black-and-Red Ware , Delhi, 1982.

(6) C.A. Winters, “The Dravido-Harappan Colonization of Central Asia”, Central Asiatic Journal , 34 (1-2), pp.120-144.

(7) C.A. Winters, “The Dravidian language of the Harappan script”, Archiv Orientalni, (1990).

(8) B. Brenjes, “On Proto-Elamite Iran”, Current Anthropology, 24 (2) (1984), pp. 240-.

(9) Henri-Paul Franceport, “La civilisation de l’Indus aux rives de l’Oxus”, Archeologie , (Decembre) p.50.

(10) Ibid., p.49.

(11) J. Desnages, “The Proto-Berbers”. In General History of Africa vol.2, (Ed.) by G. Mokhtar (Heinemann Educational Books, London) p.25.

(12) Andersson,T.G. 1934. CHILDREN OF THE YELLOW EARTH:STUDIES IN PREHISTORIC CHINA. London.