Page:The Outline of History Vol 1.djvu/213

called the Sumerians. They were neither Semites nor Aryans, and whence they came we do not know. Whether they were dark whites of Iberian or Dravidian affinities is less certainly to be denied.^[1] They used a kind of writing which they scratched upon clay, and their language has been deciphered.^[2] It was a language more like the unclassified Caucasic language groups than any others that now exist. These languages may be connected with Basque, and may represent what was once a widespread group extending from Spain and western Europe to eastern India, and reaching

1. Sir H. H. Johnston is inclined to believe that a common late Neolithic and early bronze culture spread widely in this primitive world. He links the Dravidian languages of India—some of which group are to be found in Beluchistan and the eastern fringe of Persia—with certain languages in the Caucasian Mountains, and these again with Basque. He would bring the Sumerians, the early Cretans, and the early peoples of Asia Minor into this early "brown" or dark white culture before the Aryans, Semites, or Hamites developed their language cultures and thrust across this band of primordial civilization. He connects these "class and prefix" languages with the creation of the African Bantu, but that is a speculation beyond the scope of this present work. A series of articles on this subject by the Rev. W. Crabtree will be found in the Journal of the African Society. The connection of Sumerian and Bantu was first suggested by Sir Richard Burton in 1885. These views are in complete accordance with Elliot Smith's suggestion of a widespread heliolithic culture already dealt with in chap. xiii, § 4, p. 146.
2. Excavations conducted at Eridu by Capt. R. Campbell Thompson during the recent war have revealed an early Neolithic agricultural stage, before the invention of writing or the use of bronze, beneath the earliest Sumerian foundations. The crops were cut by sickles of earthenware. Capt. Thompson thinks that these pre-Sumerian people were not of Sumerian race, but proto-Elamites. Entirely similar Neolithic remains have been found at Susa, once the chief city of Elam.