The Sumerian Paradox: Modern archaeogenetics proves they were a massive mix of surrounding populations, yet their language has ZERO connection to anyone else on Earth. Are we looking at a surviving remnant of an older civilization?
The Sumerian Paradox: Modern archaeogenetics proves they were a massive mix of surrounding populations, yet their language has ZERO connection to anyone else on Earth. Are we looking at a surviving remnant of an older civilization?
I’ve been looking into early Sumerian history and something weird pops up. DNA studies show the people were a mix of Zagros, Anatolian, and Levant populations, but the Sumerian language is a total isolate with no clear relatives. So genetically they’re a melting pot, yet linguistically it comes from nowhere. Makes you wonder if it’s just a lost language family or something much older. I actually made a short 12-minute video here if anyone’s curious: [**https://youtu.be/EFkR7FRNu6E**](https://youtu.be/EFkR7FRNu6E)
JournalistEast4224 on
This image looks very similar to that one about the Native American DNA 🤔🧐😡
Soggy-Mistake8910 on
Who are you, and why should I believe you?
jojojoy on
> And the origin story that textbooks have been telling for generations? It just collapsed
For all the references I see to textbooks needing to be rewritten or similar phrasing, I hardly ever see any actual names of textbooks.
> The traditional narrative treats civilization as something that was invented, like a switch was flipped and humans went from simple to complex
Similarly, where does this narrative exist? What specifically are archaeologists saying about civilization in this context?
Angry_Anthropologist on
That’s not how language isolates work. It just means that the other members of their language family died out before they could be recorded in writing. We can be pretty confident that other members of a Proto-Sumerian language family existed contemporary to Sumerian proper, but passed into disuse just like Sumerian itself eventually did.
Whilst we will probably never know the true history of these languages, my guess would be they had the same fate as Sumerian itself; gradual replacement by Semitic languages like Akkadian when Semitic-speaking empires began to dominate the region. This is also probably how Basque became a language isolate; all of its neighbouring languages were replaced by Latin.
ilunga-naa on
Wrong. Turkish is the closest language to Sumerian, min. 170 some exact words living in Turkish. Both languages stem from the same source. Turcic Z and R.
Nevertheless this does not have to have emotional connotations, we Turks still live like shit.
7 Comments
I’ve been looking into early Sumerian history and something weird pops up. DNA studies show the people were a mix of Zagros, Anatolian, and Levant populations, but the Sumerian language is a total isolate with no clear relatives. So genetically they’re a melting pot, yet linguistically it comes from nowhere. Makes you wonder if it’s just a lost language family or something much older. I actually made a short 12-minute video here if anyone’s curious: [**https://youtu.be/EFkR7FRNu6E**](https://youtu.be/EFkR7FRNu6E)
This image looks very similar to that one about the Native American DNA 🤔🧐😡
Who are you, and why should I believe you?
> And the origin story that textbooks have been telling for generations? It just collapsed
For all the references I see to textbooks needing to be rewritten or similar phrasing, I hardly ever see any actual names of textbooks.
> The traditional narrative treats civilization as something that was invented, like a switch was flipped and humans went from simple to complex
Similarly, where does this narrative exist? What specifically are archaeologists saying about civilization in this context?
That’s not how language isolates work. It just means that the other members of their language family died out before they could be recorded in writing. We can be pretty confident that other members of a Proto-Sumerian language family existed contemporary to Sumerian proper, but passed into disuse just like Sumerian itself eventually did.
Whilst we will probably never know the true history of these languages, my guess would be they had the same fate as Sumerian itself; gradual replacement by Semitic languages like Akkadian when Semitic-speaking empires began to dominate the region. This is also probably how Basque became a language isolate; all of its neighbouring languages were replaced by Latin.
Wrong. Turkish is the closest language to Sumerian, min. 170 some exact words living in Turkish. Both languages stem from the same source. Turcic Z and R.
Nevertheless this does not have to have emotional connotations, we Turks still live like shit.
Fuck ai