274 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



But even so, there is no clear racial continuity between these 

 early Babylonian Mongols and the present Mongol peoples of 

 Western Asia. Some 6000 years ago the Akkado-Sumerians had 

 already been in close contact with the Semitic Assyrians of 

 Mesopotamia 1 , and merged with them and the Amorites in a 

 single nationality, the Semitic element of which was afterwards 

 strengthened both by Israelites and Jews, and still later by pre- 

 and post-Muhammadan Arabs. Hence the assumed original 

 Mongol substratum has long been effaced throughout the Tigris- 

 Euphrates basin. 



Most authorities agree in locating the Akkads on the northern 

 heights, and the Sumerians on the lowland plains 



Akkado- . . 



Sumerian of Chaldaea. But while R. von Hiring, following 

 Hommel, brings both of these Turki tribes, as he 

 calls them, from " their original home in the mountains 2 ," others 

 are inclined to the view that they came, not from the north, but 

 by sea from the south, most probably from Minaea in Arabia. 

 Certainly the earliest known settlements Lagash, Nippur, Erech, 

 Uru. Uruk lay about or near the head of the Persian Gulf, 

 where Babylonian culture would therefore seem to have first 

 taken root, spreading thence northwards to Akkad, Elam, and 

 Assyria. The Semitic Assyrians themselves, formerly supposed 

 to have come from the northern highlands, are now believed on 

 good grounds to have reached Mesopotamia from South Arabia 3 . 

 Of the two Babylonian dialects also, the Sumerian of the southern 



1 "The Sumerians had already mingled closely with the Semites when we 

 first hear of them. Their language gave way to the Semitic and tended 

 gradually to become a language of ceremony and ritual. Their religion 

 became assimilated to the religion, and their gods identified with the gods of 

 the Semites. The process of fusion commenced at such an early date that 

 nothing has really come down to us from the time when the two races were 

 strangers to each other" (Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, p. 551). As regards 

 the Amorites (Aramaeans, Syrians) Mr Pinches has shown that this branch of 

 the Semitic family had already founded settlements in Babylonia at least so far 

 back as the time of Khammurabi. 



- Vorgeschichte tier Indo-Europaer, English ed. (Evolution of the Aryan} y 

 1897, p. 79. 



3 Sayce, Assyrian Graw., Schrader, Die Ursitze der Semiten in Zeitsch. d. 

 D. M. Ges. xxvii. p. 397. 



