MAN FROM THE FARTHEST PAST 
Like the Painted Pottery People, the Sumerians learned 
to employ copper, and gold as well, very early, perhaps 
even before they arrived in Babylonia. Much of their 
work in these metals is of a high order and shows a well- 
developed knowledge of metallurgy. They made a sort 
of bronze by mixing the molten copper with lead; and they 
seem to have been the first to develop the socketed spear- 
head and the battle-ax with the helve passing through the 
ax-head. The Sumerians also early used regular troops, 
drawn up in ranks and equipped with huge shields and 
long spears, something like the famous Macedonian 
phalanx of much later times. The kings were carried to 
battle, probably as medicine men rather than fighters, in 
carts drawn by donkeys—the forerunners of the later 
horse-drawn war chariots. 
The development of agriculture naturally led to a great 
increase in population, which in turn gave rise to a need 
for more and more organization and joint action, directed 
by the priest-king rulers, in the defense of their fields and 
herds and in the making of canals, dykes, town walls, 
foundation mounds, and temples. Navigation, too, was 
developed; for water transport has always beén easier 
and cheaper than that by land. For ages the peoples 
along the lower courses of the Euphrates and Tigris doubt- 
less used simple floats made of bundles of reeds, together, 
probably, with dugout canoes. But later they constructed 
craft of a larger size, with oars and sails. There was a 
tradition, indeed, that the Phoenicians, that great sea- 
faring people of antiquity who lived in historical times on 
the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, came origi- 
nally from the Persian Gulf. 
In time the Sumerians were absorbed by the Semites, 
peoples speaking tongues belonging to the same family of 
speech as ancient Hebrew and modern Arabic. There was 
much give and take in this process, and each people 
adopted many elements of civilization from the other. The 
Sumerian language, however, which belonged to a totally 
[ 304 ] 
ee 
