60 BY THE EIVERS OP BABYLON 



north of Palestine, which leads to the Mesopotamian 

 plain. That was the great commercial route from 

 Babylon in later days. 



The more serious difficulty is that scholars are not 

 at all agreed as to who the earliest founders of the 

 civilization were, and where they came from. The 

 earliest cities, such as Ur and Eridu, are the farthest 

 removed from the Mediterranean. Their sites are 

 now a long distance from the Persian Gulf, but seven 

 thousand years ago they were coast-cities. Most of 

 the experts say that a strange people called the 

 Sumerians came down from the mountains in the 

 north-east, built these and other cities, drained the 

 marshes, and founded the Babylonian civilization. 

 The Semites later mingled with the Sumerians — 

 though a few high authorities believe the Semites 

 were there first — and took over the civilization. At 

 all events, we have the clearest traces of the two 

 peoples — the bearded, large-nosed Semites and the 

 beardless, rather Mongolian-looking Sumerians — on 

 the early monuments, and it is generally agreed that 

 the Sumerians were the first great engineers and 

 builders of cities. 



But how these Sumerians are related to the rest of 

 humanity is not clear. Hall believes that they came 

 from the region of India. Others relate them to the 

 Turkish peoples of central Asia. Others (though this 

 is a less favoured view than it used to be) connect 

 them with the early Chinese. Professor Elliot Smith 

 regards them as the eastern wing of the Mediterranean 

 race, as I have represented them in the preceding 

 chapters. 



If we carefully consider a map, and reflect what 

 would be likely to happen during the Ice Age, we see 



