243. The Sumerian Hinterland
There are some evidences of these cultures previous to the Sumerian one or coeval with it. In Elam, the foot-hill country east of Sumer, a mound at Susa contains over 100 feet of culture-bearing deposits; in southern Turkistan, at Anau, 300 miles east of the Caspian sea, one is more than fifty feet deep. The date of the first occupancy of these sites has been set, largely on the basis of the rate of accumulation of the deposits—an unsafe criterion—at 18,000 and 8000 B.C. respectively. These dates, particularly the former, are surely too high. But a remote antiquity is indicated. Both sites show adobe brick houses and hand-made, painted pottery at the very bottom. Susa contains copper implements in the lowest stratum; Anau, three-fourths way to the base—in the same level as remains of sheep and camels. Still lower levels at Anau yielded remains of tamed cattle, pigs, and goats, while wheat and barley appear at the very bottom, before domesticated animals were kept. Whatever the date of the introduction of copper in these regions, it was very likely anterior to the thirty-first century, when bronze was already used by the Sumerians. These excavations therefore shed light on the Full Neolithic and Eneolithic or Transition phases of west Asiatic culture which must have preceded the Sumerian civilization known to us.
The languages of these early west Asiatic peoples have not been classified. Sumerian was non-Indo-European, non-Semitic, non-Hamitic. Some have thought to detect Turkish, that is Ural-Altaic, resemblances in it. But others find similarities to modern African languages. This divergence of opinion probably means that Sumerian cannot yet be safely linked with any other linguistic group. The same applies to Elamite, which is known from inscriptions of a later date than the early strata at Susa. What the Neolithic and Bronze Age people of Anau spoke there is no means of knowing. The region at present is Turkish, but this is of course no evidence that it was so thousands of years ago. The speech of the region might conceivably have been Indo-European, for it lies at the foot of the Persian plateau, which by the Iron Age was occupied by the Iranian branch of the Indo-Europeans, who are generally thought to have entered it from the north or northwest. But again there is not a shred of positive evidence for an Indo-European population at this wholly prehistoric period. The one thing that is clear is that the early civilization of the general west Asiatic area was not developed by the Semites who were its chief carriers later. This is a situation parallel to that obtaining in Europe and Asia Minor, whose civilization in the full historic period has been almost wholly in the hands of Indo-Europeans, whereas at the dawn of history the nations who were culturally in the lead, the Hittites, Trojans, Cretans, Lydians, Etruscans, and Iberians, were all non-Indo-European.