[102] My friend Colonel Lawrence tells me that the movement among the Arabs is somewhat as follows: (1) the sessile village cultivators are pushed out by over-population into the desert—very reluctantly; (2) they wander in the desert for a thousand years or so—as a stick pushed into the water gets carried about for a long way; (3) they are pushed again out of the desert, back again into sessile life by starvation—very reluctantly (they have learned to love the desert); and when they come back into sessile life they are on the other side—i.e. having started in west Arabia, they land in Mesopotamia. Thus they wander a thousand years or so, and end up thousands of miles from where they started.—E. B.
[103] Sir H. H. Johnston is inclined to believe that a common late Neolithic and early bronze culture spread widely in this primitive world. He links the Dravidian languages of India—some of which group are to be found in Beluchistan and the eastern fringe of Persia—with certain languages in the Caucasian Mountains, and these again with Basque. He would bring the Sumerians, the early Cretans, and the early peoples of Asia Minor into this early “brown” or dark white culture before the Aryans, Semites, or Hamites developed their language cultures and thrust across this band of primordial civilization. He connects these “class and prefix” languages with the creation of the African Bantu, but that is a speculation beyond the scope of this present work. A series of articles on this subject by the Rev. W. Crabtree will be found in the Journal of the African Society. The connection of Sumerian and Bantu was first suggested by Sir Richard Burton in 1885. These views are in complete accordance with Elliot Smith’s suggestion of a widespread heliolithic culture already dealt with in chap. xiii, § 4, p. 146
[104] Excavations conducted at Eridu by Capt. R. Campbell Thompson during the recent war have revealed an early Neolithic agricultural stage, before the invention of writing or the use of bronze, beneath the earliest Sumerian foundations. The crops were cut by sickles of earthenware. Capt. Thompson thinks that these pre-Sumerian people were not of Sumerian race, but proto-Elamites. Entirely similar Neolithic remains have been found at Susa, once the chief city of Elam.
[105] Sayce, in Babylonian and Assyrian Life, estimates that in 6500 B.C. Eridu was on the seacoast.
[106] Authorities vary upon this date. Some put back Sargon I to 3750 B.C. This latter was his traditional date based on Babylonian records.
[107] Of unknown language and race, “neither Sumerians nor Semites,” says Sayce. Their central city was Susa. Their archæology is still largely an unworked mine. They are believed by some, says Sir H. H. Johnston, to have been negroid in type. There is a strong negroid strain in the modern people of Elam.
[108] For most of these dates here Winckler in Helmolt’s World History has been followed.
[109] II. Kings xv. 29, and xvi. 7 et seq.
[110] II. Kings xvii. 3.
[111] To be murdered by his sons.