The case for black Mesopotamians

[zarahan]

^^Exactly how do you define "Asian" in this context? Is the Near East part of Asia?
How would they be "Asian"? The Near east also includes the Palestine area.
Would the clear sub-Saharan African element found among the ancient Natufians of the Israel/Palestine area qualify or disqualify them from being 'Asian"?
Please elucidate with specific examples to bolster your definition.

[zarahan]

-

[sundiata]

^Zarahan. In a way, egytianplanet makes a valid point, which is why I've personally never made attempts to argue with the same veracity about the africanity/blackess of ancient egypt, as it concerns non-African civilizations. That they'd have been dark-skinned non-Africans does little in the way of disproving African inferiority since Mesopotamian/Sumerians were not African people. We need African examples to disprove such nonsense. I've yet to see any evidence that they were recent migrants from Africa as opposed to a derived dark-skinned Asiatic population, possibly akin to the Dravidians (who are not related to Africans). If we're weighing probabilities here, based on the few language classifications and skull measurements, they seem to be more related to modern Dravidian than modern African populations. Hence, I'm not so sure what Sumerians have to do with Africans and I' still confused as to the connection you seek to make with the Natufians..

[zarahan]

I hear ya Sun. I am more stressing the climate angle first. The Sumerians/Mesopotamians were in the subtropical zone and developed advanced civilizations and cultures, among the first at that level. Egypt falls both within the Tropic zone and subtropic zone. This undercuts racist "biodiversity" claims about the primacy of the "cold climate" peoples, who claim the subtropic/tropic peoples lived in environments where they did not learn "to plan" or "organize" and other "complex" cognitive functions. This is clearly dubious - but it is the gospel of JP Rushton and his followers.
See searing critique of Rushton below:
knol.google.com/k/mainstream-academic-research/human-biodiversity-racial-evolutionary/3q8x30897t2cs/28#

Secondarily I deal with Mesopotamian links to Africa. I look at the GREATER MESOPOTAMIA area which includes Palestine, Sumeria and parts of Iran- what would be called today;s "Middle East". Four cultures come into play:
africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/nordicMesopotamiadebunk.jpg

--In the Palestine area we have the Natufians, reputed precursors of the neolithic who show clear sub-Saharan elements. So right off the bat, we have a clear link with sib-Saharan Africa in the Palestine portion of Greater Mesopotamia.

--In the Sumerian area, a number of old time studies refer to "EurAfrican" elements, which incorporates Sub-Saharan elements and "Mediterranean" ones, although the sub-Saharan is usually downplayed. THis is a favorite practice of Carelton Coon- the data shows clear "negroid" elements but he goes ahead and classifies them as "Mediterranean" anyway. Other writers point to head shapes, others to a similarity with Egyptians of the Western desert and people from UPPER EGYPT. This is older research, but the weight of it shows the Sumerians resembling tropical indigenous Africans on some counts. Note- I do not say they were identical.

--The Ubaid people: linked with some tropical African phenotypes such as the Eridu skulls showed a marked prognathism and skulls that were dolichocephalic. The point here is not to argue that the Ubaids were identical to Africans - they clearly were not- but to show that contrary to the claims of "biodiversity" "truth" the peoples of Mesopotamia were not at all the cold climate types supposedly blessed with higher IQ due ot the climate with better ability to "Plan" etc.

--Finally we have the peoples of early Iran as late as the Iranian Bronze Age- they show resemblance more to tropical Africans rather than Europeans- putting another spike in the heart of "cold climate" superiority claims, and a spike into the constant propaganda about "Eurasians". If they were "Eurasian": how come they look like Africans? How come "biodiversity" types keep invoking the true negro stereotypical look, but when we find the same stereotypical look in Mesopotamia, suddenly oh no- we have a sudden change- they suddenly ain't the same negro stereotype they insist on in other contexts? The objective is basically to expose the hypocrisy of their "biodiversity" double standards.


Note again- I do not say Mesopotamians are identical to Africans- that is not the case, but there are certain resemblances- hence calling into question cold-climate claims, and true negro stereotypes invoked elsewhere.

---------

I've yet to see any evidence that they were recent migrants from Africa as opposed to a derived dark-skinned Asiatic population, possibly akin to the Dravidians (who are not related to Africans). If we're weighing probabilities here, based on the few language classifications and skull measurements, they seem to be more related to modern Dravidian than modern African populations. [/img]

Well that's the thing Sun. The data I see, shows several researchers and writers noting resemblances of the Mesopotamians - Sumerians, Palestian Natufians, Ubaids, early Iranians - to Africans. I have seen very little weight of data or analysis typing them into Asiatics like Dravidians. I do not find this surprising since East Africa and Arabia, and the Mesopotamian form part of the ancient GReat Rift Valley, or an area close to it, which once stretched across the Red Sea, before there was a Red Sea, I can very easily see migrations from East Africa to these areas, and movement back and forth with Africa. Pound for pound, so to speak, if we are talking resemblances based on crania, the weight of data is with tropical Africans. Hence, I have shown linkage with Africa on 4 counts.




Another reason for stressing the weight of data with Africa is that it provides a backflow reference point. As you well know, there is a massive amount of effort in the academy to show as much outside inflow into the Nile Valley and East/NEast Africa as possible. It is another way they can deafricanize peoples like Egyotians, Nubians, Ethiopians, Somalis and others. Such studies shamelessly and deliberately continue to use misleading labels and terms like "Arabic", "Oriental" "Caucasoid" etc. You have seen the papers where Keita and others complain about this state of affairs, but the academy is pressing on urgently. It is their last hope. They have failed on crania. They have failed on limb proportions. But the obscurities of DNA combined with misleading labels provides them an excellent way of resurrecting the old Hamitic Hypothesis, and the old hypocritical double standards, all the while making pious utterances about "diversity" and posturing behind a veneer of non-racial objectivity. See how liberal I am is the cover story on the one hand, all the while resurrecting the old hypocrisy and double standards on the other. It is a shrewd, cynical game they are running.

I think it is important to note that peoples in Greater Mesopotamia looked like Black Africans and had some physical links to Africans. Hence, any "backflow" identified thru DNA would be of people ALREADY LOOKING LIKE TROPICAL AFRICANS, not today's Europeans or Middle Easterners. Brace 2005 showed how Euro Neolithics resembled Black Africans more than modern Europeans. Hanihara 1996 worked the Middle Eastern side of the fence, and found the same thing. Hence, when the "biodiversity" types wave backflow as some sort of trump card, they still fail- the incoming "backflowees" resemble Africans not "Caucasoids" or "Eurasians." Note their terminology- how often they lump in Europeans to that Eurasian category, even though the people samples may not be at all from Europe. It is the same old hypocrisy of the "Dynastic Race" and "Hamitic Hypothesis" eras- define Europeans and 'Asians" as widely and expansively as possible, but define anything having to do with Africa as narrowly as possible, preferably something far disant "sub-Saharan" or "Bantu" or any other suitable "true negro" stand-in that fits the cynical game they are playing.

Hence I remain skeptical of any Dravidian link over and above data on the ground, because they will use that to pump up "Asiatic" influx into Africa. Brace 1993 for example carefully excluded the Badarians, but included Indians in his sample by way of comparison. It is like those who run sampling games- taking samples from the far north of Egypt and claiming they are "representative" of Egypt as a whole. They are fooling a lot of people with such games. Also note the continuing hypocrisy of the academy. When Africans migrate into Europe or Asia they become "Europeans" or '"Eurasians", and the populations they influence remain such, but when some European elements migrate into ancient North Africa, they too often remain "Caucasoid."

Still I have not seen much data on Dravidian links and may have missed some studies. Do you have any credible cranial research or at least multiple researches similar to that on the Sumerians above, showing such Dravidian links with Mesopotamia?

[sundiata]

Well that's the thing Sun. The data I see, shows several researchers and writers noting resemblances of the Mesopotamians - Sumerians, Palestian Natufians, Ubaids, early Iranians - to Africans.

I guess what confused me was your actual definition of "Mesopotamia", which is simply the land between the two rivers (the Tigris and Euphrates) and more or less includes parts of Iraq, Turkey and Syria, but not Israel, Palestine, etc... Your work is always spot on and I am not trying to get too technical here, but I think it's important to realize that the civilizations of Mesopotamia were old and unique and shouldn't be lumped with other polities simply because its people inhabited a region of Asia that westerners refer to as the mid-east. There's no telling where they came from. Your sources mostly speak to their dolichocephalic skulls and Eurafrican affinities so-to-speak, yet Eurafrican is a nonsense term that's hard to decipher without other data to compare it with, which is why Keita and others are so useful in proving the tropical affinity of ancient Egyptians. No surprise that such a citation would be from the early 20th century. Surely these affinities can just as readily be attributed to other peoples. Tyro posted this a while ago on ES (again, based on some of the same old sources but one can easily see how interpretation is key):

Buxton and Rice found that of 26 Sumerian crania 17 were Australoid, five Austrics and four Armenoid. According to Penniman who studied skulls from Kish and other Sumerian sites, these three: the Australoid (Eurafrican), Austric and Armenoid were the "racial" types associated with the Sumerians. Here is Penniman's description of the Austric type found at Sumer:

"These people are of medium stature, with complexion and
hair like those of the Eurafrican, to which race they are
allied, dark eyes, and oval faces. They have small ill-filled
dolichocephalic skulls, with browridges poorly developed or
absent, bulging occiputs, orbits usually horizontal ellipses,
broad noses, rather feeble jaws, and slight sinewy bodies."

---Source

In addition, have you heard of the classification, Elamo-Dravidian? It is proposed as a consequence of the striking correspondence between Elamite-Sumerian languages with Dravidian languages. McAlpine notes a large cognate correspondence between Dravidian and related Elamite.

www.azargoshnasp.net/history/ELAM/elamitedravidian.pdf

H. Heras draws on a Dravidian connection due to similarity in cultural motifs, art/pottery and Dravidian language distribution which is sporadic, but tends to radiate towards old Mesopotamia. It has also been demonstrated that agriculture reached the Indus from the direction of Elam and there are loan words for plants that came directly from this region.

www.jstor.org/pss/30079682 (tell if you want access)

Speiser (1951), based on their physical anthropology links the Sumerians and Elamites with Dravidians. Sir Arthur Keith (1927) also linked them with ancient Indians and H. Crawford (1960) did as well. Also see Jan Braun (1971) who linked them to the Indus and A. Wierciñski's work in support of Braun. An extensive break down on the history of Sumerian anthropology, with reference to these sources can be read here:

www.antropologia.uw.edu.pl/SHA/sha-04-07.pdf

^As seen in the paper, I actually don't recall ANY scholars linking the ancient Sumerians (Mesopotamians) and Elamites (related group to the east) with tropical Africans. Dravidian links have been shown while tropical African links have not, which is why I said "if we're dealing with probabilities here, the evidence suggests a closer relationship to Dravidians (or aboriginal Indians)".

Hence I remain skeptical of any Dravidian link over and above data on the ground, because they will use that to pump up "Asiatic" influx into Africa. Brace 1993 for example carefully excluded the Badarians, but included Indians in his sample by way of comparison. It is like those who run sampling games- taking samples from the far north of Egypt and claiming they are "representative" of Egypt as a whole. They are fooling a lot of people with such games. Also note the continuing hypocrisy of the academy. When Africans migrate into Europe or Asia they become "Europeans" or '"Eurasians", and the populations they influence remain such, but when some European elements migrate into ancient North Africa, they too often remain "Caucasoid." Still I have not seen much data on Dravidian links and may have missed some studies. Do you have any credible cranial research or at least multiple researches similar to that on the Sumerians above, showing such Dravidian links with Mesopotamia?

I'm skeptical as well, but I'm more skeptical of a tropical African link, which is why I felt it necessary to respectfully challenge you on this. "Data on the ground" lends more credence to an "aboriginal Indian" link for the Sumerians rather than African or other foreign link; a view shared by Soltysiak in the above paper. The people aboriginal to India it seems were more widespread in the past as their languages extend as far as modern Iran. Prognathism and Dilichocephalism are not features exclusive to tropical Africans since native Indians share it as well, and in fact the distinctiveness of their large teeth and alveolar prognathism, lead some of the cited researchers to initially propose these links. Scholarly speculations in Language, culture and archaeology only gave more fire to their argument, which I can't rule out. As for the question in bold, I've provided some but I was responding to a claim that you yourself made about African links. There should be credible cranial research from multiple researchers showing African and Mesopotamian links but there aren't.

In fact, archaeologists spent decades ridding Egyptology of the fallacious arguments concerning the Dynastic race theory, which involved direct links between Egypt and Mesopotamia. It has been shown clearly that links between Africans and Mesopotamians were minimal and restricted to trade. There is no indication of common ancestry or cultural similarity between the two. That the Natufians may have represented a proxy is possible, but hasn't been demonstrated.

[zarahan]

I agree with what you say above and did not know of the Dravidian data.
But some of the same folks you cite for Davidians, such as Keith, also see an African link via Egypt, which is why I quoted Keith on my Meopotamian example. See the 4 counts on
the diagram above Sumeria, U'baid for cited scholars.

But anyway its all old research on both counts- Dravidian or African. What we have
is a contradiction between those who cite the Asiatic angle and those who see the
african link. There is supporting info on both sides of the aisle.

Your definition of Mesopotamia is technically correct. I just use a more expansive greater Mesopotamia to balance off and contradict HBD claims as to "Near East" this and "Middle east" that.

I have no problem with the Dravidian if it is supported and your examples look solid.
I'll check em out. As I say before you have Keith and others claiming an African
link- see diagram above "4 counts" where Keith says various Sumerian specimens
looked like Egyptian pre-dynastics, plus Rice and Burton also cited.
Basically we have a clash of conflicting scholalrly views.

[Tukuler al~Takruri]

The Japanese have done a modern study of select northern Iraq
crania including Mesopotamian era skulls (or fragments). It or its
bibliography may be helpful.

Naomichi OGIHARA et al
Geometric morphometric study of temporal variations in human crania
excavated from the Himrin Basin and neighboring areas, northern Iraq
ANTHROPOLOGICAL SCIENCE Vol. 117(1), 9–17, 2009



As for any connection between Mesopotamia and the contemporaneous
Mediterranean Europe, D. J. Finkel (1976) concluded that osteo remains
from "48 local populations from Southern Europe and the Middle East,
ranging in time from 3100 B.C. to 200 A.D.," disconfirms the two
regions "as a single interbreeding group of populations. "

In the evolution of these populations during the time period
under consideration, it is concluded that evolution proceeds
slowly; small changes per generation of phenotypic
characteristics are noted. Except in a few cases, migration is
believed to have little effect on the population evolution of this
area. Drift also is believed to have little effect, so that the
primary factor affecting these populations is natural selection.

David J. Finkel
Spatial and temporal dimensions of Middle Eastern skeletal populations
Journal of Human Evolution Volume 7, Issue 3, March 1978, Pages 217-229

[zarahan]

Jun 16, 2010 16:01:47 GMT -5 Tukuler al~Takruri said:

The Japanese have done a modern study of select northern Iraq
crania including Mesopotamian era skulls (or fragments). It or its
bibliography may be helpful.

Naomichi OGIHARA et al
Geometric morphometric study of temporal variations in human crania
excavated from the Himrin Basin and neighboring areas, northern Iraq
ANTHROPOLOGICAL SCIENCE Vol. 117(1), 9–17, 2009



As for any connection between Mesopotamia and the contemporaneous
Mediterranean Europe, D. J. Finkel (1976) concluded that osteo remains
from "48 local populations from Southern Europe and the Middle East,
ranging in time from 3100 B.C. to 200 A.D.," disconfirms the two
regions "as a single interbreeding group of populations. "

In the evolution of these populations during the time period
under consideration, it is concluded that evolution proceeds
slowly; small changes per generation of phenotypic
characteristics are noted. Except in a few cases, migration is
believed to have little effect on the population evolution of this
area. Drift also is believed to have little effect, so that the
primary factor affecting these populations is natural selection.

David J. Finkel
Spatial and temporal dimensions of Middle Eastern skeletal populations
Journal of Human Evolution Volume 7, Issue 3, March 1978, Pages 217-229

Thanks Takuri! Great references! I looked at that japanese study, and it suggests that a change in the population took place after the Parthian invssion- i.e a period of Asiatic influx. befoe that the population was more doclichcephalic- a marker sometimes claimed as "negroid" in some older studies. quote:


"this study suggests that the Himrin population was relatively dolichocranic and generally unaltered until the Parthian period as in southern Mesopotamia (Keith, 1927; Ehrich, 1939; Swindler, 1956), but sometime in or after the Parthian period a more brachycranic population came into this northern Mesopotamian area and craniofacial characteristics within the inhabitants in this area probably became more diverse, as preliminarily suggested by Ishida and Wada (1981) and Wada (1986). It has been suggested based on archeological data that the population of Mesopotamia began to be influenced by Persians after the Achaemenean domination, and more foreigners were settled and mixed with the native population in the Parthian period (Roux, 1992). The present results do not contradict this view. Furthermore, this study depicts the dolichocranic population as tending to have a relatively lower orbit and broader (lower) nose, and vice versa in the brachycranic population. These results are consistent with the findings of Wada (1986), indicating that the present morphometric analysis successfully extracted the morphological characteristics derived from conventional craniometry."

Also great ref debunking or restricting the alleged "Mediterranean" influence.

Will check out the bibliography on the japanese study.

[Tukuler al~Takruri]

Well, I don't hang my hat on a dolichocephalic head.

As this 20th century old school racial chart shows that
Nordic, Irano-Afghan, and Mediterranean 'caucasoids'
and Amerindian 'mongoloids' share dolichocephaly with
Negro and Melanesian 'negroids' while all 'australoids'
are mesocephalic



ANECDOTE: I used to really go for Dixon and Haddon and crew
until one I accidently saw the top of one of my brothers' head.
It was sub-brachycephalic! But that couldn't be so we are all
'negroids.' I checked my other brothers and they me only to
confirm none of us were dolichocephalic but ranged between
sub-brachycephalic and mesocephalic. Now my son my heir as
a little boy his head was Sergi's textbook Pentagonoides acutus.
So much for my faith in cephalic index as an indicator of any
racial or ethnic identity

[zarahan]

^^True dat.. dolichcephaly is a very broad factor cutting across a lot of groups now that you mention it..

[clydewin98]

[8man]

Even here I find people still using "black-headed." I kept reading about this "black-headed" business all over the web and so I went to the online Sumerian dictionary and checked out the words. This is what I was able to figure out. I’m reposting this here in hopes someone will challenge it with other evidence to support the assumption everywhere that it means "black-headed" which whites assume means "dark haired".

The Sumerians supposedly called themselves the “black-headed people”. And all over the internet this is being misconstrued by whites, I think, as referring to hair or what it means is being avoided because nobody wants to deal with the implications. It cannot possibly be hair. And I shall show why.

This is indeed an odd and disingenuous construction. It seems inconsistent with (albeit) our modern perception that the main feature, hair in this argument, would then in fact make them rightfully call themselves the “dark haired” people rather than “black headed” people unless of course they suffered from black heads--a little levity there.

Saying it is just a modern perception proves nothing if we don’t find other such odd constructions but the actual words don’t support it being an odd Sumerian construction either but a translation that is in error. There are a number of Old Babylonian words for hair so it isn’t that they lacked terms for hair why they would refer to the head alone.

We should refer here to the first Sumerians and later Sumerians, perhaps the period of the earliest pottery. Miscegenation seems to have ocurred in ancient Sumeria and the Sumerians of later periods acknowledged perhaps a dark ancestry when they described themselves as black.

One historian says the Sumerians liked shaving their heads to avoid lice and so wore wigs. Yet we see shaven headed Sumerian sculpture. Hair is not that important to have except as wigs. So in order to prove that “black-headed” refers solely to brunettes, a dark “haired people”, it begs the question why we see Sumerians with shaved heads at all and no references or emphasis in texts of hair shaving being somehow “bad” or dark hair being a significant trait, praised, well regarded etc. among them, if hair in fact defined them as mankind, human, mortal. Animals have hair, fur, after all--it's not unique.

Dark hair is never emphasized as being unique contrasted against foreign peoples who are not dark haired—and, given the region of Irag, Turkey, and Iran today, and the assumptions of permanent whiteness there now and in ancient times, “dark hair” being something unique there is impossible, it shouldn’t stand out at all if it was the substance of their persons.

Substance here is the body itself, the culture–since it defines who they are—if the emphasis is not there in other texts, why is this emphasis “head” used to describe their whole culture or their persons as a group, why would it matter to them to be described as “black-headed” with the current presumption that it means dark haired?

Their darkness had to have some regional significance if they were in contact with a different group or if this term is a memory of ancestors who were in fact blacks of some sort, the first Sumerians.

Psychologically a people that is dark haired, so obsessed with coiffure, beards, wigs etc. to name their ancestor thus, wouldn’t leave the hair part out of a description like their heads, and this is ironic given the Assyrians fancy hairstyling later…it’s not logical, it doesn’t make sense, this translation is an avoidance fear of the word “person” instead of “head” as the right choice. Here is the evidence.

We have in the dictionary this: saĝgiga [HUMANKIND] (4x: Old Babylonian) wr. saĝ-gig2-ga “humankind” Akk. şalmat qaqqadi …how is this related to the standard use of the phrase “black-headed”?

Here we have:

saĝ [HEAD] (3582x: ED IIIa, ED IIIb, Old Akkadian, Lagash II, Ur III, Early Old Babylonian, Old Babylonian, unknown) wr. saĝ “head; person; capital” Akk. qaqqadu; rēšu

Is the semi-colon after the first there to suggest that each is a distinct term; they’re not saying the head is {head-person-capital} all as one compound word, therefore a choice here is not arbitrary, no, a sensible choice has to be made for which of the three is most meaningful, is going to be applied to the next part which is:

giggi [BLACK] (941x: ED IIIa, Ur III, Early Old Babylonian, Old Babylonian, 1st millennium) wr. giggi; gi6-gi6 “(to be) black” Akk. şalmu

Which makes more sense saying black person or black headed? I don’t like to do an arm-chair psychoanalysis of individuals I don’t know but a recent study of white children, shown images of whiteness to gradations of brown to black, consistently more often than not chose the whitest for all things good and the darkest for dumb, ugly, bad…is picking “head” some knee jerk translator’s reaction against the unconscious implications of “person”/ “to be black persons–mankind” which seems like the correct translation to me but let me emphasize the words again, look carefully, further proofs will follow.

As to heads with hair we have sikipa [HEAD-HAIR] (4x: Old Babylonian) wr. siki-pa “head hair” but I don’t know where the Sumerian is, if this is it or not, as a loan word or a translation so I’m not sure how this relates. I wish Sumerian scholars, even a black Sumerian scholar, would write on this phrase honestly and expose the falsity of the translation. I admit I’m not a Sumerian scholar and this may seem speculative but it is based on the Sumerian dictionary online— are these irrefutable facts?

What other types of phrases appear so similar to this one in Sumerian texts, that is, a phrase that disregards particulars, as this does skin, skull, hair and eyes while it absurdly separates one part of the anatomy, in this case, the head from the hair and the skin etc., to offer a vague description of appearance, vital here supposedly in terms of asserting Sumerian differences, that is their calling themselves “black-headed”--what does that mean? Why should it matter if, again, given the region, dark hair is not that significant a trait.

What could it mean: black hair, black scalp, black scarves, black hats? And yet this is separated from the rest of the body, it’s anomalous and feels like translation noise or ambiguity which smells of racism. Is there any wiggle room on this translation to either hair or to skin? None that I can see, it's either one or the other. What are the words for hair and skin, and types of skin if any? The PSD offer words for skin, and people, even brown, red, and yet these are not used to describe a tribe, a family, a unique group, such as “mountain people”, “plains people” etc with dark hair. What other peoples in history now or then described themselves so uniquely, significantly as black, and yet so vaguely?

I would think a fair and honest explanation of this one phrase would help provide a context for better informed debate or settle the matter.

“dumusaĝ [FIRST-BORN] (66x: ED IIIb, Lagash II, Ur III, Old Babylonian) wr. dumu-saĝ “first-born”….It seems also that head is used to mean first in a series….”dubsaĝ [BEFORE] (76x: Old Akkadian, Ur III, Old Babylonian) wr. dub-saĝ “first; before” Akk. mahrû; qudmu”

saĝgiga [HUMANKIND] (4x: Old Babylonian) wr. saĝ-gig2-ga “humankind” Akk. şalmat qaqqadi

If I’m not mistaken, if I’m not misunderstanding the grammatical complexity here “sag” then isn’t just “head” meaning skull, face etc, the body part alone but can be “first”, first humankind? You see “sag” being used this way in other compound uses. Notice in the standard translation they don’t relate this to the word giggi…I don’t understand if salmat is related to salmu though it appears it might be or giggi relates to giga…from my limited understanding, I suspect it does mean "black mankind".

giggi [BLACK] (941x: ED IIIa, Ur III, Early Old Babylonian, Old Babylonian, 1st millennium) wr. giggi; gi6-gi6 “(to be) black” Akk. Şalmu

Nevertheless to say “black-headed people” is not conclusive or necessary because there are other choices, the translator can select one of three items, “head”; “person”; “capital”; given those three choices and a fourth if “head” (capital, chief) as “sag” can also mean first, so it is foolish for people to think or assume so confidently that it means a description of “dark haired” peoples, and thus “whites”, and this assumption is all over the internet now, I’m sure even right here; as I said there are words for hair at least in the Sumerian Dictionary in terms of Sumerian versions in Akkadian and Babylonian.

To be black headed, what does black headed mean…again, when there are three choices given for Sag: head 3582x: ED IIIa, ED IIIb, Old Akkadian, Lagash II, Ur III, Early Old Babylonian, Old Babylonian, unknown) wr. saĝ “head; person; capital” Akk. qaqqadu; rēšu: head;person;capital…is the choice of head over the others a substitute for “person”?

Think about it. It’s not even clear if head in the accepted translation means chief or it means the skull, or “first blacks”–it’s not clear what usage of “head” is being put forward here by the traditional accepted false translation.

Are we talking about the head of the line, the head of mankind etc. so to dismiss afrocentric concerns of faulty translation in this, and other cases, is not warranted…and which makes more logical sense, person or head—why would the ancients leave out the rest of their body and why is it that there is no emphasis on hair, beards etc as in phrases such as “the dark haired” ones, the “hairy ones”, “black hairs”, the “bearded fathers” etc., these would be appropriate if the people recognized hair as their distinctive mark, brown or black…it’s dubious then that it means hair of any kind given the choices above…I think the mainstream scholars will have to explain what they think “head” itself designates to justify such a vague choice given the other two and more correct choice of “person”. The choice of first is even more profoundly threatening. They must give and answer with a criteria for this choice which seems to allow all sorts of people to assume it means “dark haired”.

Mainstream white scholars already recognize that “sag” doesn’t mean “head and hair”… “Figurative Language in the Near East” edited by Mindlin, Geller, Wansbrough…this is from an article with the title “A Riding Tooth”…

"The words for head, Sumerian saĝ, Akkadian qaqqadum and rēšum, are extremely productive in the metaphoric (catachrestic) creation of new terms. I only refer to the use of ‘head’ for ‘slave’ as in Latin, to saĝ-níĝ-GA-ra=rēš makkūrim for the ‘available capital accounted for’ on account tablets which at least once is referred to in an Old Babylonian letter (in the accusative) as qaqqadī kaspim ‘the heads of (the) silver’.8 Related to this is Sumerian dub—saĝ ‘tablet head’ for the beginning of a cuneiform tablet9, and, once more transferred, used for ‘beginning’ in general.10 The beginning of a period may be called its ‘head’ as in kaqqad ebūrim11, ‘beginning of the harvest time’. In yet another letter we find the head in the adverbial accusative rēšam, ‘in the beginning’.12

An area abounding in metaphoric terminology is the scholarly language of extispicy. On a sheep’s liver we find such structures as a city (or palace) gate with its door jambs..."

The first Sumerians were some sort of people that looked black or were dark skinned to the point where they percieved a difference with others in the same region.

Bill Games

[thought]

Thought Writes:

The Natufians were probably early holocene descendents of Nile Valley Africans in part. The proto-Sumerians may have been Black, like south Indians, but there is little evidence of a recent (i.e., Holocene) African ancestry. They likely retained tropical traits from the original out of Africa migration.

[8man]

Here is another example of how racism works with translators.

No they weren’t black they were "black headed sheep!" So far Herman's reading of the translation or it's his translation is brilliant until it comes to race, then he suddenly becomes illusory and makes up a meaning without proof either in the text or from the Dictionary…

EPICS OF SUMERIAN KINGS The Matter of Aratta
by Herman Vanstiphout Edited by Jerrold S. Cooper Society of Biblical Literature Atlanta

"Then the Black-headed17 were long-lived and satisfied
In their ways and within their means;
Then mountain goats with pounding hooves,
Mountain stags with glorious antlers,
Were (constantly) presented to Enmerkar, son of the Sun.
B. ENMERKAR CALLS UP THE ARMY"

See his footnote below to the above line on the mistranslated "black-headed"--perhaps he took it for granted and didn't check the dictionary...he doesn't explain sheep with the dictionary, nor does he give examples elsewhere from actual texts for Sumerians refering to themselves as "black-headed" sheep--please note also the range of words unrelated to sheep in my post.

"17 “Black-headed” is a common epithet for “Sumerians.” The expression undoubtedly derives from the ideological imagery, which represents humanity as a
flock of sheep—that are black-headed to this day—under the care and protection
of their divine and royal pastor bonus.
18 “Setting the mace toward” means “to intend to conquer.”
19 The number seven recurs in most of the cycle. In ELA there..."

I've never seen it justified as a common place. Does anyone know of any actual examples of this usage.

As to genes and classifications today and tropical traits and such. Philosophically why should this matter, African or Dravidian? Some say well it doesn’t make them African. But is that true? When dealing with European classifications like African, Dravidian etc., I try to keep in mind that Africans were made an exception because of the slave trade, in the system of superior and inferior peoples, thus it was advantageous to separate dark skinned peoples into different groups--ruling Europeans organized this system in order to value or devalue different peoples for political, economic, and social purposes, perhaps even for psychological reasons, subconscious rationalizations, outright favoritism, so perhaps because the black Indians had straight hair (presuming it was always so) they were not Africans, and could not possibly have come from there or be related to Africans, in the stone age or prehistory--they also devalued other “whites” in terms of class as well as ethnicity in similar contradictory ways based on appearance, different customs etc.

Modern peoples who generally now regard themselves as whites where not always perfectly privileged whites but showed signs of degeneration, or inferiority, depending on their class and ethnicity, many of the Irish, many southern Italians, the Jews, the Roma, depending on region and immigration—I’m not even sure I buy the idea that feudalism was not as bad or worse than the African slave trade was, because I see the cruelties of feudal society as contributing to the psychosis of the common whites who helped conquer the new world, full as they were of fears of dark powers, devils and demons, full of religious dogma, sins, while the idea of reason itself was still analogical, magical, and scientific discoveries, from scientists, who were often Christians themselves, was denied, suppressed.

White historians might want to mitigate this madness in order to flatter themselves and their culture in regards to white slavery, serfdom, but Europe even as it struggled to civilize itself was full of barbarisms of one sort or another, much like Africa is today, with its witch killings—in Europe it was the persecutions of heretics and Jews and others—no wonder they ravaged the New World and Africa, with the help of some natives also, it is true---and, even later in the New World you had indentured servitude for poor whites, a variation of serfdom—also blacks currently like Jews might want to see their suffering as historically exceptional as a group and so cannot believe that feudalism was just as bad or worse for serfs, it could’ve been—yet the demeaning of European lives during the tribal turmoil in Europe at that time plausibly must’ve made it easier for ignorant Europeans to demean and harm “inferior” peoples at the behest of their masters and superiors?

We’re dealing here with inferior and superior, what is similar, what is dissimilar, based on white presumptions, classifications, preferences, even today, we can redefine the terms to say that Africans and Dravidians were similar peoples or one ought to certainly look into the possibility, the exclusion of the possibility is the fault of the previous racist classifications which denied them any links or contacts with Africa and yet genetics is suggesting mankind had his roots in Africa so from woolly hair to straight hair and over time "white" features this makes them now an unrelated peoples to Africans? We might ask what makes anybody African given these involved classification systems, from racist ones to modern genetics which claims there are no real races in fact? Groups of populations with certain related traits and genes yes but no races per se.

India today is an interesting example of the idealogy of race because the presumption of whiteness for them is there at present, while in the past it was more ambivalent, given the appearance of miscegenation with darker peoples perhaps in their past, or their own form of racism, in the caste system—how did they handle their confrontation with “whiteness” against their mixed race appearance?

They were or are put on a slightly higher rung than Africans in the European’s eye and in their own eyes today but once not too long ago they were regarded as inferior by many of their British rulers nevertheless despite the elites, say of Germany, seeing an “Aryan” presence, the light skinned Indians in their midst or a shared origins in terms of language. Straight features, straight hair was favored and thus the various classifications, even among Africans today, all depends on European standards of similarity, signs of beauty, signs of intelligence, signs of perfection. Is it still even so.

Yet even when whites began to find India’s spirituality and sciences more appealing, rising to the level of the European perceptions of complexity, even so they were a degenerate race, not pure. It’s like the term sand "nigger" for Arabs. Nigger, if I’m not mistaken was also used against East Indians. Because of this favored race status form of classification scholars must sort through this mess but I wonder if racism is still not part of the
process when it comes to questions of related and unrelated traits, genes?

Europeans everywhere sought to find traces of themselves in ancient civilizations rather than the other way around—racist classification is so interlaced with trying to find the truth about ancient civilizations that it seems the question of ancient black civilizations ought to be the goal of mainstream scholars as a corrective to the considerable amount of racist scholarship and science in the past that might have damaged the evidence for such or avoided the evidence, or connections, so who knows what was lost because Europeans couldn’t believe it or didn’t want to see it given the amount of racism they exposed and believed in.

You could say race was all that many educated Europeans had on their minds for quite a while and now when blacks try to tackle the question of race they are told they can’t go home again or some such nonsense. Avoiding the question of types and traits, their origins and connections to Africans is more advantageous to white scholars because they can avoid the mess their ancestral proto-or pseudo-science made of what was dug up or buried.

But given the range of ethnicity in Africa itself, the tribal and civilized variations in cultures, styles of art, pottery or ways of speaking, it seems both difficult to resolve this question and yet it is even more plausible that a range of African cultures, types of Africans, some looking like Indians in appearance, say, spread out from North Africa, into the near east and created different kingdoms, just as you find different Medieval kingdoms in Africa, and different types of Africans in features and customs. Their being Dravidian shouldn't exclude them from being African in terms of "the original out of Africa migration".

The real difficulty is explaining the emergence of the European type person via evolutionary or climate effects. I will agree the whole thing is a convulated mess without enough concrete data to say for sure what the hell happened but the legacy of racist historical scholarship cannot be let off the hook simply because science now doesn’t want to deal in races but in genes and traits over a range of mixed up populations, related or unrelated to recent departures or earlier departures from Africa.

[Tukuler al~Takruri]

It's breakthroughs like this that make it all worthwhile. Thanks Bill.

Oct 18, 2010 15:29:50 GMT -5 8man said:

Even here I find people still using "black-headed." I kept reading about this "black-headed" business all over the web and so I went to the online Sumerian dictionary and checked out the words.

. . . .

We have in the dictionary this:

saĝgiga [HUMANKIND]
(4x: Old Babylonian)
wr. saĝ-gig2-ga “humankind”
Akk. şalmat qaqqadi

…how is this related to the standard use of the phrase “black-headed”?

Here we have:

saĝ [HEAD]
(3582x: ED IIIa, ED IIIb, Old Akkadian, Lagash II, Ur III, Early Old Babylonian, Old Babylonian, unknown)
wr. saĝ “head; person; capital”
Akk. qaqqadu; rēšu
...
giggi [BLACK]
(941x: ED IIIa, Ur III, Early Old Babylonian, Old Babylonian, 1st millennium)
wr. giggi; gi6-gi6 “(to be) black”
Akk. şalmu

Which makes more sense saying black person or black headed?

. . . .

As to heads with hair we have

sikipa [HEAD-HAIR]
(4x: Old Babylonian)
wr. siki-pa “head hair”

but I don’t know where the Sumerian is, if this is it or not, as a loan word or a translation so I’m not sure how this relates. I wish Sumerian scholars, even a black Sumerian scholar, would write on this phrase honestly and expose the falsity of the translation. I admit I’m not a Sumerian scholar and this may seem speculative but it is based on the Sumerian dictionary online— are these irrefutable facts?

. . . .

I would think a fair and honest explanation of this one phrase would help provide a context for better informed debate or settle the matter.

“dumusaĝ [FIRST-BORN]
(66x: ED IIIb, Lagash II, Ur III, Old Babylonian)
wr. dumu-saĝ “first-born”

….It seems also that head is used to mean first in a series….

”dubsaĝ [BEFORE]
(76x: Old Akkadian, Ur III, Old Babylonian)
wr. dub-saĝ “first; before”
Akk. mahrû; qudmu”

saĝgiga [HUMANKIND]
(4x: Old Babylonian)
wr. saĝ-gig2-ga “humankind”
Akk. şalmat qaqqadi

If I’m not mistaken, if I’m not misunderstanding the grammatical complexity here “sag” then isn’t just “head” meaning skull, face etc, the body part alone but can be “first”, first humankind? You see “sag” being used this way in other compound uses. Notice in the standard translation they don’t relate this to the word giggi…I don’t understand if salmat is related to salmu though it appears it might be or giggi relates to giga…from my limited understanding, I suspect it does mean "black mankind".

giggi [BLACK]
(941x: ED IIIa, Ur III, Early Old Babylonian, Old Babylonian, 1st millennium)
wr. giggi; gi6-gi6 “(to be) black”
Akk. Şalmu

. . . .

The first Sumerians were some sort of people that looked black or were dark skinned to the point where they percieved a difference with others in the same region.

Bill Games