The beginning of Sumerian history contains many secrets. Historians and archaeologists have spent a lot of effort trying to unravel them. Now we know what the Sumerians looked like, what gods they believed in, how they ran the household, raised children. Archaeologists walk the streets of ancient Sumerian cities, restore the location of houses and temples. However, there are no fewer mysteries. As knowledge accumulates, new questions arise. And the main one - where did the Sumerians come from, where is their homeland?
The land of Sumer takes its name from a people who settled around 3000 BC. in the lower reaches of the Euphrates River, not far from its confluence with the Persian Gulf. The Euphrates is divided here into numerous ducts and arms, which then merge, then diverge again. The banks of the river are low, so the Euphrates often changes its path to the sea. At the same time, the old channel gradually turns into a swamp. Clay hills, located at some distance from the river, are badly burned by the sun. The heat, heavy fumes from the swamps, clouds of midges forced people to stay away from these places. The lower reaches of the Euphrates did not attract the attention of farmers and pastoralists of Western Asia for a long time.
Small villages were located quite far from the water, since the Euphrates floods very violently and unexpectedly in summer, and floods were always very dangerous here (the memory of the great floods was preserved in Sumerian legends). People tried not to go into the endless reed beds, although very fertile lands were hidden under them. They were formed from silt that settled during floods. But in those days, the cultivation of these lands was still beyond the power of people. They knew how to harvest only from small open areas, resembling vegetable gardens rather than fields in their size.
Everything changed when new, energetic owners appeared in the country of rivers and swamps - the Sumerians. This is where the mysteries begin. We do not know where they came from to the lower Euphrates. In the Sumerian legends, only the high mountains in their forgotten homeland are mentioned, the path by sea that led them to the mouth of the Euphrates, and the island in the sea, which the Sumerians considered not only their ancient homeland, but also the ancestral home of all people in general. It is known that we are talking about the island, which in ancient times was called Dilmun, and now - Bahrain. However, there are no high mountains in Bahrain, so historians have tried to check whether there is any truth in these legends, and for many years excavations have been carried out in Bahrain. It turned out that in ancient times there were Sumerian settlements and cemeteries on the island, which means that the Sumerians lived here for quite a long time. Unfortunately, these finds date back to the same time when the Sumerians already lived in Mesopotamia. Maybe just small trading towns are found in Bahrain, connected with the main cities on the Euphrates?
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