SUMER, THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION

Göbekli Tepe is a vast archeological site which lies at 2,493 feet atop a mountain in the Anatolia region of Turkey. Topographic scans reveal that nearby structures, still awaiting excavation, probably date to 14 to 15 thousand years ago, potentially as far back as the concluding millennia of the Pleistocene. One of the, if not the oldest archeological site yet discovered on Earth. The site baffles scientists, who have yet to discover the actual purpose of the massive and sophisticated site. Whatever it was, it was not a “city.”


The first and oldest true city on Earth was located in a region known as Sumer in what was the southern tip of ancient Mesopotamia, now Iraq.

The city was known as Eridu and dates to at least 4,000 BC. Older than Ur, older than Damascus, Babylon, Ninevah, even the biblical Jehrico stone fortress where Joshua and his army made "the walls tumble down." Eridu predates the building of the Great Pyramid.

In Eridu (note the obvious similarity to the word Earth), kingship - organized civilization - first appeared and flourished, making Eridu not just the first fully functioning city but one which can brag of truly amazing achievements.

Anthropologists tell us that it took roughly eleven million years for humans to evolve from our first man-like ape ancestors to primitive stone-era man. Then, suddenly 35,000 years ago - almost “instantly” in anthropologic terms - just like stone-age men in Arthur C. Clarke's "2001" a new order of “thinking man” evolved. Even more amazing, these ancestors of ours at about 5,000 BC went from declining groups of regressing cavemen – to a full-fledged civilization centered about Sumer.

How is it possible that these same people suddenly" began practicing advanced astronomy, mathematics, agriculture, had the first written language on Earth, were master builders and architechs, had the first written code of law, domesticated animals, practiced medicine, preventive medicine, performed surgery when needed, established art, poetry, music and most of the things we today take for granted?

Most astounding was their knowledge of celestial mechanics. They knew the movements of the sun, stars and planets, and were able to predict eclipses and celestial precession with computer-like accuracy. They built soaring temples aligned along east-west axes - equinoctical alignments which were responsible for fixing the seasons. They are the people who first established the three vaults of the sky, divided the celestial sphere into 360º, and established the twelve constellations of the zodiac. They knew other esoterica – of the planets not visible to the naked eye, planets not “discovered” by modern science until after The Civil War! – and many other things so incongruous that were I to list them, you would have a difficult time believing them. We know this because scholars have been busy at work translating the prolific Sumerian historic records discovered as they unearth more and more of the ancient cities.

All this was lost when the Mesopotamian civilization, for reasons equally mysterious, dispersed. One branch of this once highly-advanced culture spread east into India and China, the other west to Europe. They are known by some as the Aryan race.

Millennia subsequent to that, mankind entered a dark age when it was believed that the world was flat and that the sun, moon, planets and stars revolved about the Earth. A few Greek philosophers had heard Sumerian legends and so believed the earth was spherical and not the center of the Universe. But by the time of the Romans, that kind of thinking was frowned upon. It wasn't until hundreds of years later that Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and others dared to contradict these wrong-headed ideas, some not publishing their theories until their dying day. Only then did Renaissance thinkers begin grappling with what the Sumerians had known millennia earlier.

Almost shockingly, it wasn't until the mid-1920's (just eighty years ago!) that scientists gathered to finalize the modern vault of the sky. They agreed on the constellations of the northern and southern hemispheres, and the central band which houses what we know as the constellations of the zodiac. They settled on the Sumerian divine number - twelve. The star configurations correspond almost exactly to what the Sumerians calculated at least six thousand years earlier. This was no coincidence, any more than the name “Eagle” given to the first human-controlled ship to land on the Moon was a coincidence. Eagle was a word used by Sumerians to describe their lords, men who came down from the sky riding in winged ships.

Sumerian mythology claims the lord Enki and then Enlil were the Eagles who first came down to Earth. Enki landed by chance or by choice on the ancient shores of the Persian Gulf, establishing there Eridu and eventually kingship on Earth. Their father and supreme leader was Anu, who on occasion would come to Earth to visit his sons. It was they and their people who in their own self interests created the first modern Earthman. They called him "Adama," showing him the secrets - some, not all - of their advanced civilization. There are too many similarities between Sumerian mythology and the much later Old Testament - the Garden of Eden, Adam's eating of The Forbidden Fruit and being cast out, Noah and The Flood, the Nefilim and so many more - to be mere coincidence. Our Bible is a clever re-write of older Sumerian writings.

There are secrets still to be uncovered, buried beneath the sands of the Middle East, particularly in what once was Mesopotamia. These secrets may be so shocking that I seriously doubt they will be widely released. But with today's internet, let's hope these secrets won't stay buried long.

One is left wondering how it is that the once-fertile regions of Mesopotamia, today's Iraq, the cradle of civilization on Earth, descended into an endless series of terrible wars spanning the last six thousand years. Some believe that, consciously or otherwise, we are even today involved in the same mighty struggle with the peoples of that region because somehow we each are influenced by the ancient struggles among those earliest gods for domination over the human race.

There is something mysterious and unknown, something of enormous importance, buried neath those ancient drifting sands. No, it is not oil. But to its discoverors, domination of the world may pass.
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