What's interesting about the Sumerians?
I'm studying Sumerology and I'm dabbling in Pedagogy. My goal is to create an easy and beginner friendly learning experience, but for that I need something to engage my learners. I need to know what interests them about the topic, so
what's interesting about Sumerians? About their culture? About their language? Anything you'd care to know? Any aesthetics that you like, stories you'd like to hear?
pic completely related
Wait, shouldn't you be telling us, you know, you being the scholar?
You know anything about their relations with Sargon of Akkad after he butt fucked them?
>>786113
I want to, but I wanna engage the learners emotionally, so I wanna present them stuff they care about. Nobody gives a shit about agriculture, so obviously I can't go and be like "they were so agriculturally advanced you guys! seriously, look at those awesome irrigation techniques! wanna read 500 lines about organisation of crop farming?"
but at the same time i'm a huge sumeraboo so i don't know if people give a shit about enki, god of wisdom, and how he first had sex with his daughter and her incest daughter and again for seven generations and then ejaculated so hard he created the tigris with it. so i ask what people actually care about.
>>786114
that's actually a nice topic. first, sargon tried to assimilate them, then they rebelled and had another 300 years or so of sumerian rule. most texts are from that time because they felt their culture was in decline, so they started writing down all of their songs and oral hymns, just so later generations wouldn't forget them. then a local sumerian governor rebelled and fucked everything. then more rebellions happened again and again and then there was babylonia
Mention the temple prostitution.
Also, hammer in the fact that they're totally unrelated genetically, linguistically, and culturally to the Semites, Indo-Europeans, or any other group around them. It not only pre-emptively denies the Afro-Centrists, but it also adds a mystical appeal; the first civilization. A lone light of glory amongst a dark sea of barbarians. Who were they? What did they look like? How foreign and mysterious, etc, etc, etc.
>>785987
Noah = Utnapishtim
The Sumerians recorded the same global flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh as the writers of the Hebrew bible.
I think the answer is obvious. Religion, right? I want to hear a compelling account of the first myths and beliefs of mankind. All the available things online are either too dry or too spiced up with unnecessary ancient aliens.
You know much about their trade connections with the Indus river valley civilization? I'm disappointed that we haven't found a Sumerian-Indus Rosetta stone and am wondering how much we can know about them indirectly
First civilization, inventors of cities and agriculture
>>786228
There's a Lot to find in the archaeology though. The trade was apparently intense and thorough enough for the sumerians to Import those large, fancy but completely useless cows with large horns they had back then. This completely stopped After the indus valley culture collapsed so it was like a fad or a trend to be more like those cool indus valley yankees
if i were a student i'd want to know
>who the fuck they were
>when they lived
>where they lived + which modern states are in the same place
>their art/aesthetic so i can picture them in my head
>any cool stories about their battles, cities, cultural practices, mythology, religion etc, esp weird shit
>any relevance for today
>>786264
You should probably emphasize that point as well. Specifically, the words "Fad" and "trend". Combine it with the mystical mystery >>786170 pointed out. It gives them a human, knowable quality, but leaves so much to the mind. Why did they like these bulls? What function did THEY think they had? What did the Sumerians think of the Indus-Valley peoples?
>>785987
Were the Sumerians the Hyksos described in Egypt? If so, what lead them to travel there?
Were they white?? Blue Eyed pale guy in op's statue
>>785987
What can you tell me about their religion and mysticisam in short?
Please OP genuinely intereted.
>>786427
Yea.
>>785987
They were the first. They thought of themselves as the greatest people, the truly blessed among all else. Their cultural identity persisted centuries as new ethnic groups were subsumed as lessers, then defended the homeland, and became superiors.
They had war chariots before horses and spoked wheel. Take that, indoeuroboos.
>>785987
Urbanism and the Uruk phenomenon are really interesting topics and have long lasting impacts that can really be analyzed.
Also flesh out the old Assyrian period. Most textbooks only focus on the business/family relationship between Kanesh and Assur.
>>785987
>I'm studying Sumerology and I'm dabbling in Pedagogy.
everything about this sentence is a grand comedy.
"hey guise, Imma teach little kids about a sex-obsessed, brutally authoritarian primitive culture with a complex agglutinizing language...any advice?"
>>785987
How experienced are these kids? The fact that Sumerian culture emerged out of fucking nowhere should be the biggest shocker.
Their language was non-Semitic. There's nothing like it.
>>785987
What was their economic system like?
>>786729
1. Uh, Sumerians (the ruling class) were Indoeuropean (they spoke an Indoeuropean language), buddy-O
2. "Indoeuropean" refers to language, not to culture, race, or ethnicity. The racial and cultural analogous term for "Indoeuropean" is "Aryan"
>>787337
Sex-obsessed?
>>787471
>1. Uh, Sumerians (the ruling class) were Indoeuropean (they spoke an Indoeuropean language), buddy-O
WHAT ARE YOU SAYING
>>787471
Your confusing them with the Hurrians.
>>787471
>Sumerians spoke an Indoeuropean language
Factually wrong. You're probably thinking of the Mittani.
>>787697
Yes, factually wrong. Sumerian was an agglutinative language isolate, it's not Indo-European.
>>787471
Sumerian is a language isolate.
>>787705
Agglutination of the original Sumerian language (Ubaid/Euphratic) was a later development that went on as Sumeria and its culture declined and the aboriginal people started to take over the civilization.
>>787771
Proof of this?
>aboriginal people started to take over
Akkadian wasn't agglutinative.
>>787808
>Proof of this?
Do you expect me to type up an essay, or a treatise here?
I'm not sure what is that you want. Use a fucking search engine, you lazy piece of shit.
>Akkadian wasn't agglutinative.
Your point? What do Akkadians have to do with this?
>>787697
Your delusional if you believe you can assert that the Sumerians were Indo European. In all likleyhood Sumerian is probably related to the languages of the Caucasus considering how both of them are agglutinative and some share a similar noun class distinction between human and non human nouns. Not to mention the genetic makeup of area.
http://www.eupedia.com/europe/autosomal_maps_dodecad.shtml#West_Asian
>>786428
In short, they believed in fate and that everybody has to do their part. Everybody's fate was decreed in the beginning of time by the god enlil, who inscribed it in Clay tablets. They believed that the gods lived exactly like the humans and all of the temples were just called houses, because the gods literally lived in them. The sumerians believed that in earlier times, the gods had to do the work they did then and that they created the humans for exactly that purpose, to do the work the gods didn't want to do.
>>787337
Yeah, because children should only learn history about genocidal europeans from the 20th Century with bad facial hair or old bearded homosexual pedophiles because of >muh philosophy
Also, Keep English Numero Uno, am i right? And other language than English only confuses the young minds!
>>785987
The Sumerians made mass gains off Ancient African Kingdoms; cannabis, astronomy, astrology, navigation, trade hub of the period. They were in the geographically strongest spot to take advantage of metalurgy insofar as their natural influence and /dominance/ could stretch (around the basin, west to egypt & its trade through , north to the mountains). Naturally benefitting from the flow of ideas through north india & the east. Philosophical hub of ideas. Birth of Abramatism, a global religion, the first. King Nebechadnezzar.
>>785987
>I'm studying Sumerology
My jealousy knows no bounds. I'd hate you if I wasn't so pleased to read of someone being interested in based Sumerian civilization.
>>786729
Yeah, they used donkeys and very heavy wooden wagons as war chariots. It must have been terrifying.
GIRUGAMESH
>>787816
Sumerian was overtaken by Akkadian, that's what they had to do with it.
>>786140
>Nobody gives a shit about agriculture
You ought to make them care about agriculture. Agriculture is highly significant in human history. This seems like a methodoligically flawed way to present information to people. You should know what's important and try to teach it to people in an engaging and informative way, not find out the ways in which people want to be entertained and then cater your information to that. This is scholarship.
>>789639
I agree, you shouldn't present a warped picture to make something more interesting. The Order of things is important though, so you should start with something generally accessible and then later on go into those things that are important but only interesting to insiders. By then, the students ideally consider themselves insiders and care about stuff like that.
>>787690
still trying to force that meme?
