and gatherers gradually turned into farmers. Since writing has not yet been created, it is difficult to judge what changes in life such an evolution entailed. Zarins argues that the conflict was much more dramatic than during the Industrial Revolution.
He is convinced that the main arena of the clash turned out to be the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, as well as the northern part of Arabia, where hunters and gatherers who came here from less hospitable areas met with people who were at a higher stage of development, who raised cattle, engaged in pottery and, apparently, showed a tendency to unite in sedentary groups. Who were these people? Zarins believes that they lived in Southern Mesopotamia and were representatives of the oldest civilization, which is now called the Ubeid. They founded in the V millennium BC the oldest of the cities of Southern Mesopotamia – Eridu.»
«It was in Saudi Arabia that Zarins unexpectedly came across traces of the Ubaid culture, and it was there that he began to develop his hypothesis about the true meaning of the biblical Eden. One clue lay in linguistics: the word «Eden», or «Edim», primarily refers to Sumer, the region of Mesopotamia, where the world’s first written language was created. This happened in the III millennium BC, that is, more than 3 thousand years after the Ubeid culture arose. Among the Sumerians, the word «Eden» simply meant «fertile plain». The word «Adam» was also found in Cuneiform, meaning something like «settlements on the plain». Although both of these words were first discovered among the Sumerians along with names such as Ur and Uruk, they are not Sumerian in origin. The brilliant assyriologist B. Landsberger put forward in 1943 the theory that these names are all that remains of the language of the people that existed before the Sumerians. Landsberger called this pre-Sumerian language «proto-Euphratic». Other scholars have suggested that the people who spoke that language belonged to the Ubaid civilization. Already existing words merged into the language of the Sumerians and found their reflection in writing. And thanks to writing, the word «Eden» has penetrated into mythology as a symbol of a fertile and fertile place.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
