feature
of their agricultural methods was the engineering skill which was
displayed in extending the cultivatable area by the construction of
irrigating canals and ditches. There are also indications that they
possessed some knowledge of navigation and traded on the Persian Gulf.
According to one of their own traditions Eridu, originally a seaport,
was their racial cradle. The Semitic Akkadians adopted the distinctive
culture of these Sumerians after settlement, and exercised an
influence on its subsequent growth.

Much controversy has been waged regarding the original home of the
Sumerians and the particular racial type which they represented. One
theory connects them with the lank-haired and beardless Mongolians,
and it is asserted on the evidence afforded by early sculptural
reliefs that they were similarly oblique-eyed. As they also spoke an
agglutinative language, it is suggested that they were descended from
the same parent stock as the Chinese in an ancient Parthian homeland.
If, however, the oblique eye was not the result of faulty and
primitive art, it is evident that the Mongolian type, which is
invariably found to be remarkably persistent in racial blends, did not
survive in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, for in the finer and more
exact sculpture work of the later Sumerian period the eyes of the
ruling classes are found to be similar to those of the Ancient
Egyptians and southern Europeans. Other facial characteristics suggest
that a Mongolian racial connection is highly improbable; the prominent
Sumerian nose, for instance, is quite unlike the Chinese, which is
diminutive. Nor can far-reaching conclusions be drawn from the scanty
linguistic evidence at our disposal. Although the languages of the
Sumerians and long-headed Chinese are of the agglutinative variety, so
are those also which are spoken by the broad-headed Turks and Magyars
of Hungary, the broad-headed and long-headed, dark and fair Finns, and
the brunet and short-statured Basques with pear-shaped faces, who are
regarded as a variation of the Mediterranean race with distinctive
characteristics developed in isolation. Languages afford no sure
indication of racial origins or affinities.

Another theory connects the Sumerians with the broad-headed peoples of
the Western Asian plains and plateaus, who are vaguely grouped as
Ural-Altaic stock and are represented by the present-day Turks and the
dark variety of Finns. It is assumed that they migrat