The Blackheads: The Africans Of Mesopotamia
- The Blackheads: The Africans Of Mesopotamia In The World
- The Blackheads: The Africans Of Mesopotamia Crossword
October 24, 1990, Page 00024 The New York Times ArchivesTo the Editor:'To Endangered List in Gulf, Add Archeology' (front page, Sept. 16) asserts that ancient Mesopotamia - which spanned the territory encompassing much of present-day Iraq - 'produced the first writing and earliest experiments in agriculture.' You also credit the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Iraq as 'the place where historical time began.' Early writing systems have long been known to have developed in the Nile Valley, in India and in other parts of Southwest Asia before writing's codification as cuneiform in Mesopotamia by the early Sumerians, who were designated in later Assyrio-Babylonian inscriptians as the blackheads or black-faced people. Fallout 4 children mods.
Sir Henry Rawlinson is said to have traced the Sumerians back to Egypt and Ethiopia.As for agriculture, research by the botanist George P. Murdock and others was reported more than 30 years ago to have constituted persuasive evidence that the Mande peoples - West African Negroes - independently invented a system of agriculture between 6,500 and 5,000 B.C. about the same time crops were first being tilled in the Middle East. Other scholars have since postulated the development of agriculture even earlier - up to 9,000 or 10,000 B.C. in East Africa, where it is believed humankind itself first walked the earth.I, too, was taught in school that history (and civilization) began at the juncture of the Tigris and the Euphrates, and was taught nothing about the great civilizations Africans and Asians built long before the emergence of Europe. I was unaware that Africans and Asians are not 'minorities,' but together with other people of color comprise close to four-fifths of the world's population.Your misinformation strikes me as a prime example of the need for a sweeping curriculum overhaul, such as has been proposed for New York State.
The Blackheads: The Africans Of Mesopotamia In The World
The Blackheads: The Africans Of Mesopotamia Crossword
BRANCH Ithaca, N.Y., Oct. 5, 1990 The writer is professor of African studies at Cornell University.