Sumeria
As far as we know, the Sumerians were the first high civilized people in
the world. For a long time it was thought the Semitic
languages were the earliest, and then Sumerian is discovered and for a long time
the scholars were saying, “Well, this was just the secret language of the
Semitic priests.” They had a hard time giving that one up,
but finally they had to. Sumerian was related neither to
Semitic nor to the Indo-European languages.
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One of the oldest recorded hero journey tales - possibly predating Gilgamesh - is the Sumerian myth of the sky goddess Inanna's descent to the netherworld. The Descent of Inanna was inscribed on an epic poem on tablets dating from around 1750 B.C.; they lay buried for close to 4,000 years in the ruins of Nippur, Sumer's cultural and spiritual center. G 83