AHC: Surviving Sumerians?

Vuu

Banned
Could it be possible for a Sumerian culture to survive in continuity to present day? Now I'm not talking about having the exact same people remain, but the culture, kinda like the modern day Assyrians. They're descendants of the ancient Assyrians yes, but so are many other Iraqis, but they kept some independent culture to themselves
 
Could it be possible for a Sumerian culture to survive in continuity to present day? Now I'm not talking about having the exact same people remain, but the culture, kinda like the modern day Assyrians. They're descendants of the ancient Assyrians yes, but so are many other Iraqis, but they kept some independent culture to themselves
Maybe Sumerian Christian enclaves in the Middle East not unlike Assyrians ? Also speak some kind of ancient Sumerian. Persists to call Iraq Mesopotamia.
 
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Vuu

Banned
Could be. Thing is, they were in the area around the Arabian River (Shatt al-Arab), which is a nice place to go to for the surrounding people

I'm thinking, maybe make them go deeper into the desert where they will be a little isolated, later scattering around as literate folks. Their language would probably change to the point it would be a Semitic one but with a lot of weird stuff
 
Could it be possible for a Sumerian culture to survive in continuity to present day? Now I'm not talking about having the exact same people remain, but the culture, kinda like the modern day Assyrians. They're descendants of the ancient Assyrians yes, but so are many other Iraqis, but they kept some independent culture to themselves

The modern Assyrians are as related to the ancient Assyrians as their Arab neighbours, through more so than their Kurdish neighbours. They simply choose the name to signifying their non-Arab-ness.

Honestly you need the Sumerians to establish presence other places than South Iraq for them to survive. They need enclaves in areas which are more isolated to not assimilate into the local Semitic population.
 
Well the following Akkadians were strongly influenced by the Sumerians to the extent that they used similar poetry styles, cuneiform, and borrowed words.
So Sumerian culture itself could live on with the Akkadians if they continue.
 
Moon hotels. Moon hotels in the moons of Neptune. :D
Could it be possible for a Sumerian culture to survive in continuity to present day? Now I'm not talking about having the exact same people remain, but the culture, kinda like the modern day Assyrians. They're descendants of the ancient Assyrians yes, but so are many other Iraqis, but they kept some independent culture to themselves
Yes. They would need to cohesively organize, defeat Sargon, and then assimilate the Akkadians and the Assyrians. Next they have to keep peaceful relations with those to the west and east, long enough for their interior to develop a strong military system and hydraulic engineering. The culture (especially the military) will need to readily adopt new ideas. Hopefully this will get them through the bronze age collapse, at which point they have a decent shot of keeping a vestige of themselves to modern times.
 

Maoistic

Banned
Sumerian religion and language surviving in some form or another is possible but very difficult. Sumerians will have to adopt papyrus and parchment, as their clay tablets make the administration of their religion and political systems extremely difficult when you have oral or papyrus-based religions like Zoroastrianism, Hellenism and Christianity that are easier to propagate and control, and they also somehow need to not get steamrolled by the Medes and the Greeks, which is the moment when Sumerian culture really starts to disappear once and for all as the Sumerian script starts getting replaced with Phoenician and Syro-Arabic alphabets, the Sumerian liturgical language starts getting supplanted by Avestan and Greek, and Greek and Iranian gods start assimilating Sumerian deities.

The second Babylonian empire allying itself with Greek city-states and Egypt against the Persian-Median offensive is probably the best way to have Sumerian culture survive. Then they need to start checking the power of the expansionist Greeks as well. And then they need to make cultural adaptations like religious reforms that don't make temples and clay tablets the only repository of sacred knowledge and start adopting the superior papyrus and parchment of Egypt and the Levant so that religious texts are more easily propagated and a more cohesive and stronger religious canon arises.
 
It is very difficult. Location was pretty much major problem. Pretty much all neighbors wanted that fertile river valley. Even if Sumerians somehow defeat Akkadians some other people might then be succesful.
 

Maoistic

Banned
It is very difficult. Location was pretty much major problem. Pretty much all neighbors wanted that fertile river valley. Even if Sumerians somehow defeat Akkadians some other people might then be succesful.
Akkadians adopted the Sumerian language as a liturgical language though, and this survived into the Sasanian period. We still find inscriptions in Sumerian as late as the fourth century CE I believe. The spread of Zoroastrianism and Christianity is what made these last Sumerian elements disappear.
 
Akkadians adopted the Sumerian language as a liturgical language though, and this survived into the Sasanian period. We still find inscriptions in Sumerian as late as the fourth century CE I believe. The spread of Zoroastrianism and Christianity is what made these last Sumerian elements disappear.

The last dated Cuneifom inscriptions I know of date of first century CE, although liturgical use into later periods cannot be ruled out. They were in Akkadian however, and to my knowledge, functional knowledge of Sumerian was largely lost among the Babylonian priesthood by the Parthian period. I've never seen evidence that Cuneiform writing in either Sumerian or Akkadian made it to the Sasanian period (when the priesthood tended to use Aramaic-derived scripts).
 
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