Currently, Iraq is the scene of a massive assault being conducted by one branch of Islam (Sunni) against another (Shiite). The underlying issue is a difference in interpretation of Islam between the two factions. What is lost in all of the slaughter is the sadness of a true fact of history.
The area currently occupied by Iraq, Iran and Syria is what most historians agree is the true cradle of civilization. It was in this region that you and I began, some 12,000 years ago. Our DNA, for the most of us, can be traced directly back to a civilization that emerged out of the hunter-gatherer stage of human development and virtually exploded onto the map of history in this very geographic area. They were known as “the black-haired people” by their neighbors but we now know them as “Sumerians.”
A brief look at Sumer gives a glimpse of the incredibly advanced civilization that it was: among the Sumerian “firsts” was the first schools, the first bi-cameral congress, the first pharmacy, the first “Farmers Almanac,” the first literary debates, the first library catalogue, the first law codes and social reforms, the first medicine, the first search for world peace and harmony.
The schools taught not only language and writing but also the sciences of the day (botany, zoology, geography, math and theology). They had written laws, courts, judges, lawyers, trials by jury, business contracts, marriages and divorces, police, jails and punishments to fit crimes. Over time, they influenced other civilizations such as those that grew throughout the Mesopotamian area.
Sumeria is long gone and has been replaced by Iraq, Iran and Syria, all of which have become theocracies ruled by religious leaders who have forgotten the glory of the history of the land they are destroying.
Francis X. Barden
Arlington
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
