Abstract
ARCHAEOLOGISTS at times may seem over-bold in attributing racial values to the terms of their cultural analyses, although the practice frequently has much to be said in its favour, when it is followed, with due reservation, as a convenient form of shorthand while a question of origins is still in suspense. Sir Leonard Woolley's lecture on “The Racial Elements in Sumerian Art History” before the Royal Society of Arts on February 19 (J. Roy. Soc. Arts, 84, April 3, 1936) afforded an example of the pregnant inferences to be drawn from study of the geographical distribution of cultural elements to be related to those found at Ur and kindred sites in Mesopotamia in its bearing on the solution of the racial problem in Sumeria. As he pointed out, various theories have been put forward at different times, as knowledge has grown, to interpret evidence of the physical characters of the early population of Sumeria. Sir Leonard himself, by citing specific elements which go to make up the complex of Sumerian art, was able to show that it is a compound of three cultural streams. Of these the Asianic or Iranian goes back at Ur to pre-diluvial times, its most marked characteristics there being the painted pottery, while it extends from Mesopotamia to China; a second is derivative from Anatolia and the third comes from northern Syria. In these three cultural elements he finds, hypothetic-ally, a parallel to the distinction which is drawn in the evidence for three differentiated physical types in the population. In this instance, it is to be admitted, there would appear to be good ground for the view put forward that the brilliant achievement of Sumerian art, in which these cultural streams unite, was due to that cross-fertilization of racial strains, which Sir Leonard maintains lies at the root of all great achievements in the art of a people as a whole. It is to be expected that Sir Leonard's new field of exploration in northern Syria will throw further light on the racial as well as the cultural problem.
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Racial Elements in Sumerian Art. Nature 138, 68–69 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/138068d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/138068d0