The various theories which have been propounded regarding the outside source of Sumerian culture are based on the assumption that it commenced abruptly and full grown.  Its rude beginnings cannot be traced on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, but although no specimens of the earliest form of picture writing have been recovered from the ruins of Sumerian and Akkadian cities, neither have any been found elsewhere.  The possibility remains, therefore, that early Babylonian culture was indigenous.  “A great deal of ingenuity has been displayed by many scholars”, says Professor Elliot Smith, “with the object of bringing these Sumerians from somewhere else as immigrants into Sumer; but no reasons have been advanced to show that they had not been settled at the head of the Persian Gulf for long generations before they first appeared on the stage of history.  The argument that no early remains have been found is futile, not only because such a country as Sumer is no more favourable to the preservation of such evidence than is the Delta of the Nile, but also upon the more general grounds that negative statements of this sort cannot be assigned a positive evidence for an immigration."[14] This distinguished ethnologist is frankly of opinion that the Sumerians were the congeners of the pre-Dynastic Egyptians of the Mediterranean or Brown race, the eastern branch of which reaches to India and the western to the British Isles and Ireland.  In the same ancient family are included the Arabs, whose physical characteristics distinguish them from the Semites of Jewish type.

Some light may be thrown on the Sumerian problem by giving consideration to the present-day racial complexion of Western Asia.  The importance of evidence of this character has been emphasized elsewhere.  In Egypt, for instance, Dr. C.S.  Myers has ascertained that the modern peasants have skull forms which are identical with those of their pre-Dynastic ancestors.  Mr. Hawes has also demonstrated that the ancient inhabitants of Crete are still represented on that famous island.  But even more remarkable is the fact that the distinctive racial type which occupied the Palaeolithic caves of the Dordogne valley in France continues to survive in their vicinity after an interval of over twenty thousand years.[15] It is noteworthy, therefore, to find that in south-western Asia at the present day one particular racial type predominates over all others.  Professor Ripley, who summarizes a considerable mass of data in this connection, refers to it as the “Iranian”, and says:  “It includes the Persians and Kurds, possibly the Ossetes in the Caucasus, and farther to the east a large number of Asiatic tribes, from the Afghans to the Hindus.  These peoples are all primarily long-headed and dark brunets.  They incline to slenderness of habit, although varying in stature according to circumstances.  In them we recognize at once undoubted congeners of our Mediterranean race in Europe.  The area of their extension runs