"News" Story

I was browsing through an issue of The Illustrated London News when I
caught an article written about the excavation at Eridu in southern
Iraq. It read in part:
 
"At level XIV, a smaller temple reappeared in the centre of our
sounding, and at Level XVI. There was a perfect little miniature shrine,
about 4 metres square, already incorporating all the principal features
of the later temples, such as an altar in a niche-recess, with a door
facing it, and a central offering-table showing traces of burnt
offerings. Furthermore, in this building, the familiar Al'Ubaid pottery
had completely disappeared and in its place was a new and unfamiliar
prehistoric ware, only slightly resembling those of Tell Halaf and
Samarra, which were prevalent in the north when the drying marshes of
the south were hardly yet habitable. A short way beneath Temple XVI was
the clean sand of the 'dune,' upon which the first arrivals at the site
must, presumably, have settled. The discovery that the Al'Ubaid people
were not, after all, the first arrivals in South Iraq will not, in some
quarters, be considered particularly surprising. Yet the curious fact
that no traces of our new, pre-Ubaid culture were found at any of the
other Sumerian sties where soundings have been sunk to virgin soil, at
least serves to confirm Eridu's claim to be one of the most ancient
cities of the Sumerian world, if not the oldest of all."
 
Who were these people? If any of you would be interested in the article
it appeared in the September 11th issue in 1948.
 
Dick Fischer
Dick Fischer, Genesis Proclaimed Association
Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
 <http://www.genesisproclaimed.org> www.genesisproclaimed.org
 
 
Received on Sun May 28 23:57:15 2006