Satuf

Which modern group of people are heirs of the Sumerians, Babylonians, Akkadians, and Assyrians?

Which modern group of people are the heirs of the ancient Egyptians?

Why do we still see Chinese today as the Chinese of ancient times and same goes for Indians and Greeks but not for the peoples of the Near East and Egypt?

punkatasset phil

Interesting question.

I'll give you my short answer. I would say it is because of the arabization and concommitant islamization of the two peoples in question.

Edgewaters

Well for the Semitic Mesopotamians (eg the Akkadians etc) it's probably the Semitic populations still living in the Middle East. For the pre-semitics, like the Sumerians, I can't say. Maybe they got absorbed into the Semitic populations?

The Copts.

I couldn't really say as far as Greece is concerned, but it's easy for China and India: they have an unbroken religio-cultural tradition. Islam made a clean break with its pagan past and more or less buried the history and customs. And even before that, Hellenization (which likely paved the way for Islam) was something of a break.

The Chinese and Indians have evolved their religions, but the roots are largely still intact in one form or another.

~Tawananna~

I will agree with punktasset phil above. I have given it though myself at some point and this is the answer I could come up with...
Also, the languages of the Chinese, the Indians and the Greeks has survived( even though all of them evolved, but this is only natural). This is why we tend to see them as a continuum and the modern populations as heirs of the ancient ones.

orestes

Purely off the top of my head within a grain of salt... descendants of the Babylonians and Assyrians are the modern day Middle Eastern Peoples, More specifically Babylonia is closer to Modern Day Iraq, where Assyria is closer to modern day Iran. While the Akkadians are closer to modern day Kuwait. Egypt is well Egypt, but of course the Egyptian Empire was much larger then it is today.

As for Greece, there is a clear religious, and cultural division that is unbroken, even under the Eastern Roman and Byzantine Empire's and where Constantinople was considered the New Rome. The people of the Eastern Roman Empire adopted Greek as their language and the religious practices of the Eastern Roman empire pervade society today. The Eastern Empire brought Christianity to Rome and as such as the influence of Greece pervades a significant part of the world even today. Even under the occupation of the Ottomans, Greeks survived through the practice of their religion. Of course it brings the question as to whether this is by blood or by culture but at least "Religo-culturally" there has been an unbroken legacy to ancient Greece.

okamido

Slightly o/t, but dealing with the development of Mesopotamian culture, from Armenia.
http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/society/news/50844/

Diogenes

As far as "blood ties" between the ancient and modern Greeks, I mean the Greeks have suffered an awful lot of invasions: Slavs, Turks and Latins just to name a few. I wonder how much DNA a modern Greek shares with those from the Classical period.

Edgewaters

Dunno about that, Christianity was definately a break with the public religion of ancient Greece. Contrast this with the Hindu tradition, which is sourced in the Vedic religion, established in 1000 BC at the latest.

orestes

Yes, but it was the Greek speaking Eastern Empire that instigated the switch and the Eastern Roman Empire was irreverently Greek in comparison to the West, they were essentially Greeks whether you call them Byzantines, Eastern Romans, or Greeks, their language was Greek their cultural and society was Greek and Constantinople was Greek until it fell.

In terms of "blood ties" that has me thinking as well, it's a personal issue for myself, how much of me a half Greek Australian is actually Greek. How much of me is Turkish, and heaven forbid of all things [tongue in cheek] Slavic Macedonian.

BUT to deny the existence of Greeks within the Eastern Roman Empire, if only in a sociocultural sense, from my own opinion [if I may have one on the matter] is flagrantly wrong. Of course I'm not speaking from an academic point of view at the moment and adding my own personal bias being half Greek and I'm prepared to eat my own words if I am wrong.

Psellos

I'm not sure we can say the same for Iraqis about the relation they have with the Assyrians, Babylonians, Summerians etc, as we can say for Greeks, Armenians, Copts, Indians and Chinese.

Greeks, despite the influences, kept the same language, spoken in the same areas where ancient Greek was spoken(southern Greece, Epiros, South Macedonia(Greek Macedonia), Eastern and Western Thrace, Minor Asia Aegean and Mediterranean coast, Pontos, hinterland cities of Anatolia, Calabria, Apulia, Cyprus etc., and this cannot be a coincidence...
Since ancient times our neighbors recognized a shaped group of people speaking Greek in that corner of the Mediterranean, calling us Graeci, Grecki, Yawan, Yoyn, Rum etc

And even the Christianity, despite the major changes that brought, passed through the Hellenic "leach" , as we can understand it from the "Greek Fathers", Chrysostoms, Nanzianzinos, Gregorios Theologos, Psellos, Gennadios Scholarios etc etc. Even the almost two millenia christian impact on Greeks, wasn't enough to delete the deep traditions that comes from antiquity(with the same names of course) like Moires, Hadis, Charon, Neraides, Gigantes, Gorgones, Vaskania, Klidones, Gellou, Alcyonides, Anaskelades, Striga, Lamia, Chamodrakon etc etc

Also we can't notice any continuity in the Assyrian, Babylonian literature-linguistic tradition, and none would deny that obvious continuity in the Greek, Indian and Chinese occasions(note also the alphabet continuousness) . Byzantion kept Hellenic tradition alive, being proud for that.

I don't know how much DNA we have inherited from classical Greeks, and i don't really care... Obviously we've inherited "a lot", but since we haven't lived for 2500 years in an apartheid regime, surely other people left their mark... among them surely Turks(because someone referred to them above) had zero to much insignificant impact. Slavs and Albanians yes.