greatstreetwarrior

Are there remanants of Sumerian,Akkadian, Assyrian and Babylonian culture today? Are there any small groups or tribes which have(reliably proven) direct lineage form any of these group?


Even if these empires lost how did the well established cultures change so repeatedly?

olajide sunday

Of course their are remains.

antocya

Good question. I imagine the villages have probably changed the least, but even there I would expect for them to be very different. Traveling through Iraq and Southeastern Turkey I've seen mud-brick villages that bring the ancient Middle East to mind.

I took some photos in the Southeast of Turkey from a bus but they didn't turn out well. Every time I've actually gone to villages I never thought to bring a camera with me.

Attached Images

	DSCN1542.jpg (56.1 KB, 32 views)
	DSCN1546.jpg (49.1 KB, 20 views)

greatstreetwarrior

I meant cultural remanants.

Salah

There are still people in Iraq calling themselves Assyrians today.

WeisSaul

They don't have much land, but they mostly live around where their ancient capital Nineveh was.

As of now they are trying to become an autonomous region in the country.

Farinal

My neighbourhood in Istanbul is called Akkad :P

kauchenvinci-0

NIce question !
Curiously waiting to know the inputs !

WeisSaul

apophaticlogos

Assyrians are still around, but if I'm not misinterpreting the original question, he is asking about influence of these civilizations in the wider culture. E.g. Phoenician alphabet-based writing used today.

It's been a long time since I've read in depth about the Ancient Middle East, and I don't I time or energy to refresh myself now totally now, so I will just offer a few brief observations.

Part 1:
The Assyrian contribution is easy to spot if you count the Syriac Christians as a part of their civilizations. The Syriac Church, ostracized from the Orthodox Byzantine Church, instead turned East and spread throughout Persia into Central Asia and then to the Mongols and China. They brought with them their alphabet and religion. Both were crushed rather thoroughly by Arabic Muslims, but the traces of their influence still live in Mongol, where the indigenous Mongolian alphabet (used in Inner Mongolia) is in essence the Syria alphabet, rotated 90 degrees. This in turn probably formed the inspiration for the Korean alphabet.

Again, it's been a couple years, but I was always under the impression that astrology is essentially a Babylonian science.
Except for those two, nothing immediate comes to mind.

Part 2:
I'm sure everyone here already is aware of this, but it's worth saying anyway-
There is an immense difficulty attributing cultural influence to civilizations that are so far removed from us because anything we get from them, we get indirectly. For example, our religion and philosophy is certainly influenced by Babylonian and Sumerian thought. You only need to look for the Tower of Babel or references to Ur in the Old Testament, or read the Epic of Gilgamesh to see the connections.

However, it's impossible to say that anything specific is actually Babylonian because what we have as far as religion we got through the Latins who got it from the Greeks who got it from the Jews who got it from the Persians who got it from the Babylonians (on their second try at empire! @~@ ). Philosophy follows essentially the same track - just take out the Jews.

Is there Akkadian cultural DNA in our culture today? Of course! Would we look any different without Akkadian DNA? Who knows ㅠ_ㅠ

It's like asking 'Who is the most important philosopher in history?' Someone might say "Heidegger of course!" But Heidegger draws inspiration from Fitche, so should we attribute Heidegger's influence to Fitche? But who the heck knows who Fitche is?!