It all lines up perfectly....(Dilmun, Basal Eurasian, Flood, Sumerians)

0:00 Welcome back. This video is picking up on that final point in last week's video. When talking about the Basil Eurasians, I mentioned how nobody knows where their home range was, but it was most likely in southeastern Arabia. And I thought about the mysterious origins of the Samrians and how it's right in the same area. And so this video is a deep dive into that. The deepest deep dive I've ever seen on this. We even meet Enki. And I was just really blown away by how many different fields all converge on this point. the overlap of the Basil Eurasian range and the Samrians originating from what now is the Persian Gulf, but right before we see the rise of Sumer, this whole area was dry land. It matches up with their own myths of Dilman, the paradise far off to their south in the middle of the sea. And there's a ton of archaeological sites found on modern Bahrain. There's

0:46 the linguistic isolate point and that famous endonym or name for themselves being the blackheaded people. A name that makes a whole lot of sense when you realize the basil eurasians have 0% neandertol ad mixture in their area to the south would get the skin lightning alles thousands of years after their northern neighbors. I got to say this video was one of my favorite to make. It was really fascinating to pull in all these different threads and put it in a nice chronological order. I think it makes a lot of sense. But let me know what you think down in the comments. But let's get into it. So the out of Africa migrations happen and one group appears to have stayed isolated from all other groups which spread throughout the Middle East into Europe and Asia. Genetic modeling studies first inferred their existence to explain why early Neareastern farmers carried ancestry

1:31 that did not fit with known European or East Asian lineages. And what's really unique is that basil urasians have 0% Neanderthal ad mixture. They diverged from other Eurasians around 60,000 years ago, just around the time that humans left Africa, and they lived in prolonged isolation for around 50,000 years. Almost no one else goes this long without ad mixture. Scientists are still trying to pinpoint where this basil Eurasian population lived, but the most recent genetic evidence points toward the southern Middle East as a likely homeland. A 2021 genomic study found that modern populations in Eastern Arabia on the Persian Gulf have the highest levels of basil Eurasian ancestry of any people today. This signal remained even after accounting for later African gene flow implying

2:17 that it is an ancient signature and the authors conclude that these findings are quote strong evidence that the now submerged Persian Gulf basin was the possible home for the basil urasians. There are plans in the works to investigate this further. So in other words, the Persian Gulf region, which was dry land during ice age periods, could have been where the be people called home. And this fits both genetic and paleo environmental clues. They were just outside of the Neanderl ranges, and no Neanderl artifacts have been found in southern Arabia, which suggests they were geographically separated from areas like the Leavant, where early modern humans met Neandertols. Now, of course, there are alternate views out there. Some scholars point to North Africa as being a strong candidate for the origin

3:02 of the basil erasians. But the Gulf hypothesis has gained support with more recent data. By the late pleaene around 26,000 years ago, people in the caucuses and Zagros mountains already carried about 30 to 50% basil eurasian ancestry, showing that this lineage had survived somewhere in the greater near east and had begun mixing with other groups by that time. But still, the pure basil Eurasian population itself has not been uncovered. It remains what's called a ghost inferred from the genetic mixtures. The idea that their home world is now under the Persian Gulf does conjure up images of a lost civilization underwater, as geneticist Razim Khan said, who's kind of poking fun at the idea, the obsession with the search for Atlantis and other things like that. But

3:48 he does note that it could be true. And most experts roll their eyes and are tired of these kind of theories. But when you get down to it, they all agree that people try and live near the water and water levels have risen dramatically over tens of thousands of years. So maybe the real events are not as dramatic as the myths say they were, but they could be the source of this cultural memory. So let's jump forward to understand the Samrians, and then I'll tie it back to the Basil Eurasians. The Samrians flourishing in southern Mesopotamia around modern southern Iraq in the 4th and 3rd millennia BC are often credited with creating the world's first urban civilization. They built citystates like Uruk and Iridu developed irrigation agriculture established the earliest known writing system of kuneaoiform and achieved remarkable advances in law literature and

4:34 architecture. Culturally they were in close contact with their cemetic acadian neighbors and the two groups lived symbiotically sharing many cultural traits. But paradoxically the Samrian stood out in one very conspicuous way their language. Samrian is a language isolate. It has no known relation to any other language family. The Acadians spoke a Seemetic language related to later Babylonian, Assyrian, Hebrew, Arabic, and others, but it's completely unrelated to Samrian. This linguistic gap between two people inhabiting the same region is known as the Samrian problem, and scholars have long puzzled how two utterly different languages came to exist in ancient Mesopotamia. Adding to the mystery is how Samrians describe themselves. In their own texts and in

5:20 the text of their Acadian neighbors, the Samrians are called the blackheaded people. In Samrian, the term is san blackheaded ones. And in Acadian, which adopted the same term, it's talmat kakadi. Both literally meaning people with blackheads. The persistence of this ethnic label in both languages implies a certain question. Blackheaded compared to who? The most obvious is just that it's a contrast in appearance between the Samrians and other groups like outsiders who had lighter hair or skin. By the third millennium BC, populations to the north in Anatolia, the Caucases and Eurasian steps were evolving lighter pigmentation traits. So an ancient southern population could indeed have looked darker by comparison. Light hair

6:05 was still really rare at this time. It is very likely that everyone had something like black hair, but at the very least it could imply that the Basil Eurasians had a type of hair texture or skin color that was somehow darker than the others and more sort of African looking than Middle Eastern. If you watched my video on the evolution of light skin, you know how that was linked to farming. Basically, if you have farming and lower UV, you get light skin like in Anatolia up into Europe and Northern Asia. You can have farming like some Africans and Southeast Asians, but because the UV is still so intense, the sunscreen effect of darker skin is more useful than the vitamin D absorption of light skin. There's so much sun that even blocking a ton of it out, you're still able to get enough nutrients. But if you're trying to live through an

6:51 Irish winter, you need to absorb as much sun rays as possible. But what's really interesting is that if you do get enough vitamin D from food like fish and meats, you will stay darker. And there's no evolutionary pressure for lighter skin. You don't need to absorb vitamin D through your skin. You're getting it through the food. So people in low UV environments like some Inuit and even Europeans before the farming diets came into Europe, they have dark skin. So the lightening of phenotypes is tied to farming diets and farming developed in the fertile crescent. First up toward Anatolia and later down toward the lands of Sumer. So, I don't want to hype this up too much, but I have wondered about this blackheaded people's thing for years. And I got to say, I think I lay it out pretty good. You can put it all in a timeline, matching up farming, the rise of Sumeriia, and the development of

7:38 light skin. And it goes something like this. When the fertile crescent shifted from foraging to farming around 10,000 to 8,500 BC, the people of the Levant, Zagros, and northern Mesopotamia were still dark-skinned and dark-haired like their Nufian predecessors. They domesticated wheat, barley, lentils, goats, and sheep. And with the rise of early farming villages like Jarmmo around 7,000 BC, the first great demographic transition begins. Alongside this, the first skin lightening mutation, SLC 2485, spread with the farmers. They're eating more grains. They're getting less vitamin D from food, and so more of an evolutionary pressure to absorb vitamin D through the skin. And remember, this is not quick. This happens over thousands of years. So

8:23 now these Neolithic villagers were lighter than their hunter gatherer ancestors, but at this point still pretty brownskinned with uniformly dark eyes and hair. Around the same time, the first efforts of orok domestication began. Cattle appear in northern Mesopotamian and Anatolian sites by the 8th millennium B.C. first as tamed or cold herds and by 6,500 BC as fully domesticated livestock. Cows became vital for every aspect of life. snowballing advances by using them to help in farming and irrigation and so become tied to ritual and symbolism integral to religions all throughout this area. I have a whole video on the bull cult and how this becomes dominant throughout the region from Anatolia to Cree to Egypt and Sumeriia. As farming

9:10 and hering spread southward, irrigation allowed settlements in the Alvium by 6,500 to 5,000 BC, the Ubied period. This is when Iridu was founded. Here in the marshes and canals, the ancestors of the Samrians lived. They were skilled irrigators, fisher folk, and cattle herders with olive brown complexions, but not yet carrying the stronger light-skinn or light eye alles of their northern neighbors. By the Aruk period, 4,000 to 3100 BC, these southern farmers transformed surplus barley, sheep, and cattle power into fuel for cities like Oruruk and with this surplus, we have the inventions of writing and monumental temples. At this stage, they still resembled their abied ancestors, still

9:56 matching their self-d designation as the blackheaded people. Further north in the Zagros, Anatolia, and northern Mesopotamia, populations had already begun absorbing the SLC 45 A2 and light eye variations carried by the step and caucus groups. This genetic divergence meant that by 3000 to 2500 BC, the North had far more variation, lighter skin tones, and though rare, there was light hair and light eyes, while the southern Samrians would have remained darker. And it's right at this time that we have the Acadian conquests around 2334 BC. The Seemetic speaking Acadians hailing from northern Mesopotamia where lightning alals were far more common eventually subdued the Samrian citystates. From then on the royal inscriptions adopt a

10:43 formulaic title, Lord of the Blackheaded people. Text from kings like Ernamu and Shuli around 2100 BC proudly use this phrase. But now the use has shifted. What began as a Samrian endonym or a name for themselves had become in the mouths of their northern rulers a label that implicitly marked the darker southerners as a governed population. And by the three dynasty there was more genetic mixing, more intermarriage and mobility across this large unified land, even if the cultural identity of the blackheaded people endured. And so these texts crystallize a moment of contrast when phenotypically lighter northern rulers with their herds of domesticated bulls and symbols of divine power ruled

11:29 the world's first cities looking out over the conquered subjects who still carried the older darker phenotype of the marshland founders of Sumer. And so you have the Samrians calling themselves the blackheaded people in contrast to the neighbors to the north. And then when those northerners take over, they still use that term because there was still this obvious visual difference. But since we're saying that this area has the largest amount of basil eurasian genetics, there is another really interesting aspect here. I'll admit it is more speculative, but I can't not bring it up. That though Neanderthalss are thought to have gone extinct around at the most recent maybe 37,000 years ago, but they too had far more phenotypic variation. In other words, they had some dark skin with dark features, but also many with light skin

12:15 and light features, possibly looking like modern-day Europeans or white people and even having red hair. So, imagine if this was a name for themsel that has been carried on not for thousands of years, but tens of thousands of years and was originally a reference distinguishing them from Neanderls. Remember, they lived at the fringes of their territory. It's very likely that they would have seen Neanderls. And like I said, there's genetic evidence suggesting that they had lighter skin and in some cases even red or fair hair. This is not thought to be induced through farming, but due to different genetic changes. But the point is for a dark-haired, dark-skinned population, looking far closer to what we would think of as phenotypically African, the most immediate way for Basil Asians to say it us versus them

13:00 would be to say that we are the blackheaded ones. And like we've seen from cultures from the son people and the pygmy groups and even just some of the core myths that have stuck around for tens of thousands of years. I think it is possible that this endonym along with stories of these alien people on the fringes of their territory. This could have stayed a core element of the basil eurasian culture for 40,000 years. A video I have coming soon is focusing just on the religious ideas of the son people. And there's a site called the Python Cave in which the same sort of ritual behavior we'll see all over the world from Native American groups to Europeans. People were offering up things of value to this snake looking rock in what's called the Python cave around 70,000 years ago. Cultural practices and ideas stick. And remember

13:46 the Basil Eurasians are so unique in that they did not mix with anybody for around 50,000 years. Not with other out of African groups and not with Neanderthalss. They're the only ones that have 0% Neanderthal ad mixture. It's very reasonable to think that they did something to be proactive in making this happen. In other words, they could have fiercely defended their territories. Even if Neanderls didn't look as light-skinned as modern white Europeans, for sure, just coming across some with red hair would have been startling, and they just wouldn't have looked like homo sapiens from Africa. for tribal people whose literal lives depend on it. They of course would have immediately picked up on any phenotypic difference in another group. And so imagine if this name for themselves, this endonym of the blackheaded people has been around since the time of

14:31 Neandertols. In this southernmost region of Mesopotamia, where it goes into the Persian Gulf, we know that by around 10,000 years ago, we know that they would have been still darker, even if by then having some ad mixture with other groups in the area. They still stay darker for longer than their northern neighbors and they still even to this day have the largest percentage of basil urasian ancestry often upwards of 50%. So while it originally may have been a distinction between them and Neandertols it endures as a cultural identity and even if their Neanderl foes were long forgotten by the 3rd millennium BC it found new relevance when the farming and SLC 452 alil carrying lighterkinned Seemetic Acadians came down into Sumer. but may have begun tens of thousands of years earlier as markers of contrast

15:18 with pale neanderthalss or even their admixed homo sapien offspring which themselves would have been a touch lighter at least less African or basil eurasian looking due to tens of thousands of years of mixing with Neanderthalss even if it was only a tiny percent of their overall genome but this endm would always fit as these people became even more light even more different from the blackheaded people so please critique this point what do you for or against it, what to add or take out of this theory. I haven't seen this anywhere. It's just me putting all this together. So, I would love some feedback. But also, what is fascinating is how their myths or stories match up with the most recent scientific findings from a variety of fields. Nobody knows where the Basil Eurasian home was, nor where the Samrians came from. They just

16:05 seem to appear suddenly in the historical record. But the Samrians themselves left clues in their myths. In Mesopotamian literature, there's a primordial paradise described in Dilman, a land that is pure and bright and untouched by sickness or death. The fullest description comes from the Samrian myth Anki and Nhersog, where Dilman is introduced as a flawless place. Quote, in Dilman, the raven utters no cries, the lion does not kill, the wolf does not snatch the lamb. And later we get, quote, no one says my eyes hurt. No one says my head hurts. In the same story, the goddess Ninhersog blesses Dilman with fertility after Enki brings it fresh water, transforming it into a paradise fit for humans and gods

16:50 alike. And there's other texts that reinforce this connection. The myth Anki in the world order describes Dilman as the sacred seat of the goddess Ninskilla, again highlighting it as a divine land linked to their origins. One tradition even calls Dilman explicitly quote the home of the land of Sumer which could hint at an ancestral memory of migration from the Gulf. Later Aadian and Babylonian texts continue to remember Dilman. The epic of Gilgamesh places the crossing to the paradise of Utnapishim, the survivor of the flood who was made immortal. To get there, you passed through waters leading toward Dilman, suggesting it remained a mythic land at the edges of the known world. And by the second millennium B.C.E., Scribes equated Dilman with the island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, and

17:37 archaeology may be supporting these legends. Excavations on Bahrain have uncovered an early Bronze Age trade hub with a vast port city and tens of thousands of burial mounds, features befitting a place once called, quote, the land of the living. This material record matches Dilman's role in Mesopotamian economic records which describe it as a vital entry point linking Sumer to the Indis Valley and Oman. Experts always give caution about connecting myth to history, but some scholars do suggest that Dilman preserves a memory of Sumerian origins that the ancestors of the Samrians may have come north from the Gulf before establishing themselves in southern Mesopotamia. And one last funny myth related thing I wanted to mention. I saw a comment on the last video saying maybe

18:22 the wild man Enkidu from the epic of Gilgamesh was referencing contact with the Neanderl. It is fun to think about, but it would require the story being either way older or Neander dolls being around for way longer, like a 30,000-year difference from when they think the story was created. But since we're talking about the myths, I just had to bring that up. But the big picture is if we put it all together there are several independent lines of evidence from geography and climate history to genetics, mythology and linguistics. They all converge to support the theory that basil eurasians could have been the ancestors of the Samrians. And all of these points have been gaining more and more evidence in their favor. Starting with the Persian Gulf Oasis during the last ice age and into the early hollesene lower sea levels left the floor of the Persian Gulf exposed as a vast land mass. This

19:10 Gulf oasis was fed by the Tigris, Euphrates, Garun, and Wadi Baiton rivers and would be dotted with freshwater springs. It would have been a rich refuge surrounded by harsh deserts. Archaeologist Jeffrey Rose has argued that humans occupied this Gulf oasis for over 100,000 years until rising seas finally inundated it around 6,000 to 7,000 BC. And importantly, as those waters rose, we see a wave of new settlements suddenly appearing along the shores of the Arabian Peninsula. Right around that same time, about 5,500 BC, villages with well-built stone houses, decorated pottery, long-d distanceance trade goods, domesticated animals, and even one of the world's oldest boats.

19:55 These sites seem to emerge out of nowhere in the archaeological record, leading Rose to suggest that quote, "These new colonists may have come from the heart of the Gulf, displaced by rising seawater levels." In other words, an advanced community living in the Gulf oasis was forced to move to higher ground, bringing Neolithic technology with them. If so, some of those displaced people could have moved north into southern Mesopotamia, precisely where Samrian civilization would blossom a couple of millennia later. I think it's no coincidence that one of the oldest Sumerian cities, Iridu, sits right on the former coastline of the Gulf. Iridu, founded in the 6th millennium BC, was revered as the first city in Sumerian tradition and was said to be located quote at the edge of the sea in ancient times. And archaeologists

20:42 note that Iridu's earliest layers show a fusion of cultures. the farming villages of the north, early Ubi culture, pastoral nomads from the deserts, and fishing people of the southern marshes. The latter possibly being incoming groups from the Gulf Coast. And the patron god of Iridu is Enki, the god of water, wisdom, and creation. And we have evidence that some of the earliest sacrifices to him were fish. And he's depicted with this overflowing of water and fish, just what you would expect if these were fishing people. And so it is tempting to identify those fisher folk as the protosumerians moving inland as their coastal homelands flooded. And this scenario meshes perfectly with the basil eurasian refuge hypothesis that an ancient population survived in the Gulf oasis potentially

21:28 preserving its distinct genetic lineage and then moving up into Mesopotamia when that oasis was flooded. And all the genetic evidence for a Persian Gulf population refuge dovetales with everything I've mentioned. The highest basil Eurasian ancestry today is found in eastern Arabia near the Gulf. They could be the descendants of populations who once inhabited this Gulf oasis. Once other neareastern groups started expanding, they admixed with the basil group. And this process is detectable by around 25,000 years ago in the near east. By the Neolithic about 10,000 to 8,000 BC, virtually all Neareastern peoples had significant basil Eurasian ad mixture. Ancient DNA shows that pre- pottery Neolithic farmers of the Zagros mountains in Iran derived about 48% of

22:14 their ancestry from basil Eurasian sources while the Nufian hunter gatherers of the Levant have about 50%. So there is zero doubt that any population in southern Mesopotamia by 4000 BC around the time of the rise of Sumer no one is doubting that they would have a high percentage of basil Eurasian genetic heritage. I'm just going a bit further saying that they might have been the hub. They might have had the highest percentage of that original ve people group. As close as you could get at this time to the original basil population. I think if we ever retrieve DNA from a Samrian era skeleton, they would be the closest thing we find to that ghost signature in the DNA. Like I mentioned, Dilman being cited as their home world in their myths. But of course, there's also the flood myth theme. The Samrian kingless mentions a great flood after

23:00 which quote, "Kingship descended from heaven a second time." And some have theorized that the flood narratives, universal as they are, might have been partially inspired by real events like the flooding of low-lying lands just like what you have in the Persian Gulf, which all happened at the end of the ice age. If the protosumerians lived through the inundation of their original Gulf homeland, they would surely carry the memory of a catastrophic flood in their oral history. So, I hope you see it really all comes together. the myths of a paradise homeland that was to the south in the middle of the Persian Gulf and then a flood that came and reset everything. This could be based on basil Eurasian memories of this oasis and its demise. Then of course there's the language. The Samrian language isolate fits the idea of an isolated population

23:46 origin. If the Samrians indeed stem from a group like Basil Eurasians that was hidden away in the Gulf or somewhere else, their language would have developed on its own unconnected to the families spoken by neighboring peoples. By the time the Samrians appear in history, none of their linguistic relatives survived. Or perhaps those relatives were other Gulf populations that never developed writing and later died out or simply merged with them. This would leave Sumerians standing alone. Linguistically isolated from the Seemetic and later Indo-Uropean tongues. The Basil Eurasian theory doesn't provide a specific language family, but its own existence implies that it is extremely old. It is notable that other ancient isolates in the near east often overlook is Elilumite in Iran. They also appear without clear relatives, possibly

24:33 suggesting multiple ancient isolated populations. But in the Samrian case, the stark contrast with Aadian right next door is the most striking. It's like two completely different people end up in the same cradle of civilization when they share so many other cultural elements. It seems likely that Sumerian was just the latest version of something that had been developing in isolation for a long time. And that linguistic point matches up with the blackheaded point. They were separate from both the linguistic developments around them, but also the genetic ones. And like I said, I've never seen anybody put all this together. Academics maybe are too cautious to make this leap, but there are plenty of credible scholars that make all the points leading up to this. Other researchers have pointed out archaeological continuities between the Arabian, Neolithic, and southern

25:19 Mesopotamia, like distinctive Ubiad period painted pottery about the 6th millennium B.C. just before the Samrian Aruk period. This has been found throughout the Persian Gulf region from Iraq Dond Bahrain in the Oman Peninsula and this suggests intensive contact perhaps Ubiad colonists moving along the coasts. It's conceivable that this represents a movement of protorean people or at least their cultural influence spreading from the Gulf outward and the lifestyle of ancient Sumerians in the marshy delta building reed houses fishing boating buffalo husbandry and other things that are unique to them. This has often been compared to the traditional lifestyle of marsh Arabs of southern Iraq. And so it seems like there's a whole culture adapted to wetland coastal conditions

26:04 that had very ancient roots in this area. If the Samrian's ancestors were indeed in this pre flood Gulf oasis being fisher hunter people, they would have brought that adaption with them. So everything from the genetic isolate, the fact that this area was dry and we know that the refuge was somewhere in this area, the mythic memory of Dilman being in the middle of this area, a flood coming and changing everything, the fact that their language is a linguistic isolate, and an archaeological record all around this area that shows a sudden explosion after the rising waters. You can see why I think there is a multiaceted case that the Basil Eurasian lineage and the mystery of the Samrian's origins could be connected. that the Persian Gulf oasis served as the key link between prehistory and the dawn of

26:49 civilization. Of course, what we really need is ancient DNA from a Sumerian skeleton. And I have hope that this could change soon. I mean, I covered in the Takori people group that only this year the ancestral North Africans were discovered. Before they too were just a ghost population inferred from the DNA results from other people. They could tell something unique was there, but they just hadn't been able to sequence any skeletons yet. That changed in 2025. So though this has been a mystery for a long time, we really are just a DNA result away from a huge breakthrough. Again, let me know your thoughts and critiques on this theory. Please comment it all down below. And hit that like button. I really could use your help. Subscribe so you don't miss anything. And I'll see you in the next one.