Why Sumerians referred to themselves as sang-ngiga "the black-headed people"?

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Why Sumerians referred to themselves as sang-ngiga "the black-headed people"?

Map of Sumer:

jtmd_sumer.jpg


And why after Gutian conquest of Sumer, we see ancient statues with very big and blue eyes in this land?

v7z4_blueeyessumer.jpg
 
Yes despite popular believe I think Sumerians had very caucasian looks, maybe they had dark hair so called themselves Sang-giga.
 
Yes despite popular believe I think Sumerians had very caucasian looks, maybe they had dark hair so called themselves Sang-giga.

Of course but in a region where all people have dark hair, it is meaningless that some people call themselves dark-haired people, don't you think so?
 
very difficult question. we need to find an answer according to all other special(unique) factors of sumer, something like decision tree:

first, is the head related with their cruelty? Did they adapt this kind of sacrifice from west asia? or were they foreigners?

see their legs like skiing position or shaman dancing position
http://sumerianshakespeare.com/media/2bb5ecf2c805583affff860cffffe415.jpg

similar to one of yamna burial type, which is not WSHG type, supine. There are two types in IVC, crouch and supine, where WSHG entered:
http://sumerianshakespeare.com/media/2bb5ecf2c805583affff81ddffffe415.jpg

http://sumerianshakespeare.com/117701/117801.html

but They are less brutal than altai people:

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/38569-Seima-Turbino-Ydna-discussion-and-poll/page2 (post 28)
 
It is important to mention that Gutians who lived in the northeast of Sumer, were also called namrutim "blonde people" in the ancient Mesopotamian sources.
 
It is important to mention that Gutians who lived in the northeast of Sumer, were also called namrutim "blonde people" in the ancient Mesopotamian sources.

Is there something black or blond modern iranian or marsh arab people are cherishing?
I don't think it is related with hair color.

I think same case is in bronze china. Their royals were called as yellow di? why are they yellow people? As far as I know, there is many theory, but I personally think that the yellow seems to be gold. Modern chinses loves gold than any other nationals. I remember to see a photo that some rich chinese have has a golden toilet:

Huang=yellow, di= lord:

unlike the yangshao and hemudu people, who came from southern china, the huang di nation came from west of china, from the western part of the eurasian continent. they conquered the native people of the yellow river and the yangtze river, who possessed a developed agricultural culture. by combining their own imported cultural factors with those of the native culture, the huang di people gradually developed a splendid new civilization in the xia, shang, and zhou dynasties. they superseded the original native people to take the leading role on the stage of chinese history. that the huang di nation was a branch of the archaic indo-european people is one of the most remarkable facts thus far known to human history. but a large number of indo-european words in old chinese language clearly attest to this fact. the relics left by the huang di people are related to the longshan culture in the archaeological chronicle, and the civilization of the xia, shang, zhou, and qin秦 dynasties were its successors.27 evidence for this claim comes from two sources: the first uses the evidence of ancient documents to show that the zhou people, and thus the yellow emperor’s nation, were originally a nomadic people, and the second is to reveal that there were a large number of indo-european words in the zhou language, using the evidence of historical linguistics. the third is the similarity in religion between the huang di people and proto-indo-european. as to the last point, please refer to the author’s paper “old chinese ‘帝*tees’ and proto-indo-european ‘*deus’: similarity in religious ideas and a common source in linguistics” (zhou 2005)

Golden-Masks-from-Sanxingdui.jpg

https://www.ancient-origins.net/new...nigmatic-sanxingdui-civilization-china-002508
 
The root may mean "black/dark + head, top of the head", so some believe, based on their paintings and statues, that the expression "dark-headed" referred to their custom of shaving their men's hair, exposing them to the sun. IMO it's very unlikely that a much darker-skinned people would describe themselves as those with black heads specifically pointing to their heads. There must've been something distinctive about their head, probably involving the hair (or lack thereof).

Lapis lazuli was heavily prized by the Sumerians, so they probably knew people with blue eyes and wanted to represent it using their cherished metal stones (no need for Gutians to have that inspiration - not necessarily, I mean -, since Chalcolithic Israel already had a community with ~49% blue-eyed people, the spread of Anatolian Neolithic ancestry might've been linked to the spread of the genes for blue eyes in the Near East). I also hope you're not making the old blue eye = Indo-European assumption that's both outdated and heir to simplistic racism. We already know that high prevalence of light eyes and hair only became a feature of some presumably IE populations from latter times (and more often than not much more admixed, i.e. with their "PIE" ancestry diluted particularly with EEF and, in Northern Europe - as in the CWC - some extra indigenous hunter-gatherer admixture), more in the Middle-Late Bronze Age than before that. Early IE peoples probably had blue eyes and light hair, but in much smaller frequencies that weren't unlike those found in other non-IE populations.

Did you read that the statues with blue eyes only appear after the Gutian rule in some reputable source? I mean, Gutians only ruled Sumer after the fall of the Akkadian Empire and well into the Semiticization process of that region.
 
maybe at the time their surrounding populations were light haired, so as to differentiate themselves from others they call themselves Sang-giga as in modern "highlander, lowlander" terms.
 

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