The Sumerian language may be a sister language to an Indo-European language. The Sumerians came up through the Persian Gulf. No one knows where they came from. They were "light-haired" (i.e., their hair was not jet black like everyone else in the region), "light-eyed" (i.e., not black-brown), "light-skinned" (i.e., olive) [They were, in other words, not an Aryan people.], hairy, short, and squatty. They invented the wheel, writing (c. 3400 B.C. they invented a stylus to write in cuneiform -- wedge-writing). All cultures of the ancient Near East used cuneiform. The Sumerians came from a mountainous countryside. They created ziggurats (step-pyramids) and used them to worship on. They made illustrated books for their myths and legends. They carved cylinder seals out of stone to roll imprints on wet clay. Sumerian priests shaved their entire bodies bald. Other men had huge beards and long wavy hair, thick eyebrows, and enormous eyes (as depicted in the artwork of the time). The eyes of statues were made of shell for the white and lapis lazuli for the iris [Possible explanation: Conquerors never want to merge with the conquered so they accentuate the differences between them in often exaggerated detail.]. The Akkadians were heavily influenced by the Sumerians -> Babylonians worshipped similar gods.