Note 81 — II. THE PREHISTORY OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST

This stage of their ceramics had been known from a small site near Erech (A. Nöldeke and others, Neunter Vorläufiger Bericht.... Uruk-Warka, Berlin, 1938, Plates 36-40), when it was found well represented at Abu Shahrein (Eridu): See Illustrated London News, 11 September 1948, p. 305; Sumer, IV (Baghdad, 1948), 115 ff. There is nothing against calling this pottery “Eridu ware” as long as its historical connections are not obscured. It is quite gratuitous to claim that “Al Ubaid people” can no longer be called the earliest settlers in southern Mesopotamia, for the Eridu ware is simply an earlier stage of the Al Ubaid ware. If quibbles about names are disregarded, it remains true that the earliest settlers of the plain descended from Persia; the new ware shows an earlier stage of their ceramics than has hitherto been found in the plain but it was already known from the western edge of the Highland, e.g. Tepe Khazineh near Susa (J. de Morgan, Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse, Paris, 1908).