Note 86 — II. THE PREHISTORY OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST

We cannot say for certain whether its bearers were the Sumerians who created the earliest civilization of Mesopotamia in the subsequent—the Protoliterate—period. But no decisive proof for a later arrival of the Sumerians has been offered, and the continuity in cult and architecture support the view that they were the dominant element in the Al Ubaid period, as they remained throughout the third millennium in the south of the country. See also p. 51, n. 1 below.