Page Content (OCR)
119 The Old Testament, focusing its interest on the line of Noah alone, lists no other passengers in the rescue ship. But the more de- tailed Mesopotamian Deluge texts also mention the Ark's naviga- tor and disclose that at the last moment friends or helpers of Ziusudra (and their families) also came on board. Greek versions of the account by Berossus state that after the Deluge, Ziusudra, his family, and the pilot were taken by the gods to stay with them; the other people were given directions to find their way back to Mesopotamia by themselves. The immediate problem facing all that were rescued was food. To Noah and his sons the Lord said: "All the animals that are upon the earth, and all that flies in the skies, and all that creepeth on the ground, and all the fishes of the sea, into your hands are given; all that teemeth and that liveth, shall be yours for food." And then came a significant addition: "As grassy vegetation all manner of grain have I given you." This little-noticed statement (Genesis 9:3), which touches on the origins of agriculture, is substantially enlarged upon in the Sumerian texts. Scholars are agreed that agriculture began in the Mesopotamia- SyriaTsraei crescent but are at a loss to explain why it did not begin in the plains (where cultivation is easy) but rather in the highlands. They are agreed that it began with the harvesting of "wild ancestors" of wheat and barley some 12,000 years ago but are baffled by the genetic uniformity of those early grain grasses; and they are totally at a loss to explain the botano-genetic feat whereby—within a mere 2,000 years- such wild emmers doubled, trebled, and quadrupled their chromo- some pairs to become the cultivable wheat and barley of outstanding nutritional value with the incredible ability to grow almost any- where and with the unusual twice-a-year crops. Coupled with these puzzles was the equal suddenness with which every manner of fruit and vegetable began to appear from the same nuclear area at almost the same time, and the simulta- neous "domestication" of animals, starling with sheep and goats that provided meat, milk, and wool. How did it all come about when it did? Modern science has yet to find the answer; but the Sumerian texts had already provided it millennia ago. Like the Bible, they relate how agriculture began af- ter the Deluge, when (in the words of Genesis) "Noah began as a husbandman"; but like the Bible, which records that there had been tilling of the land (by Cain) and shepherding (by Abel) long before the Deluge, so do the Sumerian chronicles tell of the devel- opment of crop-growing and cattle-rearing in prehistoric times. Mankind Emerges