We are continuing to pursue the first people in our area from pre-historic time.

The history is just now being written. From where did they come? When? What does diffusion have to do with Original Americans? Scattering.

Diffusion is one of those terms used across many fields of science, but seldom arises in everyday use. Diffusion simply means scattering.

Virtually every author discussing culture advocates some form of diffusion. The common refrain is culture developed from a few or one location. The oft used

“Cradle of Civilization” declares the idea that people diffused.

The most common origin is the Middle East. A few advocate “out of Africa.” Easter Island even as its champions. If we look at artifacts, Sumer wins. Other locations postulated are based on possibility of DNA distribution or other models.

The Sumerians have the goods. They lived in the Tigris and Euphrates watershed. Look at the succeeding cultures to clarify their history. Sumerians, from nowhere, appear on the world stage circa 4000 BCE. Seldom is there a clean break in ancient dynasties. They morphed with succession by Akkadians about 2400 BCE and became the Babylonians about 2100 BCE. The area was Mesopotamia during history and is Iraq today.

A parallel culture was in Egypt, but was hundreds-of-years behind in development of architecture, sciences, and mathematics. The distance between the locations is a

little over 800 miles (1300 km), close enough for some trade interaction and occasional forays, but far enough that the cultures were different. The distance is like Tulsa to Charlotte, North Carolina or Flagstaff, Arizona.

Before 3900 BCE, from earliest time during the Chalcolithic Period, copper processing was already at a pinnacle with fine cast metal. They were producing flax

for linen. The Sumerians developed astronomy, mathematics with trigonometry and geometry, time measurement, clocks, arts, and architecture. The Sumerians have a rich history with literature and stories. Their history relates they were world traveling seafarers. Their pinnacle ziggurat was circa 3900 BCE at Ba’bel (Babylon).

The Egyptian culture developed hieroglyphics, a pictorial writing well after the time Sumerians developed Cuneiform with its variations of lines, and depressions.

The Egypt ziggurats, called pyramids, came over a thousand years later with the Step Pyramid about 2630 BCE. Common perception is the pyramids were massive stone structures. However, some are only mud-brick remnants.

Another parallel culture was the sea-faring region which would become Phoenicia. The city-state of Sidon came on the scene about 3900 BCE. They were trading and shipping construction material around the Mediterranean and into the open ocean.

What happened between the time of Ba’bel and the pyramids? Watson Brake in our side of the world had people before 3500 BCE when the oldest known earthwork ziggurat (mound) complex in North America was under construction. Watson Brake illustrates

similar mathematics, astronomy, and architecture to Sumerians of the same time. With no stones in the Ouachita Delta, and no significant caves, the ziggurats were necessarily dirt mounds.

How does that relate to language? No surviving writing material has been recovered. No large rocks were available for epigraphs and fired pottery would not develop for another thousand years.

The subsequent American descendants became largely illiterate, unable to read and write a native tongue. In some river valleys,

diverse groups did create glyphs on rock.

How does an advanced culture become illiterate? A one-year change in education erases all prior history. In the third grade, with the introduction of math principles such as multiplication tables, cursive writing and reading has been traditionally engrained in young minds. Cursive is the format of all prior English writing.

That is no longer the case. Give instructions or an address written in cursive to a 20-something adult and stand in awe at the consternation. My co-author experienced this with the individual saying I can do this, I can do this, with multiple requests to explain letters.

Although many like me do not write precisely, that is not my co-author. She has as near perfect penmanship and formulation of words as I have ever seen.

I often comment to her as do many others about the symmetry, beauty, and ease of reading for her writing.

Simply by eliminating cursive education, the entire history of mankind no longer exists. The generation of illiterates must rely on someone else to translate Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, who were articulate in numerous languages using cursive forms of handwriting.

All early scientific knowledge is in the cursive language form. Einstein’s work is hand-written. Reality is like so many dystopian movies, where the book of survival must be guarded and the older generation is the

only remaining link to escape destruction.

The specious argument is we do not need cursive. Everything is print on a computer.

Does anyone believe all the important works of science, art, and history have been translated from written cursive to ones and zeroes?

History tells us the mistakes humans have made. Do we need to repeat those?

Intelligence and technology are not the same thing. Earlier civilizations were mathematically and scientifically very intelligent, with simpler technology. Technology is a tool. Tools break. Again, consider the dystopian stories.

Think about, is society moving to the place of technology without intelligence, where society cannot read its own language, but must depend on the academic class?

Who can perform the trigonometry or geometry of the Sumerians necessary to make global maps? Does technology mean dismissal of all prior knowledge?