One of the more significant archaeological contributions of the past hundred years to the humanities consists of the discovery, restoration, and translation of the Sumerian literary documents, the oldest group of belles lettres in the history of civilization. Inscribed some thirty-five hundred years ago in the cuneiform script on over four thousand clay tablets and fragments , they include a varied assortment of man's first recorded myths and epic tales, hymns and lamentations, proverbs and essays. Long before the Hebrews wrote down their Bible, and the Greeks their Iliad and Odyssey, the Sumerians, who were neither Indo-Europeans nor Semites and whose original homeland may have been in the steppes of Central Asia , created a rich and mature literature, largely poetic in form, which was copied, translated, and imitated all over the ancient civilized world. Nor has it failed to leave its mark on the thought and spirit of modern man, though how and to what extent will long remain a matter of scholarly research and debate