Modern history begins with the peoples of Mesopotamia. There were cultured peoples east of the Tigris and Euphrates, in Persia, India, Mongolia, Tartary, and China before the founding of Babylon. But we are more instructed about the Babylonians and Assyrians than about earlier Asiatic races. The Babylonians and Assyrians appear to have originated in central Asia and to have migrated to Arabia about 10,000 B. C., and perhaps earlier. They were well settled in Arabia before the Egyptian pyramids and other Semitic memorials were planned. They brought with them from the farthest Orient many important contributions to civilization and culture, and developed many others. These were religious, philosophical and keen commercial peoples. They shaped the organization of modern religions. The Babylonians reduced the world of gods to a single system with classifications distinguishing between major and minor deities, and between those of heavenly, or stellar, and earthly habitats, and those of time and space. They developed many religious myths of the Creation, the Flood, Paradise, and others which were subsequently embraced by other religions. Both the Babylonians and Assyrians composed beautiful hymns, prayers, parables, and religious tales, and had numerous elaborate religious customs, rituals, ceremonies, and festivals conducted by priests, nuns, and acolytes. Anu, or Anum, the God of Heaven, was the principal Babylonian deity, while Ashur was the leading god of the Assyrians. Religious studies and rites occupied a large portion of the time of these peoples and, consequently, their temples, monasteries, schools, and other religious buildings were large and numerous. Their architecture was elaborately artistic. This was one of their incentives to scientific invention. They made important discoveries in all the basic physical sciences, like chemistry, physics, metallurgy, and mathematics, to enable them to improve their buildings and to embellish them with paintings, pictorial tiles, and fancy metals and textiles. They had excellent professional men, artists, jurists, bankers, contractors, and scientists. They were fond of literature and founded extensive libraries. Music and musical instruments were very popular with them. Their cuneiform writings, as disclosed by numerous beautiful stone and porcelain tablets which have come down to us, were excellently done. The fragments of literature, laws, and religious policies that we are acquainted with indicate that the numerous Babylonian and Assyrian settlements in each great empire possessed social and political conditions similar to those of our days. Science and art were then sufficiently advanced to enable these ancient people to live as agreeable, moral, and legally secure lives as those of any subsequent peoples.