The southern part of Chaldea was called Shumir--the Hebrews writing it _Shinar_; the land immediately north they called Accad. The dwellers in both districts came from the same stock and spoke practically the same language. The name _Accad_ means mountains, or highlands, and it has been surmised that it may have attached to the inhabitants from some earlier home. These early people may have migrated to Chaldea five or six thousand years before the Christian era. Of their coming and first settlements, nothing is known. When we first learn of them, they had reached quite a degree of civilization, having canals for irrigating the lands unreached by the river; they had also devised the cuneiform system of writing--an advance on the picture system, earlier in use. The history of their strange symbols was probably this: in ages bygone they had invented a system of picture writing, as all primitive people seem to have done. As they advanced, too much time was required to copy the elaborate pictures in their entirety, and so the principal outlines were used to represent the pictures themselves. When these people migrated to Chaldea, and were reduced to clay tablets on which to write, it was easier to make straight lines than curved ones. In this way the written language continued to undergo changes until it was eventually made up of wedge-shaped symbols, one of the clear results of the use of the clay tablets. Our principal knowledge concerning the Chaldeans pertains to their religion, which is believed to have been one of the earliest religions of the world. The religious instinct seems to have been inborn with man. Some form and degree of worship has been found among all primitive people and is cruder or more elevated according to the stage of development. Primitive man felt himself able to cope with many of the conditions around him, but he soon found that the very agencies which helped might also injure him. The sun, whose light and warmth gave life to his growing crops, might also wither them with its intense heat. The rain which renewed and refreshed the fields, might come in torrents and lay them low. Gradually all these agencies were regarded as _Beings_, which must be importuned. The religion of the Chaldeans taught man how to guard himself against the harmful forces in the world, and every animate and inanimate thing was endowed with a spirit. A series of tablets treating of this ancient religion was recovered by Rassam, and they fall into three divisions: those treating of "Evil Spirits," others concerning diseases, and last, those devoted to prayers and hymns of praise.