the sumeriansthose foremost civilized and civilizing ancient people whose monuments and high art of 5000 years ago are the wonders of the modern worldwere the long lost aryans the phoenicians were not semites , as has been hitherto supposed , but aryans and the chief colonizing branch of the sumerians ; and that the people who colonized and civilized india , as well as those who colonized and civilized the mediterranean , northwest europe , and britain , and who were the ancestors of the britons , were literate aryans , and belonged predominately to the phoenician branches of that race .