Looking For a Prehistory of the Presocratics

I recently published a post on this blog in which I stated that I didn't believe that philosophy began with the Pre-Socratics -- not because I actually knew anything about cultures previous to the Pre-Socratics, but because the notion that the pre-Socratics could've invented philosophy on their own struck me as prima facie absurd. A century or two after the Pre-Socratics, the author of Ecclesiastes stated that there was nothing new under the sun, and this matched the impression I had that cultures borrowed things from other cultures which had borrowed them other cultures, with many modifications, to be sure, but rarely with anything completely new. There was certainly nothing new, or unique to the ancient Greeks, in a reluctance for one culture to acknowledge its debts to another.

The wrong way around, after publishing the blog post instead of before, I attempted to track down some confirmation of its thesis.

And I'm still looking. Martin L West, in his book The East Face of Helicon, Oxford, 2003 edition, says on p vii: "I am not concerned with Oriental contributions to science and philosophy," and I also could not deduce any from among the huge number of Mesopotamian literary, mythical and other cultural influences upon Greece demonstrated in West's book (which is superb and which I highly recommend).

Marc Van de Mieroop's book Philosophy Before the Greeks, Princeton, 2017 edition, did not show me that which its title describes, nor, apart from an assertion that Pythagorean triples were in use in Mesopotamia 1000 years before Pythagoras -- an assertion which did not come with a footnote which would aid someone hoping to confirm it -- did Walter Burkert's contribution, "Prehistory of Presocratic Philosophy in an Orientalizing Context," to The Oxford Handbook of Presocratic Philosophy, Oxford, 2011, p 55. Perhaps I should read them again, more slowly.

Or perhaps I should show more respect to an academic consensus, even when it contradicts my sense of what is prima facie obvious. Perhaps, when there is widespread astonishment among the experts at some achievement, as there is in the case of the achievement of Pre-Socratic philosophy, I should be more open to the possibility that the astonishment is justified. Astonishment is what I'm feeling more and more as I search for philosophical predecessors of the Pre-Socratics and -- sorry, Dr Van de Mieroop, sorry, Dr Burkert -- keep finding none.