 Similarly, Doyle states "It is now thought that the Egyptians adopted circumcision much earlier" (than the confirmed 2400 BC date), "from peoples living further south in today's Sudan and Ethiopia, where dark-skinned peoples are known to have practised circumcision".Evidence suggests that circumcision was practiced in the Arabian peninsula "from where, in the fourth millennium BCE, two groups of people migrated into what we today call Iraq.These were the Sumerians and, slightly later, the Semites, the forefathers of the Hebrews".