A quick question John:  how closely related are Proto Afroasiatic/Proto Semitic to Proto Nostratic?  It seems to me that the relationship should be fairly close.  Could be that the Middle East and Arabian Pen. were the correct Urheimats despite your two listed problems. If the Middle East is indeed incorrect as Urheimat, where then do you propose it be located?
 
Gerry
----- Original Message -----
From: John <jdcroft@...>
To: Nostratica@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, December 27, 2002 1:48 AM
Subject: [Nostratica] Identifying Proto Afroasiatics - locating cultures of Nostratic.

Where was the Proto Afroasiatic and Proto-Semitic Urheimats?

There are a number of locations that have been suggested.  Yuri
Militarev suggests that the original homeland was the Middle East and
the Arabian Peninsula.  This theory would suggest that Afroasiatic
languages quite possibly are close relatives to the other members of
the Nostratic superfamily, which according to Bomhard developed in
Syria and Northern Iraq.  Militarev would seem to suggest that Proto-
Afroasiatic is to be recognised as the Natufian culture, which may be
dated roughly 10,000 BCE, roughly fitting the timespand when the
various sub-families of Afroasiatic are acknowledged as having begun
to split.

Bomhard suggests that this group spread to the south east into the
Arabian peninsular (Cushitic) and north into Syria, which became the
homeland of Semitic.  He sees a spread across Sinai into Egypt and
the Nile Valley, from whence Egyptian and Berber eventually
developed.  Chadic languages by such a means would develop deep in
the Sahara amongst the cattle using cultures of the Saharan "wet
phase" that are demonstrated in the rock paintains at Tassili and
Hoggar Massifs.

But there are problems with this scenario. 

Problem 1: The lack of derivation of the cultures of Egypt from
Natufian.  The cultures of Egypt at the period of Militarev's thesis
show no derivative links or connections at all across the Sinai,
showing affiliation only with those of the Sahara region.  Thus 24-
17,000 BCE Halfan culture of Egypt, shows connection to the earlier
Aterian of the Sahara, the 17-15,000 BCE Fakhurian seems to have
developed locally, but by 13,000 BCE Silsillian and the 13-9,000 BCE
Qadan show clear connections to the Ibero-Maurasian of North Africa.
The Egyptian Isnan culture, of 9,000-4,500 BCE shows close ties with
that of Qafsa, in Tunisia, from which the Capsian culture developed
in the period from 9,000-4,500 BCE.  In fact the connections would
seem to go the other way, from Egypt into the Sinai.  The Fakhurian
culture would seem to be the parent of the Epipaleolithic Kebaran
culture microliths, which was the parent culture for the Natufian. 
Similarly the Isnan microlithic tradition seems to have spread into
the Sinai in the 6,000 BCE period of increasing dryness.

Problem 2: There is an equivalent lack of connection across the Bab
el Mandeb from Arabia into Ethiopia and Eritrea.  The Arabian
Bifacial Tradition, which is widespread throughout the peninsula, and
dates to somewhere between 9000 and 4000 BP.  The chronologically
later, a local "Upland Neolithic Tradition" of the Yemeni Neolithic
is also aceramic, and architecture appears on highland sites of both
traditions.  The inhabitants of the interior desert in the Neolithic
practiced hunting and gathering throughout the period, but their
neighbors in the highland and coastal regions may have herded
domestic cattle as early as the sixth millennium BP, possibly
receiving their cattle not from the Middle East but from Africa. 
These developments are not found on the other side of the Red Sea. 
In fact what connections exist at this earlier stage show a movement
also in the direction from Ethiopia into Arabia.  

Thus rather than the Middle East being a centre for dispersion of
cultures (and thereby language) into Africa, we find the opposite -
Africa, until the late neolithic early Chalcolothic, was the centre
of dispersion of cultures to the Near East.

There is one other piece of evidence that clearly suggests an African
origin for Afroasiatic languages.  Ehret's reconstruction of
Proto-Afroasiatic finds no vocabulary relating to agriculture. Proto-
Afroasiatic does not have any cognates for any domesticated animal. 
The adoption of Agriculture seems to have occurred, however, before
the dispersal of Semitic, as that language family does have a number
of common words which came as loan words from their neighbours There
is a clear absence of common words for cropping and for agricultural
persuits generally.  This would indicate that the language, wherever
it was found, started its dissemination before the onset of
agriculture.

There is one piece of evidence which suggests, however, that the
parental language did understand the art of pottery.  It has been
suggested that Proto-Afroasiatic had the word *k'ad- for "pot".  This
is confirmed by the wide disrtibution of forms of the word in
daughter languages ; Arabic *kedah (drinking bowl, cup, goblet),
*keddah (dry measure); Sabaean *m-kdh (cup); Geez *kadho (well
bucket), Lowland East Cushitic *k'od- (recepticle); Oromo * k'odaa
(recepticle); Dahalo *koodo (gourd shaped pot); Central Chadic *-
k'wad- (bottle); East Chadic *K'wad- (bottle), Egyptian *qd (pot).

There is another clue too.  The first culture to develop the bow and
arrow was the Ateran culture of the Sahara.  We find the predominant
hunting technology of the Proto-Afroasiatic was the bow and arrow for
which cognates are found in all languages.  The early Semites for
instance made use of bows (*qat-) and arrows (*aw-).

This suggests that Proto-Afroasiatic was a pottery using hunter
gatherer culture.  This by definition would exclude any Urheimat in
the Near East as pottery here began *after* the spread of
agriculture.  Pre-pottery neolithic cultures were widespread down to
the 6th century BCE (and 4th century BCE in Southern Arabia), with
the technology dispersing from southern Anatolia, where the oldest
pots have been found.  In Africa, however, there is an unpolished
ware of Wavy Line Pottery, that is associated with the Saharan
Capsian traditions, that are earlier than most Near Eastern finds,
suggesting the spread of pottery throughout the Sahara before the
introduction of agriculture.

It thus appears that Diakonoff is correct in his suggestion regarding
the location of Proto-Afroasiatic (his Afrasian), in the region
between Tibesti and Darfur, spreading from there by 6,000 BCE from
the Sinai to the Atlantic and East Africa, and by 5,000 BCE
penetrating Ethiopia.  This Saharan area was exactly the region from
which the first handmade wavy line pottery was found.

Proto-Semitic, then, it would appear, developed in the region from
the Eastern Desert of Egypt across into Sinai, starting as Isnan
hunter gatherers, but once it came in contact with the Middle Eastern
neolithic cultures, adopting a nomadic pastoral lifestyle,
particularly based on the domestication of ovicaprids.  We can
reconstruct separate words for "sheep" (*immar-), "ewe" (*lair-, see
lr), and "she-goat" (*inz-), as well as separate words for "flock of
sheep" (*aw-) and "mixed flock of sheep and goats" (*an-). Sheep were
shorn (*gzz) and the flocks "tended" or "herded" (ry, with the
participle *riy-, "herder") and given to drink (qy). From there they
spread as Asko Parpola suggests into that horizon identified by Juris
Zarins, as a "Syro-Arabian pastoral techno-complex," covering the
western Arabian peninsula up through Jordan and eastern Syria.  These
people belonged to the Proto-Semitic speakers ca. 6000-4000
(Deciphering the Indus Script, p.127).  The Minhata culture of
Palestine, identified by James Mellaart as the first wave of Semitic
speakers in Palestine.  They represents a local variant of this
widespread culture.  Minhata potters, the first ceramic tradition in
Palestine, in fusion with the Amuq culture of Byblos, developed into
the Ghassulian culture, of which I have posted already, and which I
suggested was proto Semitic.

This development via a settled culture, rather than one that was
purely nomadic is indicated in the Proto-Semitic vocabulary.  "The
level of technology that the reconstructed Proto-Semitic vocabulary
points to is that of the late Neolithic or early Chalcolithic. The
early Semites, or at least some of them, lived in houses (*bayt-; see
byt) with doors (*dalt-; see dl), containing at least chairs (*kussi-
) and beds (*ar-) for furniture. They were not just desert nomads. 
They dug (*kry) wells (*bir-), lit (*rp) fires (*i-), and roasted
(qly) food (*lam-; see lm). A number of words dealing with mining are
found: the Semites had learned to smelt (rp) ores with coal (*paam-)
to obtain metals (only "silver," *kasp-, is Proto-Semitic; words
for "gold," "copper," "bronze," and "iron" are not reconstructible).
Bitumen (*kupr-) was used for waterproofing. They also used antimony
(*kul-; see kl) and naphtha (*nap-; see np), and manufactured rope
(*abl-). ... In transactions, they weighed (ql), measured (*mdd), and
otherwise counted (mnw) things, and sometimes, at least, found time
to play music (zmr)." (See http://www.bartleby.com/61/10.html)  This
confirms fairly well with what we know of Ghassulian culture.

Thus Afroasiatic, by comparison, seems to have developed out of the
Saharan Capsian hunter-gatherer cultures, with derivative Isnan in
Egypt leading to the Sinaitic cultures which developed into the first
fully nomadic pastoralists in the Near East, spreading north and
south.  What we have here is a "Sahara pump" that during Wet Sahara
Phases attracts cultures into the deep Sahara, and during the
following dry phases pushes them out.  We can see this cycle
operating as an explanation of the modern distribution of the
Afroasiatic languages.  This also means that the earlier cycle of the
Saharan Pump, by which Kebaran, related to Egyptian Fakhurian
cultures were "pumped" across Sinai to become the ancestor culture of
Natufian *WAS NOT* Proto Semitic or Proto-Afroasiatic, but rather
perhaps Proto-Nostratic.  Afroasiatic, as some have suggested, was
not a part of the Nostratic superfamily, but rather a "sister
language" from which Nostratic split.

For the wet sahara phase have a look at

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?
img_id=4900

Regards

John


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