Yves asked
> Could someone give me more information about the first emigration
wave of
> the Afro-Asiatic languages. I thought that they came from Arabia, but
I
> always heard that Egyptians came from the south to Egypt by following
the
> Nile. Could you give me the exact emigration and give me some
websites were
> I can find information about the emigration of the Afro-Asiatic
languages.
As a non-professional linguist (one who much more follows ethnological
and genetic information), whilst there is some evidence for a possible
Semitic origin from Arabia, the situation for the whole of the
Afro-Asiatic language group, I believe, is much more problematic.
Jarred Diamond, in his book, "Guns Germs and Steel, a History of
Everyone for the last 13,000 years" follows the lead of a number of
researchers who suggest an early African origin for Afro-Asiatic (Check
the bibliography of Jarred Diamond (above) for references).
The SIL site has a classification of the Afro-Asiatic family at
http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/families/Afro-Asiatic.html
On linguistic diversity grounds, the situation in Ethiopia has been
suggested to point to the origins of the Afro-Asiatic family
thereabouts.
There have also been a number of people who have suggested a Levantine
origin for Afro-Asiatic. I have seen people on this list who suggest
that the Natufians (the first farmers of Palestine were Afro-Asiatics),
and that the spread of the group occurred with the spread of farming.
But culturally, Natufians seem to have developed seamlessly out of the
earlier Kebaran cultures of the region, and (unless there was a
complete language shift between Kebaran and Natufian times, unlikely
given the nature of cultural developments between the two) the Kebaran
people on this evidence would have been Afro-Asiatic too.
Kebaran cultures show clear connections with the Earlier Helwan of
Egypt, and an African origin of the Kebaran has from time to time been
proposed. But given that we are here talking of a period 15,000 BCE, I
suspect that the Kebaran people were more likely to have been
proto-Nostratics, rather than proto-Afro-Asiatics.
Ethnologically, because Natufian has more connections with the various
pre-pottery neolithic cultures of Anatolia than it has with the Semitic
areas of the middle east, it has been suggested that the Natufian's
spoke a non-Afro-Asiatic language (unfortunately my reading on this was
done some time ago, and I cannot give you useful references here).
Nevertheless some have suggested that the cultural hiatus at the end of
PPNII (Pre-Pottery Neolithic II) period, associated with increasing
aridity and an appearance of a culturally alien pastoralist group in
the Levant, was associated with the appearance of Afro-Asiatics in the
Middle East. These people, it would seem, settled widely in the area,
and developed the highly successful Ghassulian culture (of which there
has been some discussion on this list).
There is not much available on the origins of Afro-Asiatic on the web.
Two things worth checking out though, the School of African and
Oriental Studies is undoubtably one of the best places of Afro-Asiatic
research in the world and they have a number of monographs on the
subject that may be accessible through inter-library loan. Also
available, on the development of Afro-Asiatic is
DEVELOPMENT OF AFRO-ASIATIC (SEMITO-HAMITIC) COMPARATIVE-HISTORICAL
LINGUISTICS IN RUSSIA AND THE FORMER SOVIET UNION
Takács, Gábor
This study gives the first science history and a detailed and extensive
scientific appraisal of the works by the Russian school (or "Moscow
school") of Afro-Asiatic (Semito-Hamitic) comparative-historical
linguistics in the past three decades.
The book contains the following parts: 1. A general overview of
roots
of Afro-Asiatic linguistics in Russia before 1965. 2. A concise survey
of development of Afro-Asiatic studies from 1965 in Russia. 3. A most
detailed presentation and critical appraisal of works by the Russian
comparativists on the reconstruction of Afro-Asiatic comparative
phonology and lexicon in the light of research results of other
("Western") scholars (incl. my own observations). 4. A concise
description of the so-called "Nostratic theory" and introduction of the
"Moscow school of comparative linguistics" in the latest three decades.
5. The work ends with a comprehensive bibliography of all cited works.
This is at the same time the first bibliography that includes all
Russian works on Afro-Asiatic linguistics from 1965.
Regarding your point about Egyptians coming South along the Nile, there
is also some debate about this. The Tasian and Badarian neolithic
cultures have no comparable Asian relations apart from the cultivation
of wheat and the development of pottery. It is now thought that these
Naqada I cultures were indigenous developments stimulated by the
arrival of new technologies (but not with large scale ethic movements)
out of Asia. In fact these cultures seem to be autochthonous
developments from a late Paleolithic Helwan base (There are few sites
in Egypt contemporaneous with Natufian and the Pre-Pottery traditions
in the Levant, and on current evidence it would seem that Egypt still
had an essentially Saharan wet-phase hunter-gatherer tradition at this
stage).
Clear Asian connections in Egypt are attested only in the latest
pre-Dynastic stage, associated with the Gerzian culture. This in
particular has a number of cultural elements that clearly connect the
culture with the Jemdet Nasr phase in Iraq. The route taken by the
bearers of this culture into Egypt is in dispute. Some have seen them
as coming by sea from Byblos. There is certainly no comparable
cultural developments in the southern Levant at this time. Others (for
example Wace, Winkler and more recently David Rohl) have found evidence
of a movement of peoples through the Wadi Hammammat to the vacinity of
Abydos, from whence warrior chieftains of the "falcon" people led the
wars north along the Nile that eventually unified the country under
Dynasty 1.
The Afro-Asiatic language of Egypt, a unique family in the Afro-Asiatic
group, is said to contain an essentially non-Semitic substratum, with a
number of Semitic words imposed as a superstratum upon this base. It
has been suggested that this Semitic superstratum was introduced by the
Gerzian peoples. Emery and others (following the lead of Flinders
Petrie) have recognised the existence of a "Dynastic Race" that began
the social stratification and cultural flourescence that later led to
the Thinite Periods of Dynasty I and II. More recently, following the
"systems anthropology" developed by Colin Renfrew and others (who also
proposed the Anatolian origins for Indo_European languages), have
tended to discount "alien invasion type approaches" in favour of
stimulus of indegenous cultures as a result of the appearance of a few
cultural elements. Such anthropologists would see the spread of
farming and the rise of Ancient Egyptian civilisation as an essentially
domestic affair, caaried largely on the development of internal
dynamics. They would say that movements south down the Nile, or the
appearance of a Dynastic Race cannot be proven. David Rohl in his
book, "Legend" gives a fairly good account of the discussion of these
issues, and proposes a compromise "foreign elite" theory (that supports
his larger very controvercial re-dating and reconstruction of Middle
Eastern culture and history).
Hope this gives you some of what you were seeking
Regards
John