Re: Afro-Asiatic

From: Glen Gordon
Message: 1512
Date: 2000-02-16

John:
>Glen can you tell me why you think Afro-Asiatics ultimately came from
>the Middle East? And what was the route they took into Africa? I >think it
>relates to your thesis about Niger Kordofanian.
[...]
>It is interesting that you have languages swimming against the >tide...
>Movements prior to the origins of Agriculture were all out >of Africa not
>into it.

John, just to clarify in case you've misread: NigerK is not Nostratic.
NigerK is a Dene-Caucasian language, a macro-family to which Nostratic also
belongs. Dene-Caucasian (c. 25,000+ BCE) and the later Nostratic (c. 15,000
BCE) happen to have sprung from the same general area (Middle East).

The movement of NigerK into Africa (which happened while Nostratic was still
developing from DeneC c. 15,000+) and the later movement of AfroAsiatic
dialects (Omotic, Chadic, Cushitic, Berber and maybe Egyptian) into Africa
(c.8,000 BCE ?) have absolutely nothing to do with each other. That
AfroAsiatic is a Nostratic language is nothing new either, having been
proposed long ago by many other people for some valid grammatical reasons.

As usual, you're mixing genetic movement, linguistic movement and
technological movement together into one big disorganized pile of
meaningless data. The question I have to ask is: "What data are you using to
guage this physical movement out of Africa?" It's not genetics again, is it?
And how "prior" do you mean? I'm looking at the last 25,000 years, not the
last million.

- gLeN



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