Okay John,
I've been checking out all your
references to cultural movements and, relying very heavily on Enc.Britt. I still
see no reason to dismiss the Ethiopian/East African origin of AfroAsiatic. In
this post I'll confine myself to the cultural progression as I see it, and leave
the linguistic consequences to later, other than the positing of the Ethiopian
source of AfroAsiatic since to me it is more linguistically
feasible.
You start with the Aterian
culture ca.30,000BCE. First I would note that EB states that these people were
_among_ the first to use the bow and arrow, and not necessarily the inventors,
if any one culture could claim that distinction. It also states that the few
human remains associated with this culture (EB uses the word "industry") are
neanderthaloid.
So, we come to the Wurm Glacial
period, corresponding to the Gamblian Pluvial in East Africa. This period lasted
some 20,000 years. It seems to me that the desert would have grown outward from
(a) source(s) in the interior of North Africa. By the time it reached the
coastal areas, the people there would have been cut off from any retreat to the
south. It also strikes me that any remnant people, caught between the expanded
Saharan desert and the icy Mediterranean, would not be in any position after
20,000 years to create a new culture when the climate improved.
So, in respect of the Sahara, I
think we start in 10,000BCE with a tabula rasa.
Firstly, then, we have the
Ibero-Maurusian industry which in my sources (Enc.Brit. and Library of Congress)
predates the Capsian. Where did this come from? Quite possibly from a population
who had weathered the Ice Age behind the Atlas Mountains and the Pyrenees. It
seems little is known about them and they were soon overtaken by the
Capsian industry.
Where did the people of the
Capsian industry come from? It seems most likely from the homines sapientes
sapientes of East Africa, who would have continued to advance their
techniques and increase their numbers throughout the favourable Gamblian Pluvial
period, and with the change of climate (wetter in the Sahara and drier in east
Africa) spread out in all directions, to the south, the west and north
arriving in north-west Africa ca.8000BCE. Their industry and art is found
throughout the Sahara, and Kenya and Southern Africa.
Pottery and
cattle-herding.
As you say, these seem to have
been the inventions of the Capsian period. Some of the oldest fired pottery
however has been found in the Nile valley around Khartoum, and is similar in
design to that found in Kenya (Gamble's Cave). So, it seems quite likely that
pottery was carried north down the Nile valley as well as into the Sahara. As
for cattle-herding, the ancient Egyptians were a cattle people, like the
present-day Beja and Shilluk of the eastern desert. This is shown in
hieroglyphics and in the language, where women, princesses of the royal line
etc. are often referred to by terms that originally denoted cows.
Obviously, emmer and einkorn
wheat must have been brought from the north-east (Levant). But how far did this
agriculture penetrate the Nile valley before the drainage works of the Old
Kingdom? During the wet phase, the Nile floods were probably greater in extent,
and the Fayyum would have been one big swamp, so it's probable that Middle
Eastern people only touched on the fringes of the eastern delta, and the low
marshy swamps to the west would have discouraged immigration from that quarter.
So, the main avenue for the peopling of the Nile valley would have been from the
south, from Equatorial Africa. This seems to be borne out by Herodotos'
descriptions of Egyptians even in his time, as black with woolly
hair.
At Deir Tasari and al-Badari, on
the eastern bank of the middle Nile, these early Egyptians must have met up with
the new agricultural technology moving up the Nile. But, this doesn't imply
major population movements.
What evidence do you have for
Asiatic elements in Naqadah I and II? They would appear to be developments of
the earlier Badari. And who are these "Dynastic people"? The origin of the
earliest dynasties can clearly be traced to Nubian "A" group. Finds at Qostul,
cemetery "L" in Nubia would appear to confirm this, in particular the remains of
a cylindrical censer showing a king, sitting in a "royal" boat (high prowed)
wearing what appears to be the long white crown of Upper Egypt. In front of him,
the royal banner and the hawk-god Horus. There is also a palace(?) wall
reminiscent of the funeral house of Zoser (3rd dynasty). There are also some
indecipherable signs - the precursors of hieroglyphics?
Like you with the Sumerians, I
tend to believe the Egyptians' accounts of their origins, and they clearly saw
themselves as coming from the south "Ta Neter" "the land of the gods". The
Egyptian word for "king" "nsw" can probably be derived from "n y swt" "man of
the south", and the words for west/right and east/left show that they oriented
themselves to the south, their origin. The text on the pyramid of Unas seems
also to recall the storms of Equatorial Africa : "The sky melts into water,
where the heavens speak and the earth trembles".
So, I remain convinced that the
source of AfroAsiatic, and I suppose by extension Nostratic, is to be found in
east Africa. The formation and spread of languages I believe is a much more
complex matter, and IMO not intrinsically connected with the spread of technical
innovations. I still believe the most likely route for Semitic is across the
Horn of Africa and up through Arabia.
I'll come back on
this.
Cheers
Dennis