Afroasiatic is one of the oldest language families of the world that is generally accepted by linguists as securely established. The earliest written evidence for an Afroasiatic language is from an
Ancient Egyptian inscription of c. 3400 BC (5400 years ago).
[3] Symbols on
Gerzean pottery resembling
Egyptian hieroglyphsdate back to c. 4000 BC, suggesting a still earlier possible date. This gives us a minimum date for the age of Afroasiatic. However, Ancient Egyptian is highly divergent from
Proto-Afroasiatic (Trombetti 1905: 1–2), and considerable time must have elapsed in between them. Estimates of the date at which the Proto-Afroasiatic language was spoken vary widely. They fall within a range between approximately 7500 BC (9,500 years ago) and approximately 16,000 BC (18,000 years ago). According to
Igor M. Diakonoff (1988: 33n), Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken
c. 10,000 BC. According to Christopher Ehret (2002: 35–36), Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken c. 11,000 BC at the latest and possibly as early as c. 16,000 BC. By any current estimate, Afroasiatic is a language family considerably older than
Indo-European (c. 4000 BC
according to David Anthony 2007: 48).