Alice C. LinsleyA comparison of the languages of Saharan Africa, Semitic languages, Sanskrit and Dravidian suggests that a vast Afro-Asiatic Dominion extended from the Atlantic coast of modern Nigeria to the Indus River valley between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago. We find evidence of this in comparing the cosmology and religious beliefs of peoples living in this part of the world. The evidence involves common culture traits and common Afro-Asiatic words found in the Hindi, Dravidian, Hamitic/Chadic and Semitic languages.
In addition to the evidence of comparative linguistics, evidence for the Afro-Asiatic Dominion is found in the comparison of ethno-astrology, number symbolism and kinship. This essay focuses on the linguistic evidence for the Afro-Asiatic Dominion and explores the cultural diffusion of the Afro-Asiatic worldview that constitutes the Bible's framework.
Linguistic Evidence for The Afro-Asiatic Dominion
Afro-Asiatic languages include Akkadian, Amharic, ancient Egyptian, Arabic, Aramaic, Assyrian, Babylonian, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Ethiopic, Hahm, Hausa, Hebrew, Omotic, Phoenician, and Ugaritic. These “cognate languages" appear to share a common ancestor language. Because this is so, linguists are able to compare the languages and draw conclusions about the older “proto” Afro-Asiatic language and dialects spoken before 10,000 years ago.
One expression of the common worldview of the Afro-Asiatics is the linguistic affinity of their languages. Consider the following examples:
The Hebrew "rison adam" = ancestral man is "adamu orisa" = ancestral Adam in Hahm/Hausa languages of Nigeria. The Hausa word for human being is "dan adam." The Sanscrit word for male human is "manu" which resembles the African word "adamu" more closely than the Hebrew word.
The Hebrew "adamah" = red clay/ground and the related Semitic words "dam" = blood and "adom" = red, are related to the Hahm/Hausa word "odum" = reddish brown.
The Hebrew "bara" = to begin, is related to the Yoruba/Hahm word "bere" = to begin. There is an apparent relationship between the verb "to begin" and the word Creator which in Hebrew is "bore" and in the African Twi dialect is "Borebore" = Creator.
The Hebrew "hay" = “living being”, is related to the Hausa/Hahm word "aye" = life, created world. Likewise, the Hebrew "iya" = mother, corresponds to the Dravidian "ka ayi" = mother, and the Hausa/Hahm "eyi" = gave birth.
The Hebrew "abba" = father, corresponds to the Hausa/Hahm "baba" = father, to the Dravidian “appa” = father, and to the Mundari "apu".
The Hebrew "ha’nock" = the chief, corresponds to the Hahm word "nok" = “first ancestral chief”
The Semitic word "wadi" = river, corresponds to the Sanskrit "nadi" = river.
The Semitic root “mgn” = to give, is the same as the Sanskrit “mgn” = to give.
The Hausa word for hunter is maharba. Compare this to the Hebrew word that appears in the Targum "naḥshirkan" (meaning hunter) and note the similarity to the Hausa word "sarkin maharba" (meaning lead hunter).
The Sanskrit “svah” = sky or heaven, corresponds to the Semitic “svam” or “Sam-yim” = sky or heaven. The Semitic resembles the Proto-Dravidian word "van" = heaven. The Spanish "desvan" (attic) comes from the Arabic-speaking Moors and is easily traced to the older linguistic layer of the Afro-Asiatic Dominion.
The Sanskrit “Sakti” = harvest moon celebration, is the linguistic equivalent of the Falasha word “Sarki” = harvest moon festival.
The Hebrew "yasuah" = salvation, corresponds to the Sanskrit words “asvah”, “asuah” or “yasuah” = salvation.
The Hebrew root "thr" = to be pure, corresponds to the Hausa/Hahm "toro" = clean, and to the Tamil "tiru" = holy. All are related to the proto-Dravidian "tor" = blood.
The Hebrew "echad" or "ehat" = one, corresponds to the Syrian "eka" and to the Sanscrit "eca" = one. It is a cognate to "ikka" = one, in the Gonga languages of southeast Ethiopia.
As many ancient Afro-Asiatic peoples used base 6 in counting and as the basis for their calendars, the number six is a significant indicator of related languages. Consider the following:
The number six in Proto-Dravidian is "caru". This correlates to "koro" in South Africa; to "karkia" in some Chadic Languages; and to "korci" in Meidob (eastern Sudan). The most striking similarity is between the Kanembu (Sudan) "araku" and the Tamil "aarru."
There is a fascinating relationship also between the Sanskrit word “Brahma” = great father and the Hebrew “Abraham” = great father. Some see a correspondence between the Sanskrit “Sarasvati” = divine consort and the Hebrew “Sarah” = noble wife of Abraham.
Cultural Diffusion and the Afro-Asiatic Dominion
How is it that people living across this vast expanse share so many important words? Genesis 11:1 tells us that the descendents of Noah who are listed in the Table of Nations (Gen. 10) were one people and spoke one language. In fact, all the peoples listed in the Genesis 10 are Afro-Asiatics and at one time they used virtually the same words, that is to say, they spoke closely related languages that shared a common system of roots. We might more accurately speak of their languages as dialects.
One explanation for this is cultural diffusion over a large area resulting in common features. Diffusion is the process of spreading knowledge, skills, and technology from one culture to another. Cultural diffusion explains the linguistic affinities between languages as different the Asian Tamil and the African Hausa. The diffusion process begins when different cultures initiate regular contact through migration, commerce and alliances. Let us consider the evidence for each of these aspects of diffusion.
Migration
There is evidence that early migration took place both "out of Africa" and into Africa. Travelers moved both by land and water. At least as early as 20,000 years ago travel meant moving through territories under the control of regional chiefs.
There is evidence that ancient peoples of Africa migrated in many directions. Some went eastward to the Near East, to Iran, to India and to Indonesia. The Olmecs came to Mesoamerica. The Dogon migrated from Egypt to Mali in West Africa.
Artifacts dating to the Stone Age have been found on the Iranian plateaus, helping experts retrace the steps of an East Africa tribe that passed through the region on their way to India where it settled in the Andaman Islands. The tribe has all the physical features of black East Africans. Their ancestors are believed to have migrated out of East Africa about 60,000 year ago. According to Hamed Vahdati, a member of the archeological society at Iran's Cultural Heritage Center, the Stone Age artifacts found in Iran are very similar to those found in East Africa.
The evidence collected by anthropologists and archaeologists suggests that humans moved out of Africa in several directions beginning about 50,000 years ago. Many moved across land as the sea level was lower during of the ice age. However, for many the final stage of the journey would have been by sea. Dr. Richard Klein, an archaeologist at Stanford University, believes that the population discovered at Lake Mungo, in southeastern Australia, was originally from Africa. The Lake Mungo site holds the remains of an adult man who was sprinkled with copious amounts of red ocher in a burial ritual common among early humans. These humans would have had to cross 50 miles of open ocean between the nearest point of Southeast Asia and the landmass of New Guinea and Australia, which were then attached.
Commerce
Diffusion is common among groups whose homelands are geographically contiguous. However, the land area of the Afro-Asiatic Dominion is so vast that the diffusion of the Afro-Asiatic worldview must have been driven by traveling merchants as well as migration. In other words, the Sahara was not a barrier to travel before 10,000 years ago because there were water routes to follow and the central part of the Sahara was wetlands (see map below).
Anne Osborne, lead author of a Bristol University paper on this topic has said: “Space-born radar images showed fossil river channels crossing the Sahara in Libya, flowing north from the central Saharan watershed all the way to the Mediterranean. Using geochemical analyses, we demonstrate that these channels were active during the last interglacial period. This provides an important water course across this otherwise arid region.”
Dr Derek Vance, senior author on the paper, added: “The study shows, for the first time, that monsoon rains fed rivers that extended from the Saharan watershed, across the northern Sahara, to the Mediterranean Sea. These corridors rivaled the Nile Valley as potential routes for early modern human migrations to the Mediterranean shores."
Cultural diffusion was aided by caravans that moved back and forth between west central Africa and Asia. This explains the appearance of ancient African artifacts in China. As Roger Blench has noted, "The spread of the donkey across Africa was linked with the proliferation of long distance caravans."
Migration and commerce do not sufficiently explain how peoples living across such a vast expanse of land should have a common worldview and linguistic heritage. The evidence suggests a more complex picture of migration, commerce, and alliances among peoples located around the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Peninsula and the Dead Sea.
Alliances of Ruling Families
Kinship was the basis of social and political interaction among the Afro-Asiatic rulers. The chiefs of the Afro-Asiatic Dominion were related by blood and marriage. This strengthened political and commercial alliances.
Afro-Asiatic chiefs married two wives and traced their lineage through both the father's line and the mother's line. Analysis of the Genesis genealogical information reveals that the father's line was traced through the ruler's sister bride because the ruler and his sister bride had the same father. Such was the case with Abraham and his sister bride, Sarah.
The mother's line was traced through the ruler's cousin bride because the ruler and his cousin were related through the sister wives of common patriarchs. Jacob married sisters and ten of Jacob's sons are called the sons of Leah. Two of Jacob's sons are called the sons of Rachel.
Abraham's mother's line was traced through his cousin wife Keturah because Keturah's mother and Abraham's mother were probably sisters.
To perpetuate her father's name, the cousin bride named her first-born son after her father. So Keturah named her first-born by Abraham after her father. Likewise Lamech's daughter married her cousin and named their first-born son Lamech, after her father.
The ruler's lineage involved both blood line and caste. Blood line was traced through the mother and caste was inherited from the father.
The chiefs who controlled the rivers, channels, lakes and ports received tribute from their subjects and from those who crossed through their territories or moved cargo on their water routes. Each chief had trained warriors and a council of advisors which included a priest. The chief and the priest represented the greatest authority.
Nimrod is one of the earliest Afro-Asiatic chiefs mentioned in the Bible. The saying "Like Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord" reflects the old tradition in which a man's valor is tested in the hunt. Among African tribes, this is how men traditionally became chiefs.
Summary
Diffusion of the Afro-Asiatic worldview was driven by three factors: migration out of Africa, commerce, and the marriage alliances of Afro-Asiatic chiefs. These chiefs had 2 wives. Abraham's 2 wives produced 6 sons. If each son had 2 wives, the population of Afro-Asiatic nobles would have expanded very quickly. Each chief had to locate where he could establish his own territory. This drove the eastward expansion of the Afro-Asiatic Dominion.
12 comments:
Where did Sanskrit come in to all this? It's an Indo-European language, not Dravidian at all. In fact, it was Sanskrit that was key to identifying the Indo-European language family in the first place. During the time period you're talking about, the Indo-Iranian speakers were still in probably either what's now Ukraine, or on the steppes of Central Asia. Sanskrit has more in common with English than with Tamil.
Correct. The Sanskrit words under consideration relate to key theological points of the Vedic texts, especially the Brahamas. These reveal affinity to the Afro-Asiatic priesthood.
I'm not trying to be critical here, but I do know something about linguistics, and it doesn't match what you're saying.
10,000 years is long enough for a language to differentiate into languages as different as Tajik and Afrikaans twice, and you're talking about 10,000 to 20,000 years of differentiation here. Cognates really won't get you very far with this; you wouldn't think "hundred" and "sto" would be related, for example, but they are, with only a few millennia of drift separating them. There are, however, regular sound shifts that happened in Germanic and Slavic languages, which can be applied in reverse, and will generate a common ancestor.
Now, quite a bit of your language connections are well-established. That Semitic, Berber, Chadic, and Cushitic languages are all part of the Afro-Asiatic family is generally agreed. Any links to Dravidian, though, are extremely tenuous and not at all well demonstrated. So your connections are perfectly good, except where you bring up Tamil and Sanskrit.
Now, a connection with Dravidian (like Tamil) or Indo-European (like Sanskrit) languages through borrowing and cultural influence is quite plausible and even likely, but that's a different sort of process than the language diffusion that you get between, say, Hebrew and Hausa. So some lexical similarity is to be expected from borrowing. Also, some leeway must be left for coincidence, especially with short words. There are a finite number of possible syllables, so sooner or later, there will be some weird little coincidences (Gajin and Goyim, in Japanese and Hebrew, have somewhat similar meanings, but no one is going to be able to seriously maintain that it's anything but coincidence).
Unless you make the distinction clear, it's going to look like you're claiming that Dravidian and Afro-Asiatic are related, on the strength of a few lexical similarities, which could make your other valid points look unbelievable by association.
I appreciate your contribution, Peter.
Yes, languages can differentiate very quickly. The point is that linguistics supports the Genesis 11:1 claim that the people listed in the Table of Nations (Gen. 10) are all of one language group. This is what we would expect if they had common ancestors coming out of Africa. We are not concerned in this essay with language groups other than the Afro-Asiatic.
Do you hold the view that all languages evolved from one original proto-language? That's what many try to do with the Genesis material, insisting against all the evidence, that all the peoples and languages of the world came from the 3 sons of Noah.
There is much evidence for trade between south India and East Africa 10,000+ years ago so there is nothing suprising about similarities between some Tamil, Semitic and African words. And the worldview of these peoples was very similar.
No doubt borrowing took place. Lots of evidence for that. What is of interest for our study of Genesis is the correspondence between the languages of peoples within the Afro-Asiatic Dominion, especially as it sheds light on their cosmology and religious beliefs concerning purity, blood, sacrifice and the priesthood.
I followed your link about the Olmec, but on that site I could find no explanation how those people supposedly moved from Africa to Mesoamerica within the past few thousand years. Are we meant to expect that enough of them sailed across the Atlantic to begin a civilization?
The Olmecs were racially negroid, but they likely inter-married with non-negroid peoples. They have a rather unusual system of writing that suggests mixed influences. It isn't uniquely African.
Peoples moved into the Americas from several directions: over the Bering Strait from Asia, from the islands of the South Pacific and from Africa. This has been supported by DNA testing. There are a number of culture traits that support this picture also.
I thought that this was an excellent article. It was insightful and was one of the most honest that I have seen in quite some time in reference to the Afro-Asiatic cultures. I the suggestion is that the two cultures Dravidian and Afro-Asiatic are possibly related.I don't think that this is a ridiculous concept. I doubt also that the peoples of Sri Lanka would disagree. Good article.
Alisha, I note that you reference this article at your blog and thank you.
Perhaps you could explain to me why so few African Americans seem interested in this research. Even my African American students seem indifferent to the fact that Abraham's ancestors lived in Africa and that the people of Genesis were Afro-Asiatics.
"A comparison of the languages of Saharan Africa, Semitic languages, Sanskrit and Dravidian suggests that a vast Afro-Asiatic Dominion extended from the Atlantic coast of modern Nigeria to the Indus River valley between 20,000 and 10,000"
Hmm, well firstly these people at the point of expansion don't show any signs of being anything other than simple farmers, not a grand empire. They didn't even have pottery.
Secondly the Olmecs were native Americans and not from Africa. the Out of Africa event is about 100k old; the spread of Afro Asiatic matches the dates for The neolithic farming expansion into Africa from the Near East. Afro Asiatic languages don't seem to have arroved in North West Africa until about 8k ago, and into Western/central Africa about 4k ago.
Pre-conceived ideas color our interpretation of the evidence. Let's look at the evidence first and then form a hypothesis that fits the evidence.
The overall picture supports the view that the Afro-Asiatic worldview was wide spread between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago. This is not to say that a "grand empire" existed. That is not what I am claiming.
Please read some of the other essays at Just Genesis. I appreciate your input.
"The Olmecs were racially negroid, but they likely inter-married with non-negroid peoples."
No they weren't. A good look at those stone heads shows Asian eyes and dead straight hair under the helmets. The local Americans had very wide noses and fleshy lips, and no trace of any African DNA has ever been found in the area that's not recent. The Olmecs were all native Americans, not mixed with African immigrants.
"This has been supported by DNA testing."
I can tell you right now it hasn't. Some very ancient Australoid-type remains have been found in America (40k ish); but zero genetic contribution has been found in America that is straight from Africa that predates historical eras. I'm VERY familiar with that material.
My ideas aren't preconcieved ...I have studied the evidence and for quite a long time. Researching population movements, DNA, and linguistics in the near east and North Africa is what I spend more or less every day doing. After a lot of time studying movements and archaeological papers from this era and area, I'm well versed in Afro Asiatic and it's dispersal.
The maximum age a language group can be is 10,000 years - any older and you wouldn't be able to establish a family relationship because of all the random changes in the language. There's good evidence that Afro Asiatic can't be over 10k old, and less than 4k old in the Chadic speaking regions. The Hausa and Ouldeme who are Chadic AA speakers show a lot of Eurasian Y chromsomes (r1b)in them that seem to coincide with the dates for Afro Asaitic appearing in central Africa and Cameroon, which doesn't support an African origin for AA. It show people from Asia arriving at the same time as AA languages.
Dravidian may have had a distant links to AA, but it was not an Afro Asiatic language, as P. Gardner has pointed out before.
Mathilda, I've the impression that you believe me to be attempting the make the case that all the peoples of the Earth came out of Afria. I actually don't believe that. My research is about Abraham's people and shows clearly that some of his ancestors (Cain and Noah, specifically) lived in west central Africa only about 10,000 years ago.
As you note: "ancient Australoid-type remains have been found in America (40k ish); but zero genetic contribution has been found in America that is straight from Africa"... I've not claimed that the Olmecs came directly from Africa, only that there is evidence of African (not excluding Asian also) racial traits. And the ancient Australoid type of which you are speaking 40k ago is not the migration to which I'm refering. However, since you point it out, human mitochondrial DNA indicates that the oldest the human gene sequences come out of Asia and Australia and we have evidence of contact between Australia and Africa.
Are you refering to the Australoid population before the wave of African humanity?
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