Abraham's Kushite Ancestors

Alice C. Linsley


Linguistics and DNA studies have shown that Abraham and his ancestors were Kushites whose cultural context was that of the Afro-Asiatic Dominion which extended from West Africa to India. The region in red shows the area of Kushite rule. The Kushites included many peoples and they ranged in appearance from brown to red to black.

The Afro-Asiatic Dominion
(Image from Clyde A. Winters Study of Haplogroup R-M173)

This corresponds with information about Abraham's father, Terah.  He is associated with the Nilotic Ainu who are at the center of Cavali-Sforza's genetic distance chart. This is to be expected of the "First People."  The Ainu spread far and wide.  They went east to Japan and north to Southern Siberia.  They traveled from Finland to Greenland and Labrador and from there to the eastern coastline of Canada.  Native Americans tribes in the X Haplogroup have Ainu blood.



Who were the Afro-Asiatics?


The Ainu writing system of Japan is virtually idnetical to the Hebrew writing system, evidence that the Nilotic Ainu must be classified as Afro-Asiatics. 

The term "Afro-Asiatic" is a general classification of peoples who speak Afro-Asiatic languages. The majority of these languages is spoken in Africa. There are three main groups: Saharan Africans, Afro-Arabians, and Aramean Afro-Asiatics. The last two can be traced back to the region of Africa known as ancient Kush. There is much evidence for the Kushite migration out of Africa, including DNA studies. The Kushites were great kingdom builders who controlled the major water systems at a time when this part of the world was much wetter.

The original context of the story of the creation of Adam is Nilotic. Adam is derived from the root DM which refers to blood (dam in Hebrew). The words edom and adam both mean red or reddish-brown. In Hausa the word for reddish-brown is odom. (Esau who married a Horite bride, Oholibamah, was designated edom.) This is a reference to the color of the soil from which Adam was made. Abraham's Kushite ancestors lived where the soil was reddish-brown. This is likely the red soil that washed down from the Ethiopian Highlands. These soils have a cambic B horizon. Chromic Cambisols have a strong brown or red colour.

Abraham's ancestors migrated from the Upper Nile Valley and the Horn of Africa to the coastal areas of Arabia. There they became established in separate territories which took their names from their rulers: Dedan, Sheba, Joktan. etc. Centuries later, these clans became separated into Afro-Arabians and Afro-Asiatics. Genesis says that this took place in the time of Peleg.


Kushite Migration Out of Africa


Archaeogeneticists employ genetics, archaeology and linguistics to examine the origin and spread of people groups. Haplogroup R-M173 is of particular significance because this pertains to the ancient Kushite and Nilotic peoples who are genetically related.

At least three migrations out of Africa have taken place in the past 120,000 years. The first that has been documented took place in the Late Pleistocene (120,000-12,000 B.C.). Here the movement was from the Upper Nile Valley and the Horn into the coastal areas of Arabia. Evidence indicates that Nilotic peoples moved out of Africa in several directions. Thomas Strasser and his team have found hundreds of stone Age tools of African origin on the island of Crete. Others have been found on the Iranian plateaus, helping experts trace the steps of an Nilotic 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 NasabVahdati, 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 most recent involved the African population known as Kushites. In a study conducted under the direction of Clyde A. Winters at the Uthman dan Fodio Institute in Chicago, data from archaeology, linguistics, genetics and craniometric studies were used to explore the role of the Kushites in the spread of haplogroup R from Africa to Eurasia. Here we find that the Dravidians of India originated in ancient Kush:


“There is genetic, linguistic and archaeological evidence pointing to the African origin of the Dravidian speakers in India (Aravanan 1980; Winters 2007). Lal (1963) research suggests that the Dravidian speaking people may have belonged to the C-Group. The C-Group people spread culture from Nubia into Arabia, Iran and India as evidenced by the presence of Black-and-Red Ware (BRW). Although the Egyptians preferred the cultivation of wheat, many ancient C-Group [Kushite] people w ere agro-pastoral people who cultivated Millet/Sorghum and raised cattle. It was the Dravidians who probably took millet to India (C. Winters, 2008b)."


Factors that Drove Kushite Expansion

Factors that drove Kushite expansion inlcude migration, commerce, conquest and the distinctive marriage pattern of the Kushite ruler-priests known as Horites, Habiru or Hapiru. In this essay we examine the Horite marriage pattern which was characterized by endogamy, that is, exclusive intermarried of the ruler-priest lines. This is the case with the lines of Cain and Seth, Ham and Shem, Abraham and Terah, and in David's time among the Levitical lines.
 
For our purposes, the key lines to consider are those from which Abraham descends. These are the lines of Ham and Shem which intermarried, making it possible to trace the Kushite ancestry of Abraham through the cousin bride's naming prerogative.  Here is a diagram showing Abraham's Kushite ancestry. Both Asshur the Younger and his brother Arpachsad are called "sons of Shem" because they belong to Shem's house, not to the house of their father Nimrod. 
 
Each Horite ruler-priest had two wives. One was a half-sister and the other, married later in life, was a patrilineal cousin or niece. The firstborn son of the sister wife ascended to the throne of his biological father.  The firstborn son of the cousin/niece wife ascended to the throne of his maternal grandfather, after whom he was named.
 
The rulers also had two concubines, as did Abraham and Jacob.  The firstborn sons of concubines, along with the younger sons of wives, were given gifts and sent away to conquer or settle away from the ruling sons. So we read in Genesis 25:6 that Abraham gave gifts to all his sons and sent them away from Isaac, his son by his sister-wife Sarah. For further explanation of this, go here.
 
This marriage pattern drove Kushite expansion across the Afro-Asiatic Dominion.

The Ainu Connection

Abraham's father was Tera, a named associated with the Ainu who originated in the Upper Nile Valley.  Tera (Terah) means priest in the Ainu language. Genesis 10 describes the Ainu dispersion out of Africa into Mesopotamia.  The Ainu went as far east as Japan and north to Finland.  From Finland they crossed through Greenland and Labrador to the eastern seaboard of Canada. My Ainu friend Sea’Key tells me that the Ainu of eastern Canada have a red skin tone and are bearded. Some have green eyes. The red skin hue may appear as rosey cheeks or a reddish tone to tanned skin.

Abraham means “burnt father” and refers to his reddish skin color. In Arabic, the word ham means burnt. The Nilotic peoples were referred to burnt because they had a reddish skin tone. This included some Nubians, as is evidenced from the drawings of Jean-Francois Champollion who lead the Franco-Tuscan Expedition of 1828. One drawing depicts a scene from the Great Temple at As in which some Nubian captives of Ramesses II are black and others are red.

Captive Nubians
Detail from a Champollion drawing 

Genesis 25 tells us that Rebekah gave birth to twins. One was born with a red skin color and was hairy.  He was known as a great hunter. What color was Jacob?  Perhaps he was black.




Related reading:  The Nile-Japan Ainu Connection; A Kindling of Ancient Memory; Tracing Christ's Kushite Ancestors; Who Were the Kushites?; What Language Did Abraham Speak?