Scientific Verification of the Genesis 10 Dispersion

The dark red spot in central Africa is Lake Chad, Noah's homeland.

Alice C. Linsley


Findings in archaeology, linguistics, and genetics indicate a Nilo-Saharan dispersion across a vast expanse of the globe. The dispersion aligns with the movement of peoples in the R1b haplogroup (shown above). This dispersion is described in Genesis 10.

This could rightly be called the Afro-Asiatic Dominion since the rulers of these areas were related and shared common religious practices, such as falcon-shaped fire altars; elevated shrine cities ("high places"); and castes of royal priests, scribes and artisans. The priests served at Sun temples, that is, stone edifices that were aligned to the solar arc.  These were called "O-piru" and the priests who served at the temples were called 'Apiru or Habiru. From Habiru comes the English spelling of Hebrew.

In this article I will trace the dispersion of the Nilo-Saharans through investigation of tools, pottery, ancient texts and genetics. I have discussed the evidence of molecular genetics in Haplogroups of Interest to Biblical Anthropologists.


Tool evidence

Discoveries made by Michael Petraglia, from the University of Cambridge, cast doubt on the theory that the volcanic eruption of Toba in Indonesia was catastrophic for humans living even great distances from the mountain. The Toba super eruption has been dated to 74,000 years ago by multiple methods from multiple locations.

Petraglia's team found stone tools at Jwalapuram in Andhra Pradesh, in southern India. These were above and below a thick layer of ash from the Toba eruption of the Toba. The tools from each layer were remarkably similar and suggests that the huge dust clouds from the eruption did not wipe out the population or force them to relocate.

“Whoever was there seems to have persisted through the eruption,” Petragalia says.

Petragalia's team notes that the Indian tools found in southern India are like those from the African Middle Stone Age about 100,000 years ago.

He states, “Whoever was living in India was doing things identical to modern humans living in Africa.”

Thomas Strasser and his team found hundreds of  tools of African origin on Crete dating to between 100,000 and 130,000 years. Others have been found on the Iranian plateaus. Ancient African artifacts have even been found in China. There is considerable tool and pottery evidence indicating prehistoric movements out of the Nile Valley.

In a recent paper, Christine S. Lane, Ben T. Chorn, and Thomas C. Johnson describe core samples from Lake Malawi that reveal ash from the Toba eruption. The Toba ash was found 28 meters or about 92 feet below the most recent sediments to have fallen to the lake floor. The ash clearly dispersed as far a East Africa, but did not cause a significant change in climate or habitat. There is no evidence of a volcanic winter, as once supposed.

Pottery evidence

We can verify the connection between the Nile and Indus Valley by comparing the Egyptian and Indus pottery inscriptions in which 17 figures are virtually identical (see below).

As recently as 1000 BC the Nubian-Dravidian connection, based on pottery samples, seems definitive. The Indian archaeologist B.B. Lal believes that the Dravidians belonged to the C-Group. C-Group people spread culture from Nubia into Arabia, Iran and India between 2300-1500 BC as evidenced by the presence of Black-and-Red Ware (BRW).

Lal writes: "At Timos the Indian team dug up several megalithic sites of ancient Nubians which bear an uncanny resemblance to the cemeteries of early Dravidians which are found all over Western India from Kathiawar to Cape Comorin. The intriguing similarity extends from the subterranean structure found near them. Even the earthenware ring-stands used by the Dravidians and Nubians to hold pots were identical."

The C-Group people of Nubia, southern Egypt and Sudan are commonly called Kushites. Their black and red pottery that has been found from the Sudan, across Southwest Asia and India to China (Singh 1982). This BRW was used as early as the Amratian period (c.4000-3500 BC).

The C-group people - who we might call "Proto-Saharans" - maintained herds of cattle which were used for sacrifice and food. Bovine skulls were used to decorate their graves in archaeologically rich Sudan.

Many ancient C-Group people were agro-pastoral. They were the first to cultivate wild sorghum and millet. These became staple grains in Egypt and were taken to Pakistan and India between 3000 and 1000 BC. The evidence indicates that all of the African domesticates arose north of the equator and were introduced to the south relatively late. (Salas 2002)

Clyde A. Winters believes that the Dravidian speakers of C-Group took millet to India. B. B. Lal contends that the Dravidians/Proto-Dravidians came from southern Egypt and Sudan. This explains the darker complexion of the "Sudra." Lal also noted common burial practices incorporating megaliths, circular rock enclosures and rock-hewn tombs.

The origin of genetic diversity found in South Asia is much older than 3,500 years when the Indo-Aryans were supposed to have migrated to India. The Indo-Aryan migration theory was proposed in mid-19th century by German linguist Max Muller. Muller suggested that 3,500 years ago, Indo-European speakers from Central Asia introduced the Indo-European language family and the caste system in India. However, genetic studies indicate that this is not the case. A study led by scientists from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad, India (published in American Journal of Human Genetics in December 2011) shows clearly that there was no genetic influx 3,500 years ago.

The Proto-Dravidians apparently migrated from ancient Nubia across Arabia to India. The oldest known civilization in Arabia was the Tihama culture which flourished on the coastal plain along the Red Sea in present day Yemen. Rodolfo Fattovish believes that the Tihama civilization originated in Nubia, exactly what Genesis 10 indicates. He also recognizes the societal organization of chiefs in the Gash River region in Sudan (2,700-2,300 BC). Fattovich's excavations in the Gash Delta demonstrated a clear relationship between the C-Group and Kerma cultures in northern Nubia. His findings were confirmed by the Italian expedition to the eastern Sudan of 2011.

Horite fire altars at the Harappan water shrines of Kalibangan and Lothal provide further evidence for the dispersion of the Nilo-Saharans. The Dravidian word Har-appa means "Hor is father" and these altars are built in the shape of a falcon in flight. The falcon was the totem of Horus, called "Son" or "Seed" of Ra. The Shulba Sutras state that "he who desires heaven is to construct a fire-altar in the form of a falcon."

Evidence of ancient texts

The Indian historian and anthropologist Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan has written: "We have to begin with the Negroid or Negrito people of prehistoric India who were the first human inhabitants. Originally they would appear to have come from Africa through Arabia and the coastlands of Iran and Baluchistan." According to the Matsya, an ancient book from India, the world belonged to the Kushites (Saka/Saki) for 7000 years. 

Homer (ca. 8th century BC) alluded to the diversity and unity of the Kushite empires when he wrote, “a race divided, whom the sloping rays; the rising and the setting sun surveys.”

A seventh century Assyrian text says that Sargon's birthplace was a city on the banks of the Euphrates called Azu-piranu. It was a Horite shrine as evidenced by the word piranu. The ha-piru were a caste of priests devoted to Horus. They called their water temples and shrines O-piru, meaning "Sun House." Azu/Asa is an East African name for God. Azu-piranu means “House of God” and is equivalent to the Hebrew word Beth-el. Hur-azu was a title for Horus and the Babylonian word for gold.

A recent phoneme study has identified the Nile Valley as the point of origin of modern languages and the comparison of African phonemes with those found in ancient Hebrew suggest that Hebrew is an African language.


Evidence of genetics

In human mitochondrial genetics, L is the mitochondrial DNA macro-haplogroup that is at the root of the human mtDNA phylogenetic tree. As such, it represents the most ancestral mitochondrial lineage of all currently living modern humans. L3 is the haplogroup from which the vast majority of modern humans outside of Africa are descended, beginning about 70,000 years ago. The “Indians” bearing these genes live on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and have negroid features. They represent this early, though probably not earliest, migration out of Africa.

Onges of Andaman and Nicobar Islands

The Onges and Jarawas belong almost exclusively to Haplogroup D

An estimated 60% of Indian DNA consists of haplogroup M which emerged from haplogroup L3 emerged. The apparent point of origin for M is the Nile and Sudan. A study by Afonso et al. (2008) found M in over 72% of the population of Sudan (112 samples). Molecular genetics has shown that Dravidians are phenotypically Africa.The most frequent haploids in India belong to L3M and L3N lineages. 

According to Maca-Meyer et al. (2001), "L3 is more related to Eurasian haplogroups than to the most divergent African clusters L1 and L2".

The Eurasian populations to which Maca-Meyer refers are mainly in Haplogroup D, believed to have arisen in Asia some 48,000 years ago. It is a descendant of haplogroup M. Haplogroup D is of special interest for Biblical Anthropologists as many of the peoples identified in Genesis fall into this mtDNA group. Here we find the Habiru (Hebrew), the Ainu, black and red Nubians, and other Kushites, such as the Afro-Sumerians and the Proto-Dravidians.

Source: Metspalu et al. Haplogroup D
Likely time of appearance about 40,000 years ago

There is much evidence for the Kushite migration out of Africa, as it is described in Genesis 10. DNA studies are but one method of tracing the Kushite dispersion. As Clyde Winters states, "The archaeological and molecular evidence provides footprints of a recent hg M ancestral migration from Nubia to India."

This is not the first migration out of Africa, but it is the one to which Genesis refers when it speaks of Kush's sons and grandsons moving from the Nile Valley into Arabia and Mesopotamia.

Kushite rulers were great kingdom builders who controlled the major water systems and the ancient world. Nimrod, the son of Kush, is but one example.

There is genetic evidence that the Proto-Saharan ancestors of the Kushites moved west along the interconnected water systems between the Nile, Lake Chad, and the Niger-Benue Trough. Outside of the Nile Valley and some north African countries, this is the only other place in Africa where the M haplogroup is found. The Nigerian historian, Dr. Catherine Acholonu, regards Iboland as the cradle of Afro-Sumerian peoples. Genetics does not support this view, however. The percentage of the population living at the confluence of the Niger and Benue Rivers with M lineage is extremely small.

Related reading: Confirmation of Early Biblical Populations; The Nile-Japan Ainu Connection; The Kushite-Kushan Connection; Clyde A. Winters, Origin and Spread of Dravidian Speakers; Egyptian Shrines on the Horus Way; Blood and Crosses; The Nilotic Origin of the Ainu; Genetics Confirms Biblical Migrations; More East Africa-Asia Connections; Abraham's Ainu Ancestors; Biblical Sheba and East African Settlements Linked; A Scientific Timeline of Genesis; The Kushite Marriage Pattern Drove Kushite Expansion