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Thursday, June 6, 2013

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.


6 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is an interesting post. I do remember reading the out of Africa migrations around 70,000 yrs ago that eventually spread into southeast Asia, but never anything regarding a connection between the Indus Valley and Ancient Egypt.

I do also remember reading about East Africans such as the Swahili making contact with India and Africa via trade in the 8th century, but never have I heard of African contact with the Indian subcontinent in the BC time period.

Do you know of any books or websites where I could read more about this? I've read a few of the articles on your site, but this is among the compelling ones so far. I'm quite interested in learning more.

Alice C. Linsley said...

There are some books on the ancient water trades routes in Africa, and Rafael Patai wrote "Children of Noah: Jewish Seafaring through the Ages" which is interesting. However, an argument has been made that, according to some Classical writers. Egyptian priests (not specifically identified as Horites) were reluctance to set foot in boats or perhaps forbidden to do so. This was also recorded of Igbo "orhenes" ( priests) who were forbidden to travel in canoes. The latter was referenced in an article published in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute for 1917. This was "Some Ibo Burial Customs" by Northcote Thomas. I recommend that you pursue the question of water travel in the Late Holocene, by which the Horites spread the Proto-Gospel.

Much related data can be found by doing internet searches. Also, you might wish to pursue this by following the related reading at the end of the article. I especially recommend "The Afro-Asiatic Dominion"

Best wishes to you!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the suggestions!

I do find it interesting that you mention the Igbo of Nigeria. I do recall of reading excerpts from Oludah Equiano's autobiography for my World Literature class from about a year ago, and he mentions something of the similarities of of the tribes from West Africa that mentioned of customs that were very similar to that of Jewish customs, and the doctor he referred to made a link to Afer and Afra from Abraham by Keturah. And I think the Igbo were the people that was referred to in the story, though I'm not sure if they are mentioned by name.

I'm not sure if I read something similar to that on your blog, but I'll be sure to continue reading some more on your blog along with those suggestions. Many thanks!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the suggestions, and I'll definitely continue reading your blog!


I also find it interesting that you mention the Igbo. I had to read an excerpt from "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano" for my World Literature class almost a year ago, and he mentions of his tribe the Igbos that had several similar customs with Jews. The doctor Equiano refers to in the book mentions Afer and Afra when regarding to the pedigree of Africans by means of the wife and concubine of Abraham named Keturah. I do wonder if the Igbo relation to OT Judaism is similar to that of the Lemba in East Africa....

*I apologize if another message similar to this appears already. I've been having trouble posting comments on blogspot pages for some reason or another....

Alice C. Linsley said...

The people called "Igbo" clearly have linguistic connection to the ancient Egyptians and probably the black Nubians. However, genetically they are not very closely related to the Nilo-Saharans who spread into Mesopotamia and India. See this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Macrohaplogrupo_L_en_%C3%81frica.png

DDeden said...

Ibo/Igbo//Ijebu//Djibouti/Egypt/GeBT/KeMT/XyaMbuaT(laya)(ancient boundary/fest)