The Hausa peoples are also Afro-Asiatic, as well as most of the peoples of Ethiopia and Somalia. The most widely recognized point of origin for the Afro Asiatic languages is the horn of Africa region, with the original speakers migrating from there into North Africa, West Africa, and Arabia.
The linguistic and genetic analysis of North Africa shows a constant movement between there and the rest of Africa.
Omar, we’ve been through all of this before. You can have a substantial amount of African ancestry and not be “black” or even brown. Phenotype is an unreliable indicator of genotype.
I want to see the citation from which you derived this claim.
I am quite willing to believe that a certain amount of agriculture managed to drift down from what is now Syria, (prior to the rise of the various kingdoms that arose in that neighborhood), but I have never seen any evidence that the Egyptian civilization was anything but home grown. At the time that Egypt was coalescing several hundred miles from the Mediterraean, the Sumerian/Akkadian Empire had barely made it to the Taurus Mountains in what is now Southern Turkey. There is no evidence that they actually extended their culture down the coast of the Levant to what would have been Gaza (still far from the place Egyptian civilization arose) by the time that Egypt had already established itslef on the Upper and Lower Nile. Once Egypt did begin to expand, its first “outside” contacts were with the Kush/Nubians to their South on the Nile. If you do not have evidence to support your position, I will have to dismiss your claims as silly.
ETA: Your dismissal of a a “Niger-Congorian” connection is nothing but a straw man, as that has not been asserted.
The problem here is that, unlike yourself, I don’t divide the Afroasiatic region among “continents”. For me, all that people, regardless of looks, are the same people, from North Africa, Arabia and West Asia, including some Horners.
*This is attested by the presence of typical Mesopotamian features of various nature. For example, a certain style of monumental architecture, the use of cylinder seals, specific decorative patterns featuring intertwined fantastic animals, and even the actual representation of the Mesopotamian Priest-king displayed with his unique status symbols. Because the reverse is not true, namely there is no trace of an Egyptian presence in Mesopotamia at that time, all seems to point to a flow of ideas from Mesopotamia to Egypt. *
And also here
Actually, those citations make a good claim that Egypt did arise independently. The artifacts appear to be the sort of thing that would be transmitted by trade, indicating that the Egyptians had a sufficiently developed society to encourage trade with the Akkadians. Had the Egyptians shown identical farming techniques and building techniques and, perhaps, weaponry, there would be a case for a transmission of civilization from the Fertile Crescent to the Nile. However, the discovery of trade records created in the same fashion speaks to the meeting of similar societies, not colonization or the transmission of a culture from one place to another.
“Oh, dear, he’s not using the cherry-picked examples I want him to use” is not much of a counter-argument.
No. You don’t get my point, but that’s not the same as not having one.
Bullshit. Just *provably *absolute bullshit. If this were the case, Egyptian civilization would *start *at the Delta and Gaza and flow south, not start halfway down the Nile and Nabta Playa, and flow north, which is the actual case.
A country or civilization can’t *be *a language group. Anymore than the Irish *are *Indian because it says Indo-European in *their *language group.
Well, Irish surpased theirs tribal phase a lot lated than Persians and Indians. So, what’s the point?
With respect to civilization, certainly Egypt got the idea of writing from Mesopotamia, but also the wheel, horses, cattle and most or the technological support of a civilization. And yes, dances could come from the South but who cares.
That language groups don’t map to culture. So why did *you *bring them up?
It’s far from certain. Evidence is flimsy, and a case can be (and has been) made for independent development.
Cattle, not so much. Burial customs, not so much. Mythology, not so much. Language, not so much. Culture isn’t made of wheels and bronze swords, it’s made of customs and beliefs. As for “technological support”, who cares? They took it and they used it and sometimes bettered it, no different than Europeans or East Asians.
Much more than “dances” came from the South. Egypt wasn’t a clone of Sumerian city-states. It developed its own civilization.
And you care, or you wouldn’t be fighting the notion so hard.
And I used to think the worst threads here were the ones with Israel in the title. Well, my ignorance on the subject has definitely been fought. Maybe we could have an ignore mode for threads as well, if we ever do, I’m gonna put “Africa” on my selection button…
As far as I know, the issue of whether writing developed independenly in Sumer, Egypt, the Indus valley, Mesoamerica and China – or whether it all “diffused” from Sumer (with Mesoamerica being the only other independed invention) – has never been satisfactorily settled.
Myself, I side with independent invention. The writing systems of China and Egypt bear no resemblence whatsoever to Sumerian, or at least, are no more like Sumerian than Mayan. (The Indus script has never been deciphered).
Certainly, Egypt was influenced by 'asiatics" - they were successfully invaded by them (the Hyscos), and at other times had diplomatic and warlike relations with them (in the New kingdom, the diplomatic “lingua franca” was written in cuniform - see the Tel Al Amarna letters). However, they regarded the Hyscos much like the Chinese regarded the steppe nomads - barbarians to be assimilated if they could not be defeated (the Hyscos rulers quickly adopted the trappings of Egyptian pharoh-hood).
The Egyptians had similar relations with the Nubians - they too successfully invaded Egypt at one point; ironically enough, they had by that time been so 'eyptized" that the ostensible purpose of the invasion was to restore proper worship of the Egyptian gods!