Cyena-Ntu (formally Negro-Egyptian language family according to Obenga ) Cikam (ancient Egyptian)
Pre-Proto-Bantu is shown here around the Great Lakes, Southern Ethiopia, North Kenya, Ugand, South Sudan
Which of the modern languages in the region are closest to Pre-Proto-Bantu?
Posted by Asar Imhotep (Member # 14487) on :
It really just depends. I use ciLuba because it is very conservative and has many of the Proto-Bantu forms. The same with Kikongo. But many of the East and Southern Bantu languages, like isiZulu, have maintained much of the PB morphology. PB itself is closet to Pre-Proto-Bantu. Next comes Middle-Egyptian and Sumerian. As I discussed in the book, citing Mboli, Pre-Proto-Bantu is essentially Proto-Bantu and there isn't much of a difference.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Asar Imhotep: It really just depends. I use ciLuba because it is very conservative and has many of the Proto-Bantu forms. The same with Kikongo. But many of the East and Southern Bantu languages, like isiZulu, have maintained much of the PB morphology. PB itself is closet to Pre-Proto-Bantu. Next comes Middle-Egyptian and Sumerian. As I discussed in the book, citing Mboli, Pre-Proto-Bantu is essentially Proto-Bantu and there isn't much of a difference.
Cilubà is Congo language, west of where you put Proto bantu on the map
Have you studied these languages and their potential relation to Egyptian? These are mainly on the Eastern Half of the continent corresponding to your map
Then there is also
Tamasheq, Ghadamès,
a couple of the berber languages spoken in Libya an direct neighbor of Egypt
Have you studied any of these languages? It seems that logical first places to look in Africa for similarities to ancient Egyptian would be the immediate and close neighbors to Egypt. All these countries the Nile is flowing through and countries near to it and add Libya also to the immediate West
Posted by Asar Imhotep (Member # 14487) on :
Geography and distance has no bearing what-so-ever on how conservative a language is, or what archaic morphology is present.
Secondly, science is not based on lookership. In linguistics, it doesn't matter where a language is currently spoken, but to what extent that a daughter language retains the characteristics of the Proto-Language, which has been determined by reconstruction.
Thirdly, people migrate and move and current distributions are not indicative of origins. Every scientist knows this and is why no one, with any sense at least, based their arguments on superficial appearances. The comparative method is the standard for a reason; primarily because it falsifies and renders useless one's assumptions based on no evidence. Nature (and reality) doesn't confirm to how you "think" it should be, and is why we employ methods to eliminate (as humanly possible) our preconceived biases.
This is why I repeatedly request that people interested in this argument, read Mboli (2010). Everything is explained there. It is 630 pages and one cannot explain everything on a messageboard forum, that is already discussed fully in the text.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rain King: West Africa is a geographic location not the name of a people. West Africa has Nilo Saharan peoples, Niger-Congo peoples, Twa Peoples, Hausa etc, so who in the Hell is "THE" West African that you are referring to? The Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan speaking populations did not live in West Africa until after 2,000 BC, and that was primarily in the Western Sahara, not the tropical regions. The only people who lived in West Africa during those early periods were the Twa.
The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality by Cheikh Anta Diop
p 274, 189
.
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Asar. Looking at these Diop quotes. He has a chapter in African Origin called "Peopling of Africa from the Nile Valley." Do you agree with this?
As far as Egyptian language corresponding to Bantu I don't know enough about Bantu to judge. However if they are related I would assume Bantu language existed far before hieroglyphs and Egyptian civilization. Do you agree with that?
And if we look at this statement "Peopling of Africa from the Nile Valley" but not in context of the book once might go back to old fossils, they found very old skulls in Ethiopia, South Africa, Morocco that are dated about 200-300K or older So if one were to speculate and say Nile Valley and Ethiopia is part of that river system one might "maybe Nile Valley" and if we are talking about 300K or 100k or 50K people being in say the Nile Valley and then settling in other parts of Africa this would be far before any of these cultural features, objects, symbols, jewelry etc coming out of Egyptian civilization.
My question is is it a proper reading of Diop to say that when he's talking about Peopling of Africa from the Nile Valley as regard to Central and West Africa he is not talking about 50-300K he is talking about the peopling of Africa only going back to Egyptian civilization time period because he gives these examples of various West African groups which he thinks have cultural features resembling those of dynastic Egypt. In the quote he is even trying to cast doubt on people being in West Africa since 10,000 B.C. You can see he is talking about the Peul and the Sao showing evidence of being influenced by Egyptian names and Gods.
It seems to me he is not talking about an early prehistoric Peopling of Africa from the Nile valley, instead he is saying that West Africa, with the exception of the Twa was uninhabited until Egyptian civilization or even as recently as after the Persians and the rest of the foreign occupations occurred and some Egyptians were thought to have left the Valley
What would Obenga and Mboli say about this? Should we think of Obenga as an extension of Diop's main ideas or is there a fundamental difference?
