posted
While the majority of scholars think that Afro-Asiatic is of African origin, I've heard a case for an Asian origin put forward using Afro-Asiatic terms for animals of Asian origin. For instance, from here:
quote:A minority suggests a linguistic homeland in the Levant (for instance Alexander Militarev; specifically, he identifies Afro-Asiatic with the Natufian culture), with Semitic being the only branch to stay put. [3]. This is in someway supported by fact that Afro Asiatic terms dominate the nouns for early livestock and crops from Anatolia and Iran, and from the probable Asian origin of Semitic languages around 4,600 BP to 4,800 BP.
quote:Particularly those dealing with with animals. I had a brief look through the nouns for PAA, and quite striking was the number of words for goats and sheep. Also included were horses and camels. Since goats, horses and sheep and camels were not native to Holocene Africa prior to the neolithic, I’m reconsidering my support of an African origin for proto Afro Asiatic. Although, as has been kindly pointed out, the reconstructions are all pretty hazy for PAA, but still it’s suspicious.
If Afro-Asiatic is of African origin, why do they have words for animals not native to Africa?
BTW, I'm still in favor of an African origin for AA, because of the fact that there's greater diversity for that phylum in Africa than in Asia, but it still seems odd that the early Afrasans had words for animals they wouldn't have encountered.
Posts: 7078 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
^Concerning your first quote, that's wikipedia man. A lot of dumb arguments are posted on there for the sake of "neutrality" which is why the "minority" position is included. Why suppress it? Did you even notice for one second though that the source used to support that was Ehret? Ehret for crying out loud!! Why are you people so uncritical of wikipedia? Did you bother to ask yourself why the following statement isn't cited at all? Do you usually believe everything that random people (IP addresses and pseudonyms) write?
And concerning the second quote (devoid of citation..I had to search for it), conversely, the argument is that there are none. That Proto-AfroAsiatic was spoken by a non-food producing population as noted by established reconstructions of the language. Why you are citing Mathilda is beyond me. Is she a professional linguist? Does she cite a source for her reconstructions? You take it for granted that she knows what she's talking about albeit that she can't replicate this data with backing from other scholars to confirm it. Lacking the proper training, she can easily be confused or can be simply distorting data intentionally (how can we ever know?).
quote:IN THEIR REVIEW “FARMERS AND THEIR languages: the first expansions” (25 Apr. 2003, p. 597), J. Diamond and P. Bellwood suggest that food production and the Afroasiatic language family were brought simultaneously from the Near East to Africa by demic diffusion, in other words, by a migration of food-producing peoples. In resurrecting this generally abandoned view, the authors misrepresent the views of the late I. M. Diakonoff (1), rely on linguistic reconstructions inapplicable to their claims (2), and fail to engage the five decades of Afroasiatic scholarship that rebutted this idea in the first place. This extensive, well-grounded linguistic research places the Afroasiatic homeland in the southeastern Sahara or adjacent Horn of Africa (3–8) and, when all of Afroasiatic’s branches are included, strongly indicates a pre–food-producing proto-Afroasiatic economy (1, 7, 8).
I like Akoben's quote about people's minds being so open that their brains fall out. No offense, but c'mon now. Be more critical.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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posted
I've decided to send an e-mail to Ehert asking him about this. As the world's foremost expert on the Afro-Asiatic phylum, he probably knows more about this than Mathilda.
Here is the text of my e-mail:
quote:Dear Mr. Ehert,
I am a student of physical anthropology who is interested in African history. Now, recently, I have met someone who claims that proto-Afro-Asiatic contains words for animals of Asian origin, such as horses, goats, sheep, and camels. She thinks that the presence of these words proves an Asian rather than African origin for the phylum. Unfortunately, she did not cite a source for her assertions.
Does any reconstruction of proto-Afro-Asiatic that you know of contain words for these Asian animals? If so, how would a language phylum that originated in Africa, as you have asserted, acquire words for Asian wildlife?
posted
^^No, but I see now that you really are THAT stupid by implying that I have a problem with Christopher Ehret. Only a side-show freak who refuses to heed context or cite-check like any other responsible person would before rendering an opinion, would infer that from the above.
The first quote I responded to references Alexander Militarev's hypothesis yet they sloppily source him indirectly by citing a man whose only reason for mentioning his view was to refute it. Meaning, to prove an Asian origin for Afro-Asiatic they cite a proponent of the widely held African origin (absurd!). The fact that you missed that, and the fact that T. Rex missed that, suggests to me that you both may need a bit more practice at this. T. Rex has an excuse as he's truly a neophyte. You on the other hand, are truly dumb and you prove it with out fail once again.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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posted
^Man, you don't even make sense right now. All of these dumb non-sequiturs. Stop trying to distract attention away from the fact that you thought that I had a problem with Ehret based on your lack of discernment and cite-checking. You are a fraud who speaks before he knows what's going on.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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posted
^ I do.. You are dumb and don't even check sources before you comment on them or the people addressing them. You are a fraud.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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quote:^Concerning your first quote, that's wikipedia man. A lot of dumb arguments are posted on there for the sake of "neutrality" which is why the "minority" position is included. Why suppress it? Did you even notice for one second though that the source used to support that was Ehret? Ehret for crying out loud!! Why are you people so uncritical of wikipedia? Did you bother to ask yourself why the following statement isn't cited at all? Do you usually believe everything that random people (IP addresses and pseudonyms) write?
And concerning the second quote (devoid of citation..I had to search for it), conversely, the argument is that there are none. That Proto-AfroAsiatic was spoken by a non-food producing population as noted by established reconstructions of the language. Why you are citing Mathilda is beyond me. Is she a professional linguist? Does she cite a source for her reconstructions? You take it for granted that she knows what she's talking about albeit that she can't replicate this data with backing from other scholars to confirm it. Lacking the proper training, she can easily be confused or can be simply distorting data intentionally (how can we ever know?).
posted
^^Nigga I know what I wrote. The question is, do you? Obviously not because you can't read..
quote:The first quote I responded to references Alexander Militarev's hypothesis yet they sloppily source him indirectly by citing a man whose only reason for mentioning his view was to refute it. Meaning, to prove an Asian origin for Afro-Asiatic they cite a proponent of the widely held African origin (absurd!). The fact that you missed that, and the fact that T. Rex missed that, suggests to me that you both may need a bit more practice at this. T. Rex has an excuse as he's truly a neophyte. You on the other hand, are truly dumb and you prove it with out fail once again.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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posted
Nigga I gots this!! And no you don't know what you write!! You're a fraud. Yes you are, yes you are...
quote:Originally posted by Sundjata: ^Concerning your first quote, that's wikipedia man. A lot of dumb arguments are posted on there for the sake of "neutrality" which is why the "minority" position is included. Why suppress it? Did you even notice for one second though that the source used to support that was Ehret? Ehret for crying out loud!! Why are you people so uncritical of wikipedia? Did you bother to ask yourself why the following statement isn't cited at all? Do you usually believe everything that random people (IP addresses and pseudonyms) write?
And concerning the second quote (devoid of citation..I had to search for it), conversely, the argument is that there are none. That Proto-AfroAsiatic was spoken by a non-food producing population as noted by established reconstructions of the language. Why you are citing Mathilda is beyond me. Is she a professional linguist? Does she cite a source for her reconstructions? You take it for granted that she knows what she's talking about albeit that she can't replicate this data with backing from other scholars to confirm it. Lacking the proper training, she can easily be confused or can be simply distorting data intentionally (how can we ever know?).
quote:IN THEIR REVIEW “FARMERS AND THEIR languages: the first expansions” (25 Apr. 2003, p. 597), J. Diamond and P. Bellwood suggest that food production and the Afroasiatic language family were brought simultaneously from the Near East to Africa by demic diffusion, in other words, by a migration of food-producing peoples. In resurrecting this generally abandoned view, the authors misrepresent the views of the late I. M. Diakonoff (1), rely on linguistic reconstructions inapplicable to their claims (2), and fail to engage the five decades of Afroasiatic scholarship that rebutted this idea in the first place. This extensive, well-grounded linguistic research places the Afroasiatic homeland in the southeastern Sahara or adjacent Horn of Africa (3–8) and, when all of Afroasiatic’s branches are included, strongly indicates a pre–food-producing proto-Afroasiatic economy (1, 7, 8).
posted
Continuing to cite what I wrote accompanied by stupid emoticons does you no good you phoney scholar you. You've been exposed and I will continue to use this against you.
-------------------- mr.writer.asa@gmail.com Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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All I know is that only someone with the IQ of a moon rock would be so dumb to suggest what you did after reading what I wrote and referenced above. The fraud is caught with his tail between his legs and knows not what to do... Play it off, play it off, play it off.. You are ruined.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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All I know is that only someone with the IQ of a moon rock would be so dumb to suggest what you did after reading what I wrote and referenced above. The fraud is caught with his tail between his legs and knows not what to do... Play it off, play it off, play it off.. You are ruined.
I gotta tell ya, for someone who pretends to be so intelligent you sure are dumb. Posts: 4165 | From: jamaica | Registered: May 2008
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If Afro-Asiatic is of African origin, why do they have words for animals not native to Africa?
Simple: The words for animals that were presumably not native to Africa were named so by the folks who adopted Proto-Afrasan languages from Africa.
quote: BTW, I'm still in favor of an African origin for AA, because of the fact that there's greater diversity for that phylum in Africa than in Asia
Indeed. Which is why it is ridiculous to even imagine that it was introduced from outside. The only area supposedly "outside" of mainland Africa that has a *single* Afrasan sub-phylum, is the "Near Eastern" portion of the Great Rift Valley. The Great Rift Valley is literally a portion of Africa, with one piece already drifting away, and one cracking away slowly. So, I don't know why it is astonishing to some that Afrasan languages are only spoken in territories just next door to Africa, the point of origin, and yet, not elsewhere. Is that a coincidence or what?
quote:but it still seems odd that the early Afrasans had words for animals they wouldn't have encountered.
If these are Afrasan speakers in the so-called "Near East", then "early" would be a relative word, as they had inherited from Africans who spoke an Afrasan phylum before they did. Nothing odd about that, unless you care to elaborate.
Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Sundjata: ^Good comeback..
quote:Aha but this is all he is good for, if you take this then what does he have? lol
He's "smiling" on the outside but crying on the inside. Doesn't fool anyone.
^ well if it makes you feel better about yourself after your Yurco **** up. And to think, you are so "perceptive"! lol
Posts: 4165 | From: jamaica | Registered: May 2008
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posted
Ehret as well as Keita already wrote about this in a letter to Science
CHRISTOPHER EHRET, S. O. Y. KEITA, PAUL NEWMAN 20004 SCIENCE 306: 1680-1681.
quote: IN THEIR REVIEW “FARMERS AND THEIR languages: the first expansions” (25 Apr. 2003, p. 597), J. Diamond and P. Bellwood suggest that food production and the Afroasiatic language family were brought simultaneously from the Near East to Africa by demic diffusion, in other words, by a migration of food-producing peoples. In resurrecting this generally abandoned view, the authors misrepresent the views of the late I. M. Diakonoff (1), rely on linguistic reconstructions inapplicable to their claims (2), and fail to engage the five decades of Afroasiatic scholarship that rebutted this idea in the first place. This extensive, well-grounded linguistic research places the Afroasiatic homeland in the southeastern Sahara or adjacent Horn of Africa (3–8) and, when all of Afroasiatic’s branches are included, strongly indicates a pre–food-producing proto-Afroasiatic economy (1, 7, 8).
quote:Originally posted by Sundjata: ^Good comeback..
quote:Aha but this is all he is good for, if you take this then what does he have? lol
He's "smiling" on the outside but crying on the inside. Doesn't fool anyone.
^ well if it makes you feel better about yourself after your Yurco **** up. And to think, you are so "perceptive"! lol
You have the credibility of a random loser who comments on things he doesn't even read. Why take this seriously? You're exposed and nothing you say can be trusted anymore because it is likely that you are improvising and not basing what you say on any particular literature. You are saving face because everyone can easily see that you're a fraud. Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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posted
Just got my response from Ehert. This is what he had to say:
quote:Dear Mr. Pilcher, There are absolutely no valid reconstructions of terms for specifically Asian animals back to the proto-Afroasiatic language.
Note the adjective 'specifically.'
One book on Afroasiatic reconstruction by Orel and Stolbova includes a number of proposed root terms, some of which probably do reconstruct fairly far back in Afroasiatic language history, which in one branch of the family or another refer to a sheep or a goat, but which in other branches (often not noted by Orel and Stolbova) refer to African antelope species. There are also a very few terms which always denote goats or sheep but which are suspect as or can be demonstrated to be loanwords that spread long after the family diverged into branches. They indicate the diffusion of the animals from Asia but not of people.
There is a valid old root word for 'cow', but cows were a wild animal of the Sahara, probably as far south as Eritrea, as well as the regions from Europe to India. The presence of a name for the cow is thus not diagnostic of an extra-African origin for the family. In any case the term does not go back to the very earliest stage, the proto-Afroasiatic period. A single domestic animal, the donkey, does have a validly reconstructible Afroasiatic root word, but the donkey's wild area was Africa, not Asia, and the donkey was domesticated by Afroasiatic speakers in Africa.
Some things to read: C. Ehret, “Linguistic Stratigraphies and Holocene History in Northeastern Africa.” In Marek Chlodnicki and Karla Kroeper (ed.), Archaeology of Early Northeastern Africa, pp. 1019-1055. Posnan: Posnan Archaeological Museum, 2006. C. Ehret. “Applying the Comparative Method in Afroasiatic (Afrasan, Afrasisch).” In Rainer Voigt (ed.). „From Beyond the Mediterranean”: Akten des 7. internationalen Semitohamitistenkongresses (VII. ISHaK), Berlin 13. bis 15. September 2004, pp. 43-70. Aachen: Shaker Verlag, 2007. The first article contains lists of the valid root word reconstructions and explains the several that have spread by diffusion. The second article explains how to take apart the mistaken reconstructions of the few scholars who claim to reconstruct words for the animals. You have seen our letter in Science critiquing claims of an Asian origin for the family, perhaps? Ehret, S. O. Y. Keita, and Paul Newman. “The Origins of Afroasiatic,” Science 306 (3 December 2004): 1680-1681. Hope this is helpful, Professor Ehret
BTW, he sent me a second e-mail:
quote:I meant to mention one other thing. I do not know how physical anthropologists and geneticists got onto the misspelling "Afro-Asiatic"; but the name is and always has been throughout the literature 'Afroasiatic.' Whenever you have the chance please do encourage people to get this right. I am a contributor to an article just now submitted to Science, and along with valid commentary, we got the goofy comment that somehow we were substituting a new name for an established term. Of course, we weren't. It was the commentator and unfortunately genetics more widely that have got the name wrong. So at least you now know. (I will be adding a note to the supplementary material that explains this confusion, so one hopes that will help reach a wider audience.) Sincerely, Christopher Ehret
Posts: 7078 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
^^Excellent stuff T. Rex! Looks like just asking the man paid off. Thanx for posting it in here as well, I learned a few things reading that.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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posted
Very, very, good post T-Rex. The thing I'd like to see is an attempt to link proto Afroasiatic to other African languages. Logic dictates that there must be a link because of common ancestry (of most Africans) in the E clade. Admittedly it may be too far back in time to come up with any valid reconstruction.
Posts: 1038 | From: Franklin Park, NJ | Registered: Aug 2005
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I meant to mention one other thing. I do not know how physical anthropologists and geneticists got onto the misspelling "Afro-Asiatic"; but the name is and always has been throughout the literature 'Afroasiatic.' Whenever you have the chance please do encourage people to get this right. I am a contributor to an article just now submitted to Science, and along with valid commentary, we got the goofy comment that somehow we were substituting a new name for an established term. Of course, we weren't. It was the commentator and unfortunately genetics more widely that have got the name wrong. So at least you now know. (I will be adding a note to the supplementary material that explains this confusion, so one hopes that will help reach a wider audience.) Sincerely, Christopher Ehret
Great Job, T Rex!
I will make certain to use, Afroasiatic, properly spelled when writing.
Posts: 96 | Registered: Oct 2007
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There are also a very few terms which always denote goats or sheep but which are suspect as or can be demonstrated to be loanwords that spread long after the family diverged into branches. They indicate the diffusion of the animals from Asia but not of people.
Which essentially supports what I related earlier...
"Simple: The words for animals that were presumably not native to Africa were named so by the folks who adopted Proto-Afrasan languages from Africa."
Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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quote:Originally posted by T. Rex: Just got my response from Ehert. This is what he had to say:
quote:Dear Mr. Pilcher, There are absolutely no valid reconstructions of terms for specifically Asian animals back to the proto-Afroasiatic language.
Note the adjective 'specifically.'
One book on Afroasiatic reconstruction by Orel and Stolbova includes a number of proposed root terms, some of which probably do reconstruct fairly far back in Afroasiatic language history, which in one branch of the family or another refer to a sheep or a goat, but which in other branches (often not noted by Orel and Stolbova) refer to African antelope species. There are also a very few terms which always denote goats or sheep but which are suspect as or can be demonstrated to be loanwords that spread long after the family diverged into branches. They indicate the diffusion of the animals from Asia but not of people.
There is a valid old root word for 'cow', but cows were a wild animal of the Sahara, probably as far south as Eritrea, as well as the regions from Europe to India. The presence of a name for the cow is thus not diagnostic of an extra-African origin for the family. In any case the term does not go back to the very earliest stage, the proto-Afroasiatic period. A single domestic animal, the donkey, does have a validly reconstructible Afroasiatic root word, but the donkey's wild area was Africa, not Asia, and the donkey was domesticated by Afroasiatic speakers in Africa.
Some things to read: C. Ehret, “Linguistic Stratigraphies and Holocene History in Northeastern Africa.” In Marek Chlodnicki and Karla Kroeper (ed.), Archaeology of Early Northeastern Africa, pp. 1019-1055. Posnan: Posnan Archaeological Museum, 2006. C. Ehret. “Applying the Comparative Method in Afroasiatic (Afrasan, Afrasisch).” In Rainer Voigt (ed.). „From Beyond the Mediterranean”: Akten des 7. internationalen Semitohamitistenkongresses (VII. ISHaK), Berlin 13. bis 15. September 2004, pp. 43-70. Aachen: Shaker Verlag, 2007. The first article contains lists of the valid root word reconstructions and explains the several that have spread by diffusion. The second article explains how to take apart the mistaken reconstructions of the few scholars who claim to reconstruct words for the animals. You have seen our letter in Science critiquing claims of an Asian origin for the family, perhaps? Ehret, S. O. Y. Keita, and Paul Newman. “The Origins of Afroasiatic,” Science 306 (3 December 2004): 1680-1681. Hope this is helpful, Professor Ehret
BTW, he sent me a second e-mail:
quote:I meant to mention one other thing. I do not know how physical anthropologists and geneticists got onto the misspelling "Afro-Asiatic"; but the name is and always has been throughout the literature 'Afroasiatic.' Whenever you have the chance please do encourage people to get this right. I am a contributor to an article just now submitted to Science, and along with valid commentary, we got the goofy comment that somehow we were substituting a new name for an established term. Of course, we weren't. It was the commentator and unfortunately genetics more widely that have got the name wrong. So at least you now know. (I will be adding a note to the supplementary material that explains this confusion, so one hopes that will help reach a wider audience.) Sincerely, Christopher Ehret
yes thanks very much - its great to hear feedback from true scholars and great Africanists. This helps to clear up things.
Posts: 4226 | From: New Jersey, USA | Registered: Mar 2007
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^Concerning your first quote, that's wikipedia man. A lot of dumb arguments are posted on there for the sake of "neutrality" which is why the "minority" position is included. Why suppress it? Did you even notice for one second though that the source used to support that was Ehret? Ehret for crying out loud!! Why are you people so uncritical of wikipedia? Did you bother to ask yourself why the following statement isn't cited at all? Do you usually believe everything that random people (IP addresses and pseudonyms) write?![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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