posted
and early Semites. From his new book, History and the Testimony of Language (2010):
quote:Chapter 6 in particular, however, is directly and profoundly important for the world history field, because it upends a long-held western presumption about the relations of African to ancient Middle Eastern History and to world history as a whole. Simply put, the Afrasian language family, to which both ancient Egyptian and Semitic languages belong, originated in Africa. The historical linguistic evidence is overwhelming on this point. Within the continent the most probable origin areas of the family lay well to the south, in the Horn of Africa or in the Red Sea Hills immediately north of the Horn. The communities that brought the earliest ancestral forms of ancient Egyptian into Egypt, before the age of agriculture, most probably came from the Red Sea Hills region; and the earliest speakers of Semitic had a northeastern African background as well. These are not new historical conclusions. They have been generally accepted among the linguists of the African language families for more than fifty years. It is long past time for historians or, for that matter, other scholars, such as geneticists, whose work bears on historical scholarship, to begin to take full account of this information. Chapter 6 seeks to set this process in motion.
Preview available on google books.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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Ehret is making sense. But I want to inquire about the evolution of the terminology used to classify the languages off Sudanic East Africa. First, we have Hamito-Semitic then Afro-Asiatic then Afrasian.
Now Ehret and others argue that Semitic has its roots in East Africa. We know that the only Afrasian languages that are spoken outside of Africa are Arabic and Hebrew( a revived language). But given the huge Asian population and the fact that the Semitic language speakers make up less than 3% of Asia's languages then when do we have Afrasian as a language classification.
Australians and Americans speak English which is still an Indo-European language despite the fact that Australia and the U.S. are not in Europe.
Posts: 5492 | Registered: Nov 2004
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So why not just assign a new name to all those Afrasian languages reflecting their purely African origins?
Posts: 5492 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by L': ^I thought "Afrasan" was another name given
Yea, I'm not exactly sure why he switched back to using 'Afrasian' in this piece (probably an unconscious habit) as he is the main advocate for taking "Asia" out of the name.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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I think "Ethio-Sudanic" would be a great alternative name for the language phylum we currently call Afroasiatic, as it reflects the phylum's geographic origin. Even "Afrasan" suggests an Asian connection if you look at it closely enough.
posted
*Breaking* Photo of the Sphynx before it was altered: definitive African/Negroid features (wide nose, big lips). Library of Congress photo, NO PHOTOSHOP!
posted
^If you're suggesting that the projecting area around 1:06 of the video are the Sphinx's lips then you're incorrect. It's the visual effect of seeing the left part of the headdress from that angle. It would be extremely grotesque if it were his lips don't you think? Please don't try to derail this thread with more of this nonsense.
Posts: 1038 | From: Franklin Park, NJ | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Just the answer I expected. I repect your opinion but please respect mine. Are you saying that this photo has been debunked? Were you aware of the photo's existence prior to my post?
posted
^ I think you're a troll trying in vain to derail us from the actual and pertinent topic. Moving on...
Posts: 26246 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by lamin: Ehret is making sense. But I want to inquire about the evolution of the terminology used to classify the languages off Sudanic East Africa. First, we have Hamito-Semitic then Afro-Asiatic then Afrasian.
Hamitic- meant African or more specifically a black caucasian resident of Africa. Semitic meant of course Semites of Middle East. You can see why the name had to change because of the fact that there are Semitic speakers in Africa as well as the fact that Afrasian languages are spoken by stereotypical "negroid" populations of West Africa etc. It became Afro-asiatic due to its origins in Africa but its extension into Asia. It then became contracted to Afrasian to put more emphasis on Africa though 'Asia' is still in the name.
quote:Now Ehret and others argue that Semitic has its roots in East Africa. We know that the only Afrasian languages that are spoken outside of Africa are Arabic and Hebrew( a revived language). But given the huge Asian population and the fact that the Semitic language speakers make up less than 3% of Asia's languages then when do we have Afrasian as a language classification.
Hebrew and Arabic aren't the only Semitic languages spoken in Asia today nor were they back in ancient times when the the subphylum was much more diverse.
quote:Australians and Americans speak English which is still an Indo-European language despite the fact that Australia and the U.S. are not in Europe.
True but the speech was brought into those regions by Europeans so it still counts.
Posts: 26246 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
Personally I prefer the term Afro-Erythrean for the phylum name. Erythrean for the Red Sea since the languages are spoken on both sides of it.
Posts: 26246 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
The fact that these black African groups have no written language to back up their claims, seriously puts your esteemed scholar in troubled waters. In fact I would venture to claim, he is in the minority.
Posts: 676 | From: the Alpha and the Omega | Registered: Nov 2010
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^ And exactly which groups are you referring to??! This thread is about the African origins of Afrasian languages and their introduction to Asia during prehistoric times. What the hell does writing have to do with this?! It's obvious your prejudice against Africans has f*cked up your brains to the point that you don't even have a clue as to what you're saying now. Posts: 26246 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by A Simpleton: The fact that these black African groups have no written language to back up their claims, seriously puts your esteemed scholar in troubled waters. In fact I would venture to claim, he is in the minority.
Oh and written language aside, since the origin of these languages PREDATES writing, apparently the dummy hasn't noticed that Ehret is in fact in the majority as he wrote himself his findings were long supported by mainstream scholarship for decades! LOL
"..They have been generally accepted among the linguists of the African language families for more than fifty years. It is long past time for historians or, for that matter, other scholars, such as geneticists, whose work bears on historical scholarship, to begin to take full account of this information. Chapter 6 seeks to set this process in motion."
^ More than fifty years is a long time and well before Ehret! LOL I would tell the Simpleton to look up Afrasian language phylum for herself and do research on it, but what's the point if she can't even comprehend a single short paragraph?! LOLPosts: 26246 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Sundjata: and early Semites. From his new book, History and the Testimony of Language (2010):
quote:Chapter 6 in particular, however, is directly and profoundly important for the world history field, because it upends a long-held western presumption about the relations of African to ancient Middle Eastern History and to world history as a whole. Simply put, the Afrasian language family, to which both ancient Egyptian and Semitic languages belong, originated in Africa. The historical linguistic evidence is overwhelming on this point. Within the continent the most probable origin areas of the family lay well to the south, in the Horn of Africa or in the Red Sea Hills immediately north of the Horn. The communities that brought the earliest ancestral forms of ancient Egyptian into Egypt, before the age of agriculture, most probably came from the Red Sea Hills region; and the earliest speakers of Semitic had a northeastern African background as well. These are not new historical conclusions. They have been generally accepted among the linguists of the African language families for more than fifty years. It is long past time for historians or, for that matter, other scholars, such as geneticists, whose work bears on historical scholarship, to begin to take full account of this information. Chapter 6 seeks to set this process in motion.
"Simply put, the Afrasian language family, to which both ancient Egyptian and Semitic languages belong, originated in Africa. The historical linguistic evidence is overwhelming on this point. Within the continent the most probable origin areas of the family lay well to the south, in the Horn of Africa or in the Red Sea Hills immediately north of the Horn. The communities that brought the earliest ancestral forms of ancient Egyptian into Egypt, before the age of agriculture, most probably came from the Red Sea Hills region; and the earliest speakers of Semitic had a northeastern African background as well. These are not new historical conclusions. They have been generally accepted among the linguists of the African language families for more than fifty years. It is long past time for historians or, for that matter, other scholars, such as geneticists, whose work bears on historical scholarship, to begin to take full account of this information."
Ehret, Christopher. (2011) History and the Testimony of Language. University of California Press.
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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Without any written evidence to back up your claims, there is no real telling what languages were spoken among those groups 5000+ years ago. It's all really a matter of guesswork.
Posts: 676 | From: the Alpha and the Omega | Registered: Nov 2010
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posted
Egyptic is an example of a language written and spoken 5000+ years ago. What are you talking about?
-------------------- The Complete Picture of the Past tells Us what Not to Repeat Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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^^ Stop, stop.. you will provoke a logic overload... lmao..
-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Delneter: Just the answer I expected. I repect your opinion but please respect mine. Are you saying that this photo has been debunked? Were you aware of the photo's existence prior to my post?
I took your photo into serious consideration:
U.S.S. Raleigh sailors at the pyramids, between 1894 and 1901. LC-D4-20921
The right side looks like a contour of the face but this is due to the lighting.
That contour is really the other side of the headdress. Look at this angle:
you can see that there are some large chunks of stone missing around the edge of the headdress.
When the sculpture is turned around the other way and shot at a distance where the face is in shadow these missing chunks are seen along an edge and it comes out looking like a curving contour which could be similar looking to the profile of a face. That is what is happening here. The actual face is back behind, to the left of that contour. It's in shadow so you can't make out the profile at all.
funny illusion though
The Sphinx and pyramid, from low viewpoint looking up. Part of: G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection, LC-DIG-matpc-23066.
Posts: 42922 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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Since 2009 Ehret saw Asian origins for Semitic. Ehret is no longer of the opinion that Semitic developed anywhere in continental Africa. See Kitchen A, Ehret C, Assefa S, Mulligan CJ Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of Semitic languages identifies an Early Bronze Age origin of Semitic in the Near East Proc Biol Sci. 2009 Apr 29
From the abstract: Our statistical tests of alternative Semitic histories support an initial divergence of Akkadian from ancestral Semitic over competing hypotheses (e.g. an African origin of Semitic). We estimate an Early Bronze Age origin for Semitic approximately 5750 years ago in the Levant, and further propose that contemporary Ethiosemitic languages of Africa reflect a single introduction of early Ethiosemitic from southern Arabia approximately 2800 years ago.
quote:Originally posted by lamin: Now Ehret and others argue that Semitic has its roots in East Africa. . . . . So why not just assign a new name to all those Afrasian languages reflecting their purely African origins?
quote:Originally posted by Sundjata:
quote:Originally posted by L': ^I thought "Afrasan" was another name given
Yea, I'm not exactly sure why he switched back to using 'Afrasian' in this piece (probably an unconscious habit) as he is the main advocate for taking "Asia" out of the name.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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^ But he does claim that a pre-proto-Semitic language originated in Africa and when its speakers entered Asia it developed into proto-Semitic.
Posts: 26246 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ But he does claim that a pre-proto-Semitic language originated in Africa and when its speakers entered Asia it developed into proto-Semitic.
WTF?! A pre-pre-Semitic language?
quote:"Since 2009 Ehret saw Asian origins for Semitic. Ehret is no longer of the opinion that Semitic developed anywhere in continental Africa."
but this is suppose to be a 2010 quote "Simply put, the Afrasian language family, to which both ancient Egyptian and Semitic languages belong, originated in Africa."Posts: 4254 | From: dasein | Registered: Jun 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ But he does claim that a pre-proto-Semitic language originated in Africa and when its speakers entered Asia it developed into proto-Semitic.
In that World History Connected interview he also acknowledges that Semitic is "one little Asian offshoot" while still referring to the family at large as 'Afrasan'.
quote:These are people who have been called Afro-Asiatic and also Afrasian. I'm saying "Afrasan" because I'm trying to get "Asia" out. There is still this idea that the Afro-Asiatic family had to come out of Asia. Once you realize that it's an African family with one little Asian offshoot, well, that itself is a very important lesson for world historians.
--Ehret
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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posted
One little Asian offshoot?lol....I wouldn't call the semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language one little offshoot if that is what you are trying to imply.lol
Posts: 676 | From: the Alpha and the Omega | Registered: Nov 2010
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^I am not trying to "imply" anything, I was quoting a renowned professor of history and linguistics on that matter. I happen to agree with his logic since it is only 1 out of at least 6 families within the language phylum and it is also the youngest.
-------------------- mr.writer.asa@gmail.com Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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That statement is dated 2003. In 2009 he put Asia back in the mix and in 2010 abandoned his Afrasan turning back to Afrasian proving Asia's spinning on platter number 2.
For Ehret the extended family is African but the family's little sonny boy Semitic is an Asian kid. Even EthioSemitic is Asian. It just wandered.
Can't go living in the past. This is where he is now, no longer trying to get Asia out with Afrasan rather firmly trying to get Asian in reverting to Afrasian.
With Ehret's reversal I don't know to use Afrisan anymore or some Erythraic hyphenated terminology.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
^I remember that thread/study and actually e-mailed Dr. Kitchen about it. I may have missed it, but I don't recall Ehret ever claiming an African origin for derived Semitic anyway, as opposed to Proto-Semitic, which they claim likely diverged later in the Near East.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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^ Depends on what you mean by 'Asian'. You yourself Takruri have often commented that the Levant and Arabia are geologically and geographically nothing more than a mere extension of Africa running into Asia. So how Asian could Semitic be if its speakers left mainland Africa and moved right next door to Levanto-Arabia or as you call it Extra-Africa??
Posts: 26246 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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I'm speaking in the context of mainstream academia usage that is universally enforced.
The point is that, unlike the way it was before, continental Africa is excluded as the place where Semitic itself originated.
I'm not the one to argue with over Semitic originating in Asia. Take it up with Ehret as postulated in the 2009 Bayesian report. It's quite firm in asserting Asian origin trumping alternatives Our statistical tests of alternative Semitic histories support an initial divergence of Akkadian from ancestral Semitic over competing hypotheses (e.g. an African origin of Semitic). We estimate an Early Bronze Age origin for Semitic approximately 5750 years ago in the Levant,
That's what Ehret co-signed two years ago. No escaping it. He has done an about face. My comments/criticisms are in the thread hyperlinked in my post before this one.
Their proposed Semitic point of origin is indicated in green on the map below.
Figure 1 Map of Semitic languages and inferred dispersals. The locations of all languages sampled in this study, both extinct and extant, are depicted on the map. The current distribution of Ethiosemitic languages follows Bender (1971) and distribution of the remaining languages follows Hetzron (1997). The ancient distribution of extinct languages is also indicated (i.e. Akkadian, Biblical Aramaic, Ge'ez, ancient Hebrew and Ugaritic; Bender 1971; Hetzron 1997). The West Gurage (Chaha, Geto, Innemor, Mesmes and Mesqan) and East Gurage (Walani and Zway) Ethiosemitic language groups in central Ethiopia are depicted as two combined groups. The map also presents the dispersal of Semitic languages inferred from our study. An origin of Afroasiatic along the African coast of the Red Sea, supported by comparative analyses (Ehret 1995; Ehret et al. 2004), is indicated in red, although other African origins of Afroasiatic have been proposed (e.g. southwest Ethiopia; Blench 2006). The assumed location of the divergence of ancestral Semitic from Afroasiatic between the African coast of the Red Sea and the Near East is indicated in italics. Semitic dispersals are depicted by arrows coloured according to the estimated time of divergence (see coloured time scale at top of figure), and important nodes from the phylogeny (figure 2) are placed on the arrows to indicate where and when these divergences occurred.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
^ Does it really matter? I mean if Semitic is a branch of Afrasian, it would mean that speakers of a pre-proto-Semitic language left Africa and colonized Asia where proto-Semitic later developed. It is still an African-derived language group.
Posts: 26246 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ Does it really matter? I mean if Semitic is a branch of Afrasian, it would mean that speakers of a pre-proto-Semitic language left Africa and colonized Asia where proto-Semitic later developed. It is still an African-derived language group.
Whats "pre-proto-Semitic"?
According to the aforementioned 2009 study ancestral Semitic expanded into the Levant in which it later crystallized into Semitic proper.
No need to add "pre" Posts: 129 | Registered: Jan 2011
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ Does it really matter? I mean if Semitic is a branch of Afrasian, it would mean that speakers of a pre-proto-Semitic language left Africa and colonized Asia where proto-Semitic later developed. It is still an African-derived language group.
Now you are so desperate you are inventing words that don't exist.lol....At least I don't think pre-proto exists.lol... I mean if there really is a pre-proto, can there not also be a proto-pre-proto?lol
Posts: 676 | From: the Alpha and the Omega | Registered: Nov 2010
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quote:Originally posted by The Old Doctore: According to the aforementioned 2009 study ***ancestral Semitic expanded into the Levant in which it later crystallized into Semitic proper.**
No need to add "pre"
^ That is what I meant by pre-. It didn't become fully Semitic until it reached the Levant but it is STILL derived from Africa. So you still lose, Simpleton! Posts: 26246 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by The Old Doctore: According to the aforementioned 2009 study ***ancestral Semitic expanded into the Levant in which it later crystallized into Semitic proper.**
No need to add "pre"
^ That is what I meant by pre-. It didn't become fully Semitic until it reached the Levant but it is STILL derived from Africa. So you still lose, Simpleton!
I lose? Then perhaps you can show us how your pre-proto-language emerged from Africa? I don't know about everyone else, but i'm not holding my breath.lol
Posts: 676 | From: the Alpha and the Omega | Registered: Nov 2010
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posted
^By concentrating on little things shows you simply don't get the BIG picture here.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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^ Of course they would focus on little things because they have little brains.
quote:Originally posted by Fake Egyptian posing Muktaba son of a Russian Whore Egypt is closer to Palestine (Israel) than to Nigeria, therefore the two people on both sides of the border are more related to each other than to Nigerians.
Sudan is also closer to Paletine than to Nigeria, following the same geographical proximity logic as Lyingass. However studies show that as Africans the Egyptians are much more closely related to Nigerians than they are to your Muktaba Arab ass!
quote: case closed, pms bitch can now go back to her house negro status quo.
You're right about ONE thing-- the case IS closed. So go back to your House Abid status as son of Russian concubine. Posts: 26246 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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