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Mboli’s idea about various stages in Negro-Egyptian does not agree with what we know about African linguistics. The phases imagined for Negro-Egyptian does not agree with the law of “linguistic continuity” for African languages. The rate at which languages change is variable. It appears that linguistic change is culture specific. Consequently, the social organization and political culture of a particular speech community can influence the speed at which languages change.
Based on the history of language change in Europe most linguists believe that the rate of change for all languages is both rapid and constant.(Diagne, 1981,p.238) The idea that all languages change rapidly is not valid for all the World's languages. Mboli has accepted this reality of I-E languages as existing in African languages. Thus he has created a series of stages for Negro-Egyptian.
African languages change much slower than European languages. (Armstrong, 1962) As a result, you can not use a European model of language change to describe events in African linguistics. For example, African vocabulary items collected by Arab explorers over a thousand years ago are analogous to contemporary lexical items.(Diagne,1981, p.239) Although, Mboli, according to Asar does not recognize Coptic as an aspect of Egyptian there are striking resemblances between the ancient Egyptian language and Coptic, and Pharonic Egyptian and African languages which indicate continuity between and among the speakers of Negro-Egyptian.(Diagne, 1981; Diop, 1977; Obenga, 1993)
The political stability of African political institutions has caused languages to change very slowly in Africa. Pawley and Ross (1993) argue that a sedentary life style may account for the conservative nature of a language.
African oral traditions and the eye witness accounts of travelers to Africa, make it clear that African empires although made up of diverse nationalities illustrated continuity. To accomodate the plural nature of African empires Africans developed a Federal system of government. (Niane , 1984) In fact we can not really describe ancient African state systems as empires, since this implies absolute rule or authority in a single individual. This political state of affairs rarely existed in ancient Africa, because in each African speech community local leadership was elected by the people within the community. (Diop, 1987) For example the Egyptians often appointed administrators over the conquered territories from among the conquered people. (Diop ,1991)
The continuity of many African languages may result from the steady state nature of African political systems, and long standing cultural stability since neolithic times. (Diop, 1991 ; Winters 1985) This cultural stability has affected the speed at which African languages change.
In Africa due to the relative stability of socio-political structures and settled life, there has not been enough pressure exerted on African societies as a whole and African speech communities in particular, to cause radical internal linguistic changes within most African languages. Permanent settlements led to a clearly defined system of inheritance and royal succession. These traits led to stability on both the social and political levels.
This leads to the hypothesis that linguistic continuity exist in Africa due to the stability of African socio-political structures and cultural systems. This relative cultural stability has led African languages to change more slowly then European and Asian languages. Diop (1974) observed that:
First the evolution of languages, instead of moving everywhere at the same rate of speed seems linked to other factors; such as , the stability of social organizations or the opposite, social upheavals. Understandably in relatively stable societies man's language has changed less with the passage of time.(pp.153-154)
There is considerable evidence which supports the African continuity concept. Dr. Armstrong (1962) noted the linguistic continuity of African languages when he used glottochronology to test the rate of change in Yoruba. Comparing modern Yoruba words with a list of identical terms collected 130 years ago by Koelle , Dr. Armstrong found little if any internal or external changes in the terms. He concluded that:
I would have said that on this evidence African languages are changing with glacial slowness, but it seems to me that in a century a glacier would have changed a lot more than that. Perhaps it would be more in order to say that these languages are changing with geological slowness. (Armstrong, 1962, p.285). Below is an article where the theory of linguistic continuity is explained.
Diop's theory of linguistic constancy recognizes the social role language plays in African language change. Language being a variable phenomena has as much to do with a speaker's society as with the language itself. Thus social organization can influence the rate of change within languages. Meillet (1926, 17) wrote that:
“Since language is a social institution it follows that linguistics is a social science, and the only variable element to which one may appeal in order to account for a linguistic change is social change, of which language variations are but the consequences.” The theory of linguistic continuity for African languages nullifies Mboli’s argument for stages in Negro-Egyptian. In the article above I show the changes that took place within English over a period of 900 years. There was marked differences between Ebglish 900 years ago and present day English. I also illustrated that Mandekan terms collected by the Medieval Arabs over 500 years ago have full agreement with modern Mandekan terms. Indicating the continuity between old and modern Mandekan. If you noticed carefully, I can support my claim of African linguistic continuity based on modern lexica and Mandekan material 500 plus years old. Mboli makes bold claims about the existence of periods when Negro-Egyptian was spoken but he has no text to support his claims for these periods accept Middle Egyptian, since he does not accept Coptic as an Egyptian language. This makes his theory invalidate and unreliable.
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-------------------- C. A. Winters Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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I have read the abstracts and downloaded their papers and am in communication with many of the people involved in the project. "Working" on something is not the same as "having it done." As I stated in an earlier posts, Africanists make a phylum and language family first, THEN looks for the evidence to support it. They are the "Creationists" of linguistics. This is not the practice of the vast majority of comparative linguists around the world. The reason why Afro-Asiatic fails is because they came up with the phylum before coming up with the criteria and characteristics for the inclusion of the phylum. That's not scientific. Thus, by the same criteria, N-C doesn't exist either. They are trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. And I must keep reminding the readers, Dr. Winters claimed to have reconstructed Niger-Congo, even his "Proto-Saharan," but using language groupings which themselves have not been established. But, he cannot provide an extensive work where he did these reconstructions, only scattered articles. With all due respect to our elder, his work is not comparable to Mboli's under discussion. Mboli's builds off of Obenga's, but does not fall into the trap Obenga did in his 1993 work. However, Obenga's _L'égyptien pharaonique: une langue négro-africaine_ is more in alignment with Mboli's (2010) text.
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quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters: Mboli makes bold claims about the existence of periods when Negro-Egyptian was spoken but he has no text to support his claims for these periods accept Middle Egyptian, since he does not accept Coptic as an Egyptian language. This makes his theory invalidate and unreliable.
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I just want to note that in many of the post above it seems you confuse the concept of Negro-Egyptian (some kind of very ancient (late)paleo-African language) and various stages of the Ancient Egyptian language (Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, etc).
Negro-Egyptian, which could be called Negro-Sudanic or whatever, was a language spoken before 10 000BC (see Obenga) so much before the ancient egyptian state or Badarian sites even existed.
Negro-Egyptian could have been called, I don't know, Negro-Sudanic. Obenga put the word Egyptian in there just to remind people that all African languages and the dead Ancient Egyptian languages are genetically related languages.
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Linguist are not creationist. You discover language families via comparative linguistics.
Afro-Asiatic failed because there is no such family.The reconstructions are usually Semiticentric.
LOL. You sent us to a site where we see abstracts of papers supporting aspects of Proto-Niger-Congo. This papers have already been written. Yet yoy declare " "Working" on something is not the same as "having it done." The fact the papers have been written indicate the work is already done.
Diop's, Parente genetique de LEgyptien Pharaonique et des Langues Negro-Africaines, is the most exhuastive study of Negro-Egyptian, and no matter what you say it does prove Niger-Congo exist because it demonstrates connections between Egyptian and Niger-Congo languages.
LOL you're funny you claim I have not done my home work on Proto-Saharan which is false. It does not take a book length manuscript to demonstrate a genetic relationship.Here is my major article on Proto-Saharan languages which I call Bafsudralam languages, is below:
Asar you don’t understand linguistics. This is why you accept Mboli’s work without any reservation.
You need to learn more about linguistics because you continue to believe that a Language Family Tree, is representing phases in a language family instead of branches like a tree.
I would recommend you read Stuart C. Poole, An Introduction to Linguistics, many of my students in my linguistics course at Saint Xavier University found the book informative. You have no knowledge of Comparative Linguistics as indicated by the fact that you don’t even recognize what a Family tree is and historical linguistics. The Best book in this genre is Robert Lord’s, Comparative Linguistics. This book is great because it teaches you how to do comparative linguistics –and includes lessons with answer that can guide you in conducting comparative linguistic research.
Also you need to get a good dictionary of linguistics so you can learn the meanings of many linguistic terms you appear not to understand.
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-------------------- C. A. Winters Posts: 13012 | From: Chicago | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Asar Imhotep: I have read the abstracts and downloaded their papers and am in communication with many of the people involved in the project. "Working" on something is not the same as "having it done." As I stated in an earlier posts, Africanists make a phylum and language family first, THEN looks for the evidence to support it. They are the "Creationists" of linguistics. This is not the practice of the vast majority of comparative linguists around the world. The reason why Afro-Asiatic fails is because they came up with the phylum before coming up with the criteria and characteristics for the inclusion of the phylum. That's not scientific. Thus, by the same criteria, N-C doesn't exist either. They are trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. And I must keep reminding the readers, Dr. Winters claimed to have reconstructed Niger-Congo, even his "Proto-Saharan," but using language groupings which themselves have not been established. But, he cannot provide an extensive work where he did these reconstructions, only scattered articles. With all due respect to our elder, his work is not comparable to Mboli's under discussion. Mboli's builds off of Obenga's, but does not fall into the trap Obenga did in his 1993 work. However, Obenga's _L'égyptien pharaonique: une langue négro-africaine_ is more in alignment with Mboli's (2010) text.
Linguist are not creationist. You discover language families via comparative linguistics.
LOL you're funny you claim I have not done my home work on Proto-Saharan which is false. It does not take a book length manuscript to demonstrate a genetic relationship.Here is my major article on Proto-Saharan languages which I call Bafsudralam languages, is below:
Asar you don’t understand linguistics. This is why you accept Mboli’s work without any reservation.
You need to learn more about linguistics because you continue to believe that a Language Family Tree, is representing phases in a language family instead of branches like a tree.
I would recommend you read Stuart C. Poole, An Introduction to Linguistics, many of my students in my linguistics course at Saint Xavier University found the book informative. You have no knowledge of Comparative Linguistics as indicated by the fact that you don’t even recognize what a Family tree is and historical linguistics. The Best book in this genre is Robert Lord’s, Comparative Linguistics. This book is great because it teaches you how to do comparative linguistics –and includes lessons with answer that can guide you in conducting comparative linguistic research.
Also you need to get a good dictionary of linguistics so you can learn the meanings of many linguistic terms you appear not to understand.
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Clyde Winters have you read Mboli's work? If not, you can't dismiss it completely without first reading his work.
Of course, I won't accept anything from his book either because I didn't read it and frankly I don't understand the different phases of Negro-Egyptians with the few excerpts I've seen of his book. I need first to understand something to use it or even take it into account.
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posted
No one said you had to create a full length work to show a genetic relationship. You are putting words in my mouth. What has been said is that it is another thing all together to reconstruct a entire language phylum, which you have not done and have yet to point us to a work in which you did. How do you keep missing this point as it has been said to you in clear language? At this point you are arguing to be arguing. If you did read the work, you'd know that there are other trees given in the text. I'm not going to do your homework for you since you don't understand the method, who has used it in the past, and why this is superior to past methods.
I can't take you seriously on this issue because you continue to argue against a work you have not read. No self-respecting scholar judges something they have not read. Let's make this clear Dr. Winters, you haven't read the book. You don't have an opinion. It's just that simple. You citing your work on Mande, Tamil and Dravidian does not establish Niger-Congo as a language PHYLUM. Where is your work on the validation and reconstruction of Niger-Congo, since you invoke Obenga and his critiques against Afro-Asiatic? I'm still waiting on that information. The same with Nilo-Saharan. I've already posted linguistic works (and not all of them by the way) that challenge these labels. Where is your work that counters their works and is accepted by fellow linguists? Even of the African school?
I have read your works AND I have read Homburger's, Diop's, Obenga's and Mboli's works and I can say with the utmost confidence that nothing you have created is on that level. One, because your work does not have the same intent. Showing a "relationship" is not the same as a reconstruction, and from your "article" (not book) on the subject above, you did not do that.
Lastly, again, the people on the Niger-Congo reconstruction have yet to reconstruct the language. If they did, can you tell me what is the name of the book where they did this and who are the authors? I await your response.
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quote:Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate: I just want to note that in many of the post above it seems you confuse the concept of Negro-Egyptian (some kind of very ancient (late)paleo-African language) and various stages of the Ancient Egyptian language (Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, etc).
Negro-Egyptian, which could be called Negro-Sudanic or whatever, was a language spoken before 10 000BC (see Obenga) so much before the ancient egyptian state or Badarian sites even existed.
Negro-Egyptian could have been called, I don't know, Negro-Sudanic. Obenga put the word Egyptian in there just to remind people that all African languages and the dead Ancient Egyptian languages are genetically related languages.
As I have noted above I do not believe Egyptian is 10ky old. Egyptian was a Koine just like Swahili. The Badarians did not speak Egyptian.
I am not confused about Egyptian. Take a moment to think. If you can learn Middle Egyptian, there must be an earlier form of Egyptian.
You appear to just write anything without thinking about it.
quote:Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate: Clyde Winters have you read Mboli's work? If not, you can't dismiss it completely without first reading his work.
Of course, I won't accept anything from his book either because I didn't read it and frankly I don't understand the different phases of Negro-Egyptians with the few excerpts I've seen of his book. I need first to understand something to use it or even take it into account.
I have read the book including summaries of his work:
quote:Originally posted by Asar Imhotep: No one said you had to create a full length work to show a genetic relationship. You are putting words in my mouth. What has been said is that it is another thing all together to reconstruct a entire language phylum, which you have not done and have yet to point us to a work in which you did. How do you keep missing this point as it has been said to you in clear language? At this point you are arguing to be arguing. If you did read the work, you'd know that there are other trees given in the text. I'm not going to do your homework for you since you don't understand the method, who has used it in the past, and why this is superior to past methods.
I can't take you seriously on this issue because you continue to argue against a work you have not read. No self-respecting scholar judges something they have not read. Let's make this clear Dr. Winters, you haven't read the book. You don't have an opinion. It's just that simple. You citing your work on Mande, Tamil and Dravidian does not establish Niger-Congo as a language PHYLUM. Where is your work on the validation and reconstruction of Niger-Congo, since you invoke Obenga and his critiques against Afro-Asiatic? I'm still waiting on that information. The same with Nilo-Saharan. I've already posted linguistic works (and not all of them by the way) that challenge these labels. Where is your work that counters their works and is accepted by fellow linguists? Even of the African school?
I have read your works AND I have read Homburger's, Diop's, Obenga's and Mboli's works and I can say with the utmost confidence that nothing you have created is on that level. One, because your work does not have the same intent. Showing a "relationship" is not the same as a reconstruction, and from your "article" (not book) on the subject above, you did not do that.
Lastly, again, the people on the Niger-Congo reconstruction have yet to reconstruct the language. If they did, can you tell me what is the name of the book where they did this and who are the authors? I await your response.
LOL you're funny. My work and the work of Diop and Obenga is far superior to that of Mboli.
LOL. You maintain that Mboli’s comparative method is superior to that of Diop, Obenga and myself. But in reading Mboli I discover that he violates the basic law of comparative linguistics i.e, isolate words with common or similar meanings that have systematic consonantal agreement with little regards for the location and/or type of vowels.
Comparative and historical linguistics is not based on the comparison of isolated words. This method of research determines relationships based on the number of lexical items and linguistic features shared by two or more languages.
Linguistic research is based on the classification or taxonomy of languages. Linguistic taxonomy is the foundation upon which comparative and historical linguistic methods are based. Linguistic taxonomy serves a number of purposes . First, it is necessary for the identification of language families. Secondly, linguistic taxonomy gives us the material to reconstruct the Proto-language of a people and discover its regular sound correspondences.
There are three major kinds of language classifications: genealogical, topological, and areal. A genealogical classifica-tion groups languages together into language families based on the shared features retained by languages since divergence from the common ancestor or Proto-language. An areal classification groups languages into linguistic areas based on shared features acquired by a process of convergence arising from spatial proximity. A topological classification groups languages together into language types by the similarity in the appearance of the structure of languages without consideration of their historical origin and present, or past geographical distribution.
COMPARATIVE METHOD
The comparative method is used by linguists to determine the relatedness of languages, and to reconstruct earlier language states. The comparative linguist has two major goals (1) trace the history of language families and reconstruct the mother language of each family, and (2) determine the forces which affect language. In general, comparative linguists are interested in determining phonetic laws, analogy/ correspondence and loan words.
The comparative method is useful in the reconstruction of Proto-languages. To reconstruct a Proto-language the linguist must look for patterns of correspondences. Patterns of correspondence is the examination of terms which show uniformity. This uniformity leads to the inference that languages are related since conformity of terms in two or more languages indicate they came from a common ancestor.
code:
COMMON INDO-AFRICAN TERMS FROM BASIC VOCABULARY
ENGLISH DRAVIDIAN Atlantic MANDING MOTHER AMMA AMA,MEEN MA FATHER APPAN,ABBA AMPA,BAABA BA PREGNANCY BASARU BIIR BARA SKIN URI NGURU,GURI GURU BLOOD NETTARU DERET DYERI KING MANNAN MAANSA,OMAAD MANSA GRAND BIIRA BUUR BA SALIVA TUPPAL TUUDDE TU CULTIVATE BEY ,MBEY BE BOAT KULAM GAAL KULU FEATHER SOOGE SIIGE SI, SIGI MOUNTAIN KUNRU TUUD KURU ROCK KALLU XEER KULU STREAM KOLLI KAL KOLI
A basic objective of the comparative linguist is to isolate words with common or similar meanings that have systematic consonantal agreement with little regards for the location and/or type of vowels. Consonantal agreement is the regular appearance of consonants at certain places in words having similar meanings and representing similar speech sounds.
code:
I.Consonantal Correspondence
English Tamil Manding
s=/=s
woman asa musa
t=/=t
fire ti ta
l=/=l
house lon lu 'family habitation
d=/=t
law di tili camp dagha otagh forest kaadu tuu
m=/=m
mother amma ma land man ma 'surface,area'
k=/=k
kill kal ki
man uku moko
b=/=p
great pal ba
x=/=s sheep xar 'ram' sara
c=/=s penis col sol-ma
abundant cal,sal s'ya
code:
II. Full Correspondence of terms from Basic Vocabulary
[B] English Dravidian Manding life zi 'abundance clay banko-mannu banko blacksmith inumu numu lie kalla kalon cultivation bey be lord,chief gasa kana,gana to recite sid, sed siti great bal ba to do cey ke rock kal kulu road sila if,what eni ni to cut teg tege exalted ma [/B]
Linguist determine relationships by comparing terms from the basic vocabulary. The basic vocabulary of a language include
[/code] lexical items of ‘universal human experience’, that exist among all humans that relate to a speakers culture, e.g., body parts, numerals, personal pronouns, the demonstratives and etc.
code:
DEMONSTRATIVE BASES
LANGUAGES /PROXIMATE /DISTANT /FINITE Dravidian i a u Mande i a u Fulani o a Serere e a Wolof i a u [/B]
In Mboli’s discussion of the grammar of Negro-Egyptien classique, or Classical Negro African he peovides the following examples of alleged cognate:
ME[b] ntr nw c’est (un) dieu (this a god)
Sango nzo ni c’est bon (this is good)
Zande ndike nyeki la loi est dure (the law is harsh )
Hausa nagari ne c’est bon (this is good)
A cursory examination of these terms clearly shows that they lack consonantal agreement and meaning. They fail to meet the basic standard for comparative linguistics.
Mboli’s reconstructions are also strange. On page 374 he provides Negro-Egyptian proto-terms for body parts. Below are a couple:
*t(w)ik(h)it(w) body (M-E dt, Sango tƐrƐ)
*rus(w)ŭ language (M-E ns, Somali leef)
None of these reconstructions by Mboli accurately indicate how Negro-Egyptian probably sounded. There is nothing in these cognate terms that indicate ( w, h ) should be attached to the reconstructed proto-terms. I believe he only attached ( w, h )to imitate Proto-Indo-European terms. As I pointed out above linguistic continuity within and between African languages would not include ( w, h )to Proto-Negro-Egyptian terms.
Your acceptance of Mboli’s cognates and reconstructions of Negro-Egyptian is sure evidence you know nothing about Comparative linguistics.
quote:Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate: I just want to note that in many of the post above it seems you confuse the concept of Negro-Egyptian (some kind of very ancient (late)paleo-African language) and various stages of the Ancient Egyptian language (Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, etc).
Negro-Egyptian, which could be called Negro-Sudanic or whatever, was a language spoken before 10 000BC (see Obenga) so much before the ancient egyptian state or Badarian sites even existed.
Negro-Egyptian could have been called, I don't know, Negro-Sudanic. Obenga put the word Egyptian in there just to remind people that all African languages and the dead Ancient Egyptian languages are genetically related languages.
As I have noted above I do not believe Egyptian is 10ky old. .
For one it's Ancient Egyptian (Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, etc) not Egyptian. And Ancient Egyptian is not the same thing as Obenga's Negro-Egyptian.
Secondly nobody believe Ancient Egyptian existed more than 10ky ago (or before 10000BP). You're the only one bringing this up. It's the Obenga's Negro-Egyptian supra phylum which existed before 10000BP.
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quote:Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate: I just want to note that in many of the post above it seems you confuse the concept of Negro-Egyptian (some kind of very ancient (late)paleo-African language) and various stages of the Ancient Egyptian language (Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, etc).
Negro-Egyptian, which could be called Negro-Sudanic or whatever, was a language spoken before 10 000BC (see Obenga) so much before the ancient egyptian state or Badarian sites even existed.
Negro-Egyptian could have been called, I don't know, Negro-Sudanic. Obenga put the word Egyptian in there just to remind people that all African languages and the dead Ancient Egyptian languages are genetically related languages.
As I have noted above I do not believe Egyptian is 10ky old. .
For one it's Ancient Egyptian (Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, etc) not Egyptian. And Ancient Egyptian is not the same thing as Obenga's Negro-Egyptian.
Secondly nobody believe Ancient Egyptian existed more than 10ky ago (or before 10000BP). You're the only one bringing this up. It's the Obenga's Negro-Egyptian supra phylum which existed before 10000BP.
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With all due respect Dr. Winters, at this point, we have to end this conversation. It is clear you are trying to be deceptive and I can't continue conversations with individuals who are not being honest. As one of the few members on this board who supports some of your work, I would think I earned greater respect from you than this. It is clear that you didn't even read the citations you cherry picked and you were skimming the pages looking for something to challenge instead of reading the whole text and following the method from the beginning like a real scholar does.
Dr. Winters:
quote: In Mboli’s discussion of the grammar of Negro-Egyptien classique, or Classical Negro African he peovides the following examples of alleged cognate:
ME ntr nw c’est (un) dieu (this a god)
Sango nzo ni c’est bon (this is good)
Zande ndike nyeki la loi est dure (the law is harsh )
Hausa nagari ne c’est bon (this is good)
A cursory examination of these terms clearly shows that they lack consonantal agreement and meaning. They fail to meet the basic standard for comparative linguistics.
It is clear you didn't read this. You assumed that he was trying to advocate that these were "cognate sets," which they are not. He's showing the morpheme on different words in these respective languages. The cognation deals with the morpheme, not the full words.
In this section, Mboli is discussing the nature of the determinatives that developed in Negro-Egyptian and how these determinatives became a complete set of affixes in the pre-classical state of Negro-Egyptian. Here the appearance of these affixes will inexorably lead to an agglutinative morphology where nominal classes are grouped, each being determined by an affix, which corresponds to a certain category of reality. This is clearly a language of classes like what we see in Bantu.
[SIDE NOTE: For those interested, I have relatively recently came across some literature which supports Mboli in the case for classifiers in Egyptian. One example is Orly Godwasser's article "A Comparison between Classifier Languages and Classifier Script: The Case of Ancient Egyptian." Those of us in the African school have always known this, which is why we argue Egyptians relation to Bantu. See works by Asar Imhotep, Theophile Obenga and Dr. Mubabinge Bilolo]
He then goes on to discuss the process by which these determinants become grammaticalized. He notes that the determining affix derives from a whole word. As a supporting reference, Dr. GJK. Campbell-Dunn also notes this feature of Niger-Congo in general: affixes deriving from whole words. Mboli discusses the word kʷəkʰi, which is a word meaning "person," which can be used to determine many other words. But since it is a generic word itself, it too can also be determined by other words with a wide range of meanings. The classical Negro-Egyptian was thus a language with a morphology both prefixal and suffixal, but with a predominance of suffixes.
The existence of two affixes of agent *ŋʲʷə- and *-ŋʲʷə was reconstructed from six languages earlier in the text. Thus, a sentence in classical Negro-Egyptian has the following form:
(R1,a1) + (R2,a2)
where (R2,a2) is the nominal predicate and (R1,a1) is the word that determines, each word being composed of a root (Rx) and an affix (ax). This morphology of the Bantu-type of course has left some traces, certainly rare, in some of the historical languages, as evidenced by the short series which Dr. Winters misquoted that follows.
quote: M-E : nTr nw « c'est (un) dieu » (littéralement « dieu c'est ») [is (a) god > "god is"] Sango : nzo ní « c'est bon » (littéralement « bon c'est ») > « le bon » [what is good > "it is good"] Zandé : ndike nyeki « la loi est dure » (littéralement « loi dure ») [the law is hard > "harsh law"] Hausa : nagàri nē « c'est bon » (littéralement « bon c'est ») > nagarin « le bon ». [what is good > "it is good"; Nagarin > "the good"]
In these four languages, it is the prefix of agent *ŋʲʷə- which is found on both the substantive (noun) and on the predicate that determines it. He notes that if the constructions are true, then we find this feature fossilized in M-E, Sango and Zande, however they are still active in Hausa where the class of animation (agents) has evolved into the male gender.
In other words, Mboli, in the examples above, starting on page 367 to 368, was not trying to argue for "cognates" of the full words above. This is clear in the fact that in the book the n- morphemes are bolded, which he was trying to focus the reader's attention. He was trying to show the fossilization of the n- morpheme in these languages (save Hausa), which he argues derives from a reconstructed *ŋʲʷə- of agent.
Dr. Winters clearly didn't read the text and lied to us, again, claiming that he "has read the book including summaries of Mboli's work." It is clear you did not. So at this point, I can no longer keep this discussion up with you because you clearly have a vendetta against the text and you have not read it. Any text that doesn't support your findings or methodology, you dismiss and that is not scholarly. You then concoct arguments which are not even being made or discussed as a diversionary tactic to distract us from the fact that you do not know what you are talking about.
We, in the African-Centered school, cannot afford to keep dealing with individuals who are not honest and doing piss-poor scholarship. If one lies about something like this, then who knows what else you have lied about in your works. This is why it is important to always check someone's sources for what the author is really saying. There have been several occasions where you have misquoted, or taken out of context a passage from a source. This is why people question your scholarship, and now I have turned over to that camp of doubters. I wish you well Dr. Winters.
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quote:Originally posted by Asar Imhotep: With all due respect Dr. Winters, at this point, we have to end this conversation. It is clear you are trying to be deceptive and I can't continue conversations with individuals who are not being honest. As one of the few members on this board who supports some of your work, I would think I earned greater respect from you than this. It is clear that you didn't even read the citations you cherry picked and you were skimming the pages looking for something to challenge instead of reading the whole text and following the method from the beginning like a real scholar does.
Dr. Winters:
quote: In Mboli’s discussion of the grammar of Negro-Egyptien classique, or Classical Negro African he peovides the following examples of alleged cognate:
ME ntr nw c’est (un) dieu (this a god)
Sango nzo ni c’est bon (this is good)
Zande ndike nyeki la loi est dure (the law is harsh )
Hausa nagari ne c’est bon (this is good)
A cursory examination of these terms clearly shows that they lack consonantal agreement and meaning. They fail to meet the basic standard for comparative linguistics.
It is clear you didn't read this. You assumed that he was trying to advocate that these were "cognate sets," which they are not. He's showing the morpheme on different words in these respective languages. The cognation deals with the morpheme, not the full words.
In this section, Mboli is discussing the nature of the determinatives that developed in Negro-Egyptian and how these determinatives became a complete set of affixes in the pre-classical state of Negro-Egyptian. Here the appearance of these affixes will inexorably lead to an agglutinative morphology where nominal classes are grouped, each being determined by an affix, which corresponds to a certain category of reality. This is clearly a language of classes like what we see in Bantu.
[SIDE NOTE: For those interested, I have relatively recently came across some literature which supports Mboli in the case for classifiers in Egyptian. One example is Orly Godwasser's article "A Comparison between Classifier Languages and Classifier Script: The Case of Ancient Egyptian." Those of us in the African school have always known this, which is why we argue Egyptians relation to Bantu. See works by Asar Imhotep, Theophile Obenga and Dr. Mubabinge Bilolo]
He then goes on to discuss the process by which these determinants become grammaticalized. He notes that the determining affix derives from a whole word. As a supporting reference, Dr. GJK. Campbell-Dunn also notes this feature of Niger-Congo in general: affixes deriving from whole words. Mboli discusses the word kʷəkʰi, which is a word meaning "person," which can be used to determine many other words. But since it is a generic word itself, it too can also be determined by other words with a wide range of meanings. The classical Negro-Egyptian was thus a language with a morphology both prefixal and suffixal, but with a predominance of suffixes.
The existence of two affixes of agent *ŋʲʷə- and *-ŋʲʷə was reconstructed from six languages earlier in the text. Thus, a sentence in classical Negro-Egyptian has the following form:
(R1,a1) + (R2,a2)
where (R2,a2) is the nominal predicate and (R1,a1) is the word that determines, each word being composed of a root (Rx) and an affix (ax). This morphology of the Bantu-type of course has left some traces, certainly rare, in some of the historical languages, as evidenced by the short series which Dr. Winters misquoted that follows.
quote: M-E : nTr nw « c'est (un) dieu » (littéralement « dieu c'est ») [is (a) god > "god is"] Sango : nzo ní « c'est bon » (littéralement « bon c'est ») > « le bon » [what is good > "it is good"] Zandé : ndike nyeki « la loi est dure » (littéralement « loi dure ») [the law is hard > "harsh law"] Hausa : nagàri nē « c'est bon » (littéralement « bon c'est ») > nagarin « le bon ». [what is good > "it is good"; Nagarin > "the good"]
In these four languages, it is the prefix of agent *ŋʲʷə- which is found on both the substantive (noun) and on the predicate that determines it. He notes that if the constructions are true, then we find this feature fossilized in M-E, Sango and Zande, however they are still active in Hausa where the class of animation (agents) has evolved into the male gender.
In other words, Mboli, in the examples above, starting on page 367 to 368, was not trying to argue for "cognates" of the full words above. This is clear in the fact that in the book the n- morphemes are bolded, which he was trying to focus the reader's attention. He was trying to show the fossilization of the n- morpheme in these languages (save Hausa), which he argues derives from a reconstructed *ŋʲʷə- of agent.
Dr. Winters clearly didn't read the text and lied to us, again, claiming that he "has read the book including summaries of Mboli's work." It is clear you did not. So at this point, I can no longer keep this discussion up with you because you clearly have a vendetta against the text and you have not read it. Any text that doesn't support your findings or methodology, you dismiss and that is not scholarly. You then concoct arguments which are not even being made or discussed as a diversionary tactic to distract us from the fact that you do not know what you are talking about.
We, in the African-Centered school, cannot afford to keep dealing with individuals who are not honest and doing piss-poor scholarship. If one lies about something like this, then who knows what else you have lied about in your works. This is why it is important to always check someone's sources for what the author is really saying. There have been several occasions where you have misquoted, or taken out of context a passage from a source. This is why people question your scholarship, and now I have turned over to that camp of doubters. I wish you well Dr. Winters.
The terms discussed above were taken from Mboli's list of Proto-Negro-Egyptian. I included the page number so anyone interested in checking my work can go directly to the page I cited.
You called me a liar. This is rude and disrespectful. I pointed out what page I found the mboli material. I faithfully translated the French into English. He assigned an /*/ to the word so it represents one of the reconstructed so-called Negto-egyptian proto-tones. As a result I was not misrepresenting his work so there was no reason to call me a liar.
The problem is that you have accepted Mboli's work as valid and reliable when it is not grounded on African linguistics and historical linguistics generally.
Presently, I have to take my wife out for dinner. Later I will show how Mboli, has made the so called proto-Negro-Egyptian terms agree with Proto Indo-European, when they do not reflect African sound laws or phonology.
Please check out the Lord book so you can see how comparative linguistics is carried out so you can stop denying the validity of Niger-Congo.
Also, if research is invalid it should be acknowledged no matter who does it.
I for one don't mind anyone challenging my work. Amun-Ra showed that I made a mistake and I acknowledged he was right. They just better step up with reliable information.
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I haven't even dealt with your second notion, which is also misread. Try dealing with the issue I just pointed out. You obviously didn't read the text. Mboli does deal with Indo-European, but that is a small segment of the VERY LAST CHAPTER. It is not the center of his book. But you'd know that if you actually read it. If you're going to address this work, let's first start with the segment for which you obviously didn't read and tried to comment on. Then we can move on to the second point. Moving to the second point first is not going to make us forget about your debauched first point that did not exist. You can continue on if you want Dr. Winters. All of the intelligent people reading this forum can follow it and see exactly what took place here. I don't have to have the last word. I know what I read and why I accept certain information over others. Always rooted in method. You on the other hand are not in that camp. That is fine. I'm good. The last word is yours.
Posts: 853 | From: Houston | Registered: Nov 2007
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posted
Mboli presents a number of proto-Negro- Egyptian(PNE) terms in his book and proto-terms generally. When describing a proto-term you add an /*/ to indicate that it represents the proto-form of a word.
Mboli wants the PNE to agree with Proto-Indo-European (PIE) terms. As a result in Mboli’s reconstructions of proto-terms he usually adds /h, w /to his reconstructions, just like they are found in PIE.
In African languages aspiration or non-aspiration of plosives usually gives a word a variety of meanings. Westerman and Ward, in Practical Phonetics for Students of African Languages, recommends that they be written as digraphs, ph,th,kh. In African languages aspiration is used to give words different meanings
Swahili
Unaspirated…………………………………………………………………………………………………..Aspirated Tembo ‘palm wine’ ………………………………………………………………………………thembo ‘elephant’ Paa ‘roof of a house’…………………………………………………………………………………..phaa ‘gazelle’ Kaa ‘coal’………………………………………………………………………………………………………khaa ‘crab’
The reconstructions of Mboli for cattle, lamb, ram and horse are below. In these reconstructions Mboli introduces the fricative or aspirated element represented by /ph/ to his reconstruction of PNE to indicate articulation of the consonant.
The addition of /h, w/ was unnecessary because the African forms of the words cattle, horse and etc., do not need aspitation. Let’s look at the term for cattle, cow.
Much of the evidence relating to this pastoral way of life comes from the discovery of cattle bones at excavated sites in the Sahara dated between 7000-2000 BC, and the rock drawings of cattle (McIntosh &McIntosh 1981). In the western Sahara, sites such as Erg In-Sakane region, and the Taoudenni basin of northern Mali, attest to cattle husbandry between 6000 and 5000 BP. The ovicaprid husbandry on the other hand began in this area between 5000 to 3000 BP. Cattle pastoral people began to settle Dar Tichitt and Karkarichinkat between 5000 to 3500 BP. The term for cattle,cow in the various African languages show much correspondence. Below we will compare the term for cow from various African languages:
CATTLE/ COW Egyptian ng, nag Wolof nag Peul/Fulfulde nag Angas ning Ankwe ning Susu ninge Nuer yang Baguirmi m-ang, mang Gbea m-angu, mangu Sar(a) m-ang, mang Serere nak Mande nika Burma nak Jarawa i-nak Kagoro nyak Kaje nyak Burak nyek Kagoma nyak Bobo nyanga Kono-Vai nige So.W. Mande ninke Sembla nigi Congo-Benue *i-nak Duala nyaka Mpongwe nyare Fang nyar Kwa nare Azer(Azayr) na Soninke na Gourmantche nua, nue Senufo nu Ewe nyi Niellim nya Boua (Bwa) nya Tarok ina Iregwe nya Dadiya nee Amo na Baya nday Bobofing nya-nga Gera ndiya Koro indak Hausa nagge Dravidian Languages Tamil naku Tulu naku
The correspondence between African terms for cattle support the archaeological evidence for the early domestication of cattle in the Proto-Sahara (Winters 1985). This view is supported by the similarity in the terms for cow/cattle by speakers of the Mande, Niger-Congo, Chadic, and Afro Asiatic Supersets.
The oldest written evidence from Africa comes from the Egyptian language. The Egyptian terms for cattle/ cow were ng and nag . In other African languages we find either the consonant n-, before the consonant g/k , e.g., n/v______(v)g/k ;or the nasal consonant n- , before the vowels -i,-y , and -a , e.g., n+i+a = nia , or n+y+a = nya .
This evidence of cognition in African terms for cattle/cow shows considerable correspondence in consonants and vowels within roots. Table 1.
Table 2. Correspondence within Vowels Niger-Congo Nilotic Mande Chadic Egyptian -i/-y -i/-y -i/-y -y a/u a a/u a/u a
The linguistic evidence supports the view that the Paleo-African term for cattle/cow was *n'n , *n'g /n'k , and *nia . This data also makes it clear that /g/ and /k/ were interchangeable consonants long before the separation of the speakers of Negro-Egyptian into distinct African cultural and linguistic groups.
This review of the linguistic evidence for cow/cattle in African languages does not support Mboli’s proto-term for cattle: • • *h.hm cattle (Egyptian) • *ƞwkeƞwe, cattle (Bantu ngome)
These words are from Mboli page 591.
The linguistic evidence for African terms for cattle make it clear the Proto-NE term would not be aspirated.
It appears that Mboli constructed this term with aspiration to make it analogous to PIE terms for cattle. It appears to me that Mboli’s reconstructions of Proto-NE terms were made to agree with PIE and therefore do not reflect reliable reconstructions of PNE.
quote:Originally posted by Asar Imhotep: I haven't even dealt with your second notion, which is also misread. Try dealing with the issue I just pointed out. You obviously didn't read the text. Mboli does deal with Indo-European, but that is a small segment of the VERY LAST CHAPTER. It is not the center of his book. But you'd know that if you actually read it. If you're going to address this work, let's first start with the segment for which you obviously didn't read and tried to comment on. Then we can move on to the second point. Moving to the second point first is not going to make us forget about your debauched first point that did not exist. You can continue on if you want Dr. Winters. All of the intelligent people reading this forum can follow it and see exactly what took place here. I don't have to have the last word. I know what I read and why I accept certain information over others. Always rooted in method. You on the other hand are not in that camp. That is fine. I'm good. The last word is yours.
I don't know what you're talking about : "debauched first point". I repeat the periods Mboli claims for Negro-Egyptian grammars are myth and never existed.
quote:
VI.14 Évolution grammaticale du négro-égyptien…………………… 361 VI.14.1 Grammaire du négro-égyptien archaïque ………………….. 362 VI.14.2 Grammaire du négro-égyptien pré-classique………………. 365 VI.14.3 Grammaire du négro-égyptien classique…………………… 367 VI.14.4 Grammaire du négro-égyptien post-classique........................ 370 Chapitre VII. Correspondances lexicologiques…………………… 373
After reading the book Mboli claims he arrived at the divisions of Negro-Egyptian grammar by looking at the morphologies of NE "base" words(See pp.361-362).
Google books gives numerous segments of the Mboli book:
This is impossible you can only determine periods in a language by looking at written text. Just looking at the base vocabulary can only allow you to find cognate terms. The only consecutive written text relate to the various stages in Egyptian.
You can accept what ever you wish.But you will remain ignorant of comparative linguistics until you acquire the knowledge base to determine what is junk and what is comparative linguistics.
Why do you say that Mboli only discusses PIE in the last chapter. Throughout his discussion of PNE terms under the title of Correspondances lexicologiques he compares the PNE words to PIE.
You hope to hide this reality, because most people on the forum don't read French. This can be remedied if the reader can copy the text and place it in Google translation program.
Mboli wants to make it appear that PNE was the originator of PIE, that is why he has attempted to make his PNE terms conform to PIE forms.
Eurocentrists know this. They are just waiting until African and Afro-American africologist use Mboli's text to support their work and then show how what Mboli has written, for the most part, is nonsense.
The good thing is that most Africologists never present their work to expertsat National and International Conferences where Graduate students and professors will hear their presentations, so they can pretend what ever is written by a popular Africologist is the "truth". I publish my work in journals with editors who have experts to peer review my work, and if it does not meet the standards of comparative and historical linguistics it will not be published.
The major problem is that linguists who are Afro-American Africalogist and French speaking African researchers have done considerable work detailing the morphology and lexical analogy of Egyptian to Wolof, Egyptian to Bantu and etc., but they have not reconstructed proto-terms for Bantu, Wolof and Negro-Egyptian so they don't know how to evaluate Mboli's work.
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This is a piss-poor attempt at discrediting his work. As stated earlier, After all of his analysis, the last section of the entire book examines possible correspondences with Sumerian and Proto-Indo-European. He is not basing his analysis on IE. You can continue to say what you say in your head, but it still won't make it true. That's what people who don't read the book don't understand.
Secondly, there are tons of words in Egyptian for "cattle." Here are a few:
Hry Dba "hornless cattle" spwt / sprwt (cattle) awt "small cattle, herds, flocks, goats" iw "cow, cattle" iwA "ox, long horned cattle" iHw "oxen, cattle, herds" nfrt "cattle" prk "cattle" kmyt "herd of cattle, black cattle" idr "cattle" iAwt "herds, flocks, cattle, animals" sxtyw (cattle) wnDw "short horned cattle, calves" nHrw "cattle" Ssr "beef cattle, sacrificial bull" xtmw "cattle" anx "goat, small cattle" xnrt "cows, cattle" Hww "a class of bulls, cattle (in general" mnmnt "cattle, the roaming ones"
Lastly, the following proves that maybe you don't read French, because you are misquoting him AGAIN. How many times do we have to go through this. The reconstructed form *h2gʰʷno- or *h3gʰʷno- "lamb," [from footnote 87] is NOT A NEGRO-EGYPTIAN RECONSTRUCTION. It is Proto-Indo-European. The big *h2 and *h3 phonemes should have been a big clue for you if you knew anything about Proto-Indo-European reconstructions. Here is Mboli's words:
quote: Mboli (2010: 591, fn 87)
Le mot pour « agneau », *h2gʰʷno- ou *h3gʰʷno-, jusqu'ici sans étymologie, s'explique également facilement en partant du négro-égyptien *(w.)xiŋʷ-no- « celui (*-no-) » du « bélier » (*(w.)xiŋʷ-).
The word for "lamb" *h2gʰʷno- ou *h3gʰʷno-, so far without an etymology, is also easily explained starting from Negro-Egyptian *(w.)xiŋʷ-no- that/he (*-no-) » of « ram » (*(w.)xiŋʷ-).
For those unaware, [ŋ] is a nasal-velar sound: /ng/.
As we can see above, in the section dealing with possible correspondences between PIE and PNE, Mboli clearly does not consider the word *h2gʰʷno- PNE, but of PIE. In other words, he never claimed this was a PNE reconstruction, but PIE. Mboli, in his own words, makes this clear that this is a PIE word. After his statement, then comes footnote 87(page 591). But the statement before the notification of footnote 87 states this at the very top of the page:
[quote] retrouve dans les mots M-E Hm.t < *w.Xm- « vache » et Xnmw < *n.Xm- « dieu-bélier », est également à l'origine du mot PIE *h3ewi- « bélier »87.
...found in the M-E words Hm.t < *w.Xm- "cow" and Xnmw < *n.Xm- "ram-god", is also the origin of the PIE word PIE *h3ewi- "ram" 87. [/quote/
By what stretch of the imagination could you have possibly gotten this wrong if you read directly from the page? Seriously, how?
Now pay attention to Dr. Winter's chart below:
Obviously the *ŋʷ-keŋʷe « bovin » (cattle) corresponds to Egyptian km.yt and not ng. The form *ŋʷ-keŋʷe « bovin » also corresponds to the Bantu word nguni "cattle," for which the Amazulu and kin are named (the nguni tribes).
You should stop while you are behind. This is getting ridiculous and someone of your stature should not be lying in the public like this; constantly misrepresenting data. I am done for real this time. If someone else wants to continue this discussion, I'd be more than willing to engage.
Posts: 853 | From: Houston | Registered: Nov 2007
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posted
Do you think possible an African Origin of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) even though its actual birth place would be elsewhere ? The French linguist Andre Martinet had attempted to reconstruct a very early state of the PIE and found typically African consonants such as labiovelar kp and prenasalised mp. On the other hand, applying vert rigorously the comparative method to some African languages, I'm surprised to find in the reconstructed vocabulary some words very similar to PIE ones. So are you aware of other works in that direction worldwide ? Here below are a few PIE roots of negro-egyptian origin:
1) PIE *h2ent- "front", "before", "against" (hittite hanti, latin ante, greek anti). This root has no etymology in PIE itself, but taking into account the negro-egyptian root *xun-t(w)i "nose" fully explains its origin: middle egyptian xnt "nose" "front"; sango hon "nose", "front", "end"; zande hun-se "nose", hausa hanci "nose", etc.
2) PIE *demh2- "home" (latin domus "home", greek demos "department". This root is related to négro-egyptian *dIm-xI "house" (middle egyptian dmi "house", zandé dimo idem).
3) PIE *h2er "to plough" (latin arare, greek aroun idem). This root derives from negro-egyptian *xir "to work" (middle egyptian iri "to work", sango le idem).
As the PIE forms are close to middle egyptian ones, it is clear that the negro-egyptian dialects entered Europe through south-west Asia, that is why Hittite forms (including personal pronouns) are so close to middle egyptian's (I shown this extensively in my book) and this is why there is some common forms with proto-semitic.
quote: retrouve dans les mots M-E Hm.t < *w.Xm- « vache » et Xnmw < *n.Xm- « dieu-bélier », est également à l'origine du mot PIE *h3ewi- « bélier »87.
...found in the M-E words Hm.t < *w.Xm- "cow" and Xnmw < *n.Xm- "ram-god", is also the origin of the PIE word PIE *h3ewi- "ram" 87.
LOL. How am I trying to misrepresent Mboli. Your translation is the same as mine. This is exactly what I said Mboli is trying to make it appear that African proto-terms are identical to PIE.
It is sad to me that Mboli represents proto-Negro-Egyptian as almost identical to PIE, eventhough proto-African terms due to linguistic continuity have not changed that much in 4-5,000 years and therefore the description provide by Mboli does not reflect African linguistic reality.
Much of the work in recent years that have Europeans practicing a agro-patoral civilization that included mining in addition to farming is hogwash. Proto-Europeans were nomads, nothing more.
The new PIE terms relating to anything but a nomadic existence are going to be African in origin because Africans introduced and maintained civilization in Europe until after 1000BC when I-E people invaded Europe. Asar, like most African and Afro-American researchers you have been so brainwashed that you can't believe that Europe was only recently occupied by Europeans. But Europeans have always known tha civilization in Europe originated with Africans. Dr N. Lahovary, in Dravidian Origins and the West (only recently translated from French into English) provides numerous research on the Africans in Europe.
Because Mboli's work makes Proto-Negro-Egyptian and African proto-terms generally identical to PIE makes his work appear satisfactory since it recognizes the superiority of Eurocentric views of African languages and linguistics. Eurocentrics already believe that Egypt was founded by "whites" so Mboli's findings only confirms their theories, that a group of "whites" spread civilization across Africa. That's why they ignore his claims about Negro-Egyptian being the parent of PIE.
Secondly, you can not determine stages in a language simply by looking at morphemes.
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Mboli does not present an accurate description of Negro-Egyptian. The aim of his work is to make Negro-Egyptian agree with Proto-Indo-European vocabulary items. A good example is Mboli's reconstruction of the Negro-Egyptian term for horse.
Most researchers believe that the horse was introduced to Africa/Egypt by the Hysos after 1700BC. This is an interesting date, and far to late for the introduction of the horse given the archaeological evidence for horses at Maadi and the Sahel-Sahara zone.
In this region we find many horses depicted in the rock art. Some researchers have dated the rock art to after 1000 BC,based on the association of the camel with horses in the rock art.
Although the horse and camel are depicted in the rcok art of Nubia, the Sahel-Sahara and Upper Egypt they are considered to be related to the Graeco-Roman period . This date is far to late for the camel and horse to be used for domesticated purposes. During the Old Kingdom camel hair cord was used by the Egyptians .
Moreover camel figurines are found in Gerzean (3500 BC) and archaic Egyptian context .
In the Sahelian-Saharan rock art the horse frequently depicted. The horse is often associated with being rode by the personages depicted in the rock art . In the same area we find engravings of men capturing horses probably to be rode or harnessed to a chariot . There are numerous pictures of blacks riding in chariots. Some researchers have dated this art to 600 BC. This date is probably far to late given the fact that the horse is attested too early in the archaeological history of Saharan Africa as discussed above.
At Buhen, one of the major fortresses of Nubia, which served as the headquarters of the Egyptian Viceroy of Kush a skeleton of a horse was found lying on the pavement of a Middle Kingdom rampart (W.B. Emery, A master-work of Egyptian military architecture 3900 years ago" Illustrated London News, 12 September, pp.250-251). This was only 25 years after the Hysos had conquered Egypt.The Kushites appear to have rode the horses on horseback instead of a chariot.
This suggest that the Kushites had been riding horses for an extended period of time for them to be able to attack Buhen on horseback. This supports supports the early habit of Africans riding horses as depicted in the rock art.This tradition was continued throughout the history of Kush.
The Kushites and upper Egyptians were great horsemen, whereas the Lower Egyptians usually rode the chariot, the Kushite calvary of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty usually rode on horseback (W.A. Fairservis, The ancient kingdoms of the Nile (London,1962) p.129).
The Nubians and Upper Egyptians were great horsemen whereas the Lower Egyptians usually rode the chariot, the Nubian warriors of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty rode on horseback . The appearance of the horse laying on a Buhen rampart may indicate it was used by Kushite warriors attacking Buhen. No matter what the use of the horse was, the linguistic evidence makes it clear that the horse was part of Saharan culture before the advent of the Indo-Europeans.
Below we compare the Malinke(M.)-Bambara (B.), Nubia (N), Wolof (W.) Hausa, Tamil (Ta), Malayam (Mal) Somali (Som.) Kanarese (Ka.) Telugu (Tel.) Kordofan Nubian (KN) languages. The African languages belong either to the Niger–Congo Family or the Cushitic Family of languages.
Horse M. wolu, Bam. b’lu, wolo, N. unde Ta. Iyuli, Brahui hulli
Other Dravidian-African terms for horse: Mande wolu Bam. B’lu, wolo Mande bara ‘grey horse’, Hausa baraba ‘swift horse’ Wolof fas Somali fara-ka Egyptian nefer Serere pis Tamil , Mal. Pari Tamil payyeru, Fulani puucu Mande bari Ge’ez faras Galla or Oromo farda, ferda Ka. Karte Tamil kartai Hausa doki Tel. gadide Kanuri Nile koś Hausa godiya
The linguistic evidenc indicates that *par- / * far-., was probably the proto-Negro-Egpyptian term for horse not Mboli’s so-called M-E *hi-kĭphuř-u . For Mboli to claim that the proto- ME term for horse was *hi-kĭphuř-u for horse, when nefer was the Egyptian term for horse demonstrates how Mboli was trying to make Negro-Egyptian conform to Proto-Indo-European.
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: Clyde who are the ancestors of the Proto-Indo-Europeans?
The Ancestors of the Indo-Europeans were nomadic people of Central Asia. I discuss their origin in my monograph on the origin of IE people at my Scribd site. See:
The Indo-Europeans probably originated in Anatolia. Their ancestors were the People of the Sea and Arya people. These Proto-Indo Europeans expanded from bases along the Black Sea into Europe,the Egyptian Delta and India after 1200 BC.
Origin Arya people
The Arya spoke Hurrian, Mitanni and some petty Iranian language.
I believe that after the Hittites defeated the Hatti and Kaska and other peoples belonging to the Hurrian and Mitanni kingdoms, these people were uprooted and forced into Iran. The lost of Anatolia to the Hittites, probably forced these people to become nomads.
In Iran they probably formed a significant portion of the Proto-Arya population. Here they may have met Indo-Iranian speaking people,who may have practiced a hunter-gatherer existence, that adopted aspects of their culture , especially the religion and use of Mitanni religious terms and chariot culture.
Joining forces with the Mitannian-Hurrian exiles they probably attacked Dravidian and Austronesian speaking people in India who lived in walled cities. The Austronesian and Dravidian people probably came in intimate contact during the Xia and Shang periods of China.
I have to reject the Afghanistan origin for the Indo-Iranian speaking people because the cultures there in ancient times show no affinity to Indo-European civilization. Given the Austronesian and Dravidian elements in Sanskrit and etc., I would have to date the expansion of the Indo-Aryan people sometime after 800 BC, across Iran, India down into Afghanistan, since the Austronesia people probably did not begin to enter India until after the fall of the Anyang Shang Dynasty sometime after 1000 BC. This would explain the declaration that "the Vedic and Avestan mantras are not carbon copies of each other", they may have had a similar genesis, but they were nativised by different groups of Indic and Iranian speakers after the settlement of nomadic Hurrian and Mitanni people in Iran.
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: Do you think possible an African Origin of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) even though its actual birth place would be elsewhere ? The French linguist Andre Martinet had attempted to reconstruct a very early state of the PIE and found typically African consonants such as labiovelar kp and prenasalised mp. On the other hand, applying vert rigorously the comparative method to some African languages, I'm surprised to find in the reconstructed vocabulary some words very similar to PIE ones. So are you aware of other works in that direction worldwide ? Here below are a few PIE roots of negro-egyptian origin:
1) PIE *h2ent- "front", "before", "against" (hittite hanti, latin ante, greek anti). This root has no etymology in PIE itself, but taking into account the negro-egyptian root *xun-t(w)i "nose" fully explains its origin: middle egyptian xnt "nose" "front"; sango hon "nose", "front", "end"; zande hun-se "nose", hausa hanci "nose", etc.
2) PIE *demh2- "home" (latin domus "home", greek demos "department". This root is related to négro-egyptian *dIm-xI "house" (middle egyptian dmi "house", zandé dimo idem).
3) PIE *h2er "to plough" (latin arare, greek aroun idem). This root derives from negro-egyptian *xir "to work" (middle egyptian iri "to work", sango le idem).
As the PIE forms are close to middle egyptian ones, it is clear that the negro-egyptian dialects entered Europe through south-west Asia, that is why Hittite forms (including personal pronouns) are so close to middle egyptian's (I shown this extensively in my book) and this is why there is some common forms with proto-semitic.
--Jean-Claude Mboli
This is not a suprise the Proto-Indo Europeans who practiced an agro-pastoral mining civilization spoke Niger-Congo-Dravidian languages.
The first Anatolians were Kushites, a view supported by the Hattic name for themselves: Kashka.
The Hittites adopted much of Hattic culture. There were other languages spoken in Anatolia, including Palaic Luwian and Hurrian.
The languages of the Hittites: Nesa, was a lingua franca used by the Luwian and Palaic speakers.
The first recorded Indo-European language is Hittite. Many researchers get the Hittites (Nesa) mixed up with the original settlers of Anatolia called Hatti according to Steiner “.[T]his discrepancy is either totally neglected and more or less skillfully veiled, or it is explained by the assumption that the Hittites when conquering the country of Hatti adjusted themselves to the Hattians adopting their personal names and worshipping their gods, out of reverence for a higher culture” . Neshili, was probably spoken by the Hatti, not the IE Hittite. Yet, this language is classified as an IE langauge. Researchers maintain that the Hatti spoke 'Hattili' or Khattili “language of the Hatti”, and the IE Hittites spoke "Neshumnili"/ Neshili . Researchers maintain that only 10% of the terms in Neshumnili is IE. This supports the view that Nesumnili may have been a lingua franca. It is clear that the Anatolians spoke many languages including:Palaic, Hatti, Luwian and Hurrian, but the people as you know mainly wrote their writings in Neshumnili. The first people to use this system as the language of the royal chancery were Hatti Itamar Singer makes it clear that the Hittites adopted the language of the Hatti . Steiner wrote that, " In the complex linguistic situation of Central Anatolia, in the 2nd Millennium B.C. with at least three, but probably more different languages being spoken within the same area there must have been the need for a language of communication or lingua franca [i.e., Neshumnili), whenever commercial transactions or political enterprises were undertaken on a larger scale" .
The language of the Hittites was more than likely a lingua franca, with Hattic, as its base. In Western Anatolia many languages were spoken including Hattic, Palaic, Luwian and Hurrian used Nesa as a lingua franca For example, the king of Arzawa, asked the Egyptian in the Amarna Letters, to write them back in Nesumnili rather than Egyptian . Steiner notes that “In the complex linguistic situation of Central Anatolia in the 2nd Millennium B.C., with at least three, but probably more different languages being spoken within the same area there must have been the need for a language of communication or lingua franca whenever commercial transaction or political enterprises were undertaken on a larger scale” . This led Steiner to conclude that “moreover the structure of Hittite easily allowed one to integrate not only proper names, but also nouns of other languages into the morphological system. Indeed, it is a well known fact the vocabulary of Hittite is strongly interspersed with lexemes from other languages, which is a phenomenon typical of a “lingua franca” .
The Hurrians spoke a non-IE language. Formerly, linguist suggested that the Hurrians were dominated by Indic speakers. Linguist of the IE languages were fond of this theory because some of the names for the earliest Indo-Aryan gods, chariots and horsemenship are found in Hurrian.
This made the Indo-Aryan domination of Hurrians good support for an Anatolia origin for the IE speakers. This theory held high regrads until Bjarte Kaldhol studied 500 Hurrian names and found that only 5, were Indo-Aryan sounding. This made it clear that the IA people probably learned horsemenship from the Hurrians, and not the other way around.
At the base of Nesite, the language of the Hittites is Hattic. Since this language was used as a lingua franca, Nesa was probably not an IE language as assumed by IE linguist. This along with the fact that Diakonoff and Kohl never defeated the Kaska; and the Hurrians introduced horse-drawn war chariots for military purposes indicate that Anatolia probably was not a homeland for the IE speakers.
The original Kushites belonged to the C-Group. The Kaska and Hurrians were part of the Kushite people who expanded into Europe and Asia after 3000 BC .
Kushites are the base of the Niger-Congo speakers. Neshumnili and Hattic is related to the Niger-Congo-Dravidian languages. Since the Kushites in Africa, Europe and Asia spoke similar languages it was only natural that the Proto-Indo-European vocabulary items would be cognate to Niger-Congo and Negro-Egyptian terms because Africans (the Kushites) introduced civilization to Europe, see Dr N. Lahovary's, Dravidian Origins and the West.
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Granted, the base of the new PIE terms relating to a agro-pastoral and mining lifestyle for the Indo-European (IE) speakers are probably the result of IE people making African terms confrom to IE languages, the majority of proto-African terms will usually be CVC or CVCV in structure, not CCVC which is a characteristic of IE languages.
I will admit that I misread *h2gʰʷno- ou *h3gʰʷno-, as Negro-Egyptian, when they are really Proto-Indo-European (PIE). But I will not retract my contention that Mboli is trying to make African proto-words agree with PIE culture terms.
Mboli spends most of his time trying to make Proto-African/Negro-Egyptian terms agree with PIE constructions for the same word. A good example is the alledged proto-term 'cattle,cow': *ŋʷ-keŋʷe, which he says “corresponds to the Bantu word nguni "cattle," for which the Amazulu and kin are named (the nguni tribes)”. In historical linguistics and the reconstruction of proto-terms we apply the rule of Occam's Razor , the preference for simplicity in the scientific method of constructing proto-languages. If we apply Occam’s Razor to Mboli’s reconstruction of the proto-term *ŋʷ-keŋʷe « cattle », we find that it does not truly reflect the probable Proto-Bantu word for ‘cattle,cow’. Below are terms for ‘cow,cattle’.
In eyeballing the Bantu word for ‘cow,cattle’ notice they are CVC(C)V in structure. The initial nasal consonant is followed by vowel consonant and vowel again: CVC. Thus we have ŋ+omb+ e/a/ó=*ŋomb-
In the Bantu languages we often find an initial nasal consonant / ŋ /. This syllabic nasal consonant in Bantu languages is usually attached to human and animal animate classes. This means that the actual root word for ‘cow,cattle’ in the Bantu languages is *-omb -( + e/a/ó). Even though Mboli recognizes that / ŋ- / is the nasal affix, in his reconstruction of *ŋʷ-keŋʷe, this word has nothing to do with either nguni , and definitely not ngombe. In fact the addition of element /keŋʷe/ to / ŋ / is not supported by the words nguni , or ngombe. If you apply the rule of Occam's Razor, any researcher would see that the proto-Bantu term for ‘cattle,cow’ was / *ŋ-omb-/ (VCCV in structure) not *ŋʷ-keŋʷe. It is this need for Mboli, to find correspondence(s) between Proto-African terms and PIE that make me suspect the reliability and validity of his research.
Mboli should not care about making his reconstructions of proto-Negro-Egyptian conform to PIE. They should be made pursuant to African sound laws.
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Another case of Mboli trying to make Negro-Egyptian conform to Proto-Indo-European terms is his reconstruction of the term for ‘ram’. Mboli claims that the PIE term for "lamb" *h2gʰʷno- ou *h3gʰʷno-, is also easily explained starting from Negro-Egyptian *(w.)xiŋʷ ‘ram’ .
The Paleo-African hunters quickly learned the habits of wild sheep and goats. As a result of this hunting experience and the shock of the short arid period after 8500 BC, Paleo-Africans began to domesticate goat/sheep to insure a reliable source of food. By 6000 BP the inhabitants of Tadrart Acacus were reliant on sheep and goats (Barich 1985).
The first domesticated goats came from North Africa. This was the screw horn goat common to Algeria, where it may have been deposited in Neolithic times. We certainly see goat/sheep domestication moving eastward: Tadrart Acacus (Camps 1974), Tassili-n-Ajjer , Mali (McIntosh & McIntosh 1988), Niger (Roset 1983) and the Sudan. Barker (1989) has argued that sheep and goats increased in importance over cattle because of their adaptation to desiccation.
The linguistic evidence indicates that ovicaprids were domesticated before the Proto-Saharan people migrated out of the Sahara into the Nile Valley, Europe and Asia. As a result we have proto-terms for sheep going back to Proto-Saharan times.
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. The Egyptian terms for sheep,ram are ø zr #, or ø sr # . In the terms for sheep we find either the consonant /s/ or /z/ before the consonant /r/, e.g., s>øa/e/i#________r. This corresponds to many other African terms for sheep, ram:
Language….Sheep, Ram Egyptian sr, zr Wolof xar Coptic sro Bisa sir Kouy siri Lebir sir Amo zara Bobofing se-ge,sege Toma seree Malinke sara Busa sa Bambara sarha,saga Koro isor Boko sa Bir sir Azer sege 'goat' Diola sarha
There is phonological contrast between s =/= z. We find both ø sr # and ø zr # for sheep. Here we have s>z/V_______(V)r. The proto- Niger-Congo term for ram,sheep was probably *sär / *zär.
As a result, I can not explain how Mboli was able to reconstruct the Negro-Egyptian term *(w.)xiŋʷ ‘ram’. The vocabulary items above make it evident that there was no aspirated /ŋʷ/ in Egyptian sr and Coptic sro terms for ‘ram’. It appears to me that Mboli said the NE term for ‘ram’ was *(w.)xiŋʷ to make it conform to PIE *h2gʰʷno- , or *h3gʰʷno-. The interesting fact about the antiquity of the term for ‘ram’ among NE speakers is the fact the same term appears in Dravidian and Sumerian. .
. It is interesting to note that the Bantu probably did not domesticate sheep goats as early as the Egyptians, Mande and Atlantic speakers. The Bantu term for ram,sheep was -buzi and -budi> mbuzi and mbudi.
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I already posted this in this thread but the post seems to have disappeared [and reappeared]. So this is a repost with a few changes:
quote:Originally posted by Truthcentric: For those of you who have never heard of this guy: Theophile Obenga
Theophile Obenga is a great scholar who worked closely with Diop. He also made great books about non-egyptian related African history (using linguistics).
Afro-asiatic language is derived from the old Hamito-Semitic language family itself derived from the Hamitic racist myth (a mythical group of Caucasian looking black people not related to other black African who live in Northern Africa, Eastern Africa and have founded the Ancient Egyptian civilization).
While most linguist have accepted Afro-asiatic as a linguistic groups without questioning. Its grouping is much weaker than the Indo-European supra-language family. There's much more inter-language diversity and the supra-language family would be much older than the Indo-European one.
Obenga's great academic work (and quite voluminous) demonstrate by using the comparative linguistic methodology (same one used for the Indo-European family) the linguistic correspondences (lexical, grammatical, etc) between various languages families spoken in Africa. Considering them all daughter languages descendant of the Negro-Egyptian language family. While Obenga went a long way proving the existence of the Negro-Egyptian language family. Obenga was also questioning the validity of the "Hamito-Semitic" aka the Afro-Asiatic language family and he is not alone.
Here excerpt from Language Classification: History and Method (2008) by Campbell and Poser:
quote: Comparison among Afroasiatic languages is complicated by long-term language contacts and borrowing , where Berber and Chadic have influenced one another; Chadic has also been influenced by both "Niger-Congo" and "Nilo- Saharan" languages ; Omotic and Cushitic share areal traits; Egyptian influenced Semitic and was itself influenced; Cushitic has Semetic; and Semitic. especially through Arabic in the last millennium . has influenced many others.
The Afroasiatic union has relied mainly on morphological agreements in the pronominal paradigms and the presence of a masculine-feminine gender distinction. This evidence is attractive, but not completely compelling . As for lexical comparisons, Afroasiatic scholars are in general agreement that the findings have been more limited and harder to interpret . Indeed, the two recent large-scale attempts at Afroasiatic reconstructing and assembling large sets of cognates, Ehret(1995) and Orel and Stoibova(1995), are so radically different from one another, with little in common, that they raise questions about the possibility of viable reconstruction in Afroasiatic . As Newman reports, "the list of supposed cognate lexical items between Chadic and other Afroasiatic languages presented in the past have on the whole been less reliable " (Newman 1980:13), Newman (2000:262) recognized that "in the opinion of some scholars, the evidence supporting the relationship between the Chadic language family and other languages in the groups in the Afroasiatic phylum, such as Semitic and Berber, is not compelling." Jungraithmayr's (2000:91) conclusions raise even graver doubts about being able to classify Chadic successfully:
To sum up: As long as there are deep-rooted properties like pronominal morphemes - existent in a given language that hint a certain genetic origin, these properties ultimately determine the classification of that language. However, since most of the ancient (Hamitosemitic) structures and properties of the Chadic languages have been destroyed or at least mutilated and transformed to the extent that they can hardly be identified as such any more , it is crucial to study these languages as deeply and thoroughly as possible.
He notes "the enormous degree of linguistic complexity we encounter in the Chadic language," with observation that the degree of "Africanization" has sometimes reached the point where, structurally speaking, the similarities between Chadic and Niger-Congo and/or Nilo-Saharan languages spoken in their immediate vicinity have become more striking than between Chadic and other Hamitosemitic languages, particularly Berber or Semetic . These obvious surface similarities between Chadic and non-Chadic languages in central Sudan put an additional task load on the researcher's shoulders (Jungraithmayr 2000:91)
Nevertheless, Newman is of the opinion that "some points of resemblance in morphology and lexicon are so striking that if one did not assume relationship, they would be impossible to explain away." There is methodological lesson to be gained in examining Newman's (1980) argument, which has been considered strong evidence of Afroasiatic. Newman (1980:19) argued that in
a range of Afroasiatic languages from whatever branch, one finds that the words for 'blood,' 'moon; 'mouth' 'name' and 'nose' for example tend to be masculine: 'eye', 'fire, ' and 'Sun,' feminine; and 'water', grammatically plural...where the overall consistency in gender assignment contrasts strikingly with the considerable diversity in form.
He compared fourteen words which have the same gender across the branches of Afroasiatic and assumed this coincidence proves the genetic relationship. (Newman's table has fifteen items, but 'egg' is listed as doubtful, and in any case, there may be a non-arbitrary real-world connection between 'egg' and female gender.) There are several problems with this claim. First, it violates the principle of permitting only comparisons which involve both sound and meaning (see Chapter 7)- Newman's comparisons involve only meaning (gender) and the forms compared are not for the most part phonetically similar. Second, it assumes that the choice of the gender marking is equally arbitrary for each of the forms involved, but this is clearly not the case. For example, 'sun' and 'moon' tend to be paired cross linguistically in a set where the two have opposite genders, one masculine, one feminine - Newman's Afroasiatic masculine 'moon' and feminine 'sun' parallels Germanic and many other languages. In many languages including some of the ones compared here, feminine gender is associated with 'diminutive' ; this may explain why the larger animals of the list, 'crocodile' and 'monkey.' have masculine gender. In any case, of Newman's fourteen, only four are feminine; perhaps. then, masculine is in some way the unmarked gender, the gender most likely to be found unless there is some reason for a morpheme to be assigned to the feminine class. As for 'water' being in the "plural," in three of the language groups compared, masculine and plural have the same form, so that it would be just as accurate in these to say that water' was "masculine." Also for 'water,' plurality and mass noun may be associated in some non-arbitrary way. The most serious problem is that of probability. As Nichols ( 1996a) shows, even if there were an equal probability for any word in the set to show up either as masculine or feminine (and as just argued this is not the case), for Newman's argument to have force, it would need to involve a closed set with exactly these words with no others being tested for gender parallels. The probability of finding this number of forms with identical gender across the six branches of Afroasiatic when an open sample of basic nouns is searched comes out to be roughly equivalent to the fourteen in Newman's table - the number he found is about what should be expected. The argument, then, has no force.
Nichols (1997a:364) sees Afroasiatic as "an atypically stock-Like quasistock." She says it is "routinely accepted as a genetic grouping, though uncontroversial regular correspondences cannot be found." though she thinks it has a "distinctive grammatical signature that includes several morphological features at least two of which independently suffice statistically to show genetic relatedness beyond any reasonable doubt." As pointed out above, some Afroasiatic languages lack these, while some neighboring non-Afroasiatic languages which have been influenced by them have these traits . This being the case, these traits are neither necessary nor sufficient to show the genetic relationship.
-Language Classification: History and Method (2008) by Campbell and Poser
We can note:
- Comparison among Afroasiatic languages is complicated by long-term language contacts and borrowing
- The similarities between Chadic and Niger-Congo and/or Nilo-Saharan languages spoken in their immediate vicinity have become more striking than between Chadic and other Hamitosemitic languages, particularly Berber or Semetic
- Afroasiatic is routinely accepted as a genetic grouping, though uncontroversial regular correspondences cannot be found .
And there is more. As noted in another thread, Ehret said:
quote: The initial warming of climate in the Belling-Allerød interstadial, 12,700-10,900 BCE, brought increased rainfall and warmer conditions in many African regions. Three sets of peoples, speaking languages of the three language families that predominate across the continent today, probably began their early expansions in this period. Nilo-Saharan peoples spread out in the areas around and east of the middle Nile River in what is today the country of Sudan. Peoples of a second family, Niger-Kordofanian (EDIT: to which Niger-Congo and Bantu are offshoots) , spread across an emerging east-west belt of savanna vegetation from the eastern Sudan to the western Atlantic coast of Africa. In the same era, communities speaking languages of the Erythraic branch of the Afrasian (Afroasiatic) family expanded beyond their origin areas in the Horn of Africa, northward to modern-day Egypt.
[...]
In the tenth millennium in the savannas of modern-day Mali, communities speaking early daughter languages of proto-Niger-Congo, itself an offshoot of the Niger-Kordofanian family , began to intensively collect wild grains, among them probably fonio.
So the homeland of the Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Kordofanian (Niger-Congo/Bantu), and debunked Afro-asiatic (considered Cushitic and Chadic by Obenga, Semitic languages didn't exist at that time) is set in the eastern part of the Sahara-Sahel-Nile Belt in the area close to Sudan or in Sudan (aka Kush/Nubia/Nile Valley). He also add that those 3 African language family probably began their expansions in the 12,700-10,900 BCE period.
In the final chapter of his book, Obenga locate the homeland of the Negro-Egyptian language in the Nile Valley from the African Great lakes regions and place it at a time before 10 000-8000 BCE.
Which wonderfully also correspond to archeological evidences from that era:
So Ehret, situate the homeland of the 4 main language groups in Africa (Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Kordofanian (Niger-Congo/Bantu), Cushitic and Chadic), which encompass almost all African languages spoken today, in the area close to Sudan, which happens to be the about the same location as where Obenga place the homeland of the Negro-Egyptian family. Which happens to be the same location African people were living in the period prior to the Holocene/Green Sahara (see image A). The only place inhabited during that era due to the extreme aridity.
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It's interesting that Keita also postulated on genetic ground the existence of about the same proto Pan-African/Paleo-African language phylum proposed by Obenga on linguistic ground.
From In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory by Omar Keita
Since we now the P2/PN2 lineage unites the majority of Niger-Congo and Cushitic/Chadic speakers (over 80% of them are from that lineage).
Basically, what Keita asked on genetic ground and that Obenga answered out on linguistic ground is: What was the original language of the PN2/P2 lineage?
The proto Pan-African/Paleo-African language proposed by Keita, is the African-Egyptian/Negro-Egyptian language phylum determined on linguistic ground by Obenga.
Click image for larger version.
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Keita does not believe it is possible to reconstruct Paleo-African. Although this is his opinion you can reconstruct Paleo-Dravido-African culture terms.
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The evidence is clear the Negro-African languages probably originated in the Sahara, not East Africa.
. Y-chromosome E haplogroups: their distribution and implication to the origin of Afro-Asiatic languages and pastoralism, by Eyoab I Gebremeskel1,2 and Muntaser E Ibrahim1
Abstract Archeological and paleontological evidences point to East Africa as the likely area of early evolution of modern humans. Genetic studies also indicate that populations from the region often contain, but not exclusively, representatives of the more basal clades of mitochondrial and Y-chromosome phylogenies. Most Y-chromosome haplogroup diversity in Africa, however, is present within macrohaplogroup E that seem to have appeared 21 000–32 000 YBP somewhere between the Red Sea and Lake Chad. The combined analysis of 17 bi-allelic markers in 1214 Y chromosomes together with cultural background of 49 populations displayed in various metrics: network, multidimensional scaling, principal component analysis and neighbor-joining plots, indicate a major contribution of East African populations to the foundation of the macrohaplogroup, suggesting a diversification that predates the appearance of some cultural traits and the subsequent expansion that is more associated with the cultural and linguistic diversity witnessed today. The proto-Afro-Asiatic group carrying the E-P2 mutation may have appeared at this point in time and subsequently gave rise to the different major population groups including current speakers of the Afro-Asiatic languages and pastoralist populations.
This is an interesting paper. Although, Afro-Asiatic languages do not exist, it does provide support for the Saharan, Not East African origin of the Negro-African languages. Eyoab et al, believe that these languages and haplogroup E , originated in the Sahara, not East Africa
quote:
The subclades of the network some of which are associated with the practice of pastoralism are most likely to have taken place in the Sahara, among an early population that spoke ancestral language common to both Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic speakers, although it is yet to be determined whether pastoralism was an original culture to Nilo-Saharan speakers, a cultural acquisition or vice versa; and an interesting notion to entertain in the light of the proposition that pastoralism may be quite an antiquated event in human history.17 Pushing the dates of the event associated with the origin and spread of pastoralism to a proposed 12 000–22 000 YBP, as suggested by the network dating, will solve the matter spontaneously as the language differences would not have appeared by then and an original pastoralist ancestral group with a common culture and language50 is a plausible scenario to entertain. Such dates will accommodate both the Semitic/pastoralism-associated expansion and the introduction of Bos taurus to Europe from North East Africa or Middle East.55 The network result put North African populations like the Saharawi, Morocco Berbers and Arabs in a separate cluster. Given the proposed origin of Maghreb ancestors56, 57, 58, 59 in North Africa, our network dating suggested a divergence of North Western African populations from Eastern African as early as 32 000 YBP, which is close to the estimated dates to the origin of E-P2 macrohaplogroup.30, 60 It can be further inferred that the high frequency of E-M81 in North Africa and its association to the Berber-speaking populations25, 30, 32, 60, 61 may have occurred after the splitting of that early group, leading to local differentiation and flow of some markers as far as Southern Europe.30, 60, 62
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