The case of Berber: Some Reasons to Doubt That Neolithic Expansions and Macro-Families Always Coincide
Abstract:
According to one of the current syntheses about linguistic, archeological and genetic data, homelands of linguistic macro-families coincide with epicenters of Neolithic expansion.Among other persons, who are archeologists for the most part, this scenario has been developed and advocated by the Australian archeologist, Peter S. Bellwood. The paper investigates the case of Berber, a branch of the Afrasian phylum. It appears that Berber lexical data very seriously conflicts with this line of reasoning. There are clear signs that the vocabulary of Neolithic realia and activities is not inherited in that branch of Afrasian but was borrowed from several sources,which include Latin and Italic languages. There is at least one group, based on primarily linguistic considerations, that does not fit in the equation ‘linguistic macro-family = neolithic expansion’:Afrasian.