This is topic Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa, scientists find ???? in forum Egyptology at EgyptSearch Forums.


To visit this topic, use this URL:
http://www.egyptsearch.com/forums/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=009813

Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF-nkzBUakM

Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa, scientists find

^^ Video

_________________________________

http://www.newsweek.com/first-hominin-europe-east-africa-human-evolution-613494


 -


https://www.newscientist.com/article/2132026-our-common-ancestor-with-chimps-may-be-from-europe-not-africa/


 -
 -

By Colin Barras

The last common ancestor we shared with chimps seems to have lived in the eastern Mediterranean – not in East Africa as generally assumed.

This bold conclusion comes from a study of Greek and Bulgarian fossils, suggesting that the most mysterious of all ancient European apes was actually a human ancestor, or hominin. However, other researchers remain unconvinced by the claim.

Go back 12 or more million years ago and Europe was an ape’s paradise. But, about 10 million years ago, environmental conditions deteriorated and the European apes began to disappear. Apes became largely confined to Africa, splitting there into gorillas, chimpanzees and humans.

At least, that’s what most researchers think happened. But in 2012, Nikolai Spassov at the National Museum of Natural History in Sofia, Bulgaria, and his colleagues reported the discovery of an ape tooth from Bulgaria that was just 7 million years old. It was, they said, the youngest European ape fossil yet found.

Very Ancient Greek
Spassov and his colleagues – including Madelaine Böhme at the University of Tübingen in Germany and David Begun at the University of Toronto, Canada – now think the tooth belongs to an ape called Graecopithecus that clung on in eastern Europe long after the other apes had disappeared from the continent. What’s more, the team says, Graecopithecus was no ordinary ape – it was a hominin.

Other than the Bulgarian tooth, Graecopithecus is known from just one fossil jawbone found near Athens in 1944. The fossil was reportedly unearthed as the occupying German forces were building a wartime bunker – although Spassov says the exact details of the story are unclear.

With so little fossil material to work with, Graecopithecus is the most poorly known of all European apes. This is not helped by the fact that the Greek jawbone – nicknamed El Graeco – has a heavily worn surface.

But Spassov and his colleagues have used a micro-CT scanner to peer into the jawbone of El Graeco, and found that the roots of one of the premolars are “fused” together in an unusual way.

“This condition is so far only known to occur regularly in hominins – pre-humans and humans,” Spassov says. “It is extremely rare in recent chimps.”

There are also hints from the jaw that Graecopithecus had relatively small canines – another hominin trait. Together, the two features suggest Graecopithecus may have been a hominin, the researchers say.

Signs of the times
In a complementary analysis, the team has also investigated the local geology in Greece and Bulgaria at the time to establish that Graecopithecus lived in exactly the sort of dry savannah-like environment traditionally thought to have driven early hominin evolution.

What’s more, geological dating techniques suggest it was alive between 7.18 and 7.25 million years ago – which means Graecopithecus slightly predates the oldest potential hominin found in Africa: Sahelanthropus is between 7 and 6 million years old.

Putting the pieces of the puzzle together, the team thinks that hominins might have split from the chimp evolutionary lineage in the eastern Mediterranean a little earlier than 7.25 million years ago. In other words, they say, that our last common ancestor with chimps may have been an eastern European.

______________________________________

http://theconversation.com/theres-not-enough-evidence-to-back-the-claim-that-humans-originated-in-europe-78280

There’s not enough evidence to back the claim that humans originated in Europe
May 25, 2017 9.35am EDT


Africa is not the cradle of humankind: that’s the claim by a group of scientists who’ve just published what they describe as evidence of pre-human remains found in Eastern Europe (Greece and Bulgaria). The fossils in question belong to Graecopithecus freybergi, and are a little more than seven million years old. This would make them the world’s oldest hominin fossils.

It would also re-root the human evolutionary tree in Eastern Europe, away from Africa. This runs counter to a great deal of evidence which suggests that humans originated in Africa.

Dr Julien Benoit, a vertebrate palaeontologist and palaeobiologist who has worked extensively on the African continent and was not part of the European research team, chatted to The Conversation Africa about the findings.

This new research suggests that Greece, not Africa, should be calling itself the cradle of humankind. Do you think that’s accurate?

Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence to support them. The African origin of humankind (Hominini) is currently supported by two really important elements.

Firstly, thousands of hominin fossils have been found on African soil since the first fossil African hominin, Australopithecus africanus, was discovered in South Africa in 1924.

Nearly a century of fossil findings has followed, chronicling the complete evolution of hominin on African soil. These fossils range from the Sahelanthropus, which lived between six and seven million years ago in what is today Chad, to the earliest Homo sapiens from east Africa.

Secondly, our closest ape relatives, the Chimpanzees and the Gorilla are also from Africa. Our last common ancestors lived somewhere between eight and 12 million years ago, which strongly suggests that the origin of humankind is deeply rooted in Africa. This leave little room for a putative European origin.

Any study that counters this consensus would have to provide very strong evidence and perfect methodology to support its claim. In my opinion, this article doesn’t meet those criteria.

Why not?

For starters, the material isn’t well preserved. It consists mostly of a jaw with no complete teeth preserved. That’s a problem because the teeth’s anatomical characteristics are the most important element when classifying any primate, including humans.

The authors claim that the jaw’s fourth premolar root is similar to that of a hominin’s. This is not a character that is conventionally used in palaeoanthropology, especially because not all hominins have similar tooth roots. This character is rather variable – and the authors go on to acknowledge this – so it’s unreliable for classification.

They also argue that the small size of the incomplete canine tooth (as suggested by the size of its root) would put this fossil close to hominin ancestry. This is based on the assumption that hominins are the only apes with small canines. This, again, is not true. In Europe, where apes have a very rich fossil record, there’s an ape called Oreopithecus which has small canines but is not related to humans at all.

This is an example of independent, parallel evolution: when one species evolves similarities to another without being related to it. For instance, dolphins look like fish, but they’re not. This is probably the same thing for Graecopithecus and hominins.

I agree with many of my colleagues, who think that this new jaw represents an Ape species that is not related to humans. It might belong to a species like Oreopithecus, which evolved human-like features – such as the fusion of the fourth premolar roots and small canines – in parallel to our lineage.

Finally, the study is lacking a phylogenetic analysis. This is a statistical method used to reconstruct a reliable evolutionary tree. To say that a fossil species is an early hominin without performing this kind of analysis is like giving the result of an equation without actually doing the maths.

What sort of further research and clarification is needed to confirm or debunk this theory of European origins?

A phylogenetic analysis is crucial. This is a way to reconstruct the evolutionary tree of species and to address the hypotheses of any relationship between them.

It will allow scientists to assess this fossil jaw’s real position in the evolutionary tree of Primates and to actually test if the similarities observed between Graecopithecus and hominins were acquired independently or were inherited from a real common ancestor.

And if their claim turns out to be true, would that mean we need to totally rewrite history?

The theory that humankind originated in Europe is an old one. It was abandoned after 1924 when the first Australopithecus was discovered in South Africa.

Since then, thousands of fossils have been found around Africa that strongly support the “African origins” hypothesis. Even if this new fossil actually turns out to be a hominin, it would only be an outlier – like a drop in the ocean. It would change very few things, because much more and far better preserved material would be necessary to totally disprove the African origin of humankind.

It would open a brand new area of research, but would not change textbooks.

___________________________________


2 SOURCE ARTICLES

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0177127

Potential hominin affinities of Graecopithecus from the Late Miocene of Europe


Jochen Fuss, Nikolai Spassov, David R. Begun, Madelaine Böhme
Published: May 22, 2017https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0177127


Abstract

The split of our own clade from the Panini is undocumented in the fossil record. To fill this gap we investigated the dentognathic morphology of Graecopithecus freybergi from Pyrgos Vassilissis (Greece) and cf. Graecopithecus sp. from Azmaka (Bulgaria), using new μCT and 3D reconstructions of the two known specimens. Pyrgos Vassilissis and Azmaka are currently dated to the early Messinian at 7.175 Ma and 7.24 Ma. Mainly based on its external preservation and the previously vague dating, Graecopithecus is often referred to as nomen dubium. The examination of its previously unknown dental root and pulp canal morphology confirms the taxonomic distinction from the significantly older northern Greek hominine Ouranopithecus. Furthermore, it shows features that point to a possible phylogenetic affinity with hominins. G. freybergi uniquely shares p4 partial root fusion and a possible canine root reduction with this tribe and therefore, provides intriguing evidence of what could be the oldest known hominin.






_____________________


http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0177347


Messinian age and savannah environment of the possible hominin Graecopithecus from Europe
Madelaine Böhme , Nikolai Spassov, Martin Ebner, Denis Geraads, Latinka Hristova, Uwe Kirscher, Sabine Kötter, Ulf Linnemann, Jérôme Prieto, Socrates Roussiakis, George Theodorou, Gregor Uhlig, Michael Winklhofer
Published: May 22, 2017https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0177347

Abstract

Dating fossil hominids and reconstructing their environments is critically important for understanding human evolution. Here we date the potentially oldest hominin, Graecopithecus freybergi from Europe and constrain the environmental conditions under which it thrived. For the Graecopithecus-bearing Pikermi Formation of Attica/Greece, a saline aeolian dust deposit of North African (Sahara) provenance, we obtain an age of 7.37–7.11 Ma, which is coeval with a dramatic cooling in the Mediterranean region at the Tortonian-Messinian transition. Palaeobotanic proxies demonstrate C4-grass dominated wooded grassland-to-woodland habitats of a savannah biome for the Pikermi Formation. Faunal turnover at the Tortonian-Messinian transition led to the spread of new mammalian taxa along with Graecopithecus into Europe. The type mandible of G. freybergi from Pyrgos (7.175 Ma) and the single tooth (7.24 Ma) from Azmaka (Bulgaria) represent the first hominids of Messinian age from continental Europe. Our results suggest that major splits in the hominid family occurred outside Africa.



 -
The lower jaw of the 7.175 million year old Graecopithecus freybergi (El Graeco) from Pyrgos Vassilissis, Greece (today in metropolitan Athens). Credit: Wolfgang Gerber, University of Tübingen


 -
A 7.24 million year old upper premolar of Graecopithecus from Azmaka, Bulgaria. Credit: Wolfgang Gerber, University of Tübingen
 
Posted by Elite Diasporan (Member # 22000) on :
 
Isn't this article old?
 
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
 
the source articles at the bottom are May of this year. I don't see a direct discussion on Egyptsearch

A similar thread is

» Possible common ancestor of humans and apes found in Kenya
Tyrannohotep

Although Graecopithecus is mentioned the topic there is the Alesi skull of Kenya
The Nat Geo headline on the 13 million yo Nyanzapithecus "Alesi was:

"Prehistoric Baby Skull Shows What Our Common Ancestor With Apes May Have Looked Like"


quote:


https://www.zmescience.com/science/tiny-skull-n-alesi/

The problem is that most headway in anthropology research is based on comparative analysis. That’s a fancy way of saying that anthropologists spend a lot of time comparing similar fossils to create an evolutionary roadmap. It works really well if you have fossils to compare — but that’s not the case here. We didn’t find any other infant Miocene-ape skull apart from this one. So although it could offer a link between modern human and ape ancestry, it leaves too much wiggle room. For example, we can’t meaningfully compare it to recently-found Graecopithecus, a similar early hominid/human-like ape which seems to hail from Europe. So while supporters of the out of Africa theory can point to N. alesi, their counterparts can rally around Graecopithecus — and it’s a stalemate again.



Notice how thw New scienteis headline is"may be" but the Newsweek headline is as if it is fact
 
Posted by Linda Fahr (Member # 21979) on :
 
<<<<< Laughing...

Again,one more unreliable result of decayed DNA test! I am wondering what will be next..
 
Posted by Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
 
Once again, the Alt Right internet hype attacks. lol
 
Posted by Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Elite Diasporan:
Isn't this article old?

It's an old internet hype that is for sure.


Published: May 22, 2017

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0177347
 
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ish Gebor:
quote:
Originally posted by Elite Diasporan:
Isn't this article old?

It's an old internet hype that is for sure.


Published: May 22, 2017

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0177347

It is sad that Eurocentrics continue to lie about history to make a lie true.
 
Posted by Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:
Originally posted by Ish Gebor:
quote:
Originally posted by Elite Diasporan:
Isn't this article old?

It's an old internet hype that is for sure.


Published: May 22, 2017

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0177347

It is sad that Eurocentrics continue to lie about history to make a lie true.
As I explained early this year, a lot of weird stuff would come out in the upcoming years.

You and others should put an ear to what the ultra far right says, because these things come from the ultra far right. To them it's war, war fought on multiple levels, including the origin of mankind, or at least them.
 
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ish Gebor:
quote:
Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:
Originally posted by Ish Gebor:
quote:
Originally posted by Elite Diasporan:
Isn't this article old?

It's an old internet hype that is for sure.


Published: May 22, 2017

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0177347

It is sad that Eurocentrics continue to lie about history to make a lie true.
As I explained early this year, a lot of weird stuff would come out in the upcoming years.

You and others should put an ear to what the ultra far right says, because these things come from the ultra far right. To them it's war, war fought on multiple levels, including the origin of mankind, or at least them.

Good point. I have tried to make people aware of the Max Plank institute and the Harvard cabal in trying to whiteout the Kushites in Europe and the Levant, and make them into "Indo-Europeans", and make North Africa and Europe the Cradle of Mankind(s).

They are blatantly redating remains and artifacts to make them either "European", or older than they really are.
 
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
 
Dr. Winters, do you claim that the Basenji dog is from Africa? I ask because I wrote the following:

The basenji dog is primitive yet its tail curls up tightly unlike any wolf or other dog. New article on 93 cuniform clay tablets found at Bassetki, an ancient Assyrian trading center, mentions that one tablet referred to a goddess Gula, who was always depicted with her hound at her feet, which looks like a basenji with curled-up tail.

Bassetki ~ Basenji.

Assyrian cuneiform clay tablets as they were discovered inside a clay vessel at the Bronze Age city site of Bassetki (Mitanni-Assyrian, Kurdistan, North Iraq)
-

It is not yet known if the tablets contain business, legal, or religious records. "Our philologist Dr. Betina Faist has deciphered one small fragment of a clay tablet. It mentions a temple to the goddess Gula, suggesting that we may be looking at a religious context," he adds.

Goddess Gula and her dog:

https://www.google.com/search?q=the+goddess+gula+and+her+dog&safe=active&tbm=isch&source=iu&pf=m&ictx=1&fir=nNBJNedmNZwGHM%253A%252Cq7av5KM4W9z9tM%252C_&usg=__Cn50XVpq_To6CWbM2ZgjO E_XnQU%3D&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjkrZipjozXAhULQyYKHUx-D5cQ9QEIOjAG#imgrc=nNBJNedmNZwGHM:

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/315744623851606349/?autologin=true

Picture of Basenji dog of Congo: http://dogtime.com/dog-breeds/basenji#/slide/1

Do you agree that Gula's dog (tightly-coiled tail) portrayed a Basenji, and that breed ended up in Congo with Bantu agriculturalists via trade, along with Asian domestic crops? Or do you think the dog was exported from Africa in exchange for Asian crops?
DD

The intense work of reading and translating the 93 cuneiform tablets will begin in Germany

Read more at https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2017/10/archaeologists-uncover-cuneiform.html#33fyPj8O7kLjoolb.99

In recent months, the researchers excavated layers of settlement dating from the Early, Middle, and Late Bronze Age, as well as from the subsequent Assyrian period. "Our finds provide evidence that this early urban center in northern Mesopotamia was settled almost continuously from approximately 3000 to 600 BCE. That indicates that Bassetki was of key significance on important trade routes," Pfälzner says.
 
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by DD'eDeN:
Dr. Winters, do you claim that the Basenji dog is from Africa? I ask because I wrote the following:

The basenji dog is primitive yet its tail curls up tightly unlike any wolf or other dog. New article on 93 cuniform clay tablets found at Bassetki, an ancient Assyrian trading center, mentions that one tablet referred to a goddess Gula, who was always depicted with her hound at her feet, which looks like a basenji with curled-up tail.

Bassetki ~ Basenji.

Assyrian cuneiform clay tablets as they were discovered inside a clay vessel at the Bronze Age city site of Bassetki (Mitanni-Assyrian, Kurdistan, North Iraq)
-

It is not yet known if the tablets contain business, legal, or religious records. "Our philologist Dr. Betina Faist has deciphered one small fragment of a clay tablet. It mentions a temple to the goddess Gula, suggesting that we may be looking at a religious context," he adds.

Goddess Gula and her dog:

https://www.google.com/search?q=the+goddess+gula+and+her+dog&safe=active&tbm=isch&source=iu&pf=m&ictx=1&fir=nNBJNedmNZwGHM%253A%252Cq7av5KM4W9z9tM%252C_&usg=__Cn50XVpq_To6CWbM2ZgjO E_XnQU%3D&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjkrZipjozXAhULQyYKHUx-D5cQ9QEIOjAG#imgrc=nNBJNedmNZwGHM:

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/315744623851606349/?autologin=true

Picture of Basenji dog of Congo: http://dogtime.com/dog-breeds/basenji#/slide/1

Do you agree that Gula's dog (tightly-coiled tail) portrayed a Basenji, and that breed ended up in Congo with Bantu agriculturalists via trade, along with Asian domestic crops? Or do you think the dog was exported from Africa in exchange for Asian crops?
DD

The intense work of reading and translating the 93 cuneiform tablets will begin in Germany

Read more at https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2017/10/archaeologists-uncover-cuneiform.html#33fyPj8O7kLjoolb.99

In recent months, the researchers excavated layers of settlement dating from the Early, Middle, and Late Bronze Age, as well as from the subsequent Assyrian period. "Our finds provide evidence that this early urban center in northern Mesopotamia was settled almost continuously from approximately 3000 to 600 BCE. That indicates that Bassetki was of key significance on important trade routes," Pfälzner says.

Yes. The Basenji dog was popular among the Proto-Saharans. As a result, Kushites took this dog with them to the Middle East. The Basenji is associated with the Niger Congo speakers.

The Dravidians took the Basenji dogs to India. Below is a picture of an extinct Chola dog from South India.

 -


Wm. E. Welmers. 1971 "Niger-Congo, Mande" in T.A. Sebeok, et al. eds. Linguistics in sub-Saharan Africa (Current Trends in Linguistics, 7), pp. 113-140 The Hague: Mouton

P 119-120. By way of conclusion to this general overview of the Mande languages, a a bit of judicious speculation about Mande origins and migrations may not be out of order. It has already been stated that the Mande languages clearly represent the earliest offshoot from the parent Niger-Congo stock—not counting Kordofanian, which Greenberg considers parallel to all of the Niger-Congo, forming a Niger-Kordofanian macrofamily. An original Niger-Congo homeland in the general vicinity of the upper Nile valley is probably as good a hypothesis as any. From such a homeland, a westward Mande migration may have begun well over 5000 years ago. Perhaps the earliest division within this group resulted in the isolation of what is now represented only by Bobo-fing. Somewhat later— perhaps 3500 to 4500 years ago, and possibly from a new homeland around northern Dahomey [now Benin]— the ancestors of the present Northern-western Mande peoples began pushing farther west, ultimately reaching their present homeland in the grasslands and forests of West Africa. This was followed by a gradual spread of the Southern-Eastern division, culminating perhaps 2000 years ago in the separation of its to branches and the ultimate movement of Southern Mande peoples southeast and westward until Mano and Kpelle, long separated, became once more contiguous.

This reconstruction of Mande prehistory receives striking support from a most unexpected source— dogs. Back in the presumed Niger-Congo homeland—the southern Sudan and northern Uganda of modern times— is found the unique barkless, worried-looking, fleet Basenji, who also appears on ancient Egyptian monuments with the typical bee that compensates for his natural silence. Among the Kpelle and Loma people of Liberia, a breed of dogs is found which is so closely identical to the Basenji that it now recognized as the ‘Liberian Basenji’. In all of the Sudan belt of Africa from the Nile Valley to the Liberian forest, the dogs are somewhat similar in appearance, but very obviously mongrelized. It would appear that the Mande peoples originally took their Basenji dogs with them in their westward migration. At that time, the present Sahara desert was capable of sustaining a substantial population, and was presumably the homeland of the Nilo-Saharan peoples. The early Mande moment thus may have been through uninhabited land, and their dogs were spared any cross-breeding. The farthest westward Mande movement—that of the Southwestern group—was virtually complete before contact with dogs of other breeds. With the gradual drying of the Sahara and the southward movement of the Nilo-Saharan peoples, the remaining Mande peoples, as well as later waves of Niger-Congo migration made contact with other people and other dogs. The present canine population of the Liberian forests thus reflects the very early departure of the Mande peoples from their original homeland, and the subsequent early movement of the Southwestern group towards its present location, without contacting substantial number of unrelated people or dogs.

[/QUOTE] Liberian Basenji
 -

Egyptian Basenji
 - Egyptian Basenji Dog Hieroglyph

 -

.
Trade might account for the presence of Basenji dogs in both places. But, from the sense of the article, Welmers claims that speakers of other African languages surrounding the Kpelle have different dogs.


The term for Basenji may be uher. In Egyptian uher also means house, so some people claim the Egyptians placed a dog size after uher to denote the term dog.


web page

Niger-Congo hunters probably early domesticated the dog. Hunters used dogs to catch their prey .

Egyptian Hieroglyph
 -


Egyptian term for dog corresponds to many African, and Dravidian terms for dog:
.


The above data indicates that there is contrast between Paleo-Afican l =/= r. The Egyptian Ø uher # , Azer Ø wulle # and Manding Ø wuru # suggest that the r > l in Paleo-African.

There is also vowel alternation in the terms for dog o =/= u. The predominance of the vowel /u/ in the terms for dog, make it clear that o<u. This evidence suggest that there are two Paleo-African terms for dog: Paleo-African [PA] *uru and *oro.

Futhermore, this comparison of the term for dog within and among Niger-Congo languages and Egyptian supports Welmers view that the dog was domesticated in the Nile Valley before the speakers of these languages separated, and migrated to other parts of Africa.


The key to science, is that control is used to test the cause of a hypothesis, layman rarely use control, they accept a hypothesis gased on belief and biases.

Finally scientists test relationships to determine their validity. Science is concerned only with things that can be tested and observed.

Let's look at Welmers hypothesis. All research begins with a research question.

Research Question: Where did the Niger Congo speakers originate?

Null hypothesis: There is no relationship between the present location of the Niger-Congo speakers and the original homeland of the speakers of these languages.

Result: The Niger Congo speakers probably originated in the Nile Valley because the Kpelle , who speak a Mande language, have the basanji dog, which was the domesticated dog of the Egyptians and other Nile Valley people.

The hypothesis was further supported by a most interesting finding, that was that the basanji dog is not the hunting dog of other ethnic groups inhabiting areas between the Nile Valley and where the Mande speakers live.

Welmers hypothesis was confirmed. To disconfirm this hypothesis you have to present evidence that nullifies the findings of Welmers.

To test Welmers hypothesis, I compared the Egyptian term for dog and the Mande term for dog. The linguistic evidence supports the physical evidence discussed by Welmer.

Wm. E. Welmers identified the Niger Congo home land. Welmers in "Niger-Congo Mande", Current trends in Linguistics 7 (1971), pp.113-140,explained that the Niger-Congo homeland was in the vicinity of the upper Nile valley (p.119). He believes that the Westward migration began 5000 years ago.

In support of this theory he discusses the dogs of the Niger-Congo speakers. This is the unique barkless Basenji dogs which live in the Sudan and Uganda today, but were formerly recorded on Egyptian monuments (Wlemers,p.119). According to Welmers the Basanji, is related to the Liberian Basenji breed of the Kpelle and Loma people of Liberia. Welmers believes that the Mande took these dogs with them on their migration westward. The Kpelle and Loma speak Mande languages.

He believes that the region was unoccupied when the Mande migrated westward. In support of this theory Welmers' notes that the Liberian Banji dogs ,show no cross-breeding with dogs kept by other African groups in West Africa, and point to the early introduction of this cannine population after the separation of the Mande from the other Niger-Congo speakers in the original upper Nile homeland for this population. As a result, he claims that the Mande migration occured before these groups entered the region.

Linguistic research make it clear that there is a close relationship between the Niger-Congo Superlanguage family and the Nilo-Saharan languages spoken in the Sudan. Heine and Nurse (Eds.), in African languages: An introduction , Cambridge University Press, 2000, discuss the Nilo-Saharan connection. They note that when Westerman (1911) described African languages he used lexical evidence to include the Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo languages into a Superfamily he called "Sudanic" (p.16). Using Morphological and lexical similarities Gregerson (1972) indicated that these languages belonged to a macrophylum he named " Kongo-Saharan" (p.16). Research by Blench (1995) reached the same conclusion, and he named this Superfamily: "Niger-Saharan".

Genetic evidence supports the upper Nile origin for the Niger-Congo speakers. Rosa et al, in Y-Chromosomal diversity in the population of Guinea-Bissau (2007), noted that while most Mande & Balanta carry the E3a-M2 gene, there are a number of Felupe-Djola, Papel, Fulbe and Mande carry the M3b*-M35 gene the same as many people in the Sudan.

In conclusion, Welmers proposed an upper Nile (Sudan-Uganda) homeland for the Niger-Congo speakers. He claims that they remained intact until 5000 years ago. This view is supported by linguistic and genetics evidence. The linguistic evidence makes it clear that the Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo languages are related. The genetic evidence indicates that Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo speakers carry the M3b*-M35 gene, an indicator for the earlier presence of speakers of this language in an original Nile Valley homeland.

In summary Welmer’s makes two key points: 1) the Mande migration began around 3000BC out of the Nile Valley; and 2)Welmers proposed migration from Benin around 1500BC, 1500 years after the initial migration of the Mande from the Nile Valley.

.
 
Posted by Fourty2Tribes (Member # 21799) on :
 
Are you trolling Lioness? A few months ago you were trying to minimize how deceptive this propaganda was.
 


(c) 2015 EgyptSearch.com

Powered by UBB.classic™ 6.7.3