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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Yom: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Hikuptah: [qb] So Djehuti no ancient Saharan ever migrated into Modern Day Ethiopia but they have migrated to Sudan i disagree with that. So the ancient people of the Sahara were are they know and are they older than modern peoples of Sudan. [/qb][/QUOTE]I'm sure there were [i]some[/i] migrations, but they were relatively limited. Migration tended to go in the other direction in the Holocene (spread of E3b), and Saharan influences are limited to some pottery influences on the Tihama cultural complex and Gash group (as Winters said above). There were no major migrations during this period, however. As to writing, Mr. Winters is mistaken. I'm not aware of any ancient syllabic Saharan writing system. The Ethiopian writing system ultimately comes from the Egyptian hieroglyphs through the Proto-Sinaitic script. This further developed into what is called the Epigraphic South Arabian script (but the first examples of this script are found in Ethiopia and Eritrea, not Yemen), and then into Ge'ez, which became an "Abugida" (a semi-syllabic script where each consonant can be given an inherent vowel) in the 4th century, like the Indian Brahmic scripts (which may have been an inspiration). Proto-Sinaitic probably would have spread to Ethiopia/Eritrea and Yemen (the Tihama) along the coastal area during the 2nd millenium BC (after the 1st intermediate period when Proto-Sinaitic might have formed) due to trade with Punt. One scholar's view (same ANE list): [QUOTE]Moreover the question of the spread of the language is probably quite different than the spread of the alphabet. The new dating for the latter (the end of the 2nd mil, or even if it's the very early lst mil) strongly suggests it travelled via the sea trade through Adulis and the coastal Tihama culture to Subr near Aden and on to Hadramaut . The highlands simply were not involved in much interregional trade at that time, and the oases cities and the camel trade were only just picking up momentum. Whereas the coastal areas had been in touch with Punt and Dhofar and possibly Oman (therefore indirectly with Eg & Msp) for milennia. (Infra) Read p. 93-95 in Edens, C. & Wilkinson, T.J. (1998). “Southwest Arabia during the Holocene,” in J. of World Prehistory. 12, section called Epigraphic Chronology, in which they sum up the archaeologists' raising of the dates for the appearance of writing in the highlands. At Ad-Durayb 30 km W of Marib de Maigret finds 3 inscribed sherds in startum B (dated 1050-830 BC) and they call this 12th-9th c. At Hajar ar -Rayhani, the largest town in Wadi Jubah, Glanzman finds 4 inscribed sherds from the 2nd Occup Phase, which consists of ashy layers without architecture and is dated by RC to the early lst milennium or slightly earlier., which is called 11th-8th c BC. The conclusion, Edens and Wilkinson, op cit p 95: "The stratigraphic context of these inscribed sherds establish that a writing system appeared in S. Arabia perhap as early as the 12-11th c BC, seemingly well before the first identified monumental inscriptions (perhaps early the 8th c BC). This conclusion requires that the South Arabian writing system was borrowed from northern antecedents as early as the Late Bronze Age." But this would mean a gap of 3-400 years! If instead we chose the lower dates, writing could have come as late as the 9th c. and inscriptions started as early as the 8th.. doesn't that make a lot more sense? Imagine us having an alphabet in the Renaissance and never cutting an inscription till today! A stray merchant from a literate culture can leave behind a sherd or an insignia without that meaning that the local culture has become literate. Although apparently some have put a 13th c date on the time of divergence of the ESA alphabet from its northern ancestors based on factors of consonant coalescence in the N. not shared in by ESA, I'm not clear why this means this system would have had to have REACHED S. Arabia that soon, for it could have spent quite a while in the Hejaz, in Punt, or in some intermediate home before pushing on to colonize the inland oases of Saba. (What ever happened to Minaean Dedan? as an earlier more northerly stage of this culture?) This is the real beauty of Punt having leapfrogged from Somaliland, past the Yemen to land in the Suakin to Adulis area. Why would W.Semitic languages (or alphabets!) coming from the north skip this area, go straight to the Yemen, then come back here as colonizers?? What is the evidence for such an improbability , more than the old fixation that the Queen of Saba or Sabaean merchants introduced Semitic languages (and "civilization") to Ethiopia.. Here what Edens and Wilkinson, op cit. have to say about the implications of these geo-chronological paradigmatic shifts. After examining the new higher chronology pushing back the origins of writing in Saba to the end of the LBA , they go on to draw the important conclusion: significant contact with the Levant at this early date would not have been by camel caravan but by sea, via the land of Punt. Here's an exerpt from their section on the Tihama in the Iron Age: p 105 "Its variety of exotic goods, including a relative abundance of metalwork, distinguishes the Subr-Sihi complex [the Eastern end of Zarins' & Kitchen's "Afro-Tihama culture"] from the situation elsewhere in SW Arabia during the late 2nd milennium and, presumably, reflects active seaborne connections with neighboring regions. The implication of maritime traffic connecting SW Arabia with the African coast at this time suggests involvement of communities of the Tihama with Punt, well known from the Egyptian records. Although the distinctive Subr-Sihi pottery appears as far away as the Hadramawt (Zarins & Zahrani, 1985, p 95-6) early maritime trade would have left largely untouched highland and desert fringe communities, helping to account for the air of greater prosperity in the large coastal communities early in the Iron Age." In case you think these civilizing influences imparted from the Eg-Punt trade (writing, monumental architecture, and even the introduction of Semitic -- if Proto-Semitic wasn't already in the area since the Ubaid!! )simply by-passed the Ethiopian plateau, they have already made it clear that this area was an integral part of this interregional communication : After examining its connections to C Group, Pan Grave, etc. African ceramics: "The Subr-Sihi group may also be related to pre- Axumite materials in Ethiopia, where burnished wares with incised geometric motifs and several vessel forms bear comparison with materials from the lower levels at Matara and from the Ona culture in Hamasen (refs)." (p 105). So the odds are that the alphabet and W. Semitic language reached coastal Eritrea before it reached Yemen, certainly before it reached Highland Yemen. What northerners needed from S. Arabia was really only the frankincense of Dhofar. Gold, ivory, timber, all the rest of it, were much nearer and more easily available on the African side of the sea. So the archaeology of the Yemen highlands, as well as the oasis states which rose to prominence in the lst milennium, indicates that these inland areas had very little contact with the outer world at all before the early first milennium, by comparison with the age-old cosmopolitan commerce of the coastal areas, which were the terminus of the sea routes from Dhofar. (or the Hadramaut as the terminus of a land route?) There are other good discussions in this article about why the camel caravans were only just beginning at this time, and that evidence of camel bones don't become significant till the mid lst milennium, paralleled by the evidence of S Arabian script, cuboid incense burners, etc. in the S Levant, also not till the mid 1st. Thus you can't have it both ways. If you want "civilizing" Sabaeans in Ethiopia transmitting such things as writing, monumental architecture, etc. you've got to keep it in the mid lst milennium. If you want to push the Sabaean "civilization" backward to the end of the 2nd milennium (by processes which even Kitchen admits are highly hypothetical) then you have to admit the "civilizing" influences arriving by sea, via the Ethiopian coast. So the question of who is the donor and who the recipient of these common cultural traits is still up in the air, especially as D'MT sites dated by their epigraphy will slide back along with their cohorts in Yemen. The real problem, again, is that the key node in the network, the Eritrean coast, the harbors of Punt, Adulis, Gabaza, Sabea, etc. have not been excavated or are covered by modern cities. [/QUOTE][URL=https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2003-April/008612.html]Source[/URL] Note that despite what is said above, the Highlands [i]were[/i] part of the Tihama cultural complex (above he says that parts of them, like Ona and Hamasien may have been, but it seems that actually most of the Tigray plateau was involved). [/QB][/QUOTE]
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