Voila le sujet que j'ai poste dans le forum Anglais
Your opinions about the biocultural&spatiotemporal "urheimat" of proto Afroasiatic genesis(branched from proto world)?
We would never be sure 100% since we can not make a travel back to the past, however we can try to built some possible scenarios starting from facts from which we can expand some propositions and speculations about possible old biocultural milieus that would constitute the first innovative geneticocultural niche stemming from the common out of Africa trunk that lead to the genesis of the primeval language that would gave birth to the actual Afroasiatic called languages. (though it should be noted that evidently the afro-asiatic called languages will have elements taken through population or idea diffusion from neighbor biocultural milieus)
According to Shomaraka Keita and Sheikh Anta Diop a cultural complex of the Sahara pupmped human waves speaking some form of "nostratic" languages that would give birth to Afro-Asiatic as well as Ind-European as well as superstratum and borrowings into other languages steming from distant and different niches, though one should ask waht was the technological innovations that could explain such wide dispersal and diffusion of Nostratic languages to such point that they would culturally or/and numerically "submerge" the other biocultures?
Martin Bernal has a similar scenario though he advocates a bioculture of harpoon hunters and foragers from the area of the great lakes in Africa as the source of the Nostratic and Afro-Asiatic phylum.
Nancy fleming advocates an origin in Ethiopia-north Kenya for Afroasiatic proper (though she accepts the nostratic hypothesis) due essentially to the diversity of the afro-asiatic branches spoken in that area
Lionel bender on the other side developped a theory called Macro-Kushitic (basing himself especially on the huge diversity of the Kushomo-Tchadic branch of Afro-Asiatic) and according to him Indo-European do descend from the Macro-Kushitic system.
Also Carleton Hodge advocates an "urheimat" in northern Egypt (the delta region) for a language phylum he calls "Lislakh" consisting of Afro-Asiatic and Indo-European because those 2 language families share many peculiar innovations as well as common inflective ablautic gender including morphology that is alien to the "Borean" languages such as Uralic...
A major difficulty is the scarcity of datas about the human movements and ancient biocultures in Africa and Arabia (Africa and Arabia being connected with the Sinai isthmus could be counted as a single continent afrabia???)
I remember a professor explained that the number of archeological excavations that were made in a single year in a small (and fringe) area such as England was superior to the number of archeological excavations made in the whole western asia (mesopotamia-levant-anatolia) during 10 years and that the situation was worse in Africa , besides the fact that the European equipes that came to western Asia were mostly interested in the great Greco-Roman heritage and to lesser extent the old Sumerian-Assyrian-Hittite but show little interest to Seljuk-Abbasi-Ottoman (ie when they digged they quickly digged to reach the greco-roman stratum and ignoring the upper islamic stratum) according to the professor, though of course this is sounds like a "non innocent" generalisation that one should take with a grain of salt and investigate it personally.
But what should be said is that the lack of sufficien archeological excavations in the deep Africa leads to what archeologists call "argument by silence" ie since there is no attestation of old cultures in some area thus in reality there was NOTHING there.
[We all know that first modern human appeared in Africa and in the same time most of our way of lifes and cultures are shaped and are stemmed from the Western European as well the Grecoroman civilisation but of course those marvellous civilisations and cultures did not appear in situ grace of some obscure inner genetic abilities (because such thinking is illogical, racist and besides all unscienitific) but they are in fact connected (both culturally and genetically) with the other humans and their old and current cultures besides the fact that at first glance one can think that "all credits" of our current culture are accomplishements of a certain "race" and certain "culture" which is totally independant and distinct from the other "races" and "cultures" and did not take anything from them while imposing its culture and way of life upon them.
ie, this is not correct and the current world bioculture is the result of symbiosis+synthesis between different "races" and cultures and all the "races" are in fact "sons" of the first african modern human, besides the fact that no one did choose his ethnicity, race, language so it's unethical to have such a supremacist behavior which in the same time could result in the "others" thinking of themselves that they are innerly "ruthless" and thus will, without any logical base, lack self esteem etc...(imagine if a swahili or hausa or mapuche or papua writing author would win the Nobel prize of litterature=>this will result in the speakers of those languages not abandoning them in favor of English/Spanish...=>the languages will have a revival and avoid extinction=>monocolor standardisation of our world and lack of the regional cultures...)]
On the other hand there are linguists that advocate an "asian" (ie arabian though arabia is sticked to africa by 2 isthmus[sinai]/detroits[bab el madab] and between them a narrow sea=red sea) and associates the proto (nostratic later lislakh later) afro-asiatic with kebaran1/kebaran2/natuf/ubaid/hassuna half biocultural niches.
One of them is Alexandre Militarev arguing that proto afro-asiatic (or afrasian with the appelation of Diakonoff or afrasan with the appelation of some other scholars) had words for agriculture&animal husbandry (from [re]constructions based in reflexes in the daughter languages) and thus should have developped in the fertile crescent area with the "discovery" of agriculture and animal domestication and then there was back migrations to Africa, this scenario is shared also by the linguist Allen Bomhard(see the section below from his book)
Also there are some speculations that some reflex words in the African branches of Afrasan are "loanwords" from asian languages similar to hurric/hattic and being so widespread amongst african branches of the afrasan languages they should have been "borrowed" in the proto afrasan phase when in Asia.
Also the diversity argument can not be relied on much since cultural diversity (such as language diversity) could more easily explained by distinct tempospatial converging migrations rather than being the source, for example nowadays there are in France 3 different ie branches (celtic, italic both from the western ie group and the very distinct germanic sub-branch of the eastern tocharo-germanic branch of the eastern ie group; greco-armeno-indoiranian being the central group) but for archeodemographical, historical, archeotechological, archeofaunaflorical, archeoracial, genetic and archeocultural as well as archeological and artcheoclimatic reasons no scholar thinks of the region corresponding to todays France as the region of the indo-european "homeland", on the other side there is only 1 and rather recent and tip-branched (eastern slavic sub-sub-branch from the slavic sub-branch from the slavo-baltic branch from the central indo-european group) language phylum (ukrainian) in the accepted area of the indo-european homeland and in Anatolia (the most accepted area of indo-hittite[ancestor of indo-european] "homeland")there is only the kurdish sub-sub-sub branch nowadays.
Your opinions about the biocultural&spatiotemporal "urheimat" of proto Afroasiatic genesis(branched from proto world)?
We would never be sure 100% since we can not make a travel back to the past, however we can try to built some possible scenarios starting from facts from which we can expand some propositions and speculations about possible old biocultural milieus that would constitute the first innovative geneticocultural niche stemming from the common out of Africa trunk that lead to the genesis of the primeval language that would gave birth to the actual Afroasiatic called languages. (though it should be noted that evidently the afro-asiatic called languages will have elements taken through population or idea diffusion from neighbor biocultural milieus)
According to Shomaraka Keita and Sheikh Anta Diop a cultural complex of the Sahara pupmped human waves speaking some form of "nostratic" languages that would give birth to Afro-Asiatic as well as Ind-European as well as superstratum and borrowings into other languages steming from distant and different niches, though one should ask waht was the technological innovations that could explain such wide dispersal and diffusion of Nostratic languages to such point that they would culturally or/and numerically "submerge" the other biocultures?
Martin Bernal has a similar scenario though he advocates a bioculture of harpoon hunters and foragers from the area of the great lakes in Africa as the source of the Nostratic and Afro-Asiatic phylum.
Nancy fleming advocates an origin in Ethiopia-north Kenya for Afroasiatic proper (though she accepts the nostratic hypothesis) due essentially to the diversity of the afro-asiatic branches spoken in that area
Lionel bender on the other side developped a theory called Macro-Kushitic (basing himself especially on the huge diversity of the Kushomo-Tchadic branch of Afro-Asiatic) and according to him Indo-European do descend from the Macro-Kushitic system.
Also Carleton Hodge advocates an "urheimat" in northern Egypt (the delta region) for a language phylum he calls "Lislakh" consisting of Afro-Asiatic and Indo-European because those 2 language families share many peculiar innovations as well as common inflective ablautic gender including morphology that is alien to the "Borean" languages such as Uralic...
A major difficulty is the scarcity of datas about the human movements and ancient biocultures in Africa and Arabia (Africa and Arabia being connected with the Sinai isthmus could be counted as a single continent afrabia???)
I remember a professor explained that the number of archeological excavations that were made in a single year in a small (and fringe) area such as England was superior to the number of archeological excavations made in the whole western asia (mesopotamia-levant-anatolia) during 10 years and that the situation was worse in Africa , besides the fact that the European equipes that came to western Asia were mostly interested in the great Greco-Roman heritage and to lesser extent the old Sumerian-Assyrian-Hittite but show little interest to Seljuk-Abbasi-Ottoman (ie when they digged they quickly digged to reach the greco-roman stratum and ignoring the upper islamic stratum) according to the professor, though of course this is sounds like a "non innocent" generalisation that one should take with a grain of salt and investigate it personally.
But what should be said is that the lack of sufficien archeological excavations in the deep Africa leads to what archeologists call "argument by silence" ie since there is no attestation of old cultures in some area thus in reality there was NOTHING there.
[We all know that first modern human appeared in Africa and in the same time most of our way of lifes and cultures are shaped and are stemmed from the Western European as well the Grecoroman civilisation but of course those marvellous civilisations and cultures did not appear in situ grace of some obscure inner genetic abilities (because such thinking is illogical, racist and besides all unscienitific) but they are in fact connected (both culturally and genetically) with the other humans and their old and current cultures besides the fact that at first glance one can think that "all credits" of our current culture are accomplishements of a certain "race" and certain "culture" which is totally independant and distinct from the other "races" and "cultures" and did not take anything from them while imposing its culture and way of life upon them.
ie, this is not correct and the current world bioculture is the result of symbiosis+synthesis between different "races" and cultures and all the "races" are in fact "sons" of the first african modern human, besides the fact that no one did choose his ethnicity, race, language so it's unethical to have such a supremacist behavior which in the same time could result in the "others" thinking of themselves that they are innerly "ruthless" and thus will, without any logical base, lack self esteem etc...(imagine if a swahili or hausa or mapuche or papua writing author would win the Nobel prize of litterature=>this will result in the speakers of those languages not abandoning them in favor of English/Spanish...=>the languages will have a revival and avoid extinction=>monocolor standardisation of our world and lack of the regional cultures...)]
On the other hand there are linguists that advocate an "asian" (ie arabian though arabia is sticked to africa by 2 isthmus[sinai]/detroits[bab el madab] and between them a narrow sea=red sea) and associates the proto (nostratic later lislakh later) afro-asiatic with kebaran1/kebaran2/natuf/ubaid/hassuna half biocultural niches.
One of them is Alexandre Militarev arguing that proto afro-asiatic (or afrasian with the appelation of Diakonoff or afrasan with the appelation of some other scholars) had words for agriculture&animal husbandry (from [re]constructions based in reflexes in the daughter languages) and thus should have developped in the fertile crescent area with the "discovery" of agriculture and animal domestication and then there was back migrations to Africa, this scenario is shared also by the linguist Allen Bomhard(see the section below from his book)
Also there are some speculations that some reflex words in the African branches of Afrasan are "loanwords" from asian languages similar to hurric/hattic and being so widespread amongst african branches of the afrasan languages they should have been "borrowed" in the proto afrasan phase when in Asia.
Also the diversity argument can not be relied on much since cultural diversity (such as language diversity) could more easily explained by distinct tempospatial converging migrations rather than being the source, for example nowadays there are in France 3 different ie branches (celtic, italic both from the western ie group and the very distinct germanic sub-branch of the eastern tocharo-germanic branch of the eastern ie group; greco-armeno-indoiranian being the central group) but for archeodemographical, historical, archeotechological, archeofaunaflorical, archeoracial, genetic and archeocultural as well as archeological and artcheoclimatic reasons no scholar thinks of the region corresponding to todays France as the region of the indo-european "homeland", on the other side there is only 1 and rather recent and tip-branched (eastern slavic sub-sub-branch from the slavic sub-branch from the slavo-baltic branch from the central indo-european group) language phylum (ukrainian) in the accepted area of the indo-european homeland and in Anatolia (the most accepted area of indo-hittite[ancestor of indo-european] "homeland")there is only the kurdish sub-sub-sub branch nowadays.
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