Afro-Asiatic Genetics! ✅
Here are the list of studies and information that deal with the issue of the origins of Afro-Asiatic/Hamito-Semitic languages, with a focus on published and reviewed material. There are a number of main theories and hypothesis, namely: 1. An original founder from the Horn of Africa that would have resembled Omotic people of Southern Ethiopia, with Afroasiatic speakers being tied to the spread of the E-M215 (E1b1b) paternal haplogroup. In this hypothesis, the Proto-Afro-Asiatic speakers would go as far back as ~20,000 years ago, being the oldest language family. 2. An autochthonous North African population that originated and expanded from the Red-Sea Hills in Northeast Africa, and carried the associated genetic components. 3. A back-to-Africa migration of a Levantine population carrying a significant Natufian/Arabian ancestry, these people would have been agro-pastoralists and migrated into the continent no more than ~8-12 thousands years ago spreading the Afro-Asiatic branches (Omotic sometimes excluded in this theory). 4. The Nostratic languages hypothesis, which is not as endorsed in comparative linguistics, but has its researchers and supporters like 🔗Allan R. Bomhard. Anyway, while the genetics studies on autosomal DNA in particular are clearly in support of some kind of Eurasian back migration following movements of this language family, there is included a disclaimer by Shriner, that it is still somewhat difficult to determine the exact origins of languages using strictly genomic data. With all that being said, listed below are the main references.
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| *credit:🔗Farming and Language Dispersal Hypothesis |
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| *credit:🔗Afro-Asiatic Homeland as Identified by Christopher Ehret |
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| *credit:🔗The Nostratic Language Expansion |
Evidence from Human Physical Anthropology:
Based on archeology in the Levant & North Africa, as well as physical anthropology indicators like dental traits, and the age of the Natufian industry from around over 10-12,000 years ago with many dating the Afro-Asiatic language phylum to also around this time; historical and anthropological linguist John Bengston (2008), proposed the origins of majority if not all Afro-Asiatic languages to have dispersed from and lie in the area of North Africa proper (Egypt and Libya). He postulated that there was population replacement and admixture in this region involving external migrants who came from northern areas, whom were ancestral to major Afro-Asiatic speakers. The genetic discontinuity from the morphology between Pleistocene and Holocene in North Africa was amongst his considerations.
🔗In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory: Essays in the Four Fields of ... - Google Books
In 2013, anthropologist Dr. Terrazas Mata and co. have argued that the Proto-Afro-Asiatic speakers would have originated in the Middle East and subsequently migrated into the areas of North Africa, and the Horn of Africa. The morphological composition of the Ancient Egyptian and Horn of African fossil series possessed notable Middle Eastern affinities and were distinct from the analyzed prehistoric crania from the aforementioned regions. These groups were said to represent migrations of groups from the Western Asia. The scientists suggest this may indicate that the Afroasiatic-speaking groups settled in the area during a later epoch, having arrived from the Near-East. The contemporary peoples of Northern and Eastern Africa would have been the result of local people and immigrants from Asia.
🔗(PDF) The Late Peopling of Africa According to Craniometric Data. A Comparison of Genetic and Linguistic Models | Martha Elena Benavente Sanvicente - Academia.edu
🔗https://www.docdroid.net/W6bVwqi/the-late-peopling-of-africa-according-to-craniometric-data-a-comparison-of-genetic-and-linguistic-models-terrazas-and-benavente-2013-pdf
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| Spread of Afroasiatic According to Diamond and Bellwood |
Evidence from Human Y-Chromosome Haplotypes:
In 2004, a study associated the spread of Afro-Asiatic with downstream mutations of the haplogroup E1b1b, as well as J1. The researchers stated the Neolithic transitions in Northern Africa were accompanied by demic diffusion of Afro-Asiatic-speaking pastoralists from the Middle East, with most of the Y-Chromosomal variation being shaped during prehistoric Neolithic phases. These mobile Proto-Afro-Asiatic speakers were said to be herders, rather than farmers, which allowed for greater movement than agriculturalists, and hence geneflow. The Y-Chromosome genetic structure in North Africa was considered to be mainly the result of the expansion of these early food producing societies. Sub clade lineages of these haplogroups like the E-M81, would have mutated and arisen in North Africa subsequently after their arrival, and expanded.
🔗A Predominantly Neolithic Origin for Y-Chromosomal DNA Variation in North Africa | Request PDF (researchgate.net)
Dr. Shomarka Keita (2008) examined a published Y-chromosome dataset on Afro-Asiatic populations and found that a key lineage E-M35/E-M78, sub-clade of Macrohaplogroup E, was shared between the populations in the locale of Egyptian and Libyan speakers and modern Cushitic speakers from the Horn of Africa. These lineages are present in Egyptians, Berbers, Cushites, and Semitic speakers in the Near-East. He noted that variants are also found in the Aegean and Balkans, but the origin of the M35 subclade was in East Africa, with its subclade E-M78 originating in the areas of Egypt and Libya. Its clades were dominant in a core portion of Afro-Asiatic speaking populations which included Cushitic, Egyptian and Berber groups, while in contrast Semitic speakers showed a decline in frequency going west to east in the Levantine-Syria region. Keita further identified high frequencies of basal M35 (>50%) among Omotic populations, but stated that this is derived from a small, published sample of 12. Nonetheless, the PN2 (E-P2) mutation was shared by M35 and M2 lineages and this paternal clade originated from East Africa. He concluded that "the genetic data give population profiles that clearly indicate males of African origin, as opposed to being of Asian or European descent", but acknowledged that the biodiversity does not indicate any specific set of skin colors or facial features as populations were subject to microevolutionary pressures.
🔗In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory: Essays in the four fields of ... - Google Books
Cruciani, Fulvilo et al. (2010), associate the spread of the Proto-Chadic languages with the haplogroup R1b-V88. The marker would have originated in Western Asia, in regions outside of Africa based on the phylogeographic analysis and distribution, and subsequently migrated into the Central Sahara, making its way into the Lake Chad Basin. There was genetic contiguity with the Chadic speaking populations of the Central Sahel, and several other Afro-Asiatic speaking groups (Berber) from North Africa. The R1b-V88 subclade's time of coalescence, range from 9200-5600 KYA, when the migration of Proto-Chadic speakers moved through the Sahara and southwards into the regions where they are spoken now, with the geomorphological evidence also consistent with this view.
🔗Human Y chromosome haplogroup R-V88: a paternal genetic record of early mid Holocene trans-Saharan connections and the spread of Chadic languages | European Journal of Human Genetics (nature.com)
According to Gebremeskel, Eyoab I, and Muntaser E Ibrahim. (2014), the proto-Afro-Asiatic group carrying the E-P2 mutation may have appeared 21 000-32 000 YBP and subsequently gave rise to the different major population groups including current speakers of the Afro-Asiatic languages and pastoralist populations.
🔗Y-chromosome E haplogroups: their distribution and implication to the origin of Afro-Asiatic languages and pastoralism - PubMed (nih.gov)
Dr. Henrey Michael Saint Clair (2020), said the Y-Chromosome evidence instead revealed that: "Long-standing opinion among linguists places the prehistoric origins of Afro-Asiatic languages somewhere in East Africa. This opinion follows the idea that most of the diversification within Afro-Asiatic occurred in Africa. However, Bellwood, based on his interpretation of the archaeological data, suggests that Afro-Asiatic languages initially evolved in Southwest Asia and co-expanded out of this region with the spread of agriculture. Interestingly, linguistic data may also support this model of Afro-Asiatic origins. Using linguistic reconstruction, Militarev presents a proto-Afro-Asiatic lexicon of farming terminology. Based on the reconstructions, he suggests that the Natufians, agriculture and Afro-Asiatic co-evolved in Southwest Asia. Finally, another reason for identifying Southwest Asia as the putative homeland of Afro-Asiatic languages is the Y-chromosome data as presented below in Sections 4 and 5."
🔗Microsoft Word - 001Title Page (genlinginterface.com)
🔗https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356580076_The_Prehistory_of_Language_A_Triangulated_Y-Chromosome-Based_Perspective
In 2023, historical linguist Christopher Ehret cited genetic evidence which had identified East Africa as a source of a genetic marker E-M35/E-M215 a Y-chromosome lineage for a significant population component which likely moved north from that region into Egypt and the Levant. Ehret argued that this genetic distribution paralleled the spread of the Afrasian language family with the movement of people from the Horn of Africa into Egypt, and added a new demic component to the existing population of Egypt around 17,000 years ago.
🔗Ancient Africa: A Global History, to 300 CE - Christopher Ehret - Google Books
Evidence from Human Maternal Markers:
Maca-Meyer, Nicole et al. (2003), in attempting to gauge the origin and spread of the proto-U6 maternal chromosome, which is said to originate over 30,000 years in the Near East, noted that: "The expansion of Caucasians in Africa has been correlated with the spread and diversification of Afroasiatic languages. There are different hypothesis to explain the Afroasiatic origin. For some, it would be the result of a Neolithic demic diffusion from the Near East to Africa. For others, the Afroasiatic originated in Africa and had a posterior demic spread to West Asia. A third possibility is that Afroasiatic languages spread mostly through cultural contacts either from Africa or from Asia. Only demic diffusions could be correlated with U6 expansions detected here. Since an upper bound of 15,000 ya has been estimated for the proto-Afroasiatic origin, it seems that the coalescence age for U6a predates by far the origin of the Afroasiatic phylum. However, the recent spread of U6a1 is more in frame with the emergence of a proto-Afroasiatic language. This U6a1 expansion would favor an East African origin for the Afroasiatic and a posterior expansion to West Africa and West Asia. However, a Near Eastern origin, most probably predating the Neolithic expansion, cannot be ruled out."
🔗Mitochondrial DNA transit between West Asia and North Africa inferred from U6 phylogeography | BMC Genomic Data | Full Text (biomedcentral.com)
A Study by Boattini Alessio et al. (2013) discovered that lineages in Ethiopia, are shared with other Afro-Asiatic speaking populations outside the region, and show shared ancestry with Semitic-speaking groups from Yemen, Egyptians and Chadic-speaking tribes from Central Africa. Due to Berbers and Levantine populations having marginal traces of admixture with Sub-Saharan groups, and having a different mtDNA profile, the researchers considered the hypothesis for a Levantine origin for Afro-Asiatic to be less likely.
🔗mtDNA variation in East Africa unravels the history of afro‐asiatic groups - Boattini - 2013 - American Journal of Physical Anthropology - Wiley Online Library
Evidence from Human Autosomes:
Kitchen, Andrew et al. (2009) in collaboration with Christopher Ehret and other linguists discovered that when using Bayesian computational phylogenetic techniques, the contemporary Ethio-Semitic languages of Africa reflect a single introduction of early Ethio-Semitic from Southern Arabia approximately 2,800 years ago, and that this single introduction of Ethio-Semitic subsequently underwent quick diversification throughout Ethiopia and Eritrea. The Semitic languages would have originated 5750 years ago in the Levant during the Bronze Age, and the statistical data was in support of this model compared to other competing hypothesis.
🔗Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of Semitic languages identifies an Early Bronze Age origin of Semitic in the Near East - PMC (nih.gov)
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| Proposed Homeland of Afroasiatic and Subsequent Back Migration of Semitic |
According to an autosomal DNA research study in 2014 on modern populations, the Afroasiatic languages likely spread across Africa and the Near East by an ancestral population(s) carrying a newly identified "non-African" (Western Eurasian) genetic component, which the researchers dub the "Ethio-Somali" component. This genetic component is most closely related to the "Maghrebi" (peaking in Tunisians) component and is believed to have diverged from other "non-African" ancestries at least 23,000 years ago. The "Ethio-Somali" genetic component is prevalent among modern Afroasiatic-speaking populations, and found at its highest levels among those in the Horn of Africa. On this basis, the researchers suggest that the original Ethio-Somali carrying population(s) probably arrived in the pre-agricultural period (12-23 ka) from the Near East, having crossed over into northeast Africa via the Sinai Peninsula and then split into two, with one branch continuing west across North Africa and the other heading south into the Horn of Africa. They suggest that a descendant population migrated back to the Levant prior to 4000 BCE and developed the Semitic branch of Afroasiatic. Later migration from Arabia into the HOA beginning around 3 ka would explain the origin of the Ethio-Semitic languages at this time.
🔗Early Back-to-Africa Migration into the Horn of Africa - PMC (nih.gov)
*Disclaimer; there is an entry by Somali researcher Awale Ismail (his 🔗YouTube page) about issues with this study, as the "Ethio-Somali" is not really real, and is itself admixed being made-up of Arabian and North African, even if you just look at the lower k=values at 11 and 10, it is not some ~70% Western Eurasian non-African component. You can read the full explanation here: 🔗Anthromadness: "Ethio-Somali" is a farce...
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| PCA Clustering Chart of Modern Human Population Groups |
🔗Human ancestry correlates with language and reveals that race is not an objective genomic classifier - PMC (nih.gov)
In 2017, population genetics writer and researcher Razib Khan gave a simple opinion piece based on the presence of extensive Western Eurasian ancestry in Afro-Asiatic speaking population from Africa and the Near-East, and the nature of select human Y-Chromosome haplotypes found in Afro-Asiatic speakers such as the E1b1b and J markers, both present in substantial degrees. This lead him to hypothesize that the spread of these languages are more likely associated with the older Natufian related cultures of the Levant.
🔗The sons of Ham and Shem – Gene Expression (gnxp.com)
According to a review in 2018 by renown geneticist David Reich, on the origins of human population groups: "New insights are already emerging from ancient DNA, which makes it possible to document ancient migrations between the Near East and North Africa that could have spread languages, culture, and crops. In 2016 and 2017, my laboratory published two papers showing that a shared feature of many East African groups, including ones that do not speak Afroasiatic languages, is that they harbor substantial ancestry from people related to farmers who lived in the Near East around ten thousand years ago. Our work also found strong evidence for a second wave of West Eurasian-related admixture this time with a contribution from Iranian-related farmers as might be expected from a spread from the Near East in the Bronze Age-and showed that this ancestry is widespread in present-day people from Somalia and Ethiopia who speak Afroasiatic languages in the Cushitic sub-family. So the genetic data provide evidence for at least two major waves of north-to-south population movement in the period when Afroasiatic languages were spreading and diversifying, and no evidence of south-to-north migration." However, Reich noted that: "Genes do not determine what language a person speaks and so genetic data cannot by themselves determine how languages spread, and thus cannot provide definitive evidence in favor of one theory or another about whether the ultimate homeland of Afroasiatic languages was sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, Arabia, or the Near East. But there is no question that the genetic data increase the plausibility of a Near Eastern agriculturalist source for at least some Afroasiatic languages, and the genetic findings raise the question of what languages were spoken by these north-to-south migrants."
🔗Who We are and how We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human ... - David Reich (Of Harvard Medical School) - Google Books
In 2019, Prendergast, Mary E and team integrated genome-wide ancient DNA, linguistic, archeological and genetic evidence in a study dealing with 41 new specimens of the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic excavated at the Luxmanda site in Tanzania and other SPN lithic industries in neighboring Kenya, which have historically been associated with migrations of South Cushitic speaking people and the spread of pastoralism. They found that the sampled remains carried a large proportion of ancestry related to the Neolithic Levant and Northern Africa, similar to that borne by modern Afroasiatic-speaking populations inhabiting the Horn of Africa, as well as ancestry related to Sudanese Nilotic speakers. It is also suggested that the ancestral group having a genetic composition similar to Non-African/Levantine populations, may have already been inhabiting general areas of Northeast Africa, and contributed significantly to historical Eastern African populations, represented by the ~5,000 year old Luxmanda individual and other remains. When compared to present day groups, all the Pastoral Neolithic individuals (both the SPN and Elmenteitan material cultures) show the greatest genetic affinity to these Afro-Asiatic speakers, supporting the hypothesis that the initial large-scale expansion of pastoralism in eastern Africa was linked to the spread of Afro-Asiatic languages into the region. This mixed genetic makeup of the migrants into East Africa, was in contrast to the local foragers and other hunter-gatherers, with whom these pastoralists came into contact with.
🔗Ancient DNA Reveals a Multi-Step Spread of the First Herders into Sub-Saharan Africa - PMC (nih.gov)
Later on, as well around the year of 2019, the 🔗YouTube channel Masaman had released charts and videos dealing with the breakdown of the various Afro-Asiatic speakers. This dataset is according to his analysis on the distribution of select components.
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| Map Showing the Spread of Semitic Languages and Iran-like Ancestry |
Related Published Information on Afro-Asiatic Speaking Peoples:
According to John A. Hall and I. C. Jarvie (1992): "Given the modern distribution of Semitic languages over the area in question, which belong to the larger Afro-Asiatic family, it seems appropriate to suggest that these first farmers of the Levant and their Mesolithic predecessors (including the Natufian culture) were speaking a proto-Afro-Asiatic language, and that the spread of mixed farming based largely on cereals, sheep and goats to north Africa took this proto-Afro-Asiatic language with it, from which the modern Berber and Chadic languages would have developed. The dispersal of these farming components would have taken dialects ancestral to the Omotic and Cushitic languages southwards."
🔗Transition to Modernity: Essays on Power, Wealth and Belief - Ernest Gellner - Google Books
Jared Diamond (1997), stated that, "we'll see a rough correspondence between language families and anatomically defined human groups: languages of a given language family tend to be spoken by distinct people. In particular, Afroasiatic speakers mostly prove to be people who would be classified as whites or blacks, Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo speakers prove to be blacks, Khoisan speakers Khoisan, and Austronesian speakers Indonesian. This suggests that languages have tended to evolve along with the people who speak them." He also cited Greenberg who "determined that Semitic languages really form only one of six or more branches of a much larger language family, Afroasiatic, all of whose other branches (and other 222 surviving languages) are confined to Africa. Even the Semitic subfamily itself is mainly African, 12 of its 19 surviving languages being confined to Ethiopia. This suggests that Afroasiatic languages arose in Africa, and that only one branch of them spread to the Near East. Hence it may have been Africa that gave birth to the languages spoken by the authors of the Old and New Testaments and the Koran, the moral pillars of Western civilization."
🔗Jared_Diamond-Guns_Germs_and_Steel.pdf (archive.org)
British linguist Roger Blench (2006), considers Afro-Asiatic to have originated in Southwestern Ethiopia, where its most fragmented branch is present, being the Omotic language. It would have then expanded outwards from there into North Afroasiatic and other branches. Blench noted that questioning the Near-Eastern origins of the language is controversial in the circles of scholars with a Semitic or Egyptological background. He instead took a synthesizing approach by incorporating various data from all other researchers.
🔗Archaeology, Language, and the African Past - R. Blench - Google Books
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| *credit:🔗Expansion of Afro-Asiatic by Wikipedia User Kathovo, Based on Roger Blench The German linguist Winfried Noth (2011) wrote than when trying to reconstruct the remote past of humans, scholars study firstly the material remains of previous times such as genetics, human bones, tools, paintings, etc. and those studies have advanced dramatically over the years, thanks to the latest findings and new interpretations of old findings. He noted that in many cases, linguists, and not anthropologists or archaeologists, were the first who came to correct conclusions on the basis of linguistic reconstructions. Their research later being confirmed by archaeologists, somewhat later and at times independently. On characterizing the Afro-Asiatic languages in relation to the above, he said: "Such was the conclusion that Near Eastern cultures, of the Natufian type, were much older and much more developed than previously thought. Linguists not only reconstructed the lexicon of Natufians, which contained words designating some very sophisticated tools and processes. They also dated it by the 12th millennium BP (= before present). And they showed that Natufians spoke the Afro-Asiatic language just before this language started to disintegrate into daughter languages (Semitic, Cushitic, Chadic, et al.)." Noth continues that the bearers of Afro-Asiatic would have moved 'back to Africa', and the ancestors of Ethiopians spoke a non-Semitic language before adopting Semitic (or Afro-Asiatic). 🔗https://books.google.co.tz/books/about/Origins_of_Semiosis.html?id=Y4_It_sAuMYC&redir_esc=y Vaclav Blazek (2013) a Czech historical linguist goes into the origin and history of the Levant hypothesis and its considerations, as well as the possible associated migrations throughout Africa and the Middle-East. 🔗15 Levant and North Africa: Afroasiatic linguistic history - Blažek - Major Reference Works - Wiley Online Library |
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| The Afro-Asiatic Dispersal as Explained by Vaclav Blazek |
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