GENETICS Are most of somalis mixed with levantine?

[Shimbiris]

@Shimbiris

What is your take on Omotic being Afro-Asiatic or not? I seriously think those guys are basically a language isolate (Ethiopian hunter-gatherer's language) with a Cushitic substrate.

There is as much linguistic evidence that Omotic is Afro-Asiatic (when excluding all the Cushitic loanwords) as there is evidence that Omotic is Indo-European, LOL.

https://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/iln/LING2110/v07/THEIL+Is+Omotic+Afroasiatic.pdf

A linguist I trust wholeheartedly once explained to me that it is most certainly Afro-Asiatic. Like, there's not even a debate. He went into quite a lot of detail with the technical stuff and it made sense even if some of it went over my head. This Omotic isn't AA stuff is a bunk controversy. It most certainly is. That claim about it you used with IE is nonsensical. Words have nothing to do with language classification. Literally nothing. So much so that Somali can have 99% Arabic vocabulary and still be 100% Cushitic. It is features like the morphology of the language, it's base structure that allows linguists to establish a genetic relationship and in that sense Omotic is firmly AA.

 

[Apollo]

A linguist I trust wholeheartedly once explained to me that it is most certainly Afro-Asiatic. Like, there's not even a debate. He went into quite a lot of detail with the technical stuff and it made sense even if some of it went over my head. This Omotic isn't AA stuff is a bunk controversy. It most certainly is. That claim about it you used with IE is nonsensical. Words have nothing to do with language classification. Literally nothing. So much so that Somali can have 99% Arabic vocabulary and still be 100% Cushitic. It is features like the morphology of the language, it's base structure that allows linguists to establish a genetic relationship and in that sense Omotic is firmly AA.

I will look into more linguistic papers, but I have major doubts.

Their genetics also isn't very supportive either. Their genetics looks predominantly Ethiopian hunter-gatherer, intermediary Ethiopian HG & Cushitic, or finally predominantly Cushitic with a higher than average Ethio HG element. I never see clear evidence of an earlier migration of Afrasians in Ethiopia predating Cushites and linking it to the rest of the AA world.

Once many SW Ethios get uploaded to yfull (from an academic paper most likely) it will be the final verdict. If we don't see anything distinctive then, besides them having the same stuff as Cushites (minus Ethio-HG E1b1a2 / E-M329) then I think the ''not AA'' theory is true.

We shall see.

 

[Shimbiris]

I will look into more linguistic papers, but I have major doubts.

Their genetics also isn't very supportive either. Their genetics looks predominantly Ethiopian hunter-gatherer, intermediary Ethiopian HG & Cushitic, or finally predominantly Cushitic with a higher than average Ethio HG element. I never see clear evidence of an earlier migration of Afrasians in Ethiopia predating Cushites and linking it to the rest of the AA world.

Once many SW Ethios get uploaded to yfull (from an academic paper most likely) it will be the final verdict. If we don't see anything distinctive then, besides them having the same stuff as Cushites (minus Ethio-HG E1b1a2 / E-M329) then I think the ''not AA'' theory is true.

We shall see.

This person once explained what they meant using Maltese:

Vocabulary seriously means nothing for linguistic classification, walaal. It's why I shake my head when I see people using terms like "hybrid language" or "mixed language" because the language has a lot of loans. It means effectively nothing for language families. That's not what we use to classify languages. So yes, you could give Somali 100% English vocabulary and unless you tried to deliberately change its structure as a language, it would still look like an Afro-Asiatic language and in fact still look plainly Cushitic.

There is really no doubt, walaal. And genetics has zero bearing on linguistics. Linguistic issues are chiefly linguistic issues. Once we have the linguistics sorted is when we should observe the genomes and see what interesting details about people migrations and intermixture we can glean. But questions like "Is Omotic AA?" it is absurd to go looking in people's genomes for such answers. If Omotics seem genetically unique within AA and somehow don't fit then that is very interesting indeed but it has no bearing on whether or not Omotic is AA. That is a chiefly linguistic question.

 

[Apollo]

@Shimbiris

I don't trust these cadaans man, cadaanka iska ilaali. They are hyper politically correct. It wouldn't surprise me if they are too cowardly to remove Omotic from AA for PC reasons, lol. Anyhow, I will look into the linguistics side more deeply before saying anymore on this.

 

[Shimbiris]

@Shimbiris

I don't trust these cadaans man, cadaanka iska ilaali. They are hyper politically correct. It wouldn't surprise me if they are too cowardly to remove Omotic from AA for PC reasons, lol. Anyhow, I will look into the linguistics side more deeply before saying anymore on this.

This person was a Yahud who would make fun cadaans 24/7. Besides, I don't care much for their identity or politics. He made a fair point and explained what he meant. It's true. It's all about things like morphology for language families. It has nothing to do with vocabulary. This is plain facts, walaal. And one shouldn't even be discussing linguistic subjects if they don't realize this. Omotic, as far as I know, is AA in terms of things like morphology. It can have 99% NS vocabulary for all it matters. Cushitic loans have zero bearing on its classification.

 

[Mujahid Nur Marehan]

Maybe proto Afro Asiatic is much older than we assume, perhaps around 30 thousand years ago.

 

[Apollo]

Maybe proto Afro Asiatic is much older than we assume, perhaps around 30 thousand years ago.

No, it is likely Neolithic or just before the Neolithic. No more than 15K ya.

 

[The alchemist]

Nice post,

By the way, I now believe Omotic is NOT Afro-Asiatic, it is in my opinion mostly an Ethiopian hunter-gatherer language family with Cushitic linguistic influence but its base is a language isolate.

Glottolog (a prominent linguistics website) doesn't list them as Afro-Asiatic.

https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/afro1255

Lol, fun fact: Chadic has more Afro-Asiatic linguistic features than Cushitic. Chadic and Semitic have the most pan-Afro-Asiatic linguistic features.

A better model, in my opinion, is Omotic is the earliest diverged primary branch of Afro Asiatic. Later, Omotic speakers moving into the Horn genetically mixing with the autochthonous foragers of the region experienced linguistic biases from hunter-gatherer languages. This is in concordance with the majority position, that Omotic is, without doubt, an Afro Asiatic formative that traces it from a linguistic genetic inheritance and not morphed out of a complex diffusion.

If you can look at where they try to shortly explain why they left Omotic out of the list of branches in Afro-Asiatic, they cited several linguists that carry specific uniform ideas -- sub-literature cliques that site each other works often. Why the Glotolog website did not site heterogeneous sources, but only repeated works of a few linguists, lies with the aim, intent, and personal positions of creators of the site. This is to give a definite unquestionable stance to propagate than provide an educational stance into an area of inquiry that is highly understudied.

The real dispute is with the internal characteristics of the branch. Omotic as we know it today has several sub-groups of which some groups of languages have different degrees of relatedness to Afro-Asiatic. In this way, you would have a stronger leg to stand on by arguing for, let us say, that Aaroid is not Afro-Asiatic, possibly shoehorn the unity of all the pieces within the family to not be classificatory valid to be included into the branch instead of claiming that Omotic is not Afro-Asiatic. But then again, I do not know if I believe this either to be the case.

I will say that people that often have issues with this Omotic stance are usually individuals who previously considered Omotic to be some form of Cushitic, or associated it with Nilo-Saharan intricacies. As an example, a certain linguist went back and forth and ultimately divided Omotic into two sub-groups, one West Cushitic, and the Aaroid as a separate Cushitic lineage. This makes sense from that point of view because they are set in a certain perspective that follows from that assumption. I believe that assumption to be invalid, to begin with.

I knew some languages like Arabic had greater retention of older Semitic words, i.e., less innovation than Hebrew but I don't know the specific nature of this. One thing I want to mention in this regard with Chadic and Cushitic; Cushitic is older than Chadic by a couple of millennia. Proto-Beja is around the age of Chadic, so I think from the age differences alone have a say in this in some ways.

 

[The alchemist]

Cushites and Nilo-Saharans have seemingly been intermingling since the beginning or almost since the beginning. There is evidence of contact going back about 8,500 years:



There is some reason to believe Waaqism has some roots in contact with Nilo-Saharans:



That's contact from before our ancestors even started appearing in the Horn around 5,000 years ago. Well before. And at a time when North-Cushitic and Proto-Agaw-East-South were just somewhat split. And it's important to notice that the main distinction between Cushites and other Afro-Asiatics is pronounced AEA (Ancestral East African)/ proto-Nilotic ancestry and then the only non-AA element we see any evidence of Cushites making extensive contact with is mostly NS which does it make it quite likely that the people we got all this extra Proto-Nilotic and A-M13 from were actual NS speakers.

My personal thinking is that NS speakers were probably always quite dominant in places like Upper Nubia and western Sudan whereas Cushites were always quite predominant along Lower Nubia and the Red Sea hills though there was most likely a lot of overlap like there has been over the last few thousand years, especially along the Nile. A sort of mirror image of each other:

The Cushitic urheimat basically seems to be Lower Nubia, the Eastern Desert, the Red Sea Hills and northern Eritrea from what I can surmise.

I do not disagree with your statement here. It's only that your particularities do not really negate my random hypothesis from above. Like the relations between NS and Cushitic speakers from the data can be proven. Since we do not have data or evidence from any other language, there is no way to disprove basically since it doesn't contradict the information we have. It is of course highly tentative from the perspective of scientific proof, but the probability skyrockets when you go far back as the times we are talking about. It's actually not a wild idea, lol.

We draw our assumptions from what we know, and what we know or can reasonably believe to be the case, is based on the limits of informative opportunities that we stream through various disciplinary methodologies and traditions. But the mapping is not complete and there is room to speculate a whole lot more as long as it does not contradict the facts that we have to be consistent with and let our assumptions be challenged now and then. And we have to recognize that our safe assumptions based on the traditions and methodologies always carry some level of tentative overreach in narrative creations that do not always have a strong factual basis across the board.

 

[Shimbiris]

I do not disagree with your statement here. It's only that your particularities do not really negate my random hypothesis from above. Like the relations between NS and Cushitic speakers from the data can be proven. Since we do not have data or evidence from any other language, there is no way to disprove basically since it doesn't contradict the information we have. It is of course highly tentative from the perspective of scientific proof, but the probability skyrockets when you go far back as the times we are talking about. It's actually not a wild idea, lol.

We draw our assumptions from what we know, and what we know or can reasonably believe to be the case, is based on the limits of informative opportunities that we stream through various disciplinary methodologies and traditions. But the mapping is not complete and there is room to speculate a whole lot more as long as it does not contradict the facts that we have to be consistent with and let our assumptions be challenged now and then. And we have to recognize that our safe assumptions based on the traditions and methodologies always carry some level of tentative overreach in narrative creations that do not always have a strong factual basis across the board.

Absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence. I feel you. Also, one thing to keep in mind is that Hunter-Gatherers are hotbeds for diversity:

And Aborigines are not unique in this. It is largely agriculturalists, especially pastoral and agropastoral ones, who push this homogenization of languages and even Y-DNA and sometimes mtDNA (matrilineal groups). HGs tend to foster a lot of linguistic, Y-DNA, mtDNA and even autosomal diversity (small population sizes boost genetic drift). There were probably COUNTLESS isolates across the Middle East and Northeast Africa during the Epipaleolithic. Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan are just lucky winners that got heavily spread by successful pastoralists after the Neolithic revolution.

 

[tariq moses]

Their genetics also isn't very supportive either. Their genetics looks predominantly Ethiopian hunter-gatherer, intermediary Ethiopian HG & Cushitic, or finally predominantly Cushitic with a higher than average Ethio HG element. I never see clear evidence of an earlier migration of Afrasians in Ethiopia predating Cushites and linking it to the rest of the AA world.

E3b is native to the Horn of Africa, the autosomal signature associated with it would be largerly Eurasian related, and likely native to North Africa. Due to climatic reasons, North Africans took refuge in the Horn, in which they could have mixed with Mota/Omotic types, then they migrated back to Egypt, and probably spoke a pre-proto Afro Asiatic language. Taforalt and the Natufians both expericend migration from Egypt and they both carried Mota/Hadza related ancestry.

 

[Apollo]

E3b is native to the Horn of Africa, the autosomal signature associated with it would be largerly Eurasian related, and likely native to North Africa. Due to climatic reasons, North Africans took refuge in the Horn, in which they could have mixed with Mota/Omotic types, then they migrated back to Egypt, and probably spoke a pre-proto Afro Asiatic language. Taforalt and the Natufians both expericend migration from Egypt and they both carried Mota/Hadza related ancestry.

E3b, what is this 2002? There is a 22,000 year gap between E-M35 and E-M78. E-M78 in the Horn derives from the pre-Neolithic Maghreb and is not from the Horn of Africa. It is a closed case with the finding of the Taforalt samples who emerged precisely around the TMRCA of E-M78. You can't get any closer than that with an ancient lineage.

There is also no evidence that the E1b1b1 lineages found in Berbers or the one in Natufians came recently from the Horn of Africa around the time of the mergence of proto-Afro-Asiatic (~15K YA). Their lineages could have been in Northern Africa for over 30,000 years and have zero ties to Omotic lineages.

Most likely all the E1b1b1 (E-M35) subtypes found in Southwest Ethiopians will be derived either from Cushites or Ethiosemities with no real sign of an older group. There are even Omotic groups with high J1 from Ethiosemites. J1 in Oromos is already shown to be from Ethiosemites and not from Cushites (see this).

The only legit uncontested Omotic lineage is E1b1a2 (E-M329) and that one is not connected to the Afro-Asiatic language family and is only found in Ethiopians and outlier Afro-Arabs, but not in normal Arabs.

I lean towards Omotic not being Afro-Asiatic for now. I will read some more linguistic papers on this topic.

 

[Shimbiris]

I lean towards Omotic not being Afro-Asiatic for now. I will read some more linguistic papers on this topic.

I urge you to cease this, ayrbooowe, and stick to solving linguistic issues with linguistics chiefly and not genetics but I cosign the rest.

 

[Apollo]

I urge you to cease this, ayrbooowe, and stick to solving linguistic issues with linguistics chiefly and not genetics but I cosign the rest.

I am leaning 80% towards this case. I haven't seen anything unique about these guys. All I see is Cushitic and Ethiopian hunter-gatherer, no signs of older shit.

 

[Apollo]

@Shimbiris

Only E-M34 / E-M123 is a potential lineage Omotic groups can form a unique pre-Cushitic lineage on that connects them with the rest of the Afro-Asiatic world, but I am expecting all Southwest Ethiopians with E-M34 / E-M123 to end up being a subset of the diversity within Habeshas just like the J1 in Southwest Ethios.

 

[Shimbiris]

I am leaning 80% towards this case. I haven't seen anything unique about these guys. All I see is Cushitic and Ethiopian hunter-gatherer, no signs of older shit.

I don't disagree with you that, genetically, Omotics just seem Cushitic/Ethiosemitic admixed. In fact, you can quite decently model Aris as a two-way between Somalis and Mota for the most part:

(model included Mota, Somalis, Tigrinyas and Dinkas)​

E-M35 and J1 lineages among them I would wager are also all Cushitic and Ethiosemitic mediated but this is just interesting, really. It says nothing about the linguistic issues. Omotic being Afro-Asiatic is a linguistic matter and in that case it does seem to be so. Why Omotics don't seem congruent with other AAs genetically is a matter that is for us to figure out after knowing this.

@The alchemist is also correct that Omotic is basically the earliest cut-off within Afro-Asiatic. The way I understand the latest structuring as that linguist told me is that AA looks like this:

Omotic seems to have cut off the earliest by quite a bit so that may account for the complete genetic break.

 

[tariq moses]

E3b, what is this 2002? There is a 22,000 year gap between E-M35 and E-M78. E-M78 in the Horn derives from the pre-Neolithic Maghreb and is not from the Horn of Africa. It is a closed case with the finding of the Taforalt samples who emerged precisely around the TMRCA of E-M78. You can't get any closer than that with an ancient lineage.

I never said E-M78 is from the Horn of Africa, IMO it is Egyptian and would have been introduced into the Horn during the Neolithic. I said E-M215/E-M35 originated in the Horn of Africa but that population itself would have been genetically North African.
This model below makes the most sense IMO.

There is also no evidence that the E1b1b1 lineages found in Berbers or the one in Natufians came recently from the Horn of Africa around the time of the mergence of proto-Afro-Asiatic (~15K YA). Their lineages could have been in Northern Africa for over 30,000 years and have zero ties to Omotic lineages.

E1b1b1 lineages in Taforalt/Natufians would have come from Egypt, but that population would have come from the Horn of Africa, who in turn, would have come from MSA Egypt, there were bidirectional migrations between the Horn and Egypt. The core ancestry of that population would have been native to North Africa.

There is Egyptian ancestry in both the Natufians and Taforalt, they also share Omotic/Hadza/Mota related ancestry, so whilst these Egyptians took refuge in the Horn they mixed with those people and spread Mota related ancestry in the Levant and Taforalt. I don't think that population would have spoke Afro Asiatic but maybe pre-proto Afro-Asiatic, something ancestral to Afro Asiatic. I predict proto-Afro asiatic speakers would be predominantly Natufian/Taforalt related and/or rich in Basal Eurasian with some Mota/Hadza related ancestry and maybe some Dinka. BTW, idk much about Afro Asiatic from a linguistic standpoint, I think Omotic is Afro Asiatic purely because it fits with genetics and it seems to be the general consensus among scholars, I'm just addressing the points you raised regarding genetics.

I never see clear evidence of an earlier migration of Afrasians in Ethiopia predating Cushites and linking it to the rest of the AA world.

Mota carried little to no Neanderthal, but can be modelled as part Natufian related, this could represent a pre-neolithic migration from Egypt. If it was during the neolithic than they would show some appreciable neanderthal ancestry, but they don't.

"Helwan lunates are extremely rare, and given their particular hafting technique, one may wonder if these were not borrowed from other, older or contemporary assemblages. Interestingly, in southern Sinai, the assemblages of the Abu Madi I site (Bar-Yosef 1985), dated to ca. 9,600-8,300 cal BC, contain el-Khiam and tanged points, as well as small rods (bipolar retouched, narrow, double pointed microliths) and a few Helwan lunates. It seems that a site that lies some 150-250 km south of any Natufian sites including those on both sides of the Jordan Rift valley retained an old tradition. Abu Madi I is also far away from the original localities at Helwan, where a couple of dozens of Helwan lunates were found in the detailed survey carried out by F. Debono in the 1930s (Schmidt 1996 and references therein)."

"To this we should also add the undated context of obsidian Helwan lunates in an assemblage retrieved in Dahlak island (Eritrea) in the Red Sea some 1,800 km south of the Nile delta (Blanc 1952). By comparison to studied shell middens with lunates, the dates at Dahlak may range from ca. 6,800 to 6,000 cal BC (Bar Yosef Mayer and Beyin 2009)."

This attests to migration/contact between the Horn and Egypt, just before the Neolithic, which definitely predates Cushites in the Horn and could represent a source of ancestry for Mota/Omotic types.

 

[Apollo]

I never said E-M78 is from the Horn of Africa, IMO it is Egyptian and would have been introduced into the Horn during the Neolithic. I said E-M215/E-M35 originated in the Horn of Africa but that population itself would have been genetically North African.
This model below makes the most sense IMO.

E-M78 is not Egyptian and that map is outdated and wrong.

E-M78 is from the Maghreb. This finding is set in stone due to finding ancient genomes literally a generation or two removed from when the E-M78 mutation occured.

As for E-M293, the lineage of the South Cushites is not from Paleolithic SW Ethiopia and then directly moved from there to Southeast Africa. It is from the Red Sea region. Moreover, the Ancient South Cushites have been genetically sequenced and show major differences compared to the Paleolithic Ethiopians such as Mota. They were a different population and likely came from very different areas.

Judging by your previous usage of E3b and now this oudated map, it looks like your knowledge of anthropology is 20 years stuck in the past.

E1b1b1 lineages in Taforalt/Natufians would have come from Egypt, but that population would have come from the Horn of Africa, who in turn, would have come from MSA Egypt, there were bidirectional migrations between the Horn and Egypt. The core ancestry of that population would have been native to North Africa.

There is Egyptian ancestry in both the Natufians and Taforalt, they also share Omotic/Hadza/Mota related ancestry, so whilst these Egyptians took refuge in the Horn they mixed with those people and spread Mota related ancestry in the Levant and Taforalt. I don't think that population would have spoke Afro Asiatic but maybe pre-proto Afro-Asiatic, something ancestral to Afro Asiatic. I predict proto-Afro asiatic speakers would be predominantly Natufian/Taforalt related and/or rich in Basal Eurasian with some Mota/Hadza related ancestry and maybe some Dinka. BTW, idk much about Afro Asiatic from a linguistic standpoint, I think Omotic is Afro Asiatic purely because it fits with genetics and it seems to be the general consensus among scholars, I'm just addressing the points you raised regarding genetics.

Again, there is no evidence for this.

The Hadza do not even have haplogroup E natively. Their original lineage is haplogroup B. You will not find any haplogroup E in ancient genomes from pre-Cushitic HGs of Tanzania. All the E they have is either recently from Cushites (mainly E-M293 -people like the Datooga nearby) or Bantus (mainly E-M2).

As for Omotic people, they are not ancestral/basal to North African Afro-Asiatic people. The only undisputed Omotic lineage is E1b1a2 (E-M329) and that one is not related to other AA lineages for 40,000 years and is not relevant to the Afro-Asiatic language family whatsoever.

Lastly, the Taforalt do not have Omotic ancestry proper. Their SSA-like ancestry is called Ancestral North African and isn't related to East Africans for literally tens of thousands of years. Even in K= autosomal studies, it quickly dissipates the moment the K is cranked up just slightly higher.

For Omotic being Afro-Asiatic.. the genetic evidence isn't there and the linguistic evidence is disputed (excluding Cushitic influence, both genetically and linguistically).

 

[Apollo]

By the way, I have no racial motivations for not accepting Omotic as Afro-Asiatic. I fully accept Chadic as Afro-Asiatic and they are linguistically even more Afro-Asiatic than Cushitic (due to linguistic conservatism). Chadic groups are much more SSA than Omotic groups on the whole. So this is not the reason. I have my doubts for other reasons (uniparentals, archeology, and linguistic disputes).

Finally, it would be cool to have a language isolate in the Horn of Africa that possible could have been spoken there since the paleolithic and isn't a neolithic transplant.

 

[The alchemist]

I don't disagree with you that, genetically, Omotics just seem Cushitic/Ethiosemitic admixed. In fact, you can quite decently model Aris as a two-way between Somalis and Mota for the most part:

(model included Mota, Somalis, Tigrinyas and Dinkas)​

E-M35 and J1 lineages among them I would wager are also all Cushitic and Ethiosemitic mediated but this is just interesting, really. It says nothing about the linguistic issues. Omotic being Afro-Asiatic is a linguistic matter and in that case it does seem to be so. Why Omotics don't seem congruent with other AAs genetically is a matter that is for us to figure out after knowing this.

@The alchemist is also correct that Omotic is basically the earliest cut-off within Afro-Asiatic. The way I understand the latest structuring as that linguist told me is that AA looks like this:

Omotic seems to have cut off the earliest by quite a bit so that may account for the complete genetic break.

Since it is an early break-off, can there be explanatory room for ETH_4500BP to be Omotic speakers that expirenced dilution? Can he not autosomally be modeled as partial intermediate with Iberomaurusian/ANA type ancestry? The particular sample takes up non-SSA elements in Vahaduo. I know the smart narrative is the forager lineage shares genetic drift with the Out Of Africa population, which explains the affinity for non-Africans relative to other SSA populations but is that really all to it?

The Natufian sample (not contam) has Ethiopian hunter-gatherer ancestry separate from the Taforalt-like portion. This within reason can be a Taforalt-like element that spills over, but then we have to contend with the fact that there is something similar that the tool can't even ascertain. Can this be evidence of a cline? Either way, some interesting movements of people happened in either direction in Northeast Africa at some point.