Hi Luna,
I have fought with others on here over the Eyle. The claim was that they were Samaales., which, of course, the archaeological record denies.
The same would be true for the Midgan. The Yibir probably don't have the same depth of settlement but certainly preceded the Samaales. Other earlier settlers would include the Shidle, Shabelli, Makaane, Gobuweyn, etc.
I distinguish between Somalis and Samaales. The Samaales are part of a pastoral people, the Berbers (B1b1b), who evolved in the Sahara when that dessert was still a verdant savanna.. They domesticated cattle and later added sheep and goats brought from the Levant.. As the Sahara dried out, these folks moved to the wetter coasts and especially into the Nile valley and surrounding grazing lands. The lower Nile produced Egypt, but the upper Nile produced Kush, which was also a high and very early culture. They mined gold and produced iron very early. But their cities were destroyed by various invaders over time and they were eventually defeated and eclipsed by the rise of Axum, all of which gave rise to migrations. The Southeastern Cushites
were at Namoratunga, west of lake Turkana in Kenya, in 300 BC. The Proto-Sam were probably the first of this group to cross the border into Somalia.
http://countrystudies.us/somalia/3.htm
"The Somalis form a subgroup of the Omo-Tana called Sam. Having split from the main stream of Cushite peoples about the first half of the first millennium B.C., the proto-Sam appear to have spread to the grazing plains of northern Kenya, where protoSam communities seem to have followed the Tana River and to have reached the Indian Ocean coast well before the first century A.D. On the coast, the proto-Sam splintered further; one group (the Boni) remained on the Lamu Archipelago, and the other moved northward to populate southern Somalia. There the group's members eventually developed a mixed economy based on farming and animal husbandry, a mode of life still common in southern Somalia. Members of the proto-Sam who came to occupy the Somali Peninsula were known as the so-called Samaale, or Somaal, a clear reference to the mythical father figure of the main Somali clan-families, whose name gave rise to the term
Somali.
The Samaale again moved farther north in search of water and pasturelands. They swept into the vast Ogaden (Ogaadeen) plains, reaching the southern shore of the Red Sea by the first century A.D. German scholar Bernd Heine, who wrote in the 1970s on early Somali history, observed that the Samaale had occupied the entire Horn of Africa by approximately 100 A.D."
I was a victim of the stories that were told at independence, that the Somalis were Arab/Dir hybrids and spoke a single language. I was taught Mahaa, but sent to a Maay/Boon-speaking area, and then isolated for most of a year. Frankly, it was intellectually uncomfortable and left me in a most confused state.
When I discovered somnet in 2005 I jumped on the chance to research the issues that had bothered me. I also use the topics that are raised as the basis for research. Menace has even put me in contact with friends from the 60's, so I push on.
I am too old now, but it was always my intention to retire to Jilib.