Somali twitter vs Spanish archaeologist

[Chaseyourdreamzz]

Somali twitter is cooking him
@Idilinaa @Step a side

 

[Chaseyourdreamzz]

He’s getting cooked in these quotes

This is why we need Somali archaeologists
@Keep it a boqol @Shimbiris

 

[Aurelian]

He’s getting cooked in these quotes

This is why we need Somali archaeologists

Then why use Indians in there? Where the people who lived in india 2000 years ago called themselves indians ?

 

[caanoshaah]

Then why use Indians in there? Where the people who lived in india 2000 years ago called themselves indians ?

LITERALLY thank you for saying this cuz i was going to cuss him TF out over this. thanks for being earlier than me cuz i was going to go off omfg.

It’s the way somali is a SPECIFIC ethnic group with one language and culture, we can trace our ancestors back god knows how many centuries. And “Indian” is a nationality (with THOUSANDS of ethnic groups), and that nationality came into existence in fucking 1947. How is it okay to say “Indians” and not Somalis….?

He needs to get beat, simple

 

[Aurelian]

LITERALLY thank you for saying this cuz i was going to cuss him TF out over this. thanks for being earlier than me cuz i was going to go off omfg.

It’s the way somali is a SPECIFIC ethnic group with one language and culture, we can trace our ancestors back god knows how many centuries. And “Indian” is a nationality (with THOUSANDS of ethnic groups), and that nationality came into existence in fucking 1947. How is it okay to say “Indians” and not Somalis….?

He needs to get beat, simple

There is a name for the ancestors of Somalis; proto-Somalis, it is a term widely used in academia.

 

[𐒁𐒚𐒒𐒂𐒘𐒂𐒗 𐒎𐒚𐒗𐒗𐒒]

I am at a loss for words out of rage, but also, yet another example of the sellouts/gullible people back home who are exploited in their own faces.

 

[Idilinaa]

@The alchemist wrote scathing critics against them, he continues to stands corrected. Even with the way they employ this whole ''nomad'' characterization in regards to pastoralists who also engage in trade which is incredibly reductive and dimorphic. They even use it to form perceptions of ethnic diversity that isn't real.

I encourage yall to read the whole post how he expertly explains it, it was too long to copy due to word limit, it gives you a way to look at the glaring flaws in that thread.
]https://www.somalispot.com/threads/the-somalis-and-the-camel-a-historic-economic-development-toward-islamic-period.171239/page-3#post-4131182

The bottom line is, that the dimorphic intuition people have about this is why we have this massive misunderstanding and quite frankly the pejoratives and reductive associations people make. For example, this was an abstract on the history of pastoralism in the Near East debunking a lot of the unfounded stereotypes:

"In this paper, we present a history of pastoralism in the ancient Near East from the Neolithic through the Bronze Age. We describe the accretional development of pas‑ toral technologies over eight millennia, including the productive breeding of domes‑ tic sheep, goats, and cattle in the early Neolithic and the subsequent domestication of animals used primarily for labor—donkeys, horses, and fnally camels—as well as the frst appearance of husbandry strategies such as penning, foddering, pastur‑ ing, young male culling, and dairy production. Despite frequent references in the literature to prehistoric pastoral nomads, pastoralism in Southwest Asia was strongly associated with sedentary communities that practiced intensive plant cultivation and was largely local in nature. There is very little evidence in prehistoric and early his‑ toric Southwest Asia to support the notion of a “dimorphic society” characterized by separate and specialized agriculturists and mobile pastoralists. Although mobile herders were present in the steppe regions of Syria by the early second millennium BC, mobile pastoralism was the exception rather than the rule at that time; its “iden‑ tifcation” in the archaeological record frequently derives from the application of anachronistic ethnographic analogy. We conclude that pastoralism was a diverse, fexible, and dynamic adaptation in the ancient Near East and call for a reinvigorated and empirically based archaeology of pastoralism in Southwest Asia."

And we have to dispel such notions otherwise we will always have these quite ridiculous titles:

"TOWNS IN A SEA OF NOMADS: TERRITORY AND TRADE IN MEDIEVAL SOMALILAND"

"Nomads Trading With Empires."

"The common ground: islam, nomads and ruban dwellers..."

The word nomad has consequential connotations. The authors of those titles often tried to form an ethnic diversity as an interpretation from the already wrong assumptions of this highly nomad dimorphic pigenholding of uncharacteristic and unfounded proportions. The Somalis were clearly "nomads" to the authors, and nomads were, in fact, baseline and could not muster anything more than meat and perhaps middle-men roles, and thus the settled people were either foreigners or foreign-influenced Somalis that divorced themselves from the "nomads," socio-culturally perhaps more strongly associated with foreigners than the nomad "periphery."

I have read a lot of such literature by archeologists that write this:

"It is also unclear who were, ethnically speaking, the inhabitants of these permanent sites, as the Somali cited in Arab texts are considered nomadic groups and differentiated from the inhabitants of the Barr Saʿd al-Dīn Sultanate, even if in some cases they shared the same territory"

Mind you, these are in Somaliland... You see, the incompetence and frankly lazy stereotyping that perhaps stems from racial bias have characterized our historical interpretation to the degree that it disassociates Somalis from Somali history itself because of this damned nomadic term and its idiotic assumptions.

So, I would suggest to all of you guys to stop using the term "nomads" or "nomadic" unless you precisely qualify what you mean and emphasize that nomadism was actually never really a thing we practiced in its irregular and constant mobile nature disassociative condition. We were agro-pastoralists, mobile pastoralists, where pastoralism has wide complexities (read the literature) that changed throughout history, and trade and centralization and various forms of cluster nucleouses we consider settled areas was always a feature of this in the macro-scale as an internal process, i.e., this nomad, settler divide was actually unfounded. You had the same tribes that simultaneously lived in settled areas, did seasonal transhumance, traded, did seafaring, farmed and interacted with every part of this complex economic chain and they were not only Somalis but often the same tribes. At the same time, there were several tribes and all of those overlapped in these formations. Sometimes you might have a centralized conception coming out of this, although that is not what causes complexity as the system was always this complex, and you have several nodes of heterarchical centralizations that make up a whole, and fragmentations are not isolated parts but merely aspect of the nature of the whole. This can muster something that draws upon several cultural, traditional homogenizing superimposed qualities across these wide regions and power accumulating for ideology without the paradigm of gradual centralized state development. In a very unique way, that mess is a whole system that can easily be considered a macro-central horizon that has its function complexified in more parts where the philosophy of institutions is very different from how a village of farmers grows into a state simply through inequality.

An important part

All the Nubian cultures were agro-pastoral-trade oriented in complex variations and thus you could have Kerma that essentially saw itself as pastoral first and foremost in ideology, engaging in a mixed economy and also supporting not second-stage, but regional super-power status of that time.

Nomads in the true sense are not transhumant pastoralists or agro-pastoral complex peoples. Neither us nor the Nubians were nomadic in its irregular meaning and I have read a study that fleshed out that the nomadic part usually is atypical.

"Archaeologists and historians have frequently confated pastoralism with nomadism and kin-based tribal societies (see Khazanov 1984; Meadow 1992). Further, archaeologists frequently use “pastoralists” narrowly to refer to communities that rely on herd animals for the majority of their subsistence and practice little or no agriculture, or to mobile populations seen as distinctive and separate from settled farmer neighbors (Chang 2015; Dyson-Hudson and DysonHudson 1980). These usages are problematic since pastoralism can take many forms and be afected by many variables that often fuctuate within and between generations (Salzman 2004)."

"More recently, Bernbeck (2013) has pushed against widespread assumptions about Halaf mobility. Instead of representing a dimorphic, nomad-herder versus sed‑ entary-farmer dichotomy, he instead sees Halaf communities as representing “modu‑ lar, multi-sited communities” (Bernbeck 2013, p. 51) engaged in mixed agropastoral practices. In this view, the shifting stratigraphy of many Halaf sites represents an intermediate scale of mobility, comparable to swidden farming, in which modular residential units (e.g., households) moved in multiyear cycles."

 

[Rayaale]

He’s getting cooked in these quotes

This is why we need Somali archaeologists
@Keep it a boqol @Shimbiris

He gives credit to outsiders and calls Somalis as Africans, why did he separate Arabs,Indians and Persians and not call them Asians

 

[Idilinaa]

He gives credit to outsiders and calls Somalis as Africans, why did he separate Arabs,Indians and Persians and not call them Asians

What's ironic is that, for Somalis there is direct genetic, linguistic continuity that we covered that part of the peninsula more than 3-2000 years ago compared with other groups that he mentioned. There is higher degree of unification as well.

There isn't much, if any evidence of ethnic plurality. I am sure @The alchemist can explain it better than i could hope to do.

But you can read this:

This is not true. They had an ethnic conception because in anthropology you are an ethnic group if you consider a set of clans in-group and the rest out-group. By genetic fact alone, Somalis constantly "intra" mixed but strictly did not mix with the rest. People back then spoke the same language dialect, had the same genes, and were even much closer in the Y-DNA front because of less differentiation. Etc. And all this was possible because they were not some fragmented groups living away from each other but part of a pretty excessive network of the ancient agro-pastoral-trading economy. If it was as you described, we would see higher noticeable structuralism and evidence of cross-mixing between several groups in the genetic data of several signatures that we would be able to pick out, and our genetics today would seem like a damn tapestry of sub-signature of marked regional variation rather than homogenized.

Anyway, I would appreciate it if you took this particular conversation somewhere else if you want to expand upon it because it will deviate from the topic of the thread into a topic that already carries demonstrable answers. And I have already written extensive posts with a lot of scientific and anthropological proof to back them up. Somalis had a continuity that went beyond 2000 years ago despite not calling themselves "Somalis," emphasized by the brute facts that prove the people of the region considered themselves as the same group.

I explained before that our geography just made us into these highly interconnected people that were binded to eachother over vast lands and trade networks. So we maintained a constant unified ethnic identity due to the cultural and linguistic uniformity created by that constant integration and interaction.

Connectivity:

Somalia is characterized mostly by flatter gently rolling terrains like plains and plateaus which facilitate easier movement of people, goods, and ideas. This promotes greater interaction and integration among communities, leading to more cultural and linguistic uniformity over time. Somalis were in constant communication and contact with eachother over vast land and distances as much as we were also in constant contact with the world outside our lands. It not only resulted in creation trade networks but also familial bonds.

Whereas other Africans are separated from each-others by mountains, sahara desert, savannahs or thick forests, creating severe geographical boundaries where people develop distinct linguistic and culture differences in isolation. So it inhibited connection building, sharing of resources, technology , ideas etc
This is why Africans prior to the Arrival of Europeans were bunch of seperate isolated tribes and are broken into many different languages. They had very little to no contact with the outside world as well.

Therefore they have been the most insulated people from the rest of the human races and isolated people have always lagged behind the rest.

 

[rin]

the only people who should be allowed to dig from now on should be Somalis. They'll loot and steal and then change our history to claim ownership of it.

 

[Idilinaa]

The first reference of the ethnic name Somali dates back to the late middle ages(15th-16th), in various local chronicles and since then Somali scholars and local leaders have been referring to their homeland as Al-Sumaliyah and bore the nisba Al-Sumal well before they had any contact with Italians or colonialists. And Arabs and Muslim outsiders called it Bar-Sumal (The land inhabited by Somalis).

My apologies it didn't really see this. You see Somali religious scholars throughout the 1800s referring to their homeland and country to outsiders as Al-Soomaliyah, not unlike how Arabs referred to their land as Arabiyaah and Sudan calling their Al-Sudaniyah and Magreb as Magbrebiyah

He refers to the land as Al-Soomaliyah collectively.

So the name isn't a colonial one, Somaliland is a colonial name but not Somalia.

The name Somaliland is a colonial imperialist rendering but the name Somalia is not.

 

[Midas]

"Southern ethiopians were trading in northern somalia" is such a wild take it through me for a loop.

 

[Midas]

What's ironic is that, for Somalis there is direct genetic, linguistic continuity that we covered that part of the peninsula more than 3-2000 years ago compared with other groups that he mentioned. There is higher degree of unification as well.

There isn't much, if any evidence of ethnic plurality. I am sure @The alchemist can explain it better than i could hope to do.

But you can read this:


I explained before that our geography just made us into these highly interconnected people that were binded to eachother over vast lands and trade networks. So we maintained a constant unified ethnic identity due to the cultural and linguistic uniformity created by that constant integration and interaction.

Sadly it seems that this narrative of "somalis as just nomads" has been imbibe by basically everybody both in the diaspora and back home. Probably becuase of the social status of this idea being connected with "geel jire" it's an incredibly corrosive one though.

 

[NidarNidar]

He’s getting cooked in these quotes

This is why we need Somali archaeologists
@Keep it a boqol @Shimbiris

Thanks for posting this, I died laughing, dude getting roasted.

 

[TheManWhoIsAlive]

This isn't anything new. A lot of people nowadays want to erase Somali history because they don't want to have people believing Somalis built these cities.

I've seen Reer Xamar people claiming to have founded Mogadishu, even though they didn't exist as a people when the city was founded. They're Swahili people from Kilwa who as merchants moved to Mogadishu.

We have Oromos who are continuing the tried and true tradition of going to a country in the Horn, acting like they're the people, and then claiming it's Oromo land. A delusion take for delusional people.

And now we have Europeans who want to deny that Somalis were the traders, despite the fact that historians from ancient history confirmed they were.

None of this surprises me. They found a mummified baboon in Eritrea and concluded the Land of Punt was there, despite there being baboons in Somalia. A civilization based on maritime trade, and it's definitely the people who didn't built many ancient coastal city states. It definitely can't be the Somalis, who had the most coastal city states in the Horn at the time.

We have Kenyan Bantu people claiming Somalis aren't native to any part of Kenya, despite the fact that we were there before they even reached East Africa. This is scientifically proven. They claim that the Bantu expansion is a colonial idea, despite genetic archeological evidence showing a Cushitic people who lived in the lands thousands of years ago with genetics indistinguishable from modern Somalis.

These delusional takes and exploits to erase Somali history will continue.

 

[Midas]

This isn't anything new. A lot of people nowadays want to erase Somali history because they don't want to have people believing Somalis built these cities.

I've seen Reer Xamar people claiming to have founded Mogadishu, even though they didn't exist as a people when the city was founded. They're Swahili people from Kilwa who as merchants moved to Mogadishu.

We have Oromos who are continuing the tried and true tradition of going to a country in the Horn, acting like they're the people, and then claiming it's Oromo land. A delusion take for delusional people.

And now we have Europeans who want to deny that Somalis were the traders, despite the fact that historians from ancient history confirmed they were.

None of this surprises me. They found a mummified baboon in Eritrea and concluded the Land of Punt was there, despite there being baboons in Somalia. A civilization based on maritime trade, and it's definitely the people who didn't built many ancient coastal city states. It definitely can't be the Somalis, who had the most coastal city states in the Horn at the time.

We have Kenyan Bantu people claiming Somalis aren't native to any part of Kenya, despite the fact that we were there before they even reached East Africa. This is scientifically proven. They claim that the Bantu expansion is a colonial idea, despite genetic archeological evidence showing a Cushitic people who lived in the lands thousands of years ago with genetics indistinguishable from modern Somalis.

These delusional takes and exploits to erase Somali history will continue.

We even have somali scholars taking part in this. Like moahmed haji mukhatr. If you listen to his lecture for the library of congress. The pseudohistory he peddles is astounding

 

[Idilinaa]

Sadly it seems that this narrative of "somalis as just nomads" has been imbibe by basically everybody both in the diaspora and back home. Probably becuase of the social status of this idea being connected with "geel jire" it's an incredibly corrosive one though.

What further complicates it is that we don't have a word ''Nomad" in our language. Geeljire just means camel herder. Which is also reductive to employ to the whole group because Somalis kept donkeys, horses, sheep/goats and cows in large numbers not just camels.

In Somali we also have names like Reer Miyi(countryside people) and Reer Magaal(Towns people), that shows the duality between the rural v urban life. Then we have various occupational names Reer Qooto/Qudaal & Beerley for farmer and/or Reer Maanyo/Jaaji for fishermen. We call Sailors , Badmaax. We have minor occupational names like Tumaal(Blacksmith), Haragsade(leatherworker), Najar(carpenter) etc

Somalis engaged in diverse economic activities and it's shows in our language. Another thing that further complicates it is when they don't realize that pastoralism fueled farming, trade and industries. Livestock provided raw materials that were essential for urban industries and crafts.

Cattle, camels, sheep, and goats) produced high-quality hides used in leatherworking. Somali tanneries processed raw hides into leather for shoes, saddles, bags, shields, and armor. Somali leather was highly valued and was exported.

Wool & Textiles even, Sheep provided wool, which was spun into yarn and woven into blankets, rugs, and clothing. Goat fur was used to for tent-making, carpets, and ropes.

Boiled animal parts were used to produce glue for construction, textiles, and weapon-making.

Pelt & Fur Trade, Animal pelts (especially sheep and goat skins) was used for upholstery, and trading purposes. Fur was a valuable commodity in the markets.

@Shimbiris shared even some time ago how there was a bone crafting industry, animal bones was used for combs, tools, handles, ornaments, and weapons and horns were used to craft drinking vessels, musical instruments, and decorative items.

So pastoralism weren't simply for substistence food produce and that Somalis became very wealthy from it in many different ways which they rendered into finished goods also traded and exported raw materials from it.

It also stimulated trade and growth in agriculture productions since livestock products such as milk, butter, hides, and wool were exchanged for grains, vegetables, and fruits in Somali markets. This symbiotic relationship ensured a steady food supply for both farmers and pastoralists while stimulating commerce. This exchange system created growth and strenghtened markets. Then it also helped with fertilizing farmland and plowing.

The formation of cities, ports and towns and trade is directly tied to all of this among other commodities, with the main driver being agro-pastoralism.

 

[Midas]

What further complicates it is that we don't have a word ''Nomad" in our language. Geeljire just means camel herder. Which is also reductive to employ to the whole group because Somalis kept donkeys, horses, sheep/goats and cows in large numbers not just camels.

In Somali we also have names like Reer Miyi(countryside people) and Reer Magaal(Towns people), that shows the duality between the rural v urban life. Then we have various occupational names Reer Qooto/Qudaal & Beerley for farmer and/or Reer Maanyo/Jaaji for fishermen. We call Sailors , Badmaax. We have minor occupational names like Tumaal(Blacksmith), Haragsade(leatherworker), Najar(carpenter) etc

Somalis engaged in diverse economic activities and it's shows in our language. Another thing that further complicates it is when they don't realize that pastoralism fueled farming, trade and industries. Livestock provided raw materials that were essential for urban industries and crafts.

Cattle, camels, sheep, and goats) produced high-quality hides used in leatherworking. Somali tanneries processed raw hides into leather for shoes, saddles, bags, shields, and armor. Somali leather was highly valued and was exported.

Wool & Textiles even, Sheep provided wool, which was spun into yarn and woven into blankets, rugs, and clothing. Goat fur was used to for tent-making, carpets, and ropes.

Boiled animal parts were used to produce glue for construction, textiles, and weapon-making.

Pelt & Fur Trade, Animal pelts (especially sheep and goat skins) was used for upholstery, and trading purposes. Fur was a valuable commodity in the markets.

@Shimbiris shared even some time ago how there was a bone crafting industry, animal bones was used for combs, tools, handles, ornaments, and weapons and horns were used to craft drinking vessels, musical instruments, and decorative items.

So pastoralism weren't simply for substistence food produce and that Somalis became very wealthy from it in many different ways which they rendered into finished goods also traded and exported raw materials from it.

It also stimulated trade and growth in agriculture productions since livestock products such as milk, butter, hides, and wool were exchanged for grains, vegetables, and fruits in Somali markets. This symbiotic relationship ensured a steady food supply for both farmers and pastoralists while stimulating commerce. This exchange system created growth and strenghtened markets. Then it also helped with fertilizing farmland and plowing.

The formation of cities, ports and towns and trade is directly tied to all of this among other commodities, with the main driver being agro-pastoralism.

What we need is a coherent narrative that combines all this and shows how pastoralism and urbanism are inseparable. We also need more materials both manuscripts and archeological evidence. This should all put into a simplified pop history book with lots of pictures of old towns and sufi tombs for emphasis. Then as long as this new narrative with all this evidence is spread people will forget the old one.

 

[Bille]

I know we have a rich, old history that no one can erase no matter how hard they try to erase it. I'm also very happy that very soon the world will have a powerful AI which will be capable to do the scientific and the archeology research in any part of the world to figure out the history and the stablishment of a nation.

I'm just waiting the day that the AI take over doing researchs and analyzing of events. Human researchers are known to have motives to hide the truth discovery of a research.

 

[Idilinaa]

What we need is a coherent narrative that combines all this and shows how pastoralism and urbanism are inseparable. We also need more materials both manuscripts and archeological evidence. This should all put into a simplified pop history book with lots of pictures of old towns and sufi tombs for emphasis. Then as long as this new narrative with all this evidence is spread people will forget the old one.

I even forgot to mention. They even used livestock to make paper to write like parchment and leather book covers for example, so pastoralism even fueled the manuscript production industry. This is not to say Somalis didn't craft with other materials, they even made writing paper out of certain trees as someone else shared before but it is to show that it was part and parcel that drove urban industry.

I agree what you are saying. Inshallah that will happen soon.