Somalis Commonalities with Sahelians

[The alchemist]

I think a segment of Sahelian Arab tribes carry frequencies of Cushitic ancestry that is proto-Somali specific in signature composition, rather than Ethiopian and Northern Cushitic derived genetic autosomal associated pulse radiation.

Upon doing some G25 tool-use, trying to inform myself by satiating my curiosity, I found out that the Messiria Arabs exclusively prefer Somali samples, totally reject other related peoples of the East Africa in place of that explicit Cushitic ancestry. One thing to note is that we know Massalit peoples carry arguably E-V32 to similar heights as Somalis, in the same vein through speculative extrapolations, parts of the Baggara Arab tribe structure can house E-V32 and/or E1b1b haplogroup diversity we lost through founder-effect/bottleneck, something that relates directly to a point of divergence not long before migration to the Horn of Africa.

This lends stronger credence to the idea that the ancestral sub-clade of ours, traces back to fairly recent time on a relative temporal ancient stage to the geographic range of the Nile-Valley, as we have touched upon earlier. I mean, how else are we going to explain this similarity among ethnically and traditionally different peoples practicing similar things:

Chadian Arabs:

Somalis:

Note that in both cases, only women are setting up these mobile huts.

The same Arabs doing the same Cushitic practice of cutting hair of small female children:

Somali:

Including Beja for good measure:

This cutting of hair practice on young girls is a Cushitic practice, yet we see Baggara Arabs in the Chadian interior retaining the similar traditions, all the way down to setting up domed huts that look like this as well:

It’s interesting, indeed. I wish there were serious academic ethnographic works done on this Cushitic thing on comparative measure on the broader Sahelian belt, whatever we have in common should elucidate a better picture of the ancient times, and definitely add to our knowledge of our past. What we need are several data sources, chiefly the genetics, together with a mix of multidisciplinary anthropological interpretation by observed lifeways. I have some genetic points I want to propose, that might or might not relate to this stuff, undoubtedly it ties to the broader region in another way. That is for another thread, for another time.

 

[Moholin01]

Interesting. Are the Toubou part of this or are they their own ethnic group? They seem to have interesting Eurasian haplogroup a like T, R1b and E1b1b.
The Sahel region is a fascinating area that needs more genetic and archeological study.

What do you think of the Green Sahara hypothesis?

 

[ZBR]

Good thread

 

[ZBR]

I was reading recently about how there’s a resemblance between Chadic and Cushitic languages

 

[Som]

Interesting. Are the Toubou part of this or are they their own ethnic group? They seem to have interesting Eurasian haplogroup a like T, R1b and E1b1b.
The Sahel region is a fascinating area that needs more genetic and archeological study.

What do you think of the Green Sahara hypothesis?

Toubou are their own ethnic group by they have considerable non African ancestry (around 30% i think) so they have a pseudo horner look. Chadian Arabs aren't real Arabs , they are sahelians who became arabized they are today called baggara Arabs and they also live in Sudan. Out of all the Arab sudanese tribes they have the least Arab dna

 

[Shimbiris]

Nice to know someone else has noticed these same similarities I've been yapping on about on Anthrogenica and elsewhere for years.

They, as you have shown, also use the characteristic Cushitic dome mat-tent used by Somalis, Cafars, Bejas and also South-Cushites who spread it to the Khoikhoi. I haven't read enough on it yet but I do recall that the reason maybe that there was an ancient Cushitic expansion into the west too. As in into what is now Chad a bit beyond and they got absorbed in due time by Chadics, Nilo-Saharans and Niger-Congo speakers.

Either that or these guys, like us, just descend culturally from the earliest nomads of the Sahel. Sahelian nomads, of which Somalis and other Horners are a sort of extension, seem to me our own cultural bloc a la MENA nomads with their poled, goat-hair tents and Steppe nomads with their Yurts/Gers (among many other cultural continuities).

 

[ZBR]

Nice to know someone else has noticed these same similarities I've been yapping on about on Anthrogenica and elsewhere for years.

They, as you have shown, also use the characteristic Cushitic dome mat-tent used by Somalis, Cafars, Bejas and also South-Cushites who spread it to the Khoikhoi. I haven't read enough on it yet but I do recall that the reason maybe that there was an ancient Cushitic expansion into the west too. As in into what is now Chad a bit beyond and they got absorbed in due time by Chadics, Nilo-Saharans and Niger-Congo speakers.

Either that or these guys, like us, just descend culturally from the earliest nomads of the Sahel. Sahelian nomads, of which Somalis and other Horners are a sort of extension, seem to me our own cultural bloc a la MENA nomads with their poled, goat-hair tents and Steppe nomads with their Yurts/Gers (among many other cultural continuities).

We need to build large ships and together invade Europe North America and South America like the central Asian steep hordes north west expansion

 

[The alchemist]

Interesting. Are the Toubou part of this or are they their own ethnic group? They seem to have interesting Eurasian haplogroup a like T, R1b and E1b1b.
The Sahel region is a fascinating area that needs more genetic and archeological study.

What do you think of the Green Sahara hypothesis?

Toubou, or Gourane, as they refer to themselves, are a separate group indigenous to the region encompassing northern Chad and southern Libya.

I believe the non-sub-Saharan DNA of those people stem from early Chadic speakers. If you model Hausa with the couple of Toubou samples available, with a West African proxy like Yoruba, you will get results of good fit. This means the Gourane internal structure, from a genetic viewpoint, represents whatever that is not West African in Hausa speakers, a language making up over 80% of the total Chadic language branch speakers.

If this is true, that Toubou carry Chadic-related genetics, then they are the group sampled up to date with the highest signature of that sort. And furthermore, if so, Chadic by default belonged to a node with Berber before diverging and migrating south.

To have a fuller comprehensive package of evidence, one need to substantiate a linguistic link, i.e., loanwords. For example, if Daza or Teda, two respective languages of the people in question, have vocabulary items in their Saharo-Sahelian spoken culture that is introduced by Chadic. I think there are evidence between those Nilo-Saharan languages of Chad and Chadic (language branch and sub-branch) already expanded upon. We already know some subsistence root words that Chadic incorporated early as they moved down to Lake Chad.

The amount of Western Saharan influence, both in genetic exchange and language borrowings, gives an indication that Chadic speakers got demographically dominated by already existing Nilo-Saharans in the Chad area from a population size perspective.

Who knows, another alternative viewpoint might be that the autosomal mixing of Toubou originated with contact with a dead Afro-Asiatic proto-branch or some separate sub-branch of pre proto-Chadic. If you listen to the language of those people living around the Tibesti mountains, what you hear is a sense of familiarity, some generality in phonology that is hard to put a finger on. The Gourane might have been very ancient language shifters, where the sound of the language is affected by the earlier languages they adhered to. Similar thing you see with the Maghrebi Arabic that gives you the “aha” notion when you hear the Berber languages and understand the accent undercurrent phenomenon; certainly the older languages bias strong accents.

Or, since this is a perception thing, it might be that the Saharan Africans got influenced by the people they incorporated. Although their Y-DNA haplogroup is overwhelmingly non-Sudanic from the strict sub-Saharan/West Asian dichotomy, to put things simplified for discussion's sake.

All in all, it seems like the climatic changes had a big drive in motivating people to migrate, that sort of explains why substructure and distinct haplogroups end up in that particular geographic reach, with mix of distinct groups, both within inter-African wider genetic differentiation and between various non-African groups.

 

[The alchemist]

Nice to know someone else has noticed these same similarities I've been yapping on about on Anthrogenica and elsewhere for years.

They, as you have shown, also use the characteristic Cushitic dome mat-tent used by Somalis, Cafars, Bejas and also South-Cushites who spread it to the Khoikhoi. I haven't read enough on it yet but I do recall that the reason maybe that there was an ancient Cushitic expansion into the west too. As in into what is now Chad a bit beyond and they got absorbed in due time by Chadics, Nilo-Saharans and Niger-Congo speakers.

Either that or these guys, like us, just descend culturally from the earliest nomads of the Sahel. Sahelian nomads, of which Somalis and other Horners are a sort of extension, seem to me our own cultural bloc a la MENA nomads with their poled, goat-hair tents and Steppe nomads with their Yurts/Gers (among many other cultural continuities).

Yes, I was aware of the similarities between the Cushitic peoples. I even saw one guy post how early Cushitics influenced those hut-type living spaces in the Arab Peninsula, and that in itself needs further digging. The impact of the Cushitic people several thousand years back to ancient times might stretch back to the early Semitic migration. Too much cultural imprint, and as you have stated among others, some of those South Arabian languages got linguistic substratum of some sort. I have read there were also cairns or cemeteries of the exact same sort as ours and the Cushitic peoples in Sudan in Yemen. That Somaliland trading history article showed archeological proof on a visual basis that we had the same burial practices late in history, at least partly to some respects.

With regards to Cushites moving towards the Western Sudan. I don't doubt that. You know, several months ago, I found out that there are very recent Cushitic descendants (full Cushitic peoples that might identify as Arab today) in the Bauyda Desert and they were also settled in the banks some were full-time sedentary while the rest were pastoralist/semi-nomadic/fully nomads. They used to have a symbiotic relationship with their kin in the towns along the river-area and also lived among other Sudanese in the broader area. I had one post where I blindly went on a quest, and certainly is well substantiated. It seems that pictures of the people there today are flat our Beja types, so maybe newer influx of Eastern Desert people migrate there for whatever reasons too. I am not aware of the Beja demographics. There used to be other Arab nomads there as well, but I think their migratory range from a conservative standpoint is under the range of Beja. Here is the link to that site, which is not a technical thing but nice:

https://www.somalispot.com/threads/lost-somalis.134466/#post-3343446

Some evidence from sources, first one is from 1894:

A satellite image of the Bayuda Desert (only because it looks cool):

The Sahelian continuity thing might be true in a lot of ways. I think we both recognize that things are complex in the Sahel, from the factors of the movements of people and the amount of time we’re speaking about that give rise to so many opportunities which create differences in similarities and vice versa.