The mystery of punt deepens.

[Midas]

why the baby so big

That hairstyle is actually worn until the kid is like 7 or 8 .

 

[Midas]

Okay I think I found the final piece of the puzzle. It explains how exactly trade in the 4th millennium b.c between Mesopotamia and eygpt might have actually happened. @The alchemist

Its ironically exactly the same situation as the wadi hammat. In Saudi Arabia, there is a wadi call wadi rummah. It's one of the longest wadi's in the country it starts in Medina and goes all the way to the middle of the country and then goes underground

Then there is a second wadi called wadi al batin, which is actually part of wadi rummah and goes from where it reappears underground to Kuwait.

And here's basically what the full route would look like on Google maps

I also honestly seemed to have underestimated the impact of the donkey since it seems like the massive cities of Mesopotamia only came into existence in the uruk period and this period started in the beginning of the 4th millennium b.c and the transition seems to have been in motion a little bit before that. All the major hallmarks of civilization seems to have developed in that time and it represented a massive change from the earlier ubaid period.

1 It seems like you need long distance trade for civilization and that without pack animals its not really possible.

 

[NordicSomali]

Do you mean you think that ? Becuase I obviously dont this whole thread was about proving that connection. In fact everything lines up so perfectly that anybody who reads about all the connections would have to be legitimately insane to deny it.

A typo, I mean “ I think”. I think the Somalia-Egypt connection is overrated, and even perhaps nonexistent.

 

[Midas]

A typo, I mean “ I think”. I think the Somalia-Egypt connection is overrated, and even perhaps nonexistent.

I dont blame you for thinking that so did I and everybody else. At most people assumed some eygptians were arriving in somalia due to the punt expeditions.


But once you look at the geography of the horn of africa and connect that with the periplus,medieval historical accounts from the rasulid period and the 19/20th century European explorer writings. It becomes obvious that this common census is not just wrong its actually retarded. In 15-20 years people will probably wonder how the hell 20th and early 21st century historians could be so stupid.

 

[Midas]

I dont blame you for thinking that so did I and everybody else. At most people assumed some eygptians were arriving in somalia due to the punt expeditions.


But once you look at the geography of the horn of africa and connect that with the periplus,medieval historical accounts from the rasulid period and the 19/20th century European explorer writings. It becomes obvious that this common census is not just wrong its actually retarded. In 15-20 years people will probably wonder how the hell 20th and early 21st century historians could be so stupid.

If you look at the 19th/20th century European travel accounts. Every port on the red sea had somali sailors and the main yemeni port from the 1700s even had a somali quarter.

In comparison most yemenis like the habesha live in the Highlands and when they came down to the coast they traded with somali merchants coming from all the different somali ports.

 

[Midas]

By the way I suspect most of you maybe even none of you are aware of the fact that like 99% of yemenis are actually farmers and that there are basically 0 bedouins/nomads in yemen. Thats why they had to import livestock from all across Somalia which was arriving at the port of berbera .since why would people who are all farmers keep a huge amount of livestock?

Its also why I found the south arabia/Yemen theory of camel domestication kind of dumb. Half of the world's camels are basically in somalia. It'd be like saying it wasn't nomad people living on the steppe who domesticated the horse it was actually eastern European farmers who don't own much livestock who did it.

 

[Midas]

By the way I suspect most of you maybe even none of you are aware of the fact that like 99% of yemenis are actually farmers and that there are basically 0 bedouins/nomads in yemen. Thats why they had to import livestock from all across Somalia which was arriving at the port of berbera .since why would people who are all farmers keep a huge amount of livestock?

Its also why I found the south arabia/Yemen theory of camel domestication kind of dumb. Half of the world's camels are basically in somalia. It'd be like saying it wasn't nomad people living on the steppe who domesticated the horse it was actually eastern European farmers who don't own much livestock who did it.

To be honest even they're agriculture is quite limited since it relies on rainfall in that small stretch of highlands in the north of Yemen . Which means its mostly for subsistence and not export.

When @Idilinaa posts sources that call juba "the grain coast of arabia" its because the agricultural potenial of the jubba river has always dwarfed that of the highlands of Yemen and so we exported grain to them. This is also why if you look at Yemen after independence they never focused on trying to export crops unlike us where under siad barre we were a major banana exporter .

 

[Idilinaa]

@Midas
It's not because there are zero pastoralists in Yemen or even Arabia that they had to import livestock from Somalia. It's because Somalia's interior has larger more extensive grassy pastures for livestock to graze and feed on compared to them. So even when they kept livestock they couldn't grow their herds that much.

Today , even though Somalia has only 10% pastoralists compared to the 80% doing other activities. Yet it has a very large camel, cattle, sheep and donkey/horse population because our land can support it.

We are also more spread out engaged in diverse activities because our land supports that as well.

It was Shabelle river linked to the Benadiir coast that was called the grain coast. But they also exported produce from Juba usually out of Kismaayo and Barawa ports in the 19th century.

Both those rivers give southern Somalia , parts of Galbeed a lot of agricultural productivity. Whereas Yemen because of the lack of rivers was more limited to domestic production and consumption . Similar to how farming is practiced today in parts of Northern Somalia.

 

[Midas]

@Midas
It's not because there are zero pastoralists in Yemen or even Arabia that they had to import livestock from Somalia. It's because Somalia's interior has larger more extensive grassy pastures for livestock to graze and feed on compared to them. So even when they kept livestock they couldn't grow their herds that much.

Today , even though Somalia has only 10% pastoralists compared to the 80% doing other activities. Yet it has a very large camel, cattle, sheep and donkey/horse population because our land can support it.

We are also more spread out engaged in diverse activities because our land supports that as well.

It was Shabelle river linked to the Benadiir coast that was called the grain coast. But they also exported produce from Juba usually out of Kismaayo and Barawa ports in the 19th century.

Both those rivers give southern Somalia , parts of Galbeed a lot of agricultural productivity. Whereas Yemen because of the lack of rivers was more limited to domestic production and consumption . Similar to how farming is practiced today in parts of Northern Somalia.

Yeah I didnt mean there was literally not a single pastoralist. But that its basically an incredibly small livestock pouplation in comparison to somalia and so importing it from somalia makes more sense. The little arable land they do have is used for growing

Which means its mostly for subsistence and not export.

 

[Midas]

Yeah I didnt mean there was literally not a single pastoralist. But that its basically an incredibly small livestock pouplation in comparison to somalia and so importing it from somalia makes more sense. The little arable land they do have is used for growing

Yemen and Saudi Arabia combined have about 30,000 km worth of Arable land whereas as somalia alone and not somali weyene has about 82,000 km worth of Arable land. This is not even factoring in that the jubba valley is probably several times more productive than land in the arabian penisula.

I like using these raw numbers because it helps people break out of this distortion in their minds of how trade between somalia and the arabian penisula historically worked. We have never really imported anything from the arabian penisula.

The main reason I suspect why somalis traded at ports like aden/mukalla/etc. Is because in the premodern period ships would hug the coast and since people were coming from india it makes alot more sense to hug the yemeni coast. Since you could get off at aden or jeddah and reach mecca and Medina and them from their go to jeursalem/cairo/damascus. So in that scenario it just made more sense for us to take our ships to those ports and trade with people arriving from the Indian ocean.