Post by Noah on Aug 4, 2011 22:21:26 GMT -5
This is a very important thread, as it attempts to explain the ultimate point of origin of the Hamitic people and various areas of dispersal.
From A Contribution to the History of the Hamitic Peoples of Africa by Kenneth Howard Honea, one of the best and most comprehensive works on Hamites:
From A Contribution to the History of the Hamitic Peoples of Africa by Kenneth Howard Honea, one of the best and most comprehensive works on Hamites:
"The Paleo-Hamites entered Africa in successive waves by manner of traversing a land-bridge formerly connecting Southwest Arabia with Northeast Africa in early Gamblian times (Upper Paleolithic). They brought with them, as it appears, a particular type of lithic industry. Crossing over the geographical entity taken in today by northeastern and northern Ethiopia , the greater body of the Paleo-Hamites turned southwards into Kenya by a route west of the Ethiopian Highlands, where a pristine center of characteristic culture became established. The older autochthonous inhabitants of this region, of ancestral Bushman-type, were either expelled or absorbed by the new-comers. Elements reminiscent of this older population may with a great measure of certainty be recognized in the present Sandawe and Hadzapi tribal groups of Tanganyika.
The lithic industry introduced by the Paleo-Hamites was of earlier Capsian facies; their economy was based on hunting, fishing and probably food-gathering.
It was especially during the closing Upper Paleolithic and dawning Mesolithic that a large-scale north-northwestward expansion of the immediate descendants of the Paleo-Hamites occurred, in which time both physical-anthropological type industrial facies were diffused (these descendants have been signated "Early Proto-Hamites" for the sake of clarity in total relation descent patterns of the Hamites). Regions influenced by this expansion were e.g. the Sudan, Upper Egypt (particularly phases II and III of the Sebilian Culture), the Sahara in its more easterly expanses and Northwest Africa (Capsian Culture) respectively; the Capsian type industries of these areas are later in date than those of Kenya.
A southward movement of Semitic elements from northern Arabia may have been responsible for a second major incursion of Hamitic type peoples into Africa from Southwest Arabia, conceivably in late Mesolithic times.
The "Later Proto-Hamites" (we have termed them thus so as to distinguish them from the earlier gorups) were pastoral nomads, breeding long-horned, humpless cattle. It appears that they diffused a highly specialized pressure-flaked lithic industry and associated implemental forms from Northeast Africa into the wider expanses of the continent. In addition to this, we may clearly follow their route of earliest extention in Africa by pertinent information supplied by very numerous naturalistic paintings and stone-engravings of pastoral scenes.
Whereas certain numbers of the "Later Proto-Hamites" remained in northeastern Africa, other groups turned northwestwards and then to the west to spread into the northern Sudan, Upper Egypt and the eastern Sahara in successive periods. Although hardly influencing Northwest Africa, some clusters did penetrate into the Western Sahara in the second or third Millenium B.C. At about the same date scant groups of pastoral nomads appear to have reached East Africa from the Sudan; the progeny of this early stratum may be recognized in the Hottentots of South Africa (admixed, however, with Bushman elements). The main diffusion of Hamitic cattle-breeders into East Africa and neighboring areas ot the south and west seems likely to have occurred much later (11th to 18th century A.D.!).
"Later Proto-Hamitic" pastoral nomads combined in Upper Egypt in the early Neolithic with the makers of the Badarian culture phase, who represent for the most part (though not exclusively) a local branch of the "Early Proto-Hamites". The immeidate forebearers of the Badarians were agriculturalists with "Kleintierzucht", but no cattle, and had cultural connections with western Asia. It is conceivable that a section of the primarily agricultural population of Upper Egypt was forced to migrate northward into Lower Egypt in Badarian times giving rise there to such cultures as those at the Fayum and Merimde. The heterogeneous Amratian culture appears as a result of the cultural innovations initiated in Badarian times in Upper Egypt. The advent of strong Semitic culture elements during still later periods (as is evident in the Gerzean and Maadian cultures), combining with the above complex strain, paved the foundations for the first dynasties of the Egyptian high-culture.
I believe we are in a position to make the following tentative correlation and division of present-day-Hamites in Africa. Firstly, a group representing the progeny of the earliest known Hamites (Paleo- and Early Proto-Hamites) and which is roughly composed of the Berbers and certain substrative peoples of Libya, Egypt, the Sudan, Ethiopia (Agau, Sidama, Waito, Sab), the Somalilands and perhaps East and South Africa. Secondly, we have a group representing descendants of the cattle-breeding "Later Proto-Hamites" which is best exemplified by the modern Borana-Galla of southern Ethiopia, but which is also to be encountered in one form or other amongst the Somali, Afar (Danakil) and Beja (all in Northeast Africa)"