Is the history of the Horn of Africa as intrinsically linked to the Middle East as North Africa?

Why don't you actually try making a fucking argument against what I posted? By that I mean pointing out what's wrong and explain why it's wrong with relevant evidence to back that up, not posting a bunch of completely unrelated greentext or quoting wikipedia.

*tips fedora*

When Islam first gained way, the Arabs showed the Somalians Islam, traded and married with them. They also sent a few of the first muslims to Abyssinia.

The belief that the people on both sides of the Red Sea are historically separate and on their own trajectory is a fallacy.

We have proof that 80k years ago a single technological complex occurred on both side of the Red Sea with the same telltale hallmarks.

Roger Blench posits a migration of Nilo-Saharan and Cushitic people's migrating with animals across the Red Sea from East Africa to Arabia Felix.

Militarev identified an autochthon Cushitic linguistic substratum within the Indigenous languages of Mehri, Socotran, Hobyot, Harsusi and Shehri

The oldest civilization in the red sea is Punt. There is no argument to that, they existed on both sides of the red sea centered mostly in Eritrea. There numbers were dense and high enough to allow trade to occur with Egyptian fleets under Hatshepsut trading the same resins both Red Sea populations were famous for later on.

Josephus Flavus acclaimed historian two millennia ago state the foundation of Arabia Felix coming from a Cushitic and later Semitic source using the semi-historical narrative of Moses representing Semitic Shusu and Keturah/Tzippora the midianite cushite.

Autosomal genetics throws away the myth that East Africans are some neolithic mulatto peoples

In the past ten years we have an ever-growing body of work that counters the obsolete claims of D'mt was founded by Sabaeans, their imprint was localized in few places and it's development can be recognized as a concurrent development of a similar peoples.

The shifting of Arabia Felix into an "Arab" as you all perceive it region occurred only after Himyar conquered Sabaeans and only after Arabic proper speakers migrated to Arabia Felix around the time of Islam.

Before one can even talk about perceived "foreign" influences in Ethiopia and the horn one has to look at the shared history of Arabia Felix and East Africa as a whole. These aren't people markedly different, they are much the same.

there are lots of ethiopian jews apparently thats from what i read, and then somalis too

We aren't that big and nearly all of us are in Israel, only two groups in Ethiopia are left Mura and a smaller northerly group.

Even then the Judaic history of Ethiopia is complicated.

You're talking about prehistory. You keep doing this. None of this refutes what I've already said, and what I've been saying to you for months; civilization (including urbanism, statehood and literacy) developed in Yemen, and was transferred from there to Ethiopia centuries later. It did not develop simultaneously in both regions, and it did not develop in Ethiopia without Yemeni influence.

>the oldest civilization in the red sea is Punt
There is absolutely no reason to think 'Punt' was a civilization or even a single society. They didn't have cities, a state or literacy; you can hardly call any society without at least one of those a civilization.

>In the past ten years we have an ever-growing body of work that counters the obsolete claims of D'mt was founded by Sabaeans
I already showed you that this is wrong in the other thread. You're ignoring evidence that goes against your beliefs.

You're twisting evidence of longstanding interactions between Yemen and the Horn, which nobody would deny, to support your own pet idea that Yemen and Ethiopia are one and the same region. They're not; they are and always have been geographically and culturally separate regions, regardless of the close relations between them. Probably the most obvious evidence of this is the fact that agriculture was practiced in Yemen several thousand years before its introduction to the Horn, as well the the fact that civilization emerged in Yemen centuries before its introduction to Ethiopia. The existence of shared cultures spanning both regions 80,000 years ago has no relevance to the period we're discussing, nor does the existence of shared language families at any point.

What you're saying is like the equivalent of saying that Chinese civilization wasn't transferred to Japan, because Japan and China have been interacting for centuries which somehow makes them the same place. It's meaningless.

Since you ignored my posts from the other thread, I'll repost them here:

>The Development of Ancient States in the Northern Horn of Africa, c. 3000 BC–AD 1000: An Archaeological Outline (2010)
>At the present state of research, the origins and development of the D’MT polity are very uncertain. Actually, we do not know whether this was a true territorial state or a constellation (federation?) of small polities sharing the same basic cultural model, and where the initial core area of the polity was located.

This next part is very important:
>Epigraphic and monumental evidence of an indisputable South Arabian influence in pre-Aksumite times suggests that this polity emerged as a consequence of interactions between the human groups living in central Eritrea and Tigray and the South Arabs, in particular the Sabeans, who dominated the highlands in Yemen in the 1st millennium BC.

>The nature of this interaction, however, is uncertain and passionately debated. Specialists in South Arabian archaeology and epigraphy tend to support the hypothesis of a migration and/or colonization from Yemen in the early 1st millennium BC as the main factor of state formation in the highlands. Specialists in African archaeology, on the other hand, like to stress an indigenous origin of the D’MT polity. In my opinion, the factual evidence we have is very ambiguous and does not support any South Arabian migration and/or colonization, although it does not exclude the penetration into the highlands of small groups coming from different regions of Yemen, including Saba.

The exact nature of Sabaean influence is in dispute, but no archaeologist would deny te important of this influence as you have.

>During the first millennium BC, a state with Sabean characteristics appeared on the plateau in Tigray and Eritrea. It is archaeologically identified by the so-called pre-Aksumite culture (c. 1000/900 BC–100 BC/AD 100). This state is recorded in the inscriptions with the name of ‘Kingdom of Da’amat’. It most likely relied on the ‘plough and cereal complex’. The ruins of a stone dam, possibly going back to this period, at Safra in the Kohaito region (central Eritrea) suggest that artificial irrigation also was practiced.

>On linguistic, epigraphic and monumental evidence, the origins of this state have been usually ascribed to a south Arabian – more specifically Sabean – colonization of the plateau in the first half of the first millennium BC. At present, it seems that the kingdom originated from the contacts between an indigenous chiefdom and the southern Arabians, who deeply affected the local cultural pattern.

>The Middle pre-Aksumite Phase (c. 700/600–300 BC). The kingdom of Da’amat appeared in this phase. Its territory stretched from western Tigray to central Eritrea. Most likely, the capital was located at Yeha (western Tigray) and monumental and epigraphical evidence stresses a direct link with the kingdom of Saba in southern Arabia. Some rock inscriptions recorded in Eritrea point to contacts with other south Arabian peoples and there were also contacts with the Nubian kingdom of Kush, the Achemenian Empire, and the Greek world. The nomads living in the Atbara and Gash alluvial plains were included in the area of Ethiopian influence.

uu.se/digitalAssets/9/9650_FattovichAll.pdf

Even ignoring the Sabaean origins of civilization in the region, it's extremely obvious that the Horn has been hugely influenced by developments in the Middle East and Mediterranean throughout its recorded history; after all, we're talking about a region which for the past millennium has been dominated by Christian and Islamic cultures, writing in scripts derived from Arabia and trading extensively with the Mediterranean and Indian Oceans. The Aksumites were culturally familiar with the Classical world, to the point that inscriptions were written in Greek alongside Ge'ez and Sabaean. They even adopted the name 'Ethiopia' from the Greeks. Obviously the various Muslim sultanates in the region were closely tied with the rest of the Islamic world.

There is no evidence of overall sabean demographic shift, there is no evidence of really anything other than the exchange of literacy but that in and of itself is not a sign of any domination or complete reorienting away from native development.

How can you state there was no density? How can you assume there is no evidence of centralization when the commeration Queen Hatshepsut ordered for her expedition of the Land of the Gods (Punt) wrote

>"...loading of the ships very heavily with marvels of the country of Punt; all goodly fragrant woods of God's-Land, heaps of myrrh resin, with fresh myrrh trees, with ebony and pure ivory, with green gold ..., with cinnamon wood, khesyt wood, with two kinds of incense, eye-cosmetics, with apes, monkeys, dogs, and with skins of the southern panther, with natives and their children. Never was brought the like of this for any king who has been since the beginning."

How can you deny Queen Ati and King Parahu who were mentioned as such by Hatshepsut?

Now do you notice something askew with the greentext?

Cinnamon another famous export of both the horn and Arabia Felix is not native to either region. It's an import from South Asia..

What can be implied from that other than established ties to the Indian Littoral and the trades both regions would be famous for later on.

Pliny wrote himself later of the migration of Indian traders into East Africa who traded with natives long before the development of your so called "MIddle Eastern" nationstates.

Arabia Felix and its initial economies developed out of the East Africans who were a mere 20 miles from Yemen via Bab-el-Mandeb, who for tens of thousands of years continually migrated back and forth across the Red Sea and who developed both regions only for both to eventually be semiticized

My issue was never that Ethiopia and Sabeans developed completely isolated, rather the development of both are rooted in an East Africa

>There is no evidence of overall sabean demographic shift
I never at any point said there was. I've made this extremely clear to you. I'm not talking about demographics, I'm talking about civilization.

>no evidence of really anything other than the exchange of literacy
As well as urbanism and statehood, which along with literacy are the very definition of civilization. You're ignoring the evidence I just presented to you.

>Punt and trade with Egypt and India
Egyptian and Indian commerce with the Red Sea is not evidence of the existence of a state, especially not spanning the Ethiopian or Yemeni highlands. All it implies is that populations on the coasts engaged in long-distance trade, which any society can do regardless of society complexity. Archaeological evidence is what matters here, and it does not show civilization (or even crop-based agriculture) existing in the Horn before the 1st millennium BC.

>rather the development of both are rooted in an East Africa
That's just not true. Urbanism, literacy and statehood developed in Yemen before they developed in the Horn. Regardless of whatever earlier developments might have reached Yemen from the Horn, civilization did not. It went the other way.

civ·i·li·za·tion
/ˌsivələˈzāSH(ə)n/
noun
the stage of human social development and organization that is considered most advanced.
•the process by which a society or place reaches an advanced stage of social development and organization.
•the society, culture, and way of life of a particular area.

What Punt had was a civilization, literacy isn't one of the from the looks of the definition.

you are arguing that no centralization existed yet there is references to both a king and queen who ruled an extensive trading region and who developed an extensive trading relationship with South Asians and who according to Pliny came in regular contact taking a five year journey to cross the Red Sea for purposes of importing East African fashions.

This is reiterated in Periplus of the Erythraean Sea that speaks of cinnamon trading further south in the port of Oponi.

Now if we look at the records of Egyptians of great Frankincense terraces and the The earliest of these writings is the Palermo Stone, which informs us that an ancient Egyptian expedition to Punt brought back 80,000 measures of ‘ntiyw what I am recognizing is a great force and polity that is able to work massive populations.

>it does not show civilization (or even crop-based agriculture) existing in the Horn before the 1st millennium BC
Who says a xeric peoples need grains? The hydrology and environment of Eritrea and Somalia have shifted greatly from the records we haven't yet even begun to excavate but even without that Date and Doum cultivation could and did/does provide the caloric needs of the average person along with fish and dairy seen in the reliefs of the kingdom.

You're statment also ignores teff and its cultivation in alluvial environments which can and is grown without the plow.

But biggest flaw is the cultivation of domesticated Pearl Millet and Sorghum(which are East African/Sahelian) among the Harrapan civilization of Pakistan and Gujurat in the second millennium BC

I never said literacy was a requirement for civilization, as the Inca make clear, but literacy is generally associated with civilization. Most literate societies could be called civilizations. Urbanism and statehood, or at least one or the other, is usually taken as a requirement for civilization. No society lacking at least a state, cities or literacy can be called a civilization.

There is no archaeological evidence of a civilization in the Horn before the Sabaean influence. In the 2nd millennium there were chiefdoms in some lowland areas and a trading port at what later became Adulis; neither of these can be described as a state or a city. There is no evidence of centralization; a reference to a ruler can describe any local power, such as a chiefdom. You cannot argue that an entire civilization existed without archaeological evidence. A reference or two to a ruler somewhere in a vaguely defined area is not evidence.

There is no archaeological evidence for crop-based agriculture in the Horn before the 1st millennium BC. I imagine it existed before then, but the lack of evidence for it suggests it wasn't on any especially large scale, certainly nowhere approaching what's needed to sustain a civilization. Intensive agriculture only emerges after Sabaean influence and the introduction of the plow.

You're really grasping at straws of you have to resort to using Pliny and the Periplus to prove the existence of a bronze age civilization.

You know you're wrong.

>I never said literacy was a requirement for civilization
yes you did
>which along with literacy are the very definition of civilization

The definition of civilization encapsulates the international trading ports and lands of Punt under one monarchy.

that is recorded.

There is a evidence that African domesticates at its absolute earliest occurred in east Africa no earlier than 2k b.c. via the cultivation of said crops by the very partners in their extensive trade relationships across the Indian Ocean.

You are also ignoring the utilization of alluvial systems that use post-flood friable soils to cultivate a myriad of grains and aren't taking into account the weighted or unmodified digging stick of Ethiopia that can be used as a dibble stick especially in alluvial soils

I'm using the definition of civilization to accurately show you the centralization and unity of Punt, showing the continuity of trade relationships and goods from the Red Sea and beyond.

Pliny accurately stating the trade between East Africans on both sides of the Red Sea and South Asia and the Perplus showing the same thing isn't grasping at straws, its showing continuity.

You do seem to get grasping at straws if you ask me since I've countered everyone of your claims.

Punt did not have cities, a state or literacy. It was not a civilization. There is absolutely no evidence that it possessed any of those things. No archaeologist calls Punt a civilization.

>>which along with literacy are the very definition of civilization
My point being that a literate society can be described as civilized, not that civilization requires literacy. I guess I wasn't clear there.

>There is a evidence that African domesticates at its absolute earliest occurred in east Africa no earlier than 2k b.c. via the cultivation of said crops by the very partners in their extensive trade relationships across the Indian Ocean.
We don't know how African crops reached India. There isn't any direct evidence for cultivation in Ethiopia before the 1st millennium BC, though I think it was earlier than that. Nothing else can be said until more evidence is uncovered. We're not even in disagreement here so I don't know why you're going on about this.

Pliny and the Periplus are of no relevance here. You're trying to cite them as evidence for the existence of a bronze age civilization, which is retarded.

>You do seem to get grasping at straws if you ask me since I've countered everyone of your claims.
You haven't counted any of my claims. You've again ignored all the evidence I've posted that urbanism and statehood in Ethiopia has Sabaean origins, instead steering the argument towards the supposed existence of an earlier civilization of Punt, for which absolutely no archaeological evidence you can provide. The only piece of evidence you have is that the Egyptians traded with a region in the Red Sea and described it having a ruler, none of which implies the existence of a civilization. You're drawing this out as long as is humanly possible. I've shown that you're completely wrong about the origins of civilization in the Ethiopian highlands, and you haven't countered a single claim I've made.

king
/kiNG/
noun
1. the male ruler of an independent state, especially one who inherits the position by right of birth.

Well Egyptians recorded Punt as having a king and queen correct? They spoke of a land of Punt controlled by said king and king correct?

>My point being that a literate society can be described as civilized, not that civilization requires literacy. I guess I wasn't clear there

nah, it just seemed like you were blowing hot air until I posted the definition and you're backtracking
>We don't know how African crops reached India.
We know that cinnamon was traded fro South Asia to Egypt atleast the time of Queen Hatshepsut. We know that said East African crops that were fully domesticated were being grown in Pakistan and India 2k b.c.

We know that said ports were zones of concentrated human presence, utilizing their labour to produce 80k measures of resin, and enough gold, ebony, ivory, and animals to fill 50 ships.

So this shows the groundwork of Indian ocean trade that was a hallmark of later red sea states that all originally spoke Cushitic languages, that still retained the linguistic and genetic evidence of said Cushitic presence.

There is no way around this dude.

You really haven't proven anything except your unwillingness to accept the centrality of East Africa in the development of the Red Sea as a whole from the time of Punt .

It's fine, some people are just so unwilling to acknowledge information about Africans they throw out obsolete information. I see it a lot on /pol/ so I'm used to it and don't mind it.

>Well Egyptians recorded Punt as having a king and queen correct? They spoke of a land of Punt controlled by said king and king correct?
Yes, the Egyptians described the ruler of Punt based on an English dictionary's definition of 'king'. Fuck off. You can't base the existence of an entire civilization on the title a foreign inscription gives their ruler.

Anyway, you seem to be wrong on this point because here the Puntites are frequently described as having multiple 'chiefs', not kings

From: jstor.org/stable/182543
>The Puntite 'chief' Parahu and his wife Atiya are the only Puntites identified by name
>Fig. 5. Two `Chiefs of Punt'
>The inscription of Sobekhotep... states this official `reached the coast, to announce the marvels of Punt, to receive aromatic gums which the chiefs had brought... as revenue from unknown lands.'
>the Karnak temple depicts Puntite chiefs bringing a number of unidentified goods
None of these imply the existence of a state. They imply a region divided into several chiefdoms.

>nah, it just seemed like you were blowing hot air until I posted the definition and you're backtracking
Believe whatever the fuck you want. Urbanism, statehood and literacy are the defining aspects of civilization, and all were introduced from Yemen. Get over it.

>all that shit about crops
Again, you try to steer the conversation away from what we're actually talking about. I've told you that I don't even disagree with you about crops. Stop bring them up. I'm talking to you about the origins of civilization in Ethiopia. I'm not talking to you about the origins of crops of the origins of trade with India.

The fact is that you cannot provide a single piece of archaeological evidence for a Puntite 'civilization' in the Horn. You've invented one, based solely on the fact that the Egyptians traded with the region, in order to satisfy your own Afrocentric agenda. It's an incredible feat of self-delusion.

A bit more, specifically about Hatshepsut's expedition and Parahu: books.google.ie/books?id=mtOhAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA594
>The plural phrase 'chiefs of Punt' is repeatedly used. Thus, Parahu is either their chief spokesman, or the one first encountered by the Egyptians.

Using the definition of civilization
>•the society, culture, and way of life of a particular area.

They still encompass that. But what's more interesting is your source that explores the possibility of there being other chiefs working together as one.

What are a number of bodies working in unison? A confederacy.
con·fed·er·a·cy
noun
a league or alliance, especially of confederate states.

Interestingly enough this is something mentioned by biblical scholars regarding Midianites and other Cushitic groups in Arabia but still whether the plural refers to those two rulers only or more working in unison it's still the "highest" example of trans-Red Sea cooperation, concentration of labour, concerted resource sharing. In essence a proto-state.

Also the agriculture history of Ethiopia is confirmed by Indian nation states using Ethiopian domesticated crops. It doesn't matter if there is not evidence at this moment of plow agriculture of wheat and barley before 200bce, Ethiopian Millet and Sorghum spread to south Asian locales 2k years earlier than that

Ask yourself the following question? Can I describe explain the majority of the history of the horn of Africa without also explaining the history of the middle east? If yes, then yes to OP's question.

The "Middle East" in this instance is a land twenty miles away. To speak of it as some entirely separate thing with a complete different history and people is fallacious.

/thread

holy shit, since when can we see the number of posters?

>the definition of civilization
>the society, culture, and way of life of a particular area
Yeah, Australian Aboriginals and San bushmen are civilizations. You've completely failed to justify calling Punt a civilization, and now you're trying to move the goalposts of what we're arguing about. We're obviously talking about civilization in the archaeological/anthropological sense of a complex, urban, stratified society.

You've made three claims to refute my original comment;

Firstly
>Sabaeans did not transmit civilization to D'mt because there was no demographic shift
I've showed you using multiple sources that this is wrong. Urbanism, statehood and literacy were all indisputably transmitted to the highlands by Sabaeans. The exact nature of transmission is the only thing debated. The lack of a demographic shift is irrelevant.

And then
>Yemen couldn't have transmitted civilization to the Horn because Yemen and the Horn are the same region and the same people, the evidence for this being shared culture in prehistory and the possible presence of Cushitic at some point in Yemen's prehistory
The same argument could be used to claim that any two parts of the world that are in any way related to each other are the same place and people. It's very reminiscent of Aryanism (Indo-European speakers trying to claim everything accomplished by any Indo-European speakers as their own 'heritage', as you do with Cushitic speakers). No matter what way you try to spin this, Yemen remains its own region and the development of civilization in Yemen is nothing more than that; it didn't develop in Ethiopia or Somalia, it developed in Yemen and then spread to Ethiopia/Eritrea. It was not a single development covering the entire region; it was a Yemeni development which later spread. Yemen is not Ethiopia and it's not the Horn; though it has interacted with both, it's still Yemen, it's own distinct region with its own development.

And finally
>Punt was actually the earliest civilization in the Horn, because the Egytpians traded with them and called there ruler a 'King'
There is no archaeological evidence for the existence of a civilization at the time of Punt. The Egyptians described Punt as a region split into a multitude of chiefdoms. These chiefdoms were capable of long-distance trade and co-operation, which is nothing unusual for chiefdoms. Chiefdoms are by definition, not states. A chiefdom is a kinship-based society which anthologists distinguish from states, which are stratified into classes, possess an administrative bureaucracy, usually (but not always) urban and literate.

Just face it, you've failed. Either you can't admit that you're wrong or you're still delusional enough not to realise it.