Afrasans
Afrasans are a group of peoples who have inhabited northeastern and northern Africa, as well as the southwestern tip of Asia, since at least the eighth millennium B.C.E. These societies share cultural traits that trace back to earlier Afrasan communities from 13,000 to 10,000 B.C.E. During the 8000-6000 B.C.E. period, the Afrasans in the Sahara, known for their Capsian tradition, relied on hunting and gathering, dining on game and wild grains in a climate that was wetter than today's. The Cushitic people in the southeastern Sahara innovated by domesticating cattle and donkeys, while the Southern Afrasans in the Ethiopian highlands developed agriculture focused on the enset plant. Another group, the proto-Semites, migrated north and contributed to early agricultural practices in the Levant by cultivating wheat and barley. Over time, the Afrasan societies adapted to environmental changes, adopting livestock farming and Middle Eastern crops. The early Afrasans practiced henotheism, a belief system where each community reveres its particular deity while acknowledging the existence of others, a tradition that has persisted in some contemporary societies. Today, notable descendants of the Cushitic peoples include the Somali and Oromo, emphasizing the diversity and cultural richness within Afrasan heritage.
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Afrasans
Also known as: Afroasiatics.
Date: 8000-4000 b.c.e.
Locale: Northern Africa and southwestern Asia
Afrasans
In the eighth millennium b.c.e., numerous Afrasan societies already inhabited nearly all of northeastern and northern Africa as well as the far southwestern tip of Asia. Most of the Afrasans pursued similar livelihoods, and they also shared key common features of culture, inherited from the earlier ancestral Afrasan communities of 13,000-10,000 b.c.e.
In 8000-6000 b.c.e., the Afrasans of the whole northern half of the vast Sahara regions belonged to a culture the archaeologists call the Capsian tradition. The Sahara at that time was wetter in climate than today and had many areas of grassland and steppe environments. The Capsian communities hunted game and collected wild grains as their principal sources of food.
In the far southeastern Sahara, between the Nile and Red Sea, the ancestral Cushitic people of 8000-6000 b.c.e. added a new way of obtaining food. Together with their Nilo-Saharan neighbors to the west, they were the first peoples in the world to domesticate the cow. They collected wild grains just like the Capsians, but they also herded cattle, using them for both meat and milk. The Cushites also domesticated the donkey, a formerly wild animal of the Red Sea hills region of Africa.
Still farther south, in the Ethiopian highlands, lived the Southern Afrasans. They emphasized a different range of plant foods in their diet. The most notable plant for them was the bananalike enset. Interestingly, people use the soft inner stem and the bulb of this plant for food but find the fruit unappetizing.
One Afrasan society, the proto-Semites, had moved north out of Africa into far southwestern Asia, at a still uncertain but early period. Originally collectors of wild grains, once they settled in the Levant, they participated, along with neighboring non-Afrasan peoples, in the development of early Middle Eastern agriculture, cultivating wheat and barley and raising goats and sheep.
The period between 6000 and 4000 b.c.e. was a time of great changes for most of the Afrasan peoples. The Capsian societies all adopted the keeping of goats, sheep, and cattle. The southernmost Capsians, the proto-Chadic people, moved far south into the basin of Lake Chad, where they took up Sudanic crops, such as sorghum, from their Nilo-Saharan neighbors. Of the more than one hundred Chadic languages spoken today, Hausa is the most important and best known. In contrast, the Capsian societies of North Africa, ancestral to the Berber peoples of later history, took up the cultivation of the Middle Eastern crops of wheat and barley. The Capsians of the northeastern Sahara, ancestors of the ancient Egyptians, increasingly concentrated along the Nile River, as the climate of the Sahara began to dry out. They, too, took up the farming of Middle Eastern foods, but they soon also adopted from the Nilo-Saharans to the south such Sudanic crops as gourds, castor beans, and watermelons.
In the wetter parts of the Ethiopian highlands, the ancestral Omotic people, a Southern Afrasan society, in the sixth and fifth millennia b.c.e. created a vigorous new agriculture, centered on cultivation of the enset plant. Over the same span, the Cushites of the southeastern Sahara spread their cattle-raising way of life southward through the drier portions of the Ethiopian highlands. Still later, in the fourth millennium b.c.e., the southernmost Cushites carried this livelihood still farther south into present-day Kenya and northern Tanzania. The best-known Cushitic peoples of recent times are the Somali and the Oromo of the Horn of Africa.
Interestingly, the early Afrasans followed a henotheistic religion, a kind of belief system unfamiliar to many people. Henotheism is a religion in which each small society possesses its own particular deity. People accept that other communities have different deities but believe in giving their first allegiance to their own society’s god. This system of belief persists to the present among some of the Southern Afrasan societies of southwestern Ethiopia. It is also apparent among the earliest Hebrews, a people of the Semitic branch of Afrasan, who originally viewed Yahweh as the deity of just their society. Its earlier existence in predynastic Egypt explains why most of the ancient Egyptian gods started out as the deities of particular nomes (administrative or geographical units of area) before they were incorporated into the national religion.
Bibliography
Bernal, Martin. Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. London: Vintage, 1991.
Yamauchi, Edwin M. Africa and Africans in Antiquity. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001.