Historical art of waaqoyi galbeed

[Xareen]

I mean, I don't think anyone at this point would deny that cultures like A-Group, Khartoum-Neolithic and Butana are ancestral to Horners, especially the first one and its strong parallels with the Pastoral-Neolithic.

Academics vehemently deny it. Claude Rilly - leading Nubiologist and authority figure on all things ancient Nubian - has it that we are not ancestral to any group. Not even Butana. He goes as far as to say that we probably got our ability to farm and herd from Nilo-Saharan speakers essentially.

and then this bull gets propagated by know-it-all retards who goon to information repackaged by PhD's with agendas of their own.

It's just this new evidence bringing down the timeframe and suggesting that it's not just early A-Group but in fact even Wawat (C-Group) and Kerma that maybe ancestral to East Cushites in particular that needs some arguing for. More on that from me another time.

Looking forward to that very much!

Waryaa, what kinda image do you have of Reer Somaleen? Maybe just don't wear a Somalia wristband or say some wild shit like, "Siyaad Barre is my hero!" But nobody otherwise cares. There are Reer Konfuur all over the place doing business.

Don't take it personally. I have that image of the whole peninsula

 

[Shimbiris]

Academics vehemently deny it. Claude Rilly - leading Nubiologist and authority figure on all things ancient Nubian - has it that we are not ancestral to any group. Not even Butana. He goes as far as to say that we probably got our ability to farm and herd from Nilo-Saharan speakers essentially.

Archaeologists are somewhat lunatics in general. If I'm not mistaken, they were vehemently against the idea of farming in Europe coming from the Middle-East via migration. Some nonsense about "cultural diffusion" until the ancient DNA came in and even then you'd be surprised. Linguists and archaeogeneticists have their own ridiculousness running about but they're at least a lot more sensible. Scholarship is not a monolith and you wouldn't have a hard time convincing someone like Ehret or Lazaridis of what we discuss on this forum.

 

[Xareen]

Archaeologists are somewhat lunatics in general.

He's a linguist, though he does have tendency to shoehorn random bull from archaeology to osteometrics to bolster shitty arguments that only have basis in shoddy linguistic analysis.

Scholarship is not a monolith and you wouldn't have a hard time convincing someone like Ehret or Lazaridis of what we discuss on this forum.

Lazaridis, I know would agree. Ehret, on the other hand, as much as I respect him, is the biggest Nilotophile on the planet. Anything that would take from his precious 'Sudanics' in this zero-sum game of history, he would be against with a passion. He's #2 behind Rilly tho he's less of a c-word about it. Rilly's papers sometimes read like the journal of a madly insecure teenager with language used.

 

[Shimbiris]

He's a linguist, though he does have tendency to shoehorn random bull from archaeology to osteometrics to bolster shitty arguments that only have basis in shoddy linguistic analysis.

Lazaridis, I know would agree. Ehret, on the other hand, as much as I respect him, is the biggest Nilotophile on the planet. Anything that would take from his precious 'Sudanics' in this zero-sum game of history, he would be against with a passion. He's #2 behind Rilly tho he's less of a c-word about it. Rilly's papers sometimes read like the journal of a madly insecure teenager with language used.

Damn, I somehow didn't catch on despite reading some of his work. But eh, what wins out in scholarship is always in the end evidence. People can publish into infinity and even try to shape mainstream scholarship with sheer will and bullying. Future generations with true scholastic rigor will do their reading and know was being silly.

Speaking of Lazaridis, it's wild to think he's Dienekes. He will probably never admit it but what exactly are the odds that there are two Greeks from Havala, of the small Pontic Greek minority no less, who went to Caltech at the same time, studied Comp Sci and happened to be interested in population genetics?

 

[Midas]

Is claudy Rilly that guy who says that merotic was nilo saharan and not cushitic?

Horta what is this aversion nubiologiists have for connecting stuff in ancient sudan with cushtic speakers?

 

[Xareen]

Damn, I somehow didn't catch on despite reading some of his work. But eh, what wins out in scholarship is always in the end evidence. People can publish into infinity and even try to shape mainstream scholarship with sheer will and bullying. Future generations with true scholastic rigor will do their reading and know was being silly.

Yh it just sucks that 'specialists' in Africa don't have to undergo same rigorous process others would have to because there's more than 1 specialist per cultural horizon outside of Africa. So much on the continent needs revisiting, linguistics most of all.

Speaking of Lazaridis, it's wild to think he's Dienekes. He will probably never admit it but what exactly are the odds that there are two Greeks from Havala, of the small Pontic Greek minority no less, who went to Caltech at the same time, studied Comp Sci and happened to be interested in population genetics?

Yeah I've heard people say this. People seem to think he inserts Dienekes' ideas of PIE urheimat into his work. Didn't know there were so many parallels tho loool. Wish we had half the motion on our shi where some blogposter could be pushing our agendas in official papers.

 

[Shimbiris]

Is claudy Rilly that guy who says that merotic was nilo saharan and not cushitic?

Horta what is this aversion nubiologiists have for connecting stuff in ancient sudan with cushtic speakers?

I think they know on some level that we are in some way part MENA even if they're not fully clued into the recent population genetics data. Then there's the unfortunate "Hamitic Hypothesis" scholarly heritage around us. So, I suspect that to some of these scholars being "Pro-Cushitic" is an extension of "colonialism" and "white supremacy".

Yh it just sucks that 'specialists' in Africa don't have to undergo same rigorous process others would have to because there's more than 1 specialist per cultural horizon outside of Africa. So much on the continent needs revisiting, linguistics most of all.

Absolutely and it will get its day, insha'Allah. Just need more young blood from our region in the field to make the shift and I hope to do my part in helping that along if I live long enough.

Yeah I've heard people say this. People seem to think he inserts Dienekes' ideas of PIE urheimat into his work. Didn't know there were so many parallels tho loool. Wish we had half the motion on our shi where some blogposter could be pushing our agendas in official papers.

You're observant! Yes, I strongly suspect he is the source of why the Reich lab still weirdly pushes Anatolian Hypothesis adjacent theories like a Caucasus or Iran origin. Him and David had a biblical rivalry back in the day and I bet he gets a bit of a kick out of it whenever he sees David railing against the Reich lab's theories. Humourously, David will vehemently deny it's the same person because Lazaridis is very polite toward him in comparison, but he just doesn't seem to understand how academics have to behave in general.

But I do think it's 100% the same person. People did some digging on those details that Dienekes revealed over the years about himself (I was aware of some of them myself) and it's just too many things. From the same not so major Greek town, from the same small Greek minority, went to the same highly elite institution barely anyone in the world gets into, at the same time (yes), then both studied Comp Sci and went into the same niche interest with those skills. It's the same person... And it adds up even more how the Dienekes persona gradually died down as Lazaridis began to appear on the scene.

But respect to him, wallahi. He is essentially the grandfather of the entire Anthro-genomics blogging and forum space. He made the initial infrastructure for a lot of the stuff people like David, Harappa, and our own Punt were using, if I'm not mistaken. Absolute pioneer. Then managed to get himself into academia and have his name front and center among some of the biggest studies in archaeogenetics.

As for Somalis and Horners having a similar figure. I don't know about ever being a full-time academic while I'm <60, but in the meantime I plan to make many Anthromadness posts going forward and once I do I intend for many of them to have polished academic paper versions that I will then endeavour to get published the way David's being doing things over at Eurogenes. Approach some scholars and let them take honestly as much credit as they like as long as the stuff gets out there as published peer reviewed work. Maybe a few years into the future but insha'Allah.

 

[Xareen]

Is claudy Rilly that guy who says that merotic was nilo saharan and not cushitic?

Horta what is this aversion nubiologiists have for connecting stuff in ancient sudan with cushtic speakers?

Yeah like Shimbiris said, 'anti-Hamitism' is a real thing in academia. Has affected how our historical agency has been viewed really badly. That Meroitic is NS is not even something that I'm particularly against tbh, just the whole pre-Meroitic being spoken by Kerma moyenne and even before that the existence of another NS family in Kerma ancien and prior. Don't know what to say to that.

 

[Xareen]

Absolutely and it will get its day, insha'Allah. Just need more young blood from our region in the field to make the shift and I hope to do my part in helping that along if I live long enough.

You're doing an incredible job as is fwiw. 90% of Somali hobbyists from like 15-20+ all cite your blog as the being the reason they got into this.

But respect to him, wallahi. He is essentially the grandfather of the entire Anthro-genomics blogging and forum space. He made the initial infrastructure for a lot of the stuff people like David, Harappa, and our own Punt were using, if I'm not mistaken. Absolute pioneer. Then managed to get himself into academia and have his name front and center among some of the biggest studies in archaeogenetics.

100%. The whole team at Reich labs have my respect. The whole rivalry is news to me and makes me wish I saw it happen in real time but yeah, people are doing incredible things with the stuff they built, themselves being the vanguard.

As for Somalis and Horners having a similar figure. I don't know about ever being a full-time academic while I'm <60, but in the meantime I plan to make many Anthromadness posts going forward and once I do I intend for many of them to have polished academic paper versions that I will then endeavour to get published the way David's being doing things over at Eurogenes. Approach some scholars and let them take honestly as much credit as they like as long as the stuff gets out there as published peer reviewed work. Maybe a few years into the future but insha'Allah.

Sounds incredible, bro. I really would like to do something to help before I retire too. I've been thinking of doing a massive 50-page-long meta-study on Somali ethnogenesis using linguistics, archaeology, DNA, history, general anthropology (oral history and whatnot) to map out exactly where our ancestors were at any given 500 year period from say 4000BC. And truth be told I've been really thinking of pivoting career-wise into something where I could perhaps help and I've been offered some really good opportunities if that's something I decide to do. But like you said, if not us, then some autistic 15 year old will probably make his PhD thesis on vindicating what you have been saying online since 2015. It's never over.

I don't entirely understand what you mean by what David has done by contacting scholars, though. Could you elaborate?

 

[The alchemist]

The Laas Geel type of art moves toward the Dir Dhabe region, and southward. It is definitely by Eastern Cushites, and reflects their expansion into Ethiopia. These were probably the Highland Eeastern Cushites.

C-Group pottery.

Some variation of this is definitely expressed by the Eastern Cushites that moved into the Horn from East-West from Somaliland. That is why I think they're early C-Group related.

From Laga Oda, a place some 20 km plus southwest from Dire Dawa, following the general theme of Laas Geel and the other sites in Somaliland and other places in Ethiopia.

Somewhere in the Western Desert in Egypt, fitting in the same style:

These were the last true cattle pastoralists who rather migrated to greener Horn of Africa, rather than changing subsistence, which was probably what our ancestors did, as the cattle became less used, though highly prized among the Nubians after 4000 years ago.

Regarding rock art, I found something pretty crazy. There was a Magdalenian style in Upper Egypt, Qurta, dated to 19- 16 ka.

"On the basis of the intrinsic characteristics of the rock art, its patination and degree of weathering, as well as the archaeological and geomorphological context, we have proposed an attribution of these petroglyphs to the Late Pleistocene, specifically to the Late Palaeolithic Period (~19 000 to ~18 000 cal BP). This interpretation has met with little criticism from the archaeological community, but proof in the form of science-based dating evidence has thus far been lacking."

In my opinion, could reflect the late Levantine Aurignicians. The rough backmigration of these groups I speculated to be 23 ka.

We have similar art dated to 20-15ka.

This is when this Levantine (Anatolian HG- related) ancestry came to the region, and it seem to coincide. What is peculiar is that I don't think this style existed in Levant but only Western Europe, which was under Ice Age at the time.

By Dirk Huyge 2011:

"By providing a reliable pre-Holocene minimum age, the Qurta OSL dates present the first
solid evidence for the existence of sophisticated figurative Pleistocene rock art in North
Africa. Whereas this makes the Qurta rock art definitely the oldest discovered in North
Africa thus far, its true age remains unknown. It is clear that the buried drawings at QII
were already considerably weathered before they became covered by sediment. It seems
likely therefore that the rock art is significantly older than the minimum ages obtained by
means of OSL. An age of ∼17 000–19 000 calendar years would make the Qurta rock
art more or less contemporaneous with Solutrean/Early Magdalenian art as known from
Upper Palaeolithic Western Europe (Bahn & Vertut 1997: 58–76). Significantly, the rock
art of Qurta and the other Egyptian Pleistocene art sites has several thematic and stylistic
features in common with European Late Magdalenian art. This is particularly evident
from the human figures, most of which are very similar to the anthropomorphs of the
Lalinde/G¨onnersdorf type (see Lorblanchet & Welt´e 1987; Bosinski et al. 2001: 299–346).
Moreover, some of the more elaborately executed bovids are highly reminiscent of Late
Magdalenian aurochs representations, such as those from the Grotte de la Mairie in Teyjat
(Dordogne, France) (Barri`ere 1968). Both the Lalinde/G¨onnersdorf type figures and the
Teyjat bovids are dated to ∼14 000–15 500 cal yr BP. Whereas it would be premature to
speculate on any implications of this in terms of long-distance influence and intercultural contacts, it is clear that the Pleistocene age of the Qurta petroglyphs — as demonstrated by
the present study — along with their degree of sophistication, similar to that of European
Ice Age art, introduce a new set of challenges to archaeological thought."

Maybe the Magdalenian started with Levantines migrating into Europe, the same way they migrated into Africa?

Or it could have been an indirect contact.

"The DNA also sheds light on what happened to these ancient Europeans when the climate worsened between 25,000 and 19,000 years ago, a time known as the last glacial maximum when much of Northern and central Europe was blanketed in ice more than 1 kilometer thick. Archaeologists had assumed people including the Gravettians retreated into ice-free areas in southern Europe beginning about 26,000 years ago, then filtered back north several thousand years later as the glaciers melted. That scenario appears to hold true in the Iberian Peninsula and the south of France: People living there before the ice reached its peak persist through the worst of the cold spell, then surge back north and east as the continent warms."

So paleo Europeans during the LGM moved to refugia in southeastern Europe, came in contact with Levantines through cultural diffusion, then subsequently, during the warming of the environment, moved northward to mainland Europe again, while the Levantines coincided with movement into Egypt.

We know that Europeans after the LGM were different from the ones before, as in they were significantly Near Eastern, reflecting this southern exchange and/or movement.

Going into a bit of the topic, @NidarNidar, the rock art you show there is actually a later type than the Laas Geel. Dating it would be between 3000-2000, and later, before the present. It is actually an early Somali art. It reflects our interaction with the environment and animals.

 

[Shimbiris]

Yeah like Shimbiris said, 'anti-Hamitism' is a real thing in academia. Has affected how our historical agency has been viewed really badly. That Meroitic is NS is not even something that I'm particularly against tbh, just the whole pre-Meroitic being spoken by Kerma moyenne and even before that the existence of another NS family in Kerma ancien and prior. Don't know what to say to that.

Yes, I've read pro-NS stuff on Meroe and Nubia in general that feels almost aggressive in how it speaks against AA and Cushitic presences. It's so strange to realize the person with such passion writing that stuff is not even remotely from NE Africa. They're not Somali, Habesha, Egyptian, Sudani Arab, Nubian, Dinka or anything of the sort... they're some cadaan of mostly North-Euro descent who grew up somewhere like New England or California.

You're doing an incredible job as is fwiw. 90% of Somali hobbyists from like 15-20+ all cite your blog as the being the reason they got into this.

Sounds incredible, bro. I really would like to do something to help before I retire too. I've been thinking of doing a massive 50-page-long meta-study on Somali ethnogenesis using linguistics, archaeology, DNA, history, general anthropology (oral history and whatnot) to map out exactly where our ancestors were at any given 500 year period from say 4000BC. And truth be told I've been really thinking of pivoting career-wise into something where I could perhaps help and I've been offered some really good opportunities if that's something I decide to do. But like you said, if not us, then some autistic 15 year old will probably make his PhD thesis on vindicating what you have been saying online since 2015. It's never over.

Will contact you about more details on this someday, insha'Allah. You have me intrigued and I encourage you to do whatever you can if it won't be any inconvenience to you.

The whole rivalry is news to me and makes me wish I saw it happen in real time

It was hilarious, wallahi. Here's a classic example:

Back when the aDNA stuff was first dropping Dienekes tried to post a bit of a win in that his early components like "West_Asian", "Mediterranean" and "Southwest Asian" were being vindicated via finds like CHG—and though he never posted about them along this vein ANF and Natufians as well—but...

West_Asian in the flesh (hunter-gatherers from Georgia) (Jones et al. 2015)

Years ago, I detected the presence of a West_Asian genetic component (with dual modes in "Caucasus" and "Gedrosia") whose origins I place...

dienekes.blogspot.com

The first fucking comment!



Seeing that sorta stuff unfold in real time on the forums as well was fun, wallahi. They were basically the "Nordicist" vs "Mediterraneanist" jihad in modern population genetics. Though, to be fair to David, he really doesn't care about "Nordicist" stuff in reality. He just wanted to prove that PIE originated on the PC Steppe and that NE Europeans like him have some of the most ancestry from the PIEs like the Yamanya folks. More personal than anything else but for Dienekes it very much was, imho, a Mediterranean bias driving things.

I don't entirely understand what you mean by what David has done by contacting scholars, though. Could you elaborate?

I mean, technically, you don’t need any credentials to publish in journals, walaal. You could seriously have just a high school diploma. There are no formal rules requiring a PhD, Master’s, or even a Bachelor’s degree to submit a paper to journals like Nature or PLOS ONE, as far as I know. If your research is solid and rigorous, there’s no official reason why it couldn’t get published.

That said, there’s definitely an implicit gatekeeping dynamic. Academia tends to self-police, and people without credentials—or without the approval of credentialed academics—can have a harder time being taken seriously. So one smart path is to build relationships with established researchers and co-author with them. I’ve noticed David’s been doing that gradually, though I’m not sure if any of his work has gone beyond the pre-print stage yet:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.05.543790v1.full