The alchemist
VIP
It is very peculiar and curious how Ethiopianists are quick to claim things that historically and under discussion they associate you with as a reductive mechanism of historical revisionism, in the sense of, seeing how pastoral networks were the fundamental skeletons of the economic flow for the entire region, they suddenly have to internalize that feature because of its relational consequence, weakening their claim on the grip of the civilization.
That Harari guy was, on the one hand, calling Somalis pastoralists incapable of building formal time-enduring structures (clearly coping by evading the archeology of the Somali and Somali region of Ethiopia), saying the domain was herding camels. On the other, when it came to the presence of camel, not only as the early phase of the Islamic mark in the region attributed to practice, inhabitation, and also main logistic economic flow, the Harari suddenly claimed that the interior Habash highlander, non-camel keeping populations incorporated camel caravans as their disposition. When evidence highlights the economic emphasis of camel specialization was crucial for the explanations of the flow of goods and commodities throughout the Islamic civilization of the Horn of Africa, he was quick to claim that as well. Thus the man said, (paraphrasing) "camels were not only a Somali-based thing" - to which I responded it was quintessentially Somali, with Afars also herding camels (only assuming: however, I do believe this given the desertic geography), but keeping to northern areas, a region not relevant to the regional parameters of the discussion we had.
The next argument would be Oromo camel pastoralists. Well, this is a failed association. Oromos that herd camels are Somaloid that were incorporated on the whole sub-clan level into Borana upon the incursion of the latter into northern Kenya, a region they historically did not settle, only pushed roughly simultaneously with the northward Oromo expansion. The other Oromo in the Western peripheral lowlands of Ethiopia incorporated camel herding into their subsistence from Somali contact.
Such distribution is represented in the region of the Horn of Africa today:
The Borana are either Somaloids or Boran that moved into drylands already inhabited by Somaloids, assimilated the Somaloids, and borrowed similar subsistence for adaptation in the region in the 16th century and onwards.
We have ethnographic evidence in the anthropological research to show this:
"Many groups of lowland camel pastoralists, who spoke Somali-like dialects or had spoken such dialects before they adopted the Boran variety of Oromo, brought them regular presents to their ritual centres in what now is Ethiopia, from an economic perspective a very light burden, and received a blessing from the qallu, the ritual head of one or the other of the two moieties to which the Boran and all of their allies were associated. Also the age-grading (gada) systems of some groups took chronological clues from each other and involved ritual exchange (Schlee 1998a). The pre-colonial picture of social relations is made up of both difference (Somali/Somaloid/Oromo speakers, cattle/ camel husbandry, distinction along interethnic hierarchy) and interaction (co-residence in the same or adjacent areas, sharing of water points, economic exchange, ritual interdependence). It was a system organized along differences without separation. This inter-ethnic system, the Boran-centred alliance known as Worr Libin (People of Libin), also had a military aspect. The Boran, jointly with their camel-keeping allies, repelled the Laikipiak Maasai who had ventured far into northern Kenya." "Territorializing ethnicity: the imposition of a model of statehood on pastoralists in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia" (2011), p. 859-860.
"I found important cultural elements of the modern pastoral groups to go back to a Proto-Rendille-Somali (PRS) complex. Apart from the Rendille, Sakuye and others, I included the Gabra and Garri, discussed by Fekadu (2009), in this perspective. My conclusions were that those among the ancestral populations, who were bearers of this PRS culture, were not Somali, but speakers of Somali-like (Somaloid) languages like Rendille. For being Somali, they lacked the core feature of being Muslims. Before their split into the modern ethnic groups, they may have borrowed elements of Arabo-Islamic culture, but the bulk of their camel-oriented beliefs and rituals had nothing to do with Islam. Neither were they Oromo; many of them adopted the Oromo language only in recent centuries." Schlee, Gunther, "Territorializing ethnicity: the imposition of a model of statehood on pastoralists in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia." p 869
The word for camel exists deep in all the Somaloid languages:
Heine, Bernie, 1978, "The Sam languages: The History of Rendille, Boni and Somali", p. 45,
We're talking 2000 years at least, existing in all the Somaloid languages.
We have evidence of an ancient presence of the dromedary in Somaliland:
One site that shows camel was dated between 1600-2100:
Brandt, A. Steven (1987), "Pastoral Rock Art in the Horn of Africa: Making Sense of Udder Chaos", p. 200.
The camel takes over as the drying of the land in the north increases, reflected in the faunal depiction in the art itself:
(Same source): p. 207, and 208
You see, the source emphasized the correct assessment that long-distance trade was easier facilitated with the dromedary introduction. A drier Somali north was, in a strange way, the beginner of a more complex economic function through subsistence adaptation with the help of a new mobile beast of burden, where previous to that, subsistence was perhaps not relied on for wide economic networking stretching toward the hinterland of modern Ethiopia, only wide-range transhumance instead, with cattle/ovicaprid-keeping pastoralists that moved long stretches for herding purposes, first and foremost. As one sees the earlier phase of rock art shows a uniform presence in the northern Somali region and Eastern interior Ethiopia, evincing the presence of ethnic homogeneity but only for agro-pastoralism. The latter is of a Nubian art style and tradition according to my assessment (with evidence coroborated by researchers), in harmony with the migration from the Egypto-Sudanic region. But that is another topic.
Here are depictions from the previous site dating between 1600-2100 in Somaliland:
This not only places early Somalis in the north, but it also adds that the camel was in existence during those days, shown in the core subsistence vocabulary genetic in all the Somaloid languages, including ancient engravings on rocks.
Not only that; there exists firm physical archeological proof that further substantiates camel presence in the northern coast. We have Ceel Gerdi producing the earliest camel remains so far out of the excavations in Somaliland, with this current site CG-02 dated to the 1st century CE.
"A camel metatarsal was also documented in CG-02, the oldest occurrence of this species so far in Somaliland. A fragment of a rib from a size 4 herbivore could also have belonged to a camel." González-Ruibal et al. (2022)., "Nomads Trading with Empires: Intercultural Trade in Ancient Somaliland in the First to Seventh Centuries CE."
You see, the argument that the camel was not very much centered with Somalis goes against the evidence -- it's archetypical Somali-based. This is nothing short of comprehensive coverage of evidence from independent areas of disciplines that all corroborate that the camel was from the north, Somalis were the ones handling them, Somalis have their origin in the north, and that such subsistence, geographic adaptation, and presence also was dealt by Somalis in a territorial sense that later bore economic significance by the pre-Islamic early trade, at least since the beginning of the first millennia, all the way continually into the Islamic era. Rock art even shows that Somalis had a presence with the camel in the Galbeed with similar rock art and fauna remaining. The latter dated to 1600 years ago. On top of that, before the camel, livestock herders of a similar style had expanse from the northern Somali region all the way into the Galbeed, always showing undeniable continuity of presence of essentially where Adal and the entire lowland region of the horn of Africa since we got there.
This is something even the people studying the rock art agree with:
"An interesting element of the paintings from this site consists of engravings tracing the outlines of some figures. One of the bovine paintings has its horns and udder engraved (Fig. 7D) in a similar fashion to what is reported from sites further east in Somaliland and Somalia e Las Geel (Gutherz et al., 2003) and Karin Heegan (Brandt and Carder, 1987). Further investigations of such stylistic similarities may reveal some degree of cultural and economic connection across a vast area of the horn of Africa stretching from the highlands of Western Harerghe to the plains of Somaliland." - Assefa, Zelalem, (2013), "Survey and explorations of caves in southeastern Ethiopia: Middle Stone Age and Later Stone Age archaeology and Holocene rock art."
Here is the art style that is the same as the one from Laas Geel:
However, it is important to emphasize that the dating of the Laas Geel rock shelter seems to have been considerably older.
That Harari guy was, on the one hand, calling Somalis pastoralists incapable of building formal time-enduring structures (clearly coping by evading the archeology of the Somali and Somali region of Ethiopia), saying the domain was herding camels. On the other, when it came to the presence of camel, not only as the early phase of the Islamic mark in the region attributed to practice, inhabitation, and also main logistic economic flow, the Harari suddenly claimed that the interior Habash highlander, non-camel keeping populations incorporated camel caravans as their disposition. When evidence highlights the economic emphasis of camel specialization was crucial for the explanations of the flow of goods and commodities throughout the Islamic civilization of the Horn of Africa, he was quick to claim that as well. Thus the man said, (paraphrasing) "camels were not only a Somali-based thing" - to which I responded it was quintessentially Somali, with Afars also herding camels (only assuming: however, I do believe this given the desertic geography), but keeping to northern areas, a region not relevant to the regional parameters of the discussion we had.
The next argument would be Oromo camel pastoralists. Well, this is a failed association. Oromos that herd camels are Somaloid that were incorporated on the whole sub-clan level into Borana upon the incursion of the latter into northern Kenya, a region they historically did not settle, only pushed roughly simultaneously with the northward Oromo expansion. The other Oromo in the Western peripheral lowlands of Ethiopia incorporated camel herding into their subsistence from Somali contact.
Such distribution is represented in the region of the Horn of Africa today:
The Borana are either Somaloids or Boran that moved into drylands already inhabited by Somaloids, assimilated the Somaloids, and borrowed similar subsistence for adaptation in the region in the 16th century and onwards.
We have ethnographic evidence in the anthropological research to show this:
"Many groups of lowland camel pastoralists, who spoke Somali-like dialects or had spoken such dialects before they adopted the Boran variety of Oromo, brought them regular presents to their ritual centres in what now is Ethiopia, from an economic perspective a very light burden, and received a blessing from the qallu, the ritual head of one or the other of the two moieties to which the Boran and all of their allies were associated. Also the age-grading (gada) systems of some groups took chronological clues from each other and involved ritual exchange (Schlee 1998a). The pre-colonial picture of social relations is made up of both difference (Somali/Somaloid/Oromo speakers, cattle/ camel husbandry, distinction along interethnic hierarchy) and interaction (co-residence in the same or adjacent areas, sharing of water points, economic exchange, ritual interdependence). It was a system organized along differences without separation. This inter-ethnic system, the Boran-centred alliance known as Worr Libin (People of Libin), also had a military aspect. The Boran, jointly with their camel-keeping allies, repelled the Laikipiak Maasai who had ventured far into northern Kenya." "Territorializing ethnicity: the imposition of a model of statehood on pastoralists in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia" (2011), p. 859-860.
"I found important cultural elements of the modern pastoral groups to go back to a Proto-Rendille-Somali (PRS) complex. Apart from the Rendille, Sakuye and others, I included the Gabra and Garri, discussed by Fekadu (2009), in this perspective. My conclusions were that those among the ancestral populations, who were bearers of this PRS culture, were not Somali, but speakers of Somali-like (Somaloid) languages like Rendille. For being Somali, they lacked the core feature of being Muslims. Before their split into the modern ethnic groups, they may have borrowed elements of Arabo-Islamic culture, but the bulk of their camel-oriented beliefs and rituals had nothing to do with Islam. Neither were they Oromo; many of them adopted the Oromo language only in recent centuries." Schlee, Gunther, "Territorializing ethnicity: the imposition of a model of statehood on pastoralists in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia." p 869
The word for camel exists deep in all the Somaloid languages:
Heine, Bernie, 1978, "The Sam languages: The History of Rendille, Boni and Somali", p. 45,
We're talking 2000 years at least, existing in all the Somaloid languages.
We have evidence of an ancient presence of the dromedary in Somaliland:
One site that shows camel was dated between 1600-2100:
Brandt, A. Steven (1987), "Pastoral Rock Art in the Horn of Africa: Making Sense of Udder Chaos", p. 200.
The camel takes over as the drying of the land in the north increases, reflected in the faunal depiction in the art itself:
(Same source): p. 207, and 208
You see, the source emphasized the correct assessment that long-distance trade was easier facilitated with the dromedary introduction. A drier Somali north was, in a strange way, the beginner of a more complex economic function through subsistence adaptation with the help of a new mobile beast of burden, where previous to that, subsistence was perhaps not relied on for wide economic networking stretching toward the hinterland of modern Ethiopia, only wide-range transhumance instead, with cattle/ovicaprid-keeping pastoralists that moved long stretches for herding purposes, first and foremost. As one sees the earlier phase of rock art shows a uniform presence in the northern Somali region and Eastern interior Ethiopia, evincing the presence of ethnic homogeneity but only for agro-pastoralism. The latter is of a Nubian art style and tradition according to my assessment (with evidence coroborated by researchers), in harmony with the migration from the Egypto-Sudanic region. But that is another topic.
Here are depictions from the previous site dating between 1600-2100 in Somaliland:
This not only places early Somalis in the north, but it also adds that the camel was in existence during those days, shown in the core subsistence vocabulary genetic in all the Somaloid languages, including ancient engravings on rocks.
Not only that; there exists firm physical archeological proof that further substantiates camel presence in the northern coast. We have Ceel Gerdi producing the earliest camel remains so far out of the excavations in Somaliland, with this current site CG-02 dated to the 1st century CE.
"A camel metatarsal was also documented in CG-02, the oldest occurrence of this species so far in Somaliland. A fragment of a rib from a size 4 herbivore could also have belonged to a camel." González-Ruibal et al. (2022)., "Nomads Trading with Empires: Intercultural Trade in Ancient Somaliland in the First to Seventh Centuries CE."
You see, the argument that the camel was not very much centered with Somalis goes against the evidence -- it's archetypical Somali-based. This is nothing short of comprehensive coverage of evidence from independent areas of disciplines that all corroborate that the camel was from the north, Somalis were the ones handling them, Somalis have their origin in the north, and that such subsistence, geographic adaptation, and presence also was dealt by Somalis in a territorial sense that later bore economic significance by the pre-Islamic early trade, at least since the beginning of the first millennia, all the way continually into the Islamic era. Rock art even shows that Somalis had a presence with the camel in the Galbeed with similar rock art and fauna remaining. The latter dated to 1600 years ago. On top of that, before the camel, livestock herders of a similar style had expanse from the northern Somali region all the way into the Galbeed, always showing undeniable continuity of presence of essentially where Adal and the entire lowland region of the horn of Africa since we got there.
This is something even the people studying the rock art agree with:
"An interesting element of the paintings from this site consists of engravings tracing the outlines of some figures. One of the bovine paintings has its horns and udder engraved (Fig. 7D) in a similar fashion to what is reported from sites further east in Somaliland and Somalia e Las Geel (Gutherz et al., 2003) and Karin Heegan (Brandt and Carder, 1987). Further investigations of such stylistic similarities may reveal some degree of cultural and economic connection across a vast area of the horn of Africa stretching from the highlands of Western Harerghe to the plains of Somaliland." - Assefa, Zelalem, (2013), "Survey and explorations of caves in southeastern Ethiopia: Middle Stone Age and Later Stone Age archaeology and Holocene rock art."
Here is the art style that is the same as the one from Laas Geel:
However, it is important to emphasize that the dating of the Laas Geel rock shelter seems to have been considerably older.
