Understanding Somali Genetics
- Thread starter Ashraf
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Eritrean Habeshas are Tigrinyas, specifically of the Biher-Tigrinya subgroup of the Tigrinya. They're basically the somewhat more coastal version of their more inland entirely mountain dweller kin in Ethiopia; the Tigray-Tigrinya. And yes, Biher in Tigrinya is a cognate with Ba7ar in Arabic for the sea.
Tigrinyas are a different sort from Amharas. Amharas are more of a meta-ethnicity like Oromos and display some variability in basal admixture levels, though not as extremely as Oromos:
As recently as 100-200 years ago, a good chunk of the Amhara region was still Agaw/Central-Cushitic speaking, some of it even Omotic speaking along the fringes. You will to this day meet Amharas who will recount to you that they are "not Amhara" yet when you inquire about where they are geographically from in Ethiopia you will find they are from the Amhara region and only speak Amharic, though some may tell you a parent or grandparent or great-grandparent speaks or spoke a different language that is now lost. Amharization, like Oromization, is still going on to this day gradually.
From wiki before some Amharas removed it:
This is why they have more variety than Tigrinyas who, in contrast, seem more like a "real ethnicity" with seemingly a common origin for thousands of years out of Ethiosemitic speaking Northern Ethiopia/Eritrea where the Proto-Ethiosemitic (PES) people seem to have mostly concentrated. @Garaad Awal is correct that there's not really any known difference genetically between TIgray-Tigrinyas and Biher-Tigrinyas, the divide is entirely political and recent historical; same ethnic group.
What you've seen is probably not just a difference between Amharas and Tigrinyas, though. A lot of highlanders in general speak Amharic practically like a first language and may seem "Amhara" to you when their true roots are Gurage, Oromo, Sidamo or whatever else. Comparing highland Ethiopia in general with its greater variety in Cushitic, Arabian and Omotic related ancestries to a subset of Tigrinyas in Eritrea is obviously gonna throw you off.
Also, some Eritreans you're seeing may not be Tigrinyas but Tigres. Tigres are a different ethnic group who speak a language closely related to Tigrinyas. They live more entirely along the coast and along some of the islands off Eritrea's coast. They were historically lowland agro-pastoralists like the Beja, Saho, Afars and Somalis and their language has a Beja rather than Agaw substratum. Basically Ethiosemitized coastal Cushites rather than highland agriculturalist Cushites. The few I've seen tested seem a little more MENA than Tigrinyas which tracks with how they are geographically closer to Yemen and since most Tigres can be Muslims rather than Christians as well they do sometimes maybe mix with the recent Banu Rashid migrants from the Hejaz so those might be some of the few you see who look like muwalads.
It amazes me how both of you have this amount of knowledge on this subject mashallah. It's also good to see you both agree on something.
I know that the Ethiopians tigrenyas like the TPLF group or Makhale is identical to Tigrenyas in Eritrea, I also know tigre are more likely to be Muslims and settle in Coastal areas, they have different language to tigrenya. I know if they are Gurage, Sidame and Oromo cause they always tell me their ethnicity. The only difference i noticed is that tigrenya and tigre seem to be taller than Amharas, so it's good you clarified the subject matter.
Two group that interests me is the kunama and nara ethnic groups of Eritrea. Two reasons, first they sound like a Japanese anime and second they don't look horn africans, the once I saw look more like fulanis of Nigeria. I have a feeling they might have migrated from Sudan and Chad. I would like to see what you know about them.
Tigre also speak the same language as Beni Amer. They might have mixed with Rashida group which may have elevated their MENA. We know Rashida are clearly Saudis in origin. That's why some Beni Amers look like muwalids. Saho and Bilen look like Somalis but with higher Eurasian mix. I have studied Eritreans quite a while and they are very interesting group. Why i said interesting is cause I came across a Jabarti Eritrean which is a sub group of Tigrinyas, Tigrinyas are majority Christians but these Sub groups Tigrinyas Jabarti are Muslims.i wonder what haplogroup they would be J or E-V32?
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Sound like Japanese anime!
Kills me because I legit often thought of Japan when I heard their names. It's funny how Nilo-Saharans in general can sometimes have very strangely East-Asian sounding names like the common Deng surname used by Dinkas. But on a more serious note, they seem to me like they've probably been in that general vicinity for a long time and are just normal NS speaking people of the general eastern Sudan area which sort of bleeds into northwestern Eritrea.
Lots of NS speaking pastoral people historically lived more north and east in Sudan. @Nilotic's own cid, the Dinka, used to apparently live along Gezira which is not far from where groups like the Kunama and Nara are in Eritrea.
To be honest, I am of the general opinion even our own Dinka-like ancestry (AEA) and our A-M13 Y-DNA across Horn Cushites and Ethiosemites is mostly NS mediated. We have evidence via Ehret of contact with NS speakers as far back as near the split between North-Cushitic and the other Cushitic branches over 7,000 years ago and lots and lots of evidence of back and forth with NS speakers after that:
I really wouldn't be shocked if those Paleolithic Sudanese remains we have that come out A-M13 and look morphologically very SSA as far north as Wadi Halfa were in fact NS speakers or if NS, alongside Afro-Asiatic, was at least part of the tapestry of Hunter-Gatherer isolates that may have flourished back in Paleolithic Sudan and southern Egypt.
Nilo-Saharans been in the general area of Sudan for a long, long time, basically. Naras and Kunamas are just the most recent edition and in that general area apparently not that recent given that we have medieval accounts of the Kunama having lived near there and adjacent to Alodia as far back as the 800s CE:
The Ethiopian Borderlands
Historically, studies of Ethiopia, like those of other countries, tend to concentrate on events at or near the center of political power, and devote far too little attention to other areas. The present account attempts at least in part to redress the balance by shifting attention to...
www.google.com
No clue about their admixture profile, though. Don't recall seeing their samples but I would not be shocked if they had some admixture from groups like Beni-Amer, Tigre or even Tigrinyas.
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I am starting to lean to the theory that the Cushitic language family came from the region of Upper Egypt/Northeast Sudan.
From what i understood, Illustrativedna shows evident that we have Elmentietan and Savanna Pastoral Neolithic Cushitic also a little of Nubian Christian period like ancestry as well. Our early ancestors were likely 60% Natufians Eurasian and 40% Nilo-Saharan with minor mota within the Nilo-Saharan ancestry.
I would say Beja are the closest to the north eastern pastoralist. We are closest to the original inhabitants of Kenyan lake turkana cushites around 3000 BC. That means we inherited further Nilotic ancestry on those periods that is absent from Beja group.
Thank you that makes sense, so it's safe to say that Cushitic groups are their "own thing" genetically (at least within the very messy context of genetics) and outside of groups relatively recently admixed with us like Maasais, the next "closest" groups are those that share a common recent ancestor with?
I know there's a lot of debate around the "Original Egyptians™" but is there any legitimacy to the idea that people in northern Africa tended to look like modern Cushitic groups until even more migration happened into the continent from gene pools that had distinctly evolved away from Africa?
