Why didn't ancient Cushites adopt widespread farming?

[Cartan Boos]

Northern Somalis actually farmed in the nugaal river before it got dry and nomad Somalis dominated

 

[NidarNidar]

Northern Somalis actually farmed in the nugaal river before it got dry and nomad Somalis dominated

You can still farm in the North, my family has a huge farm that has mangos, oranges and various other vegetables farmed seasonally.

 

[GALAN]

Keep in mind the East African HG component in Natufians accounts for their E1B1B, The particular Y Haplogroup survived and was the dominant paternal haplogroup in the Natufians.

Several factors could have been in play, the African humid period was about to end, and we probably traded with local farmers for what we needed, in or around the Nile.

The drying of the Sahara probably pushed us south for more land for our cattle to graze, competition with Nilotes and the formation of petty kingdoms around the Nile disrupted our grazing lands, early Cushites arrived in Kenya by 5,000 BC, earliest camel description was found in Laas Geel in North Somalia dated to 3,500 - 2,500 bce.

"The dromedary has not occurred naturally in the wild for nearly 2,000 years. It was probably first domesticated in the Arabian Peninsula about 4,000 years ago, or in Somalia where there are paintings in Laas Geel that figure it from 5,000 to 9,000 years ago. In the wild, the dromedary inhabited arid regions, including the Sahara Desert. The domesticated dromedary is generally found in the semi-arid to arid regions of the Old World, mainly in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula"

The domestication of the Camel set us apart from other Cushitic tribes and allowed us to take control of some of the largest and dryest landmass in Africa.

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14,000 bc - 5,500 bc.
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Look at the giant lakes in the middle of the Sahara.

One of the biggest reasons why some Natufians were pushed back into Africa was due to younger dryas, this hypothetical cause being asteroid or comet impact somewhere in the north Hemisphere.

The younger dryas occurred around 12,900 - 11,700 bce was a return to glacial conditions, a period for about 1,000 years.

View attachment 302225
source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastoral_Neolithic

African humid period - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Late Natufian culture dynamics during the Younger Dryas event (Leore Grosman) | the Digital Archaeological Record

The Natufian culture coincided with the Terminal Pleistocene, a period of climatic unpredictability. In the Southern Levant the Late Natufian phase corresponds to the global Younger Dryas event and directly precedes the abrupt transition to early Neolithic entities at the beginning of the...

core.tdar.org

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas

who snuck in the little green in Somaliland

 

[NidarNidar]

who snuck in the little green in Somaliland

Mostly supplied with ground water, Somalia has a sizeable underground water, look at the sahara though.

 

[GALAN]

Mostly supplied with ground water, Somalia has a sizeable underground water, look at the sahara though.

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somalia has suffered a heavy drought recently. if there were to be any green it Ould be in the south like afgoye not Somaliland my friend.

 

[NidarNidar]

somalia has suffered a heavy drought recently. if there were to be any green it Ould be in the south like afgoye not Somaliland my friend.

Droughts can be mitigated if we dig deep enough, ground water for many of us is the sole source of water in Somali.

 

[GALAN]

Mostly supplied with ground water, Somalia has a sizeable underground water, look at the sahara though.

View attachment 302426

the Sahara is deadly hence its the hottest on earth.

 

[GALAN]

Droughts can be mitigated if we dig deep enough, ground water for many of us is the sole source of water in Somali.

sadly somalia does not have any water source if were talking about drinkable. all of its water comes from Ethiopia I.E Shabelle, Ganale, and Dawa.

 

[NidarNidar]

the Sahara is deadly hence its the hottest on earth.

It still has a sizable underground water table, at some point, it had some of the largest lakes in Africa not that long ago as well.

sadly somalia does not have any water source if were talking about drinkable. all of its water comes from Ethiopia I.E Shabelle, Ganale, and Dawa.

Maybe bottled water, the majority of water for most nomads is still underground, in Borama our water is pumped from an underground aquifer.

 

[GALAN]

It still has a sizable underground water table, at some point, it had some of the largest lakes in Africa not that long ago as well.

Maybe bottled water, the majority of water for most nomads is still underground, in Borama our water is pumped from an underground aquifer.

intresting

 

[mohammdov]

somalia has suffered a heavy drought recently. if there were to be any green it Ould be in the south like afgoye not Somaliland my friend.

In the northwest and mountainous areas are green most of the year because rainfall is high there

 

[NidarNidar]

In the northwest and mountainous areas are green most of the year because rainfall is high there

It rains around August in Awdal, I would dream to have lived around 7000 years ago, the whole area must have countless rivers running into the sea, but prior to that, it was almost inhabitable.

 

[Thegoodshepherd]

Northern Somalis actually farmed in the nugaal river before it got dry and nomad Somalis dominated

Nugaal Valley seems to have been more densly inhabited in the past than in the past few centuries. It seems to have been wetter in the past. You could probably still grow sorghum there if you try hard enough.

 

[The Ace]

The Cushitic race came about in the Nike valley of Sudan 10,000 years ago when natufian tribes crossing into Africa from the Levant migrated south from prehistoric Egypt and mixed with the Proto nilotic populations.

Natufians who are the ancestors of North African Berbers, Semetic middle east, and Cushtiic east africans. We're the first humans to leave the hunter gatherer lifestyle 12,000 years ago and adopt farming. They brought farming to places like Iraq and Egypt which became the cradle of civilization.

The interesting thing is, when the Cushtic people formed, we took on the Nomadic lifestyle of our Proto nilotic side rather than the farming natufians. Ofc many cushites farmed along the nile valley which is why we get the Nubian/Kush civilisation from. But largely we didn't do it. Cushites expanded all over east coast Africa from southeastern Egypt, to South Africa.

But due to our nomadic life being heavily reliant on livestock. The tset tset fly brought disease which killed them some 1,500 years ago leading to famine and de population among south cushites. The farmer bantus who had recently expanded from Cameroon to all over the Congo jungle too advantage of this sparsely populated land and started leaving their jungles to farm in the great lakes region. The few south cushite left assimilated except one group of surviving south cushites in Tanzania called the Iraqw who live in a small Highlands region north of the country an maintain a population of less than 3~ million.


If the Cushitic tribes practiced widescale farming we could've taken all of Africa no joke. Like nomadic along with small population we snatched all of east coast. For much of our history we were the only pastoralists farmer peoples in Africa rest were hunter gatherer and sparse populated until bantu discovered farming. We had thousands years to take over all of Africa. If only...

It's geography and not genetics. Transition from farming to nomadism is not by choice, neither does it happen overnight. Change occurs slowly and over many centuries according to what will offer an optimal chance of survival meaning nomads can transit to farming too. It's just how humans work, nothing to do with genealogy.

If we assume that Cushites started as nomads then the Iraqw are a perfect example of this change. There's evidence of irrigation systems they built in some parts of the Rift Valley in present-day Kenya on their way to present-day Tanzania. If the Bantus arrived much later then who taught the Iraqw to farm? Most likely geography played a part in a process that took time.

As for the Bantus they occupy most of the green zones in Africa and have been farmers for a long time. Like us, they too have been shaped by geography.

If Somalia had numerous permanent rivers maybe even deltas, the picture would be very different. In addition, social structures such as clan divisions and rivalries are a product of environment too. We share the same beliefs as Indonesians but farming and fishing is what they have always done in that tropical environment. I'm sure you will agree we are very different.