Asia or Africa? Localizing the Afroasiatic Homeland

Abstract

To test the competing theories of Afroasiatic homeland, the matrix of pairwise lexical matches between 58 Afroasiatic languages based on short (50-item) wordlists from The Tower of Babel: The Global Lexicostatistical Database, compiled by G.S. Starostin, A.S. Kassian, and M.A. Zhivlov, was subjected to several multivariate analyses. Rooted and unrooted networks were constructed, and the quasi-spatial model, which had rarely been used in lexicostatistics, was applied. A gradual relaxation of requirements to classification (from a rooted to an unrooted network, and from a hierarchical to a non-hierarchical ordering) reveals a southern cluster consisting of two families – Cushitic and Omotic. Under a more stringent approach there is no such cluster because Omotic proves the earliest branch of Afroasiatic, strengthening the African homeland theory. However, a comparison with dental, archaeological, and population genetic data tilts the balance somewhat in favor of Alexander Militarev’s Natufian scenario.