Reconstruction of the Proto-Afrasian Cultural Vocabulary of the 11th–10th Millennia BCE: Terms for Watercraft and Metals (An Experience in Systematic Assessment of Available Etymologies and Reconstructions)

Abstract

The content of the article, as well as of my previous publication in Etnograficheskoe Obozrenie, is the reconstruction of the Proto-Afrasian cultural vocabulary, which is a unique source of information on the ancient history of the West Asian-North African-Mediterranean area of the Late Mesolithic – Early Neolithic period, not yet properly appreciated by archaeologists and prehistorians. In this case, we are talking about two groups of terms – for watercraft and for metals (including their processing and products from them) and about the proto-language period of the early Afrasians and their closest descendants – North Afrasians (who spoke a common ancestor language of Semitic, Egyptian, Libyo-Berber and Chadic), whom the author identifies with the creators of the Natufian and Post-Natufian archaeological cultures of the Levant. These proto-languages began to split successively into dialects, which grew into the known (and possibly some extinct and unknown to us) linguistic taxa in the last third of the 11th millennium BCE (namely, Proto-Afrasian, which includes, beside the above-mentioned languages, the South Afrasian – Cushito-Omotic branch) – the first third of the 10th millennium BCE (Proto-North Afrasian). Presented in the article are the etymologies of the reconstructed Proto-Afrasian terms: ten relating to watercraft and navigation, and ten relating to metals. The article has an additional purpose of evaluating and rating the results obtained.