Hamitic
Encyclopedia
Ham, son of Noah
Ham , according to the Table of Nations in the Book of Genesis, was a son of Noah and the father of Cush, Mizraim, Phut and Canaan.- Hebrew Bible :The story of Ham is related in , King James Version:...
, paralleling Semitic
Semitic
In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages...
and Japhetic
Japhetic
Japhetic is a term that refers to the supposed descendants of Japheth, one of the three sons of Noah in the Bible. It corresponds to Semitic and Hamitic...
.
It was formerly used for grouping the non-Semitic Afroasiatic languages (which for this reason were described as "Hamito-Semitic"), but since, unlike the Semitic branch, these have not been shown to form a phylogenetic unity, the term is obsolete in this sense.
In the 19th century, as an application of scientific racism
Scientific racism
Scientific racism is the use of scientific techniques and hypotheses to sanction the belief in racial superiority or racism.This is not the same as using scientific findings and the scientific method to investigate differences among the humans and argue that there are races...
, the "Hamitic race" became a sub-group of the Caucasian race
Caucasian race
The term Caucasian race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia , Central Asia and South Asia...
, alongside the Semitic race, grouping the non-Semitic populations native to North Africa
North Africa
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...
, the Horn of Africa
Horn of Africa
The Horn of Africa is a peninsula in East Africa that juts hundreds of kilometers into the Arabian Sea and lies along the southern side of the Gulf of Aden. It is the easternmost projection of the African continent...
and South Arabia
South Arabia
South Arabia as a general term refers to several regions as currently recognized, in chief the Republic of Yemen; yet it has historically also included Najran, Jizan, and 'Asir which are presently in Saudi Arabia, and Dhofar presently in Oman...
, including the Ancient Egyptians. The Hamitic theory suggested that this "Hamite race" was superior to or more advanced than Negroid populations of Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa as a geographical term refers to the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara. A political definition of Sub-Saharan Africa, instead, covers all African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara...
. In its most extreme form, in the writings of C. G. Seligman, it asserted that all significant achievements in African history were the work of "Hamites" who migrated into central Africa as pastoralists, bringing technologies and civilizing skills with them. Theoretical models of Hamitic languages and of Hamitic races were interlinked in the early twentieth century.
Curse of Ham
The term Hamitic originally referred to the peoples believed to have been descended from the biblical HamHam, son of Noah
Ham , according to the Table of Nations in the Book of Genesis, was a son of Noah and the father of Cush, Mizraim, Phut and Canaan.- Hebrew Bible :The story of Ham is related in , King James Version:...
, one of the Sons of Noah
Sons of Noah
The Seventy Nations or Sons of Noah is an extensive list of descendants of Noah appearing in of the Hebrew Bible, representing an ethnology from an Iron Age Levantine perspective...
. When Ham dishonors his father, Noah pronounces a curse on him, stating that the descendents of his son Canaan will be "servants of servants". Of Ham's four sons, Canaan fathered the Canaanites, while Mizraim fathered the Egyptians
Egyptians
Egyptians are nation an ethnic group made up of Mediterranean North Africans, the indigenous people of Egypt.Egyptian identity is closely tied to geography. The population of Egypt is concentrated in the lower Nile Valley, the small strip of cultivable land stretching from the First Cataract to...
, Cush the Cushites, and Phut the Libyans
Libu
The Libu were an ancient Berber tribe, from which the name Libya derives....
.
During the Middle Ages, this was interpreted to define Ham as the ancestor of all Africans. The curse was regularly interpreted as having created visible racial characteristics in Ham's offspring, notably black skin. According to Edith Sanders, the sixth-century Babylonian Talmud
Talmud
The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....
states that "the descendants of Ham are cursed by being Black and depicts Ham as a sinful man and his progeny as degenerates." Both Arab and later European and American slave traders used this story to justify African slavery.
In fact, the Bible restricts the curse to the offspring of Ham's son Canaan, who occupied the Levant
Levant
The Levant or ) is the geographic region and culture zone of the "eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt" . The Levant includes most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and sometimes parts of Turkey and Iraq, and corresponds roughly to the...
, not to his other sons who are supposed to have populated Africa. According to Edith Sanders, this restriction was increasingly emphasised by 19th century theologians, who rejected the curse as a justification for slavery.
Hamitic hypothesis
In the mid 19th century, the term Hamitic acquired a new meaning as European writers claimed to identify a distinct "Hamitic race" that was superior to "Negroid" populations of Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa as a geographical term refers to the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara. A political definition of Sub-Saharan Africa, instead, covers all African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara...
. The theory arose from early anthropological writers who linked the stories in the Bible of Ham's sons to actual ancient migrations of a supposed Middle-Eastern sub-group of the Caucasian race. The theory that this group migrated further south was introduced by British explorer John Hanning Speke
John Hanning Speke
John Hanning Speke was an officer in the British Indian Army who made three exploratory expeditions to Africa and who is most associated with the search for the source of the Nile.-Life:...
, in his publications on his search for the source of the Nile. Speke believed that his explorations uncovered the link between "civilized" North Africa and "barbaric" central Africa. Describing the Ugandan Kingdom of Buganda, he argued its "barbaric civilization" had arisen from a nomadic pastoralist race which migrated from the north and was related to the Hamitic Oromo people
Oromo people
The Oromo are an ethnic group found in Ethiopia, northern Kenya, .and parts of Somalia. With 30 million members, they constitute the single largest ethnic group in Ethiopia and approximately 34.49% of the population according to the 2007 census...
of Ethiopia (known as the "Galla" to Speke). In a section of his book entitled "Theory of Conquest of Inferior by Superior Races", Speke wrote:
"It appears impossible to believe, judging from the physical appearance of the Wahuma [Tutsi], that they can be of any other race than the semi-Shem-Hamitic of Ethiopia... Most people appear to regard the Abyssinians as a different race from the Gallas, but, I believe, without foundation. Both alike are Christians of the greatest antiquity.... [They] fought in the Somali country, subjugated that land, were defeated to a certain extent by the Arabs from the opposite continent, and tried their hands south as far as the Jub river, where they also left many of their numbers behind. Again they attacked Omwita (the present Mombas), were repulsed, were lost sight of in the interior of the continent, and, crossing the Nile close to its source, discovered the rich pasture-lands of Unyoro, and founded the great kingdom of KittaraEmpire of KitaraThe Empire of Kitara is a strong part of oral tradition in the area of the Great Lakes of Africa, including the modern countries of Uganda, northern Tanzania, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi...
, where they lost their religion, forgot their language, extracted their lower incisors like the natives, changed their national name to Wahuma, and no longer remembered the names of Hubshi or Galla--though even the present reigning kings retain a singular traditional account of their having once been half white and half black, with hair on the white side straight, and on the black side frizzly."
These ideas provided the basis for asserting that the Tutsi were superior to the Hutu
Hutu
The Hutu , or Abahutu, are a Central African people, living mainly in Rwanda, Burundi, and eastern DR Congo.-Population statistics:The Hutu are the largest of the three peoples in Burundi and Rwanda; according to the United States Central Intelligence Agency, 84% of Rwandans and 85% of Burundians...
. In spite of both groups being Bantu
Bantu languages
The Bantu languages constitute a traditional sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and Ethnologue counts 535 languages...
-speaking, the Tutsi were classed as "Hamitic" on grounds of their being deemed to be more Caucasoid in their facial features. Later writers followed Speke in arguing that they had originally migrated as pastoralists and had established themselves as the dominant group, having lost their language as they assimilated to Bantu culture.
Sergi
Later scholars expanded on these ideas, the most influential was the Italian race theorist Giuseppe SergiGiuseppè Sergi
Giuseppe Sergi was an influential Italian anthropologist of the early twentieth century, best known for his opposition to Nordicism in his books on the racial identity of ancient Mediterranean peoples...
. In his book The Mediterranean Race (1901) Sergi argued that there was a distinct Hamitic racial group which could be divided into two sub-groups: The northern Hamites, which comprised Berbers
Berber people
Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are continuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River. Historically they spoke the Berber language or varieties of it, which together form a branch...
, Toubou
Toubou
The Tubu are an ethnic group that live mainly in northern Chad, but also in Libya, Niger and Sudan....
, Fulani and the Guanches
Guanches
Guanches is the name given to the aboriginal Berber inhabitants of the Canary Islands. It is believed that they migrated to the archipelago sometime between 1000 BCE and 100 BCE or perhaps earlier...
; the Eastern branch, which comprised Egyptians, Nubians
Nubians
The Nubians are an ethnic group originally from northern Sudan, and southern Egypt now inhabiting North Africa and some parts of East Africa....
, Ethiopians, Oromo
Oromo
The Oromo are an ethnic group found in Ethiopia, northern Kenya, .and parts of Somalia. With 30 million members, they constitute the single largest ethnic group in Ethiopia and approximately 34.49% of the population according to the 2007 census...
, Somali
Somali people
Somalis are an ethnic group located in the Horn of Africa, also known as the Somali Peninsula. The overwhelming majority of Somalis speak the Somali language, which is part of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family...
, and Tutsi
Tutsi
The Tutsi , or Abatutsi, are an ethnic group in Central Africa. Historically they were often referred to as the Watussi or Watusi. They are the second largest caste in Rwanda and Burundi, the other two being the Hutu and the Twa ....
s. Some of these groups had "lost their language" and so had to be identified by physical characteristics. In Sergi's theory, the Mediterraneans were the "greatest race in the world", and had expanded north and south from the Horn of Africa
Horn of Africa
The Horn of Africa is a peninsula in East Africa that juts hundreds of kilometers into the Arabian Sea and lies along the southern side of the Gulf of Aden. It is the easternmost projection of the African continent...
, creating superior civilizations. Sergi described the original European peoples as "Eurafricans". The ancient Greeks and Italians were born from "Afro-Mediterraneans" who migrated from western Asia and had originally spoken a Hamitic language before the advent of Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
.
Seligman
The Hamitic hypothesis reached its apogee in the work of C. G. Seligman, who argued in his book The Races of Africa (1930) that:"Apart from relatively late Semitic influence...the civilizations of Africa are the civilizations of the Hamites, its history is the record of these peoples and of their interaction with the two other African stocks, the NegroNegroThe word Negro is used in the English-speaking world to refer to a person of black ancestry or appearance, whether of African descent or not...
and the BushmenBushmenThe indigenous people of Southern Africa, whose territory spans most areas of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, and Angola, are variously referred to as Bushmen, San, Sho, Barwa, Kung, or Khwe...
, whether this influence was exerted by highly civilized Egyptians or by such wider pastoralists as are represented at the present day by the BejaBeja peopleThe Beja people are an ethnic group dwelling in parts of North Africa and the Horn of Africa.-Geography:The Beja are found mostly in Sudan, but also in parts of Eritrea, and Egypt...
and Somali....The incoming Hamites were pastoral 'Europeans' - arriving wave after wave - better armed as well as quicker witted than the dark agricultural Negroes."
Seligman asserted that the Negro race was essentially static and agricultural, but that the wandering Hamitic "pastoral Caucasians" had introduced most of the advanced features found in central African cultures, including metal working, irrigation and complex social structures.
Despite criticism, Seligman's thesis remained unchanged in new editions of his book into the 1960s.
Negro-Hamites
Seligman and other early scholars also believed that invading Hamites from North AfricaNorth Africa
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...
and the Horn of Africa
Horn of Africa
The Horn of Africa is a peninsula in East Africa that juts hundreds of kilometers into the Arabian Sea and lies along the southern side of the Gulf of Aden. It is the easternmost projection of the African continent...
had mixed with local Negro women in East Africa and parts of Central Africa to produce several hybrid "Negro-Hamitic" populations such as the Tutsi and the Maasai:
"At first the Hamites, or at least their aristocracy, would endeavour to marry Hamitic women, but it cannot have been long before a series of peoples combining Negro and Hamitic blood arose; these, superior to the pure Negro, would be regarded as inferior to the next incoming wave of Hamites and be pushed further inland to play the part of an incoming aristocracy vis-a-vis the Negroes on whom they impinged... The end result of one series of such combinations is to be seen in the Masai [sic], the other in the Baganda, while an even more striking result is offered by the symbiosis of the Bahima of Ankole and the Bahera [sic]."
While some scholars accepted the idea of Sub-Saharan tribes like the Tutsi and the Maasai being Negro-Hamites, others such as John Walter Gregory
John Walter Gregory
John Walter Gregory, FRS, was a British geologist and explorer, known principally for his work on glacial geology and on the geography and geology of Australia and East Africa.-Early life:...
emphasized that the putative Hamitic element in these peoples was at best minimal and consequently assigned them to a sub-group within the Negro race (where they had historically been classified). Citing the considerable physical disparity between the ethnic groups traditionally considered Hamites and the aforementioned "Negro-Hamites", Gregory wrote:
"By some authorities the Masai are included in the Hamitic group, but we have only to compare the features of a member of this tribe with those of a GallaOromo peopleThe Oromo are an ethnic group found in Ethiopia, northern Kenya, .and parts of Somalia. With 30 million members, they constitute the single largest ethnic group in Ethiopia and approximately 34.49% of the population according to the 2007 census...
... to realise the predominance of the negro element in the former. The aspect of the pure Hamite differs altogether from those of the Bantu and Negroid races. The... portrait of a Galla presents no correspondence with the conception usually formed of an African native. The forehead is high and square instead of low and receding; the nose is narrow, with the nostrils straight and not transverse; the chin is small and slightly pointed instead of massive and protruding; the hair is long and not woolly; the lips are thinner than those of the negro and not everted; the expression is intellectual, and indicates a type of mind higher than that of the simple negro. Indeed, except for the colour, it could hardly be distinguished from the face of a European. These characteristics prepare us for the fact that the Galla are not African, but immigrants from Asia."
Rwanda and Burundi
The Hamitic hypothesis affected the policies of European imperial powers in the twentieth century. In Rwanda it was linked to preferential attitudes to the Tutsis over the Hutu. This is believed by some to have been a significant factor in the Rwandan genocideRwandan Genocide
The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people in the small East African nation of Rwanda. Over the course of approximately 100 days through mid-July, over 500,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate...
in 1994.
The League of Nations Mandate
League of Nations mandate
A League of Nations mandate was a legal status for certain territories transferred from the control of one country to another following World War I, or the legal instruments that contained the internationally agreed-upon terms for administering the territory on behalf of the League...
of 1916 appointed Belgium to govern Rwanda after Germany's defeat in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
; Philip Gourevitch
Philip Gourevitch
Philip Gourevitch , an American author and journalist, is a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker and the former editor of The Paris Review. His most recent book is The Ballad of Abu Ghraib , an account of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison under the American occupation...
claims that “the terms Hutu and Tutsi had become clearly defined opposing “ethnic” identities, and the Belgians made this polarization the cornerstone of their colonial policy.” Belgian officials would set about measuring Rwandans to define traits among the various tribes which resulted in discrepancies they argued justified the Tutsis majority of control throughout the country.
Racial differences were established between the Tutsi and Hutu people, differences which would impose a wholly inflexible ceiling on those designated as Hutu.
Scholars such as Mahmood Mamdani suggested that the Hutu began to see the Tutsi as an outside invader to their land, as "aliens" and usurpers, and that this led, in the end, to genocide. He states that reforms of local government by the Belgian colonial rulers in the 1920s led to a situation in which the Hutus "were not ruled by their own chiefs but by Tutsi chiefs. The same reforms constructed the Tutsi into a different race: the Hamitic race". A major contributing force to the animosity between Hutu and Tutsis is derived from Spekes’ “Hamitic hypothesis”. Namely the notion that since the Tutsis were considered the Hamitic race, the Hutu could frame the Tutsis as foreign invaders, as by definition, the Hamitic race is synonymous with a settling identity.".
Following World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
Belgium’s colonial administration had been placed under United Nations trusteeship, which meant that it was to prepare for the eventual independence of Rwanda as a self-governing nation. Hutu political activists emerged in great numbers and exploited this as an opportunity to rally the masses to unite in their "Hutuness" as this was their chance to finally gain power after decades of oppression. This philosophy, coupled with other political incidents led to the social revolution of 1959 where ten thousand Tutsis, predominantly those within the political structure, were killed, and thousands more displaced from their homes. What followed was essentially a racial and ethnic hierarchy similar in most respects to that of one year prior; however with the roles simply reversed – Hutu dominated institutions with discrimination in education, the civil service and armed forces.
This was unique to Rwanda and Burundi
Burundi
Burundi , officially the Republic of Burundi , is a landlocked country in the Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east and south, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. Its capital is Bujumbura...
. While other ethnic groups outside Rwanda such as the Bahima were also identified as "Hamites", they were not given institutionalised superior status. "Only in Rwanda and Burundi did the Hamitic hypothesis become the basis of a series of institutional changes that fixed the Tutsi as a race in their relationship to the colonial state."
African-American views
African-American writers were initially ambivalent about the Hamitic hypothesis. Because Sergi's theory proposed that the superior Mediterranean raceMediterranean race
The Mediterranean race was one of the three sub-categories into which the Caucasian race and the people of Europe were divided by anthropologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, following the publication of William Z. Ripley's book The Races of Europe...
had originated in Africa, support for the Hamitic hypothesis could be used to challenge claims about the superiority of white Anglo-Saxons of the Nordic race, promoted by writers such as Madison Grant
Madison Grant
Madison Grant was an American lawyer, historian and physical anthropologist, known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist...
. According to Yaacov Shavit this generated "radical Afrocentric theory, which followed the path of European racial doctrines". Writers who insisted that the Nordics were the purest representatives of the Aryan race
Aryan race
The Aryan race is a concept historically influential in Western culture in the period of the late 19th century and early 20th century. It derives from the idea that the original speakers of the Indo-European languages and their descendants up to the present day constitute a distinctive race or...
encouraged "the transformation of the Hamitic race into the black race, and the resemblance it draws between the different branches of black forms in Asia and Africa." In response, the Journal of Negro History stressed the cross-fertilization of cultures between Africa and Europe, publishing an article by George Wells Parker
George Wells Parker
George Wells Parker was an African American political activist and writer who co-founded the Hamitic League of the World....
who adopted Sergi's view that the "civilizing" race had originated in Africa itself. In the same vein, the concept of Hamitic identity was taken up by black pride groups. Parker founded the Hamitic League of the World
Hamitic League of the World
Hamitic League of the World was an African American nationalist organization. Its declared aims were:The word Hamitic derives from Ham the son of Noah in the Old Testament. The organisation was founded in 1917 by George Wells Parker. In 1918 it published his pamphlet Children of the Sun...
in 1917 by to "inspire the Negro with new hopes; to make him openly proud of his race and of its great contributions to the religious development and civilization of mankind." He insisted that "fifty years ago one would not have dreamed that science would defend the fact that Asia was the home of the black races as well as Africa, yet it has done just that thing."
These ideas evolved into the concept of the "Asiatic Blackman" in the theories of Timothy Drew and Elijah Muhammad
Elijah Muhammad
Elijah Muhammad was an African American religious leader, and led the Nation of Islam from 1934 until his death in 1975...
. Many other authors followed the argument that civilization had originated in Hamitic Ethiopia, a view that became intermingled with biblical imagery. The Universal Negro Improvement Association (1920) considered that Ethiopians were the "mother race". The Nation of Islam
Nation of Islam
The Nation of Islam is a mainly African-American new religious movement founded in Detroit, Michigan by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in July 1930 to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African-Americans in the United States of America. The movement teaches black pride and...
asserted that the superior black race originated with the lost Tribe of Shabazz
Tribe of Shabazz
According to the Nation of Islam the Tribe of Shabazz was an ancient Black nation that migrated into central Africa, led by a scientist named Shabazz. The concept is found primarily in the writings of Wallace Fard Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad...
, which originally possessed "fine features and straight hair", but which migrated into central Africa, lost its religion and declined into a barbaric "jungle life".
However, writers who were keen to create a Pan-African view of the unity of black African peoples considered the Hamitic hypothesis to be divisive, since it asserted that superior Africans were not Negroid. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that "the term Hamite under which millions of Negroes have been characteristically transferred to the white race by some eager scientists" was a tool to create "false writing on Africa".
Hamitic language group
Johann Ludwig Krapf
Johann Ludwig Krapf was a German missionary in East Africa, as well as an explorer, linguist, and traveler. Krapf played an important role in exploring East Africa with Johannes Rebmann. They were the first Europeans to see Mount Kenya and Kilimanjaro...
(1810–1881), but in the traditional biblical sense to refer to all languages of Africa spoken by African people deemed "black".
Friedrich Müller
Friedrich Müller (linguist)
Friedrich Müller was an Austrian linguist and ethnologist who originated the term Hamito-Semitic languages for what are now called the Afro-Asiatic languages.-Biography:He studied at the University of Göttingen...
named the traditional Hamito-Semitic
Afro-Asiatic languages
The Afroasiatic languages , also known as Hamito-Semitic, constitute one of the world's largest language families, with about 375 living languages...
family in 1876 in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft, and defined it as consisting of a Semitic group plus a "Hamitic" group containing Egyptian, Berber, and Cushitic; he excluded the Chadic group. It was the Egyptologist
Egyptology
Egyptology is the study of ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native religious practices in the AD 4th century. A practitioner of the discipline is an “Egyptologist”...
Karl Richard Lepsius
Karl Richard Lepsius
Karl Richard Lepsius was a pioneering Prussian Egyptologist and linguist and pioneer of modern archaeology.-Background:...
(1810–1884) who restricted it to the non-Semitic languages in Africa which are characterized by a grammatical gender system. This "Hamitic language group" was proposed to unite various, mainly North-African languages, including the Ancient Egyptian language
Egyptian language
Egyptian is the oldest known indigenous language of Egypt and a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Written records of the Egyptian language have been dated from about 3400 BC, making it one of the oldest recorded languages known. Egyptian was spoken until the late 17th century AD in the...
, the Berber languages
Berber languages
The Berber languages are a family of languages indigenous to North Africa, spoken from Siwa Oasis in Egypt to Morocco , and south to the countries of the Sahara Desert...
, the Cushitic languages
Cushitic languages
The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family spoken in the Horn of Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Sudan and Egypt. They are named after the Biblical character Cush, who was identified as an ancestor of the speakers of these specific languages as early as AD 947...
, the Beja language
Beja language
Beja or North Cushitic is an Afro-Asiatic language of the southern coast of the Red Sea, spoken by about two million nomads, the Beja, in parts of Egypt, Sudan, and Eritrea.-Classification:...
, and the Chadic languages
Chadic languages
The Chadic languages constitute a language family of perhaps 200 languages spoken across northern Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Central African Republic and Cameroon, belonging to the Afroasiatic phylum...
. Unlike Müller, Lepsius considered that Hausa
Hausa language
Hausa is the Chadic language with the largest number of speakers, spoken as a first language by about 25 million people, and as a second language by about 18 million more, an approximate total of 43 million people...
and Nama
Nama language
The Khoekhoe language, or Khoekhoegowab, also known by the ethnic term Nàmá and previously the now-discouraged term Hottentot, is the most widespread of the Khoisan languages. It belongs to the Khoe language family, and is spoken in Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa by three ethnic groups, the...
were part of the Hamitic group. These classifications relied in part on non-linguistic anthropological and racial arguments. Both authors used the skin-color, mode of subsistence and other characteristics of native speakers as part of their arguments that languages should be grouped together.
Carl Meinhof
Carl Friedrich Michael Meinhof was a German linguist and one of the first linguists to study African languages.-Early years and career:...
published Die Sprachen Der Hamiten (The Languages of the Hamites) in which he expanded Lepsius's model, adding the Fula language
Fula language
The Fula or Fulani language is a language of West Africa. It is spoken as a first language by the and related groups from Senegambia and Guinea to Cameroon and Sudan...
, Maasai language
Maasai language
The Maasai language is an Eastern Nilotic language spoken in Southern Kenya and Northern Tanzania by the Maasai people, numbering about 800,000...
, Bari language
Bari language
Bari is the Nilotic language of the Karo people, spoken over large areas of Central Equatoria state in South Sudan, across the northwest corner of Uganda, and into the Democratic Republic of Congo....
, Nandi language, Sandawe language
Sandawe language
Sandawe or Sandawi is a tonal language spoken by about 40,000 Sandawe people in the Dodoma region of Tanzania. Language use is vigorous among both adults and children, with people in some areas monolingual. Sandawe had generally been classified as a member of the defunct Khoisan family since Albert...
and Hadza language
Hadza language
Hadza is a language isolate spoken by fewer than a thousand Hadza people along the shores of Lake Eyasi in Tanzania, the last full-time hunter-gatherers in Africa. Despite the small number of speakers, language use is vigorous, with most children learning it...
to the Hamitic group. Meinhof's model was widely supported into the 1940s. Meinhof's system of classification of the Hamitic languages was based on a belief that "speakers of Hamitic became largely coterminous with cattle herding peoples with essentially Caucasian origins, intrinsically different from and superior to the 'Negroes of Africa'." However, in the case of the so-called Nilo-Hamitic languages (a concept he introduced), it was based on the typological feature of gender and a "fallacious theory of language mixture
Mixed language
A mixed language is a language that arises through the fusion of two source languages, normally in situations of thorough bilingualism, so that it is not possible to classify the resulting language as belonging to either of the language families that were its source...
." Meinhof did this in spite of earlier work by scholars such as Lepsius and Johnston demonstrating that the languages which he would later dub "Nilo-Hamitic" were in fact Nilotic languages with numerous similarities in vocabulary with other Nilotic languages.
Leo Reinisch (1909) already proposed linking Cushitic and Chadic, while urging a more distant affinity with Egyptian and Semitic, but his suggestion found little resonance. Marcel Cohen
Marcel Cohen
Marcel Samuel Raphaël Cohen was a French linguist. He was an important scholar of Semitic languages and especially of Ethiopian languages. He studied the French language and contributed much to general linguistics.- Life :...
(1924) rejected the idea of a distinct "Hamitic" subgroup, and included Hausa
Hausa language
Hausa is the Chadic language with the largest number of speakers, spoken as a first language by about 25 million people, and as a second language by about 18 million more, an approximate total of 43 million people...
(a Chadic language) in his comparative Hamito-Semitic vocabulary. However, it was Joseph Greenberg
Joseph Greenberg
Joseph Harold Greenberg was a prominent and controversial American linguist, principally known for his work in two areas, linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.- Early life and career :...
(1950) whose work led to widespread scholarly rejection of "Hamitic" as a category. Greenberg refuted Meinhof's linguistic theories, and rejected the use of racial and social evidence. In dismissing the notion of a separate "Nilo-Hamitic" language category in particular, Greenberg was actually "returning to a view widely held a half century earlier." He consequently rejoined Meinhof's Nilo-Hamitic languages with their Nilotic siblings. He also added (and sub-classified) the Chadic languages, and proposed the new name Afroasiatic for the family. Almost all scholars have accepted this classification.
Greenberg's model was fully developed in his book The Languages of Africa
The Languages of Africa
The Languages of Africa is a 1963 book of essays by Joseph Greenberg, in which he sets forth a genetic classification of African languages that, with some changes, continues to be the most commonly used one today...
, in which he reassigned most of Meinhof's additions to Hamitic to other language families, notably Nilo-Saharan. Following Isaac Schapera
Isaac Schapera
Isaac Schapera, FBA, FRSSAf was Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and regarded as one of the world's leading experts in the anthropology of South African tribesmen....
and rejecting Meinhof, he classified the Hottentot language as a member of the Central Khoisan languages
Khoisan languages
The Khoisan languages are the click languages of Africa which do not belong to other language families. They include languages indigenous to southern and eastern Africa, though some, such as the Khoi languages, appear to have moved to their current locations not long before the Bantu expansion...
. To Khoisan he also added the Tanzanian Hadza
Hadza language
Hadza is a language isolate spoken by fewer than a thousand Hadza people along the shores of Lake Eyasi in Tanzania, the last full-time hunter-gatherers in Africa. Despite the small number of speakers, language use is vigorous, with most children learning it...
and Sandawe
Sandawe language
Sandawe or Sandawi is a tonal language spoken by about 40,000 Sandawe people in the Dodoma region of Tanzania. Language use is vigorous among both adults and children, with people in some areas monolingual. Sandawe had generally been classified as a member of the defunct Khoisan family since Albert...
, though this view remains controversial since some scholars consider these languages to be linguistic isolates
Language isolate
A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with other languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language. They are in effect language families consisting of a single...
. Despite this, Greenberg's model remains the basis for modern classifications of languages spoken in Africa in which the Hamitic category (and its extension to Nilo-Hamitic) plays no part.