Linguistics
28557 BCE to Now
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Papuans, the earliest people in the Western Melanesia, had occupied the Sahul continent, which later partially submerged to become the island of New Guinea, at least forty thousand years ago.
By thirty thousand years ago, speakers of Papuan languages had occupied the Bismarck Archipelago east of New Guinea.
The broad outlines of the prehistoric populations of present-day Ethiopia, coming forward to the late Stone Age, have begun to clarify through recent research in historical linguistics—and increasingly in archaeology as well.
These populations speak languages that belong to the Afro-Asiatic super-language family, a group of related languages that includes Omotic, Cushitic, and Semitic, all of which are found in Ethiopia today.
Linguists postulate that the original home of the Afro-Asiatic cluster of languages was somewhere in northeastern Africa, possibly in the area between the Nile River and the Red Sea in modern Sudan.
From here the major languages of the family gradually dispersed at different times and in different directions—these languages being ancestral to those spoken today in northern and northeastern Africa and far southwestern Asia.
The first language to separate seems to have been Omotic, at a date sometime after 13,000 BCE.
During the seventh millennium BCE, the northern half of Chad is part of a broad expanse of land, stretching from the Indus River in the east to the Atlantic Ocean in the west, in which ecological conditions favor early human settlement.
Rock art of the ''Round Head" style, found in the Ennedi region, has been dated to before the seventh millennium BCE and, because of the tools with which the rocks were carved and the scenes they depict, may represent the oldest evidence in the Sahara of Neolithic industries.
Many of the pottery-making and Neolithic activities in Ennedi date back further than any of those of the Nile Valley to the east.
In the prehistoric period, Chad was much wetter than it is today, as evidenced by large game animals depicted in rock paintings in the Tibesti and Borkou regions.
Recent linguistic research suggests that all of Africa's languages south of the Sahara Desert (except Khoisan) originated in prehistoric time in a narrow band between Lake Chad and the Nile Valley.
The origins of Chad's peoples, however, remain unclear.
Several of the proven archaeological sites have been only partially studied, and other sites of great potential have yet to be mapped.
Linguistic evidence indicates that both Cushitic speakers and Omotic speakers are present in Ethiopia by about 7000 BCE at the latest.
Linguistic diversification within each group thereafter gives rise to a large number of new languages.
In the case of Cushitic, these include Agew in the central and northern highlands and, in regions to the east and southeast, Saho, Afar, Somali, Sidamo, and Oromo, all spoken by peoples who will play major roles in the subsequent history of the region.
Omotic also spawns a large number of languages, Welamo (often called Wolayta) and Gemu-Gofa being among the most widely spoken of them, but Omotic speakers will remain outside the main zone of ethnic interaction in Ethiopia until the late nineteenth century.
The area west of Makassar Strait, sometimes called Sundaland, encompasses the areas of the Asian continental shelf that was exposed during the last ice age.
It includes the Malay Peninsula on the Asian mainland, the large islands of Borneo, Java, and Sumatra, and their surrounding islands.
It consists of a web of watered plains, because the seas have been some one hundred and fifty feet, or fifty meters, lower than they are now.
The stone tools used by hunting and gathering societies across Southeast Asia during this period of lowered sea levels show a remarkable degree of similarity in design and development.
Some scholars (e.g., Oppenheimer) locate the origin of the Austronesian languages in Sundaland and its upper regions.
Genetic research reported in 2008 indicates that the islands, which are the remnants of Sundaland, were likely populated as early as fifty thousand years ago.
The sea levels rise in about 7000 BCE to form the islands of Sundaland, home to many Asian mammals including elephants, monkeys, apes, tigers, tapirs, and rhinoceros.
Both Cushitic- and Omotic-speaking peoples collect wild grasses and other plants for thousands of years before they eventually domesticate those they most prefer.
According to linguistic and limited archaeological analyses, plow agriculture based on grain cultivation is established in the drier, grassier parts of the northern highlands by at least several millennia before the Christian era.
Indigenous grasses such as teff and eleusine are the initial domesticates in the Ethiopia region; considerably later, barley and wheat are introduced from Southwest Asia.
The corresponding domesticate in the better watered and heavily forested southern highlands is ensete, a root crop known locally as false banana.
All of these early peoples also keep domesticated animals, including cattle, sheep, goats, and donkeys.
Thus, from the late prehistoric period, agricultural patterns of livelihood are established that are to be characteristic of the region through modern times.
It is the descendants of these peoples and cultures of the Ethiopian region who at various times and places will interact with successive waves of migrants from across the Red Sea.
This interaction begins well before the modern era and will continue through contemporary times.
Brick building is taking place at Çatalhöyük around 6000 BCE.
Its people appear to have lived relatively egalitarian lives with no apparent social classes, as no houses with distinctive features (belonging to royalty or religious hierarchy, for example) have been found so far.
The most recent investigations also reveal little social distinction based on gender, with both men and women receiving equivalent nutrition and apparently, having relatively equal social status as typically found in Paleolithic cultures.
In upper levels of the site, it becomes apparent that the people of Çatalhöyük were gaining skills in agriculture and the domestication of animals.
Female figurines have been found within bins used for storage of cereals such as wheat and barley that are presumed to be a deity protecting the grain.
Peas were also grown, and almonds, pistachios, and fruit were harvested from trees in the surrounding hills.
Sheep were domesticated and evidence suggests the beginning of cattle domestication as well.
However, hunting continued to be a major source of meat for the community.
The making of pottery and the construction of obsidian tools were major industries.
Obsidian tools were probably both used and traded for items such as Mediterranean sea shells and flint from Syria.
Among archaeological sites in Anatolia, Çatalhöyük features native copper artifacts and smelted lead beads, but no smelted copper.
Proto-Austronesian culture is based on the south coast of China in about 5000 BCE, combining extensive maritime technology, fishing with hooks and nets, and gardening.
The protohistory of the Austronesian people can be traced farther back through time than can that of the Proto-Austronesian language.
From the standpoint of historical linguistics, the home (in linguistic terminology, Urheimat) of the Austronesian languages is the main island of Taiwan, also known as Formosa; on this island the deepest divisions in Austronesian are found, among the families of the native Formosan languages.
According to Robert Blust, the Formosan languages form nine of the ten primary branches of the Austronesian language family Blust (1999).
At least since Sapir (1968), linguists have generally accepted that the chronology of the dispersal of languages within a given language family can be traced from the area of greatest linguistic variety to that of the least.
While some scholars suspect that the number of principal branches among the Formosan languages may be somewhat less than Blust's estimate of nine (e.g., Li 2006), there is little contention among linguists with this analysis and the resulting view of the origin and direction of the migration.
For a recent dissenting analysis, see (Peiros 2004).
To get an idea of the original homeland of the Austronesian people, scholars can probe evidence from archaeology and genetics.
Studies from the science of genetics have produced conflicting outcomes.
Some researchers find evidence for a proto-Austronesian homeland on the Asian mainland (e.g., Melton et al. 1998), while others mirror the linguistic research, rejecting an East Asian origin in favor of Taiwan (e.g., Trejaut et al. 2005).
Archaeological evidence (e.g., Bellwood 1997) is more consistent, suggesting that the ancestors of the Austronesians spread from the South Chinese mainland to Taiwan at some time around eight thousand years ago.