Haplogroup J1 may be one of the most interesting genetic markers regarding human history. It’s highly represented in many places associated with the first civilizations (Levant, Mesopotamia and Egypt).
The Afroasiatic language family (including Semitic and Egyptian) has a strong correlation with haplogroup J1 (J1-M267). This haplogroup did not only spread Afroasiatic languages, but also mobile pastoralism in the arid zones. Since semi-nomadic pastoralists and farmers have very different temperaments and are unlikely to switch their modes of subsistence (pastoralists consider farming lowly work and farmers are typically sedentary), there is a good chance that the Afroasiatic founder population was a population of mobile herders and if the Nostratic hypothesis is true that its parent clade represented the origin of pastoralism and potentially also the Nostratic languages.
In Ancestral Journeys: (2013) Jean Manco writes:
The long and convoluted story of J1 is gradually becoming clearer. Today the greatest density of J1 centres on the southern Levant, if all its subclades are included. Without subclades the parent J1* clusters most strongly in the Zagros/Taurus mountain region, the cradle of the Neolithic. J1 may have spread from there with farming. So far it has not been found in the early farmers of Europe, but it appears in the Caucasus today with non-Afro-Asiatic languages. The association with the Semitic languages seems to begin within the large subclade J1b2 (P58). J1b2 is found in nearly half the men who report themselves members of the hereditary Jewish priesthood (Cohanim). It also has a strong presence in Palestine and Jordan. The highest diversity of J1b2 (P58) is found in the Zagros/Taurus region. High diversity provides a clue to origin. So men carrying haplogroup J1b2 (P58) may have helped to take pastoralism into the Levant. Proto-Semitic probably arose in the Copper Age. So it may turn out that J1b2 (P58) pre-dates Proto-Semitic by millennia. A rare form of J1b2 with the marker M368 has been reported among the Avars in Dagestan in the northeast Caucasus, where a completely different language is spoken. The subclade J1b2b (L147) appears much larger and promises to contain many men whose ancestors spoke a Semitic language in the Copper Age.
If J1 really originated in the Zagros mountains, then it is most likely associated with the origins of pastoralism, which is assumed to have started exactly there, in Western Iran. As its sibling clade J2 is more associated with farmers, it wouldn’t be odd to call them Cain (J2, farmer) and Abel (J1, herder).
J2 - farmer Cain (green) and J1 - herder Abel (red)
Now, what has this got to do with the hypothetical Nostratic superfamily few linguists nowadays believe in? We know that Indo-European languages were spread by a small herder population from the Pontic Steppe (Yamnaya), most likely by making themselves overlords of local farmer populations (so it was actually Abel who killed Cain, again and again). If this is a general pattern in history, it means that both Eurasiatic and Afro-Asiatic languages were spread by herding primarily and only secondarily by farming and that the common paternal clade can be associated with the origin of mobile pastoralism and the Nostratic superfamily.
I hypothesised a while ago that the Nostratic hypothesis could get a real boost if a connection between southern herders (Afro-Asiatic) and northern herders (Euroasiatic) could be proven.
J1 so far has not been found in the early farmers of Europe, but it appears in the Caucasus (Kartvelian languages) today with non-Afro-Asiatic languages. Due to admixture with countless substrate languages, it would be extremely difficult to prove a connection between Caucasian/Euroasiatic and Afro-Asiatic languages with purely linguistic methodology. However, a genetic link via J1 and mobile pastoralism would give a lot of credibility to the Nostratic hypothesis.
Comments
Post a Comment