Most languages of North Africa, East Africa and the Near East are descended from a common ancestor known as proto-Afro-Asiatic. According to linguists this proto-language was spoken no earlier than 9500 years before present, which makes it one of the oldest identified proto-languages. The original homeland of proto-Afro-Asiatic has not yet been identified with certainty. In order to do this we need to know how the various branches of Afro-Asiatic languages spread, which is difficult because these developments mostly took place in prehistoric times. Moreover, because the proto-language is so old the extant branches, like Cushitic, Chadic, Semitic, Berber and Egyptian, are highly divergent. This makes it difficult to group these branches into subgroups. To illustrate the problems I will give an overview of the scholarly concensus on this issue.
Yama: The First Man
Yama is one of the most enigmatic gods known to man. He is venerated in various religious traditions across the Asian continent, from Iran all the way to Japan. To Hindus he is king of the Underworld. According to Buddhists he judges the dead. The Persians know him as one of their first kings and the Nuristani people see him as the Creator of the world and mankind. Who is this mysterious Yama? In this post I will highlight the role of Yama in various religious traditions in an attempt to trace the ultimate origin of this deity.
The Bantu migrations
All across southern Africa, from Mt. Cameroon to the Kilimanjaro and from the Great Lakes to the Cape, live people who refer to themselves as ‘Bantu’. These Bantu people speak closely related languages sharing a common ancestor that was spoken no longer than 4000 years ago. Obviously there must have been a series of massive migration waves that brought the Bantu people and their languages to the far southern and eastern edges of the African continent.
History of the Nuristani people
Some 1000 years ago all of Afghanistan was under muslim control. All of Afghanistan? No! One region resisted the conquerors…
To the troops of sultan Mahmud of Ghazni (971-1030), who invaded the region in 1014, the area was known as Kafiristan (land of the infidels). The inhabitants of Kafiristan, known as ‘Kafirs’, followed a polytheistic religion and had a remarkable European look. The Kafirs lived in remote parts of the Hindu Kush mountain range, which had allowed them to maintain their original language and culture for centuries. According to local legend the Kafirs were descended from the troops of Alexander the Great, but the true story of their origins is even more interesting.
The Graeco-Persian wars in context
Who hasn’t heard of the Graeco-Persian wars? The wars in which the freedom-loving Greek city states, home to a highly sophisticated culture, bravely resisted the expansionist policy of the despotic Persian kings. That clash of civilizations. That collision between east and west, between tyranny and freedom. Had the Persians won, western culture as we know it would not have been able to develop. At least, that is what some scholars believe and is still taught at many high schools today. The reality is more complex.
Were the Achaemenids Zoroastrians?
Before the arrival of Islam Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion of Greater Iran. Because of the predominance of Zoroastrianism it has often been assumed that all pre-Islamc Iranian dynasties had been Zoroastrians. This notion, however, has been called into doubt by recent scholarship. Scholars see too many contradictions between the religion of the Achaemenids (the first Persian dynasty, r. 550-330 BC) and ‘true’ Zoroastrianism. In order to settle the matter, we need to determine what exactly ‘true Zoroastrianism’ is.
Pirates of the Aegean
Today the ancient Greeks are mainly remembered as a highly sophisticated people who lived in prosperous city states inhabited by great philosophers, scientists and artists. This golden age, however, forms only a small part of Greek history and culture. To their contemporaries the Greek were mainly known as fearsome warriors, cunning traders and even pirates. These military and commercial endeavors did eventually pave the way for the blossoming of classical Greek culture. In this post I will highlight the role that archaic Greek pirates, traders and mercenaries played in the ancient world. Credit goes to Nino Luraghi, on whose article Traders, Pirates, Warriors I base much of my information.
Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh
During the tenth century AD a Persian dynasty known as the Samanids ruled over much of Khorasan and Transoxiana. By that time the very survival of the Persian language was threatened by the expansion of Arabic and Iran’s pre-Islamic past was generally seen as a period of ignorance (Jahiliyya). The Samanids, however, sought to change all that. They reinstated Persian as the official language of the empire and they rehabilitated Iran’s pre-Islamic heritage. They also financed various poets to compose a national epic on the pre-Islamic history of Iran. The most successful poet was Abolqasem Ferdowsi (940-1020), whose Shahnameh (Book of Kings) became the most famous of these epics. The Shahnameh contains over 50.000 verses and describes Iran’s history from the creation of the world up to the Arab Conquests in poetic form.
Babylon to Baghdad – A History of Monotheism
On February 9, 2016 Livius Onderwijs organized a lecture day on the history of monotheism. In ten short lectures lasting ten minutes each, Dutch historians Jona Lendering and Richard Kroes discussed various topics, including the origins of monotheistic thought, the birth of the various monotheistic religions, the reasons why they split up into different sects and the origin of fundamentalism. Of course it is quite a challenge to present such a complex theme in a series of ten mini-lectures. Nevertheless, Jona Lendering and Richard Kroes managed quite well. Their lectures went smooth (aside from a breakdown of the beamer during the second lecture and the fact that some lectures did surpass the ten minute limit) and they managed to introduce the audience to the basics, leaving the wanting for more. Now I am facing the challenge of summarizing these mini-lectures in even fewer words…
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Historia Regum Britanniae
In 1066 William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, invaded Britain and subdued the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The Anglo-Saxons, in turn, had invaded Britain during the fifth and sixth centuries. Before the Normans and Anglo-Saxons invasions, the original Celtic-speaking Britons had lived on the island for at least a thousand years, leaving a great cultural impact on the region. This indigenous British culture had been slowly dying out since the Anglo-Saxon invasions and was even further endangered by the Normans, who brought along a new wave of French culture. Only in Wales, where people cherished their ancient roots, language and oral traditions, did this original British culture survive. It was in the Welsh town of Monmouth that a certain Geoffrey was born. Geoffrey of Monmouth was a cleric and a prolific author who, at the instigation of Archdeacon Walter of Oxford, set out to write a history on the original British people: the Historia Regum Britanniae.