But very difficult if you are based on kiswahili as an example, where you need 3-4 words together to describe a thing or a greeting, that needs only 1-2 words in other languages. Afroasiatic languages on the other hand, are having very difficult pronunciation & syntactic. Especially the Amhara & the tamazight-tamasheq languages.
@@419prince Stop comparing what is incomparable: no one hesitates to vomit his hatred of Europeans. But strangely, no one puts on the same level the same acts committed by non-Europeans.
@@Zakariya3603 hahahhaha good old days you 🙉were better of then. Now you have no civilization anymore or break it of. Name one black country that does well. 👍🏻👌🏻💪🏻 💪🏻👌🏻👍🏻💪🏻👌🏻👍🏻
@@yt-nx1qm Black People were building wonders in Egypt and Sumer when Crackas such as yourself where still rolling in the mud until the Black Carthaginians showed them how to behave like a human.
I am from Ethiopia and I speak one of the Semitic languages. It's really interesting to see how the Semitic languages supplanted other languages. Thanks for this video, very cool!
And you even still have your own script. If I recall correctly many of the sub-Saharan African nations that were truly colonized now use the Roman script because they either had no written language before or their scripts were wiped out by the colonizers, like what happened with Vietnamese and Tagalog)
@@badpiggies988 fun fact: the reason why nations like Greeks, Georgians, Armenians and Ethiopians preserved their scripts is because of their Orthodox Christian faith as the Orthodox priests would preserve the script.
You had a lot to fit in. I had to keep in mind that many of these like Niger-Congo were entire large/complex language families. Also I briefly thought you both misspelled and misplaced "Caspian" (instead, Capsian... I had never heard of it before). I really need to look up the history of Madagascar. I had no idea it was unsettled before the Austronesians moved in. I thought there would've been native Sub-Saharan Africans and the Austronesians would've assimilated them or something. It's a shame we lost the Pigmy languages 2000 years ago. I would've loved to have heard what they would've sounded like. Again, well done on a hard job. Only the Americas and New Guinea to go.
I can confirm Austronesian from Indonesia settle Madagascar. It was kind a surprise to me also, but considering how the Austronesian were settling across the Pacific, it should not be a surprise. I bet they also tried to settle East Africa, but it was already settled.
@@tommy-er6hh The original Austronesian culture tends to be sea-based so I guess they hate hot and arid areas so they mostly settled on islands. Some embraced the highland areas though. I think this would explain why Austronesians didn't settle in northern Australia, western South America and eastern Africa.
Some Pygmy languages might still exist simply because as has been stated in Costas Melas earlier videos in the comments, research on African languages relationship to each other and we're basically still relying on faulty connections made close to a century ago, with various patches made to it over the years of course but still not enough to fully revise it. As such there might be Pygmy languages that have been falsely classified as Bantu like Irimba. there also were earlier arrivals to Madasgascar than Austronesians but they didn't stay.
If you're interested why the Egyptian language family never left the video, it's because of the coptic language; a minority language spoken by the Eastern Christians living there.
I'm afraid you're not getting it accurately. The Egyptian Language in its current Coptic form/stage is not a minority language related to religion or Christian groups in Egypt, the Egyptian Coptic Language is our national language. Source: I'm Egyptian Muslim and I speak Egyptian Coptic.
And this despite the fact that it is still not a language, but a linguistic substrate. And the people themselves have not changed for 30 thousand years
The Khoi-San Languages are actually 3 families. The Khoi-Khoi migrated from Eastern Africa while the two San families were from closer to Namibia since forever.
Personally I loved the cushites the most in this video 👌👌👍👍 Absolutely astonishing how much history comes from such an ancient people yet so little is talked about them. From The land of Punt to Macrobia to trading city states to vast Maritime Thallocracies. I love how diverse and far reaching the cushite history in Africa is. Very underrated and they're probably the MVP in this video.
I think the Khoisan were only indigenous to South Africa Namibia Bostwana and Zambia and the other areas of Southern Africa were inhabited by a people similar to the Khoisan but distantly or closely related
Google says currently between 1000 and 2000 languages are spoken in Africa. I wonder how low this number will go. In modern times more and more languages are facing extinction.
Great video. Only thing I have a problem with is that you didn't show the different Khoisan families, and I wish you used similar colors for the Afroasiatic branches because they're related, but other than that I commend you for your research into these videos. They are genuenly incredile.
Interesting. However, this is the boldest of your continental language map videos, since much of this is speculation; heck, you can't prove that one substrate was spanning all of Arabia and Mesopotamia before the Semitic overtake. Btw, where is the Atlantic substrate? And Nilo-Saharan languages are still debated to this day. Arabia was probably very empty everywhere but in the coasts (Dilmun, Magan, pre-Sabaean). That is why Semitic pastoralists from the Levant were able to retain most of the Old Levantine-Anatolian ancestry (but remember genetics ≠ linguistics). Who told Pygmies inhabited the heart of Africa? Why it is with hashed lines, not full color? Their relationship with the West Africans is closer than with the Khoisans, and thus they had to migrate from east to west in all directions to fill the lands. Also, what is the evidence of Chadic being spoken by people in such a large area? (I know at that time, Sahara was drying) Did Berber exist back in the days of building the glorious Pyramids or did Para-Berber? Did Cushites really inhabit such a large part of South Arabia? Was Southern East Africa really empty (it is white or hashed-white), when humans had continuously inhabited it? Who told Iran's south-central part wasn’t inhabited? And who told Afghanistan was absolutely related to Bacto-Margianan culture in terms of language back in the day? Who knows if Jiroft culture spoke that Zagros tongue. No people shared the North Atlantic coast of Africa between the Capsian substrate and Niger-Congo speakers? Was the Indus language really the Proto-Dravidian language or a relative to it? As far I remember, the Proto-Dravidian word for goat is commonly agreed to be *yaṭu (retroflex T, which is everywhere in English) while the Indo-Aryan (I-A) pastoralists had a tribe called Yadu. Now, normally *yadu yields *yaṭu, not the other way round. It suggests that the language was a bit different to the Proto-Dravidian in South (and South-Central) India, but probably related. Also, Dravidian influence is what is said to have differentiated the South I-A languages (Marathi, Sinhalese) from their cousins, and obviously the lands they are now being spoken in were most likely under Dravidian tongue. Eastern I-A is also said to have differentiated due to Munda influence. And of course, it is sad that the very first civilizations, Sumer and Elam, do not have their languages shown separately. Being the most continuosly inhabited continent and subcontinent in human history, Africa and the Middle East (which you didn’t label, btw) must have had the most number of languages at the start of civilization. This video undermines all of those substrates for the currently dominant language families.
@@CostasMelas Isn't it the case that Sumerian and Elamite are unrelated to each other? There are some evidences that connect Elamite to Dravidian however. Really interested to hear your thoughts on this.
@@DainisKarklins Yes they were part of a language substrate along the Indian Ocean coasts from Yemen to India, but they were indeed different languages
@@DainisKarklins I think they used a general term like the other substrates since there is no one Khoisan "family", the "Atlantic substrate" includes Basque and Iberian, the "Mediterranean substrate" includes Minoan, Eteocypriot, and Hattic, and the Caucasus-Zagros substrate includes Hurro-Urartian and the unknown Zagros peoples.
I think this explains the existence of common words between the Basque language and the amazigh language, perhaps because it is a loanwords by the amazighs from languages that existed in the Maghreb before it
@@TSGC16 at least I THINK it is the songhai set of languages (if i remember the Nilo-Saharan video correctly that Costas did). You would be wise to double-check though, I can't remember for the life of me :S
@@CostasMelas I've looked up on Wikipedia, and nowhere it says that South Cushitic languages reached as far south as Monzambique and Zambia. All I could find is "Prior to the arrival of Bantus in Southeast Africa, Cushitic-speaking peoples had migrated into Southeast Africa from the Ethiopian Highlands and other more northerly areas. The first waves consisted of Southern Cushitic speakers, who settled around Lake Turkana and parts of Tanzania beginning around 5,000 years ago. Many centuries later, around AD 1000, some Eastern Cushitic speakers also settled in northern and coastal Kenya."
@@Faustobellissimo southern cushite expand to South Africa. We know this because of genetics and the customs of some the San who still have cushitic admixture to this day. Even some Zulu can care cushitic admixture around 1%. And the Y-DNA prove this aswell, cushitic speaker expanded to modern Congo (DRC) and probably to Zambia and Namibia
@@TheDragoneire First, DNA haplogroups do not necessarily (actually rarely) correspond to linguistic groups. Second, the KhoiSan came from Eastern Africa, so they could have picked Cushitic genes before moving to Southern Africa. Anyway, please direct me to the Wikipedia pages that support your claims.
The first people in Madagascar was not austronesian but probably related to the Khoisan speaker group just like the same people from zanzibar at this time. It was more than 5000 BC. Very long time also the bantu speaker (swahili) occupied the northern part of Madagascar for century
Great work, as always! I wonder if you'll do one like this for both of the Americas, since you never even mapped any south american language family and only one north american one. It's gonna be hard and with less certainty but feasable
I totally didn't know that there was a Cushitic presence in East Africa before the bantu showed up. I always thought the transition was straight from Khoi-San to Bantu. How much, if anything, is known about this East African Cushitic?
There are a linguistic substratum. There are also tribes with Cushitic traditions, although some of these may have migrated later, such as the Tutsi in Rwanda
Costas. Just to say. The Tutsi don't speak a cushitic language they speak kinyarwanda a bantu language. I don't know much about their coultures but it has been heavily influenced by Bantus.
@@CostasMelas Thanks for the info. I am impressed it's possible to detect both the Cushitic and Khoi-San language substrates- or is the latter only inferred from archeology?
@@estajeanette7487 well the DNA in these regions is very diverse of admixture between Nilotic, cushite and bantu Most speak a bantu language probably due to assimilation.
The oldest dna samples from Tanzania/Kenya show Cushitic people used to roam these lands very early before Bantu and nilotes en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savanna_Pastoral_Neolithic
In 4000 BC Khoi and San substrate would have been as far reaching as upper Egypt (anthropologically supported). It is to my understanding that many indegenous African ethnic groups, (now associated with Sub-Saharan Africa geographically), would have been situated further north; permeating the entire Green Sahara..or rather Savannah of northern Africa.
@@estajeanette7487 bantus are a small population in southern Somalia who are the decedent's of traders & unfortunately slaves. They've only been in the area since the 1500's. Also the vast majority of the farmland in Somalia is owned by the Reewin clan, not bantus. Don't know where you got that information from .🤷🏿♂️
It is interesting that after the decolonization of Africa, only Arabic-speaking countries renounced the languages of the occupiers. All others kept them as state ones.
@@estajeanette7487 I did not say that they did not have their own languages at all. But they left English or French as the official language. And the Arabs have given up on them altogether and have only Arabic as their official language. Sometimes also Berber.
@@estajeanette7487 but they didn’t remove English. It’s still co official and used for education and government which are the most important aspect of one’s society. Unless they replace everything with Swahili they will never be free.
As for Pygmy: Not only do we have direct evidence genetically speaking do these populations differ heavily from other Bantu speakers, a good amount of the languages have non-Bantu and non-Sudanic vocabulary not found anywhere else. Rimba language is currently unclassified but considered a good contender for an evolved Pygmy language. As for Capsian: We know for sure people lived in this area related to people from Iberia, Southern Europe and most likely earlier populations of North Africans. Its possible these are proto-Berber tribes but from where we think Afro Asiatic started it seems unlikely they are. Language wise its almost impossible to tell if a substrate exists due to Arabic's influence on Berber. As for Caucasus-Zagros: The Hurro-Urartian languages certainly come to mind, we also know Kassite which may or may not be related. There are potential links to the NE Caucasian language family but its not fully accepted. We also think its possible the Marhasi kingdom mentioned by the Akkadians may also be related. As for Bactria-Margiana: Easily one of the more complicated to explain. There is a clear substratum in proto Indo-Aryan which corresponds with the BMAC culture with significant Neolithic Anatolian ancestry in comparison to their neighbors. However, genetically seemed to be separate from Caucasus Hunter Gatherer populations and Harrappan populations. Its clear they were in close contact but had agriculture on a level only the Harrappans could rival. We certainly dont know if this civilization spoke similar languages.
South cushitic expansion extended so far into Namibia and South Africa. Even today, some Khoisan group such as nama care cushitic admixture around 20% in average.
@@unknown..642 explain me why Nama people of namibia care the Y-DNA e1b1b and care south cushitic admixture aswell? You can easily find they're sample in Internet 😉😉
@@unknown..642 this haplogroup is heaviest among the Somali population in the horn of Africa Which is outside north Africa Somalis have a higher Density of Haplogroup E1B1b than even most morrocans and Algerians.
5:26 What happened here? all of a sudden arabic is getting partially spoken troughout the sahelo-sudanese psrt of west africa, then it gradually disappears from the former mali empire's land and gets replaced by "nilo saharan", but at the same it stays still between the southern part of sudan/grassland and forests, i dont get what happened
It's not cushitic but the meeting zone between the orange Niger-Congo and the rose Afro-asiatic which gives a colour a bit similar to the yellow used for cushitic
South of Egypt, you have Nilo-Saharan languages at the beginning. However, we don’t really know which languages were spoken there at that time. It could have been Cushitic, Nilo-Saharan, or even something more closely related to Egyptian. We actually just have insufficient data for now. I personally think it was an Afro-Asiatic language that would have provided a smoother transition between Egyptian and Cushitic, but I am just speculating without evidence as well.
@@CostasMelas What evidence makes you believe that Meriotic was more likely nilo-saharan than Cushitic or close to Egyptian? Have there been any recent discoveries? Last I heard, it was still disputed with almost no evidence to back up any of the competing theories.
We don't actually know what happened because documentation was basically non-existant, but we have a basic idea because of how these languages formed and the genetic distance between them. Generally, the more homogenous an area is, the more likely the languages there where spread recently. An example being how most American dialects of english are more related to each other than British dialects (Scottish English is very different from London English in comparison to California and Midwest English)), because English is older and had more time to evolve in the UK. So we can apply this rule to get a rough layout of how events unfolded.
It is possible that they came from the area of the Tuareg Berbers, because it shows early different cultural elements with the pastoral nomadic Nilo-Saharans who dominated the rest of the Sahel
So the 3 major language groups that took over was the Semitic Arab, the Niger-Congo Bantu, and the Iranian languages. Which becomes the Black, Arab and Persian races today.
It seems to be a rule in the world. Hunter-gatherer groups tends to get replaced by more advanced cultures and it happened throughout the world. According to the video, Cushitic also expanded to Khoi--San and Pygmy speaking lands but they eventually lost to the Bantus. It's a good thing that Khoi-San languages are still alive to this day because they're among the most unique languages out there with their click sounds but it seems Pygmy languages got completely replaced by Bantu.
So what. Go into those countries. They are still there. Plus the pygmies and Khoisan people did not occupy all the land that is now known as bantu land.
@Yousif Boti Elamites were distinct from other Mesopotamians but they did adopt a lot from them. They were linguistically different too but prob not Dravidian
@Yousif Boti Actually there are documents saying that there was a people in elam speaking a language distinct from others in the Middle Ages. Aramaic died in Iran way before Elamite.
@@mikailm6934 yes it was but that is more or less hypothetical whereas sumerian was a known language and its spread was widespread proven by writing and archeology. also dravidian wasnt the only language group in the indus valley as hurro-urartian languages and the ancestor language to burushaski was spoken likely by the higher class indus valley civilization inhabitants
@@JcDizon cushitic also lost to Nilo saharan in Central/northern Sudan and to Egyptian in northern Sudan/southern Egypt. They survived in the Horn but even there, they lost ground to Semitic coming from southern Arabia
They were pretty much wiped before bantus even got to east africa due the Tset Tset flie killing their livestock Most of them died of starvation because it's a taboo to hunt animals in Cushitic culture. Literally got themselves killed over pride 💀 Bantus and Nilotes assimilated the few that survived from mass starvation.
@@belkacemF arabic hebrew akkadian amharic and aramaic are all semitic and the arabic language have similar prounounce with akkadian hebrew and other semitic subdivisons language
@@alexangelo1998 not comparable. As you can see, Nilo-saharans and afro-asiatic are found in the North and the rest of the continent. We could even argue that it was the case with Niger-Congo as well before and during the green Sahara
except there isn't a linguist barrier. Afroasiatic languages are spoken in both North and Sub-Saharan Africa. Nilo-Saharan languages are also spoken in both areas.
Please, its not called berbian, its tamazight. Berber is a racist Definition from the greeks and its mean babaric or wild people. Amazighi means free people.
@CostasMelas Damn. I knew the Germans did some massacres there, but I didn't know it had that much of an effect on the demographic map. Pair that with the Afrikaaner expansion, and it seems a lot of the Bantuization of south Africa was undone.
They got easily replaced by Bantus and later by Afrikaners since Khoi-San are mostly hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherer cultures tends to get replaced easily when a more advanced culture moves in. It's a good thing that their languages are still alive because they're some of the most unique languages in the world because they're like the only languages filled with click sounds.
@@newagetapes Could also be absorbed. Seems that some Bantu languages from South Africa, most notably Xhosa incorporated click sounds from Khoi-San languages and Nelson Mandela who is said to be Xhosa kinda looks Khoi-San. I also read that the Afrikaans-speaking Coloured people of South Africa are largely a mixture of Afrikaners and Khoi-San.
The Ruling dynasties of Tulunids, Ikhshidids, Ayyubids(during Saladin) Bahri and Burji Mamluks, Ottomans, Beyliks/Deyliks of Northern Africa and Khedivate spoke Turkic languages
None of em spoke turkic languages exept Ottomans, Mamluks we're raised as muslim slaves warriors and only spoke Arabic, same for the kouloughli of North Africa who spoke Maghrebi Arabic and for the Tulunids/Ikhshidids who didn't left a single piece of literatture in any turkic languages
See also
facebook: facebook.com/people/Costas-Melas-Page/100090025323926/
twitter: twitter.com/Costas_Melas
This is a better video than the Semitic and Cushitic language ones.
@@Zeyede_Seyum Thank you
Can I get some info on the various Substrate languages shown like the “Pygmy” or the “Capsian” substrates?
I really liked this video, I hope you will soon make the videos of the Omitic, Chadic and Afroasiatic languages
Greetings from Mexico 🇲🇽
Thank you
Selling some chex to a mex in order to cure my hex put on me to make me terrible at _ _ _.
Proudly bantu. The way our languages are structured is beautiful and amazing.
Cushitic for life😊
But very difficult if you are based on kiswahili as an example, where you need 3-4 words together to describe a thing or a greeting, that needs only 1-2 words in other languages. Afroasiatic languages on the other hand, are having very difficult pronunciation & syntactic. Especially the Amhara & the tamazight-tamasheq languages.
and proud of the expansion of these languages through colonization and the destruction of the cultures of conquered peoples?
@andalusi33 lmao "andalusi33" you know that's how Indo-European and Arab spread, right?
@@419prince Stop comparing what is incomparable: no one hesitates to vomit his hatred of Europeans. But strangely, no one puts on the same level the same acts committed by non-Europeans.
Indo-European languages: “We’ll be back.”
It is Afrikaans (Dutch) 👍🏻💪🏻👌🏻
@@yt-nx1qmprachtige praat
@@yt-nx1qm White colonizer.
@@Zakariya3603 hahahhaha good old days you 🙉were better of then. Now you have no civilization anymore or break it of. Name one black country that does well.
👍🏻👌🏻💪🏻 💪🏻👌🏻👍🏻💪🏻👌🏻👍🏻
@@yt-nx1qm Black People were building wonders in Egypt and Sumer when Crackas such as yourself where still rolling in the mud until the Black Carthaginians showed them how to behave like a human.
I am from Ethiopia and I speak one of the Semitic languages. It's really interesting to see how the Semitic languages supplanted other languages. Thanks for this video, very cool!
You're welcome 🙂
And you even still have your own script. If I recall correctly many of the sub-Saharan African nations that were truly colonized now use the Roman script because they either had no written language before or their scripts were wiped out by the colonizers, like what happened with Vietnamese and Tagalog)
@@badpiggies988 But Ethiopia was never colonized, and our script was created in the 1st millennium BC.
@@EthiopiaTewahedo I know
@@badpiggies988 fun fact: the reason why nations like Greeks, Georgians, Armenians and Ethiopians preserved their scripts is because of their Orthodox Christian faith as the Orthodox priests would preserve the script.
You had a lot to fit in. I had to keep in mind that many of these like Niger-Congo were entire large/complex language families. Also I briefly thought you both misspelled and misplaced "Caspian" (instead, Capsian... I had never heard of it before).
I really need to look up the history of Madagascar. I had no idea it was unsettled before the Austronesians moved in. I thought there would've been native Sub-Saharan Africans and the Austronesians would've assimilated them or something.
It's a shame we lost the Pigmy languages 2000 years ago. I would've loved to have heard what they would've sounded like.
Again, well done on a hard job.
Only the Americas and New Guinea to go.
Thank you
Pygmy people still exist but their languages are just dialects of Niger-Congo languages.
I can confirm Austronesian from Indonesia settle Madagascar. It was kind a surprise to me also, but considering how the Austronesian were settling across the Pacific, it should not be a surprise. I bet they also tried to settle East Africa, but it was already settled.
@@tommy-er6hh The original Austronesian culture tends to be sea-based so I guess they hate hot and arid areas so they mostly settled on islands. Some embraced the highland areas though. I think this would explain why Austronesians didn't settle in northern Australia, western South America and eastern Africa.
Some Pygmy languages might still exist simply because as has been stated in Costas Melas earlier videos in the comments, research on African languages relationship to each other and we're basically still relying on faulty connections made close to a century ago, with various patches made to it over the years of course but still not enough to fully revise it.
As such there might be Pygmy languages that have been falsely classified as Bantu like Irimba.
there also were earlier arrivals to Madasgascar than Austronesians but they didn't stay.
I like how, thanks to the Brahui language, Dravidian just never left the map, lol.
Yes
Did anyone else get an ad in Greek? It sounds like a really nice language.
I thought it was just me haha
now that makes sense why it gives me so many greek ads watiching this channel lol
Mine was in Dutch and it wasn't pleasant
The one with the bearded dude and short hair in Grey suit?
The three main powers in past
Niger Congo
Nilo Saharan
Cushitic
.....
The 4th power that sweeping all North Africa
Semetic
fantastic! I can't wait to see the historical changes of South Asian languages
Thank you
If you're interested why the Egyptian language family never left the video, it's because of the coptic language; a minority language spoken by the Eastern Christians living there.
I'm afraid you're not getting it accurately. The Egyptian Language in its current Coptic form/stage is not a minority language related to religion or Christian groups in Egypt, the Egyptian Coptic Language is our national language. Source: I'm Egyptian Muslim and I speak Egyptian Coptic.
@@ASMM1981EGY Is Coptic your L1 or L2? I'm curious if there are any native speakers (L1).
@@rvat2003 yes there are. But less and less.
I read, however, that Coptic is just a liturgic language nowadays, but no one speaks it, just like Latin in Catholic countries
@@regabrielexv that sounds weird, nobody learns latin in Spain (unless you choose classical languages as a subject in highschool)
Niger-Congo really be hitting the gym spreading their muscles like that.
Please do a video about Mesopotamian Substrate/languages.
Imagine if he posted Languages of Antarctica on April 1st
hilarious idea
😂😂😂
Penguinian Languages.
@@TheBobVova i'l do it properly. Penguinian Substrate
Interesting how the Koi San survived in the area where its speakers last settled.
And this despite the fact that it is still not a language, but a linguistic substrate. And the people themselves have not changed for 30 thousand years
@@13nathrezim What?. It is called a substrate in the map just to indicate that later Bantu languages took alot from it but yes, it is a language.
The Khoi-San Languages are actually 3 families. The Khoi-Khoi migrated from Eastern Africa while the two San families were from closer to Namibia since forever.
They speak Afrikaans (Dutch dialect) now mostly.
Personally I loved the cushites the most in this video 👌👌👍👍
Absolutely astonishing how much history comes from such an ancient people yet so little is talked about them.
From The land of Punt to Macrobia to trading city states to vast Maritime Thallocracies.
I love how diverse and far reaching the cushite history in Africa is.
Very underrated and they're probably the MVP in this video.
keep up the work like this I see you in the video of new languages nice video 👍
Thank you very much
I think the Khoisan were only indigenous to South Africa Namibia Bostwana and Zambia and the other areas of Southern Africa were inhabited by a people similar to the Khoisan but distantly or closely related
I'm looking at how much of Africa used to be Koi-San, as well as Pygmy.
They were Hunter-Gathers so they expanded quickly but weren’t in organized societies so got quickly absorbed.
Google says currently between 1000 and 2000 languages are spoken in Africa. I wonder how low this number will go. In modern times more and more languages are facing extinction.
*In some near future*
Costas Melas: History of the Languages of the World.
😀😀
😂😂
In the end, Niger-Congo and Semitic seem to have been the biggest overall winners from this.
Thanks to you I’m getting ads in Greek now. 🇬🇷
I thought it was just me hahahahahahahaha
😀😀
Same lol
Great video. Only thing I have a problem with is that you didn't show the different Khoisan families, and I wish you used similar colors for the Afroasiatic branches because they're related, but other than that I commend you for your research into these videos. They are genuenly incredile.
Thank you
Interesting. However, this is the boldest of your continental language map videos, since much of this is speculation; heck, you can't prove that one substrate was spanning all of Arabia and Mesopotamia before the Semitic overtake. Btw, where is the Atlantic substrate? And Nilo-Saharan languages are still debated to this day.
Arabia was probably very empty everywhere but in the coasts (Dilmun, Magan, pre-Sabaean). That is why Semitic pastoralists from the Levant were able to retain most of the Old Levantine-Anatolian ancestry (but remember genetics ≠ linguistics).
Who told Pygmies inhabited the heart of Africa? Why it is with hashed lines, not full color? Their relationship with the West Africans is closer than with the Khoisans, and thus they had to migrate from east to west in all directions to fill the lands.
Also, what is the evidence of Chadic being spoken by people in such a large area? (I know at that time, Sahara was drying)
Did Berber exist back in the days of building the glorious Pyramids or did Para-Berber? Did Cushites really inhabit such a large part of South Arabia? Was Southern East Africa really empty (it is white or hashed-white), when humans had continuously inhabited it?
Who told Iran's south-central part wasn’t inhabited? And who told Afghanistan was absolutely related to Bacto-Margianan culture in terms of language back in the day? Who knows if Jiroft culture spoke that Zagros tongue.
No people shared the North Atlantic coast of Africa between the Capsian substrate and Niger-Congo speakers?
Was the Indus language really the Proto-Dravidian language or a relative to it? As far I remember, the Proto-Dravidian word for goat is commonly agreed to be *yaṭu (retroflex T, which is everywhere in English) while the Indo-Aryan (I-A) pastoralists had a tribe called Yadu. Now, normally *yadu yields *yaṭu, not the other way round. It suggests that the language was a bit different to the Proto-Dravidian in South (and South-Central) India, but probably related. Also, Dravidian influence is what is said to have differentiated the South I-A languages (Marathi, Sinhalese) from their cousins, and obviously the lands they are now being spoken in were most likely under Dravidian tongue. Eastern I-A is also said to have differentiated due to Munda influence.
And of course, it is sad that the very first civilizations, Sumer and Elam, do not have their languages shown separately.
Being the most continuosly inhabited continent and subcontinent in human history, Africa and the Middle East (which you didn’t label, btw) must have had the most number of languages at the start of civilization. This video undermines all of those substrates for the currently dominant language families.
Atlantic is only marked for the southern part of Spain
@@CostasMelas yes I got it afterwards
Hahahahahhahahahahahhha-
10/10 map as always. One question, is the Mesopotamian Substrate meant to be Elamite and Sumerian?
Yes, I could alternatively call it Sumerian-Elamite
@@CostasMelas Isn't it the case that Sumerian and Elamite are unrelated to each other? There are some evidences that connect Elamite to Dravidian however. Really interested to hear your thoughts on this.
@@DainisKarklins Yes they were part of a language substrate along the Indian Ocean coasts from Yemen to India, but they were indeed different languages
@@DainisKarklins I think they used a general term like the other substrates since there is no one Khoisan "family", the "Atlantic substrate" includes Basque and Iberian, the "Mediterranean substrate" includes Minoan, Eteocypriot, and Hattic, and the Caucasus-Zagros substrate includes Hurro-Urartian and the unknown Zagros peoples.
there was no language in north africa before Berber, officially called Amazigh. I never heard of that capsian substrate thing
I think this explains the existence of common words between the Basque language and the amazigh language, perhaps because it is a loanwords by the amazighs from languages that existed in the Maghreb before it
Yes there was you berbers are a back migration group several ancient people used to live in the north
Lol stop lying to yourself berber is part of AfroAsiatic family and this family originate in modern day Palestine
@@desfighterPalestine? You mean from Gaza and WB?
@@desfighteralso AfroAsiatic likely developed from Africa not Asia
Would you ever in the future make any changes to this map? Just curious great work!
Thank you
Wow great work this is extremely detailed. Pls do different forms of government in Asia that would be really good
Thank you
Somehow i've missed this video when it came out. Very satsifying video. What is that Nilo-Saharan language in Morocco from 4:13 to 5:44?
That's the "Songhai" language spoken in the Mali region of West Africa (spoken also by neighboring countries next to Mali also).
@@Jacob-du9tf Ah i see thanks
@@TSGC16 at least I THINK it is the songhai set of languages (if i remember the Nilo-Saharan video correctly that Costas did). You would be wise to double-check though, I can't remember for the life of me :S
Can you make one for Afroasiatic languages
I didn't know that the Cushitic languages historically reached as south as Monzambique and Zambia.
Where did you read that?
You can google that and get what you want to learn :p
See also the video about the Cushitic Languages
@@CostasMelas I've looked up on Wikipedia, and nowhere it says that South Cushitic languages reached as far south as Monzambique and Zambia.
All I could find is "Prior to the arrival of Bantus in Southeast Africa, Cushitic-speaking peoples had migrated into Southeast Africa from the Ethiopian Highlands and other more northerly areas. The first waves consisted of Southern Cushitic speakers, who settled around Lake Turkana and parts of Tanzania beginning around 5,000 years ago. Many centuries later, around AD 1000, some Eastern Cushitic speakers also settled in northern and coastal Kenya."
@@Faustobellissimo southern cushite expand to South Africa. We know this because of genetics and the customs of some the San who still have cushitic admixture to this day. Even some Zulu can care cushitic admixture around 1%. And the Y-DNA prove this aswell, cushitic speaker expanded to modern Congo (DRC) and probably to Zambia and Namibia
@@TheDragoneire First, DNA haplogroups do not necessarily (actually rarely) correspond to linguistic groups.
Second, the KhoiSan came from Eastern Africa, so they could have picked Cushitic genes before moving to Southern Africa.
Anyway, please direct me to the Wikipedia pages that support your claims.
The first people in Madagascar was not austronesian but probably related to the Khoisan speaker group just like the same people from zanzibar at this time. It was more than 5000 BC. Very long time also the bantu speaker (swahili) occupied the northern part of Madagascar for century
no wrong
That's wrong. No one lived there before the Austronesians
It is funny to see how many different substrates there are at the start of the video
Great work, as always! I wonder if you'll do one like this for both of the Americas, since you never even mapped any south american language family and only one north american one. It's gonna be hard and with less certainty but feasable
Thank you
is coptic really still spoken outside Liturgy services? i thought they had all switched to arabic some time ago
Coptic (native egyptian language) are still spoken in egypt
I totally didn't know that there was a Cushitic presence in East Africa before the bantu showed up. I always thought the transition was straight from Khoi-San to Bantu. How much, if anything, is known about this East African Cushitic?
There are a linguistic substratum. There are also tribes with Cushitic traditions, although some of these may have migrated later, such as the Tutsi in Rwanda
Costas. Just to say. The Tutsi don't speak a cushitic language they speak kinyarwanda a bantu language. I don't know much about their coultures but it has been heavily influenced by Bantus.
@@CostasMelas Thanks for the info. I am impressed it's possible to detect both the Cushitic and Khoi-San language substrates- or is the latter only inferred from archeology?
@@estajeanette7487 well the DNA in these regions is very diverse of admixture between Nilotic, cushite and bantu
Most speak a bantu language probably due to assimilation.
The oldest dna samples from Tanzania/Kenya show Cushitic people used to roam these lands very early before Bantu and nilotes en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savanna_Pastoral_Neolithic
Great video👍
Thank you
always love your video's there so interesting
don't stop please
Thank you
In 4000 BC Khoi and San substrate would have been as far reaching as upper Egypt (anthropologically supported). It is to my understanding that many indegenous African ethnic groups, (now associated with Sub-Saharan Africa geographically), would have been situated further north; permeating the entire Green Sahara..or rather Savannah of northern Africa.
Incredible video. Your channel truly needs to grow more
Thank you very much
@@CostasMelas no problem
Why did the Afroasiatic languages family not continue to expand like the west and the south after conquering the Ethiopian Highlands?
They were defeated by the Bantus after trying to expand.
@@estajeanette7487 😂😂😂 Bantu slave defeated who ...Bantu expansion never come to horn of Africa and north Africa i think you know why
@@estajeanette7487 there's no bantus west of the Ethiopian highlands only Nilotics who Afroasiatics lost to in various wars.
Look up Bantus who are in somalia. 😂 Also Bantus own most of Somalia's most fertile lands. While Somalis are dying from drought.
@@estajeanette7487 bantus are a small population in southern Somalia who are the decedent's of traders & unfortunately slaves. They've only been in the area since the 1500's.
Also the vast majority of the farmland in Somalia is owned by the Reewin clan, not bantus. Don't know where you got that information from .🤷🏿♂️
i didnt heard about capsian substrate
It is interesting that after the decolonization of Africa, only Arabic-speaking countries renounced the languages of the occupiers. All others kept them as state ones.
Not true. Kenya and Tanzania have Swahili as state languages. South Africa also has it own languages besides English as state languages.
@@estajeanette7487 I did not say that they did not have their own languages at all. But they left English or French as the official language. And the Arabs have given up on them altogether and have only Arabic as their official language. Sometimes also Berber.
South Afrika and Namibia took Dutch. It is called Afrikaans there.
@@estajeanette7487 but they didn’t remove English. It’s still co official and used for education and government which are the most important aspect of one’s society. Unless they replace everything with Swahili they will never be free.
Kenya has English and Swahili. Yes. But Tanzania has only swahili for both education and government. It does not have English.
Austronesian family be like: Hey can I join?
What languages are meant to be included in Pygmy, Capsian, Caucasus-Zagros and Bactria-Margiana substrates? Is there any evidence of them?
As for Pygmy: Not only do we have direct evidence genetically speaking do these populations differ heavily from other Bantu speakers, a good amount of the languages have non-Bantu and non-Sudanic vocabulary not found anywhere else. Rimba language is currently unclassified but considered a good contender for an evolved Pygmy language.
As for Capsian: We know for sure people lived in this area related to people from Iberia, Southern Europe and most likely earlier populations of North Africans. Its possible these are proto-Berber tribes but from where we think Afro Asiatic started it seems unlikely they are. Language wise its almost impossible to tell if a substrate exists due to Arabic's influence on Berber.
As for Caucasus-Zagros: The Hurro-Urartian languages certainly come to mind, we also know Kassite which may or may not be related. There are potential links to the NE Caucasian language family but its not fully accepted. We also think its possible the Marhasi kingdom mentioned by the Akkadians may also be related.
As for Bactria-Margiana: Easily one of the more complicated to explain. There is a clear substratum in proto Indo-Aryan which corresponds with the BMAC culture with significant Neolithic Anatolian ancestry in comparison to their neighbors. However, genetically seemed to be separate from Caucasus Hunter Gatherer populations and Harrappan populations. Its clear they were in close contact but had agriculture on a level only the Harrappans could rival. We certainly dont know if this civilization spoke similar languages.
South cushitic expansion extended so far into Namibia and South Africa. Even today, some Khoisan group such as nama care cushitic admixture around 20% in average.
Cushites never went to south stop lying
@@unknown..642 explain me why Nama people of namibia care the Y-DNA e1b1b and care south cushitic admixture aswell? You can easily find they're sample in Internet 😉😉
@@TheDragoneire e1b1b haplogroup is not carried by cushites only north Africans too carry this dna
@@unknown..642 this haplogroup is heaviest among the Somali population in the horn of Africa Which is outside north Africa
Somalis have a higher Density of Haplogroup E1B1b than even most morrocans and Algerians.
The original carriers are the Natufians and not somali
Looking forward to a video on the americas
I think this format works better for smaller regions, the whole of Africa is too large
I can't seem to locate the "Atlantic Substrate" on the map, am I missing it?
It is in South Spain. A very small section is shown
Caspian substrate in northwestern Africa? Not should be Atlantic?
Capsian not Caspian
@@CostasMelas ah sorry, I read it wrong.
5:26 What happened here? all of a sudden arabic is getting partially spoken troughout the sahelo-sudanese psrt of west africa, then it gradually disappears from the former mali empire's land and gets replaced by "nilo saharan", but at the same it stays still between the southern part of sudan/grassland and forests, i dont get what happened
The Songhai Empire succeeded Mali
@@CostasMelas ahhh ok thanks
Baggara Arabs spread from Sudan/Chad all the way to CAR and Nigeria
The update from this video to today is that Mali stopped using French as an official language
make about languages in the Caucasus
I have made it
the capsian substrate speaks a language that originates from an Afro-Asiatic language
This video implies Chadic and Berber split from each other. Isn’t the consensus that Chadic and Cushitic split from one another instead?
There's no consensus about intermediate nodes
Though I do think Chado-Berber is more likely
Can you do morea revolt and krokodelios kladas revolt???
Amazing video
Thank you
Do we know anything about the substrate languages you show?
Little only about the Pygmy substrate
What is the apparently Cushitic language all the way over in Western Sahara?
It's not cushitic but the meeting zone between the orange Niger-Congo and the rose Afro-asiatic which gives a colour a bit similar to the yellow used for cushitic
@@mikailm6934 No the rose is the capsian substrate not the afro-asiatic branch
Which Gutian and Kassite belong to, Mesopotamian or Caucasus-Zagros?
I include them in Caucasus-Zagros
Great video
Thank you
South of Egypt, you have Nilo-Saharan languages at the beginning. However, we don’t really know which languages were spoken there at that time. It could have been Cushitic, Nilo-Saharan, or even something more closely related to Egyptian. We actually just have insufficient data for now. I personally think it was an Afro-Asiatic language that would have provided a smoother transition between Egyptian and Cushitic, but I am just speculating without evidence as well.
I think he was estimating, given the distance in the past and the lack of direct info. And that is ok, as long as you announce it.
The earliest known form was the meroitic (Kushite) which probably belonged to the Nilo-Saharan branch.
@@CostasMelas What evidence makes you believe that Meriotic was more likely nilo-saharan than Cushitic or close to Egyptian? Have there been any recent discoveries? Last I heard, it was still disputed with almost no evidence to back up any of the competing theories.
@@CostasMelas Meroitic seems to be an afro-asiatic-nilo-saharan hybrid
How do you know how different language families were spread in sub Saharan Africa before 15th century AD?
We don't actually know what happened because documentation was basically non-existant, but we have a basic idea because of how these languages formed and the genetic distance between them. Generally, the more homogenous an area is, the more likely the languages there where spread recently. An example being how most American dialects of english are more related to each other than British dialects (Scottish English is very different from London English in comparison to California and Midwest English)), because English is older and had more time to evolve in the UK. So we can apply this rule to get a rough layout of how events unfolded.
How did you get Chadic Substrate that far north?.
It is possible that they came from the area of the Tuareg Berbers, because it shows early different cultural elements with the pastoral nomadic Nilo-Saharans who dominated the rest of the Sahel
the sahara was greener when afroasiatic languages expanded
So the 3 major language groups that took over was the Semitic Arab, the Niger-Congo Bantu, and the Iranian languages. Which becomes the Black, Arab and Persian races today.
What
Not all Niger - Congo speakers are Bantu
When did they start speaking Bonix.
it would be interesting to see some native American languages evolution, like arawak or maybe even eskimo aleutin languages
Nice video.
Thank you
So the bantu expansion what cause the khoisan and pygmy language speakers become minority huh?
Let's say the latter went extinct. Ofc with leaving pretty significant influence on some Bantu langs.
Maybe people were tired of clicking.
@@Banana_Split_Cream_Buns If they were tired then why did the southern Bantu languages adopt clicks lol. /hj
Yes.
So?
It seems to be a rule in the world. Hunter-gatherer groups tends to get replaced by more advanced cultures and it happened throughout the world. According to the video, Cushitic also expanded to Khoi--San and Pygmy speaking lands but they eventually lost to the Bantus. It's a good thing that Khoi-San languages are still alive to this day because they're among the most unique languages out there with their click sounds but it seems Pygmy languages got completely replaced by Bantu.
What's Morroco and Algeria labelled as in the beginning?
Capsian substrate
Bantus took the land of Pymgyes and Khoi San and replaced them.
So what. Go into those countries. They are still there. Plus the pygmies and Khoisan people did not occupy all the land that is now known as bantu land.
What software do you use to make your videos?
paintnet and blender
2:50 the irony of the Mesopotamian languages not being spoken in Mesopotamia anymore but still being spoken in Persia
Mesopotamian isn't actually a family tho
Good job man, but Elam language probably belongs to Dravidian instead of Mesopotamian. We need more archeological materials to examine it.
Thank you
@@CostasMelasignore him, his statement is factually unfounded
@Yousif Boti Elamites were distinct from other Mesopotamians but they did adopt a lot from them. They were linguistically different too but prob not Dravidian
@Yousif Boti Actually there are documents saying that there was a people in elam speaking a language distinct from others in the Middle Ages. Aramaic died in Iran way before Elamite.
@Yousif Boti There are arab sources who talk about a language being spoken in the Iranian province of khuzestan
I want to watch “History of French Sign Language family”
i dont get how you can call sumerian a substrate and then place dravidian in the entire indus region
Dravidian was more widespread before indo-european expansion
@@mikailm6934 yes it was but that is more or less hypothetical whereas sumerian was a known language and its spread was widespread proven by writing and archeology. also dravidian wasnt the only language group in the indus valley as hurro-urartian languages and the ancestor language to burushaski was spoken likely by the higher class indus valley civilization inhabitants
Actually It is not proven that Indus Valley people spoke Dravidian language
This is true. But it remains the most popular view
Only European language which made many 1st language speakers in Africa is Afrikaans (Dutch) in South Africa and Namibia.
capsian substrate , why in africa ?
Capsian not Caspian
0:42 why is there a whole in Africa
Sparsely populated jungles
@@CostasMelas aaa thank you
@@CostasMelasyou should’ve done the same to the Afar depression, it’s largely uninhabited.
Next one, North America languages
capsian substrate ???
It was the predecessor culture of the Iberomaurusian
@@CostasMelasAre the Capsians the same as the Aterians?
Bantu language is the Best
👍👍
It's interesting that Cushitic like the Bantus expanded south to the Khoi-San and Pygmy lands but they eventually lost to the Bantus.
South cushitic not the big cushites like somali afar oromo
Cushitic and Bantu Languages Families are 2 distinct different languages families. You're mixing things up.
@@ASMM1981EGY I wasn't mixing them up, I was just saying that they both expanded southwards but the Cushites eventually lost to the Bantu.
@@JcDizon cushitic also lost to Nilo saharan in Central/northern Sudan and to Egyptian in northern Sudan/southern Egypt. They survived in the Horn but even there, they lost ground to Semitic coming from southern Arabia
They were pretty much wiped before bantus even got to east africa due the Tset Tset flie killing their livestock Most of them died of starvation because it's a taboo to hunt animals in Cushitic culture. Literally got themselves killed over pride 💀 Bantus and Nilotes assimilated the few that survived from mass starvation.
KHOISAN?
Also called Bushmen
You better make languages of the world after all of these are done
arabic?
It is included in Semitic
@@CostasMelas but it's different in Semitic like very different
@@belkacemF arabic hebrew akkadian amharic and aramaic are all semitic and the arabic language have similar prounounce with akkadian hebrew and other semitic subdivisons language
@@scarymonster5541 yeah coz they were once one language
@@belkacemF yes semitic languages were divided into arabic akkadian aramaic hebrew and amharic
North Africa's strategic location has made it a crossing point for all civilizations unfortunately
Maybe it would be better to do Sub-Saharan Africa and Northern Africa separately?
Why. Do you think they are separate continents?
For what reason 🤨🤨
@@princeofafricaradio9042he did East Asia separatly from the rest of Asia
@@alexangelo1998 not comparable. As you can see, Nilo-saharans and afro-asiatic are found in the North and the rest of the continent. We could even argue that it was the case with Niger-Congo as well before and during the green Sahara
except there isn't a linguist barrier. Afroasiatic languages are spoken in both North and Sub-Saharan Africa. Nilo-Saharan languages are also spoken in both areas.
人類の故郷。
Personally I speak CHADIC
Which language?
Innacuracy scares me.
Elaborate
Please, its not called berbian, its tamazight. Berber is a racist Definition from the greeks and its mean babaric or wild people. Amazighi means free people.
Source kfc toilet 😂😂🤣
Is it me, or did khoi San gain ground during the colonial era?
Due to German massacres in Namibia against herero bantu tribes
@CostasMelas Damn. I knew the Germans did some massacres there, but I didn't know it had that much of an effect on the demographic map. Pair that with the Afrikaaner expansion, and it seems a lot of the Bantuization of south Africa was undone.
They speak Afrikaans (Ducth dialect) now 💪🏻👌🏻👍🏻
Gee I wonder what happened to the Khoi-San languages...
They got easily replaced by Bantus and later by Afrikaners since Khoi-San are mostly hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherer cultures tends to get replaced easily when a more advanced culture moves in. It's a good thing that their languages are still alive because they're some of the most unique languages in the world because they're like the only languages filled with click sounds.
@@JcDizon Replaced = Genocided
@@newagetapes Could also be absorbed. Seems that some Bantu languages from South Africa, most notably Xhosa incorporated click sounds from Khoi-San languages and Nelson Mandela who is said to be Xhosa kinda looks Khoi-San. I also read that the Afrikaans-speaking Coloured people of South Africa are largely a mixture of Afrikaners and Khoi-San.
The Ruling dynasties of Tulunids, Ikhshidids, Ayyubids(during Saladin) Bahri and Burji Mamluks, Ottomans, Beyliks/Deyliks of Northern Africa and Khedivate spoke Turkic languages
Yes. Sad none made a settlement in Africa.
@@king_halcyon well atleast the ottoman turks never force non turkish speaker to learn turks
None of em spoke turkic languages exept Ottomans, Mamluks we're raised as muslim slaves warriors and only spoke Arabic, same for the kouloughli of North Africa who spoke Maghrebi Arabic and for the Tulunids/Ikhshidids who didn't left a single piece of literatture in any turkic languages
@@scarymonster5541 They didn't have the choice lol they just couldn't
Are you a bot or a team?.
Chadic language?Oh, it's so Chad.
this is rediculous u r not speaking abput languages u r speaking about successive ocupations