Sunday, January 2, 2011

Who Were the Kushites?

The Kushites are the Nilo-Saharan peoples who contributed their binary worldview to the ancient Afro-Asiatic world. They include red, black and brown Nubians, pre-dynastic lower Nilotes, and the Ainu/Annu. Among them were Abraham's Horites ancestors who descended from Kush, the grandson of the great Proto-Saharan ruler Noah. The Horites were a caste of ruler-priests who were devotees of Hor/Horus. Jews call their ancestors Horim which is "Horite" in the English Bibles. Some Jews have Horite blood and some Arabs have Horite blood.

Abraham is a descendant of the Proto-Saharan rulers Ham and Shem as the lines of Ham and Shem intermarried (endogamy).  Endogamy is a trait of castes and ruling families. Abraham ruled in Edom, though his father ruled in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley.

To understand the significance of the Kushites and their trade relations with their neighbors, see Angelika Lohwasser, Kush and Her Neighbours Beyond the Nile. For information on the Kushite king list tradition, see Matthew Adams, Manetho's 23rd Dynasty and the Legitimization of Kushite Rule Over Egypt

Alice C. Linsley

Beginning in Nubia and Sudan about 10,000 years ago, the Kushites spread across the Levant and Mesopotamia, going as far as Central Asia. They also spread into the interior of Africa along the Shari and the Benue rivers, establishing kingdoms and chieftains as far at Lagos in Nigeria and into the southern Kordafan. They also went west. The Ashante of Ghana were Kushites. Nte means "people of" and Asha is a proper name. The Ashante are the people of Asha, a Kushite ruler who established a kingdom in West Africa.

The name Asha is a priestly name in the Bible. One of Jesse's grandsons was named Asah-el, which means "made by God." The priest Elkanah had a son named Am-asi (I Chron. 2:25, 35), and a Jerusalem priest was named Am-ashai (Neh. 11:13). This suggests that the origins of the priesthood of Israel are to be traced to the older Kushite civilization. This makes sense since Abraham's ancestors came from Kush.

The various regions of ancient Kush later came to be called by different names. Nubia, the land of gold (nu (means gold) was later called Aithiopia by the Greeks. Aithiopia means black. When the Arabs arrived, they translated aithiopia into the Arabic equivalent soudan (Sudan) which means black.

Before the naming of modern nations, the Kushite territories were ruled by tribal chiefs and overlords of larger territories. Biblical Kush included southern Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, the Horn of Africa and the western and eastern coastal areas of the Red Sea. Later, in the time of Sargon the Great (Nimrod), they controlled commerce on the Tigris River and then the Euphrates River. Kushite rulers controlled the water systems such as oases and wells, and built shrines and temples on the Nile, Jordan, Euphrates and Tigris Rivers.

Linguistic and archaeological evidence supports the biblical picture of Abraham's ancestors coming from the Upper Nile region that was part of Kush and spreading their culture and religious beliefs by the great water systems across what I've termed the ancient "Afro-Asiatic Dominion."  During this period the Sahara was a much wetter region.

In ancient inscriptions from Africa and Central Asia the Kushites were called many names including Kush, and Ethiopian. In Sumerian inscriptions they are called Meluha-Kasi. There is historical evidence that the word Meluha was a geographical designation for peoples who lived in the area of Nubia, Arabia and Northern Africa. "The Babylonian designation for Arabia is 'Magan and Meluha' and the two expressions are used distinctively, the one (Magan) to denote the eastern and southern part - that situated nearest to Babylonia, the other (Meluha) to denote the N. and W. The district of Sinai would thus form part of Meluha." (From here.) A term that is used today for the peoples of this region is "Afro-Arabian."

Genesis tells us that Abraham was a descendant of Kush and of the great Kushite kingdom-builder, Nimrod.  Abraham lived after the time of the "division" that took place between Peleg and his brother Joktan.  This division had to do with territory, but did not change the marriage pattern of these people.  The priest lines of the Horite caste continued to intermarry according to the unique pattern of their people.

Genealogical Evidence

The Kushite marriage and ascendancy structure speaks of the promised Son to whom God the Father will deliver the eternal kingdom.

The Kushites traded with many surrounding people and kingdoms. There is evidence that the clans herded cattle from the grasslands to a communal gathering place at the Nile each year. (In 1986, cattle burials were found at Qustul, south of Abul Simbel, in the heart of Kush.) 

During the Chalcolithic Period, Kushites settled on the edges of the Beersheba Valley where they lived in subterranean dwellings carved out of the limestone with metal tools. An ivory workshop was discovered in one of these houses at Bir es-Safadi. The Bible refers to these cave-dwellers as Dedanites. Dedan, Tema and Buz comprized a Horite confederation. The oldest Arabic texts have been found around the North Arabian oases of Tema and Dedan. Tema, known by Arabs as Taima, lies about 70 miles north-east of Dedan. Tema, Dedan and Dumah were caravan stops along the trade route from Babylon to Sheba.

The term "Horite" can't be taken anachronistically when speaking of Abraham's ancestors, who were devotees of Horus, who they regarded as the “Son of God.” This is the origin of Messianic expectation, and some of Abraham's Jewish descendants recognized Jesus as the fulfillment of the prophetic pattern articulated by their Horite ancestors from Kush. This was apparently true of Nicodemus and Joseph of Har-Mathea, both disciples of Jesus and men in the priestly lines.

The men of Dedan shaved their heads (Jeremiah 25:23), as did Joseph and the Horite priests. This suggests that a confederation of Horite families lived in the Beersheba Valley. Genesis 36 confirms this, listing Dedan as a Horite ruler. Genesis 10 tells us that Dedan's father was Raamah, son of Kush.  Raamah and Nimrod were the first-born sons of Kush by different wives. From Raamah and Dedan come the Afro-Arabians and from Nimrod come the Afro-Asiatic Arameans. Genesis tells us that the separation between the two groups took place in the time of Peleg and Joktan and was a territorial separation, possibly due to climate change. However, the ruling lines of the Kushites and Horites continued to intermarry according to the long-standing custom of their people.

Archaeological Evidence

"Of particular significance is archaeologist B. B. Lal's contention that the Dravidians probably came from Nubia, Upper Egypt. This theory would give them among other things their Mediterranean features and dark complexion. Lal writes: "At Timos the Indian team dug up several megalithic sites of ancient Nubians which bear an uncanny resemblance to the cemeteries of early Dravidians which are found all over Western India from Kathiawar to Cape Comorin. The intriguing similarity extends from the subterranean structure found near them. Even the earthenware ring-stands used by the Dravidians and Nubians to hold pots were identical." According to Lal, the Nubian megaliths date from around 1000 B.C." (From here.)

The word "sudra" means Sudanese. Herodotus referred to the Sudra/Dravidians as the “eastern Ethiopians” and described them thus: “The Eastern Ethiopians differed in nothing from the other Ethiopians, save in their language, and the character of their hair. For the Eastern Ethiopians have straight hair, while they of Libya are more woolly-haired…” (Herodotus VI.70, The History, trans. George Rawlinson, Dutton)

The Sudra buried their dead in wooden coffins with the head toward the north. This distinguished the Sudra from other Indians who cremate their dead. This is how Joseph was buried in Egypt. His body would have been mummified and wrapped in cloth before being placed in the coffin (Gen. 50:26).

In Goshen/Avaris, a city built on a series of sandy hillocks to avoid the annual Nile floods, Joseph had an Egyptian-style palace built over Jacob's dwelling. The magnificent palace enclosure had a garden tomb, the largest sepulcher found in Avaris, dating to the 13th Dynasty. Avaris was uncovered by Manfred Bietak and his Austrian team.  This attests to the antiquity of the Joseph story because royal burials were later in cemetaries far removed from residences. Avaris pottery fragments of Canaanite origin indicate that the people who lived in Avaris were Canaanites (peoples descended from Ham and Shem).

The most conclusive evidence of Saharan antecedents (Kushite origins) is the work of the Canadian archaeologist, Mary McDonald. She has shown that the ancient Pharaonic civilization built upon the culture of Saharan peoples. Comparing ostrich eggshell excavated from the Bashendi circles with those found in Egypt, she found that nearly all of the shared artifacts showed up in Dakhleh, in the southwestern desert of Egypt, 500 to 2000 years before they appeared in the Nile Valley. Additionally, cattle domestication took place in the Sahara long before it appeared in the Nile Valley. No solid evidence has been found for cattle domestication in the Nile Valley before 6000 years ago.

Fekri Hassan, Petrie Professor of Archaeology at University College London, believes that “Mary’s work has been an outstanding contribution to our understanding of the origins of Egyptian civilization.” Hassan says, “Her work confirmed that one of the main strands in the early civilization of the Nile Valley was the contribution from the inhabitants of the Sahara."

Linquistic Evidence

Linguistically, the Kushites are in the Proto-Saharan group. A comparison of the lexicons and grammatical categories demonstrates that the languages of Saharan Africa, old Arabic, and Dravidian are cognate languages. (Arabic is older than Hebrew.)

These languages were spoken across a vast Afro-Asiatic Dominion that extended from the northern Nigeria to the Indus River valley around 10,000 years ago.  Consider the linguistic correspondences between these words:
  • The Semitic word "wadi" = river corresponds to the Sanskrit "nadi" = river.
  • The Semitic root “mgn” = to give, is the same as the Sanskrit “mgn” = to give.
  • The Semitic “svam” or “Sam-yim” = sky or heaven corresponds to the Sanskrit “svah” = sky or heaven. Both are likely dreived from the Proto-Dravidian word "van" = heaven.
  • The Sanskrit “Sakti” = harvest moon celebration, is the linguistic equivalent of the Falasha word “Sarki” = harvest moon festival.
  • The Semitic "yasuah" = salvation, corresponds to the Sanskrit words “asvah”, “asuah” or “yasuah” = salvation.
  • The Semitic root "thr" = to be pure, corresponds to the Hausa/Hahm "toro" = clean, and to the Tamil "tiru" = holy. All are related to the proto-Dravidian "tor" = blood.
  • Sarki live in Orissa, India and as ‘Haruwa’ in the Tarai region of Nepal. The word "haruwa" is equivalent to the ancient Egyptian word ‘har-wa”, meaning priest. In Nigeria the sarki are called "Kano Kings."
The spread of the worldview represented by these words appears largely to have been the work of Horite missionary priests, as evidenced by falcon-shaped fire altars found in the Sudan and Central Asia. The Vedas speak of falcon-shaped fire-altars. These are associated with Horus, whose totem is the falcon. Vedic tradition teaches that "he who desires heaven is to construct a fire-altar in the form of a falcon." (The hierofalcon has its origin in Africa. "Hiero" means priest.  This species is brown with an arrowhead pattern on its belly.)

Prof. Bator Vamos Toth has identified hundreds of place names that link the Sudan and Central Asia. For example, the places names Orissa and Kar-nak are found in Egypt and in Central Asia. The temples at Karnak in Egypt and at Karnak in Orissa, India, are sun temples associated with the cult of Horus, who the Horite ruler-priests regarded as the "son of God", miraculously begotten according to an ancient promise. This Kushite migration has been confirmed also by DNA studies.

Clyde A. Winters has shown that the "Elamites, Dravidians, Sumerians and Manding are all of Proto-Saharan origin. In the history of mankind they were called the Kushites. Testimony of the great heritage of the Kushites, resulted from their boldness in trade and seafaring expeditions. The authors of ancient Indian literature claimed that the Kushites ruled the world for 7000 years. According to Epiphanies, the age of the Kushites extended from the Flood to the age of Terah, the father of Abraham, the prophet of the Jews and Muslims.

The Egyptian term for these people was K-'-sh and K-'-sh-i. The Hebrews called them Kush, which is the biblical name for a people and a region. In the cuneiform inscriptions the Sudanese were called "Kushiya." (From here.)

The Horites were a caste of ruler-priests who were devotees of Horus who was called "son of God." They were ethnically Kushites or Afro-Arabians.  They appear to be the key to understanding the origins of Messianic expectation.

Related reading: Hittite ReligionKushites in Mindanao;  The Kushite-Kushan Connection; Kushite WivesKushite Gold; The Christ in Nilotic MythologyWho Were the Horites?; The Saharan Origin of Pharaonic EgyptGenesis and Climate Change; Pharaonic Survivals Between Lake Chad and the West Coast; Afro-Asiatic Metalworkers


Anonymous said...

the dravidians have a middle eastern look but have color of the hamitic people they have beautiful brown colors to black also fair

Anonymous said...

The reference in Isaiah 66:19 seems to locate the land of Lud in the Mediterranean, whilst Jeremiah (46:9) and Ezekiel (27:10; 30:5) place it squarely in Africa. The likelihood is that it is in North Africa on the Mediterranean shores.
and as i mentioned several times i dreamt the dravidians came from a place closer to sea in the north of egypt not sudan

Alice C. Linsley said...

This diagram shows the pattern of Abraham's Horite rulers whereby the daughter who married her cousin named her firstborn son after her father. This is a trait of the Horite ruler-priests kinship pattern.The diagram traces Abraham's line through Asshur. It also shows that there were 2 firstborn sons: one the son of the cousin bride (as was Keturah to Abraham) and the other the son of the half-sister bride (as was Sarah to Abraham).

In Gen. 10 the term "son" can also mean descendant. Elam is a "son" in that the Elamites are descendants of Shem and Ham. That is not to say that there wasn't an actual son named Elam, but there is no further information about him. The lines of Ham and Shem intermarried exclusively.

Gen. 11 shows the line of descent of Shem. The Arpachsahd listed in 11:10 is the elder Arpachshad. The Arpachshad shown in the diagram, Asshur's brother, is the younger. There are at least 2 Esaus, 2 Joktans and 2 Shebas as well. These are royal names.

Alice C. Linsley said...

Beja is related to Bayajidda, a character from the Hausa people of Nigeria who slew a serpent with an iron sword made by metalworkers. The root his name is bja which is an ancient word referring to meteoritic iron. The Egyptian word for meteoritic iron is bja and means "metal from heaven." This corresponds to the Sanskrit word bija, meaning semen or seed.

Meteoritic iron was used in the fabrication of iron beads in Nubia about 6000 years ago. These beads may have been perceived as seeds from heaven which when worn brought power to the wearer.

Alice C. Linsley said...

Anonymous, Do your Beja people look like these Beja people of Sudan and Egypt?

These Beja were metal-workers who were devotees of Horus and his mother Hat-Hor until the 6th century. Today many are Christians and some of Sufi Muslims.

Rasheed said...


Alice C. Linsley said...

The Sudra were Kushites. Kushite expansion across the Afro-Asiatic Dominion has been well established by archaeology, anthropology, DNA studies, linguistics and migration studies.

Aileen Kawagoe said...

The Nubian technology, you refer to, of having meteorite iron fashioned into beads symbolizing seeds of heaven appears to have made its way into Asia ... perhaps with the same migratory peoples we have been contemplating. The Chinese have their heaven's beads or heaven's pearls; The Tibetans have their Dzi beads which are said to have made their first appearance between 2000 BC to 1000 BC, in ancient India: a few hundred thousand were supposedly brought back by Tibetan soldiers from Persia or ancient Tajikistan during a raid. Fear of the “evil eye” was taken very seriously by these people, so whoever made the dzi created talismans with “eyes” on them as a “fight fire with fire” form of protection. This reminds me of the Anatolian/Turkey practice of hanging on a tree hundreds of amulets of"eyes". And from prehistoric times, the Japanese have their tama-ishi or lit. "seed-stone" beads that contain the soul (tamashi is a homonym for soul). Alternatively, tama=jewel/spirit. The Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu, the shining goddess, wears a necklace of beads and is associated in mythology, with the sacred sakaki tree hung with a myriad of curved jewel beads (common as grave goods in Kofun tombs)...remarkably like the Anatolian tree of eyes. The curved "eye" jewel bead appears in Asia earliest with the Jomon in Japan.

Alice Linsley said...

Aileen, that is fascinating and important information. Thank you for sharing it. There are many linguistic connections between these Japanese words and the Nilo-Saharan languages.

How do you pronounce Jomon? The root would be JoM with the N making it a plural form? Tell me more!

Aileen Kawagoe said...

Jo as in "Joe"; mon as in "maw-n" with a hard "n". The word did not exist in the Jomon language, it is just a word that modern archaeologists used to describe the pottery, it comes from the Japanese (or Chinese rather) character "縄文" meaning literally cord/rope ... markings/glyph/character/pattern

Alice Linsley said...


The rope pattern of Jomon Period pottery and the shape is almost identical to the rope pattern found on Kushite or Nubian pan grave pottery at Nekhen in Sudan. See the rope or cord pattern here:

It appears that some Ainu, who were part of the Kushite civilization, moved south along the Nile and crossed the seas from Southern Africa.

The Nilotic Ainu had a system of writing because they had priestly scribes. Wani Kishi, who brought the Kata script to Japan, may have been an Ainu priest-scribe. The Kata writing system was first used by Buddhist priests. I think Wani Kishi came from Korea.

The Kojiki indicates that Wani Kishi arrived sometime after 372, but before 375 AD. Kata was a priestly syllabic system, similar to Hebrew.

"Wa-kishi" is an African term found among the Ba-Kaonde of Northern Rhodesia. It refers to the ancestor spirits to which they offer prayers at a family altar. This resembles the Shinto family shrine.

Lots of connections. Still much to investigate.

Aileen Kawagoe said...

I have a slightly differently nuanced take. But 1st about cord-marked pottery. Cord-marked pottery is a common trait among all if not nearly all of the oldest cultures that are thought to have produced the 1st potteries China, Russia/Jomon-Japan. For the moment, the Nea-Eastern/India/European cordmarked potteries appear to have dates about three thousand years later than the East Asian dates. So for the moment it appears, they originated somewhere in that triangle...and perhaps spread backwards with burgeoning trade exchanges...Stephen Oppenheimer in East of Eden traces many of these links from Asia back to the N-E and Europe.

Aileen Kawagoe said...

Next, the bundle of Nilo-Saharan/Kushitic traits, I suggest need to be separated into two or even more different migratory lineages, and many are not at all typical of the Ainu. The timing is also wrong. Many of the Kushitic assemblages appear to be Chalcolithic for eg. the Jomon people had none of these, no writing, also none of most of the religious Shinto traits that actually have to do with the Austronesian Southeast Asia culture(and possibly the earlier Austro-Asiatic culture) that is seen widely in China. In Japan, the earliest tori gate for eg., only surfaces around the 3rd c. in Japan, and the tori in exactly the same form can only be found in the tombs of Anyang, Shandong, although I have seen something close enough form in Vietnam. Indian and Cambodian gates are distinctly different, more megalithic in nature. Genetic connections and tomb-building technology between Shandong and Japan has been established to be closely connected. The Shinto ricecake offerings, glutinous rice are again identical or similar in SEA and Japan. Balinese architecture and Japanese (as well as elsewhere in W. Indonesia) have been noted in various papers to have/had the same housing and religious architecture, tomb sepulchre, agricultural & royal mythological well as the same range ofO haplogroups, esp. O2b and O3 Y-DNA. The semitic Ark of the Covenant is hard to miss, but again you can find near-identical divine arks in relic Austronesian cultures, Yunnan and NW of India, Himalayan tribes, again suggesting the NW Indian corridor probably two-way passage way for Austro-Asiatics or Austronesians in ancient times. If you visit temples of Taiwan, Singapore where southern Fujian or Guangdong Chinese genes prevail, you can actually witness the same omikoshi "arks" being carried, and just like the Hindu do during Deepavali. They also have the same firewalking/torch and water-throwing festivals. All the relic cultures hark back to an earlier time when they also shared the same mythical traditions. Hgs O (A-A), O2a and O2b corresponding to the Tiberto-Burman and Mon-Khmer split, which presumably precedes O3 slightly, so we can trace the earliest provenances of these to the NE India to Northern corridor to Yunnan-Tibetan area...i.e. from West to the East. These cultural influences appear to have a number of semitic traits.

Aileen Kawagoe said...

Out of Anyang, Shandong in the east ... the jade dragon step pyramid culture that emerged from the Yangshao, Hongshan, Shang dynasty -- the tomb shaft technology diffused to Japan either late Yayoi or beginning of the megalithic tomb-building Kofun period. Was it possible that this showed the influx of Kushitic influences out of Shandong or via the Altai/Caucasus? It is really difficult to say. Early Shinto stone shrines (a lot like the Greek delphic oracle/meteor stone ones) emerge in tombs of this period along with the Taoist Queen Mother of the West icon which was common in Yunnan, Sichuan, Shang dynasty. All around the same time, Wei dynasty Buddhism starts to be brought into Japan via Silk Road and continental immigrants, both Chinese(Tibetan?) and Korean start to proliferate.

Aileen Kawagoe said...

But the bronze tree surfaces really early (but still @2,000BC) in Sangxindui Sichuan presenting perhaps the clearest Near Eastern Chaldean/Hamitic motifs (what about Anatolian?). Significant for Jp culture ... notice the form of the tree, it is most clearly a pomegranate tree which is of Iranian/NETurkey/Caspian Sea domestication and I have seen the pomegranate tree in Kanto that was established to be the "father" of all pomegranate trees in this area. The sharp-knife-like ends of the tree's branches are but the stylized jagged sepals that surround a pomegranate fruit. Most intriguing is the triskele seen on the "hand" of Eve/Ishtar(the Metmuseum has one from Nimrud) or of Sabazios Sky God(, more likely according to NE tradition, on the Sanxingui bronze tree (seen on Thracian coins and of course much of the Celtic/Anatolian(?)/Indo-european world) and is the emblem on many J. shrine banners and temples, and J. taiko drums. And then there is the serpent at the bottom of the Sangxingdui Tree. It is from the early cultures of China, eg. Yangshao culture that the same three-legged crow solar motif (cognate of which is the triskele) emerges in the tombs of Mawangdui-Changsha China, Korean tombs and Japanese royal and religious iconography. Solar spirals of course emerged as icons far earlier ... since Jomon times

Aileen Kawagoe said...

I am not a hundred percent certain of the exact provenance of all of the Shinto or Buddhist cultural traits or icons, I have been trying to work out the geographical locations and chronological sequences of each and to map the J. myths corresponding to those from elsewhere, but it has been an ongoing project for years. I do have trouble with your Ainu-kushitic-semitic origins theory -- mainly because the Ainu nor the Jomon of mainland and the north do not possess any J or E Y-DNA at all. In the southern islands, there are traces of the NE genes. So for Ainu and Jomon at large, it is all hg D-YAP+ which has split from Africa. YAP has a clearer trail (D is sporadic and has relic population traces) I referred to earlier. To be clear, the Afro-Asiatic/Hamitic/NE/ME traits we are trying to assign do not fall neatly with the Ainu who display largely Siberian and NE Pacific (Nivkh and Kamchatka peoples' traits through recent intermarriages), although they clearly have inherited the greatest proportion of Jomon genes common to all Japanese populations, north, south or mainland. Their oral tradition also says they were there in the land long before the children of the sun, so it is important to separate much of the Shinto cultural assemblage that arrived not during the Jomon, but the Yayoi onwards from...Austronesian SEA as well as out of Shandong, Northern China elements of the Japanese religion. To confuse things further, many of the elements of Shinto appear to also embody Mithraic or Bactrian elements due to the Silk Road trade, but these probably entered Japan from the 7th (possibly 6th) century onwards. Sorry this post has gone on for so long.

Aileen Kawagoe said...

I should probably also mention that the Jomon culture itself (assuming one agrees that they are to be equated with Ainu ancestors) did not have the Austro-Asiatic/Austronesian megalithic burials nor wooden coffin burials, though they did as you rightly noted have the jar burials. They were also not responsible for the later stele or balbal culture, but along with the Venus figurines, the characteristic pottery, they are associated with some portable phallic stone objects, comma shaped jade stones and in a certain region stone maceheads. Only with the later continental migrants from the Yayoi period onwards, came the Eurasian-Caucasus-EAS cairn culture, burials, elaborate beads, bronze grave items, etc, etc. In other words, the Paleolithic to Jomon arrivals in Japan represent probably not the priestly-tribes, but true hunter-gatherers. The only question is who was responsible for the megalithic structure at the bottom of Yonaguni Island, and that might possibly be attributed to either Hg J or E or C haplogroups... that remains a mystery.

Alice Linsley said...

The earliest vessels (ca. 60,000 years) were not pottery but ostrich egg shells found in Africa, and they have the rope pattern.

Painted or incised ostrich eggs have been found in El-Badari and ancient Kush (Nubia). In the Oriental Museum there are examples of ostrich eggs which have been decorated over their entire surfaces. The largest concentration of ostrich eggs to be discovered in one place in Predynastic Egypt were found at a tomb in Hierakonpolis (Nekhen). Ostrich eggs have been found in the graves of children and nobles. At Naqada, a decorated ostrich egg replaced the owner's missing head. This egg is now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. These painted ostrich eggs appear to symbolize life after death. Perhaps that is why pottery with the similar egg shell shape and rope pattern is commonly found in graves.


There might be an African precedent for the dolmen in Japan. The Horite ruler-priest caste cut tombs out of stone. Any thoughts on this?

Aileen Kawagoe said...

I believe the standing stones and steles were features that spread all over the Africa and Middle East-Anatolia, and later all over Eurasia-E. Asia during the nomadic steppes Indo-European expansion. The dolmen culture of Japan is clearly linked to the India-SEA-Vietnam Austronesian (possibly even Austro-Asiatic) hg O, O2b expansion (that is later than the Out-of-Africa event) as well as the Liaoning-Korean dolmen phenomenon. The India-Japanese-NE dolmen phenomenon may have expanded from the Caucasus to Asia. You might be able to better draw your conclusions as to the Middle Eastern links to the Caucasus. YAP+ terminals are in Kazakhstan, SW China, but dolmens are only found in Liaoning, Japan & Korea.

Aileen Kawagoe said...

I don't think the dolmens of E. Asia are directly attributable to African dolmens...but to Bronze Age developments and they would be closer to Eurasian-Caucasus developments than remote African ones. What African-NE cultural packages can we see in SEA-E. Asia? We should probably look out for where standing stones surface and burial jars and where these tie together with the oldest population genes, we may have something. There are rare standing stones in Shaanxi, many more in the Altai and S. Siberian Baikal area to Mongolia to northern Japan which is consistent with the consensus that Siberia was populated from very early times. The oldest populations in SEA are Tai-Daic where trace L2 genes remain (the provenance for a certain lineage in Aichi in Japan), Vietnam and possibly N. Laos where standing stones and the Plain of Jars (the latter dated to around 2000 BC). These last dates are however, still no where near the 35,000 yrs bp Paleolithic earliest arrivals in Japan.

Aileen Kawagoe said...

As for ostrich eggs, I have other thoughts at present on this ... and I think the ostrich eggs' peoples may be linked to the populations where the out of "egg" cosmic creation myths are found. We can follow the trails, the area where the latest Romanian pyramids are said to have been found are said to have mysterious round "egg" megaliths. In 2000, Semino's study on Y DNA revealed the presence of haplotypes belonging to the large clade E1b1b1 (E-M35). These were predominantly found in the southern Balkans, southern Italy and parts of Iberia. Semino connected this pattern, along with J haplogroup subclades, to be the Y-DNA component of Cavalli-Sforza's Neolithic demic-diffusion of farmers from the Near East. Cosmic egg trail in Egypt, India, of course the Chinese Pangu and Taoist cosmic egg myth (not forgetting the Altai-Finnish-Saami dove/duck egg creation myths) as well as Cambodian/Japanese primordial pair and land floating in the primordial egg soup. Mapping mythology alone is however, tricky and the associations tenuous, we need all the other evidence of the other disciplines.

Aileen Kawagoe said...

P.S. There are Horai shrines, Hori shrines in the Nara, Kansai region of Japan but one would need to investigate the earliest shrines and their associated oral traditions more closely, as well as the surrounding clans and populations' genetic details to know more. I have a theory that the deity Susa-no is a name (lit. "out of Susa") that harkens back to to Susa, the capital of Elam, some of the earliest square tomb cairns are found only in the Shimane area of Japan, also where the square tombs may only be found via the Silla-Korean continent, but it is somewhat a difficult assertion to prove or disprove..nobody else has yet dared to assert such a connection. African L lineages are said to have emerged in Eurasia-E. Asia via the Pamir mountains-Hindu-Kush while the hg DE-YAP+ emerge in Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, etc, etc., and your own references to the Kushitic empire I'm sure throws light on these trails that we might want to tie together.

Aileen Kawagoe said...

On Anatolia-to-Egypt. The keyhole shaped tombs of Japan I believe might have been inspired by the Anatolian keyhole arches of rock-cut cave entrances and/or the Ankh (one particular in-between tomb looks remarkably like the ankh). I have visited rock-cut tombs in Kanagawa and Kamakura, they appear to be nearer those of Anatolia-Turkey than Egyptian ones though. have also been intrigued by the Egyptian reliefs and mention of the Land of Punt, and Phoenicians. The depicted Punic people traveling from Punt look a lot like Shinto devotees - with the loincloths and hachimaki white headcloth tied at the back of the head (again common to Japanese, Korean, Mongol, and Austronesian festivals/burial ceremonies)

If you had to take your pick of the semitic/Mesopotamian cultures, which would you say Shinto resembled the most? Phoenicians? Phrygians? Chaldeans? Hittites? Canaanites? Sumerians?

Is it not possible that most of the Shinto religious features correlate to the Phoenicians, Phrygians or Chaldeans?

Aileen Kawagoe said...

I wrote this piece a while back but you might be interested in it "Do J. petroglyphs reveal prehistoric connections with the ancient Sumerian-Phoenician-Akkadian civilizations?"

Aileen Kawagoe said...

In the article (I plan on cleaning it up a little), Citing Suraksha Agrawal's "YAP, signature of an African-Middle Eastern migration into northern India" which says "The proto-Asian Dravidians were ascendants[sic] of Elamites, inhabitants of Elam (southwestern Iran) and speakers of proto-Elamo Dravidian languages...Significantly, the
YAP+ve lineage, although present in Middle Eastern populations in a frequency of 11–25%, has never been reported in any other North Indian or South Indian populations...The only exception is Siddis, a migrant group of East African ancestry found in the southern state of Andhra
Pradesh. Siddis show a high frequency of YAP+ve lineage (40%)" -- follow the grey trail on this map
Note: Ancient Elam lay to the east of Sumer and Akkad, in the far west and southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of Khuzestan and Ilam Province. In the Old Elamite period c. 3200 BC, it consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered in Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Elam was absorbed into the Assyrian Empire in the 8th and 7th centuries BC

Alice Linsley said...


Your observations are remarkable and I am thrilled to read what you have written.

Tell me about your background. If you would rather do so by email, you may contact me at aproeditor-at-gmail-dot-com

Best wishes to you!

Anonymous said...

All this is subject to great debate. Kusha is an Indian prince, a son of Lord Rama of Indian civlization. Despite the presence of millions of Kush in India, no african Y chromosomes are reported in India. Indeed decendents of Kush can be associated with all the known aryan tribes, Assyrians, Amorites, Kassites, Hittites, scythains etc. The presence of Kush in Africa, middle east, Asia is due to migration from India.

Alice Linsley said...

Kusha, Krishna, Rama and Hori are words that come out of the Horite religion that originated in the Sudan.

Haplogroup B with origina in the Sudan is found in some populations in southern India and Sri Lanka.

Anonymous said...

Alice great research, one thing you missed is if you go to the septuagint Genesis 10:24, which is missing in masoratic text that Cainan (Canaan) is the actual father of Shelah. That means Abraham's descendents were also Hamitic. Reference Luke 3:34-36. Book of Jubilees 8: 1-6. Two or more witnesses! Take care.

bhagwat manral said...

There is a reference in our prehistory of some of India's races,particularly their sacerdotal castes, coming from a place called Kush but to link them to the Tamils is rather far fetched.The only archaeological evidence produced so far is the similarity in the burial practices of the two.This is too slender an evidence link them.It is possible that some practices of one region got adopted in another region through trade contacts. The author has cited some some Sanskrit terms that bear a resemblance to or are derivates of Kushic. Unfortunately terms quoted are from classical Sanskrit(post 5/4th century BC) and not from the earlier Vedic version which would have been chronologically co existing and impressionable to foreign influence- but only one of a very high order. Classical Sanskrit was too developed a language to be influenced by Kushic or, for that matter, any Semitic language.
Some scholars have tried to link the Sumerians to the Tamils.This theory is also deficient of plausable evidence. Sumer did have trade links with the Indus Valley but were these links purely commercial or do they point to a deeper connection, is not yet established.Sumerian was a language isolate and its only link to India is some names in the Kish list of Kings.Things will only be clear once the Indus script is deciphered. Further, latest studies anti date the Indus-Saraswati civilization by two millenia. This could turn the entire historical perspective on its head. The movement of peoples,in the aftermath of the great flood( caused by the retreating ice age), could have been from East to West- from south Asia to west Asia rather than from west to east.This is a matter of conjecture.

Alice Linsley said...

Yes, Anon. The lines of Ham and Shem intermarried, as is customary with clans belonging to a caste. This is evident in analysis of the Genesis King Lists. See these articles:

Alice Linsley said...

Thank you, Bhagwat Manral, for that excellent comment! Since this article was written five years ago, I have come to different conclusions. See this article:

I am only interested in the priest caste. Tamil Brahmins, the priestly caste, practice endogamy and DNA studies indicate that they have substantial North Indian origins mixed with some South Indian, according to the Harappa DNA Project's autosomal DNA data, as summarized by Razib Khan. See his research here: