Black Athena: Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization; Volume III: The Linguistic Evidence

Glossary

GLOSSARY 695 GLOSSARY Africa Africa fits the conventional definition of a continent as a large land mass surrounded by water. Like the concept of “continent” itself the definition of Africa is problematic. It contains a range of climates, from desert to rainforest and is divided by many natural boundaries, though these have shifted over the millennia, making contacts among the various climatic regions over time more possible than they are today. As the continent in which modern humans have lived longest, it has a wider genetic variation than all the rest of the world put together. There is, however, a surprising degree of linguistic uniformity. Thus, all in all, Africa remains too useful a concept to be deconstructed. Afroasiatic Otherwise known as Afrasian and formerly called HamitoSemitic , this linguistic super-family consists of a number of language families including Beja, Berber, Chadic, Egyptian, Semitic, Omotic and Central, Eastern and Southern Cushitic. Ainu People surviving in northern Japan. Their language is thought to be an independent branch of Euroasiatic. Akkadian The Semitic language of Mesopotamia heavily influenced by Sumerian. It was replaced by Aramaic around the middle of the First Millennium BCE. 696 BLACK ATHENA Alphabet A particular form of script in which signs uniquely represent single phonemes. Nearly all known alphabets derive from a single form developed in Egypt or the Levant, in the Third Millennium BCE. The only exceptions to this pattern are a very few created by analogy to those descended from the original alphabet. The outstanding examples of the latter type are the Irish Ogham and the Korean alphabets. Altaic Widespread language family in Central Asia, including Turkic, Mongol and possibly Tungus and Korean. It is thought to be an independent branch of Euroasiatic. Amharic This Ethiopian Semitic language is the national language of Ethiopia. Anatolia Ancient region more or less co-extensive with modern Turkey. Anatolian Extinct Indo-Hittite but non–Indo-European languages of Anatolia. They include Hittite, Palaic, Luvian, Lycian, Lydian and probably Carian and Etruscan. Aramaic A West Semitic language. Originally spoken in parts of what is now Syria, it became the official language of the Assyrian, NeoBabylonian and Persian empires. It replaced the Canaanite dialects of Phoenician and Hebrew in the East Mediterranean around the middle of the First Millennium BCE. In its turn it was replaced by Greek and Arabic. Archaic Greece Greek historical period conventionally dated from the first Olympic Games in 776 BCE to the beginning of the Classical Age around 500 BCE. Armenian Indo-European language of an ancient people in eastern Anatolia. It is sometimes supposed to be especially close to Greek. As the earliest Armenian texts only go back to the fourth century CE, the similarities may only be due to Greek influence or common contacts with Semitic languages. Aryan Term derived through the Semitic œary from the Egyptian ˆrˆ, “companion.” The people later called Persians described themselves as GLOSSARY 697 Arya. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars used the term to denote speakers of an Indo-Aryan or Indo-Iranian branch of the IndoEuropean language family. These people appear to have invaded Iran and India from the northwest in the first half of the Second Millennium BCE. In the late nineteenth century CE the term came to be used for the “Indo-European” or “white race” specifically excluding Jews. Asia A name derived from the western Anatolian state of Assuwa in the Second Millennium BCE. Among the Greeks, the term was used both for Anatolia (Asia Minor) and for the whole continent across the sea, to the east of Greece. Strictly speaking, neither Asia nor Europe count as continents as they are not surrounded by water. Furthermore, Asia is divided by permanent geographical barriers and is populated by peoples with very distinct languages and cultures. Assyria An ancient city-state or kingdom in northern Mesopotamia. It dates back to the Third Millennium BCE. Its periods of greatest power were at the end of the Second Millennium and between 900 and 600 BCE. Its language was an archaic dialect of Akkadian. Atlantic languages Branch of Niger-Congo spoken along the west coast of Africa. One branch, Fulani, is spoken in pockets as far east as Cameroon. Autochthonous Native or aboriginal. Bantu By far the largest branch of the Niger-Congo language family. It is spoken from Cameroon in the west to Kenya in the east and South Africa in the south. It appears to have...