163-579: The Proto-Afroasiatic homeland is the hypothetical place where speakers of the Proto-Afroasiatic language lived in a single linguistic community, or complex of communities, before this original language dispersed geographically and divided into separate distinct languages. Afroasiatic languages are today mostly distributed in parts of Africa , and Western Asia . The contemporary Afroasiatic languages are spoken in West Asia , North Africa ,
326-547: A case system with at least two cases. Proto-Afroasiatic may have had marked nominative or ergative-absolutive alignment. A deverbal derivational prefix *mV- is also widely reconstructed. While there is disagreement about the forms of the PAA personal pronouns, there is agreement that there were independent and "bound" (unstressed, clitic ) forms. There is also agreement that a widespread demonstrative pattern of n = masculine and plural, t= feminine goes back to PAA, as well as about
489-599: A dental consonant but does co-occur with other pharyngeal consonants , it must itself have originally been a dental *d in Proto-Afroasiatic, which later became *ʕ in Egyptian. Rössler's ideas have come to dominate the field of Egyptology without, however, achieving general acceptance. Orin Gensler argues that Rössler's sound change is typologically extremely unlikely, though still possible, while many of
652-810: A lord of the manor with a Roman Catholic church and priest. Thanks to the exchange with the Al-Andalus where the Arab Agricultural Revolution was underway, European agriculture transformed, with improved techniques and the diffusion of crop plants, including the introduction of sugar, rice, cotton and fruit trees (such as the orange). After 1492, the Columbian exchange brought New World crops such as maize, potatoes, tomatoes, sweet potatoes , and manioc to Europe, and Old World crops such as wheat, barley, rice, and turnips , and livestock (including horses, cattle, sheep and goats) to
815-410: A terminative case in -iš . Scholars debate whether these are vestigial cases or adverbial postpositions . The ending -iš has often been connected to the Egyptian postposition js and is sometimes used to reconstruct a Proto-Afroasiatic locative case. Diakonoff also believed he could reconstruct a comitative - dative case in *-dV or *-Vd , an ablative - comparative case in *-kV ,
978-557: A "directive" case in *-l , and an ablative case in *-p . A prefix mV- is the most widely attested affix in AA that is used to derive nouns. For PAA, its shape has variously been reconstructed as *ma- , *ma(i)- , *mV- , and *-m- . In the daughter languages, it is attested with a wide variety of meanings and functions, such as forming deverbal agent nouns , place nouns, instrument nouns, as well as participles. Erin Shay argues that *mV-
1141-510: A background in Semitic or Egyptological studies, and amongst archaeological proponents of the " farming/language dispersal hypothesis " according to which major language groups dispersed with early farming technology in the Neolithic . The leading linguistic proponent of this idea in recent times is Alexander Militarev , who argues that Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken by early agriculturalists in
1304-470: A combination of labor supply and labor demand trends have driven down the share of population employed in agriculture. During the 16th century in Europe, between 55 and 75% of the population was engaged in agriculture; by the 19th century, this had dropped to between 35 and 65%. In the same countries today, the figure is less than 10%. At the start of the 21st century, some one billion people, or over 1/3 of
1467-591: A common farming lexicon, he suggests that early Afroasiatic languages were involved in the even earlier development of intensive food collection in the areas of Ethiopia and Sudan. In other words, he proposes an even older age for Afroasiatic than Militarev, at least 11,000 years old, and believes farming lexicon can only be reconstructed for branches of Afroasiatic. Ehret argues that Proto-Afroasiatic speakers in Northeast Africa developed subsistence patterns of intensive plant collection and pastoralism , giving
1630-499: A consonant; consonants included in the pattern often involve gemination . If root-and-pattern morphology originated in Proto-Afroasiatic, then an explanation must be found for why it has mostly disappeared in the Omotic and Chadic branches; if it was not present in PAA, then an explanation must be found for why it developed independently in the Semitic, Egyptian, and Cushitic branches. Hans-Jürgen Sasse proposed that Proto-Afroasiatic
1793-464: A demonstrative *h- ('this/that') or *ha- ('this/that one'). The most common Afroasiatic interrogative pronoun is *mV , which Ehret reconstructs as *ma , *mi 'what?'. Diakonoff argued that *mV ultimately derived from a demonstrative stem *m- . Only the Semitic reflexes of this root have separate forms for animate ('"who?") and inanimate ("what?") referents. The Old Egyptian and Berber descendants both appear to be used regardless of whether
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#17327661893641956-621: A descendant population migrated back to the Levant prior to 4000 BC and developed the Semitic branch of Afroasiatic. Later migration from Arabia into the HOA beginning around 3 ka would explain the origin of the Ethio-Semitic languages at this time. A similar view has already been proposed earlier, suggesting that the ancestors of Afroasiatic speakers could have been a population originating in
2119-405: A fact which has not yet been explained. Additionally, it is not always clear which words are cognates, as some proposed cognates may be chance resemblances. Moreover, at least some cognates are likely to have been altered irregularly due to analogical change , making them harder to recognize. As words change meaning over time, the question of which words might have originally meant the same thing
2282-432: A few branches, making them difficult to reconstruct. In addition to a singular and plural, Egyptian and Semitic attest a dual , the endings of which can be reconstructed respectively as Ancient Egyptian : * -a(y) and Semitic * -ā (nominative) and * -ay (oblique). These endings are very similar to each other, and due to the dual's attestation in the two earliest attested branches of Afroasiatic it
2445-528: A form of the copula 'to be' or a particle meaning 'self'. Afroasiatic languages attest a variety of determiners , only some of which are likely to derive from Proto-Afroasiatic. As first noticed by Joseph Greenberg , Afroasiatic languages in all branches but Omotic attest a series of third person agreement markers in the form n- (masculine), t- (feminine), and n- (plural), which probably derive from Proto-Afroasiatic determiners; Omotic attests t- (feminine) alone of this set. Additionally, Omotic attests
2608-663: A grammatical rather than a lexical function, and argue that there is thus no basis to reconstruct it as a lexical feature in PAA, as Diakonoff does; they find Ehret's reasoning more sound. Igor Diakonoff argues that Proto-Afroasiatic required a consonant at both the beginning of a syllable and the end of a word, and that only one consonant was possible at the beginning or end of a syllable. Zygmont Frajzyngier and Erin Shay note that these rules appear to be based on Semitic structures, whereas Chadic includes syllables beginning with vowels as well as initial and final consonant clusters. Christopher Ehret argues that all word stems in PAA took
2771-664: A hazardous industry, and farmers worldwide remain at high risk of work-related injuries, lung disease, noise-induced hearing loss , skin diseases, as well as certain cancers related to chemical use and prolonged sun exposure. On industrialized farms , injuries frequently involve the use of agricultural machinery , and a common cause of fatal agricultural injuries in developed countries is tractor rollovers . Pesticides and other chemicals used in farming can be hazardous to worker health , and workers exposed to pesticides may experience illness or have children with birth defects. As an industry in which families commonly share in work and live on
2934-444: A high use of inputs (water, fertilizer, pesticide and automation). It is practiced mainly in developed countries. From the twentieth century onwards, intensive agriculture increased crop productivity. It substituted synthetic fertilizers and pesticides for labor, but caused increased water pollution, and often involved farm subsidies. Soil degradation and diseases such as stem rust are major concerns globally; approximately 40% of
3097-404: A marked nominative language. However, Abdelaziz Allati notes that, if PAA was originally ergative-aligned, it is unclear why both the attested ancient languages and modern AA languages predominantly have nominative-accusative alignment . Proto-Afroasiatic word order has not yet been established. Igor Diakonoff proposed that PAA had verb-subject-object word order (VSO word order), meaning that
3260-438: A masculine agreement form k- , while Chadic and Cushitic show a gender- and number-neutral form k- : both likely go back to a Proto-Afroasiatic determiner *k- , reconstructed by Ehret as *kaa 'this'. Diakonoff argues that in Proto-Afroasiatic these forms were originally demonstrative pronouns that later developed into third person personal pronouns in some branches and into genitive markers in others. Ehret also reconstructs
3423-475: A newly identified "non-African" (Western Eurasian) genetic component, which the researchers dub the "Ethio-Somali" component. This genetic component is most closely related to the " Maghrebi " component and is believed to have diverged from other "non-African" (Western Eurasian) ancestries at least 23,000 years ago. The "Ethio-Somali" genetic component is prevalent among modern Afroasiatic-speaking populations, and found at its highest levels among Cushitic peoples in
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#17327661893643586-608: A pluralizing morpheme in which a vowel *a was inserted between the two final consonants of the root, possibly replacing another vowel via apophony . However, Paul Newman has argued that while plurals via vowel alteration are frequent in Chadic, they cannot be reconstructed back to Proto-Chadic or Proto-Afroasiatic. Andréas Stauder likewise argues that Coptic and Egyptian plurals via vowel change may have developed independently. Lameen Souag argues that while some form of vowel-changing plural likely goes back to Proto-Afroasiatic, many of
3749-447: A positive note, the gender gap in access to mobile internet in low- and middle-income countries fell from 25 percent to 16 percent between 2017 and 2021, and the gender gap in access to bank accounts narrowed from 9 to 6 percentage points. Women are as likely as men to adopt new technologies when the necessary enabling factors are put in place and they have equal access to complementary resources. Agriculture, specifically farming, remains
3912-408: A region in the adjacent Horn of Africa , specifically in modern day Ethiopia , arguing that Omotic represents the most basal branch and displays high diversity. Others have however pointed out that Omotic displays strong signs of contact with non-Afroasiatic languages, with some arguing that Omotic should be regarded as an independent language family. Like Ehret, Blench accepts that Omotic is part of
4075-404: A significant decrease in genetic diversity and resources among livestock breeds, leading to a corresponding decrease in disease resistance and local adaptations previously found among traditional breeds. Grassland based livestock production relies upon plant material such as shrubland , rangeland , and pastures for feeding ruminant animals. Outside nutrient inputs may be used, however manure
4238-655: A significant population component which moved north from that region into Egypt and the Levant. Ehret argued that this genetic distribution paralleled the spread of the Afrasian language family with the movement of people from the Horn of Africa into Egypt and added a new demic component to the existing population of Egypt 17,000 years ago. Proto-Afroasiatic language Proto-Afroasiatic ( PAA ), also known as Proto-Hamito-Semitic , Proto-Semito-Hamitic , and Proto-Afrasian ,
4401-492: A small area of forest is cleared by cutting and burning the trees. The cleared land is used for growing crops for a few years until the soil becomes too infertile, and the area is abandoned. Another patch of land is selected and the process is repeated. This type of farming is practiced mainly in areas with abundant rainfall where the forest regenerates quickly. This practice is used in Northeast India, Southeast Asia, and
4564-558: A small, published sample of 12. Keita also wrote that the PN2 mutation was shared by M35 and M2 lineages and this paternal clade originated from East Africa. He concluded that "the genetic data give population profiles that clearly indicate males of African origin, as opposed to being of Asian or European descent" but acknowledged that the biodiversity does not indicate any specific set of skin colors or facial features as populations were subject to microevolutionary pressures. Fregel summarized that
4727-409: A suffix *-Vb- used to mark harmful animals. Vladimir Orel also attests less well-defined uses for this suffix, while Ehret takes this as a suffix to mark animals and parts of the body. Afroasiatic languages today clearly distinguish singular and plural. One of the first features of Proto-Afroasiatic proposed by Joseph Greenberg was the existence of "internal-a plurals" (a type of broken plural ):
4890-661: A third consonant. As early as the Middle Ages, however, grammarians had noticed that some triradical roots in Arabic differed in only one consonant and had related meanings. According to supporters of original triradicalism such as Gideon Goldenberg, these variations are common in language and inconclusive for the matter. He compares phonetic similarity between words with similar meanings in English such as glow , gleam , glitter , glaze , and glade . Other scholars argue that
5053-483: A tonal system of at least two tonal phonemes, falling tone, rising tone, and possibly a third tone, level tone. Other scholars argue that Proto-AA had a pitch accent and some branches subsequently developed tone. Such scholars postulate that tones developed to compensate for lost or reduced syllables, and note that certain tones are often associated with certain syllable-final consonants. Zygmunt Frajzyngier and Erin Shay note that in AA tonal languages, tone usually has
Proto-Afroasiatic homeland - Misplaced Pages Continue
5216-468: A two vowel system ( *a and *ə ), as supported by Berber and Chadic data, and then developing further vowels. Some scholars postulate that Proto-Afroasiatic was a tonal language, with tonality subsequently lost in some branches. Igor Diakonoff argued for the existence of tone based on his reconstruction of many otherwise homophonous words. Christopher Ehret instead takes the fact that three branches of AA have tone as his starting point; he has postulated
5379-552: A year, or requiring irrigation. In all of these environments perennial crops are grown (coffee, chocolate) and systems are practiced such as agroforestry . In temperate environments, where ecosystems were predominantly grassland or prairie , highly productive annual farming is the dominant agricultural system. Important categories of food crops include cereals, legumes, forage, fruits and vegetables. Natural fibers include cotton, wool , hemp , silk and flax . Specific crops are cultivated in distinct growing regions throughout
5542-473: A yearly summit to discuss safety. Overall production varies by country as listed. The twenty largest countries by agricultural output (in nominal terms) at peak level as of 2018, according to the IMF and CIA World Factbook . Cropping systems vary among farms depending on the available resources and constraints; geography and climate of the farm; government policy; economic, social and political pressures; and
5705-400: Is c. 4000 BCE , after which Egyptian and the Semitic languages are firmly attested. However, in all likelihood these languages began to diverge well before this hard boundary. The estimations offered by scholars as to when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken vary widely, ranging from 18,000 BCE to 8,000 BCE. An estimate at the youngest end of this range still makes Afroasiatic
5868-584: Is a hybrid of a Chilean and a North American species, developed by breeding in Europe and North America. The indigenous people of the Southwest and the Pacific Northwest practiced forest gardening and fire-stick farming . The natives controlled fire on a regional scale to create a low-intensity fire ecology that sustained a low-density agriculture in loose rotation; a sort of "wild" permaculture . A system of companion planting called
6031-480: Is a later development, which he associates primarily with Semitic. Helmut Satzinger has argued that the earliest form of conjugation in Afroasiatic was the so-called "prefix conjugation," a form found in Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic that uses prefixes to conjugate verbs for person, gender, and number. Other scholars ague that, as there is no evidence for the "prefix conjugation" in Omotic, Chadic, or Egyptian,
6194-416: Is also a divergent proposal that has become popular among Egyptologists ; there is no agreement about PAA's vowels, the existence of tone , or its syllable structure. At the same time, scholars disagree to whether and to what extent the classical Semitic languages are a conservative, faithful representation of PAA morphology. This is particularly important for the question of whether the lexical roots in
6357-461: Is also accepted by Takács, but he reconstructs it as *ʔaw / *wa 'who?'. Diakonoff also reconstructs an interrogative adjective, *ayyV- , which he claims left traces in Semitic, Cushitic, and Omotic. Lipiński, on the other hand, holds this term to be Semitic and deriving from a particle ʔay 'where?'. Takács derives this particle from PAA *ʔay / *ya , a variant of *ʔaw / *wa 'who?'. Most morphological reconstruction for PAA has focused on
6520-470: Is also debate about whether some of the forms may have been nominal (using verbal nouns), or possibly participial or gerundival , rather than purely verbal. TAMs may have been indicated by both changes in the verb stem and the use of suffixes and prefixes. Some scholars argue that prefixes were used for "eventive" (describing things happening) aspects, as opposed to the "suffix conjugation," which described states. Abdelaziz Allati, however, argues that this
6683-409: Is also possible for forms closer to PAA to be preserved in languages recorded later, while languages recorded earlier may have forms that diverge more from PAA. In order to provide a more accurate reconstruction of Afroasiatic, it will be necessary to first reconstruct the proto-forms of the individual branches, a task which has proven difficult. As of 2023, there is only the beginning of a consensus on
Proto-Afroasiatic homeland - Misplaced Pages Continue
6846-491: Is also usually reconstructed for the proto-language. The loss of the dual in the other branches over time is a well attested feature in languages, including within the Egyptian and Semitic branches themselves. There is widespread agreement that Proto-Afroasiatic had case inflexion . First proposed by Hans-Jürgen Sasse on the basis of his reconstruction of the Proto-Cushitic case system in 1984, Proto-Afroasiatic
7009-425: Is attested among the Semitic languages and may have been dialectal in origin. The forms of the personal pronouns are very stable throughout Afroasiatic (excluding Omotic), but there is no consensus on what the reconstructed set of Afroasiatic pronouns might have looked like. Most modern branches have an independent / absolute pronoun, an object pronoun, and a suffix /possessive pronoun. According to Igor Diakonoff,
7172-626: Is both a cause of and sensitive to environmental degradation , such as biodiversity loss , desertification , soil degradation , and climate change , all of which can cause decreases in crop yield. Genetically modified organisms are widely used, although some countries ban them . The word agriculture is a late Middle English adaptation of Latin agricultūra , from ager 'field' and cultūra ' cultivation ' or 'growing'. While agriculture usually refers to human activities, certain species of ant , termite and beetle have been cultivating crops for up to 60 million years. Agriculture
7335-444: Is defined with varying scopes, in its broadest sense using natural resources to "produce commodities which maintain life, including food, fiber, forest products, horticultural crops, and their related services". Thus defined, it includes arable farming , horticulture, animal husbandry and forestry , but horticulture and forestry are in practice often excluded. It may also be broadly decomposed into plant agriculture , which concerns
7498-567: Is described as autochthonous to Northern Africa, related to the Paleolithic Eurasian migration wave, and the characteristic ancestry components of modern Northern Africans along a West-to-East cline, with Northeastern Africans having an additionally higher frequency of a Neolithic Western Asian component associated with the Neolithic expansion. Genetic research on Afroasiatic-speaking populations revealed strong correlation between
7661-437: Is evidence for natural gender in all branches, including Omotic, perhaps marked originally by an opposition of PAA *-u (masculine) and *-i (feminine), as also found in the second person singular pronouns . In addition to grammatical gender, Igor Diakonoff argues that Afroasiatic languages show traces of a nominal classification system , which was already unproductive in the Proto-Afroasiatic stage. In particular, he noted
7824-436: Is found in the two oldest attested branches of the family. In the Semitic languages, the "nisba" is used to form adjectives, derive nouns for people associated with a place or profession, and to form hypercoristic names . In Egyptian, it forms adjectives and nouns from nouns and prepositions. The "nisba" is often assumed to be connected to the genitive case ending in Semitic and possibly Cushitic. Igor Diakonoff argued that
7987-429: Is likely that this is inherited from proto-Afroasiatic. Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova (1995) reconstruct 32 consonant phonemes, while Christopher Ehret reconstructs 42. Of these, twelve in both reconstructions rely on the same sound correspondences, while an additional eighteen rely on more or less the same sound correspondences. Both reconstructions also include a number of other consonants. While some of these are
8150-494: Is no evidence for this in Ancient Egyptian, Cushitic, or Chadic, perhaps indicating that there was no gender distinction in the plural in Proto-Afroasiatic. Chadic has both an inclusive and exclusive form of "we", which Igor Diakonoff and Václav Blažek reconstruct also for Proto-Afroasiatic. Helmut Satzinger has argued that Proto-Afroasiatic only distinguished between the "object" and "possessive" pronouns, deriving
8313-499: Is often difficult to answer. As a result, Robert Ratcliffe suggests that Proto-Afroasiatic may never be reconstructed in the same way that Proto-Indo-European has been. The current state of reconstruction is also hindered by the fact that the Egyptian and Semitic branches of Afroasiatic are attested as early as 3000 BCE, while the languages of the Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Omotic branches are only attested much later, sometimes in
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#17327661893648476-438: Is returned directly to the grassland as a major nutrient source. This system is particularly important in areas where crop production is not feasible because of climate or soil, representing 30–40 million pastoralists. Mixed production systems use grassland, fodder crops and grain feed crops as feed for ruminant and monogastric (one stomach; mainly chickens and pigs) livestock. Manure is typically recycled in mixed systems as
8639-412: Is the only prefix in the AA phylum that clearly goes back to the proto-language rather than possibly being an areal feature . The precise meaning and origin of this prefix in PAA are debated. There is a long tradition of comparing the prefix to the interrogative pronoun *mā 'who'. Carsten Peust has suggested a common PAA origin for the prefix in forming nouns of place and instrument, but proposes that
8802-482: Is the reconstructed proto-language from which all modern Afroasiatic languages are descended. Though estimations vary widely, it is believed by scholars to have been spoken as a single language around 12,000 to 18,000 years ago (12 to 18 kya ), that is, between 16,000 and 10,000 BC . Although no consensus exists as to the location of the Afroasiatic homeland , the putative homeland of Proto-Afroasiatic speakers,
8965-500: Is the use of the prefix *ʔan-/*ʔin- , which appears in the Semitic and Old Egyptian first person independent pronouns, the Old Egyptian, Cushitic, and Semitic second person singular and plural pronouns, and the Old Egyptian and Berber third person singular and plural independent pronouns. While Ehret reconstructs this as the original form of the first person singular pronoun, other scholars argue that this element either represents
9128-518: Is usually reconstructed with a case system similar to Proto-Semitic. This gives a nominative ending *-u , accusative or absolutive *-a , and genitive *-i . Besides Proto-Semitic, evidence for these endings is derived from the Cushitic languages and has been argued to exist in Berber as well. The Egyptian nominal ending -w , found on some masculine nouns, may also be evidence of this system. Some evidence for nominative -u may also exist from
9291-456: Is widely agreed to have been present in Proto-Afroasiatic. However, Russell Schuh argues that there was no gender distinction in the plural, as this feature is found only in Semitic and Berber (see also personal pronouns ). Christopher Ehret argues against the consensus that grammatical gender existed in Proto-Afroasiatic, arguing that its development is an isogloss separating all other Afroasiatic languages from Omotic, which alone preserves
9454-409: The *mV- prefix used in agent nouns and participles is actually a post-PAA development, derived from the interrogative pronoun *mā 'who'. Christopher Ehret, meanwhile, proposes that the prefix did not exist in PAA at all, but is a later development from the interrogative pronoun. Gábor Takács and Andrzej Zaborski both reject a connection to *mā entirely; Takács instead suggests that a connection to
9617-514: The Horn of Africa , parts of the Sahara and Sahel , and Malta . The various hypotheses for the Afroasiatic homeland are distributed throughout this territory; that is, it is generally assumed that proto-Afroasiatic was spoken in some region where Afroasiatic languages are still spoken today. However, there is disagreement as to which part of the contemporary Afroasiatic speaking areas corresponds with
9780-532: The Horn of Africa . On this basis, the researchers suggest that the original Ethio-Somali carrying population(s) probably arrived in the pre-agricultural period (12–23 ka) from the Near East , having crossed over into northeast Africa via the Sinai Peninsula and then split into two, with one branch continuing west across North Africa and the other heading south into the Horn of Africa. They suggest that
9943-500: The Indus Valley civilization . In China, from the 5th century BC, there was a nationwide granary system and widespread silk farming . Water-powered grain mills were in use by the 1st century BC, followed by irrigation. By the late 2nd century, heavy ploughs had been developed with iron ploughshares and mouldboards . These spread westwards across Eurasia. Asian rice was domesticated 8,200–13,500 years ago – depending on
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#173276618936410106-533: The Levant and subsequently spread to Africa. Militarev associates the speakers of Proto-Afroasiatic with the Levantine Post- Natufian Culture , arguing that the reconstructed lexicon of flora and fauna, as well as farming and pastoralist vocabulary indicates that Proto-AA must have been spoken in this area. Scholar Jared Diamond and archaeologist Peter Bellwood have taken up Militarev's arguments as part of their general argument that
10269-474: The Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics including Igor Diakonoff and Alexander Militarev includes also *pʼ, *tɬ, *ʃ, *kx⁽ʷ⁾, *gɣ⁽ʷ⁾, *kxʼ⁽ʷ⁾, *x⁽ʷ⁾. Taking Ehret's labialized velars as equivalent to Orel and Stolbova's non-labialized set, and taking Ehret's extra nasals as equivalent to Orel and Stolbova's <n>, the two reconstructions mostly agree on the following correspondences between
10432-523: The Natufian culture . The linguistic view on the location of the homeland of Afroasiatic languages is largely divided into proponents for a homeland within Africa, and proponents for a homeland in western Asia. To date, a homeland within Africa is favored by a majority of scholars, although a significant minority of scholars support a homeland in western Asia. Pagani and Crevecoeur (2019) argue that, given
10595-583: The Paleolithic , after 10,000 BC. Staple food crops were grains such as wheat and barley, alongside industrial crops such as flax and papyrus . In India , wheat, barley and jujube were domesticated by 9,000 BC, soon followed by sheep and goats. Cattle, sheep and goats were domesticated in Mehrgarh culture by 8,000–6,000 BC. Cotton was cultivated by the 5th–4th millennium BC. Archeological evidence indicates an animal-drawn plough from 2,500 BC in
10758-769: The Proto-Cushitic speakers with economic transformations in the Sahara dating c. 8,500 years ago, as well as the speakers of the Proto-Zenati variety of the Berber languages with an expansion across the Maghreb in the 5th century AD. More hypothetical links associate the proto-Afroasiatic-speakers with the Kebaran and the Mushabian culture , while others argue for a possible affiliation between proto-Afroasiatic and
10921-514: The Tigris and Euphrates rivers and a canal system for irrigation. Ploughs appear in pictographs around 3,000 BC; seed-ploughs around 2,300 BC. Farmers grew wheat, barley, vegetables such as lentils and onions, and fruits including dates, grapes, and figs. Ancient Egyptian agriculture relied on the Nile River and its seasonal flooding. Farming started in the predynastic period at the end of
11084-630: The molecular clock estimate that is used – on the Pearl River in southern China with a single genetic origin from the wild rice Oryza rufipogon . In Greece and Rome , the major cereals were wheat, emmer, and barley, alongside vegetables including peas, beans, and olives. Sheep and goats were kept mainly for dairy products. In the Americas, crops domesticated in Mesoamerica (apart from teosinte) include squash, beans, and cacao . Cocoa
11247-548: The organic movement . Unsustainable farming practices in North America led to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Pastoralism involves managing domesticated animals. In nomadic pastoralism , herds of livestock are moved from place to place in search of pasture, fodder, and water. This type of farming is practiced in arid and semi-arid regions of Sahara , Central Asia and some parts of India. In shifting cultivation ,
11410-410: The "nisba" was an "expanded" form of the genitive suffix: he reconstructs the "nisba" suffix as *-iya or -*ī ; he also suggests the existence of a variant *-uwa . Lipiński suggests that the "nisba" originated as a postposition, which was also used to create the genitive case. Christopher Ehret argues that the original form of the suffix was -*iy and also reconstructs a form -*ay . This latter form
11573-526: The 20th century. The long history of scholarship of the Semitic languages compared to other branches is another obstacle in reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic; typical features of Semitic have often been projected back to the proto-language, despite their cross-linguistic rarity and lack of correspondences in other branches. Like cognates, shared morphological features tend to disappear over time, as can be demonstrated within Afroasiatic by comparing Old Egyptian (2600–2000 BCE) with Coptic (after 200 CE). Yet it
11736-466: The Afroasiatic grouping and sees the split of northern languages from Omotic as an important early development. Güldemann (2018) does not accept Omotic as unified group, but argues for at least four distinct groupings. Igor Diakonoff proposed the Eastern Saharan region, specifically the southern fringe of the Sahara as possible location of the Afroasiatic homeland. Lionel Bender proposed
11899-572: The Afroasiatic homeland across Africa and western Asia. A complicating factor is the lack of agreement on the subgroupings of Afroasiatic (see Further subdivisions ) – this makes associating archaeological evidence with the spread of Afroasiatic particularly difficult. Nevertheless, there is a long-accepted link between the speakers of Proto- Southern Cushitic languages and the East African Savanna Pastoral Neolithic (3000 BC), and archaeological evidence associates
12062-540: The Amazon Basin. Subsistence farming is practiced to satisfy family or local needs alone, with little left over for transport elsewhere. It is intensively practiced in Monsoon Asia and South-East Asia. An estimated 2.5 billion subsistence farmers worked in 2018, cultivating about 60% of the earth's arable land . Intensive farming is cultivation to maximize productivity, with a low fallow ratio and
12225-560: The Americas. Irrigation , crop rotation , and fertilizers advanced from the 17th century with the British Agricultural Revolution , allowing global population to rise significantly. Since 1900, agriculture in developed nations, and to a lesser extent in the developing world, has seen large rises in productivity as mechanization replaces human labor, and assisted by synthetic fertilizers , pesticides, and selective breeding . The Haber-Bosch method allowed
12388-482: The Egyptian preposition m needs further consideration, while Zaborski argues for a connection to a verb *VmV- 'to be'. The term "nisba" refers to a suffix found in the Semitic ( -iy ) and Egyptian ( -j ) branches, with possible relict traces in Berber. A related suffix -āwi occurs in Arabic and possibly Egyptian, as suggested by e.g. ḥmww 'craftsman', from ḥmt 'craft'. Carsten Peust argues that this suffix descends from Proto-Afroasiatic, as it
12551-468: The Levant. Keita (2008) examined a published Y-chromosome dataset on Afro-Asiatic populations and found that a key lineage E-M35 / E-M78 , sub-clade of haplogroup E, was shared between the populations in the locale of Egyptian and Libyan speakers and modern Cushitic speakers from the Horn. These lineages are present in Egyptians, Berbers, Cushitic speakers from the Horn of Africa, and Semitic speakers in
12714-663: The Near East that migrated to Northeast Africa during the Late Palaeolithic with a subset later moving back to the Near East. Subsequent archaeogenetic studies have corroborated the migrations of Western Eurasian ancestry during the Paleolithic into Africa, becoming the dominant component of Northern Africa since at least 15,000 BC. The "Maghrebi" component, which gave rise to the Iberomaurusian culture,
12877-781: The Near-East. He noted that variants are also found in the Aegean and Balkans, but the origin of the M35 subclade was in Egypt or Libya , and its clades were dominant in a core portion of Afro-Asiatic speaking populations which included Cushitic , Egyptian and Berber groups, in contrast Semitic speakers showed a decline in frequency going west to east in the Levantine-Syria region. Keita identified high frequencies of M35 (>50%) among Omotic populations, but stated that this derived from
13040-413: The Omotic branch. By the evidence of Semitic, in the dual and plural , only the nominative and an oblique were distinguished. David Wilson, on the other hand, argues that the case endings are often not cognate in the individual branches of Afroasiatic and that this precludes their reconstruction for the proto-language. Old Akkadian and Palaeosyrian have two additional cases, a locative in -um and
13203-555: The PAA root may have originally been mostly biradical, to which a third radical was then added. Christopher Ehret argues that the third consonants were derivational affixes, proposing as many as thirty-seven separate verbal extensions that subsequently became fossilized as third consonants. This theory has been criticized by some, such as Andrzej Zaborski and Alan Kaye, as being too many extensions to be realistic, though Zygmont Frajzyngier and Erin Shay note that some Chadic languages have as many as twelve extensions. An alternative model
13366-420: The PAA root was originally biradical but saw the biradical roots outside of Semitic as largely the result of losing a third consonant. Afroasiatic languages feature a "root-and-pattern" ( nonconcatenative ) system of morphology, in which the root consists of consonants alone and vowels are inserted via apophony according to "templates" to create words. A "template" consists of one or more vowels and sometimes
13529-586: The Paleolithic Levant, 23,000 years ago, cereals cultivation of emmer , barley , and oats has been observed near the sea of Galilee. Rice was domesticated in China between 11,500 and 6,200 BC with the earliest known cultivation from 5,700 BC, followed by mung , soy and azuki beans. Sheep were domesticated in Mesopotamia between 13,000 and 11,000 years ago. Cattle were domesticated from
13692-486: The Three Sisters was developed in North America. The three crops were winter squash , maize, and climbing beans. Indigenous Australians , long supposed to have been nomadic hunter-gatherers , practiced systematic burning, possibly to enhance natural productivity in fire-stick farming. Scholars have pointed out that hunter-gatherers need a productive environment to support gathering without cultivation. Because
13855-793: The United Nations (FAO) posits that the roles and responsibilities of women in agriculture may be changing – for example, from subsistence farming to wage employment, and from contributing household members to primary producers in the context of male-out-migration. In general, women account for a greater share of agricultural employment at lower levels of economic development, as inadequate education, limited access to basic infrastructure and markets, high unpaid work burden and poor rural employment opportunities outside agriculture severely limit women's opportunities for off-farm work. Women who work in agricultural production tend to do so under highly unfavorable conditions. They tend to be concentrated in
14018-524: The United States is roughly 1.7 times more productive than it was in 1948. Agriculture employed 873 million people in 2021, or 27% of the global workforce, compared with 1 027 million (or 40%) in 2000. The share of agriculture in global GDP was stable at around 4% since 2000–2023. Despite increases in agricultural production and productivity, between 702 and 828 million people were affected by hunger in 2021. Food insecurity and malnutrition can be
14181-622: The Y-chromosome diversity of North Africans was compatible with a demic expansion from the Middle East, because the age of common lineages in North Africa (E-M78 and J-304) were relatively recent. The North African pattern of Y-chromosome variation was mostly shaped during the Neolithic period. Ehret cited genetic evidence which had identified the Horn of Africa as a source of a genetic marker “ M35 / 215 ” Y-chromosome lineage for
14344-458: The addition of a consonant. Not all triradical roots can be convincingly explained as coming from biradicals, and there are cases in which triradical roots with similar meanings appear to differ in one consonant due to root-internal changes or derivation via rhyme. Andréas Stauder argues that the evidence from Ancient Egyptian shows that both tri- and biradical verbs were probably present in Proto-Afroasiatic. Igor Diakonoff, in contrast, argued that
14507-544: The annual work-related death toll among agricultural employees is at least 170,000, twice the average rate of other jobs. In addition, incidences of death, injury and illness related to agricultural activities often go unreported. The organization has developed the Safety and Health in Agriculture Convention, 2001 , which covers the range of risks in the agriculture occupation, the prevention of these risks and
14670-574: The area near Khartoum , Sudan , at the confluence of the Blue Nile and White Nile . The details of his theory are widely cited but controversial, as it involves the proposal that Semitic originated in Ethiopia and crossed to Asia directly from there over the Red Sea. Scholars, such as Hodgson et al., present archaeogenetic evidence in favor for a place of dispersion within Africa, but argue that
14833-553: The available work force, were employed in agriculture. This constitutes approximately 70% of the global employment of children, and in many countries constitutes the largest percentage of women of any industry. The service sector overtook the agricultural sector as the largest global employer in 2007. In many developed countries, immigrants help fill labor shortages in high-value agriculture activities that are difficult to mechanize. Foreign farm workers from mostly Eastern Europe, North Africa and South Asia constituted around one-third of
14996-539: The c. 5,000 year old Luxmanda specimen, while modern Cushitic-speaking populations have additional contributions from Dinka-related and "Neolithic Iranian-related" sources. This type of ancestry was later partially replaced by following migration events associated with the Bantu expansion , with Bantu-speaking Eastern Africans having only little ancestry associated with the Pre-Pottery Neolithic culture of
15159-475: The central vowels *e and *o could not occur together in the same root. Taking a different approach, Ronny Meyer and H. Ekkehard Wolff propose that Proto-Afroasiatic may have had no vowels as such, instead employing various syllabic consonants (*l, *m, *n, *r) and semivowels or semivowel-like consonants (*w, *y, *ʔ, *ḥ, *ʕ, *h, *ʔʷ, *ḥʷ, *ʕʷ, *hʷ) to form syllables; vowels would have later been inserted into these syllables ("vocalogenesis"), developing first into
15322-597: The central west coast and eastern central, early farmers cultivated yams, native millet, and bush onions, possibly in permanent settlements. In the Middle Ages , compared to the Roman period , agriculture in Western Europe became more focused on self-sufficiency . The agricultural population under feudalism was typically organized into manors consisting of several hundred or more acres of land presided over by
15485-468: The cultivation of useful plants, and animal agriculture , the production of agricultural animals. The development of agriculture enabled the human population to grow many times larger than could be sustained by hunting and gathering . Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa , in at least 11 separate centers of origin . Wild grains were collected and eaten from at least 105,000 years ago. In
15648-473: The different branches of Afroasiatic: Additionally, there is another proposal for the sound correspondences between – and phonetic values of – Egyptian and Semitic consonants. This second theory is known as neuere Komparatistik and was first proposed by Semiticist Otto Rössler on the basis of consonant incompatibilities . In particular, Rössler argued that, since the hieroglyph conventionally transcribed as <ʿ> and described as *ʕ never co-occurs with
15811-427: The difficulty in reconstruction is likely related to the use of vowel changes known as apophony (or "ablaut") in the "root-and-pattern" system found in various Afroasiatic languages. In addition to apophony, some modern AA languages display vowel changes referred to as umlaut . Igor Diakonoff, Viktor Porkhomovksy and Olga Stolbova proposed in 1987 that Proto-Afroasiatic had a two vowel system of *a and *ə , with
15974-687: The distribution of Afroasiatic languages and the frequency of Northern African/ Natufian /Arabian-like ancestry. In contrast, Omotic speakers display ancestry mostly distinct from other Afroasiatic-speakers, indicating language shift , or support for the exclusion of Omotic from the Afroasiatic group. Genetic studies on a specimen of the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic excavated at the Luxmanda site in Tanzania, which has been associated with migrations of Cushitic-speaking peoples and
16137-668: The domestication of squash (Cucurbita) and other plants. Coca was domesticated in the Andes, as were the peanut, tomato, tobacco, and pineapple . Cotton was domesticated in Peru by 3,600 BC. Animals including llamas , alpacas , and guinea pigs were domesticated there. In North America , the indigenous people of the East domesticated crops such as sunflower , tobacco, squash and Chenopodium . Wild foods including wild rice and maple sugar were harvested. The domesticated strawberry
16300-442: The etymologies proposed in support of the theory have been attacked by Gábor Takács. The most important sound correspondences in the neuere Komparatistik that differ from the traditional understanding are: Attempts to reconstruct the vocalic system of Proto-Afroasiatic vary considerably. While there is no consensus, many scholars prefer to reconstruct a simple three vowel system with long and short *a , *i , and *u . Some of
16463-444: The existence of an interrogative pronoun *mV , which may not have distinguished animacy . There is some agreement that the PAA verb had two or possibly three basic forms, though there is disagreement about what those forms were and what tenses, aspects, or moods they expressed. There is also widespread agreement that there were possibly two sets of conjugational affixes (prefixes and suffixes) used for different purposes. Additionally,
16626-432: The farm itself, entire families can be at risk for injuries, illness, and death. Ages 0–6 may be an especially vulnerable population in agriculture; common causes of fatal injuries among young farm workers include drowning, machinery and motor accidents, including with all-terrain vehicles. The International Labor Organization considers agriculture "one of the most hazardous of all economic sectors". It estimates that
16789-430: The forests of New Guinea have few food plants, early humans may have used "selective burning" to increase the productivity of the wild karuka fruit trees to support the hunter-gatherer way of life. The Gunditjmara and other groups developed eel farming and fish trapping systems from some 5,000 years ago. There is evidence of 'intensification' across the whole continent over that period. In two regions of Australia,
16952-450: The forms of the pronouns in the other branches show evidence of marked nominative alignment. Igor Diakonoff instead argued that Proto-Afroasiatic was an ergative-absolutive language, in which the ergative case marks the subject of transitive verbs and the absolutive case marks both the object of transitive verbs and the subject of intransitive verbs. Satzinger suggests that Proto-Afroasiatic may have developed from ergative-absolutive to
17115-458: The great amount of time since Afroasiatic split into branches, there are limits to what scholars can reconstruct. Cognates tend to disappear from related languages over time. There are currently not many widely accepted Afroasiatic cognates, and it is difficult to derive sound correspondence rules from a small number of examples. The most convincing cognates in Afroasiatic often have the same or very similar consonants but very different vowels,
17278-422: The greater use of pesticides and fertilizers. Multiple cropping , in which several crops are grown sequentially in one year, and intercropping , when several crops are grown at the same time, are other kinds of annual cropping systems known as polycultures . In subtropical and arid environments, the timing and extent of agriculture may be limited by rainfall, either not allowing multiple annual crops in
17441-427: The importance of verbal gemination and reduplication and the existence of three derivational affixes, especially of a causative -*s-, are commonly reconstructed. A numeral system cannot be reconstructed, although numerous PAA numerals and cognate sets from 1 to 9 have been proposed. There is no consensus as to when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken. The absolute latest date for when Proto-Afroasiatic could have been extant
17604-450: The independent pronouns via various processes in the branches. He argues that the independent pronouns derive from various strategies combining pronominal elements with different nominal or pronominal bases. Václav Blažek reconstructs an original set of independent pronouns but argues that the ones found in most current Afroasiatic languages arose by a process of suppletion similar to that argued by Satzinger. An example of one such process
17767-561: The individual daughter languages. Most reconstructions agree that PAA had three series of obstruents ( plosives , fricatives , and affricates ) and that the continuants were all voiceless. There is also general agreement that obstruents were organized in triads of voiceless, voiced, and "emphatic" (possibly glottalized ) consonants, and that PAA included pharyngeal and laryngeal consonants . Disagreement exists about whether there were labialized velar consonants. Several Afroasiatic languages have large consonant inventories, and it
17930-441: The input of nutrients (fertilizer or manure ) and some manual pest control . Annual cultivation is the next phase of intensity in which there is no fallow period. This requires even greater nutrient and pest control inputs. Further industrialization led to the use of monocultures , when one cultivar is planted on a large acreage. Because of the low biodiversity , nutrient use is uniform and pests tend to build up, necessitating
18093-410: The language family to be about 10,000 years old. He wrote (Militarev 2002, p. 135) that the "Proto-Afrasian language, on the verge of a split into daughter languages", meaning, in his scenario, into " Cushitic , Omotic , Egyptian , Semitic and Chadic - Berber ", "should be roughly dated to the ninth millennium BC". Support for the migration of agricultural populations, according to linguists, are
18256-568: The language were originally mostly biradical or triradical , that is, whether they originally had two or three consonants. It also plays into the question of the degree to which Proto-Afroasiatic had root-and-pattern morphology , as most fully displayed in the Semitic , Egyptian , and Cushitic branches. There are nonetheless some items of agreement and reconstructed vocabulary. Most scholars agree that Proto-Afroasiatic nouns had grammatical gender , at least two and possibly three grammatical numbers (singular, plural, and possibly dual ), as well as
18419-433: The later realized as [i] or [u] depending on its contact with labial or labialized consonants . Christopher Ehret has proposed a five vowel system with long and short *a , *e , *o , *i , and *u , arguing that his reconstruction is supported by the Chadic and Cushitic vowels. Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova instead proposed a six vowel system with *a , *e , *o , *i , *ü ([ y ]), and *u ; they further argued that
18582-476: The lower yield associated with organic farming and its impact on global food security . Recent mainstream technological developments include genetically modified food . By 2015, the agricultural output of China was the largest in the world, followed by the European Union, India and the United States. Economists measure the total factor productivity of agriculture, according to which agriculture in
18745-530: The majority of linguists as the origin of the language group because it includes the geographic center of its present distribution and the majority of the diversity observed among the Afroasiatic language family, sometimes considered a telltale sign for a linguistic geographic origin. Within this hypothesis there are a number of competing variants: Christopher Ehret has proposed the western Red Sea coast from Eritrea to southeastern Egypt. While Ehret disputes Militarev's proposal that Proto-Afroasiatic shows signs of
18908-706: The majority of scholars agree that it was located within a region of Northeast Africa . The reconstruction of Proto-Afroasiatic is problematic and has not progressed to the degree found in Indo-European linguistics . The immense amount of time over which the branches have been separated, coupled with the wide gap between the attestations of the original branches (3rd millennium BC for Egyptian and Semitic, 19th and 20th centuries for many Chadic , Cushitic , and Omotic languages ) mean that determining sound correspondences has not yet been possible. In addition to more traditional proposed consonant correspondences, there
19071-485: The oldest proven language family. Contrasting proposals of an early emergence, Tom Güldemann has argued that less time may have been required for the divergence than is usually assumed, as it is possible for a language to rapidly restructure due to areal contact , with the evolution of Chadic (and likely also Omotic) serving as pertinent examples. At present, there is no commonly accepted reconstruction of Afroasiatic morphology, grammar, syntax, or phonology. Because of
19234-454: The oldest proven language family. Contrasting proposals of an early emergence, Tom Güldemann has argued that less time may have been required for the divergence than is usually assumed, as it is possible for a language to rapidly restructure due to areal contact , with the evolution of Chadic (and likely also Omotic) serving as pertinent examples. No consensus exists as to where proto-Afroasiatic originated. Scholars have proposed locations for
19397-531: The original gender system of Afroasiatic had masculine endings *-y/*-w (later *-Vy / *-Vw ) and feminine endings *-H/*-y (later *-āʔ / *-āy ), the later of which was later ousted by feminine *-(a)t on nouns. Marijn van Putten has reconstructed a feminine ending *-ay/*-āy from Semitic and Berber evidence: he argues that this ending comes down from the last common ancestor of Berber and Semitic, which may be Proto-Afroasiatic. Despite arguing that Proto-Afroasiatic had no grammatical gender, Ehret argues that there
19560-577: The original homeland. The majority of scholars today contend that Afroasiatic languages arose somewhere in Northeast Africa . There is no consensus as to when Proto-Afroasiatic was spoken. The absolute latest date for when Proto-Afroasiatic could have been extant is c. 4000 BC, after which Egyptian and the Semitic languages are firmly attested. However, in all likelihood these languages began to diverge well before this hard boundary. The estimations offered by scholars as to when Proto-Afroasiatic
19723-465: The original, genderless grammar of the proto-language. Other scholars such as Lionel Bender argue that Omotic has lost grammatical gender despite originally having had it. A feminine morpheme -Vt is found widely in Afroasiatic languages. Lameen Souag argues that this feminine ending -t is probably a case of a grammaticalized demonstrative , as this feature has also independently developed in some Chadic and Cushitic languages. Diakonoff argued that
19886-437: The philosophy and culture of the farmer. Shifting cultivation (or slash and burn ) is a system in which forests are burnt, releasing nutrients to support cultivation of annual and then perennial crops for a period of several years. Then the plot is left fallow to regrow forest, and the farmer moves to a new plot, returning after many more years (10–20). This fallow period is shortened if population density grows, requiring
20049-414: The poorest countries, where alternative livelihoods are not available, and they maintain the intensity of their work in conditions of climate-induced weather shocks and in situations of conflict. Women are less likely to participate as entrepreneurs and independent farmers and are engaged in the production of less lucrative crops. The gender gap in land productivity between female- and male managed farms of
20212-635: The population an economic advantage which impelled the expansion of the Afroasiatic languages. He suggests that a Proto-Semitic or Proto-Semito-Berber-speaking population migrated from Northeast Africa to the Levant during the late Paleolithic . In the next phase, unlike many other authors Ehret proposed an initial split between northern, southern and Omotic. The northern group includes Semitic , Egyptian and Berber (agreeing with others such as Diakonoff). He proposed that Chadic stems from Berber (some other authors group it with southern Afroasiatic languages such as Cushitic ones). Roger Blench has proposed
20375-406: The prefix conjugation may be a shared innovation in Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic. In those languages where it appears, the "prefix conjugation" is used with two stems, with Igor Diakonoff identifying one as perfective/punctual as well as jussive, and the other with the imperfective. These stems may also be known as "short form" (=perfective) and "long form" (=imperfective). Assuming a PAA origin,
20538-399: The prefixes can be reconstructed as agreeing with the forms of the "bound" personal pronouns in having *n- for first person plural, *t- for second person plural and singular and feminine third person singular, and *y/*i- for third person masculine and third person plural; the form of the first person singular is unclear, but may be *ʔ- . The prefixes may have originally developed from
20701-440: The production of fish for human consumption in confined operations, is one of the fastest growing sectors of food production, growing at an average of 9% a year between 1975 and 2007. During the second half of the 20th century, producers using selective breeding focused on creating livestock breeds and crossbreeds that increased production, while mostly disregarding the need to preserve genetic diversity . This trend has led to
20864-426: The pronouns or from auxiliary verbs with pronominal elements, though N. J. C. Kouwenberg argues that the close agreement between the forms in Semitic, Berber, and Cushitic indicates that such grammaticalization must have happened in Proto-Afroasiatic itself or earlier. Farming Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture , and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture
21027-420: The reconstruction of Proto-Semitic , and no widely accepted reconstruction of any of the other branches' proto-forms. Current attempts at reconstructing Afroasiatic often rely on comparing individual words or features in the daughter languages, which leads to results that are not convincing to many scholars. There is currently no consensus on the consonant phonemes of Afroasiatic or on their correspondences in
21190-443: The referent is a person or thing. It is therefore not clear if this pronoun differentiated animacy in Proto-Afroasiatic. Lack of differentiation between "who?" and "what?" is also sporadically attested in Semitic and Cushitic, but appears to be absent in Chadic; most modern AA languages use different lexical roots to make the distinction. Ehret also reconstructs a second interrogative *wa-/*wi- 'what?'. The PAA origin of this form
21353-477: The result of conflict, climate extremes and variability and economic swings. It can also be caused by a country's structural characteristics such as income status and natural resource endowments as well as its political economy. Pesticide use in agriculture went up 62% between 2000 and 2021, with the Americas accounting for half the use in 2021. The International Fund for Agricultural Development posits that an increase in smallholder agriculture may be part of
21516-874: The role that individuals and organizations engaged in agriculture should play. In the United States, agriculture has been identified by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health as a priority industry sector in the National Occupational Research Agenda to identify and provide intervention strategies for occupational health and safety issues. In the European Union, the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work has issued guidelines on implementing health and safety directives in agriculture, livestock farming, horticulture, and forestry. The Agricultural Safety and Health Council of America (ASHCA) also holds
21679-478: The salaried agricultural workforce in Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal in 2013. In the United States of America, more than half of all hired farmworkers (roughly 450,000 workers) were immigrants in 2019, although the number of new immigrants arriving in the country to work in agriculture has fallen by 75 percent in recent years and rising wages indicate this has led to a major labor shortage on U.S. farms. Around
21842-439: The same size is 24 percent. On average, women earn 18.4 percent less than men in wage employment in agriculture; this means that women receive 82 cents for every dollar earned by men. Progress has been slow in closing gaps in women's access to irrigation and in ownership of livestock, too. Women in agriculture still have significantly less access than men to inputs, including improved seeds, fertilizers and mechanized equipment. On
22005-768: The same, they rely on correspondences in the daughter languages which cannot be reconciled. For instance, although both Ehret and Orel and Stolbova reconstruct *tʼ , Ehret gives its Egyptian correspondence as s , while Orel and Stolbova give it as d and t ; and though both reconstruct PAA *tlʼ , Ehret gives its Arabic correspondence as ṣ , while Orel and Stolbova give it as ḍ . Additionally, Ehret has reconstructed 11 consonants not found in Orel and Stolbova, while Orel and Stolbova have reconstructed 2 not found in Ehret. The additional consonants are: An earlier, larger reconstruction from 1992 by Orel, Stolbova and other collaborators from
22168-477: The shape CV (with a possible alternate form VC) and CVC, with suffixes often giving the syllabic shape CVCC. David Wilson agrees with Diakonoff that the root syllable could only begin with a single consonant, but adds a requirement that syllables have two mora weight and argues for the possibility of an extra-syllabic consonant at the end of a root (CVC-C or CV:C). The degree to which the Proto-AA verbal root
22331-488: The solution to concerns about food prices and overall food security , given the favorable experience of Vietnam. Agriculture provides about one-quarter of all global employment, more than half in sub-Saharan Africa and almost 60 percent in low-income countries. As countries develop, other jobs have historically pulled workers away from agriculture, and labor-saving innovations increase agricultural productivity by reducing labor requirements per unit of output. Over time,
22494-481: The speakers of Proto-Afroasiatic can ultimately be linked to a Paleolithic and pre-agricultural migration wave into Africa from Western Asia, and that the Semitic-branch represents a later back-migration to the Levant. According to an autosomal DNA research in 2014 on ancient and modern populations, the Afroasiatic languages likely spread across Africa and the Near East by an ancestral population(s) carrying
22657-524: The spread of linguistic macrofamilies (such as Afroasiatic, Bantu, and Austroasiatic) can be associated with the development of agriculture; they argue that there is clear archaeological support for farming spreading from the Levant into Africa via the Nile valley. Militarev, who linked proto-Afroasiatic to the Levantine Natufian culture, that preceded the spread of farming technology, believes
22820-434: The spread of pastoralism, found that the specimen carried a large proportion of ancestry related to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic culture of the Levant ( Natufian ), similar to that borne by modern Afroasiatic-speaking populations inhabiting the Horn of Africa. It is suggested that a population related to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic culture of the Levant contributed significantly to historical Eastern African populations represented by
22983-436: The still open debate on the origin of Afroasiatic, the consensus will probably settle on an intermediate "across-the-Sinai" solution. They also note that the very early interactions between African and Eurasian cultures, point "to a geographical shrinking of what can currently be defined as 'strictly African' in a long term perspective." Supporters of a western Asian origin for Afroasiatic are particularly common among those with
23146-620: The suffix/possessive pronoun was originally used as the object of verbs and to show a possessive relationship, the "independent" pronoun served to show emphasis, and the "object" pronoun was used to mark the subject of intransitive verbs and the direct object of transitive verbs. All Afroasiatic branches differentiate between masculine and feminine third person singular pronouns, and all except for Cushitic and Omotic also differentiate between second person singular masculine and feminine pronouns. Semitic and Berber also differentiate between masculine and feminine second and third person plural, but there
23309-400: The synthesis of ammonium nitrate fertilizer on an industrial scale, greatly increasing crop yields and sustaining a further increase in global population. Modern agriculture has raised or encountered ecological, political, and economic issues including water pollution , biofuels , genetically modified organisms , tariffs and farm subsidies , leading to alternative approaches such as
23472-663: The templates found in the branches likely do not. Several Afroasiatic languages of the Semitic, Chadic, and Cushitic branches attest pluralization via reduplication , a feature which has often been assumed to go back to Proto-Afroasiatic. Robert Ratcliffe has instead argued that this reduplicating pattern originated after PAA, as a way to allow biradical nouns to insert "internal-a," a process which then became generalized to other roots in some languages; as an alternative hypothesis, they may have developed from forms with plural suffixes. Afroasiatic languages also use several pluralizing affixes – few of these, however, are present in more than
23635-572: The transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies indicate an initial period of intensification and increasing sedentism ; examples are the Natufian culture in the Levant , and the Early Chinese Neolithic in China. Then, wild stands that had previously been harvested started to be planted, and gradually came to be domesticated. In Eurasia, the Sumerians started to live in villages from about 8,000 BC, relying on
23798-745: The verb would come first in most sentences. Carsten Peust likewise supports VSO word order, as this is found in the two oldest attested branches, Egyptian and Semitic. However, Ronny Meyer and H. Ekkehard Wolff argue that this proposal does not concord with Diakonoff's suggestion that PAA was an ergative-absolutive language, in which subject and object are not valid categories. Zygmont Frajzyngier and Erin Shay further note that, if Proto-Afroasiatic had VSO word order, then an explanation must be found for why two of its branches, Omotic and Cushitic, show subject–object–verb word order (SOV word order). Both sets of scholars argue that this area needs more research. A system of sex-based male and female grammatical gender
23961-404: The verb, with categories found in Semitic languages such as aspect , voice , and person . There is little agreement about which tenses, aspects, or moods ( TAMs ) Proto-Afroasiatic might have had: it may have had two basic forms (indicative vs. subjunctive, state vs. action, transitive vs. intransitive, or perfective vs. imperfective) or three (unmarked vs. perfective vs. imperfective). There
24124-671: The wild aurochs in the areas of modern Turkey and Pakistan some 10,500 years ago. Pig production emerged in Eurasia, including Europe, East Asia and Southwest Asia, where wild boar were first domesticated about 10,500 years ago. In the Andes of South America, the potato was domesticated between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago, along with beans, coca , llamas , alpacas , and guinea pigs . Sugarcane and some root vegetables were domesticated in New Guinea around 9,000 years ago. Sorghum
24287-506: The word for dog (an Asian domesticate) reconstructed to Proto-Afroasiatic as well as words for bow and arrow, which according to some archaeologists spread rapidly across North Africa once they were introduced to North Africa from the Near East, viz. Ounan points. Lexicon linked to a pastoralist society (cattle-breeding) reconstructed for proto-Afroasiatic also support a western Asian homeland, possibly indicating an earlier pastoralist migration. A Northeast African homeland has been proposed by
24450-744: The world consist of fewer than 2 hectares (4.9 acres), and take up only around 12% of all agricultural land. Farms and farming greatly influence rural economics and greatly shape rural society , affecting both the direct agricultural workforce and broader businesses that support the farms and farming populations. The major agricultural products can be broadly grouped into foods , fibers , fuels , and raw materials (such as rubber ). Food classes include cereals ( grains ), vegetables , fruits , cooking oils , meat , milk , eggs , and fungi . Global agricultural production amounts to approximately 11 billion tonnes of food, 32 million tonnes of natural fibers and 4 billion m of wood. However, around 14% of
24613-781: The world's agricultural land is seriously degraded. In recent years there has been a backlash against the environmental effects of conventional agriculture, resulting in the organic , regenerative , and sustainable agriculture movements. One of the major forces behind this movement has been the European Union , which first certified organic food in 1991 and began reform of its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in 2005 to phase out commodity-linked farm subsidies, also known as decoupling . The growth of organic farming has renewed research in alternative technologies such as integrated pest management , selective breeding, and controlled-environment agriculture . There are concerns about
24776-664: The world's food is lost from production before reaching the retail level. Modern agronomy , plant breeding , agrochemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers , and technological developments have sharply increased crop yields , but also contributed to ecological and environmental damage . Selective breeding and modern practices in animal husbandry have similarly increased the output of meat, but have raised concerns about animal welfare and environmental damage. Environmental issues include contributions to climate change , depletion of aquifers , deforestation , antibiotic resistance , and other agricultural pollution . Agriculture
24939-485: The world, women make up a large share of the population employed in agriculture. This share is growing in all developing regions except East and Southeast Asia where women already make up about 50 percent of the agricultural workforce. Women make up 47 percent of the agricultural workforce in sub-Saharan Africa, a rate that has not changed significantly in the past few decades. However, the Food and Agriculture Organization of
25102-495: The world. In the 20th century, industrial agriculture based on large-scale monocultures came to dominate agricultural output. As of 2021 , small farms produce about one-third of the world's food, but large farms are prevalent. The largest 1% of farms in the world are greater than 50 hectares (120 acres) and operate more than 70% of the world's farmland. Nearly 40% of agricultural land is found on farms larger than 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres). However, five of every six farms in
25265-621: The world. Production is listed in millions of metric tons, based on FAO estimates. Animal husbandry is the breeding and raising of animals for meat, milk, eggs , or wool , and for work and transport. Working animals , including horses, mules , oxen , water buffalo , camels, llamas, alpacas, donkeys, and dogs, have for centuries been used to help cultivate fields, harvest crops, wrangle other animals, and transport farm products to buyers. Livestock production systems can be defined based on feed source, as grassland-based, mixed, and landless. As of 2010 , 30% of Earth's ice- and water-free area
25428-400: Was a marked nominative language, in which the nominative case is only used to mark the subject of a verb, whereas an absolutive case is the citation form of the noun and also marks the object. Evidence for marked nominative alignment comes primarily from the use of cases in Cushitic and the so-called "states" of the noun in Berber languages; additionally, Helmut Satzinger has argued that
25591-444: Was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization , whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in the cities. While humans started gathering grains at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers only began planting them around 11,500 years ago. Sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle were domesticated around 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of
25754-640: Was domesticated by the Mayo Chinchipe of the upper Amazon around 3,000 BC. The turkey was probably domesticated in Mexico or the American Southwest. The Aztecs developed irrigation systems, formed terraced hillsides, fertilized their soil, and developed chinampas or artificial islands. The Mayas used extensive canal and raised field systems to farm swampland from 400 BC. In South America agriculture may have begun about 9000 BC with
25917-560: Was domesticated in the Sahel region of Africa by 7,000 years ago. Cotton was domesticated in Peru by 5,600 years ago, and was independently domesticated in Eurasia. In Mesoamerica , wild teosinte was bred into maize (corn) from 10,000 to 6,000 years ago. The horse was domesticated in the Eurasian Steppes around 3500 BC. Scholars have offered multiple hypotheses to explain the historical origins of agriculture. Studies of
26080-404: Was originally triradical (having three consonants) or biradical (having two consonants) is debated. Among the modern branches, most Semitic roots are triradical, whereas most Chadic, Omotic, and Cushitic roots are biradical. The "traditional theory" argues for original triradicalism in the family, as is the case in Semitic. In this theory, almost all biradical roots are the result of the loss of
26243-536: Was proposed by Georges Bohas , who argued that the third consonants were added to differentiate roots of similar meaning but without the third consonant having a particular meaning itself. Biradical verbs may also have been made triradical on the model of so-called "weak verbs," which have a final radical y or w . Many scholars do not argue for the original nature of either biradical or triradical roots, instead arguing that there are original triradical roots, original biradical roots, and triradical roots resulting from
26406-443: Was spoken vary widely, ranging from 18,000 BC to 8,000 BC. According to Igor M. Diakonoff (1988: 33n), proto-Afroasiatic was spoken c. 10,000 BC. According to Christopher Ehret (2002: 35–36), proto-Afroasiatic was spoken c. 11,000 BC at the latest, and possibly as early as c. 16,000 BC. These dates are older than dates associated with most other proto-languages . An estimate at the youngest end of this range still makes Afroasiatic
26569-584: Was used for producing livestock, with the sector employing approximately 1.3 billion people. Between the 1960s and the 2000s, there was a significant increase in livestock production, both by numbers and by carcass weight, especially among beef, pigs and chickens, the latter of which had production increased by almost a factor of 10. Non-meat animals, such as milk cows and egg-producing chickens, also showed significant production increases. Global cattle, sheep and goat populations are expected to continue to increase sharply through 2050. Aquaculture or fish farming,
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