Cushite Era: Incredible Origin From The Stone Age to Iron Age

Cushite Era

Australopithecus Afarensis, better known as “Lucy,” is the earliest known ancestor of humans. She lived in the Horn of Africa more than a million years ago, according to fossil studies. So, Northeast Africa, which includes the Horn of Africa, may have been the first place where people lived (Brandt 1992). Hominids may have been pushed out of the Horn of Africa around 125,000 years ago by early Homo humans. 

In northern Somalia, near the city of Hargeisa, a specific type of Stone Age industry with blades and flint tools began to form many years later, approximately 25,000 years ago (Brandt 1992, p. 29). However, the identity of the people who made these tools remains unknown. The people who lived in the Horn during the Stone Age, even in the later Stone Age, about 12,000 years ago, are also unknown. 

So, in its early stages, digging doesn’t tell us anything about specific racial groups. To summarize, we can only talk about early human groups in the area right now. We haven’t talked about Cushitic or Semitic groups yet. In the 20th century, a few searches in the north turned up information on “everything from Acheulian sites to Neolithic rock art.” 

According to radiocarbon dates from 18,000 to 40,000 years ago, some of the sites showed that the same people lived there over and over again (Brandt, Brook, and Gresham 1983, pp. 7–15). However, there is still less searching there than in West Africa and the Nile Valley. In the north, between Erigavo in the mountains and Las Koreh on the Gulf of Aden, there are hills and valleys. In 1980, a small-scale archaeological survey found “a series of caves and rock-shelters, many of which revealed surface scatters of Middle to Late Stone Age artifacts and fossilized bone” (Brandt, Brook, and Gresham 1983, p. 8). 

Rock shelters at Karin Hagin, a natural mountain pass about 70 kilometers southwest of Bosaso, have detailed rock paintings (Brandt, Brook, and Gresham 1983, p. 16). A type of cattle known as jamuusa, no longer found in Somalia but found in Egypt, is the most intriguing feature. There are also goats in the drawings. The style of these drawings is a lot like the rock art of Ethiopia and northeastern Africa in general, which is interesting. 

People who live in Northeast Africa and can now be found as far south as past the Equator in East Africa are called Cushites. In the past, they were mostly called Hamites. The words “Cushite” and “Hamite” come from the Christian Bible. However, the term “Hamite” has become less common. In their efforts to create a wide range of African races and subraces, European anthropologists have long fought about where the Cushites came from and have sometimes seen them as a mix of Caucasoid (white) immigrants from outside of Africa and dark-skinned (Nigeria) Africans. 

We have seen Cushites referred to as Black Caucasoids or Europoids, which is not appropriate (Seligman 1930). In the human range, it is not straightforward to tell where one person ends and another begins. Picking any number of traits to create human typologies means ignoring others. Also, these kinds of meanings are based on the personal preferences of the people who are making the lists. They also contradict the notion that all human groups have always interacted, beginning with those in close proximity and progressing to groups of varying sizes. In other words, every group of people is a mix of people.

Also, these kinds of groups don’t help us learn more about how people moved around in general, and they’ve led us to make wrong assumptions about where the Cushitic peoples of Africa and the greatest ancient civilization that grew out of Northeast Africa (ancient Egypt) came from. Since history books began keeping records of the area, which could be as early as 7,000 years ago, in the late Stone Age, the Cushites have lived in Northeast Africa. 
Still, not much is known about their past. Experts and archaeologists may have concentrated most of their work on ancient Egypt and the Nile Valley, failing to gain a comprehensive understanding of the entire region and its inhabitants.

Linguistics reveals potential connections between the languages spoken by the Cushites and other languages. Therefore, we now understand that the Cushites’ languages share similarities with the Ancient Egyptian, Semitic, Chadic, and Berber languages, collectively referred to as the Afroasiatic “superfamily” of languages. Out of these, only the Semitic group has some native speakers in Asia. These people moved there from the African side of the Red Sea. 

Therefore, it’s likely that the ancestors of people who speak Afroasiatic languages first lived in northeastern Africa, mostly on the coasts of the Red Sea. They then spread out, with some Chadic groups heading into Western Sudan and some Semitic groups crossing the Bab el Mandab Straits into the Arabian Peninsula. After the Stone Age, around 6,000 years ago, people who lived in the lowlands of the Horn near the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden relied on keeping domesticated animals as their main source of income. 

In those early days, it rained more in the mountains and along the coast, which made raising animals easier (Brandt, Brook, and Gresham 1983, p. 10). New studies from northeastern and eastern Africa suggest that southern Egypt was raising and cultivating cattle, wheat, and barley more than 8,000 years ago. People first tamed sheep and goats about 7,500 years ago (Brandt 1992, p. 30).

People from different parts of the area learned from each other. For example, people who lived in the Nile Valley learned how to farm and handle cattle, while individuals who lived in the drier areas learned how to raise small animals like goats and sheep. At about the same time, groups living in the mountains or plateaus, like those in Ethiopia, started farming. From Egypt to Cape Guardui in what is now Somalia and up to the coast of the Red Sea during the time of the Egyptian culture, people lived in northeastern Africa. 

People generally say that the early Cushites were mostly herders, but it’s more likely that their jobs depended on the weather. If the area had a lot of water, they farmed, but if it was mostly dry, they raised sheep and goats as herders. Early Cushite societies also established castes, limiting their roles to specific tasks. For instance, only specific groups had permission to handle metal and leather.

For example, the warrior class was in charge of war, while the priest class was in charge of faith. This set of deals has been around for a long time. The early Cushites left behind remnants that warrant further study and research. Huge shrines in the Horn of Africa, for instance, serve as an ideal location for such research. The most famous of these are the huge graves and raised cairns in northern Somalia that stretch all the way to the Dawa River in southern Ethiopia, where the Oromo people’s ancestors lived. 

We haven’t found these massive graves in locations unrelated to early Cushitic settlements. The construction of these massive tombs implies a complex religion with numerous rituals and structures. This is even more true because we know that the Cushites believed in only one sky god, Waaq, prior to Islam and Christianity. The ahan ceremony, which involves creating and burying a grave, required a significant amount of labor from the people. Muslims still do this today.

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