ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN LANGUAGE
EVOLUTION OF HUMAN TONGUES MOTHER TONGUE AS ROUTE
TO THE TRACE OF HUMAN HISTORICAL GENESIS
By Onyeji Nnaji.
Source Journal of Linguistics, Language and Igbo Studies. V.1; No.1. Pages 113-149.
TO THE TRACE OF HUMAN HISTORICAL GENESIS
By Onyeji Nnaji.
Source Journal of Linguistics, Language and Igbo Studies. V.1; No.1. Pages 113-149.
Abstract
The leading novelist and critique in Kenya, James Ngugi Wa Thiongo, noted that “language is the carrier of culture”. Since culture is the totality of the life of any people – the same also which derived its root from the people’s history – having language as the conveyor belt – history and language become interwoven and closely tied. It is pertinent to note that as a language user leaves a particular language community to another, the language in his possession changes its forms; sometimes sound, codes and meaning. When this happens, the same language does not lose completely every possible feature that traces its root to its original source. By this view, this paper suggests that any language whose features are found in the languages of the major ancient civilizations around the globe would possibly be the mother language. This is because language is not separated from history. This paper sets to examine the conclusion drawn by researchers alongside the evidence from fossil skulls and DNA records which relates language dating to the human history to justify the claim that humanity originated in Africa. If language should be found with various ancient signals that point to the assumed original history of man, it is apparent that the language found with greater portion of these signals is or had been the mother of the human tongue. Considerations here extend to the earliest language tree (the Indo-European family) so far reconstructed, including English, to far back as 9,000 years at most.
(1.0) Introduction
The earliest civilization the world had emanated from the time of the early fathers. Language is the earliest form of this civilization which the earth had unanimously, and it emanated from the first people who occupied this earth, possibly before the creation of Adam. To this end, this paper believes that history is never complete and as well does not prove true until it is able to establish a solid relationship among different people through a common language. Language consolidation may prove truer than cultural affinity among any people belonging to a common historical background. Yes, culture can be easily overtaken by the insurgence of another which may be regarded to be of more relevance to the people owing to the dominant situation around them at that given time. For instance, many parts of the world had lost the truest part of their culture to the over-lording European imperialism. Colonialism beclouded many countries in Africa, suppressing their cultural and religious practices to the mud/ground, then as recompense, the victims lost what they held supreme and sacred within themselves to the later. The conclusion was that Africa lost her identity.
There is no part of Egypt today that sustains the ancient culture of the eminent Egyptian civilization of old. The first ever civilization after the flood that involved almost the entire continents of the world was lost to the Arabian world whom Egyptians had allowed to take over their land. What this aptitude paid the Egyptians with was the lose of their history and origin. It is very pathetic to hear that all the ancient books excavated in Egypt were sold out by the Arabs who did not and were not prepared to know what historical relevance those tabulates hold to Egyptian history. That is why the position of pharaoh, which was one of the most sophisticated monarchies in the history of Africa, was claimed to have ever been taken by a foreigner different from the pharaoh bloodline. I believe that such faulty historians spreading lies in the bid to assigning certain credence to the foreigner who did not have a history actually did not know the meaning of the word Pharaoh. For if they knew, they would understand that it was a family affair which was never done by selection. In a condition where a people had lost their heritage to foreign culture and its civilization, the only surviving historical proof is language. These include terms and their meanings, names of the inhabitants; especially those involved in different legendary acts. Language also includes writings. As we progress we shall understand that Egypt became much more disillusioned to the point that the name of the architect who designed the stepped pyramid in Saqqara was replaced with Imhotep. Imhotep was still associated with the cosmic architecture (see Bauval and Brophy, Imhotep: The African Architect of the Cosmos). But the Egyptian Book of the Dead (P. 120) proves these later records wrong. We shall get the real architect of the cosmos in the succeeding pages. Language made us to know him, not history.
(1.1) The Birth of the Human Tongue
The history of the development of the human tongue should be rightly traced to the account of creation. This, in another way, will still pose problems since the conclusion that might be drawn by any people would mostly be relevant to their oral tradition or myths bothering the account of creation. For instance, if the Christian Bible is followed ultimately, one would conclude that the language of creation was the Hebrew tongue. But, the controversy remains that Hebrew as a tongue belongs to the later generations after the deluge. The question now is which language was spoken by the generation of Adam and the generations possibly before him? The attempt to discover this language brings us closer to deciphering the original language which could be taken as the first language the earth had.
In the radical argument posed by Late Professor Catherin Acholonu in her bestseller book entitled They Lived before Adam, she vehemently asserts that, “the God of creation, whosoever He may be, spoke Igbo”. She was of the conclusion that since the Igbo father was proven by researches to have lived before Adam, it was certain that the language of creation belongs to God; and the same language was what later became the Igbo, the language spoken by the Igbo. She may be correct, in another way she may be wrong. Our research from various ancient books and cave libraries (such as the The Nag Hammadi Scripture, The Sacred Book of the East and the anonymous book in the internet entitled, The Book of Creation by the Sons of Fire and others) proved that there were populations who were on earth before Adam was created. The Christian Bible also echoed these suggestions in the various parts of the book of Genesis. We can find this from Cain’s word in Genesis 4: 13-15 and the account of the sons of God in Genesis 6:1-9. If there is a consonance in these assertions, we should think about the language the people used to communicate with God, first, and their fellow beings. The account of Job remains a clear version of the language proof. The sons of God used a language to communicate with God. The Bible, Egyptian book for the creation of the world (Nag Hammadi Scripture) and the Jewish Cabbala all agree that God gave commands before things were in their places. The command is in English Bible translated as “Let there be…”. From this we may conclude that the earliest language was naturally imperative and declarative in nature. Its pattern, Nnaji suggested, was discursive.
The last suggestion on the features of the earliest language spoken on the earth plane favours the definition of tongue in Igbo. In the eastern part of Nigeria, tongue is defined as the palm oil used in the craving of speech. This definition, perhaps, had come from the fact that the easterners believed that what are spoken today as languages emanated from one mother tongue. Asserting thus, the easterners (the Igbo) hold that the first tongue humanity had was Afa. They maintain that Afa was the language of creation used by Chukwuokike at the time He created man. Afa is the language of the priests and dibias in the Igbo society of the present age. It was believed to be the language of the ancestors. And as such, it is the best tongue to address the ancestors and equally pass the message of the ancestors and gods, even the almighty God, to the people around. In the Christian doctrine, Afa is used mainly during prophecies. Listen to the tongue of the prophet anytime he prophesies you will hear afa. Dibias have afa as the only language of communication at the time they are engaged in the affairs of the spirits. Priests and heads of deities employ afa at the time of duty.
As the palm oil with which speeches are craved, afa had to employ the language of nature to make explicit the information intended of the speaker at every given time. The language of nature is the language that is peculiar to each particular setting. The secret of the stemming of the language of nature was born from the fact that language is conditioned by the dominant physical nature of every area. This is true in the sense that the dominant physical setting of a particular locale is usually found prominent in the proverbs and wise saying of the inhabitants of the area. A society that is dominantly forestry usually experienced the influence of vegetative and cosmic features in their speech art. Their proverbs and wise sayings are dominated by things related to plants and animals and their relationship with the solar bodies. In the same way, people living in the ocean side usually experience this influence. This time, the influence will be dominantly aqua cultural. The bulk of the presence of animals, plants, wind, the sun and spirits in the Igbo proverbs show the dominant nature of the ancient Igbo society.
The inclusion of these natural features in the tongue of any people contributes a lot in the formation of symbols which stand the language out amidst other languages spoken on the planet earth. In the book, Strands of Literary Theory and Criticism, Nnaji asserts,
Language embodies all kinds of signs, images, codes, gesture, sound, object and others which form the complex association of the component of language whose meanings are analyzed at the bases of Semiology. Semiology therefore aims at accommodating all system of signs, whatever may be there substance and limits, to make language meaningful.
The complex association of the features of any language, as indicated by the expression above, derived their existence in such a language via the cultural or natural composition of the language community. Nnaji believes that the stemming of such a language composition by the elements mentioned above take place gradually and with time. These features are mainly the characters that differentiate one language from the other and played a veritable role in ascertaining the relationship between one language and another. Therefore, when more than one language are found sharing identical features similar to those mentioned above, such languages may be concluded to have a common source. These features gave researchers like Dr. Atkinson and Russell Gray the impetus to conclude, through a thorough analysis of the sounds of the various languages spoken around the world, that they share one origin. In their analysis, they detected an ancient signal that points to western Africa (sub-Sahara Africa) as the place where modern human language originated.
It is pertinent to note that as a language user leaves a particular language community to another, the language in his possession changes its forms; sometimes sounds, codes and meaning. Yet, one prominent feature remains that the same language does not lose every possible features that traces its root to its original source. By this view, this paper may be persuaded to conclude that any language whose features are found in the languages of the major ancient civilizations around the globe is the mother language. The reason is simple; language is not separated from history. The conclusion drawn by researchers above fits well with the evidence from fossil skulls and DNA which insist that modern humans originated in Africa. The detection of such an ancient signal in language is surprising because – as was noted above – words change so rapidly. In the succeeding heading we shall observe the earliest language tree (the Indo-European family) so far reconstructed, including English, to far back as 9,000 years at most.
History works hand-in-hand with language to shape itself. The reason for this interconnectivity, perhaps, is because history is created through events which make excessive use of language as a veritable tool. On that note then, it should follow suit that as language is traced to Africa, history should be likewise. J.A. Bailey, an English researcher from London, holds to the following view:
The earliest known migrations out of Africa were to the North and East into India, the Far East, the Near East, and South Pacific. Around 125,000 BC a group of Africans moved northward towards the Nile. (African Bible Messages, Feb. 2014).
It is indicative from the assertion of Bailey above that the spread of language outside Africa is, at least, as old as125, 000 BC. The same was the date that modern humans dispersed from Africa to found the western world. Some experts say it is at least 100,000 years old. From the observations of Dr. Atkinson, a biologist who had started applying sophisticated statistical methods into a well developed historical linguistics through the construction of genetic trees based on DNA sequences, the period is a distant that echoes from this far back in time. Although, linguists are pessimistic about the period, Dr. Atkinson may be correct looking at the time estimated by radio carbon dating on the fossil discovered at the Chad Basin by the French Professor of Paleontology, Michael Brunet. The fossil was estimated to have lasted more than seven million years.
Dr. Quentin Atkinson, a biologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, chose a different dimension by looking not at words but at the phonemes (the consonants, vowels and tones) that are the simplest elements of language. Dr. Atkinson, showed his expertise at applying mathematical methods to languages, a striking pattern which he succeeded in the analysis of about 500 languages spoken throughout the world. He believed that some of the click-using languages of Africa have more than 100 phonemes, while English has about 45 phonemes. In an article published in 2011 in the journal, Science, Dr. Atkinson drew the conclusion that this pattern of decreasing diversity with distance, similar to the well-established decrease in genetic diversity with distance from Africa, implies that the origin of modern human language is in the region of southwestern Africa,
In 2003, Dr. Atkinson and Russell Gray, another biologist at the University of Auckland, reconstructed the tree of Indo-European languages with a DNA tree-drawing method called Bayesian phylogeny. The tree indicated that Indo-European was much older than historical linguists had estimated and hence favored the theory that the language family had diversified with the spread of agriculture sometime around 10,000 years ago, not with a military invasion by stepped people some 6,000 years ago as the history of ancient Sumer suggests about the spread of tongues in Babel. Dr. Atkinson, finding fits with other evidences about the origins of language, gave a suggestion which favored the assertion of many historical linguists. The Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert belong to one of the earliest branches of the genetic tree based on human mitochondrial DNA. Their languages belong to a family known as Khoisan and include many click sounds, which seem to be a very ancient feature of language. This historical people live in southern Africa where Dr. Atkinson’s calculations point to as the place of the origin of language. Atkinson maintained that, whether Khoisan is closest to some ancestral form of language “is not something my method can speak to”.
(1.2) The Spread of the Human Tongues.
Most valid to the efficacy of this research work is the recent finding by Dr. Atkinson and Russell Gray that the number of phonemes in a language increases with the number of people who speak it. It invariably means that phoneme diversity would increase as a population grew, but would fall again when a small group split off and migrated away from the parent group. Such a continual budding process, which is the way the first modern humans expanded around the world, is known to produce what biologists call a serial founder effect. Each time a smaller group moves away, there is a reduction in its genetic diversity. The reduction in phonemic diversity over increasing distances from Africa, as seen by Dr. Atkinson, parallels the reduction in genetic diversity already recorded by biologists. For either kind of reduction in diversity to occur, the population budding process must be rapid, or diversity will build up again. This implies that the human expansion out of Africa was very rapid at each stage. The acquisition of modern language, or the technology it made possible, may have prompted the expansion as Dr. Atkinson claimed.
What is so remarkable about this work is that it shows that language does not change all that fast, instead it retains a signal of its ancestry over tens of thousands of years. Dr. Pagel saw language as central to human expansion across the globe. “Language”, he said, “was our secret weapon, and as soon as we got language we became a really dangerous species.” Merritt Ruhlen saved us several stress through his research work entitled The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother-Tongue, 1994. He took the task of drawing apparent difference between the borrowed items of language and the features that characterized borrowing. He showed his support for the phonemic ideology for the trace of the origin of the human tongue when he said that, “borrowing of a large number of basic words among numerous languages never occurs in a language except as proof of migration of bearers of the seed language across that (affected) area”. In this regard, we shall demonstrate in this part the borrowing of numerous Igbo basic words by languages as far-flung as Egypt, Sumer, English, Hebrew, ancient Canaanite etc. We shall back this assertion up with the demonstration of cultural borrowings in the same direction. An explicit example given by Ruhlen to demonstrate the existence of one common mother of European languages actually provides further proof of this claim thus:
We are able to reach back into pre-historical times and reconstruct portions of languages that existed at that time by extrapolating backward on the basis of contemporary languages and (the) knowledge of how languages change over time… similar words in different languages are usually the result of divergent evolution from a single earlier form in a single earlier language. (Thus) … if we compare the word for ‘mouse’ in various European languages, we will be struck by the similarity of the form (sound) in many of them: English ‘mouse’, Swedish mus, German Maus, Dutch muis, Latin mus, Greek mus, Russian mys, Polish mysz, Serbo-Croatian mis. It is a safe bet that all these languages (and others we could mention) did not independently invent such similar forms for the name of this animal. Our firm conclusion, then, is that all these similar forms for ‘mouse’ have evolved from a single earlier language. In this case the hypothetical earlier language – about which nothing is known except the indirect evidence of its daughter families and languages – is called Proto-Indo-European. (p. 17-18)
Merritt was right in his prognosis that further research into “the identification of such language groups, at increasingly deeper time depths can lead to a number of astonishing discoveries about the origin and dispersal of modern humans.” We may suggest that all these various forms of the word for ‘mouse’ (as demonstrated in the above excerpt) are derived from the Igbo word, amusu. The Igbo have two words for two species of rats, oke. The smaller specie, known in English as ‘mouse’, is specifically addressed with the term amusu or amosu. These are those small rats that live in holes in houses and bite into cloths and personal belongings. Due to its destructive actions, it had been directly called simply amosu. This same reference had, in the course of the millennia, lent their name to the description of a kind of evil spirit that inflicts diseases by biting its victim or his belongings.
Our observations based on the Ethno-semantic analysis of the relationship between European, Asian and the languages of the Niger-Congo family here in Africa, using the Igbo example as we have done in this work, we can comfortably assert that (Proto-Indo-European) the unknown mother of European and West-Asian languages was a language belonging to the Niger- Congo family; not unrelated to the Kwa family of languages. This mother-language is, as demonstrated by Martin Bernal in Black Athena, is known as Indo-Hittite. Bernal was of the opinion that the two major mother languages of the human family are Indo- Hittite (mother of Indo-European and Anatolian) and Afro-Asiatic, mother of Canaanite (Semitic, Cushite, Egyptian, Berber, Chadic [Niger-Congo?], etc.). The demonstration above shows Igbo words of similar sound and meaning in languages cutting across the Indo-Hittite and Afro-Asiatic families. It is indicative through that experiment that Igbo is the link between these two racial families. All these pieces of evidence lead to one conclusion: that Igbo is a major hunk of the missing link in the search for the proto-language of humanity, the original seed of language/Mother-Tongue. This discovery equally places the Igbo at the origin of human civilizations and long before it. Archaeology and oral tradition seem to support, rather than disprove, this linguistic evidence in pointing to an over 500,000 year old Acheulian Igbo habitation excavated in present-day Igbo land by the eminent archaeologist Professor Francis Anozie of the Nsukka archaeological School as noted by Professor Catherine Acholonu of the blessed memory.
The conclusion by the Atkinson research team that language originated in the Western part of sub-Saharan Africa supports our assertion of an Igbo origin of languages because Igbo language is based in the Western part of sub-Saharan Africa. Also the conclusion that this ancient mother tongue left Africa during the earliest out of Africa migration is another credible point to prove that the human history began with Africa. We therefore employ African researcher on language evidence of the human history to give heed to the scientific evidence provided by Dr. Atkinson’s research. This will aid global research interest towards Igbo and other African languages to locate the place of African genesis, as we shall consider in the next section. The observation made by Dr Pegel remains remarkable as it shows that what’s so remarkable about this (Atkinson’s) work is that it shows language doesn’t change that entire fast — it retains a signal of its ancestry over tens of thousands of years.
What we are about to demonstrate in this article is how signals of the Igbo language have been retained in some of the most ancient as well as the most modern languages (and cultures) of the world, proving without any shadow that Igbo language was the mother of languages such as Sanskrit, Egyptian, Sumerian, English and the Semitic languages, or at least that Igbo is the longest surviving child of a global mother language spoken by gods and men alike.
P.O. Okwoli, a renowned Nigerian historian believes alongside many linguists that when words from two or more separate languages share similarities in sound and meaning, it is a sign of borrowing or common origin. Depending on Okwoli’s observation, we shall identify hundreds of words of similar sounds and meanings with those of the Igbo language across several languages of the globe, showing, indeed that signals of the mother language are retained “through tens of thousands of years” as remarked by Pegel. It may be concluded, as Catherine Acholonu asserts, that even the God of creation spoke Igbo. If her assertion is true, considering her immeasurable uncovered evidences, then it is apparent that even Adam did speak Igbo. We made this conclusion in the view that the classification of languages into language families is based on the discovering of words in different languages that are similar in sound and meaning as Ruhlen maintains. With the instances as we shall display below, our reader can judge within himself whether our assertion is true or not.
(1.3) Evidence of Igbo in the Efik, Ibibio and Anang
To be explicit about this trace of Igbo in the languages of the world, it will benefit research if we should take the ride gradually out of the Igbo settlement. According to research, these groups (the Efik, Ibibio and Anang) were considered as the first set of Bantu to leave the Igbo settlement in the east. To sustain this claim, Wikipedia record had maintained that the Cross River area was the exit route of the earliest out of Africa migration. These communities proved this claim true through the over hundreds of the Igbo words that are wedded into their tongues, where perhaps they had disseminated it across the sea. Greater of their domestic activities and terms of reference derived their sources from the Igbo language. Very obvious among these terms or activities are things connected to utensils and numbering among the names of the various places and persons.
The leading novelist and critique in Kenya, James Ngugi Wa Thiongo, noted that “language is the carrier of culture”. Since culture is the totality of the life of any people – the same also which derived its root from the people’s history – having language as the conveyor belt – history and language become interwoven and closely tied. It is pertinent to note that as a language user leaves a particular language community to another, the language in his possession changes its forms; sometimes sound, codes and meaning. When this happens, the same language does not lose completely every possible feature that traces its root to its original source. By this view, this paper suggests that any language whose features are found in the languages of the major ancient civilizations around the globe would possibly be the mother language. This is because language is not separated from history. This paper sets to examine the conclusion drawn by researchers alongside the evidence from fossil skulls and DNA records which relates language dating to the human history to justify the claim that humanity originated in Africa. If language should be found with various ancient signals that point to the assumed original history of man, it is apparent that the language found with greater portion of these signals is or had been the mother of the human tongue. Considerations here extend to the earliest language tree (the Indo-European family) so far reconstructed, including English, to far back as 9,000 years at most.
(1.0) Introduction
The earliest civilization the world had emanated from the time of the early fathers. Language is the earliest form of this civilization which the earth had unanimously, and it emanated from the first people who occupied this earth, possibly before the creation of Adam. To this end, this paper believes that history is never complete and as well does not prove true until it is able to establish a solid relationship among different people through a common language. Language consolidation may prove truer than cultural affinity among any people belonging to a common historical background. Yes, culture can be easily overtaken by the insurgence of another which may be regarded to be of more relevance to the people owing to the dominant situation around them at that given time. For instance, many parts of the world had lost the truest part of their culture to the over-lording European imperialism. Colonialism beclouded many countries in Africa, suppressing their cultural and religious practices to the mud/ground, then as recompense, the victims lost what they held supreme and sacred within themselves to the later. The conclusion was that Africa lost her identity.
There is no part of Egypt today that sustains the ancient culture of the eminent Egyptian civilization of old. The first ever civilization after the flood that involved almost the entire continents of the world was lost to the Arabian world whom Egyptians had allowed to take over their land. What this aptitude paid the Egyptians with was the lose of their history and origin. It is very pathetic to hear that all the ancient books excavated in Egypt were sold out by the Arabs who did not and were not prepared to know what historical relevance those tabulates hold to Egyptian history. That is why the position of pharaoh, which was one of the most sophisticated monarchies in the history of Africa, was claimed to have ever been taken by a foreigner different from the pharaoh bloodline. I believe that such faulty historians spreading lies in the bid to assigning certain credence to the foreigner who did not have a history actually did not know the meaning of the word Pharaoh. For if they knew, they would understand that it was a family affair which was never done by selection. In a condition where a people had lost their heritage to foreign culture and its civilization, the only surviving historical proof is language. These include terms and their meanings, names of the inhabitants; especially those involved in different legendary acts. Language also includes writings. As we progress we shall understand that Egypt became much more disillusioned to the point that the name of the architect who designed the stepped pyramid in Saqqara was replaced with Imhotep. Imhotep was still associated with the cosmic architecture (see Bauval and Brophy, Imhotep: The African Architect of the Cosmos). But the Egyptian Book of the Dead (P. 120) proves these later records wrong. We shall get the real architect of the cosmos in the succeeding pages. Language made us to know him, not history.
(1.1) The Birth of the Human Tongue
The history of the development of the human tongue should be rightly traced to the account of creation. This, in another way, will still pose problems since the conclusion that might be drawn by any people would mostly be relevant to their oral tradition or myths bothering the account of creation. For instance, if the Christian Bible is followed ultimately, one would conclude that the language of creation was the Hebrew tongue. But, the controversy remains that Hebrew as a tongue belongs to the later generations after the deluge. The question now is which language was spoken by the generation of Adam and the generations possibly before him? The attempt to discover this language brings us closer to deciphering the original language which could be taken as the first language the earth had.
In the radical argument posed by Late Professor Catherin Acholonu in her bestseller book entitled They Lived before Adam, she vehemently asserts that, “the God of creation, whosoever He may be, spoke Igbo”. She was of the conclusion that since the Igbo father was proven by researches to have lived before Adam, it was certain that the language of creation belongs to God; and the same language was what later became the Igbo, the language spoken by the Igbo. She may be correct, in another way she may be wrong. Our research from various ancient books and cave libraries (such as the The Nag Hammadi Scripture, The Sacred Book of the East and the anonymous book in the internet entitled, The Book of Creation by the Sons of Fire and others) proved that there were populations who were on earth before Adam was created. The Christian Bible also echoed these suggestions in the various parts of the book of Genesis. We can find this from Cain’s word in Genesis 4: 13-15 and the account of the sons of God in Genesis 6:1-9. If there is a consonance in these assertions, we should think about the language the people used to communicate with God, first, and their fellow beings. The account of Job remains a clear version of the language proof. The sons of God used a language to communicate with God. The Bible, Egyptian book for the creation of the world (Nag Hammadi Scripture) and the Jewish Cabbala all agree that God gave commands before things were in their places. The command is in English Bible translated as “Let there be…”. From this we may conclude that the earliest language was naturally imperative and declarative in nature. Its pattern, Nnaji suggested, was discursive.
The last suggestion on the features of the earliest language spoken on the earth plane favours the definition of tongue in Igbo. In the eastern part of Nigeria, tongue is defined as the palm oil used in the craving of speech. This definition, perhaps, had come from the fact that the easterners believed that what are spoken today as languages emanated from one mother tongue. Asserting thus, the easterners (the Igbo) hold that the first tongue humanity had was Afa. They maintain that Afa was the language of creation used by Chukwuokike at the time He created man. Afa is the language of the priests and dibias in the Igbo society of the present age. It was believed to be the language of the ancestors. And as such, it is the best tongue to address the ancestors and equally pass the message of the ancestors and gods, even the almighty God, to the people around. In the Christian doctrine, Afa is used mainly during prophecies. Listen to the tongue of the prophet anytime he prophesies you will hear afa. Dibias have afa as the only language of communication at the time they are engaged in the affairs of the spirits. Priests and heads of deities employ afa at the time of duty.
As the palm oil with which speeches are craved, afa had to employ the language of nature to make explicit the information intended of the speaker at every given time. The language of nature is the language that is peculiar to each particular setting. The secret of the stemming of the language of nature was born from the fact that language is conditioned by the dominant physical nature of every area. This is true in the sense that the dominant physical setting of a particular locale is usually found prominent in the proverbs and wise saying of the inhabitants of the area. A society that is dominantly forestry usually experienced the influence of vegetative and cosmic features in their speech art. Their proverbs and wise sayings are dominated by things related to plants and animals and their relationship with the solar bodies. In the same way, people living in the ocean side usually experience this influence. This time, the influence will be dominantly aqua cultural. The bulk of the presence of animals, plants, wind, the sun and spirits in the Igbo proverbs show the dominant nature of the ancient Igbo society.
The inclusion of these natural features in the tongue of any people contributes a lot in the formation of symbols which stand the language out amidst other languages spoken on the planet earth. In the book, Strands of Literary Theory and Criticism, Nnaji asserts,
Language embodies all kinds of signs, images, codes, gesture, sound, object and others which form the complex association of the component of language whose meanings are analyzed at the bases of Semiology. Semiology therefore aims at accommodating all system of signs, whatever may be there substance and limits, to make language meaningful.
The complex association of the features of any language, as indicated by the expression above, derived their existence in such a language via the cultural or natural composition of the language community. Nnaji believes that the stemming of such a language composition by the elements mentioned above take place gradually and with time. These features are mainly the characters that differentiate one language from the other and played a veritable role in ascertaining the relationship between one language and another. Therefore, when more than one language are found sharing identical features similar to those mentioned above, such languages may be concluded to have a common source. These features gave researchers like Dr. Atkinson and Russell Gray the impetus to conclude, through a thorough analysis of the sounds of the various languages spoken around the world, that they share one origin. In their analysis, they detected an ancient signal that points to western Africa (sub-Sahara Africa) as the place where modern human language originated.
It is pertinent to note that as a language user leaves a particular language community to another, the language in his possession changes its forms; sometimes sounds, codes and meaning. Yet, one prominent feature remains that the same language does not lose every possible features that traces its root to its original source. By this view, this paper may be persuaded to conclude that any language whose features are found in the languages of the major ancient civilizations around the globe is the mother language. The reason is simple; language is not separated from history. The conclusion drawn by researchers above fits well with the evidence from fossil skulls and DNA which insist that modern humans originated in Africa. The detection of such an ancient signal in language is surprising because – as was noted above – words change so rapidly. In the succeeding heading we shall observe the earliest language tree (the Indo-European family) so far reconstructed, including English, to far back as 9,000 years at most.
History works hand-in-hand with language to shape itself. The reason for this interconnectivity, perhaps, is because history is created through events which make excessive use of language as a veritable tool. On that note then, it should follow suit that as language is traced to Africa, history should be likewise. J.A. Bailey, an English researcher from London, holds to the following view:
The earliest known migrations out of Africa were to the North and East into India, the Far East, the Near East, and South Pacific. Around 125,000 BC a group of Africans moved northward towards the Nile. (African Bible Messages, Feb. 2014).
It is indicative from the assertion of Bailey above that the spread of language outside Africa is, at least, as old as125, 000 BC. The same was the date that modern humans dispersed from Africa to found the western world. Some experts say it is at least 100,000 years old. From the observations of Dr. Atkinson, a biologist who had started applying sophisticated statistical methods into a well developed historical linguistics through the construction of genetic trees based on DNA sequences, the period is a distant that echoes from this far back in time. Although, linguists are pessimistic about the period, Dr. Atkinson may be correct looking at the time estimated by radio carbon dating on the fossil discovered at the Chad Basin by the French Professor of Paleontology, Michael Brunet. The fossil was estimated to have lasted more than seven million years.
Dr. Quentin Atkinson, a biologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, chose a different dimension by looking not at words but at the phonemes (the consonants, vowels and tones) that are the simplest elements of language. Dr. Atkinson, showed his expertise at applying mathematical methods to languages, a striking pattern which he succeeded in the analysis of about 500 languages spoken throughout the world. He believed that some of the click-using languages of Africa have more than 100 phonemes, while English has about 45 phonemes. In an article published in 2011 in the journal, Science, Dr. Atkinson drew the conclusion that this pattern of decreasing diversity with distance, similar to the well-established decrease in genetic diversity with distance from Africa, implies that the origin of modern human language is in the region of southwestern Africa,
In 2003, Dr. Atkinson and Russell Gray, another biologist at the University of Auckland, reconstructed the tree of Indo-European languages with a DNA tree-drawing method called Bayesian phylogeny. The tree indicated that Indo-European was much older than historical linguists had estimated and hence favored the theory that the language family had diversified with the spread of agriculture sometime around 10,000 years ago, not with a military invasion by stepped people some 6,000 years ago as the history of ancient Sumer suggests about the spread of tongues in Babel. Dr. Atkinson, finding fits with other evidences about the origins of language, gave a suggestion which favored the assertion of many historical linguists. The Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert belong to one of the earliest branches of the genetic tree based on human mitochondrial DNA. Their languages belong to a family known as Khoisan and include many click sounds, which seem to be a very ancient feature of language. This historical people live in southern Africa where Dr. Atkinson’s calculations point to as the place of the origin of language. Atkinson maintained that, whether Khoisan is closest to some ancestral form of language “is not something my method can speak to”.
(1.2) The Spread of the Human Tongues.
Most valid to the efficacy of this research work is the recent finding by Dr. Atkinson and Russell Gray that the number of phonemes in a language increases with the number of people who speak it. It invariably means that phoneme diversity would increase as a population grew, but would fall again when a small group split off and migrated away from the parent group. Such a continual budding process, which is the way the first modern humans expanded around the world, is known to produce what biologists call a serial founder effect. Each time a smaller group moves away, there is a reduction in its genetic diversity. The reduction in phonemic diversity over increasing distances from Africa, as seen by Dr. Atkinson, parallels the reduction in genetic diversity already recorded by biologists. For either kind of reduction in diversity to occur, the population budding process must be rapid, or diversity will build up again. This implies that the human expansion out of Africa was very rapid at each stage. The acquisition of modern language, or the technology it made possible, may have prompted the expansion as Dr. Atkinson claimed.
What is so remarkable about this work is that it shows that language does not change all that fast, instead it retains a signal of its ancestry over tens of thousands of years. Dr. Pagel saw language as central to human expansion across the globe. “Language”, he said, “was our secret weapon, and as soon as we got language we became a really dangerous species.” Merritt Ruhlen saved us several stress through his research work entitled The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother-Tongue, 1994. He took the task of drawing apparent difference between the borrowed items of language and the features that characterized borrowing. He showed his support for the phonemic ideology for the trace of the origin of the human tongue when he said that, “borrowing of a large number of basic words among numerous languages never occurs in a language except as proof of migration of bearers of the seed language across that (affected) area”. In this regard, we shall demonstrate in this part the borrowing of numerous Igbo basic words by languages as far-flung as Egypt, Sumer, English, Hebrew, ancient Canaanite etc. We shall back this assertion up with the demonstration of cultural borrowings in the same direction. An explicit example given by Ruhlen to demonstrate the existence of one common mother of European languages actually provides further proof of this claim thus:
We are able to reach back into pre-historical times and reconstruct portions of languages that existed at that time by extrapolating backward on the basis of contemporary languages and (the) knowledge of how languages change over time… similar words in different languages are usually the result of divergent evolution from a single earlier form in a single earlier language. (Thus) … if we compare the word for ‘mouse’ in various European languages, we will be struck by the similarity of the form (sound) in many of them: English ‘mouse’, Swedish mus, German Maus, Dutch muis, Latin mus, Greek mus, Russian mys, Polish mysz, Serbo-Croatian mis. It is a safe bet that all these languages (and others we could mention) did not independently invent such similar forms for the name of this animal. Our firm conclusion, then, is that all these similar forms for ‘mouse’ have evolved from a single earlier language. In this case the hypothetical earlier language – about which nothing is known except the indirect evidence of its daughter families and languages – is called Proto-Indo-European. (p. 17-18)
Merritt was right in his prognosis that further research into “the identification of such language groups, at increasingly deeper time depths can lead to a number of astonishing discoveries about the origin and dispersal of modern humans.” We may suggest that all these various forms of the word for ‘mouse’ (as demonstrated in the above excerpt) are derived from the Igbo word, amusu. The Igbo have two words for two species of rats, oke. The smaller specie, known in English as ‘mouse’, is specifically addressed with the term amusu or amosu. These are those small rats that live in holes in houses and bite into cloths and personal belongings. Due to its destructive actions, it had been directly called simply amosu. This same reference had, in the course of the millennia, lent their name to the description of a kind of evil spirit that inflicts diseases by biting its victim or his belongings.
Our observations based on the Ethno-semantic analysis of the relationship between European, Asian and the languages of the Niger-Congo family here in Africa, using the Igbo example as we have done in this work, we can comfortably assert that (Proto-Indo-European) the unknown mother of European and West-Asian languages was a language belonging to the Niger- Congo family; not unrelated to the Kwa family of languages. This mother-language is, as demonstrated by Martin Bernal in Black Athena, is known as Indo-Hittite. Bernal was of the opinion that the two major mother languages of the human family are Indo- Hittite (mother of Indo-European and Anatolian) and Afro-Asiatic, mother of Canaanite (Semitic, Cushite, Egyptian, Berber, Chadic [Niger-Congo?], etc.). The demonstration above shows Igbo words of similar sound and meaning in languages cutting across the Indo-Hittite and Afro-Asiatic families. It is indicative through that experiment that Igbo is the link between these two racial families. All these pieces of evidence lead to one conclusion: that Igbo is a major hunk of the missing link in the search for the proto-language of humanity, the original seed of language/Mother-Tongue. This discovery equally places the Igbo at the origin of human civilizations and long before it. Archaeology and oral tradition seem to support, rather than disprove, this linguistic evidence in pointing to an over 500,000 year old Acheulian Igbo habitation excavated in present-day Igbo land by the eminent archaeologist Professor Francis Anozie of the Nsukka archaeological School as noted by Professor Catherine Acholonu of the blessed memory.
The conclusion by the Atkinson research team that language originated in the Western part of sub-Saharan Africa supports our assertion of an Igbo origin of languages because Igbo language is based in the Western part of sub-Saharan Africa. Also the conclusion that this ancient mother tongue left Africa during the earliest out of Africa migration is another credible point to prove that the human history began with Africa. We therefore employ African researcher on language evidence of the human history to give heed to the scientific evidence provided by Dr. Atkinson’s research. This will aid global research interest towards Igbo and other African languages to locate the place of African genesis, as we shall consider in the next section. The observation made by Dr Pegel remains remarkable as it shows that what’s so remarkable about this (Atkinson’s) work is that it shows language doesn’t change that entire fast — it retains a signal of its ancestry over tens of thousands of years.
What we are about to demonstrate in this article is how signals of the Igbo language have been retained in some of the most ancient as well as the most modern languages (and cultures) of the world, proving without any shadow that Igbo language was the mother of languages such as Sanskrit, Egyptian, Sumerian, English and the Semitic languages, or at least that Igbo is the longest surviving child of a global mother language spoken by gods and men alike.
P.O. Okwoli, a renowned Nigerian historian believes alongside many linguists that when words from two or more separate languages share similarities in sound and meaning, it is a sign of borrowing or common origin. Depending on Okwoli’s observation, we shall identify hundreds of words of similar sounds and meanings with those of the Igbo language across several languages of the globe, showing, indeed that signals of the mother language are retained “through tens of thousands of years” as remarked by Pegel. It may be concluded, as Catherine Acholonu asserts, that even the God of creation spoke Igbo. If her assertion is true, considering her immeasurable uncovered evidences, then it is apparent that even Adam did speak Igbo. We made this conclusion in the view that the classification of languages into language families is based on the discovering of words in different languages that are similar in sound and meaning as Ruhlen maintains. With the instances as we shall display below, our reader can judge within himself whether our assertion is true or not.
(1.3) Evidence of Igbo in the Efik, Ibibio and Anang
To be explicit about this trace of Igbo in the languages of the world, it will benefit research if we should take the ride gradually out of the Igbo settlement. According to research, these groups (the Efik, Ibibio and Anang) were considered as the first set of Bantu to leave the Igbo settlement in the east. To sustain this claim, Wikipedia record had maintained that the Cross River area was the exit route of the earliest out of Africa migration. These communities proved this claim true through the over hundreds of the Igbo words that are wedded into their tongues, where perhaps they had disseminated it across the sea. Greater of their domestic activities and terms of reference derived their sources from the Igbo language. Very obvious among these terms or activities are things connected to utensils and numbering among the names of the various places and persons.
Efik families |
Meaning |
Igbo equivalents |
Meaning |
Fan’a |
Force into |
Fanye |
Force into |
Enyen |
A person |
Onye |
A person |
Usong |
Road |
Uzo |
Road |
Utere |
Vulture |
Udene/Udele |
Vulture |
Anwan |
Woman |
Nwanyi |
Woman |
Adiagha |
Daughter |
Ada |
Daughter |
Afere |
Soup |
Afere |
Plates |
Iko |
Container |
Iko |
Cup |
Ikpe |
Case in the court |
Ikpe |
Case in the court |
Ikwo |
Song |
Ukwe |
Song |
Kwoo |
Sing |
Kwee |
SingValue |
N’oo |
To Drink/drink |
N’oo |
Drink |
Taa |
Chew |
Taa |
Chew |
Ekpat |
Bag |
Ekpa/Akpa (Ekpa, Nkalaha) |
Bag |
Iba |
Two |
Iboo/abuo |
Two |
Ita |
Three |
Ato |
Three |
Inang |
Four |
Ano/ino |
Four |
Ufok/Ulok |
House |
Uno/Ulo |
House |
Asug kood |
He/she calls you |
A si koo gi |
He/she said you should be called (Nkalaha dialect) |
Akparawa |
Young man |
Akparawa |
A tall young man (Nkalaha dialect) |
Abasi |
God |
Obasi (Arochukwu) |
God |
Ime |
Birth rebirth |
Ume |
Birth rebirth |
Ata |
To chew |
Ita/ata |
To chew |
Obasi was and still is another name for Chukwu to the Aros. From them it went across other dwellers of the heartland region of the Igbo nation. In the same way as the Onitsha refer to Chukwu as Olisa, the heartland Igbo used the name (Olisa) to indicate certain eulogy and veneration in a manner of extolling God for his greatness and provisions. Popular among the Onitsha are names like Olisabuikem (God is my strength) Olisaemeka (God had done much) etc. In the same wise are names associated with Obasi. The former Super Eagles’ player has the name, Chinedu Obasi. There is also such a name as Obasiemeka. Therefore, Obasi was the name of god which was associated with prayers. When the Ibibios were chased out of their original home by the Aros who migrated from the Northern Igbo, they retained this name; but in a disguised form. Instead of Obasi, they have Abasi for the same linguistic meaning.
Other related words in the languages of Igbo and Efik are Gaa and Kaa respectively. They both mean go in the English version. The reason for the difference in the consonants of the words is blamed upon the morphological condition of the consonant /g/ in the language of the latter. It is usually very rare to get Efik word with /g/ as its initial consonant. /g/ is rather realized as the final consonants. In this condition it is realized alongside /n/ to take the English pronunciation for -ing morpheme. Examples include Afang, Anang, Idongesit, Obong etc. Where possibly this consonant, /g/ appears at the initial position of a word, the Efik pronounce it as the consonant /k/. Therefore, instead of gaa or go, the Efik say kaa or ko respectively.
Ibibio and Anang use Ufok to refer the abode of man. Ufok is the reference to the house where one lives. The Igbo equivalent of this word is Uno or Ulo. Either of these words can be used to connote house and the home of a man as Ufok refers to. The relationship of the sounds of these words is not only revealed through their meanings, we find their sounds the same to indicate that they have one common source or origin. This relationship becomes clearer when the Efik are considered. I believe you will accept our assertion when you know that the Efik use Ulok for the same reference. It was possible that the entire communities of the aqua cultural settlers of these regions made use of Ulok in the earlier time, but as time glided the Ibibio and Anang communities had a change of tongues.
Could these be the all-encompassing evidence? I think not. There are places found in the Efik families that appeared to have borrowed their names from the Igbo language. More convincing is the military base at Abak Akwa Ibom State known as Ibeagwa but pronounced Ibawa by the inhabitants of the area. The history of the place has it that the first people to settle in the area had come from the Ibeagwa in the present day Enugu State. To sustain this aspect of their oblivious history the ancient sign post at the military base still has the name correctly written. Akwa Ibom also has places known as Ikot Okoro, Ikot Imo, Obiono and other names that are not included here. What all these show is simply a common historical tie among the concerned people and places. There are also places like Eastern Obolo in Akwa Ibom (in Eket political region) and Western Obolo in River State. These two communities, like the Ibeagwa in Akwa Ibom State, sustained the name of their original home; they migrated from the ancient Nsukka area called Obolo.
The name of the researcher’s mother is Ebe Nnaji. The name Ebe was derived from the name of the river which had sustained Nkalaha community since the day Onoja Oboni stepped into the place and founded it. The river is richly historical when the reason for settling in the place is brought to minds. It was this lasting values and inextinguishable roles of its substance to the teeming population of the Nkalaha people that her name was decided to be given to people. The researcher’s mother shares in this rich historical relevance. Akwa Ibom also has this name among her indigenous members. Other names found to have Igbo origin are names like Uko, Nnamso, Nnamuko,Udoh etc. all these are Igbo names. Other names are derived through expressions in the manner that the Igbo give their names. Every name in Igbo land is a complete expression. Many are written in their abridged form while others are written as a word. Examples include Chukwu ka Ike (God is ever powerful) written as Chukwuka, Ife eyi nwa (there is no semblance for a child) written as a word. We also have Onyinye Chukwu Ka (God’s gift is the greatest) also written simply as Onyinye. In the same way Ibibio has a name like Mkpo Kang Nke Abasi transliterated as nothing above the power of God). All this information added to their oral traditions and history to give a clear picture of the unequivocal expansion of the men from the eastern part of Nigeria.
(1.4) Egyptian Words of Igbo Origin.
The most contribution this research work has to African readers is its unmentionable attempts to reconstruct African history by tracing the genesis of the world as well as Africa from various perspectives. As the passage way to the western part of this world, the survivor of the flood had the Sahara planes as their uninterrupted route out of Igbo land, many stopped in Egypt to form a population there. Igbo popularized the language of ancient Egyptian because it was, by the explanation above, the foundational language of the founding fathers. A later crusade was occasioned by the civilizer who also went to Egypt with the prevailing culture in the east. To this end, Egyptian words with Igbo sounds and meanings are numerous. Citable among them are in the table below:
Other related words in the languages of Igbo and Efik are Gaa and Kaa respectively. They both mean go in the English version. The reason for the difference in the consonants of the words is blamed upon the morphological condition of the consonant /g/ in the language of the latter. It is usually very rare to get Efik word with /g/ as its initial consonant. /g/ is rather realized as the final consonants. In this condition it is realized alongside /n/ to take the English pronunciation for -ing morpheme. Examples include Afang, Anang, Idongesit, Obong etc. Where possibly this consonant, /g/ appears at the initial position of a word, the Efik pronounce it as the consonant /k/. Therefore, instead of gaa or go, the Efik say kaa or ko respectively.
Ibibio and Anang use Ufok to refer the abode of man. Ufok is the reference to the house where one lives. The Igbo equivalent of this word is Uno or Ulo. Either of these words can be used to connote house and the home of a man as Ufok refers to. The relationship of the sounds of these words is not only revealed through their meanings, we find their sounds the same to indicate that they have one common source or origin. This relationship becomes clearer when the Efik are considered. I believe you will accept our assertion when you know that the Efik use Ulok for the same reference. It was possible that the entire communities of the aqua cultural settlers of these regions made use of Ulok in the earlier time, but as time glided the Ibibio and Anang communities had a change of tongues.
Could these be the all-encompassing evidence? I think not. There are places found in the Efik families that appeared to have borrowed their names from the Igbo language. More convincing is the military base at Abak Akwa Ibom State known as Ibeagwa but pronounced Ibawa by the inhabitants of the area. The history of the place has it that the first people to settle in the area had come from the Ibeagwa in the present day Enugu State. To sustain this aspect of their oblivious history the ancient sign post at the military base still has the name correctly written. Akwa Ibom also has places known as Ikot Okoro, Ikot Imo, Obiono and other names that are not included here. What all these show is simply a common historical tie among the concerned people and places. There are also places like Eastern Obolo in Akwa Ibom (in Eket political region) and Western Obolo in River State. These two communities, like the Ibeagwa in Akwa Ibom State, sustained the name of their original home; they migrated from the ancient Nsukka area called Obolo.
The name of the researcher’s mother is Ebe Nnaji. The name Ebe was derived from the name of the river which had sustained Nkalaha community since the day Onoja Oboni stepped into the place and founded it. The river is richly historical when the reason for settling in the place is brought to minds. It was this lasting values and inextinguishable roles of its substance to the teeming population of the Nkalaha people that her name was decided to be given to people. The researcher’s mother shares in this rich historical relevance. Akwa Ibom also has this name among her indigenous members. Other names found to have Igbo origin are names like Uko, Nnamso, Nnamuko,Udoh etc. all these are Igbo names. Other names are derived through expressions in the manner that the Igbo give their names. Every name in Igbo land is a complete expression. Many are written in their abridged form while others are written as a word. Examples include Chukwu ka Ike (God is ever powerful) written as Chukwuka, Ife eyi nwa (there is no semblance for a child) written as a word. We also have Onyinye Chukwu Ka (God’s gift is the greatest) also written simply as Onyinye. In the same way Ibibio has a name like Mkpo Kang Nke Abasi transliterated as nothing above the power of God). All this information added to their oral traditions and history to give a clear picture of the unequivocal expansion of the men from the eastern part of Nigeria.
(1.4) Egyptian Words of Igbo Origin.
The most contribution this research work has to African readers is its unmentionable attempts to reconstruct African history by tracing the genesis of the world as well as Africa from various perspectives. As the passage way to the western part of this world, the survivor of the flood had the Sahara planes as their uninterrupted route out of Igbo land, many stopped in Egypt to form a population there. Igbo popularized the language of ancient Egyptian because it was, by the explanation above, the foundational language of the founding fathers. A later crusade was occasioned by the civilizer who also went to Egypt with the prevailing culture in the east. To this end, Egyptian words with Igbo sounds and meanings are numerous. Citable among them are in the table below:
Egypt words |
Meaning |
Igbo |
Meaning |
Tuf |
To throw away. |
Tufuo |
To throw away. |
Akhu |
Fire or light |
Oku |
Fire or light |
Aru |
Body or form |
Aru |
BodyValue |
Ba |
Heart |
Obi |
Heart |
Egypt |
Black soil |
Ojikputu (Orlu dialect) |
Pitch black |
(h)ike |
Power or strength |
Ike |
Power or strength |
Xut (pronounced kut) |
Sunrise |
Kutee (Igbo Nkanu) |
To wake or rise |
Sa |
To shine |
Sa/saa |
To shine |
Satu |
Shine down |
Satuo (Orlu dialect) |
Shine down |
Tua |
Praise or glorify |
Tuo/too |
Praise or glorify |
Xerkert (pronounced kirkir) |
Pieces |
Kirikiri |
Pieces |
Huru |
The day dawns |
Horo (Orlu dialect) |
The day dawns |
Musi/mose/msi, |
To give birth |
Mmusi |
To give birth to many children |
Miri |
Water |
Miri |
Water |
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