Hamitic is an obsolete ethno-linguistic classification of some ethnic groups within the Afro-Asiatic (previously termed "Hamito-Semitic") language family. These populations were also termed the Hamitic race throughout the 19th century and most of the 20th century. The Afro-Asiatic languages constitute a language family (Languages of Africa) with about 375 languages (SIL estimate) and more than 300 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, East Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, and Southwest Asia (including some 200 million speakers of Arabic). ...

Ham in the Bible

Further information: Curse of Ham

The term Hamitic originally referred to the peoples believed to have been descended from the biblical Ham, one of the Sons of Noah. Over history, there have been several separate, but interrelated, interpretations of the term. In the Bible, the sons of Ham include peoples who were traditionally enemies of the Jews, notably the Egyptians and the Canaanites. While the Canaanites competed with the Israelites for the same territory, Ham's sons were said to have fathered the peoples of Africa. Of Ham's four sons, Canaan, fathered the Canaanites, while Mizraim fathered the Egyptians, Cush the Cushites and Phut the "Libyans".^[1] The Drunkenness of Noah by Giovanni Bellini, depicting Ham (center) laughing at his father, while Shem and Japheth cover him. ... For other uses, see Bible (disambiguation). ... Ham (חָם, Standard Hebrew , Tiberian Hebrew , , Geez Kam), according to the Genealogies of Genesis, was a son of Noah and the father of Cush, Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan. ... This T and O map, which abstracts that societys known world to a cross inscribed within an orb, remakes geography in the service of Christian iconography and identifies the three known continents as populated by descendents of Shem (Sem), Ham (Cham) and Japheth (Iafeth) The Table of Nations is... Map of Canaan For other uses, see Canaan (disambiguation). ... “The Twelve Tribes” redirects here. ... A world map showing the continent of Africa Africa is the worlds second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. ... Map of Canaan For other uses, see Canaan (disambiguation). ... Mizraim (Hebrew מצרים Mitzráyim or Miṣrāyim/Miṣráyim; cf. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Phut (cf. ...

A literal interpretation of the Bible leads literalists to believe that all of humanity was descended from Noah. Chapters 9 and 10 of the Book of Genesis deal with the dispersing of Noah's sons into the world. The name of Cush, Ham's eldest son, means "black" in Hebrew, and "Caanan" means "trader", "trafficker", or "lowland".^{[citation needed]} The word "Ham" in Hebrew moreover means "hot" or "multitude", and is thus not necessarily a racial reference.^[2] Although using Hebrew to define these names will result in inaccurate translations due to the fact that Noah and his sons were not Hebrew. And in fact, according to Genesis 11:10-26, they lived thousands of years before Abram (later Abraham), who is the father of the Hebrew people. For other uses, see Bible (disambiguation). ... Genesis redirects here. ... For other uses, see Abraham (name) and Abram (disambiguation). ...

According to Bernard Lewis, the sixth-century Babylonian Talmud states that "the descendants of Ham are cursed by being Black and are sinful with a degenerate progeny."^[3] However, an exhaustive online search of the Soncino translation of the Babylonian Talmud reveals no such statement, nor a similar statement. Instead the rabbis are found discussing what the nature of Ham's offense was, such that his fourth son was cursed. Nevertheless, slave holders, slavery defenders and racial theorists used similar formulations to justify African slavery in the Americas.^[4] For the founder of the River Island retail chain, see Bernard Lewis (entrepreneur). ... The first page of the Talmud, in the standard Vilna edition. ... The slave trade in Africa existed for thousands of years. ... World map showing the Americas CIA political map of the Americas in an equal-area projection The Americas are the lands of the Western hemisphere or New World, consisting of the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions. ...

Use of Hamite after Napoleon's invasion of Egypt

After Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, European interest in that country increased dramatically. With the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics and the rapid increase in knowledge of Ancient Egyptian civilization, European academics became increasingly interested in the origin of the Egyptians and their connection to other groups nearby. For other uses, see Napoleon (disambiguation). ... A section of the Papyrus of Ani showing cursive hieroglyphs. ... The pyramids are among the most recognizable symbols of the civilization of ancient Egypt. ...

Non-religious and Darwinian writers theorised that the Biblical stories contained an element of truth about the ancestry of some populations in Africa, who may have migrated into Central Africa from the North.^{[citation needed]} These peoples were assumed to be racially superior to Black Africans. This article is about Darwinism as a philosophical concept; see evolution for the page on biological evolution; modern evolutionary synthesis for neo-Darwinism; and also evolution (disambiguation). ...

Hamitic language group

During the Middle Ages and up until the early 19th century the term Hamitic was initially used by some Europeans to refer indiscriminately to Africans. The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ...

The term "Hamitic" was used for the first time in connection with languages by the German missionary Johann Ludwig Krapf (1810–1881), but with regard to all languages of Africa spoken by people deemed "black". Johann Ludwig Krapf (born January 11, 1810 in Tübingen-Derendingen; died November 26, 1881 in Korntal-Münchingen) was a German missionary in East Africa, an explorer, linguist, and traveler. ...

It was the Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius (1810–1884) who restricted it to the non-Semitic languages in Africa which are characterized by a grammatical gender system. This "Hamitic language group" was proposed to unite various, mainly North-African languages, including the Ancient Egyptian language, the Berber languages, the Cushitic languages, the Beja language, and the Chadic languages. The Great Sphinx of Giza against Khafres Pyramid at the Giza pyramid complex. ... Karl Richard Lepsius 1810 – 1884 Karl (or Carl) Richard Lepsius (December 23, 1810 – July 10, 1884) was a pioneering Prussian Egyptologist and linguist and pioneer of modern archaeology. ... Spoken in: Ancient Egypt Language extinction: evolved into Demotic by 600 BC, into Coptic by AD 200, and was extinct (not spoken as a day-to-day language) by the 17th century. ... This article is about the Berber language called Tamazight. ... The Cushitic languages are a subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic languages, named after the Biblical figure Cush by analogy with Semitic. ... Beja (also called Bedawi, Bedauye, To Bedawie) is an Afro-Asiatic language of the southern coast of the Red Sea, spoken by about two million nomads in parts of Egypt, Sudan, and Eritrea. ... The Chadic languages are a language family spoken across northern Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Central African Republic and Cameroon, belonging to the Afro-Asiatic phylum. ...

Friedrich Müller named the traditional Hamito-Semitic family in 1876 in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft, and defined it as consisting of a Semitic group plus a "Hamitic" group containing Egyptian, Berber, and Cushitic; he excluded the Chadic group. These classifications relied in part on non-linguistic anthropological and racial arguments. Friedrich Müller (1834-1898) was a German linguist who originated the term Hamito-Semitic languages. ... The Afro-Asiatic languages constitute a language family (Languages of Africa) with about 375 languages (SIL estimate) and more than 300 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, East Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, and Southwest Asia (including some 200 million speakers of Arabic). ...

Leo Reinisch (1909) proposed to link Cushitic and Chadic, while urging a more distant affinity with Egyptian and Semitic, thus foreshadowing Greenberg; but his suggestion found little resonance. Marcel Cohen (1924) rejected the idea of a distinct "Hamitic" subgroup, and included Hausa (a Chadic language) in his comparative Hamito-Semitic vocabulary. Joseph Greenberg (1950) strongly confirmed Cohen's rejection of "Hamitic", added (and sub-classified) the Chadic languages, and proposed the new name Afro-Asiatic for the family; almost all scholars have accepted his classification. The Hausa are a people of northern Nigeria and south-eastern Niger. ... Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915–May 7, 2001) was a prominent and controversial linguist, known for his work in both language classification and typology. ... Map showing the distribution of Afro-Asiatic languages The Afro-Asiatic languages are a language family of about 240 languages and 285 million people widespread throughout North Africa, East Africa, the Sahel, and Southwest Asia. ...

Hamitic race

The Hamitic race refers to various populations living in Africa (including Ancient Egyptians) that speak one of the so-called Hamitic languages (any of various groupings of non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages).^[5] Hamites were regarded as a Caucasoid people who probably originated in either Arabia or Asia on the basis of their cultural, physical and linguistic similarities with the peoples of those areas.^[6][7][8] Europeans considered Hamites to be more civilized than Black Africans, and more akin to themselves and Semitic peoples.^[9] In the first two-thirds of the 20th century, the Hamitic race was, in fact, considered one of the branches of the Caucasian race, along with the Indo-Europeans, Dravidians, Semites, and the Mediterranean race. A tomb painting of Seti I as reconstructed by Giovanni Battista Belzoni (d. ... The Afro-Asiatic languages constitute a language family (Languages of Africa) with about 375 languages (SIL estimate) and more than 300 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, East Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, and Southwest Asia (including some 200 million speakers of Arabic). ... Though most indigenous Africans possess relatively dark skin, they exhibit much variation in physical appearance. ... In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic (from the Biblical Shem, Hebrew: שם, translated as name, Arabic: سام) was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages. ... For the peoples actually from the Caucasus, see Peoples of the Caucasus. ... The Aryan race is a concept in European culture that was influential in the period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. ... Dravidian may refer to: in the spiritualistic interpretations: the people who are the drav i. ... Semitic is an adjective which in common parlance mistakenly refers specifically to Jewish things, while the term actually refers to things originating among speakers of Semitic languages or people descended from them, and in a linguistic context to the northeastern subfamily of Afro-Asiatic. ... Languages French Occitan Greek Italian Portuguese Spanish Catalan Religions Predominantly Roman Catholic Protestant Orthodox The Mediterranean race was one of the three sub-categories into which the people of Europe were divided by anthropologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, following the publication of William Z. Ripleys...

Within colonialism

Further information: Second European colonization wave (19th century–20th century)

The so-called Hamitic Myth was used as a justification for European colonial policy in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as the slave trade in earlier times.^[10][11] The Second European colonization wave is so-called because it followed the first European colonization wave, which started in the 15th century. ... The Second European colonization wave is so-called because it followed the first European colonization wave, which started in the 15th century. ... This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

As a result of this re-evaluation, the term "Hamitic" took on a new, more positive connotation for Europeans. During the 19th century Europeans explored more and more of Africa. In their travels, they found many different physical types, and they valued those that appeared most like themselves or had a redeeming cultural characteristic. Please wikify (format) this article or section as suggested in the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style. ...

Soon the Hamitic theory became an important ideological instrument of colonialism, especially in German politics.^{[citation needed]} It has been suggested that Benign colonialism be merged into this article or section. ... This article is about former colonies of Germany. ...

As racial theories became increasingly complex and convoluted, the term Hamitic was used in different ways by different writers and was applied to many different groups, mainly comprising Ethiopians, Eritreans, Somalis, Berbers and Nubians. It has been suggested that Race science be merged into this article or section. ... The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (Ityopiya, Amharic ኢትዮጵያ) is a country situated in the Horn of Africa. ... National motto: None Official languages Tigrigna, Arabic and English Capital Asmara President Isaias Afewerki Area  - Total  - % water Ranked 96th 121,320 km² Negligible Population  - Total (2002)  - Density Ranked 118th 4,298,269 37/km² Independence  - Limited  - Fully From Ethiopia  May 29, 1991  May 24, 1993 Currency Nakfa Time zone UTC... Languages Berber languages Religions Islam (mostly Sunni), Christianity (mostly Kabyle catholic) Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. ... For the Star Wars planet, see Nubia (Star Wars). ...

Racial theory was very hierarchical; Europeans saw Hamites as leaders within Africa, instructing lesser peoples in the ways of civilization, just as they saw themselves teaching the Hamitic peoples.

However, the Hamitic peoples themselves were sometimes deemed to have failed as rulers, a failing that was usually ascribed to interbreeding with Negroes. For example, in the mid-20th century the German scholar Carl Meinhof claimed that the Bantu race was formed by a merger of Hamitic and Negro races,^{[citation needed]} and that the Hottentots (Nama or Khoi) were formed by the union of Hamitic and Bushmen (San) races. Manifestations Slavery Racial profiling Lynching Hate speech Hate crime Genocide (examples) Ethnocide Ethnic cleansing Pogrom Race war Religious persecution Blood libel Paternalism Police brutality Movements Policies Discriminatory Race / Religion / Sex segregation Apartheid Redlining Internment Ethnocracy Anti-discriminatory Emancipation Civil rights Desegregation Integration Equal opportunity Counter-discriminatory Affirmative action Racial quota... Negro is a term referring to people of Black African ancestry. ... Carl Friedrich Michael Meinhof (July 23, 1857 — February 11, 1944) was a German linguist known as one of the first linguists to study African languages. ... The Khoikhoi (men of men) or Khoi are a division of the Khoisan ethnic group of south-western Africa, closely related to the Bushmen (San). ... Nama (in older sourses also Namaqua) are a pastoral people of South Africa, Namibia and Botswana speaking the Nama language which belongs to the Khoe-Kwadi language family (previously known as Central Khoisan). ... The Khoikhoi (men of men) or Khoi are a division of the Khoisan ethnic group of south-western Africa, closely related to the Bushmen (San). ... |group = Bushmen |image = |poptime = 82,000 |popplace = Botswana (55,000), Namibia (27,000) |rels = San Religion |langs = various Khoisan languages |related = Khoikhoi, Xhosa, Zulu, Griqua }} The Bushmen, San, Basarwa, ǃKung or Khwe are indigenous people of the Kalahari Desert, which spans areas of South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Angola. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with SAN. (Discuss) Look up san, -san in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Rwanda

In Rwanda, the Hamitic hypothesis was a racialist hypothesis created by John Hanning Speke, which stated that the supposedly "Hamitic" yet Bantu-speaking Tutsi people were superior to the Bantu Hutus because they were deemed to be more Caucasoid in their facial features, and thus destined to rule over the Hutus.^[12] This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... John Hanning Speke (May 4, 1827 – September 15, 1864) was an officer in the British Indian army, who made three voyages of exploration to Africa. ... Map showing the approximate distribution of Bantu vs. ... The Tutsi are one of three native peoples of the nations of Rwanda and Burundi in central Africa, the other two being the Twa and the Hutu. ... The Hutu are a Central African ethnic group, living mainly in Rwanda and Burundi. ...

While the Hutu majority ruled in Rwanda from independence in 1962 until their ouster in 1994 by a Tutsi rebel group, Tutsis in neigboring Burundi did, in fact, enjoy 400 hundred years of unmitigated minority rule over that country's largely Hutu populace.^[13]

This hypothesis is believed by many^[who?] to be a significant factor in the Rwandan genocide. Because of the wide-spread tribalism in the area, and the belief among Tutsis that they were superior to the Hutus, the Hutus began to see the Tutsis as an outside invader to their land. The Rwandan Genocide was an attempt to exterminate the Tutsi minority of Rwanda, and the moderates of its Hutu majority, in 1994. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Today

These ideas were still in wide circulation until the last third of the 20th century. The Hamitic hypothesis is rejected by most scholars today on a multitude of grounds. Most "scientific" observations of the time were heavily culturally biased and generally returned results that suited Europeans. Many observations of the time have been corrected since then to reveal a much more complex picture of ethnic groups than was initially conceived.

Nonetheless, the term Hamitic is still used in some anthropological and historical academic settings.

The term's linguistic use was effectively terminated by Joseph Greenberg (The Languages of Africa) in the 1950s, who introduced the use of geographical rather than racial terms for the various language families spoken in Africa. Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915–May 7, 2001) was a prominent and controversial linguist, known for his work in both language classification and typology. ... The Languages of Africa is a seminal 1963 book of essays by Joseph Greenberg, in which he sets forth a genetic classification of African languages that, with some changes, continues to be the most commonly used one today. ... Map showing the distribution of African language families and some major African languages. ...

Today, the Hamitic concepts have been widely discredited, and are often referred to as the Hamitic Myth.^[14]

The Hamitic language group is no longer considered by most scholars to be a useful concept, though the phrase "Hamito-Semitic" is a dated term for the Afro-Asiatic linguistic group. Map showing the distribution of Afro-Asiatic languages The Afro-Asiatic languages are a language family of about 240 languages and 285 million people widespread throughout North Africa, East Africa, the Sahel, and Southwest Asia. ...

References