The Horn of Africa (HOA), also known as the Somali Peninsula, is a large peninsula and geopolitical region located in the easternmost part of mainland Africa.Robert Stock, Africa South of the Sahara, Second Edition: A Geographical Interpretation, (The Guilford Press; 2004), p. 26 It is the fourth largest peninsula in the world and is composed of Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the partially recognised state of Somaliland. Although not common, some broader geopolitical definitions include parts or all of Kenya and Sudan.John I. Saeed, Somali – Volume 10 of London Oriental and African language library, (J. Benjamins: 1999), p. 250.Sandra Fullerton Joireman, Institutional Change in the Horn of Africa, (Universal-Publishers: 1997), p.1: "The Horn of Africa encompasses the countries of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia. These countries share similar peoples, languages, and geographical endowments." It has been described as a region of significant geopolitical and strategic importance, since it is situated along the southern boundary of the Red Sea; extending hundreds of kilometers into the Gulf of Aden, Guardafui Channel, and Indian Ocean. It shares a maritime border with the Arabian Peninsula.
The Horn of Africa commonly is referred to simply as "the Horn," while inhabitants are sometimes colloquially termed Horn Africans or Horners. The term Horn Africans or Horners, aside from its geographic context, is considered a coherent population label. Anthropologically, "Horn Africans" is used in a stricter sense, reserved for the Cushitic and Ethio‑Semitic speaking peoples, who constitute the core historical and demographical population of the Horn, rather than all groups living within the peninsula's borders. Regional studies on the Horn of Africa are carried out in the fields of Ethiopian studies and Somali studies.
Names The peninsula has been known by various names. The Ancient Romans referred to it as Regio Aromatica or Regio Cinnamonifora after the aromatic plants found there, or as Regio Incognita for its poor coverage by classical Mediterranean cartography. In ancient and medieval times, the Horn of Africa was referred to as Bilad al Barbar ("Land of the Berbers").J. D. Fage, Roland Oliver, Roland Anthony Oliver, The Cambridge History of Africa, (Cambridge University Press: 1977), p.190George Wynn Brereton Huntingford, Agatharchides, The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: With Some Extracts from Agatharkhidēs "On the Erythraean Sea", (Hakluyt Society: 1980), p.83 It is also known as the Somali Peninsula, or in the Somali language as Geeska Afrika or Jasiiradda Soomaali.Ciise, Jaamac Cumar. Taariikhdii daraawiishta iyo Sayid Maxamad Cabdille Xasan, 1895–1920. JC Ciise, 2005. In other local languages it is called the direct equivalent of "Horn of Africa" or "African Horn": in , in , in , and in .Teklehaimanot, Hailay Kidu. "A Mobile Based Tigrigna Language Learning Tool." International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies (iJIM) 9.2 (2015): 50–53.
Usage Geographic and geopolitical
The region geographically consists of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and the partially recognised state of Somaliland.Sandra Fullerton Joireman, Institutional Change in the Horn of Africa, (Universal-Publishers: 1997), p.1: "The Horn of Africa encompasses the countries of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia. These countries share similar peoples, languages, and geographical endowments." It covers approximately two million square kilometers (770,000 square miles) and is inhabited by roughly 115 million people (Ethiopia: 110 million, Somalia: 15.8 million, Eritrea: 6.4 million, and Djibouti: 921.8 thousand). These nations protrude from the continent in the shape resembling a horn. Geopolitically, the region consists of these same nations. The term is occasionally used to be inclusive of neighbouring southeast African countries to distinguish the broader geopolitical definition of the Horn of Africa from narrower peninsular definitions.Schreck, Carl J., and Fredrick HM Semazzi. "Variability of the recent climate of eastern Africa." International Journal of Climatology 24.6 (2004): 681–701.
Population
In genetics, linguistic and anthropological studies, the term is used as a label for those with a shared, distinct, commonality in their genetic structure, historical trajectories, cultural traits, and Afroasiatic languages. Genome‑wide studies of these populations identify two ancestry components largely restricted to the Horn: a differentiated African component termed 'Ethiopic' and a differentiated non‑African component termed 'Ethio‑Somali', which represent East African plus West Eurasian related admixture.
Peoples
Demographics and linguistics
The main groups are the Cushitic-speaking Cushitic peoples, traditionally centered in the lowlands, and the Ethio-semitic-speaking Habesha peoples, who inhabit the Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands. The most spoken Cushitic languages are: Oromo with ~30 million speakers, Somali with ~28 million speakers,Sidama with ~3 million speakers, and Afar with ~3 million speakers. The most spoken Ethio-semitic languages are: Amharic with ~32 million speakers, and Tigrinya with ~10 million speakers. Other Afroasiatic languages with a significant number of speakers include the Cushitic Saho, Hadiyya, and Agaw languages; the Semitic Tigre, Arabic, Gurage, Harari, Silt'e and Argobba tongues
Languages belonging to the Nilo-Saharan language family are spoken in some areas by Nilotic ethnic minorities in Ethiopia and Eritrea. These tongues include the Nilo-Saharan Me'en and Mursi languages used in southwestern Ethiopia, and Kunama and Nara idioms spoken in parts of southern Eritrea. Omotic languages are also spoken by Omotic communities inhabiting Ethiopia's southern regions. Among these languages are Aari, Dizi, Gamo, Kafa, Hamer and Wolaytta.
The Horn has, both modern and historically, utilised several indigenous writing systems. Among these is Ge'ez script ( ) (also known as Ethiopic), which has been written in for at least 2000 years.Rodolfo Fattovich, "Akkälä Guzay" in Uhlig, Siegbert, ed. Encyclopaedia Aethiopica: A-C. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz KG, 2003, p. 169. It is an abugida script that was originally developed to write the Ge'ez language. In speech communities that use it, such as the Amharic and Tigrinya, the script is called (), which means "script" or "alphabet". The Somali language was, for centuries, written using an adapted Arabic script known as wadaad's script. In the early 20th century, in response to a national campaign to settle on a writing script for the Somali language, which had since lost its ancient script,Ministry of Information and National Guidance, Somalia, The writing of the Somali language, (Ministry of Information and National Guidance: 1974), p.5 Osman Yusuf Kenadid, a Somali poet and cousin of the Sultan Yusuf Ali Kenadid, devised a phonetically sophisticated alphabet called Osmanya (also known as far soomaali; Osmanya: 𐒍𐒖𐒇 𐒈𐒝𐒑𐒛𐒐𐒘) for representing the sounds of Somali. Though no longer the official writing script in Somalia, the Osmanya script is available in the Unicode range 10480-104AF [from U+10480 – U+104AF (66688–66735)].
Genetics
Autosomal
Modern studies consistently show that Horn of Africans, those speaking Cushitic and Ethio‑Semitic, form a distinct cluster, deriving their genomes from a mix of local East African ancestry dubbed "Ethiopic" and substantial non‑African, West Eurasian, ancestry which Hodgson et al dub "Ethio-Somali"".
Genome‑wide analyses indicate that HOAs carry 40–60 % or more of this non‑African component, detectable in ADMIXTURE and principal component analyses setting them apart from other sub‑Saharan African populations. This non‑African component is often represented in analyses as a distinct "Ethio‑Somali" ancestral component, interpreted as an ancient back‑migration into northeast Africa, tied to the Afro‑Asiatic linguistic dispersal. This back‑migration signal shows affinities to ancestries typical of the Levant and North Africa; in combination with the "Ethiopic" African component, this places Horn populations in an intermediate genetic position between sub‑Saharan Africans and Middle Eastern/European populations in PCA space.
In addition to this Cushitic, Ethio-Somali, Eurasian component, HOAs carry a secondary southern Arabian related component that entered via the Red Sea corridor. This component is detectable in autosomal studies as a distinct West Eurasian ancestry not overlapping with the older Ethio‑Somali signal.
Unipaternal
Y-DNA Haplogroup E-M35 has the highest frequency in Horners, particularly its descendent E-M78 with a high diversity of subclades suggesting an ancient presence in the region, followed by various lineages belonging to Haplogroup J, specifically J1 and J2, as well as Haplogroup T-M184. Cruciani et al found E-M35 in approximately 57% of both Oromo and Amhara individuals.Cruciani et al. (2004) Phylogeographic Analysis of Haplogroup E3b (E-M215) Y Chromosomes Reveals Multiple Migratory Events Within and Out Of Africa The second most prevalent lineage Haplogroup J, has been found to exist at levels as high as 35.4% in the Amhara, of which 33.3% is of the type J1, while 2.1% is of J2 type. These lineages are also found in the neighbouring Tigrayans. Amongst Somalis, Haplogroup E-M78, specifically E-V32 is found in roughly 2/3 of the population with most of the remaining belonging either to T-M70 or J-P58.
mtDNA Maternal ancestry in northern Ethiopian populations, including Tigrayans, is dominated by African L haplogroups, which comprise about 60% of lineages. Consistent with other regions and groups like Somalis where it also comprises around 60% of lineages. The remaining 40% belong primarily to Eurasian-associated lineages such as M1 and subclades of haplogroup N.
History
Prehistory Some of the earliest Homo sapiens fossils, the Omo remains (from ca. 233,000 years ago) and the Herto skull (from ca. 160,000 ago) have been found in the region, both in Ethiopia.
The findings of the Earliest Stone Tipped Projectiles from the Ethiopian Rift dated to more than 279,000 years ago "in combination with the existing archaeological, fossil and genetic evidence, isolate East Africa as a source of modern cultures and biology."
According to the Southern Dispersal scenario, the Southern route of the Out of Africa migration occurred in the Horn of Africa through the Bab el Mandeb. Today at the Bab-el-Mandeb straits, the Red Sea is about wide, but 50,000 years ago it was much narrower and sea levels were 70 meters lower. Though the straits were never completely closed, there may have been islands in between which could be reached using simple rafts. Shell middens 125,000 years old have been found in Eritrea, indicating the diet of early humans included seafood obtained by beachcombing.
Ethiopian and Eritrean agriculture established the earliest known use of the seed grass teff (Poa abyssinica) between 4000 and 1000 BCE. Teff is used to make the flatbread injera/taita. Coffee originated in Ethiopia and has become a worldwide beverage.
Historian Christopher Ehret, cited genetic evidence which had identified the Horn of Africa as a source of a genetic marker "M35/215" Y-chromosome lineage for 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.
Ancient history