Hildiid,
The Afroasiatic uhrheimat may well have been in the Horn, but it is clear from its divisions that it did not remain localized there.
http://linguistics.byu.edu/classes/ling ... iatic.html
"Bomhard postulates that from Proto-Afroasiatic (henceforth PAA), Chadic was the first to break off. Omotic and Cushitic followed the example and split together, as did Egyptian, Berber, and Semitic in another group. Next, Egyptian followed by Berber split from the Semitic languages (Bomhard and Kearns 1994:24)"
On the map in this article the Semitic presence west of about Libya is due to the presence of Arabic from the Muslim conquests. The native Omotic and Cushitic groups were initially to the south, the Egyptian, Berber and basal Semitic groups to the north.
http://archaeology.about.com/od/kterms/qt/kerma.htm
The early Cushitic speakers were in the southeastern Sahara and later on the Plains around the Nile river in the Sudan. They were cattle herders and grain, bean and flax farmers, and were very likely involved in the domestication of both an African strain of cattle and the domestic donkey, which is exclusively from the wild Nubian strain. They are known to have supplied cattle to Egypt, but the archaeology of the area is still in it's infancy so we don't have a chronology.
http://archaeology.about.com/od/domesti ... cattle.htm
http://archaeology.about.com/od/domesti ... onkeys.htm
"Scholars are divided about the likelihood of a third domestication event having occurred in Africa. The earliest domesticated cattle in Africa have been found at Capeletti, Algeria, about 6500 BP, but Bos remains are found at African sites in what is now Egypt, such as Nabta Playa and Bir Kiseiba as long ago as 9,000 years, and they may be domesticated. Early cattle remains have also been found at Wadi el-Arab (8500-6000 BC) and El Barga (6000-5500 BC)."
http://www.enzimuseum.org/after-the-sto ... ast-africa
"The earliest livestock bones in East Africa were recovered at Dongodien, in the Koobi Fora area on the east side of Lake Turkana. Radiocarbon dating suggests an age of approximately four thousand years ago. Both bones of cattle (mostly Bos Taurus, a humpless species. Bos Indicus, or Zebu, a humped, more common today in the North was introduced starting from AD 100, from the East African coast) and goats, or caprines (goat-like), were recovered. More evidence dated to approximately thirty-five hundred to four thousand years ago was also excavated at the Ileret Stone Bowl site on the northeast side of Lake Turkana."
(link 1)
"The Southern Cushites were the second earliest inhabitants of Kenya after the indigenous Bushman hunter-gatherer groups, and the first of the Cushitic-speaking people to migrate from their homeland in the Horn of Africa about 2000 years ago. They were progressively displaced in a southerly direction and/or absorbed by incoming Nilotic and Bantu groups until they wound up in Tanzania. As a consequence of these movements, there are no longer any Southern Cushites left in Kenya.
The Eastern Cushites include the Oromo and the Somali, of which the Somali are the most recent arrivals to Kenya, having first come from Somalia only a few centuries ago."
Here is what the Oromo have to say:
(link 2)
"The land of Cush, Nubia or the ancient Ethiopia in middle and lower Nile is the home of the Cushitic speakers. It was most probably from there that they subsequently dispersed and became differentiated into separate linguistic and cultural groups. The various Cushitic nations inhabiting north-east and east Africa today are the result of this dispersion and differentiation. The Oromo form one of those groups which spread southwards, and then east and west occupying large part of the Horn of Africa. "
"
, in older Somali it probably meant to copulate with a woman but now it just means intercourse.
