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James Dahl wrote:The original inhabitants of the Shabeele/Jubba valleys were the Orma, ancestors of the Digil, Borana, Rendille, Tunni, Jiddu etc.

I thought the sab clans were in the area, the ancesters of the digil and mirifle?
are you saying they are orma?

I always believed that the samaale and sab clan originated in lake tana area, and started moving away lilnguistically after seperating in southern somalia as samale moved north, and sab stayed in the shabele area.

You're not wrong, Sab (aka Sabbo aka Saabe) is the big moiety of Orma, the other one is Goona.

Orma is the same thing as Oromo, also sometimes called Oroma or Ormo. Orma later split into two confederacies, the eastern one (Borana) and the western one (Barentu)

Modern Oromo are mostly from conquered and "Oromized" tribes though, so it's not directly equivalent. Orma is the original "root" people, and the ancestors or more than just Borana.

Modern Oromo have Samaale (Saamaalo) clans in Goona, so it's a complete mess haha.

I think the 9 sons of Samaale were originally confederacies as well, not sons exactly, more like moieties or sub-tribes of ancient Berberica/Punt

makes sense, i think claims of geneological lineage started after islam,
the majority of clans were confederacies and may have even contained different langauge groups.
once you accept this, the picture of ancient horn is less confusing.