Khalid,
I don't know if you have noticed for a while, but at this point my understanding of Somali is beyond forum debate level caliber.
And I can tell very very very clearly not everyone considered Madhibaan today were considered Madhibaan even 2 Centuries ago and not everyone considered "bilis" were considered "bilis" two centuries ago.
I can also legitimately argue a thesis pointing out moments in this dynamic history where such disparate number of oppressed groups even came together and became a force to be recognized.
Keep in mind, I am not alluding or not alluding anything to you or any other group, I am saying realistically my understanding of Somali history is at that level where I now at least have overcome the basic Ignorance.
Early British colonial writers lied about Madhibaan. They perpetuated a well recognized descriptive strategy based on fictionalized embellishment we now called "Sambo" effect. You can read about Sambo online but it wasn't only towards Madhibaan.
They lazily regurgitated the same tropes (engorging this meat after a hunt, blood running down their bodies, mindless ant like being who are good finding tracks for them, one incident or another where they save the author from a hunt inwhich they mindlessly again allegedly stab the animal with their arrows and daggers and then engorge on the scene) time and time again towards all they called "helot" tribes or groups we now identify as marginalized. It was always effected as an extreme juxtaposition, a sort of spoil to the majority of the land being brought in to the commonwealth as a constiuent member.
The people designed as audience for the stories weren't you or people in the culture, heck they could never imagine our lives right now.
The audience was supposed to be the sheltered influential society folk in upper class Europe needing to be shocked and entertained by the strange and wondrous world their countries were going to go civilize.
This is why;
1. The writings are all from a period and they completely and immediately cease once real administration was built and real anthropologists and scholars came to.study---not just the wild gamesman or extremely adventurous globe trotter looking for shock and awe but without any trained skills in ethnography.
2. The writings are all British.or the point of view they speak for or influenced, those sourcing them. Yet this perspective is fantastically missing from ITALIAN travelers who ironically saw a larger, and bigger proportion of the Somali people and lands.
3.
And the biggest and 1st clue of all that made me suspicious was, after employing critical observation, I noticed foundational inconsistencies that did not cosign with BASIC HUMAN EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY AND ANTHROLOLOGY;
As for dead meat, it doesn't even make scientific sense.
You have to understand the way the dead meat story is employed in Somali culture is not even Hunter-Gatherer. It is scavenger.
So do they eat collected carcass meat (scavenging) or do they eat foraged food/hunt meat (hunter-gatherer)?
Do they not know the cultural and evolutionary difference between SCAVENGING and HUNTING/GATHERING is even greater than Pastoralism and Agriculture?
Or did they not know using FIRE and going to HUNT is literally the moment one evolved from scavenging to hunting/gathering?
How about the fact that NOMADIC PASTORALISTS like Somalis are literal the half brother to hunting/gathering in comparison to the distant farmer?
The whole story is nothing more than the simple meanderings of small localized primitive myth creation.
At that time, I thought the caricature "which did not make sense" was naturally reflecting from Somali culture, but it is obvious now it was actually reflected from the imposed colonial readaptation that monopolized and owned the narrative informing how an already marginalized group was even retold back to the society they were within.
Yet, none of the folks from that era sufficiently understand the extent of the biological and anthropological inconsistency the fake caricatures would ultimately be betrayed by.
Hunting and gathering =/= scavenging
They were pointing out "allegedly" what they said were hunter/gathers while ascribing scavenger characteristics.
The discovery of fire was the most important cultural development in human history. It allowed humans to jump from scavenging TO hunting/gathering.
Hunting/gathering is as culturally evolved to scavenging as 4th ave New York living is evolved to hunting/gathering. I mean literally and figuratively.
There are no human scavengers for at least 200000 years.
Scavenging = "engorging" on uncooked, raw carcass
Hunting/gathering = going out to "hunt" meat rarher than growing or keeping domesticated animals
These are Hunter gathers
Notice that fire? Any scavenging early man that did not jump 200,000 lost the race. There have not been any existing human scavengers for that long.
So when they randomly equivocate "baqti" buu cunay (wild game/hunting) and *cayriin buu cunay" ((carcassscavenging?)----it tells basic human mind understanding the huge evolutionary distinction and wide cultural chasm between the two groups that the basic facts underpinning this story are probably non-existent.
It is like an alien describing humans " there are two kinds, one bigger and taller, hair in face, and betweem the legs something protrudes (penis/man?) and the other are small, long hair in head, but not on body,, and thr chest protrudea (breast/woman?).....and the bigger with protruding leg gives birth to a new one of their kind (the man gives birth?)----at that point, one expert would br like "yeah, I don't think you actually went to earth, are you just repeag