Regarding the Semitic branch in particular, a number of scholars postulate
an African origin of the linguistic family and its speakers.
George A. Barton, who wrote on Semitic and Hamitic Origins, spoke of an
“African origin and Arabian cradle-land of the Semites.” He opined in 1929.
“As many of the linguistic phenomena which Hamites and Semites possess in
common appear in the Hamitic languages in a more primitive form than in the
Semitic, the one theory which satisfies the facts is that the Hamito- Semitic
race originated in North Africa and the Sahara region, and that at a very early
time-say 10,000 to 8000 B.C. or earlier-some of this stock migrated to Arabiaprobably South Arabia via the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb-where they spread
over the peninsula in the course of subsequent millennia......
.....as Arabia suffered desiccation, in common with North Africa, they were
gradually forced to migrate in various directions in search of subsistence. It
was under this pressure that, by migration and mingling with other races, the
various Semitic nations of history, other than the Arabs, were formed.”
Dana Marniche’s (Historian and former adjunct instructor on world civilizations
with Masters in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago] conclusion is
appropriate here:
“the inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula…long after the time of Mohammed
shared the appearance of Ethiopians and other sub-Saharan Africans, as
well as customs of present day Africans stretching from the present country of
Sudan to Somalia in the East to Mauritania, Mali and Nigeria in the West .”
The following are the earliest recorded descriptions of the ancient Arabs
according to the well known and classic Muslim scholars.
Al-Mubarrad said:
"The Arabs used to take pride in their asmar and black complexion and
they used to hate a red (white) colour and very fair colour and they said
that it was the colour of the Persians ( and Romans )
" قال المبرد"العرب كانت تفتخر بالسمرة و السواد و كانت
تكره الحمرة و