Who we are

It'sclear that most of us would hastily answer the aforementioned question by saying we came from arabs,due to our long history of cultural, religious, and trade ties with the Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula,or some of us may claim that our ancestries came from the other side of the indian ocean( Indiansubcontinent), while others may argue that our ancestries traces back to the ancient persians and Egyptians .So isn’t our origin race quite intresting topic?! ,isn’t that confusion allow us to ask ourselves''Who we are?!. Before we answer to that question we have to consider the scientific methods and historical facts on the ground

A typical Somali person

The most accepted fact of the origin of human being among the scientific community is that all mankind began in the horn of Africa as fossils and other evidence shows. Even Prehistoric cave paintings and other evidence in the horn of Africa showed that the natives in the area have had the same features and traditional lifestyles as they have lived during prehistoric times. Therefore, the first humans looked like the way we Somalis, Eritreans, Ethiopians, and Djiboutians look like.

In according to the findings of such study that most of the genes of Somalis are indigenous and find only among themselves, the small percentage we share with Eurasian and Arabs can be disputed, as some genes found in Eurasians are prominent among Somalis and Horn of Africans in general, it is also possible that those genes originated among Horn of Africans and their presence in Eurasian is a trace of their African heritage. Same goes for the tiny percentage to sub-Saharan ancestry.

Map of the horn of Africa where humans originated

However, it is clear that the Somalis living in the Horn of Africa were a very ancient people of far more than 10,000 years B.C., much before the oldest civilization of Egypt which developed only about 5,000 years B.C. The historical fossil records tells of tall people with long and narrow heads, faces and noses who lived a few thousand years B.C. Thus, we Somalis must feel proud that archaeological and physical anthropological researches have conclusively established that the Somalis have been a very ancient people who have been living in their present land for about 40 or 50 thousand years.

So the idea saying that Somalis and other Horn of Africans are mixed or have Arab ancestry as some of us claimed is not correct. Also, we Somalis are known for being the most homogeneous people in Africa and in the world. We Somalis are one ethnic group, share one religion, one language, one country, and one common ancestor. It is believed that our common ancestors migrated from the highlands of Ethiopia towards the Somalian Peninsula, as we share common ancestor with the Cushitic people in Ethiopia, the Afars, Oromos and Rendille people in Kenya. So we are neither Arabs nor came from them but sounds logically Vice Versa, We are, indeed, a very ancient people, one of the oldest in the world.

To sum up, it is clear that we Somalis are always obsessed with self denial, and it came as no surprise to me that some of us still claim such outdated hearsay and unverified information, that caused them to deny theirown history and existence.

Written by:Ahmed Hassan Ibrahim.

PS:any debate about this crucial topic is very well welcomed and appreciated thanks all.