7000–5000 BCE: (The Spread of the Religion of Divinity Across Language Family Boundaries — Around the Seventh or Sixth Millennium BCE the Idea of Divinity Sp…

7000–5000 BCE: (The Spread of the Religion of Divinity Across Language Family Boundaries — Around the Seventh or Sixth Millennium BCE the Idea of Divinity Spreading from Nilo-Saharan Speakers to Neighboring Cushitic-Speaking Peoples in the Horn of Africa, Then Diffusing from Cushitic Speakers to Many Omotic-Speaking Peoples of the Southern Ethiopian Highlands, Widely Replacing the More Ancient Henotheism of the Earliest Afrasian-Speaking Peoples Except Among a Few Omotic Societies in the Farther Southwestern Highlands, Demonstrating That Religious Systems Could Spread to New Areas and Peoples Even Well Before Long-Distance Commerce or Written Records): The religion of Divinity provides an example for historians of the capacity of religious systems to spread to new areas and peoples even well before the eras of long-distance commerce or written records. Early on — the overall evidence indicates the period around the seventh or sixth millennium BCE — the idea of Divinity spread from Nilo-Saharan speakers to neighboring societies in the Horn of Africa who spoke very early languages of the Cushitic branch of the Afrasian language family. From the Cushitic speakers this religion then diffused subsequently to many of the Omotic-speaking peoples of the southern Ethiopian Highlands. Across all these regions the belief in Divinity widely replaced the more ancient henotheism of the earliest Afrasian-speaking peoples, except among a few Omotic societies in the farther southwestern Ethiopian Highlands, where henotheism persisted as a relict. The spread of the Divinity religion across language family boundaries is one of the most significant findings in the entire book. A religious idea — a conception of the divine — originated among Nilo-Saharan speakers and then crossed the linguistic boundary into the Afrasian-speaking world, replacing the older henotheistic system among Cushitic and Omotic peoples. This happened in the seventh or sixth millennium BCE, thousands of years before the first written records, thousands of years before long-distance trade networks, thousands of years before missionaries or empires. Ideas travel. They travel across language boundaries, across cultural boundaries, across the deepest divisions of human linguistic geography. And in Africa, they were traveling — and transforming entire religious landscapes — at a time when the Western narrative has nothing to say about the history of ideas at all, because the Western narrative has no tools for accessing a history that predates writing. Ehret’s tools — comparative linguistics, reconstructed vocabularies, relict distributions — access it with precision and confidence.