Proto-Semitic language

Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical proto-language ancestral to historical Semitic languages of the Middle East. Places which have been proposed for its original Urheimat include northern Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Levant, with a 2009 study proposing that it may have originated about 3800 BCE. Semitic is considered a subfamily of the larger Afroasiatic macrofamily.

The earliest attestations of a Semitic language are in Akkadian, dating to around the 23rd century BCE (see Sargon of Akkad) and the Eblaite language, but earlier evidence of Akkadian comes from personal names in Sumerian texts around 2800 BCE. Researchers in Egypt also claim to have discovered Canaanite snake spells: "The passages date from between 2400 to 3000 B.C. and appear to be written in Proto-Canaanite, a direct ancestor of biblical Hebrew."

The specific appearance of the donkey, an African animal, in Proto-Semitic, but total absence of any reference to the wheel or wheeled vehicles, dates Proto-Semitic rather narrowly to between 3800 BCE and 3500 BCE.

Semiticists have put importance in locating the Urheimat of the Proto-Semitic language since all modern Semitic languages can be traced back to a common ancestor. The Urheimat of the Proto-Semites cannot be determined without considering the larger Afro-Asiatic family to which it belongs. The previously popular Arabian Urheimat hypothesis has been largely abandoned since the region could not have supported massive waves of emigration before the domestication of camels in the second millennium BC.

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