The first rulers listed in Genesis 4-6 lived in the Chad Basin during the late Holocene. This includes Kain, Seth, Enoch and Noah. At that time Lake Chad had an area of close to 200,000 miles. As the climate changed and the water level receded, what was once a single lake became at least three separate lakes: Lake Chad, Lake Bodele and Lake Fitri. The 10,000 year skeletons unearthed by Paul Sereno at Gobero in Niger were buried on the edge of a paleolake on the northwestern rim of the Chad Basin. The Gobero site is the earliest known cemetery in the Sahara and the large lake was likely another part of Lake Mega-Chad.
Noah and the other Chadic rulers of Genesis controlled commerce on the interconnected waters systems. These were their roads by which they conquered other territories and spread their worldview.
The Oldest Known Language
The “Dufuna boat” is about 4000 years older than the oldest boat found in Egypt. It was found in Borno.
Chadic is one of the best researched branches of the Afro-Asiatic language phylum. According to Genesis, the first rulers: Kain, Seth and Enoch are associated with the region where Chadic is spoken. This includes Chad, Northern Cameroon, Northern Nigeria, and Southeastern Niger in an area around Lake Chad. The area is called Bor’No, which means “Land of Noah.” This is the only region on Earth that has place names reflecting the rulers listed in Genesis 4 and 5.
Chadic is the most diversified of the Afro-Asiatic languages and considered the most ancient subgroup within the Afro-Asiatic phylum. The antiquity of Chadic river populations is attested by the discovery of an 8000 year old black mohagany dugout in Dufuna in the Upper Yobe valley along the Komadugu Guna River in Northern Nigeria. This region was much wetter at the time that the rulers listed in Genesis lived there.
Map shows Kano and Borno and related kingdoms extending to the Nile in 1750.
Berbers were called “El-Barbar” by the Arabs, it is very probable that the modern European languages adopted it from the Arabic language. The Arabs didn’t use the name “El-Barbar” as a negative, not being aware of the origin of that name; they supposedly created some myths or stories about the name. The most notorious myth considers “Barbar” as an ancestor of the Berbers. According to that myth, the Berbers were the descendants of Ham, the son of Noah, the son of Barbar, the son of Tamalla, the son of Mazigh, the son of Canon… ([Ibn Khaldun]/ The History of Ibn Khaldun – Chapter III).http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/berber
Kano-Nok-Borno is the region where some of Abraham’s ancestors lived. Bor-no means “Land of Noah.” Kano refers to Kain (Cain) and Nok appears in the Bible as the name Ha’nock. [R]
It was a time when the major water systems of West Central Africa were connected. Around 8000 years ago Lake Chad had an area of 249,000 miles (400,000 km) and a depth of 586 feet. The Komadugu Guna River connected Lake Chad and the Benue Trough, making it possible to travel by boat from Lake Chad to the Atlantic Ocean.
Benue Trough
Genesis tells the story of how Kain left his home and went eastward to a place where he married the daughter of a Chadic chief named Nok (Enoch) and built and named a “city” after his firstborn son Enoch. Enoch the Younger was named by Kain’s wife after her father, indicating that she was Kain’s cousin and her firstborn was heir to the throne of his maternal grandfather. We can place Kain and Enoch in the region of Northern Nigeria (Nok and Kano).
Genesis then tells us about Lamech who had two wives, typical of the pattern of the Chadic rulers. By one wife he had a daughter named Naamah who married her patrilineal cousin or uncle Methuselah and named their firstborn son Lamech, after her father. Lamech the Younger was the heir to the throne of his maternal grandfather.
Lamech the Younger was the father of Noah, a Chadic ruler whose terriotry included Bor’No, meaning “Land of Noah.” It is in the region of Lake Chad, which at the time that Noah lived was a very large lake. Noah’s flood was likely the result of a monsoon which swelled the lake region over which Noah ruled.
Noah’s three sons were Ham, Shem and Japheth. Ham and Shem appear to have been the firstborn sons by two different wives and the leading Chadic lines descending from Noah. The exclusive intermarriage of their lines has been confirmed by analysis of the Genesis 4 and 5 data and by mtDNA studies. The mtDNA (L3f) of Chadic speaking populations involves a relatively homogenous group, with lower diversification than the other Afro-Asiatic branches, including the Semitic and Kushitic. The most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) of the L3f dates to about 8000 years ago, the same time period that Noah would have lived with his two wives to whom he was related by blood.
These rulers had two wives. This meant that there were two first born sons. The son of the first wife ascended to the throne of his biological father. The first born son of the second wife served as a sort of Prime Minister in the kingdom or territory of his maternal grandfather, after whom he was named.
Other sons were sent-away. As Ham and Shem were the ruling sons, Japheth was likely a sent-away son who moved into the Upper Nile region where some of his descendants have been identified as the Magyar-ab (the Magyar people). Likely there was intermarriage between Nilotic peoples and Chadic, especially in the case of Japheth. This has been confirmed by mtDNA studies of the L3f haplogroup that show that the only non-Chad Basin sequence in the L3f3 subhaplogroup is from the Upper Nile or Nubia. The TMRCA of the L3f3 sub-haplogroup is 8,000 years ago, which aligns with the data from the Genesis 4-5 king lists, as well as the evidence from archaeology, linguistics and biblical anthropology. Ancient Nubians included red, black, and brown people.
Other of Japheth’s descendants moved north into what is today the region of Hungary. Hungarians called themselves “Magyar.”
Recent investigations of three archaeological sites in the Nigerian part of the Chad Basin during the Holocene reveal key stages in the cultural development and environmental history of that region. At Dufuna, a dugout boat was dated to around 6000 BC, making it the oldest known boat in Africa and one of the oldest in the world. Boats may thus have contributed to the mobility of the population of the southern edge of the Sahara 8000 years ago and, thereby, to the cultural homogeneity of this period. The pottery site at Konduga is around a thousand years younger than Dufuna but still belongs to the time of Mega-Chad. The site is on the Bama Ridge, an old shoreline. Its pottery, decorated in the Saharan tradition, belongs to the earliest ceramic phase of the West African Later Stone Age, long before the beginnings of food production. Although this site was probably settled by pioneers advancing into a largely flooded landscape along the slightly raised shoreline, the human occupation of the area previously covered by Mega-Chad began along a broad front around 2000 BC. Archaeological and palaeoecological finds from two settlement mounds at Gajiganna are described as case studies for this phase, which predates the well-known site of Daima. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01956304#page-1
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Africa in the Days of Noah
The “Dufuna boat” is about 4000 years older than the oldest boat found in Egypt. The 8000 year old black mahogany dugout found in the region of Lake Chad, in the Land of Noah.
8000 year old black mahogany dugout found in the region of Lake Chad, in the Land of Noah. TheDufuna dugout was buried at a depth of 16 feet under clays and sands whose alternating sequence showed evidence of deposition in standing and flowing water. The dugout is 8000 years old. By comparison, Egypt’s oldest boat is only about 5000 years old.Peter Breunig of the University of Frankfurt, Germany, an archaeologist involved in uncovering the Dufuna boat, reports that the canoe’s age “forces a reconsideration of Africa’s role in the history of water transport”. He adds, “that the cultural history of Africa was not determined by Near Eastern and European influences but took its own, in many cases parallel, course”. According to Breunig, “The bow and stern are both carefully worked to points, giving the boat a notably more elegant form”, compared to “the dugout made of conifer wood from Pesse in the Netherlands, whose blunt ends and thick sides seem crude”. To go by its stylistic sophistication, he reasons, “It is highly probable that the Dufuna boat does not represent the beginning of a tradition, but had already undergone a long development, and that the origins of water transport in Africa lie even further back in time.”Indeed, the Dufana dugout was found in what is now the Sahara desert, but in the days of Noah this region of wet and the major water systems were interconnected. Lake Chad, a freshwater lake located in west-central Africa, was then a sea. Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Niger all have shorelines on Lake Chad. This is the only place on the surface fo the earth that claims to be Noah’s homeland – Bor-No, meaning Land of Noah. Noah’s boat probably came to rest on Mount Meru in Tanzania, also called Mount Kenya. Or it may have landed on a mountain in eastern Niger.
About 8000 years ago, the Chadic Sea was about 600 feet deep and sustained boating and fishing industries. The average fishermen used canoe dugouts (as shown above) which they could carve themselves, but nobles used boats constructed of marsh reeds lashed together and sealed with pitch.
Between 10,000 and 8000 BC the climate changed, ushering in years of persistent, heavy rains. The Nile was transformed from a slow stream into a roaring river with mile-deep gorges. This was the beginning of the wet period that would turn the Sahara into vast grasslands able to support elephants, antelopes, gazelles, ostriches, giraffes, and hyenas.Lakes formed in the basins, large enough to support fish, crocodile and hippopotamus. Early hunters camped along the lakes, as evidenced by heaps of domestic refuse at many sites along the lakeshores. Lake Chad filled and merged with the Mega-Chad Sea, creating a body of water comparable in size to the state of Sudan. The overflow spilled southwest out the Benue River to the Atlantic.
Kanemi Empire of Bornu
The flood of Noah likely occurred during the late Holocent Wet Period which lasted from about 10,000 to 3000 B.C. During the peak of the rainy period, around 8000, Mega-Chad would have covered 157,000 square miles. The surrounding land was spongy and there was great flooding at the confluence of the Niger, Benue, Yobe and Osimili Rivers. The floodwaters created a disaster of such proportions that it is still remembered. Rainbows would have been a common sight over the region due to rising mists.
In the ancient world, regional chiefs controlled rivers, lakes and wells from west central Africa to the Indus River Valley. The region where Lake Chad is located is called “Bor-no”, the “Land of Noah”, suggesting that Noah controlled the water commerce in the area. As a chief he would have had access to the best and the most plentiful supply of boat building materials and shipwrights.
Since the worst flooding occurred about 8500 years ago we can assume that Noah ruled this region at that time. Noah was a figure of such importance that a great portion of the Genesis Prehistory pertains to him. We are told that the land of Noah was tilled and there were grape vines. In the late 1980s, German archaeologists found remains of wine making equipment in the tomb of the ancient Nubian king Scorpion I (dating to about 3150 BC). That find consisted of grape seeds, grape skins, dried pulp and imported ceramic jars covered inside with a yellow residue chemically consistent with wine. Ancient Egyptian murals depict details of wine-making. Egyptians flavored their wines with tree resins, herbs, and figs.
An oracle concerning Noah states, “This one shall bring us relief from our work and the toil of our hands.” (Genesis 5:29) We are also told that Noah was drunk with wine on at least one occasion.
Many factors caused population migration from the area of Bor-No. The region suffered the effects of a massive volcanic explosion on the floor of the Dead Sea. The eruption caused earthquakes and likely more severe flooding. The loss of life and homesteads among the peoples living in the southern edge of Lake Chad was apparently great and archeaologists report that the area shows no evidence or rehabitation for at least 200 years.
Doubtless the territories of the lake region declined in power and influence as a result of the Monsoon Belt moved more to the south and the desert began to encroach. This caused people to move toward the Nile and the center of political power moved from central west Africa to eastern Sudan, Egypt and Canaan.
