Christopher Ehret

Christopher Ehret ( born 1941 ) is an American professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and an internationally recognized expert on African history and African historical linguistics. He was known especially for his approach to link linguistic taxonomy and archaeological findings with each other.

Historical works

In An African Classical Age (1998 ), he explains his thesis that the era of 1000 BC was a "classic era " to 400 AD in East Africa, where several key technologies and social structures first took shape. His book Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800 (2002) spans the African history from the end of the last Ice Age to the end of the 18th century. Together with the archaeologist Merrick Posnansky 1982, he published the standard work The Archaeological and Linguistic Reconstruction of African History, which establishes links between linguistic and archaeological research in various parts of Africa.

Linguistic works

To Ehret's linguistic work includes a reconstruction of the Proto - Nilo-Saharan (2002), the proto - Afro Asian (1995 ) and Cushitic (1980). In terms of methodology, he stands in the tradition of neo-grammarians.

Anthropological works

More recently, Ehret has been dealing with the reconstruction of early human kinship systems. His interest is now also transfer the methods of linguistic reconstruction on anthropological and world-historical theory and linking linguistic and genetic findings.

Publications (selection)

  • The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800 University Press of Virginia, 2002..
  • A Comparative Historical Reconstruction of Proto - Nilo- Saharan. Rudiger Koppe Verlag, Cologne, 2001.
  • An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern Africa in World History, 1000 BC to A.D. 400th University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1998.
  • The Archaeological and Linguistic Reconstruction of African History ( as ed., together with a couple Merrick Posnansky ). University of California Press, Berkeley / Los Angeles 1982.
  • The Historical Reconstruction of Southern Cushitic Phonology and Vocabulary. Reimer, Berlin 1980.
  • Ethiopians and East Africans: The Problem of Contacts. East African Publishing House, Nairobi 1974.
  • Southern Nilotic History: Linguistic Approaches to the Study of the Past. Northwestern University Press, Evanston 1971.
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