Christopher Ehret

Christopher Ehret (born July 27, 1941 ) is an American linguist and historian. He is a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and an internationally recognized expert on African history and African historical linguistics . He was best known for his approach to link linguistic taxonomy and archaeological knowledge.

Historical works

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

Linguistic works

Ehret's linguistic works include a reconstruction of the Proto- Nilosaharan (2002), the Proto- Afro-Asian (1995) and the Cushitic (1980). In methodological terms, he stands in the tradition of the young grammarians .

Anthropological works

More recently Ehret has dealt with the reconstruction of early human kinship systems. Recently he has also been interested in the transfer of the methods of linguistic reconstruction to anthropological and world-historical theory formation as well as the linking of linguistic and genetic findings.

Fonts

• The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800. University Press of Virginia, 2002.
• A Comparative Historical Reconstruction of Proto-Nilo-Saharan. Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, Cologne 2001.
• An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern Africa in World History, 1000 BC to AD 400. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville 1998.
• Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): Vowels, Tone, Consonants, and Vocabulary. University of California Press, Berkeley / Los Angeles 1995.
• The Archaeological and Linguistic Reconstruction of African History (as ed., Together with 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.

Web links

• Bio bibliography by Christopher Ehret