Proto-Afroasiatic language

Proto-Afroasiatic is the hypothetical proto-language from which every modern Afroasiatic language descends, with scholarly estimates for when it was spoken ranging as far back as 16,000 to 10,000 BC, though a minority push the date as late as around 4000 BC, when Egyptian and Semitic first become documented. Most scholars place its homeland somewhere in West Asia or northeastern Africa, though no firm consensus exists on the exact location. It is reconstructed as ancestral to the Afroasiatic family's major branches, including Proto-Semitic, Archaic Egyptian, Proto-Berber, Proto-Chadic, Proto-Cushitic and Proto-Omotic.