I'm Ijaw (Ijọ, Kalabari-Ibani/Okirika) and Igbo. I made an account because I found some interesting things when researching our languages and I wanted to get some insight from knowledgeable Ijaw people about this and our history:

A) ​Ijaw is the oldest Niger-Congo language in Nigeria and likely the second oldest of all the Niger-Congo languages. This has been confirmed by decades of linguistic studies (see diagram by Roger Blench attached). The Ijaw language's closest relatives in West Africa are the Dogon and Mande languages in Mali!

I can confirm, while listening to videos of 350 different Niger-Congo languages, Dogon and Jula (Mande) were the most familiar/similar to Kalabari Ijaw to me. This was before I knew they were relatives, so there's no confirmation bias here!

B) Even more interesting: Ijaw shares a relationship with Kordofanian languages in SUDAN—more specifically, Katla-Rashad (See map attached)! The people who speak these languages are relatively isolated in the mountains and hills of Nuba. There are a lot of similar word cognates to Kalabari Ijaw.

C) I took a DNA test a couple months ago and it actually revealed some distant ancestry from Southern East Africa. According to the test, I have an ancestor that was born between 1720-1810 who had 100% Southern East African ancestry. This is relatively recent for westward African human migration. That's only 200-300 years ago.

This is very intriguing and I want to learn more. Can anyone, Ijaw or otherwise, offer some insight into this?

1. How were our ancestors able to preserve the Ijaw language for THIS long when we frequently traded, traveled by canoe, and interacted with so many different people?

2. Have you heard of our people coming from Sudan or anywhere in East Africa? Ijaws kept detailed records of our history. If it was happening as recently as 2-300 years ago, there should be accounts of that, right?

Okrika people are not from Sudan.

BlackSaints:
Okrika people are not from Sudan.

We're "from" the Niger Delta. But linguistic studies point to origins in the southern area of Sudan. I want to know why that is. Ijaw is a uniquely isolated language. For it to share relationships with languages in Mali and Sudan, and not its neighboring languages means it broke off from the original Proto-NC language early and we've somehow managed to preserved it all these years.

Also, it was my mom's Okirika mtDNA that placed my 6th great-grandparent in East Africa lol.

Ijoh:
Ijaw is the oldest tribe in Nigeria and one of the oldest tribes in Africa.


Ijaw have always occupied the coasts of West Africa for thousands of years.

The Kru people of Liberia are our close relations. Didier Drogba is Ijaw from Ivory Coast Kru

Kru are Ijaws.

I wouldn't say that. They're definitely an older group than most other N-C groups, but Ijaw is far older than Kru linguistically. There's about 7 other language families that break off from the Proto-NC language tree in between Ijoid and Kru. It's more distant.

Dogon and Mande (Mali), Katlaic and Rashadic (Sudan) remain our closest known language families.

Also, Drogba actually belongs to a Mande ethnic group, not Kru!

Nice topic. I guess now would be as good a time as any for me to share some things.

I want to start with that language family tree in the first post. There is only one point I want to drive home. Language family trees do not encode any temporal information. So when you look at these language family trees, it's not actually saying anything about time. It's all about genetic relationship, a.k.a. language features.

Let me make a comparison with the human family tree. The human family tree shows genetic descent of people, but it also encodes a sense of time. We know for instance that a father and a mother are older than the descendent children. We know that grand parents are even considerably older than the descendent children. Ultimately, we understand that the further up you go in a human family tree, the further back in time you are. Language family trees have the exact same concept as human family trees, minus the concept of time. So, going all the way up to Dogon does not actually mean that Dogon is the oldest branch. A different tool (glottochronology) is used by linguists to get a sense of time for when languages diverge. In the case of Dogon, even though it is high up in the language family tree, it actually has a time of 4000 BP (Before Present), making it as young as Bantu. While Mande, which is lower down the tree than Dogon actually has a time of 6000 BP, making the Mande group of languages considerably older than the Dogon group of languages.

Long story short, the language family trees are only used to show relatedness or divergence with no sense of time or scale. So, in the case of Ijo, how do we interpret this tree? Basically, as such:

Ijo language belongs to a yet unknown branch (call it proto-Ijoid) that originally diverged with similar features as Dogon and to a lesser extent Mande. Do we have an idea of when proto-Ijoid diverged? No. However, linguists do have some theories about modern Ijo that might shed some light on proto-Ijoid, and this is where it gets interesting for Ijo.

The surviving Ijoid branch has a dating of 3000 BP. That is young. From a linguistic perspective, 3000 BP suggests that the surviving Ijoid lects, diffused into the Delta rather recently. Now, typically, I will always state that we can separate the movement of language from the movement of people. However, Ijo is a rather special case. Ijo has some language innovations that are simply shocking, compared to the rest of the Niger-Congo group. These innovations, plus the fact that Ijo lexicon fully reconstruct fishery terminology, suggests that the branch which Ijoid belongs to has been isolated from the rest of the typically agrarian Niger-Congo family for a very long time. Maybe, in fact, for reasons unknown to us, it's been isolated since its inception. This makes modern Ijo rather special in the sense that we can maybe guarantee that the movement of the language equates to the movement of the people. In other words, Ijo people entered the Delta rather recently. It might be interesting to re-examine Ijo oral traditions with this linguistic understanding.

But what does this say about proto-Ijoid? The linguistic analysis suggests that proto-Ijoid was isolated elsewhere and not within the Niger Delta. One linguist, Roger Blench, believes there is a possibility that proto-Ijoid resided further east. How far east is uncertain. I suspect Blench may not have been thinking of Sudan, but since Blench did not explain any further than "east of the Delta", we cannot know for sure. Perhaps he did.

I say, if we can eventually identify a confluence for proto-Niger-Congo, then we can probably suggest that the Ijoid branch got isolated somewhere near there.

Anyhow, I see there are two specific questions in the original post. I can really only provide an supposition to question #1. In short, the proto-Niger-Congo has an estimated date of 10,000 BP. The Ijoid branch was isolated for such a long time and was able to successfully remain isolated for perhaps seven of those 10,000 years. If we take this isolation along with the highly acquatic lexicon, we can see that the proto-Ijoid branch likely did not compete for resources with their agrarian counterparts. So it's possible that proto-Ijoid had limited contact with other Niger-Congo branches until it entered the Delta. That would explain how the language could have been preserved the way it was.

ChinenyeN:
Nice topic. I guess now would be as good a time as any for me to share some things.

I want to start with that language family tree in the first post. There is only one point I want to drive home. Language family trees do not encode any temporal information. So when you look at these language family trees, it's not actually saying anything about time. It's all about genetic relationship, a.k.a. language features.

Let me make a comparison with the human family tree. The human family tree shows genetic descent of people, but it also encodes a sense of time. We know for instance that a father and a mother are older than the descendent children. We know that grand parents are even considerably older than the descendent children. Ultimately, we understand that the further up you go in a human family tree, the further back in time you are. Language family trees have the exact same concept as human family trees, minus the concept of time. So, going all the way up to Dogon does not actually mean that Dogon is the oldest branch. A different tool (glottochronology) is used by linguists to get a sense of time for when languages diverge. In the case of Dogon, even though it is high up in the language family tree, it actually has a time of 4000 BP (Before Present), making it as young as Bantu. While Mande, which is lower down the tree than Dogon actually has a time of 6000 BP, making the Mande group of languages considerably older than the Dogon group of languages.

Long story short, the language family trees are only used to show relatedness or divergence with no sense of time or scale. So, in the case of Ijo, how do we interpret this tree? Basically, as such:

Ijo language belongs to a yet unknown branch (call it proto-Ijoid) that originally diverged with similar features as Dogon and to a lesser extent Mande. Do we have an idea of when proto-Ijoid diverged? No. However, linguists do have some theories about modern Ijo that might shed some light on proto-Ijoid, and this is where it gets interesting for Ijo.

The surviving Ijoid branch has a dating of 3000 BP. That is young. From a linguistic perspective, 3000 BP suggests that the surviving Ijoid lects, diffused into the Delta rather recently. Now, typically, I will always state that we can separate the movement of language from the movement of people. However, Ijo is a rather special case. Ijo has some language innovations that are simply shocking, compared to the rest of the Niger-Congo group. These innovations, plus the fact that Ijo lexicon fully reconstruct fishery terminology, suggests that the branch which Ijoid belongs to has been isolated from the rest of the typically agrarian Niger-Congo family for a very long time. Maybe, in fact, for reasons unknown to us, it's been isolated since its inception. This makes modern Ijo rather special in the sense that we can maybe guarantee that the movement of the language equates to the movement of the people. In other words, Ijo people entered the Delta rather recently. It might be interesting to re-examine Ijo oral traditions with this linguistic understanding. Tangent, but related. I think our oral traditions borrow from each other or come from some source that predates us. When there's a gap in an Ijaw story, I look to Edo, etc., and it fills the gap. Also, most of the Niger-Congo root words are mutations of each other and describe the same class of things. Guess I'll have to make another post about it but they all deal with aspects of our religion/deities. I stay clear of egyptology for many reasons, but I can't ignore some of the obvious derivations from medu neters (particularly Shu and Geb).

But what does this say about proto-Ijoid? The linguistic analysis suggests that proto-Ijoid was isolated elsewhere and not within the Niger Delta. One linguist, Roger Blench, believes there is a possibility that proto-Ijoid resided further east. How far east is uncertain. I suspect Blench may not have been thinking of Sudan, but since Blench did not explain any further than "east of the Delta", we cannot know for sure. Perhaps he did. I wonder where in that Great Lakes region would they be isolated? Though there's similarities in all N-C words (esp words of nature and numbers), I can't quite shake the Swahili word for mother being the exact same in Ijaw (Nyingi). If all else fails, we'll assume the Ijaw are from Wakanda.

I say, if we can eventually identify a confluence for proto-Niger-Congo, then we can probably suggest that the Ijoid branch got isolated somewhere near there.

Anyhow, I see there are two specific questions in the original post. I can really only provide an supposition to question #1. In short, the proto-Niger-Congo has an estimated date of 10,000 BP. The Ijoid branch was isolated for such a long time and was able to successfully remain isolated for perhaps seven of those 10,000 years. If we take this isolation along with the highly acquatic lexicon, we can see that the proto-Ijoid branch likely did not compete for resources with their agrarian counterparts. So it's possible that proto-Ijoid had limited contact with other Niger-Congo branches until it entered the Delta. That would explain how the language could have been preserved the way it was.

First, thank you so much for correcting me on the proper way to read a language tree. Good to know!

Second, this was amazing and insightful! I actually saw this reply last week and did some research...there's strong indication that Ijọs might have migrated from the African Great Lakes area in East Africa no more than 2-300ish years ago!

Would be nice if an official population study could be done (esp genealogical). I wrote about this elsewhere, so I'll just copy and paste it here. I'd appreciate your thoughts and criticisms:


Memorable Title Or Something
There's strong indications that Ijaws have only lived in Nigeria for 2-300 years (all of us). It appears our ancestors might have settled along the shores of the African Great Lakes area for ~2000 years before that. This is consistent with our ancestors' aquatic, voyaging lifestyle since the area is filled with waterways. If this is true, that means our true "ancestral homeland" (for the Holocene period) is in SouthEast Africa and that we have only been "West African" for a couple hundred years!

Overview of African migration
Technically, we all originated in East Africa. It's where the oldest human remains were found. There were several migrations out, in and all within the continent for thousands of years. Earlier L3e mtDNA haplogroups expanded through Sudanic and Chadic regions, and then settled in present day Cameroon/Nigeria ~2001-36,000 years ago. This period is called the Pleistocene period. Then, starting ~2000 years ago during the Bantu Migration, the L3e haplogroup expanded again into many areas in and out of Africa, especially Southern and Eastern Africa. That's how the L3e2a1b1 haplogroup likely found itself in the Great Lakes region. The period starting 2000 years ago to present day is called the Holocene period. This is the period I'm referring to when I say we likely came from East Africa.

Findings
I think most knowledgeable Nigerians suspected this, but it's likely that Ijaw languages (Ijaw) developed in isolation from other Nigerian languages, only coming recently—hence its unique structural and lexical differences compared to other Nigerian language (e.g. SOV structure instead of SVO). But if so, where did Ijaw people come from? And how long ago?


I took a 23andMe DNA test as a joke, but also out of curiosity a few months ago. I was shocked to find that I had an ancestor born between 1720-1810 who was 100% Southeast African. This shocked me because historically speaking, that's very recent!

This came from my maternal haplogroup: L3e2a1b1, which—to my surprise—is most common in Central and Southern East Africa, not West Africa. L3e2a1b1 is also common in Brazilians whose ancestors were sold through Angola, and a minority of Angolan coastal people. I then searched for people with the same haplogroup. Besides Nigerians and Diasporans, I found 1 from Zambia, 2 from Algeria and 1 from an unspecified Middle East/North African (MENA) country.



As I searched for more people with this haplogroup, I discovered this blog post from "The Water Diviner" who stated she has this maternal haplogroup. With this information, I was able to connect the dots! Everything she said tracks...except the part about running out of West Africans, so going to East Africa for slaves. Trans-Atlantic slave trade stayed within the Gulf of Guinea and did not specifically target East Africans.

It's ahistorical, but perfectly understandable why she'd come to that conclusion. Why? Well, if your last ancestor in Africa is East African, but the TA Slave Trade occurred on the west side of the continent, how else would you explain that? Her ancestor was likely part of the same group of Ijọs who migrated westward as mine!


The observations on her blog were eerily spot on. Her thoughts that her ancestors had a water affinity/stayed in areas "flush with water" describes Ijaws to a tee! The Ijaws' entire culture is water-based and we're known for traveling far distances by canoe. It makes sense to settle here. Also, like @ChinenyeN pointed out, the highly aquatic lexicon makes the language unique. Perhaps this is where our ancestors became highly adept at canoeing, fishing, etc.

This is further supported by the fact that one of the estimated closest language families to Ijaw (Katla-Rashad) is in the South Kordofan area of Sudan That's up the Nile from Lake Victoria, not too far away. It's also not too far from the "area between Sudan and Uganda" where her ancestors briefly settled before moving southbound on the Nile. Perhaps the present-day Katla-Rashadians are descendants of our ancestors who stayed there.



Limitations:
Middle East/North Africans: The only explanation I could think of for the MENAs with L3e2a1b1 is that they might be descended from Ijọ who came to the Niger Delta first, then traveled north 2-300 years ago. We do have an established history of traveling up and down the rivers. The Niger and Benue rivers were probably good waterways to the north. In addition to this, the locations of the languages most related to Ijoid in West Africa—Mande and Dogon—are literally along the path of the Niger River. In any case, the Zambian in the database gives some credence to the theory.




Migration over time: I don't remember where I read this, but some linguists have doubted that Ijọs expanded slowly to Nigeria from the Great Lakes over hundreds of years (in which case my ancestor would be one of the last), because countries in-between would be speaking languages close to Ijoid. The isolated nature of our language suggests that it happened over a short period of time. How short (few months, years)? I'm not sure.

L3e2a1b1 Migration : Some African Diasporans have this haplogroup, but would not have been in the same Ijọ group that migrated to the Niger Delta based on their closest ancestor's estimated birth year. I believe The Water Diviner mentioned a year in the 1700s that was well within my ancestor's estimated birth year. Her blog also mentions that her last ancestor within Africa was in Mozambique (lower part of Great Lakes). Knowing the Transatlantic slave trade occurred between 1600-1800s, it's safe to assume her ancestor's birthdate is within range.

Conclusion
There's strong indication that Ijaws have only been "native" to Nigeria (and West Africa) for 2-300 years. A combination of linguistic analysis, genealogy, historical analysis, archaeology, oral and written history, and what we know of Ijaw culture and behavior give strong support to this theory. It's likely that Ijaw people migrated to the Niger Delta in the 17-1800s from the Great Lakes area of East Africa—our ancestral home for ~2000 years!

Given how old Ijoid languages seem to be, it'd be beneficial if a genealogy study was conducted on the
Ijaw population. Other populations of interest are coastal Angolans and Bobe (Bubi)/inhabitants of Bioko. A decent number of people from these populations had this haplogroup. Perhaps Ijaw ancestors might have stopped in Angola and came up to the Niger Delta by canoeing along the Gulf of Guinea coast (the specific Bioko inhabitants might have come from Angola)?

Additional Thoughts
I don't know who "The Water Diviner" is. Unfortunately, I couldn't find her name, but I think she's African American. If this ends up being true, then it is eerily astonishing how on point she is about our people's affinity to water....it's as if she knows herself without knowing that she knows herself.

Anywho, I welcome all thoughts and critiques!

all historical, scientific and religious accounts or proves points to life begining in Eastern Africa and of a truth we have the kemetic/Nubian(Sudan) and such influence and beliefs has been with us since time immemorial, it's no coincidence the Nubian people call a god or a spirit Ouru(Oru) while the Egyptian call it(H)Oru.
it's also not a coincidence that we call the source of creation Temerau(TemRa),Tamara, Temuno(Tamuno) the most similar to the Egyptians of lower Egypt(Nile delta)

you might be thinking that there was no reasonable water ways for the early ijaws to navigate but that is in fact not true as terrains change over the years. many water routes has been made land over the years; e.g that ancient 8000 year old canoe found in Adamawa which butteres the early scientific claims that the lakechad basin of antiquity was also once a major water route to east Africa in ancient times.

There’s actually a lot here to digest, but I guess I can walk backwards from the conclusion.

Conclusion: Ijo people have been native to Nigeria for approximately 300 years.

I’m not so sure about this conclusion. However, I will say is that it is interesting your timeline estimate in this conclusion lines up relatively well with the period of socio-political shift that occurred in many Ijo-speaking communities (18th century). The emergence of many of the cultural and social features we think of as “archetypal Ijo” is actually rooted in this period of social and political change; even the amanyanabo kingship system and war canoe house system. I personally refer to this 18th century and later period as the “modern Ijo period”.

Now, between your genealogical report and what I call the “modern Ijo period”, there are two ways we can look at this. It’s either an eerie circumstantial coincidence or ridiculously good evidence to support some parts of your conclusion. I say “some parts” because the estimate of 300 years runs contrary to what has currently been established regarding Ijo-speaking settlements in the Niger Delta. At best, the 300 years might explain parts of the most modern Ijo settlement histories, but it does not explain the archeological finds that suggest a settlement history going back to the 11th century AD (see Archaeology and Culture History in the Central Niger Delta by Abi Alabo Derefaka). There are also historical and linguistic angles we need to consider.

On the history end, we have (thanks to documentation by the Portuguese and others) corroboration for the existence of a number of communities we consider Ijo that goes farther back than the 300 year estimate. Kalabari and Bonny is known as far back as the 16th century. Ifoko (Elem Ifoko) in the 17th century. There are others. The oral traditions of these communities suggests that there have been some Ijo-speaking settlements in the area as far back as the 15th century. There is a caveat to this though, but I can get into it in another post.

On the linguistic end, the branch called Ijoid actually consists of two branches—Ijo proper and Defaka. Defaka is only tentatively included because linguists suspect a distant relationship between Defaka and (what is assumed to be) proto-Ijo. This piece of linguistic information is interesting because it would mean that the Ijo-speaking communities are no longer an isolate. This suggests evidence of other dialects of Ijoid (particularly of Defakoid) that have gone extinct or assimilated in one way or another.

There’s one final point that I would add, and this is more so a personal belief. I am of the school of thought that a single proto-Ijo language branch entered into the Delta by way of the Niger River and initially pushed west (settling the Western Delta) and remained there for quite a while. I suspect that the Eastern Delta waterways did not exist yet (at least not as we know them today). This is supported by both oral traditions and linguistics.

According to Defaka oral traditions, their people’s earliest remembered settlement is in the Iselema area in Warri area of the Western Delta. According to most modern Ijo-speaking settlements, they trace their settlement origin back to either Central or Western Delta, which are practically at the mouth of the Niger River entrance to the Delta.

Linguistically, the Ijoid branch has a dating of 3000 BP, suggesting that Defaka and Ijo proper began separating at that time. They will have to have been separated for a while in order for Defaka to be considered “distantly related” to Ijo. Yet, they both ended up in the same Niger Delta region suggesting they independently took similar routes to get here. For a highly aquatic culture, the Niger River is the most viable candidate for a waterway that two disparate groups can independently take and yet arrive at the same contiguous location. So I suspect a north to south migration history for the Ijoid branch and not an east to west one. I believe an east to west is difficult to defend, especially in a 300 year window considering both Ijo and Defaka’s closest linguistic relatives, oral tradition and possible routes to arrive at the same location.

But I do think the 300 year window is certainly good corroboration for the effects of a booming trade culture at the time.

ChinenyeN:
The oral traditions of these communities suggests that there have been some Ijo-speaking settlements in the area as far back as the 15th century. There is a caveat to this though, but I can get into it in another post.

Now here's the caveat I wanted to get into that I think might be of interest to you and in some way might support the 300 year conclusion.

Ijo people don't talk about this, and I'm not sure why, but there is something only they themselves have done in the Niger Delta; ascribe their own names to other communities.

And it's more than just ascribing the names. There exists a pattern that cannot be ignored, and it is with the suffix -ni.

And it's more than just the pattern in the names that cannot be ignored. It's also the pattern with where these names are ascribed, and that is primarily within the Eastern Delta.

Ibani - Okoloma
Igoni - Khana, etc.
Idoni - Obolo

Finally, the main point I want to drive home. Afakani - Defaka.

The Defaka people, though being an Ijoid-speaking community, are historically considered non-Ijo. This piece of information, coupled with the naming pattern as well as the known history behind some of these names has some significant implications.

Implication #1: Many of the Eastern Delta communities which we consider Ijo today, are perhaps historically non-Ijo. There are different ways this has played out in oral traditions. Either the communities are situated by the time the Ijo move into the Eastern Delta or that they and the Ijo arrive at around the same time and jointly establish the community in question. Whichever the case, these communities have non-Ijo founding elements.

Implication #2: We begin to wonder about when Ijo actually came in contact with some of these communities. In this case, we are using Defaka as a case-in-point. According to Defaka oral traditions (which are corroborated by the Nkoroo and some other Ijo communities), the Defaka have perhaps only been in contact with Ijo for around 300 years (interestingly, it corresponds with your timeline). Do you know what makes this particularly strange? Both Defaka and Ijo have oral traditions of expanding from the Western Delta to the Eastern Delta, however known contact between Defaka and Ijo occurred in the Eastern Delta according to the oral tradition that I am aware of. That is significant. It suggests that the Defaka were already in the Western Delta and had to have expanded out of the Western Delta before the Ijo moved in. So we begin to question the timeline for when Ijo actually entered the Delta. With this current understanding, it seems unrealistic that Ijo would have been in the Western Delta with Defaka for 1000+ years without oral traditions concerning their contact, because the two speech communities would have certainly competed for resources both being highly aquatic.

Implication #3: The evidence of early settlement in the Western Delta perhaps is actually that of the early Defaka or other Ijoid (or non-Ijoid marine-type cultures). Linguists suspect that there used to be other Defaka dialects that went extinct in some way. We can then suspect that the Defaka in the Eastern Delta are remnants of an earlier Defaka language community that occupied the Western Delta. If the Ijo were in the Western Delta either earlier or at the same time as Defaka, then we would have ended up with a different linguistic situation. The dating for Ijo and Defaka branches would be later (as in, younger) due to new language branches forming from their contact and competition for resources, potentially overriding the previous branches. However, no such evidence of that occurred, suggesting that the Western Delta was either vacant by the time the Ijo arrived or sparsely occupied and the incoming Ijo overwhelmed and assimilated them.

All of these implications lead to a simple conclusion: The fact that Ijo's closest linguistic relatives in the Delta (Defaka) are 3000 years separated linguistically means that the Ijo could not have entered the Delta that long ago. Ijo presence is in fact recent. How recent is still to be determined. But if we go by what is known about Defaka and Nkoroo, that’s perhaps 300 years in the Eastern Delta. This is the caveat that invites further investigation.

Is it not possible that the East African ancestry is unique to your mum's line? How many other Okirika people from another region could have the Mitochondrian very recent East African heritage? Did the British bring with them an East African who had an affair with someone in most delta? What are other possible explanations? What of your dad mums test?