History of Somalia The oldest evidence of burial customs in the Horn of Africa comes from cemeteries in Somalia dating back to the 4th millennium BC. The stone implements from the Jalelo site in the north were also characterized in 1909 as important artefacts demonstrating the archaeological universality during the Paleolithic between the East and the West. According to linguists, the first Afro-Asiatic-speaking populations arrived in the region during the ensuing Neolithic period from the family's proposed urheimat ("original homeland") in the Nile Valley, or the Near East. Other scholars propose that the Afro-Asiatic family developed in situ in the Horn, with its
2009 timeline of the War in Somalia Insurgents fired mortars at the presidential palace in Mogadishu to which government forces retaliated with their own mortar fire which killed five civilians. Also, in fighting in the Wardigley district another nine civilians were killed. Fighting between Al Shabaab forces and a government backed militia in the Lower Shabelle region of KM60 resulted in the deaths of 7 Somali militiamen and 2 Al Shabaab insurgents and the capture of at least 100 militiamen as prisoners. In Bardhere Town SW Somalia an explosion killed 4 Somali militiamen including a commander and killed 2 civilians and injured two civilians. Abdirahaman Xaji Mohamed