16 Facts About Somalis

Somalis are an ethnic group native to the Horn of Africa who share a common ancestry, culture and history.

The Lowland East Cushitic Somali language is the shared mother tongue of ethnic Somalis, which is part of the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, and are predominantly Sunni Muslim.

Somalis overwhelmingly prefer the demonym Somali over the incorrect Somalian since the former is an endonym, while the latter is an exonym with double suffixes.

Origin of the Somali people which were previously theorized to have been from Southern Ethiopia since 1000 BC or from the Arabian peninsula in the eleventh century has now been overturned by newer archeological and linguistic studies which puts the original homeland of the Somali people in Somaliland, which concludes that the Somalis are the indigenous inhabitants of the Horn of Africa for the last 7000 years.

Consequently the Somalis were some of the earliest non-Arabs that converted to Islam.

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The majority of those who voted no were Somalis who were strongly in favour of joining a united Somalia, as had been proposed by Mahmoud Harbi, Vice President of the Government Council.

Somalis'sassassination was quickly followed by a military coup d'etat on 21 October 1969, in which the Somali Army seized power without encountering armed opposition — essentially a bloodless takeover.

Somalis are ethnically of Cushitic ancestry, but have genealogical traditions of descent from various patriarchs associated with the spread of Islam.

Many Somalis speak it due to centuries-old ties with the Arab world, the far-reaching influence of the Arabic media, and religious education.

Somalis have a rich musical heritage centered on traditional Somali folklore.

Somalis have old visual art traditions, which include pottery, jewelry and wood carving.

Somalis have produced many world-class distance runners like their neighboring countries with Mo Farah, Abdi Bile and Mohammed Ahmed.

An estimated 20,000 Somalis emigrated to the U S state of Minnesota some ten years ago and the Twin Cities now have the highest population of Somalis in North America.

The number of Somalis has especially surged in the Cedar-Riverside area of Minneapolis.

Deep subclade E-Y18629 is commonly found in Somalis and has a formation date of 3,700 YBP and a TMRCA of 3,300 YBP.

Research shows that Somalis have a mixture of a type of native African ancestry unique and autochthonous to the Horn of Africa, as well as ancestry originating from a non-African back-migration.