High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical proto-language of the Semitic languages. The earliest attestations of a Semitic language are in Akkadian, dating to ca. the 23rd century BC and Eblaite, but earlier evidence of Akkadian comes from personal names in Sumerian texts. Researchers in Egypt also claim to have discovered Canaanite snake spells that "date from between 2400 to 3000 B.C." The Semitic Urheimat is suggested by some to be in the Middle East; more specifically, Kienast advocates the Arabian peninsula. The East and West Semitic branches are found in Mesopotamia and the Levant during the Bronze Age, while South Semitic speakers migrated to Africa before the 8th century BC via the Yemen gap. This is also supported by the presence of nouns in proto Semitic that seemingly make an African origin for the language impossible - ice, oak, horse and camel. The camel and horse did not arrive in Africa until nearly two thousand years after Semitic languages were being written in the Mesopotamia area.