I wonder if the pharyngeal fricatives are not relics, or living "fossils" of the back clicks from the earliest proto-languages of early humans in Africa and that survive in the click languages of the !Kung or San and Xhosa and Hadzabe. These go back at least 40,000 years and perhaps even further. My opinion is that these click sounds may have had their origins in early hunting communication by early humans (maybe as far as H. erectus) imitating animal sounds to communicate. Their use as consonants probably migrated to the Semitic languages from Africa through Egypt.***
Jack Kilmon
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