If counted as a single language, Arabic is by far the most widely spoken in the family, with around 313 million native speakers concentrated primarily in the Middle East and North Africa. There are many well-attested Afroasiatic languages from antiquity that have since died or gone extinct, such as Egyptian (which constitutes its own branch) and the Semitic languages Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, Phoenician, Amorite, and Ugaritic. While there is no consensus among historical linguists as to where or when Proto-Afroasiatic—the common ancestor of all Afroasiatic languages—was originally spoken, most agree on a place of origin situated somewhere in northeastern Africa. Proposed locations for this Afroasiatic homeland include the Horn of Africa, Egypt, the eastern Sahara, and the Levant.
