Semites, Semitic peoples or Semitic cultures was a term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group. The terminology is now largely obsolete outside the grouping "Semitic languages" in linguistics.

More is known about Semitic peoples who lived in cities such as Mari in Syria than their nomadic neighbors who are often looked to as the primary Semitic language speakers. By the time of the first written records around 3,000 BCE the Semitic People were well established city dwellers but other Semitic people did continue life as nomads.

Most Semitic groups were nomadic and traveled throughout the Arabic peninsula. By 2,500 BC they had migrated as far as Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Mediterranean coastline. Contemporary Semitic people are primarily Hebrews and Arabs.

The off-white areas in the map above are past and present Semitic peoples lands. Modern countries such as the Palestinians, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Yemen, Oman, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Western Sahara and Mauritania. A Semite, is a person speaking one of a group of related languages.

The Elamites, Assyrians, Lydians, Arameans, and several Arab tribes were known to be descendants of Shem. A number of these people groups spoke related languages in ancient times. These are the Semites. The descendants of Shem spread geographically from Lydia to Syria, Assyria, and Persia.

Semites. As far back as 1704, the German philosopher and polymath Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz had identified a group of cognate languages which included Hebrew, old Punic, i.e., Carthaginian, Chaldaean, Syriac, and Ethiopic. To this group he gave the name “Arabic,” after its most widely used and widely spoken member.

people. Semite, member of a people speaking any of a group of related languages presumably derived from a common language, Semitic ( see Semitic languages ). The term came to include Arabs, Akkadians, Canaanites, Hebrews, some Ethiopians, and Aramaean tribes.

Saying that, they fall into the broad umbrella of peoples similarly related that include: Sub-Saharan Black Africans, West Asians, South Asians and the Latino [Spanish] descended peoples of Central and South America. The Arab is not western [European] or oriental [East Asian] but part of the equatorial [Hamitic] peoples of the world.

Today the term Sem. is primarily applied to the various people associated with the Sem. languages. The Sem. family, therefore, includes most of the inhabitants of Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Arabia, and a high percentage of Turkey, Lebanon, and N Africa.

It refers to remarks or acts targeting the ethnic group termed Semites, which comprises both Jews and Arabs. The Hebrew Encyclopedia defines anti- Semitism as all manifestations of hatred and racism directed against Semites.