Eurasian Origin of Berbers and modern North Africans
Essentially the same thing, as North Africans are mainly Arabized Berbers..
Essentially, about ten thousand years ago a population wave from the near East swept over North Africa, bringing in gracile Mediterranean people in the Capsian era. A later wave of immigration occurred in the Neolithic when the expanding farmers from the near east ploughed their way across North Africa, some leaving artwork in the central Sahara to mark their passage. As far as DNA studies can tell, the Arab invasions that converted North Africans to Islam made virtually no impact to the population; essentially they converted the local population and didn’t replace them. There was a only trace contribution made to North Africa by Europe during the Barbary slavery era, but quite a significant amount of sub Saharan maternal ancestry was added. The modern North African is mainly Eurasian in ancestry, and cluster with Europeans and west Asians. To quote Cavalli Sforza..
Berbers are located primarily in the northern regions of Algeria and Morocco, but somewhat to the interior, usually not far from the sea. . Berbers are believed to have their ancestors among Capsian Mesolithics and their Neolithic descendants, possibly with genetic contributions from the important Neolithic migrations from the Near East. It is reasonable to hypothesize that the Berber (Afro-Asiatic) language was introduced by the Neolithic farmers
Anyway, this page has a few links to DNA studies of North Africans, which I should really start updating. I’s not complete. One day I will redo the whole thing to be neater and more comprehensive.
Sean Myles1, 2 , Nourdine Bouzekri1, Eden Haverfield1, 3, Mohamed Cherkaoui4, Jean-Michel Dugoujon5 and Ryk Ward1
(1) Institute of Biological Anthropology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
(2) Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103, Leipzig, Germany
(3) Department of Human Genetics, University of Chicago, 920 East 58th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
(4) Laboratoire dEcologie Humaine, Faculté des Sciences-Semlalia, Université Cadi Ayyad, Morocco
(5) Centre dAnthropologie CNRS,, University of Toulouse, UMR 8555, France Received: 15 November 2004 Accepted: 23 December 2004 Published online: 2 April 2005
Abstract The process by which pastoralism and agriculture spread from the Fertile Crescent over the past 10,000 years has been the subject of intense investigation by geneticists, linguists and archaeologists. However, no consensus has been reached as to whether this Neolithic transition is best characterized by a demicdiffusion (witha significant genetic input from migrating farmers) or a culturaldiffusion (without substantialmigration of farmers). Milk consumption and thus lactose tolerance are assumed to have spread with pastoralism and we propose that by looking at the relevant mutations in and around the lactase gene in human populations, we can gain insight into the origin(s) and spread of dairying. We genotypedthe putatively causal allele for lactose tolerance (–13910T) and constructed haplotypes from several polymorphisms in and around the lactase gene (LCT) in three NorthAfrican Berber populations and compared our results with previously published data. We found that the frequency of the –13910T allele predicts the frequency of lactose tolerance in several Eurasian and North African Berber populations but not in most sub-Saharan African populations. Our analyses suggest that contemporary Berber populations possess the genetic signature of a past migration of pastoralistsfrom the Middle East and that they share a dairying origin withEuropeans and Asians, but not with sub-Saharan Africans.
Mitochondrial DNA heterogeneity in Tunisian BerbersBerbers live in groups scattered across NorthAfrica whose origins and genetic relationships with their neighbours are not well established. The first hypervariablesegment of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region was sequenced in a total of 155 individuals from three Tunisian Berber groups and compared to other North Africans. The mtDNA lineages found belong to a common set of mtDNA haplogroups already described in NorthAfrica. Besides the autochthonous North African U6 haplogroup, a group of L3 lineages characterized by the transition at position 16041 seems to be restricted to North Africans, suggesting that an expansion of this group of lineages took place around 10500 years ago in NorthAfrica, and spread to neighbouring populations. Principal components and the coordinate analyses show that some Berber groups (the Tuareg, the Mozabite, and the Chenini-Douiret) are outliers within the NorthAfrican genetic landscape. This outlier position is consistent with an isolation process followed by genetic drift in haplotypefrequencies, and with the high heterogeneity displayed by Berbers compared to Arab samples as shown in the AMOVA. Despite this Berber heterogeneity, no significant differences were found between Berber and Arab samples, suggesting that the Arabization was mainly a cultural process rather than a demographic replacement.
Genetic studies have emphasized the contrast between North African and sub-Saharan populations, but the particular affinities of the North African mtDNA pool to that of Europe, the Near East, and sub-Saharan Africa have not previously been investigated. We have analysed 268 mtDNA control-region sequences from various Northwest African populations including severalSenegalese groups and compared these with the mtDNAdatabase. We have identified a few mitochondrial motifs that are geographically specific and likely predate the distribution and diversification of modern language families in North and West Africa. A certain mtDNA motif (16172C, 16219G), previously found in Algerian Berbers at high frequency, is apparently omnipresent in Northwest Africa and may reflect regional continuity of more than 20,000 years. The majority of the maternal ancestors of the Berbers must have come from Europe and the Near East since the Neolithic.The Mauritanians and West-Saharans, in contrast, bear substantial though not dominant mtDNAaffinity with sub-Saharans.
This is actually a bit innacurate, as the approximate arrivalof a lot of the Eurasian DNA , excluding U, coincides withthe Neolithic expansion and arrival of the Capsian culture about 10,000 years ago (from Cranio facial studies of ancient Magrebian skulls). The Capsians show a gracile build and small face traceable to the eastern Mediterranean.
The faces of modern North Africa.
Abstract Alu elements are the largest family of short tandem interspersed elements (SINEs) in human who have arisen to a copy number with an excess of 500 000 copies per haploid human genome and mobilize through an RNAse polymerase III derived transcript in a process termed retroposition. Several features make Alu insertions a powerful tool used in population genetic studies: the polymorphic nature of many Alu insertions, the stability of an Aluinsertion event and, furthermore, the ancestral state of an Alu insertion is known to be the absence (complete and exact) of the Alu element at a particular locus and the presence of an Alu insertion at the site that forward mutational change. Here we report on the distribution of six polymorphic Aluinsertions in a generalMoroccan population and in the Arab and Berber populations from Morocco and their relationships with other populations previously studied. Our results show that there is a small difference between Arabs and Berbers and that the Arab population was closer to African populations than Berber population which is closest to Europeans.
Mitochondrial DNA transit between West Asia and North Africa inferred from U6 phylogeography
Nicole Maca-Meyer1 , Ana M González1 , José Pestano2 , Carlos Flores1 , José M Larruga1 and Vicente M Cabrera1Published: 16 October 2003
Abstract
World-wide phylogeographicdistribution of human complete mitochondrial DNA sequences suggested a West Asian origin for the autochthonous North African lineage U6. We report here a more detailed analysis of this lineage, unraveling successive expansions that affected not only Africa but neighboring regions such as the Near East, the Iberian Peninsula and the Canary Islands.Results
Divergence times, geographic origin and expansions of the U6 mitochondrial DNA clade, have been deduced from the analysis of 14 complete U6 sequences, and 56 different haplotypes, characterized by hypervariable segment sequences and RFLPs.Conclusions
The most probable origin of the proto-U6 lineage was the Near East. Around 30,000 years ago it spread to North Africa where it represents a signature of regional continuity. Subgroup U6a reflects the first African expansion from the Maghrib returning to the east in Paleolithic times. Derivative clade U6a1 signals a posterior movement from East Africa back to the Maghriband the Near East. This migration coincides with the probable Afroasiatic linguistic expansion. U6b and U6c clades, restricted to West Africa, had more localized expansions. U6b probably reached the Iberian Peninsula during the Capsian diffusion in North Africa. Two autochthonous derivatives of these clades(U6b1 and U6c1) indicate the arrival of North African settlers to the Canarian Archipelago in prehistoric times, most probably due to the Saharan desiccation. The absence of these Canarian lineages nowadays in Africa suggests important demographic movements in the western area of this Continent.The Emerging Tree of West Eurasian mtDNAs: A Synthesis of Control-Region Sequences and RFLPs
Variation in the human mitochondrial genome (mtDNA) is now routinely described and used to infer the histories of peoples, by means of one of two procedures, namely, the assaying of RFLPsthroughout the genome and the sequencing of parts of the control region (CR). Using 95 samples from the Near East and northwest Caucasus, we present an analysis based on both systems, demonstrate their concordance, and, using additional available information, present the most refined phylogeny to date of west Eurasian mtDNA. We describe and apply a nomenclaturefor mtDNA clusters. Hypervariable nucleotides are identified, and the relative mutation rates ofthe two systems are evaluated. We point out where ambiguities remain. The identification of signature mutations for each cluster leads us to apply a hierarchical scheme for determining the cluster composition of a sample of Berber speakers, previously analyzed only for CR variation. We show that the main indigenous North African cluster is a sister group to the most ancient cluster of European mtDNAs, from which it diverged »50,000 years ago.
MtDNA Profile of West Africa Guineans: Towards a Better Understanding of the Senegambia Region
Alexandra Rosa et al.
The matrilineal genetic composition of 372 samples from the Republic of Guiné-Bissau (West African coast) was studied using RFLPsand partial sequencing of the mtDNA control and coding region. The majority of the mtDNA lineages of Guineans (94%) belong to West African specific sub-clusters of L0-L3 haplogroups. A new L3 sub-cluster (L3h) that is found in both eastern and western Africa is present at moderately low frequencies in Guinean populations.A non-random distribution of haplogroups U5 in the Fula group, the U6 among the “Brame” linguistic family and M1 in the Balanta-Djola group, suggests a correlation between the genetic and linguistic affiliation of Guinean populations. The presence of M1 in Balanta populations supports the earlier suggestion of their Sudanese origin. Haplogroups U5 and U6, on the other hand, were found to be restricted to populations that are thought to represent the descendants of a southern expansion of Berbers.Particular haplotypes, found almost exclusively in East-African populations, were found in some ethnic groups with an oral tradition claiming Sudanese origin.
A possible ancient migration from Asia to Africa was proposed by Cruciani et al. (2002) to explain the presence of some unusual Y-chromosome lineages identified in West Africa. Haplogroup R1 (defined by M173 mutation), without further branch defining mutations (M269 and M17) specific to Europeans, accounted for ~40% of the Y-chromosomes in North-Cameroon, while not yethaving been sampled elsewhere in Africa. More data from Central and Western Africa are needed to cast light on the origin of such idiosyncratic mtDNA and Y chromosome lineages. Thus, our U5 sequences from the Guinean Fulbe people corroborate Cruciani’s hypothesis of a prehistoric migration from Eurasia to West Sub-Saharan Africa, testified by their present day restricted and localised distribution
Abstract An analysis of 11 Alu insertion polymorphisms (ACE, TPA25, PV92, APO, FXIIIB, D1, A25, B65, HS2.43, HS3.23, and HS4.65) has been performed in several NW African (Northern, Western, and Southeastern Moroccans; Saharawi; Algerians; Tunisians) and Iberian (Basques, Catalans, and Andalusians) populations. Genetic distances and principal component analyses show a clear differentiation of NW African and Iberian groups of samples, suggesting a strong genetic barrier matching the geographical Mediterranean Sea barrier. The restriction to gene flow may be attributed to the navigationalhazards across the Straits, but cultural factors must also have played a role. Some degree of gene flow from sub-Saharan Africa can be detected in the southern part of North Africa and in Saharawi and Southeastern Moroccans, as a result of a continuous gene flow across the Sahara desert that has created a south-north cline of sub-Saharan Africa influence in North Africa. Iberian samples show a substantial degree of homogeneity and fall within the cluster of European-based genetic diversity.
The population history of North Africa is particularly interesting because, although the region belongs to continental Africa, its history has been completely different from the sub-Saharan part. The peopling of the region has been influenced by two strong geographical barriers: the Sahara Desert to the south, which splits the African continent into two differentiated regions, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north, which separates the European and African continents. These geographical barriers may have constrained human movements in NorthAfrica into an east-west gradient, although they were not impermeable to human movements. During the first half of the Holocene, the humid climate that prevailed in the Sahara produced a receding of the desert allowing human settlements, but over the past 5000 years, the Sahara Desert has suffered a gradual aridification and has become as dry as it is nowadays (Said and Faure 1990). Historicalrecords document extensive trade routes that were established across the desert between sub-Saharan Africa and the north coast. In contrast, since the time of the Phoenicians, the city-based settlement pattern of the NW African coast integrated the area into the Mediterranean world. The seaward orientation of populations persisted and, similar to the desert, separated the Maghreb (NW Africa) from the rest of Africa to the south (Newman 1995). Moreover, during the 8th century AD, Berbers from North Morocco and Algeria under Arab leadership crossed the Mediterranean Sea and occupied the Iberian Peninsula for almost eight centuries, although the demographic impact of the conquest is thought to be limited (Hitti 1990).
Until recently, few genetic studies have been performed in NW Africa. In the latest compilation of classical genetic markers in North Africa (Bosch et al. 1997), the first principal component (PC) of gene frequencies showed an east-west pattern of genetic differentiation, in agreement with the geographical barrier imposed by the Sahara and the Mediterranean. Recent work with autosomal short tandem repeats (STRs; Bosch et al. 2000), mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences (Rando et al. 1998), and Y-chromosome haplotypes (Bosch et al. 1999) has suggested that the gene flow between NW Africa and Iberia and that between sub-Saharan Africa and NW Africa has been small. MtDNA variation in NW Africa (Rando et al. 1998) has shown a high frequency (up to 25%) of geographically specific sequences (named haplogroup U6) that is essentially absent in the Iberian Peninsula (from 0% in Andalusians to 5% in Portuguese). The mtDNA analysis has shown a limited gene flow from Europe to NW Africa that could be attributed to recent human movements.The study of Y-chromosome haplotypes (Bosch et al. 1999) shows little admixture between NW Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. The study of 21 autosomal STR loci in NW Africa has also shown a clear genetic difference between NW African populations and Iberians, although some degree of gene flow into Southern Iberia (Andalusians) can be detected (Bosch et al. 2000).
(Mitochondrial diversity in the Taforalt population (circa 12,000 BP, Morocco): a genetic approach to the study of the peopling of North Africa.)
ABSTRACT:
The population exhumed from the archaeological site of Taforalt in Morocco (12,000 years BP) is a valuable source of information toward a better knowledge of the settlement of Northern Africa region and provides a revolutionary way to specify the origin of Ibero-Maurusian populations. Ancient DNA was extracted from 31 bone remains from Taforalt.The HVS1 fragment of the mitochondrial DNA control region was PCR-amplified and directly sequenced. Mitochondrial diversity in Taforalt shows the absence of sub-Saharan haplogroups suggesting that Ibero-Maurusian individuals had not originated in sub-Saharan region.Our results reveal a probable local evolution of Taforalt population and a genetic continuity in North Africa.
Eurasiatic component (J/T, H, U et V) and North African component (U6).
Genetic structure of Taforalt:
Eurasiatic Component : H, U, JT, V: 90.5%
North African component: U6: 9.5 %
42, 8% (9/21) H or U
14, 2% (3/21) JT
2 individuals (9,5%) U6
Essentially, the DNA studies of Berbers observe that they are mostly similar to Eurasians, and that they appear to have arrived in North Africa about 30,000 years ago plus (Mechta Afaloupeople), with a second wave of colonisation in the neolithic from the Near East confirmed by the cranio facial measurements (Loring Brace) of neolithic North Africans. Then then migrated South during the saharan wetphase about 12,000 years ago, with Eurasian Y chromosome now making up 40% of Cameroon’s Y chromosomes as a result (although less in other areas).
All these prehistoric NorthAfricans are described as mostly similar to other Mediterranean Caucasian populations, with a lesser similarity to Nubians from the Wadi Halfa area. There’s a simplified explanation of ancient North African population movements here
Edit to Blog..
To the mad Afrocentrist ‘Nubian’ who claims that these DNA studies prove Berbers are all black and that the white Berbers are the descendants of slaves…
Please show where any of these studies say that.. Because they don’t, at all. They point out that Berbers are mostly Caucasian and that they’ve been in North Africa a very long time.
Explain why every anthropologist who’s looked at Mahgrebian bones in the Holocene describes them as mainly Caucasian Mediterranean.
Explain why the Egyptians uniformly portrayed Libyans as white Caucasians, as they North Africans did on their own art work.
Explain why all the contemporary art and descriptions of the Moors all show a majority Caucasian population.
Why the Guanches, an isolated North African group since the BC’s were all white people with plentiful blondes, if all Berbers were black untill ‘Moorish slavery whitened up North Africa’?
Also, for those who insist in the face of overwhelming evidence they were all black in North Africa until European slaves whitened them up..
From the Roman era in Libya. All the Roman era mosaics show a mainly Caucasoid light skinned population in North Africa, as does the rock art.
Carthage era coins, with two coins showing Hannibal.
The Tassili ladies, from Algeria (age unclear, but sometime in the BC). I have a wider collection of images here.
I also have a 16th century image of the contemporary Guanches; pure blood North Africans with no European or sub Saharan ancestry mixed in, isolated on the Canary islands since about 500 BC, alone for about 1,000 years until the Spanish invaded.
In the brown skin clothing. As you can see he is pretty indistinguishable from the Spaniard holding him.
I would also like to point out that the Tuareg at not ‘the only real Berbers’ as is often claimed. In fact, they are related to the Beja, and are relatively recent arrivals in North West Africa who have adopted Berber customs. They are also about half Eurasian in ancestry. The recent contribution of Europeans to the North African genepool is 4% for males, and probably less than 2% for females; 12,000 year old DNA studies show only Eurasian derived mt DNA in ancient North Africans from Morocco. It isn’t likely to be very high though, as the majority of Barbary slaves were males. A good comparison would be the Arabian peninsula. About 8 million or so slaves were imported from Eaest Africa into this area, but only about 10% of the Mt DNA there is African. By contrast about 1.25 million Europeans ended up on the Barbary coast, so this is unlikely to have made a difference of more than a couple of percent to the whole. Way more black African slaves were imported into the area during the Barbary slavery era, so the net difference is probably that they are slightly darker than they used to be.
I’d also like to point out to those who feel the need to spam me with descriptions of Berbers as black or brown from old European texts…
Europeans used these words differently back then. Brown was used to describe anyone with a moderate tan, black was a skin tone of a dark tan seen with black hair and dark eyes. Ladies and children had white skin. Europeans commonly called anyone with black hair and a heavy tan black, so believing that black in medieval/renaissance literature refers to a black African is incorrect. In fact, you can find references to Jews, Turks and Spaniards as being black. Gypsies were still referred to as black into the 20th century. See below. Black Africans are referred to as Ethiopians in these old texts.
The men were very black, with their hair frizzled, the women were the most ugly and the blackest that were ever seen. .. they had sorceresses amongst them , who by pretended to look into peoples hands, to tell them what had or would happen to them…” p. 153 of The Christian journal and Literary Reigster published I 1827 by T & J. Swords? Photo Arabian gypsies , European gypsies James Michener’s Iberia Spanish Travels and Reflections 1968.
18?? – “We were not far from Pressburg when at once we heard in the distance, a singing, shouting and hallooing which continually grew nearer. Presently we met four wagons, in which a brown company of gypsies were seated. It was a curious sight. Their sat men and women, girls and boys all dark as half-negroes, in ragged array, with long shining hair, smeared after Hungarian fashion with lard…We gazed at them in astonishment…” Wanderings of a Journeyman Tailor through Europe and the East: During the years 1824 to 184
COMMENTS POLICY.
Unfortunately necessary, as Afrocentrists feel the need to spam this page with moronic comments. All comments need to be approved by me before they’ll appear. They won’t be posted unless…
- They are an intelligent comment
- I’m in a bad mood and feel like ridiculing someone (Dana/Don).
I’d also like to point out that NOT ONE SINGLE ANTHROPOLOGIST takes the view that there’s been any kind of population change in North Africa since the Neolithic. Take that as a hint.
Mathilda's Anthropology Blog. 
Pingback: X chromosome study of Mediterranean populations « Mathilda’s Anthropology Blog.
Saami and Berbers–an unexpected mitochondrial DNA link.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15791543
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It’s really a shame, a disgrace that u just deleated an entry made by Dana Reynolds Marniche of the Rasta Limewhire website Team whi studies allot of books about the ancient Berbers and discriptions of Romans, Greeks and Arabs. Who actually prove that Berbers are paternally Blacks, and have a maternal white slave, greek, Sea People,Roman, Arab, Turk origin. Can’t you handle the truth? Why are you censoring this blog when somebody posts historical facts with their sources? So Sad, oh so sad.
Why are you censoring this blog when somebody posts historical facts with their sources?
I deleted it because I’ve got an entry specific to that POS on another blog, where I deconstruct a fair chunk of it and display what a steaming heap it is.
She completely decided to omit the numerous anthropological studies, historic descriptions and contemporay Spanish artwork that show a mostly Caucasoid Berber/Arab force attacking Spain.
BTW, DNA studies and anthropological studies have shown every time that there were several Eurasian migrations into N Africa from about 30k ago and 8k ago. Carletoon Coon (who the ‘team’ pretend say North Africans were black) actually said that the modern Mediterranoid Berbers have been in situ at least 15,000 years. DNA studies on ancient N Af bones how Eurasian DNA from 12,000 years ago.
Coon on Berbers
Cavalli Sforza on Berbers
Also, the word ‘brown’ for skin was used to mean ‘a tan’ in northern Europeans, and anyone of gypsy colouring was called black. We called black Africans ‘Ethiopians’, not black. So any desciption of North Africans being ‘black’ only means they looked Arab/darkish. Try reading some proper text books on the moorish invasion. The Arabs and Spanish kept very good records on which Berber tribes were Ethiopians. Of all that list of drivel, only the top entry with ‘affrights it’s cradle’ actually describes black berbers. Some of the moors used to dye their hair black so they didn’t look like the Spaniards. So half of that stuff they claim means ‘black African’ translates into modern language as moderately tanned or middle Eastern in colouring
She also left out that the all Berber genetically Guanches were described as tall and tanned and handsome with a great many blondes in their number. These were native north Africans that never saw Europeans until the Spanish wiped them out.
The Eurasian maternal contribution goes back before written history, it’s from 12,000 years and older (there is solid proof from ancient bones). The Berbers have paternally native north African, not ‘black’ Y chromosomes you moron. The M81 Y chromsome is never seen south of the Sahara, and very uncommon in black Africans.
BTW, Tuareg are newcomers to the North Africa area. They originated in East Africa, are half Eurasian, and aren’t genetically Bebers.
But of course, you can’t handle the truth. That’s why you never see the any of the images or historical descriptions or any relevant quotes from anthropologists on that POS site.
I fully agree with Mathilda37!
I’m Portuguese on both male & female lineages since generations and generations. My ancestors are all from the northern part of the actual Portugal (former Gallaicia). My paternal grandfather was tall, blue-eyed and with a very fair skin. Not at all the Mediterranean typical person!.
I am myself tall (1.82m), green-eyed and fair skin.
So, some months ago I subscribed for a complete Y-DNA & mt-DNA tests. The results are: Y DNA: E1b1b1b (M81 modal) & mt DNA : H. Conclusion, I’m a kind of Celtiberber!
I wasn’t surprised at all, knowing that berber presence in the northern part of the Iberian Peninsula is much more older than the Muslim invasion of Iberia in the early 8th century.
Justin,I have E1b1b1b2,tracing my father lineage ancestors I found all where pasiegos since 1650 I wonder how this pasiego population isolated in west Cantabria got there and when.The idea of a group of berbers? concentrated in a small area as a result of arab invasion in 7th century do not seem very accurate to me.May I understand , by you comment, that maybe pasiegos moved south to N Africa? By the way I have also H mtdna
Luis,
The concentration of E1b1b1b2 in the Pasiego population is a mistery and still under hot debates. One thing is sure and well covered in this blog, the E-M81 subclade is found mainly in the northwestern part of Africa. So, the Berber presence in Ibera started from Africa to our beautiful peninsula and not the opposite.
The only thing I wanted to say is that the presence of Berbers in Ibera is a very very old story which started well before the
Arab invasion in the early 8th century. It’s mainly true in the north of the peninsula (North Portugal/Galicia, asturias, cantabria). Berbers were already there before the Romans arrival…
Luis,
Here you’ll find a lot of information on the E1b1b1b presence in your beautiful Cantabria region.
http://community.haplozone.net/index.php?topic=881.15
You are amoung the oldest inhabitants of Iberia (it goes back to prehistoric times). As i said in my previous message your ancestors were there well before the islamic expansion in Iberia (7th – 8th century), yes they came from North africa, but well before the islamisation of Africa.
At that time, the northwestern part of Africa was populated by white caucasoid Amazigh tribes (Berbers).
During the islamic expansion in Iberia, your ancestors were already Christians, and that, since the beginning of christianity in the Iberic peninsula. They surely participated at the battles against the “Mauros”…
Even the Kabyles where Black and some verry dark with an exeption of a few white tribes till very recently!!!
Here is an account from 1834 by Scotman Thomas Campbell: The Kabylesdress like the Arabs and a part from a few tribes, are brown complexioned and black haired p. 109 Barbary and Enlightenment: European Attitudes Toward the Maghreb in the 18th Century, Ann Thomson. Published 1987 by E. J. Bull
In 1890 was written “The Kabyles or Kabaily of Algerian and Tunisian territoriesbesides tillage, work the mines contained in their mountainsThey live in huts made of branches of trees and covered with clay which resemble the Magalia of the old NumidiansThey are of middle stature, their complexion brown and sometimes nearly black.” from The Encyclopedia Britannica: Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and General Literature Henry G. Allen Company p. 261 Volume I 1890. Other accounts are similar.
ITS CLEARLY SAYS SOMETHIMES NEARLY BLACK!!!! BLACK !!! GO BUY THE BOOK AND READ IT YOURESELF what do you have to say on that? This time we are not talking about ancient “black”terms but 1830-70-80’s BLACK, so even the Kabyles where Black Berbers who where whitened by the Slave Trade and White Invasions. Dont forget the fact that the Kabyles have the highest concentration of SKIN cancer in Africa. Search it on the NET. This is inrefutable truth that Berbers always have been Black. Even the Northern Ones.
Honey (explains gently) Europeans called anyone with black hair and a heavy tan ‘black’. ‘Brown’ was used to describe Europeans with a tan. We used to call Gypsies black complexioned right into the 20th century here. You should become more familiar with how Europeans used the words black, white and brown in describing skin tones. The word ‘black’ only came to be commonly used for black Africans in the 20th century.
There is plenty of artwork from ancient North Africa, and it doesn’t depict black Africans living there in any kind of numbers. The DNA and skull stuides all show a caucasoid population in residence for about 30k or more.
I read this statement by Stunny Pharouk who happens to be half Egyptian and half German, but who was taken as being Black even though his skin is fair. He was treated badly in Germany because he has wavy hair that goes kinky in the water but goes Indian if he drinks ascorbics and is VEGAN. He wrote this: “That being so; – our wall reliefs of Egyptians depict our ancesters with woolly hair that billows out ower their shoulders with nubica (nupticals/ twisted curls-knots) at the ends? Albinoism is when racism decided to keep colour out, and in the Egyptian and Coptic language a “sitera” or a sitrey” is a woman who is a setter, and doesn’t imply racial incest at all. Africans always call their women “sisters” – “Sos- àsat” meaning “hip-sitters” in sexual terms. The term denotes the Indian word “sutera” meaning “to sow a seed” or to “join with a stitch” – “to marry with a needle”, which are keen to procreation and are also non-katalistic unlike genetic sociological incest practiced by Europeans phobic of colour who read the Tora!” – I think he was “skoffing you off!” as he likes to say. Anthropology is probably an old school of racism. Most people outside of Europe are mixed. Its a fact. Sexual attraction is more powerful than racism.
Justin thank you for you kind reply.I live in Spain and I know pretty well the area were pasiegos live:four small valleys west cantabria.One of the reasons I had to investigate my dna was that in my family tree (with almost 100 people)starting around i600 and with little endogamy ,no one had a basque surname.¡Those valleys are less than ten miles from Vizcaya!Also the area has hundreds of caves,many with prehistric paintings.
The problem with this study is that it tries to claim that the migrants out of Africa that evolved into N lineages 30,000 years ago are somehow Caucasians, even if they only had just left Africa. Likewise, it goes on to claim that the migrants carrying U6a who they say possibly originated in East Africa were Caucasians as well.
First, Caucasian is a reference to a set of Mountains in Southern Russia. It is not a phenotype. Caucasians therefore do not originate in East Africa. And white skin only developed thousands of years after the migrations of humans out of Africa and into the far north of Europe and Asia. These migrants from East AFrica did not simply turn into white Caucasians by virtue of crossing form Africa into Asia. Yet this is the underlying methodology being applied in this study, which stresses Caucasia as a basis for human biodiversity, yet COMPLETELY ignores the fact that all humans originate in Africa and therefore that all human biodiversity originates in Africa among black Africans. Claiming that North Africans were indigenous Caucasians is about as illogical as it gets, especially considering that any back migrations from Eurasia 30,000 years ago were of black African derived people. Putting Caucasian into this only serves to pretend that these original settlers of Eurasia did not come from Africa, were not the basis of the biodiversity in Eurasia and that these people were all black for most of their time IN Eurasia up until maybe 10-20,000 years ago. All of the regions surrounding Africa would have been initially populated by black Africans, even after mutations like M and N. M and N do not signify the evolution of white skin, they only signify random changes in genetic mutations. Trying to pretend otherwise is simply dishonest.
The problem with this study is that it tries to claim that the migrants out of Africa that evolved into N lineages 30,000 years ago are somehow Caucasians even if they only had just left Africa
Let me just stop you there.
A, I’m not letting you repeat that bollocks endlessly, so just give it up and go to Egyptsearch. You’d think that not one single anthropologst agrees with the bulllshit you are trying to spout as gospel here (even the black ones) might clue you in to the fact you are incorrect.
B, They hadn’t ‘just left Africa’. LMAO. Where do you get your info? Off the back of a cereal packet? There are modern human remains at least 70K old in China, and signs of continued modern human occupation in the Far East after the Toba explosion 74k ago. Add on the roughly 15k it would have taken for the population to have expanded to the far East, and you are looking at at least 85K for an OOA exit date and probably older than 100k, as some of the remains in China are looking good for over the 90k date. So a minimum of 45k plus a founder effect is more than enough to stop them being ‘black Africans’, which is what you seem to be claiming here.
C, The modern human remains from North Africa about the date of the back migration are so similar to the Paleolithic European ones they used to get called North African Cro Magnons, and are roughly similar to modern Europeans, if a bit more robust. They are roughly Caucasoid, if not an exact match for modern Europeans/ North Africans. In fact there’s a European carving called the Brno head you should look at, as these people about 26k ago were pretty closely related to the North Africans, and it’s very conspicuosly not a black looking face.
D, Yet again I see that bullshit about that one mutation turning black people white. DUH, NO. It only accounts for a third of the difference between lighter African groups like the San, who can be a very light caramel colour when out of the tropical sun (I know, I’m related to one). It turned Europeans from a strong tan like the middle Eastern people to pasty pink, not from black to white.
First, Caucasian is a reference to a set of Mountains in Southern Russia. It is not a phenotype
Also, you seem to think Caucasoid means white. NO. It means Caucasoid, it is a phenotype, and it includes south Asians like Pakistanis and North Africans. The location it was originally attached to is meaningless, as the word now refers to a skull shape and racial grouping.
all human biodiversity originates in Africa among black Africans.
NO, again. Since masses of mutations seen in modern humans don’t have an African origin, like pale skin and blue eyes for a starter. This is a fallacy often repeated by the ignorant.
In essence, you’ve posted a long block of waffle that demonstrates how little you know. The fact that you used the word ‘Caucasia’ is quite frankly laughable. The North Africans, in their ancient art and bones, show themselves to be mainly Caucasoid people.
This comment was only good for one thing, it’s a good example of all the bullshit that Afrocentrics believe.
NubianMoor, this is exactly because they are not black that Berbers in general (not only Kabyles) have the highest skin cancer rate under the sunny climate of north Africa!
Luis, you’re welcome, that’s always a pleasure to exchange with a brother from Iberia.
The only DNA evidence we see is U6, which has a patchy distribution in North Africa and isn’t even the predoiminate mtDNA haplogroup. Cro-Magnons were not Caucasoid and do not closely resemble any of the modern popuklations in North Africa and Europe. The Euros have presented no evidence of “caucasoids” in North Africa since 30,000 years ago
Ancient North Africans are *NOT* “Cauacsoids” and the ancient crania are morphologically distinct from the modern ones, we can have this debate right here and Mr Bass will win.
Since I have specific studies of the bones in North Africa that descibes them as either Caucasoid or mediterannoid, I’ll pass on that Charlie.
Interesting article found in the Scotsgenealogy website:
http://www.scotsgenealogy.com/
Unfortunately, There is no direct link, so once in the website, just follow these two steps:
– On the left menu click on “On-line Information”
– Then click on the article “OUR ANCIENT COUSINS THE BERBERS”
Cool. thank you. I’d heard of the story, but never seen much detail about it.
Far Western Europeans look a fair bit like North Africans. I’m of Welsh ancestry, and when I pick up even a mild tan I could pass for a Berber woman. We tend to look more Mediterranean than other Northern Europeans.
You’re absolutely right Mathilda37. That’s surely due to the post-LGM Iberia spread Towards the European northwestern parts.
You are a “CeltiBerber” as Luis and me!
Hi – interesting post Matilda, I’ve read a few of your blogs and always found them useful for my own amataeur research! OK – about the above thread on the Welsh/ancient British and Berber connection…
From what I’ve been looking at over the past two years, it seems to me that the Iberian refugia of the last glacial peopled a surprisingly diverse number of cultures. As I understand the Berbers like the Basques and British have a higher percentage of rhesus negative, as well as startlingly similar physical apearences as the lady above states (I saw this too in Crete, I have a photograph of a Cretan shepherd who looked as if he’d marched up from the valleys!LOL) On a side note, I read one genetic report which attested that the main haplogroups in Crete were from North Africa, I notice on your illustration of rock art, that the women closely resemble those of the Minnoans. There is also the question of the X haplogroup found in the Clovis culture Native Americans like the Ojibwa, I think the genetisist Steve Jones comments on this, saying that it is also found in the Welsh. Berber music too has many correspondences with Irish and Gaelic as Bob Quinn pointed out some 30 year ago and has, I see, republished with a seal of approval from Pro. Cuncliffe! Then there is that tennuous connection to the Saamis way up in the North of Europe! WOW!
I think the consensus these days is that the term ‘Celt’ is redundant and those of us on the British Isles have more in common with Spain and possibly the Middle East than the fabled ‘La Tene’ culture. (look too at the megalithic culture which seemed to originate in North Africa.) I too read that article on Scotsgenealogy and was very surprised by his comparisons to Gaelic. I have argued with a friend who is more of a Linguist than I, that i believe the indigenous British languages we call today ‘Celtic’ although Indo-European, have a strong Afro-Asiatic flavour, as if those who adopted them had spoken another language before, I believe for instance the syntax and grammar in Welsh is similar to Afro-Asiatic. The Amizigh are a fascinating people, thanks for the info and somewhat ‘lively’ debate:-)
PS…on a side note – a while back I couldn’t help noticing that the Linear A/B script of the Minoans bore quite a resemblence to ancient Berber. I can’t beleive no one has spotted this, maybe they have? I get the impression they have been looking towards Greece and further into Asia, but with the genetic data, surely it’s obvious where the language origniated – but hey what do I know? It’s been a while since I was an under-grad!!LOL
Yep, the Welsh are Atlantic Mediterranoid types. My mothers family are all small, dark and round faced with a tendencey to tan quickly. The Celtic languages had an Afro Asiatic language type grammar structure, not an Indo European one. They think Indo European words were overlaid onto a AA grammar structure when farming arrived(IE seems to spread with neolithic farmers from northern Turkey).
Western parts of Britain were repopulated from the Iberian refuge population after the ice age, which would explain why we and the Basques are a lot alike. There was some population movement from North Africa into Iberia during the LGM, which could explain the language similarities.
The Minoans were colonised from Anatolia, but the same population ended up on the North African coast, so I guess they could all have come from the same root population or even be Minoan in origin. There’s patchy evidence that writing is a fair bit older in Southern Europe than was previously thought, so we’ll have to wait to see how this all pans out.
‘Lively debate’… AKA me getting fed up with some very dim people thinking that a couple of descriptions with the word ‘black’ in them wil suddenly make all the artwork and classical desciptions and anthropological/DNA studies magically vanish. Yes, I’m getting a bit cranky with them. They never have anything intelligent to say.
Well done NubianMoor, thanks to that little (deleted) race hate rant all your comments now bypass the comments system and hit the bin without being seen.
Bite me. All the qualified anthropolgists and DNA studies show modern Berbers haven’t changed, and you never supplied one properly sourced thing that said otherwise.
Dana Reynolds-Marniche essential argument is that ‘the qualified phsical anthropolgists and genticists are wrong’, nothing else. She’s a bone fide nutjob. I have hundreds of images of North africans in their own art and depicted by others, and they don’t show black Africans. But these things just don’t exist for you do they?
You will find below a link, which will show you some supplementary photos on Amazighs:
Some pictures say often more than many words…
Very nice, thanks Justin. there’s a new page called the Faces of North Africa you might like.
Original Berbers were clearly Eurasian and white. They bear some similarities to people in the far south of Portugal, Spain as well as southwest France.
It should be said that some Berber tribes co-opted small percentages of black and mixed race people (from Mauritania and the Senegal) during the Almoravid invasion of Iberia in the 9th-10th centuries. Berber tribes, however, continue to be overwhelmingly white, with facial features consistent with Europeans.
Thanks for fighting for your ancestors people. This lady is obvious not an anthropologist or she wouldn’t be bringing up people like Coon who are in fact are not seen as reputable. Her idea that the Tuareg who still bear their ancient clan names listed by the Greco-Romans, as newcomers to North Africa speaks for itself. And she is calling me the “nutjob”. By the way Mezikes (ancient Amazigh) are mentioned in a Roman documents such as “Expositio Totius Mundi” as “Ethiopians”. My website will be up soon with all the bibliography. As far as photos go of Amazigh everyone should understand that is now the generic name for Berber-speakers, when in earlier times it is a name for only one Maurusoi group in the area of Tripoli and Tunis. see Gsell in La Tripolitaine. p 17 if you can read French.
Dana…
I only used that Coon reference to point out how someone on Rastawire was misusing a quote of his to ‘prove’ North Africans were all black. Point out he is out of date to them. On this blog you’ll find masses of very recent DNA studies and anthropological studies and portriats of ancient North Africans, and pictures of their skulls. They show that Eurasian type people have been there at least 12,000 years, with more input in the Neolithic. The Tuareg only arrived a few thousand years ago, from the Nile area where they were one population with the Beja, which is recent to me as I’m into the Holocene era.
Make an effort to look at the artwork from Roman and Byzantine North Africa, which doesn’t show a single black face, and neither do the Egyptian depictions of Libyans. I notice on the rastawire pages the art done by North africans of themselves is conspicuously absent.
Dana, you are only familiar with (and then only the bits you want to see) what is written in history books, and that is essentially hearsay, and sometimes third and fourth hand hearsay. We have their bones, and their DNA, and the art they left depicting themselves. Once you got onto the coast, North africans where white.
As for the crap about European women slaves whitening up North Africa.. Europeans arab era slaves 1.5 million, black Africans about 14 million. And the Guanches (all North African), unmixed with any slave group where only ever described as tanned and blonde, and were enthuastically married by the Spanish invaders.
Yes you did get Ethiopians in North Africa, but further inland around the desert oases, the same as today. As is observed in classical texts. It’s a very multiethnic place the Sahara. BTW, Europeans commonly used the word black to refer to a person with black hair and a tan right into the 20th century, gypsies were often called black. Brown was used to refer to Northern Europeans with a tan in medieval literature.
There have been black groups in the Sahara too, as shown at Uan Muhuiggiag, but right next to white groups (theres a very old very white mummy from the same era just a few miles away from it). But even your black North Africans have a substantial amount of Eurasian ancestry in them.
thx mathilda
Im Moroccan berber from Rabat capital of Morocco , I’m white with red hair and pharaonic eyes ! my country are mostly populated by berbers (arbizeds or not arabizeds) but we have different colors of hair’s (blond-red-dark-brown-..also other strange color like white/blue…) mostly of my people are white,pal-olive skin also typically look like spaniards , I don’t know why we have this similarity and I know already that spaniard are racists against Moroccans they occuped two Moroccan cities (ceuta and mellila ,also other Islands like shafarinas islands and canary islands)
!!!!
finally !
I think berbers are cro-magnons
for example Moroccan women have different by colors hair’s !!!
watched :
we are Maliki (muslims) others are jews (toshavim) also called sephardics , my people converted to some religions for example christianity in ancient souss vally before the arrival of Islam ,berbers are pagans at first time but until today,they have some religions,because my people believe to the second life after the death ,we are believers from ancient time !
Moroccans have build large monuments for you to see :
I think that the Moroccans have a megalithic culture (Islamic version ) until today!!
thx mathilda
Im Moroccan berber from Rabat capital of Morocco , I’m white with red hair and pharaonic eyes ! my country are mostly populated by berbers (arbizeds or not arabizeds) but we have different colors of hair’s (blond-red-dark-brown-..also other strange color like white/blue…) mostly of my people are white,pal-olive skin also typically look like spaniards , I don’t know why we have this similarity and I know already that spaniard are racists against Moroccans they occuped two Moroccan cities (ceuta and mellila also other Islands like shafarinas island and canary island)
!!!!
finally !
I think berbers are cro-magnons
Fascinating page! I came here after googling E1b1b1b2 which is the haplogroup my DNA belongs too. The Berber connection has been puzzling me because my paternal ancestry is British (with a common Welsh surname). Yet the evidence suggests affinities with the Atlas and Iberia. How did those people get to Wales?
I guess we’re still investigating that one and I’ll watch the web with interest. Coincidentally I spent a few days in the north Morrocan Rif mountains in 2006 and was struck by the fairly common incidence of blue eyes and fair skins. At the time, I commented that the ‘Moors’ looked more euro than the Spanish
North Africans travelled a long distances looking for tin in the bronze age, or you could have a Roman Legionaire as an ancestor-they recruited from all over the empire including North Africa… Mr Jones.
To Phil Kiwi,Mathias,Antropo et al.
I have a curiosity for the North African ethnics,and their origins,as it’s seemly my paternal dna ancestry came from that origin.Curiously I have genetic matches that tie me closer with people from Wales,Algeria,Morocco,Scotland and other Iberian and French people.Mostly along the Atlantic coast of Europe.
Mrs.Mathilda has speculated that it may be due to the romans or to tin mines prospectors or traders.
She also estates the origins of these northern cultures extant until today or recent times was due to a heavy influx of euroasians from the east along the northern african coasts and immediate inlands bound by the Sahara extension,though smaller at those times.
While all these seems very interesting,and much complex than it looks,many other questions could be taken from other factors in neighbor areas.Then,as later.
Looking at the presence of a more complex Mt-dna genetic variance that hints at different ethnic-genesis for the demographic composition of the modern result population in northern Africa,that is highly unbalanced in proportions to the male genetic result,and hence, provenience(?),one can’t fail notice the proximity to european coasts longer occupied perhaps and the presence over them of cultures and female haplogroups also found later in Africa.
My own Mt-dna,V is very common in the Basque country where my family has been living since centuries.However,this one also shows in the same line of direction along the Atlantic coasts of Europe,being the higher frequency found among some Scandinavian shepherds too,but curiously among some Berber women and other north africans!
The records track get more interesting,because along this Mt-dna traces another one -supposedly “northafrican”-shows up among the same isolated population minority in Scandinavia,the Mt-DNA haplogroup U6…!
So,at which time they may have taken the road north in search of metal,legions,or food,these peoples with more than pastoralism in their veins as common?
or the roads went south,from Scandinavia?
(as some white suprermacists claim,locating Atlantis among Aryans of that North)
Which way to Rome?
or all roads came from Rome?
Most people have little knowledge of Berbers and just assume they are not white. Of course what they see in the media are examples of mixed race people who CLAIM to be of Berber descent.
I for one never believed that native origin Berbers were anything but North African whites. The problem is that the Arab invasion in the 5th century (mostly, but not all white), and the 11th century recruitment of negroes from Mauritania and the Senegal to fight in the Almoravid armies, changed the racial composition of some Moroccan Berber tribes.
Kiwi Phil:
The great majority of the Welsh people is R1b Y-haplogroup and Atlantic Celt haplotype. Many people in northern and central Portugal and Spain are R1b and part of the Celtic haplotype. The original Celtic ancestors of a most British Isles populations came from Iberia. For example, the Irish DNA markers match or correlate very closely with northern Portuguese and Galicians (NW Spain).
As far as your Berber haplogroup goes, there may well have been Berber elements in Iberia well prior to the Roman, Germanic and Islamic invasions. Therefore there may have been a few Iberian Celts who were part Berber.
ANTHROPOLOGIQUE = AFROCENTRISTS
BERBERS ARE MORE WHITE MORE BLOND than spaniards or italians !!
Berbers are defined as Mediterraneans with moderate Alpinid & Nordic admixture closer to Europeans than to Arabs or Africans. This is supported by a scientific study done on Rif and atlas Berbers showing that 38.6% of the Rif ,atlas Berbers have blue or green eyes a percentage higher than that found in Itlaians or Spaniards ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
Berbers do have a very high precentage of blonds. The purest berbers, the isolated Guanches, were described as often blond and blue eyed by the spanish when the conquered them. No European slacve ancestors or arab ancestry in them.
Why would you put photos of Roman paintings up on your site and classify them as Mauri is the true question. Furthermore, you keep confusing the people Coon classified as “hamitic caucaoids” with mesocephalic non African peoples represented in Kabylia and northern Morocco. What I am I to respond you to Mathilde? and try not to delete this answer. The Mauri were said to have worn braided curls in their hair and rings in their ears. They are well described as “black” in color by almost all the Romans and the Greeks, Iranians like and the Iraqis like Ibn Butlan describe the Ketama who moved down from Numidia, Sanhaja tribes (who are Lamta Lamtuna tuareg of Niger ) whom Leo Africanus said were also ancient Numidians still claim descent as blacks. They are otherwise describes simply as “Ethiopians” as in the Expostio Totius Mundi quoted by S. Gsell in La Tripolitaine where it is applied to the Mezikes (from which comes the term Amazigh). All those tribes that were calledf Berbers or Babars in ancient times were described as “blacks and dark brown in color. There is nothing tan about most Tuareg or Nafusa (of the Zenata ) or Masmuda (the “blacks of Abu Shama and Chosroes of the 11th and 12th c. A.D. They remain the color they say they were. Don’t confuse Greeks and Roman with nomads of African and in fact Ethiopic origin. I don’t care what kind of Caucasoid terminology Coon and his cronies used for them. Gypsies were called black and kinky haired because many that came into Europe through Spain were just that! know your history and don’t confuse it with others!
Quote from 1827 – “The men were very black, with their hair frizzled, the women were the most ugly and the blackest that were ever seen. .. they had sorceresses amongst them , who by pretended to look into peoples hands, to tell them what had or would happen to them…” p. 153 of The Christian journal and Literary Reigster published I 1827 by T & J. Swords? Photo Arabian gypsies , European gypsies James Michener’s Iberia Spanish Travels and Reflections 1968.
18?? – “We were not far from Pressburg when at once we heard in the distance, a singing, shouting and hallooing which continually grew nearer. Presently we met four wagons, in which a brown company of gypsies were seated. It was a curious sight. Their sat men and women, girls and boys all dark as half-negroes, in ragged array, with long shining hair, smeared after Hungarian fashion with lard…We gazed at them in astonishment…” Wanderings of a Journeyman Tailor through Europe and the East: During the years 1824 to 1840
I am sorry you are not familiar with the way some gypsies still look in Europe. Just because many of them have mixded with Europeans doesn’t they were’nt once black as Egyptians adn Jats they came from.
LMAO… Dana–please, I deal in science on this site not bullshit. Please read prior comment about iffy descriptions. You do like to omit the ones that descibe invading moors as being occasionally blond etc. There’s art from the Byzantine era showing white north Africans too.
Those roman mosaics are not of anyone else other than north Africans. Not a single black face. Please explain why the Egyptians painted them as white and they themselves painted themselves as white in the cave art?
Gypsies are originally from India you moron.
Dana… the woman I have shown to be an outright liar elsewhere… ranting on senselessly.
Do me a favour and actually try to quote some paper or DNA study that shows ancient North Africans to be black.. hint, you’ll have a sodding fruitless search.
If you really want historical references; Scilax mentions fair libyans, and at a later date Procopious speaks of a population with white skin and fair hair. Callimachus also m noted the fair Libyan women among the inhabitants of Cyrenaica. The Egyptians always showed libyans with pale skin. The question is why do the Romans when depicting the locals in those mosaics – and they arelocals , fisherman, servants and slaves- not one is black.
You know all you ever do is dig up the few descriptions of North Africans you can find that could be interpreted to mean ‘black’, and you steer well clear of any reference to any publication to do with anthropology as you know they always disagree with you. PLease, quote a DNA study on ancient bones or a crania study that shows ancient Libyans to be any different to the modern.
Take the trouble to read up on the origins of the gypsies – even Wiki has a decent item on them. They originate from India not Spain. LMAO We have numerous portraits of them, from olde England, they don’t look even vaguely African and modern gypsies have zero ancestry that traces to Africa. They diodn’t come from africa via spain-where do you get that crap? both Y chromosmes and mitochondiral DNA and their own Indo European (not African) language shows they came from the Punjab area in the Middle Ages.
Thanks for digging up the descriptions of Gypsies as black though, to prove my point that black doesn’t mean black African. Very handy; expect to see that being used by me.
Again, you are a moron Dana.
Secondly you show paintings of Libyans from the time of Seti which a relatively late period in the Egyptian dynasties. In fact these Libyans you show where the hair styles and cosutmes of people who are earlier during the Old kingdom shown only in Brown skin. I was fortunate enough to study in the Oriental Museum in the University of Chicago where i saw some of these populations and learned about them. That is why Oric Bates speaks about the xanthrochroids or fair skinned Libyans as being late comers. Only dark skinned Lebou Tjehenou are shown in Old Kingdom paintings. Thus if this is indeed the true color of the Libyans of the time of New Kingdom the fact that they are wearing the same accoutrement and costumes of earlier Woodabe looking people of the Sahara makes it certain they were at the most mulatto descendants of the early Libyans or Lebou. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, there was absolutely no neolithic “white” mummy found in the Sahara. Like the lancient Egyptians the skeleton was quite like those of modern Cushitic or semitic speakers of Ethiopia. You might want to look into Nabta Playa y a Sudanese site where the prototype of the neolithic megaliths of Europe have been found. naturally the neolithic peoples of the Stone Henge have been classified by Coon as Mediterranean types although Elliot Smith said they were identical to Somali and Bedja, etc. If you are going to keep putting people of Eurasiatic origin and calling them the true Berbers Moors, Arabs an whatever you will need to explain why their are rarely photos up on your site of Sanhaja or Ketama, Nafusa (Zenata), Masmuda, Lamtuna, Goddala and modern Berbers, including the dark brown Kabyles whom were claimed to be the majority of kanbyles in the mid 19th century and who appear in photographs all of the Egypt forum blog site.
The Gaunches aren’t pure anything but descendants of Europeans brought to the area. Aren’t you interested in researching history too?!. Next thing you will be saying is that they are descenants of Phoenicians like some wishful thing colonialists used to do.
The Guanches showed up as typically North Africa for mt DNA – they tested their remains, they aren’t European. they also make up a large part of the modern Canatries DNA pool. Also, typically Eurasian ancestry shows up in North African bones that are 12k old. Their arrival predates the birth of Christ in the Canaries.
You are so desperate to make the ancient North African people black.. here’s a hint – find me some actual science to back that up (not your carefully cherrypicked and usually very deceptive descriptions that leave out half of the relevant info). No anthropologist will agree with you that before the modern era North africans were any different than they are now
Mathias:
What you say is a bit exaggerated. Yes, there are blond and light eyed elements in NATIVE ORIGIN Berbers. Some of that is a result of the original gene pool, no question, but it was enhanced by the Vandal occupation of North Africa.
The Spanish and Portuguese, in percentage terms, have more light eyes, red and blond hair than Italians, Greeks, southern French and, yes, Berbers. This is particularly true in the central and northern regions of the Iberian Peninsula, where Germanics and “nordicized” Celts (the original Celts were darker, more Alpine) ruled for hundreds of years (in the case of the Celtic tribes, more than a thousand years). It is absurd to thinks that all Spaniards are dark.
I don’t get what you are saying about my being Afrocentric. That is an unfair and unjustified comment. I am hardly that. In fact, I suspect that the Berbers were one of the earliest settlers in Europe.
to Anthropologique
Vandals have not colonized Morocco!
you must consulted the territory vandals who held just in the sides of the Mediterranean in northern Tunisia and northren eastern part of algeria
Morocco is a country too remote compared to other countries of North Africa, Arabsand romans couldn’t invade this country (consult history of Morocco)!
Moors are Berbers 100%! I know they are typically Moroccan indigenous too! they resemble to the old Cromagnons
watched : berbers from MOROCCO
http://i3.ytimg.com/bg/zyHB8h-gd3K8K-bONmo2Hg/default.jpg?app=bg&v=4e8bc1
yes, the first Celtic are Berbers from Morocco across the Strait of Gibraltar
to dana
you know that there are berber pharaos (lybian pharaos ) ?!!!
just like Ramses II and sheshonq ,Takelot and more others …..!
Go get em Mathilda37…
I am so tired of people spreading misinformation about various and sundry people around the world. The absolute worst are the afrocentrist types who are clueless about everything, it seems. I don’t know, maybe by deluding themselves into thinking that everyone is black or part black it makes them feel better about their own identities…Insane!
Dana:
Where do you get your information from, comic books? Bizarre…
Dana, you are so full of crap it’s funny.
You’ve also quoted C.Coon and tried to pretend he said ancient Berbers were black- I only mentioned him because I needed to show you were lying/stupid. So reign back on the ‘she’s using a racist source BS’, you used him first (Rastawire).
“Lastly and perhaps most importantly, there was absolutely no neolithic “white” mummy found in the Sahara. “
BULLSHIT
Please refer to link on the white lady mummies from central Libya .Only a few miles from the Uan Muhuggiag black mummy. Complete with picture.
Please feel free to mail me links to other decent images of Libyans from the Moorish era and earlier. Not that in the time you’ve spammed this blog you’ve produced any evidence at all to support yourself. BTW, Tuareg only arrived in North Africa a few thousand years ago, genetically they are East African in origin. Check out the Link to the DNA study done on them…
The History and Geography of Human Genes
Also, read Golden Age of the Moor properly for a description of their similar customs.
Most of the skulls from the Neolithic Sahara are Mediterranoid Caucasians, only about 25% are typically black.
Yet again, not one single peice of science in any of your ranting. You are in complete denial of the DNA studies which show a Eurasian type people in North Africa over 12k ago.
If it wasn’t for the humour value I wouldn’t let you post here. Example..
“naturally the neolithic peoples of the Stone Henge have been classified by Coon as Mediterranean types although Elliot Smith said they were identical to Somali and Bedja,”
Grafton Elliot Smith … born 1871. LMAO. Believed all megalithic cultures came from Egypt or Nubia. Now known to be, well, just plain wrong as older structures are found in Turkey and central Europe than in Egypt. LMAO some more.
BTW, Many Southern British are typically mediterranoid today, me included. It’s a type of Caucasoid (white folks to you).
The fact you claimed Gypsies were African in origin proves you are a total moron.
Oh yeah, sure, Gypsies originated from black Africa…and purple elephants inhabit the skies.
Yes, the Southern British…Most are what is referred to as Q-Celtic and they are descendant from the original Celts of Iberia. Yes, many Spaniards and Portuguese are tribal kin of the Welsh, Cornish, Irish and even the Western Scots – the Atlantic Celts. Many of their DNA markers match or correlate very closely with the populations of Western Iberia, particularly the North West (Galicia, Asturias in Spain and Minho, Douro and Tras-os-Montes in Portugal. Small world, isn’t it?
Small world, isn’t it?
Yes it is ANTHROPOLOGIQUE. Whenever I pick up any kind of tan I get mistaken for Spanish or Italian.
I think what you are doing is great, Mathilda…
I am so tired at the lies and gross exaggerations that the Afrocentric looney tunes put out about race and ethnicity. The White Nationalists are nearly as bad and sometimes just as ignorant and mendacious as the Afros.
Well thanks, it;s a nice change from the Afronut hate mail I get.
Sorry Ms Mathilda,I already gave my opinion as a comment about the origin of the berbers which was opposite to your point of view,I did not know you defending a fact ( principle) that you believe and stick on it . I am not an afrocentric ,I am an algerian arab with kabyle blood from my mother side,I recognize that the berbers of atlas Tellien are whites and the ones from the south (Touareg) are blacks with some mixture. But based on researchs made by linguistics scientists as Maurice Delafosse ,
Joseph Greenberg,Theodore Benfey,Friedrich Muller all of them said that Hamitic language is afroasitic but you, you denied it ,I would to know why ? explain?
As an engineer agronomist ,I would not trust any one in the future .
As for hypothesis wich said most the arabs in the maghreb are of berber origin.This is the 21th century propaganda C’est du bluff.I am originaire of IRAK from arab Djabour arch.
Joseph Greenberg,Theodore Benfey,Friedrich Muller all of them said that Hamitic language is afroasitic but you, you denied it
No, actually I have a whole entry on the afro asiatic language around here somewhere which goes into it’s African origins, although this is under dispute from a few sources. The Berber/Egyptian/Semetic group (north Afrasian) seem to be Asian in origin, and probably arrived with the Neolithic from Asia.
As for hypothesis wich said most the arabs in the maghreb are of berber origin.This is the 21th century propaganda
It’s not a hypothesis. A lot of North African ‘Arabs’ are pretty pissed at finding their ancestry doesn’t come from the holy land, but they don’t really show much ancestry from Asia. For the most part North African men’s Y chromsomes are native to North Africa, whether they be Arab or Berber.
Ms Mathilda Hi !
I saw a documentary in PBS channel in 2001-02 and it showed, on the basis of genetic analysis study that the human population started near the horn of Africa and moved eastward and got divided into two groups,one continue it journey to what is now called Australia and the second group get to near minor asia and made a U turn toward europe.Others moved south where they met a tough environement conditions of africa that made them more dark skinsThe document showed also a black tribe in south africa with genetic link to the jews and they pretended that they are may be the lost israelite tribe.
The host of the show was a white man.
How you explain that?
They only have Jewish Y chromsomes- it would be sane to say that a small group of Jewish men settled in Africa taking Jewish traditions with them. Saw the same thing on TV, had to do with the Ark of the Covenant.
Matilda,
Berber is a language not an ethnic group. The Berber language originated in East Africa according to Christopher Ehret and Igor Diakonoff. While some may argue for a “Near Eastern” origin for Berber languages, many still stick to the view that it originates in East Africa.
So the idea that “The Berbers” are defined by Eurasian ancestry is simply nonsense, as Berber language and culture has no roots in “Eurasia”. Berber language and culture has its roots completely in Africa. Yes many modern Berber speakers have Eurasian ancestry. But Eurasian ancestry of some Berber speakers does not mean that Berber language and culture originates in Eurasia. It does not. Languages are spoken by different ethnic groups with different ancestries and such ancestry does not prove the origin of a language. However, linguistic studies in conjunction with genetic and other studies can be useful for clues. But here is where you play loose with the facts, because your site is filled with claims of ancient North Africans being “Eurasian” based on all sorts of studies and analysis, as if to pretend that these people were white, including ancient “Nubians” and Hausa no less. Anyone who would claim that ancient Hausa, Chadians, Saharans and Northern Sudanese are somehow Eurasian people is simply not to be taken seriously. Nevertheless, this is the basis of your analysis and the crux of it, which is to prove that ancient North Africans area a Eurasian race, which means that black Africans are not the true original people of North Africa, which is inherently false.
So again, as I said earlier, Berber languages are said to be a branch of Afro Asiatic which split off in East Africa and moved West from around Northern Sudan. Sure, according to you, these were Eurasian people, but I think not.
If the language did not originate there, then what is your hypothesis on how it got to Africa, when and where did it come from and based on what “evidence”? All you have done so far is to show some pictures of modern white Berbers and imply that this makes Berber an ancient language from Eurasia, which it does not. It does not matter how long people with white skin have been in North Africa and I know they have been there for a few thousand years, but that does not mean that white skin and Eurasian ancestry is the basis of Berber languages or culture in North Africa. This you have not shown.
And your so called “evidence” of a white mummy is meaningless as it is a corpse. You don’t simply look at a dried ancient corpse and determine ancestry. It takes scientific analysis. But what do you expect from an amateur who pretends to be an expert?
because your site is filled with claims of ancient North Africans being “Eurasian” based on all sorts of studies and analysis, as if to pretend that these people were white, including ancient “Nubians” and Hausa no less
LMAO. Yet again Don you have the reading comprehension of a 5 year old. I said the Hausa had an unusually high level of R1b, which they do. I never said they were white….I also said the Nubians were pretty much mixde race like Ethiopians in Lower Nubia, not white. Again, you do like to make shit up.
Ehret claims a lot of thing, there are quite a few linguists (three last count) that back an Asian orign for Afro Asaitic. Ehrets work shows itself to be seriously flawed on many occassions, particularly in dating.
Berber language and culture has its roots completely in Africa.
Well, technically a large part of the culture arrived from the near East in the neolithic. And then it was influenced by the Romans and Phoenicians and then the Byzantine empire. Black Africa makes a notable abscence from the history of North Africa in antiquity.
I think not.
I think you’ve proved that every time you posted a comment here Don.
All you have done so far is to show some pictures of modern white Berbers and imply that this makes Berber an ancient language from Eurasia
No, I’ve pointed out Ehrets ‘ancient’ dates are ridiculous for AA., and that the age of AA is probably a better match for the Neolithic, which means an Asain POO is more likely. Since I previously was all for an African origin for AA and posted articles on it’s possible route out of Africa, you can kiss my arse when you claim this is all some bias my part.
And your so called “evidence” of a white mummy is meaningless as it is a corpse
And yet Afrocentrists (like you) insist a single black mummy from Uan Muhuggiag means all of North Africa was black. Besides that, I have a mass of art from the neothic pastoral in the Sahara showing very white North Africans, and access to plenty of anthropological material that describes Neolithic Saharans as mainly EurAfricans or Caucasoid (white to you) with about 25% being black.
And I’ve never pretended to be anything other than a well informed (and well connected) amateur keeping track of my research binges.
Don, the only reason I’m allowing to to post this is because I have PMT and need someone to shred. Do yourself a favour, don’t give me the opportunity to prove you a moron in public. I don’t like fighting battles of wits with an unarmed opponent.
Actually, you haven’t proven the “Nubians” to be mixed race. So again, while not claiming them to be white, now you claim they were mixed. The point being that somehow they were mixed with whites, because of R1b, which is not proven. R1b does not prove white skin or “race”, which shows that much of your “analysis” is based on identifying “race” in ancient populations based on all sorts of non anthropological data. Language and genes do not prove race because race does not exist. And language and genes do not prove skin color either.
I would like to know how black Africa is absent from antiquity? Where did it go? Were not the ancient “Nubians” black? Not to mention the predynastic and dynastic Egyptians. But oh wait, they were all mixed with Eurasian whites who migrated to the Nile Valley 40,000 years ago even though no whites existed 40,000 years ago.
And with all your recent posts of “Asian” agriculture in north Africa you still show that the Nile Valley was completely indigenous. Not to mention your own article on the “sub saharan” affinities of early Natufian remains. Seems to me you are contradicting yourself.
And as far as the Libyan mummies go, the only one pretending to be “competing” on what “race” of mummies they can find in Libya is you. And no amount of trying to bring up Afrocentric straw men can change the fact that anthropologists not Afrocentrics called the Libyan mummy a “black” mummy. It seems you feel the need to find a “white” mummy since you are the one who feels that ancient North Africans were so “mixed”. But I guess you need to find something to substantiate your claims of ‘black’ Africa missing from antiquity. Uan Muhuggiag was black in antiquity and certainly nobody else missed it. His mommy was most likely black and so was his daddy. So somehow I don’t see what you are calling your “facts” to the contrary other than imagining to see a “white” mummy based on absolute non scientific observation.
Therefore, the only one trying to make the “race” of ancient North Africans into a competitions between “whites” and “blacks” seems to be you.
Really a glutton for punishement Don aren’t you?
even though no whites existed 40,000 years ago.
There were light skinned people 40k, just not quite as pasty as Norther Europeans are- more an Asian light tan colour, modern Northern European skin mutations make virtually no difference to North Africans, as you seem to think they do. Natufians are the product of a mixed Eurasian and SSA migration into Israel (24k BP) after the older back migration date (35k BP) fro Eurasian into Africa. (The OOA date is at least 85k ago you moron, people were in East Asia 74k ago, they hadn’t ‘just left Africa’ as you like to think). I never said the Natufians were black or ‘ all African’, it’s unlikley they were any darker than modern Isarealis after being mixed with Eurasian and then having about 10k of time to adapt to lower UV levels. ‘Affinities to Africans’ means ‘having some relationship to Africans’, not ‘the same as Africans’ . Like I said, you have the reading comprehension of a five year old.
R1b does not prove white skin or “race”,
The R1b proves a population movement from North (asia) to south along the Nile at the same time the AA languages appear in the area. I never said these people were other than black – that was all in your tiny mind. One good look at a Chadic speaker will tell you that’s an idiot concept- unlike Nubians and Ethiopians who show a lot of Eurasian ancestry in their skull shapes and the DNA studies. The Ouldeme R1b has been through a lot of bottlenecks. Not that you are smart enough to grasp that- you proven yourself to be a simpleton on many occasions here.
And with all your recent posts of “Asian” agriculture in north Africa you still show that the Nile Valley was completely indigenous.
But strangely full of Asian crops and Asian animals. And not, it wasn’t indigenous, agriculture and animal husbany and Eurasian people entered Africa about 8,000 years ago and brought their Asian crops and animals with them. You also see a few aspects of their culture in the Nile valley area in predynastic eras. So the Nile valley was not some isloated peice of all African purity as as you seem to want to desperately believe.
genes do not prove skin color either
Actually, in large scale population studies they are a pretty good guide. If a population shows mainly Eurasian ancestry- surprise surprise- they look Eurasian and pretty light skinned. Mixed populations look mixed, with intermediate skin.
Every publishing anthropologist (including Keita) has outrighted stated that dynastic and predynastic Egyptians are mainly the ancestors of modern Egyptians- with Keita (you know, the black one) making very sure to point out theres been NO VARIATION IN PHENTOYPE in Egyptians (the interview with national Geographic-look it up here.) No, Black Africans really didn’t play much part in classical Mediterranean history. The old PD upper Egyptians were essentially mixed race, with the dynastic Egyptians having mostly Eurasian ancestry (bother to read some of Keitas work properly, there was a N to S population movement in the early dynasties).
It’s not a competition Don.. I’m just having to repeately correct the semi literate uneducated drivel that you keep spouting here and else where. North Africans have been mainly ‘Eurafrican’ for about the last 10,000 years, and before that they were a mixed race buch called the Mechtoids. Modern North Africans mainly have Eurasian ancestry that arrived in three waves; in the Paleoithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic.
And the Uan mummy wasn’t a straw man.. you guys keep waving that one black mummy around and wailing ‘it’s proof they were all black’, but I post one news legitimate news item on the finding of ‘the oldest mummy in North Africa’ and you have a massive hissy because she’s really obviously not black and it takes away one of you main ‘proofs’ that ‘blacks created Egyptian culture’ if the oldest mummy is white. How dare I show that a white person was mummified at an earlier date.
BTW, funny that you accept that anthropologists can tell when a skull is from a black person in Africa, but when they all say and they do) that they show typically European skulls and mixed race skulls (along with white looking people in th contemporary rock art) in the area you (agreeing with the DNA studies that show Eurasians in North Africa since before history) just wave that little inconvenience aside in you quest to ‘prove’ all of North Africa was black.
Sehr gute Seite. Ich habe es zu den Favoriten.
Actually Matilda no anthropologist believes in “race” because there is no such thing. Yes all humans vary in phenotype, but phenotype is not race. What you mean is skin color and skulls do not prove skin color, especially of populations thousands of years ago in Africa. The point being that you are taking it onto yourself to define the “races” of ancient remains based on your own non scientific layman point of view, using scientific studies and paraphrasing them as if they were your own, when they are not. But you pretend that because some study says something you believe proves a “racial” trait among ancient populations, you use it. The point being that most of these studies do not mention “race” at all, only you are. Therefore, you are the one trying to turn this into a discussion of race and the movement of Eurasians in particular as the epitome of a certain “race”. However, the part you keep missing is that Africans are the source of humanity, not Eurasians. Eurasians are not an ancient “race” to themselves. Africans are the most ancient form of human on the planet, including Eurasians. Therefore, trying to claim that 40,000 years ago, Eurasians were like modern white Europeans is nonsense. They were not. They were closer to their ancient African forebears than modern Europeans.
Yes, there have been whites in Northern Africa for a few thousand years or more, but they are not the original North Africans, they did not replace the aboriginal black Africans of North Africa and no, black Africans were never foreign to North Africa. That is the part that is simply a nonsense point of view pushed by you and not proven by any means of the word. 40,000 years ago there was no mass migration of Eurasian whites into North Africa which replaced the black Africans with some “other” non black type. It is again simply you trying to find a way to take blacks out of North Africa in antiquity.
And the oldest mummy in North Africa is simply a dead body and none of the reports you cited said anything about the “race” of this corpse. Again, you are making up arbitrary “racial” markers to define the “race” of a corpse, which has nothing absolutely to do with any science other than your attempts to take actual scientific studies and twist them to make it seem that they say things which they don’t.
And here is the article about the oldest mummy found in Egypt and it says absolutely nothing about “race” or skin color. So again, the only one making this into a competition between white and black is you and you seem hell bent on fighting a battle of “white” versus “black”, since it seems that this is the core thrust of so many of your posts, especially about North Africa.
And again, all of that nonsense about mummies does not change that the Berber language originated in East Africa, according to many linguists, which has nothing to do with Afrocentrism. But however it has something to do with your precious ancient exclusively, predominantly white original north Africans and therefore, you are against it.
And again, all of that nonsense about mummies does not change that the Berber language originated in East Africa, according to many linguists, which has nothing to do with Afrocentrism.
With equally as many placing it Asia, and more in NE Africa. BTW, east Africa is now less popular than the others, with Asia gaining ground in recent years.
As for the mummy, she’s whiter than the Italians examining her, and you haven’t read ALL the texts about them, I have. One was using her as an example of the multi racial/ethnic Sahara of that era. Not that I mention her apparent race even once.. you’re pissed at the way she looks, not at anything I typed. As I’ve said, you have the reading comprehension of a 5 year old.
As for the oldest Egyptian mummification.. race was not mentioned there either; it was just a mummy found. It seems that you are the one with a bug up their ass about proving race, not me. And actually, on the ‘is there any such thing as race’ issue, when asked, most physical anthropologists said ‘yes there is’ when polled a few years ago- there’s a study out there- and so do biologists and about 50% of geneticists. Even the ones that just support ‘clinal variation’ will tell you it is totally possible to figure out the popuation affinities of a skeleton pretty accurately, and from its DNA.
BTW, Cavalli Sforza on Berbers.
So… not an Ethiopian origin then.
You must be a masochist Don, I’ve never seen someone so keen to get his arse kicked on a daily basis.
black Africans were never foreign to North Africa.
Just the coastal areas from about 10k ago.. I’ve never said otherwise you idiot. But then you’ve proved on multiple occasions you don’t understand half of what you read.
Therefore, trying to claim that 40,000 years ago, Eurasians were like modern white Europeans is nonsense. They were not. They were closer to their ancient African forebears than modern Europeans.
It seems massively important to you that this is true.. it isn’t. Read some anthropology papers or books. Asians of that era get described as ‘proto Caucasoid’, they weren’t even remotely like modern black Africans. The first typically Caucasoid skull is about 30k old from Eastern Europe. Humans had been out of Africa a long time by that point, and although not typically Caucasiod, the Eurasians had roughly the same kind of crania shape they do today, but with heavier brow ridges, bigger faces and cheekbones. I have an image of an early European from about 26k ago.. notably not African looking. And modern skin mutations make very little difference to anyone’s skin colour except northern Europeans.. Even very Southern Africans have a lightish golden tan skin colour, not black. Since humans had been in Asia at least 45k prior, there’s no reason to think they had anything other than light Asian tan skin for a very long time. See link for what someone without modern skin lightening mutations looks like- Africans can reach Arabian skin tones with no new mutations needed in just a few thousand years . You can chuck as many tantrums as you like, but Europe was not colonised by a black group ‘straight from Africa’, all the evidence suggests a long time OOA before this happened. CS places the separation date (probably in N Africa) at 146k, most fossil remains indicate about 120k ish for OOA, so saying that the colonists of Europe were ‘black Africans’ is laughable, as they hadn’t been for tens of thousands of years.
Another one here. The art from that era uniformly shows straight hair. Also seen sticking out from this ones hat. and this ones.
Why in God’s black earth would I try to make modern Berber-speakers like the whiter Kabyles whose dna proves they are in fact Greek and southern Europeans with the African Tuareg and other true Berbers, whose dna shows them to have close affiliation to east Africans. I think you’ve been reading too much National Geographic. If i lied anywhere feel free to email me directly, and let me know the facts. Like I’ve said prevsiously the archeology of the Kabyle region, their blood types palm prints and culture links them to Greeks and not Berbers and certainly not the Moors of any sort.
They have shown what earlier physical anthropologists have shown. That they were closely affiliated with and in fact indistinguishable from the cranial and skeletons of those of modern Ethiopians.
Hilariously wrong. Try reading ‘Clines and clusters’ the Brace paperwhere he concludes there no hint of Sub Sharan in the dynastic Egyptian population.
Thus proving you be full of crap yet again.
Dana you show a totall lack of familiarity with Braces and any other authors work; they’ve concluded that modern Egyptians are essentially the same as ancient, which is why you never see them actually quoted in any of your stuff. And only the Southern most predynastic Egyptian show up like any black population- and they come to the ones who are more or less mixed race- which is the conlusion you get with these studies for the Badarians-mixed race (same as modern upper Egyptians BTW). Lower Egyptians show up as typically caucasoid people in every way. BTW, modern Egyptians have mainly Y chromsomes specific to Africa.. how did they magically change appearance then?
And no, the M81 (Berber) Y chromosome shows absolutely no affinity to any Ethiopian population. It’s derived from a migration into North Africa of a mixed race people dating about 24k ago, all the migrations into North Africa since that point have been from the near East, and the crania are typically mediterranian from about 10k BP on in coastal north Africa, and so is the DNA. The Berbers do not come from Ethiopia bonehead, the bulk of their ancestry is Eurasian, and has been for the last 10k or so,, not that I’d expect you to grasp the comlpex population movement across nOrthAfrica since the Pleistocene.. you though gypsies were African in origin for pities sake…LMAO
Like I’ve said prevsiously the archeology of the Kabyle region, their blood types palm prints and culture links them to Greeks and not Berbers and certainly not the Moors of any sort.
Funny how the kabyle mt DNA is exactly the same as the specimens from North Africa dated to 12k ago. You are so full of crap. And no I’m not emailing you so you can get my email address. 😉
No one that knows African history, linguistics or anthropology and the many depictions of Moorish Arabs and Moors in early Europe will ever take you seriously
LMAO.. all the genetics papers and history papers I’ve ever read desccribe ancient North Africans as a mainly white people. Read the Cavalli Sforza books (the worlds No 1 pop geneticist) where he describes Eurasian white north Africans as being present in North Africa since the Caspian, and the Tuareg as relatively recent appearacen in NW Africa. He includes Berbers in the Eurasian Cucasoid groups, see the diagrams here.
Funnily enpugh, an exact match for the views in my blog and the opposits of your BS.The fact is that you can’t quote any scientific to study that says what you want.. YET AGAIN… Please read the book you really need to.
You have distorted everything that you have ever read. And in fact the homogeneity of the skeletons of ancient Egyptians stopped dead at the Ptolemaic period. We know that from the studies of Brace, Armelagos, Batrawi and others who have done studies on the genetic related traits of crania and dentition along the Nile. They have shown what earlier physical anthropologists have shown. That they were closely affiliated with and in fact indistinguishable from the cranial and skeletons of those of modern Ethiopians. The same can be said of ancient Saharans, Arabians and most of the Neolithic and Mesolithic North Africans.
No one that knows African history, linguistics or anthropology and the many depictions of Moorish Arabs and Moors in early Europe will ever take you seriously because you have even misinterpreted the genetic assertions of European scholars. African history isn’t about nationalisms whether Zionist, Euromediterranean, African or European. Your name calling will also not change the bones of Neolithic Europeans and most ancient North Africans, nor the fact that the early megalithic site found in of Nabta Playa in Sudan was the prototype of the megalithic sites found in the British Isles – Nabta Playa dating from over a thousand years earlier.
Dear Mathilda37:
You have the patience of a saint. You deal so effectively with these brainless dopes.
It is truly amazing how insecure some people of color can be. Afrocentrism is just another word for the grossly ignorant types trying to re-write history and the findings of physical anthropology and genetics.
You have the patience of a saint
That will come as news to Mr Mathilda.
I’m going to have ban Dana and Don… It just makes me look nasty when I shred them like idiots. They do come out with some world class bullshit.
Dana, Don, while this has been amusing..
Dana.. until you manage to pull a piece of a respectable published work that supports your POV (good luck with that) out of your ass – something you’ve failed to do abysmally despite a dozen opportunites – you won’t be getting any more comments on here. All you ever do is prove to the world how little you know (African gypsies!!!), and I’m getting a bit tired of pointing out how ignorant you are. Should you manage to find something non-inane and supported, it’ll be allowed through… I won’t hold my breath though…
Don, your lack of reading comprehension would put you in the retarded group in a Downs’s syndrome school, and your knowledge of anthropology appears to rival Dana’s for ‘the most ignorant’ title. The same thing for Dana goes for you.. until you mange to post something with published work to back it up, you can naff of. I’ve given you plenty of opportunities to say something intelligent, and you’ve failed everytime.
Doesn’t the fact that you can’t find any published material but I can find plenty, at least give you pause for thought?
TOUCHE’, Mathi…:-)))
BTW, I was born in Alto-Minho Portugal, once part of Gallaecia. I am an original Celt on both sides. I traced my roots back a thousand years. All my R1b markers on my father’s side match the dominant DNA trend found in southern and western Ireland and there are some matches with the Welsh on my mother’s side. Since you are Welsh, I consider you a tribal kin…:-))
see it Dana !!
MOROCCAN MOORISH MEN !
So let me get this straight, the first “Berbers” in the coasts of North Africa did not speak Berber and it was introduced to them by “Neolithic farmers”? Then why are you calling them Berbers then? Seems to me that the first Berbers would be the people who first spoke the Berber languages. That is why using Calli Sforza, who is a geneticist, to speak on the history of a language doesn’t make any sense to me.
And, if you read the book you referenced, he makes very further claims about the Berber languages which do not make sense. He claims the Tuaregs are not Berbers but they speak an ancient form of the Berber language. But again, if Berber identity is based around language, not genetics, then this doesn’t make any sense. So because the Tuaregs are genetically closer to the Beja and East Africans, Mr Sforza, who seems to want to identify Berbers based on genetics, omits Tuaregs from being Berber, simply because he uses genes as the basis of Berber identification, when in reality it is based on language and culture. Therefore, the views of Mr. Sforza are skewed and do not really address the identity of Berbers as a linguistic group, as opposed to trying to identify Berbers based on genetics.
The funny point is that nobody, not from this site, nor Mr Sforza, would have the courage to tell Tuaregs to their faces that they are not real Berbers. This is simply the kind of nonsense stuff written for people outside of Africa who have no knowledge of or contact with the Africans in question, which is precisely why such nonsense should be questioned.
So the fundamental question is whether we are talking Berber as a language or Berber as a gene?
I was born in Alto-Minhoo Portugal too & I’m a real CeltiBerber. Markers in my family (both sides) :
yDNA: R1b1b2/E1b1b1b2
mtDNA: H/H1
Long live the variety!
So let me get this straight, the first “Berbers” in the coasts of North Africa did not speak Berber and it was introduced to them by “Neolithic farmers”?
Quite possibly. No language family dates to over 10k old , and the spread of Afro Asiatic languages matches the dates of the Neolithic expansion.And Berber is a pretty recent name fo these people, and not one they use themselves.
Tuaregs are thought to have arrived a few thousand years ago and adopted Berber languages. Genetically they don’t show much time in NW Africa. They’re ‘real berbers’ if you take being being Berber as cultural.
“Faces of Morrocco” ? Are you kidding ? These are not morrocan !
The girl in bottom left is Kabyl. It’s berber algerian. This picture was taken while “the black spring” in 2001, in Kabylia.
No way between her and the makhzen morrocco. Amazigh, berber, algerian, but NOT morrocan.
And i’m sure there is other faces that are from algeria.
Be serious
Faces of Morrocco” ? Are you kidding ? These are not morrocan !
The girl in bottom left is Kabyl. It’s berber algerian. This picture was taken while “the black spring” in 2001, in Kabylia
Where did I say ‘faces of Morocco?’
As an exemple, the third picture from bottom left.
The lady is wearing jewels typically from kabyl amazigh (algeria)
As an amazir of algeria, i’m really disappointed to see my culture is being mixed up with “Morroco”, still i have no link with this state.
These are amazir ou amaziGH faces (amazigh of algeria and morrocco are brothers), BUT NOT “morrocan” faces.
All of North Africa is essentially ‘non Arab’ , and there’s not much genetic difference between the two. This page isn’t about Morocco, it’s about North Africans ion general really.
Hi Mathilda:
BTW, my latest post was meant for you. Sorry, I forgot to put your name on it.
Justin:
My understanding is that there are Berber markers as far north as Norway…Amazing!
Moroccan faces !!!
hot hot beauty !!! I
ANTHROPOLOGIQUE :
You’re right & my closest E1b1b1b2 genetic matches are from USA (with British roots), Scotland & England!
“Amazigh” indeed.
Mathilda:
Quite possibly. No language family dates to over 10k old , and the spread of Afro Asiatic languages matches the dates of the Neolithic expansion.And Berber is a pretty recent name fo these people, and not one they use themselves.
So how old is the Berber language then and where is the oldest evidence for it? I do not think the origin of Berber languages is the same as the original spread of Afro Asiatic, that would make the Berber language over 10,000 years old. And it still seems odd to label someone based on identity that they don’t use, theoretically defined by a language that did not exist, and on top of that using genetics and not linguistic studies and history. At best it is misleading and at worst it is dishonest.
I did a little reading into Berber langauges.. they seem to have seperated from Egyptian and Semtiic in the Neolithic, but the last spread from a common dialect was less than about 2k ago, as there are lots of words for camels and they dont’; appear till around the birth of Christ in NW Africa. The Guanches spoke a Berber related language, they left for the Canaries about 3k ago.
And it still seems odd to label someone based on identity that they don’t use, theoretically defined by a language that did not exist, and on top of that using genetics and not linguistic studies and history.
The difference between ethnicity and ancestry. Tuareg are ethnically Berber, but ancestrallly they have an origin in the South of Egypt/North of Sudan. Before Arabic berber was the common language of North Africa, it’s probably why they adopted it.
Lol.
Thank you Mathilda 🙂
You do not say faces of Morocco right now 🙂
Never let it be said I won’t take criticism 🙂
Amused:
Dana sweety; I don’t ‘take comments off’, they don’t get posted at all unless I permit it. Yet again another abusive rant ( disallowed) where you fail to pull any evidence out of your arse. I called you a moron before for a very good reason (African gypsies!). Please refer to the prior tirades of yours where you insist on calling me a liar as an ice breaker before you act outraged for having your rather epic ignorance pointed out to you
As for the coins of Hannibal.. They are North African coins representing a north African- what exactly was your point? So far all the artwork from the north coast relentlessly shows brunette white people from the neolithic on- including the Byzantine art just prior to the Islamic invasion.
To date you haven’t supplied one image from ancient North Africa showing a black African or any quoted publication to support you- despite repeated requests. All you do is spout quite litigious abuse.
Since I have posted direct quotes from a number of anthropologists and geneticists who directly disgree in their own words with your ‘beliefs’, I’d like to point out to the world in general that I’m not making this up; I’m just quoting.
As I have said before..find images or actual publications to back you up. Your deranged ramblings are not comment-worthy.
Mathilda:
“I did a little reading into Berber langauges.. they seem to have seperated from Egyptian and Semtiic in the Neolithic, but the last spread from a common dialect was less than about 2k ago, as there are lots of words for camels and they dont’; appear till around the birth of Christ in NW Africa. The Guanches spoke a Berber related language, they left for the Canaries about 3k ago.”
Based on that reply and other information from elsewhere it would seem that the Berber language is about 3-4 thousand years old. That would mean that the spread of U6, whether we call them “Eurasian” or otherwise, has nothing to do with the origin of Berber as a language. The origin of U6 predates the development of Afro Asiatic by tens of thousands of years. Which again why I disagree with trying to equate Berber as a language or culture with a genetic lineage. The two are totally different things. All Berber populations have varying genetic lineages, some more “Eurasian” and some more “African”, but none of that says anything about where and or how a particular language originated. Most of the studies provided treat the Eurasian lineages as a group including U,K,N and J, with U6 being a relatively small percentage of all lineages in most Berber speaking populations. Considering that all of these lineages reflect a complex history of migration and interaction, it is impossible to tie any of them to the spread of Berber as a language, especially something like U6 which is 45 -50 thousand years old and definitely out of the question as a marker for the origin of Berber languages. Also, the 3-4ky age of Berber languages also makes them much younger than the spread of the Neolithic in North Africa, which took place between 10ky and 6ky.
Last time I checked Berber was worked out to have separated fom proto Erythraic (proto Berber,/Egyptian/Semitic) about 8k or so by glottochronology- its a neolithic language. The 2k date is the last ‘node’, or last dialect that came to dominate it. The Guanches would have left before that. Before that they’d have spoken an older Berber dialect, not a non Berber language.
Generally when I use Berber I mean indigenous North Africans in general. I know a lot have Arab ethnic identity, but their DNA says other wise- they are mainly native north africans under the skin. IAnd never associated the spread of U6 to Berber languages (way too old).
From what I can gather, the DNA traces of language expansions can be pretty ghostly. Some Eurasian population migrated into Africa into the neolithic bringing farming. The Berber languages (IMO and a few others) seems to date to that. Who is a modern ethnic Berber has a lot more to do with who’s ancestors din’t Arabize. The North Africans who didn’t got called Barbarians (Berbers). The Tuareg are Berbers ethnically but not genetically North African.
Yes, proto Erythraic is mentioned by Authors such as Blench. However, he puts the homeland of such a split between Berber, Egyptian and Semitic at somewhere between the Nile and Red Sea. He also puts the original extent of Berber Languages as being from the Upper Nile clear across to Mauritania and Niger. And given that he feels that AfroAsiatic spread North from Ethiopia, he considers AfroAsiatic primarily an African language. Again, given that AfroAsiatic and Berber are languages and because the region where the Tuareg lineages originate is also in the same area where some linguists postulate that Berber originally split from Egyptian and Semitic, it does not make sense to make a distinction for the Tuareg as less Berber than others based on genetic lineage, when the history and spread of a language does not necessarily correlate with lineage and to this point nobody has clearly defined any genetic lineage that indicates the origin and spread of a single language. While it is definitely true that some Berbers have a large degree of Eurasian ancestry, it is not necessarily true that Eurasian ancestry defines or indicates the origin of or defines what is considered Berber, which is a language and culture not a genotype.
Blench’s book is here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=esFy3Po57A8C&pg=PA154&lpg=PA154&dq=proto+Erythraic&source=bl&ots=6eNT2GXWvy&sig=ZPkQb73x1UUkpHXBdOa0z1tQPdg&hl=en&ei=I4fGSeK_BdGEtwep9eHHCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result
I’ve read a fair bit of Blench, but thanks for the link. Every tree I’ve seen I’ve seen for AA languages has Berber, Semitic and Egyptian as a little group together. I’ve seen two linguists put AA languages as Asiatic in origin. I have to say the population movements, dates and DNA seem to agree with them more which is probably why Cavalli Sforza takes the same view I do. As I’ve said on this blog; the calibrated ages for AA language exactly match an origin in Asia spreading into N Africa. Not to mention that Militarev managed to reconstruct plenty of words for goats and sheep, which just don’t turn in up Africa until the Neolithic (they are only wild in Asia) and others that suggest a neolithic farming/pastoralist era instead of a hunter gatherer time frame.
The Tuareg arrive in North Africa until long after the date for proto Berbers seperation (about 3,000 years after), so attaching it to them won’t work. They also don’t have any relationship to Egyptians and theres absolutely no way to explain how they could have a close relationship to Asaitic Semitic. There is no way Semitic is African in origin. There’s no movement out of Africa within a relavant time frame- culturally or genetically. The main reason for me pointing out that Tuareg are not ‘the real Berbers’ here is that I get endlessly spammed by Afrocentrists desperate to believe the Moors and Egyptians were black, so they insist All the other Berber tribes are the descendants of slaves (see Dana above) and that Tuareg are the only real Bebers. I’m just pointing out that their appearance in North Africa is pretty recent (within historical eras) not ancient proto Berber eras. They had nothing to do with the Berber langauge’s spread, they still show strong cultural similarities to the East African Beja. The Beja speak Cushitic.. if the Tuareg would have brought any language with them it would have derived from Cushitic. Berber doesn’t have any close relationship to Cushitic.
Actually I wasn’t referring to Afrocentrics at all. I was talking about Blench. Blench claims an African origin for Afro Asiatic, as does Ehret. Yes, other people claim that AA originates in “Asia” but in all reality they aren’t talking about “Asia” as opposed to the Levant. And, in terms of Blench anyway, the grouping of Egyptian, Berber and Semitic are grouped as African by Blench. And he openly admits that there is a “debate” among linguists about whether AA or Semitic originates in Asia or Africa, but none of these people are Afrocentrics in any sense of the term. Whatever “Afrocentrics” say has nothing to do with this as this is purely a linguistic and cultural issue. Yes, genes are part of the puzzle, but genes do not tell the whole story.
As for the Tuaregs, yes they are related to the Beja and Blench does speak on the differences and relationship to Berber. But the point I am making is that at least Blench and maybe even Ehret put the origin of Berber in the Nile Valley. The debate over the origins of Afro Asiatic aside, the point is that Berber is not as old as Afro Asiatic, neither is Egyptian and neither is Semitic. Therefore, when I speak of Berber I want to keep focus on the dates of when Berber as a language originated and from where. Which is why I refer to the linguists, like Blench and others. And some definitely put the origin and or split of Berber into the area of the Nile Valley. And I have seen no linguist who posits that proto-Berber originates 7,000 years ago.
If you mean the branching of Northern Semitic from proto-Erythraic, then again Blench puts that squarely into the Nile Valley and Red Sea areas. But this branch was not Berber it was a common ancestor of Egyptian and Berber and Semitic that split off 7,000 years ago according to Blench. That is not Berber.
The Tuareg are partially descended from peoples in East Africa 3,000 years ago, but they are also descended from the inhabitants of the Sahara in the Neolithic as well. The 3,000 year date for “the Tuareg” is simply a reference to a specific cultural/linguistic package. There have been multiple movements of Africans from the Sahara to the Nile and back over the last 50,000 years and that is simply the latest of a long series of such movements.
Anyway, whether or not you believe in the “Eurasian” origin origin of AfroAsiatic or Semitic, that is fine. The point I am making is that all scholars do not agree on this view and the debate that goes on about it is not simply an Afrocentric debate. There are many reasons for believing one way or another and it isn’t for you to pretend that because you want to believe one group of linguists/anthropologists, that this makes the views of other linguists/anthropologists any less valid.
Here is another reference that puts proto Berber as breaking off from proto-Erythraic about 6,000 years ago. Note, this author puts proto-Erythraic languages squarely in the Nile Valley and Ethiopian highlands and not “Eurasia”. This also shows the tree, with Cushitic being an earlier branch off of proto-North Erythraic. This book also has an extensive discussion on the relationships of “loan words” for cattle and sheep between the various families of languages in this tree.
http://books.google.com/books?id=C7XhcYoFxaQC&pg=PA291&lpg=PA291&dq=proto+Erythraic&source=bl&ots=eVFwaXn6Bo&sig=CRIJ6zqpe47LxmEk4E09NiLfXpk&hl=en&ei=I4fGSeK_BdGEtwep9eHHCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result#PPA291,M1
The point being that some things stated here are an oversimplification of the complexity of linguistic studies and genetics.
The berbers don’t appear to have changed much in the last 12000 years.
Ms Mathilda it is controversial,you wrote to me that most of arabs speaking in the maghreb are in facts berbers of origin. Suppose,it is true that’s mean they embrace fully the culture of the invaders specially their new faith( Islam) without compulsion and by consequent full intermariage(e.g : my father is Arab ,my mother is kabyle, My niece is Arab,her husband is kabyle). As a fact,during all this time from the 8th to 21th century,you think nothing changed ?
Just to remind you,the amazigh language of today has 35% of arabic lexica. I love listen
to Kabyle music even though I do not speak berber .It is a part of my culture and I enjoy because of this link.
To the rivals of opnion: we all belong to one humans ancestor known as Adam peace upon Him through Noah and sons: Sam,Ham…
A Y chr study showed North African Arabs and Berbers to have the same y chromosome make up.. mainly North West African. the population were converted not massacred, as Islam requires.
Arabic in the African north are not many they are rather divided into family, because to be clear amazighs cut their relation with the east and its authority for the year 789 Christian
The Arabic historians hide us a lot of information I do not know why!!!!! Especially on beni hilal small tribe which invaded a part of lybie and Tunis This tribe was sent by king fatimide of Egypt to take revenge for tribes Tunis which left the shite for the sunite
Then where is the problem? Arabic say that these tribes steered on all the north of Africa !!!!hehehe And that they are many is they who arabized amazigh ( berbers ) The Arabic historians reveal only this part(party) of the history(story) and the most interesting hiding place yes yes The lies of Arabic The reality it is because the tribes of Tunis have were disturbed by the beni hilal which steal them plunder are in hiding to them And they asked for Abu Yusuf Ya’qub al-Mansur ‘s help(assistant) Berber king of Morocco Algiers and Moslem Spain,Which(Who) has terminated this tribe of beni hilal in the couppant in small groups in every region of the African north checked(controlled) by big tribes Berber as zennate …for the arabisation it is Berbers which chose to be arabisé and every berber dynasty encouraged the arabisation as almoravide and zennete
For the Berber language it is very difficult to speak about this language(tongue)
I am Berber and I know very well my language(tongue) and I can give my point of view, I remember myself my first ones lessons of English I was surprised on the resemblance between some word berbers and English even if they have no same sense(direction) !!!
And also for the qopt language(tongue) of egypte the former(ancient) language(tongue) of the Pharaohs
I also noticed that there are two words in English the same sense(direction) bite have the same meaning in berber for bii’tte to us you and yes of it berbers it is yah
This language(tongue) deserves to be studied
thank you mathildas for your research and from articles and your effort
THANK YOU MATHILDAS for your searches it is very rich ,,,I completely agree with you, I am Berber and I can make you useful ,,The analyses of is very correct without any faults the North African are always berbers but arabized they do not know him(it) ,,I think that there is a fault, it is can be the Arabic historians treated(manipulated) our history(story) in 19th century ,,,Because a lot of people ignores some event since the Islamic conquest
–In the first place the Arabic invaders were helped by Egyptians and Berber tribes Islamized without war
–Then the authority of Arabic did not last very for a long time, because Berber Islamized by strength were revolutionized several times They freed(cleared) Arabic especially in regions of morroco and Algers and the South of Tunis and the lybie Because the Berber were not in agreement with Arabic which exceeded the limits
— The Islamic part of the dynasties which throned on North of Africa are Berber the majority army berbers or African blacks And the Arabic dynasties which throned are of single one origin ali ibn taleb cousin of prophet Them big father came only to the African North with no tribe
— The tribes which entered the African North are not Numerous (many) scattered thanks to kings Moslem berbers thus these Arabic do not have any point to the African North it is just the arabization which exists ;;The legend of the tribe beni hilal is only a big lie ;;Because beni hilal came only to steal the berbers of Tunis sent by the fatimides of Egypt but the berbers of Tunis asked help the king yaqoub al mansour King of morocco, Algers and andolucia spanish
And thanks to him this tribe was scattered on all the North of Africa ind mountains Thus she(it) did not arabize berbers, but it is the berbers which chose of spoken Arabic for centuries at present their descendant consider Arabic
I speak very well about the berber and I find that it is a mixture enters language(tongue) simites and the europiennes languages(tongues)
I think that afrocentric did not read the history(story) because Ethiopia and Somalia is countries shared by berbers and Egyptians that is why they a culture different from the others African black and in more ethupiens are more clearly they are not completely black
I add that there are Berber tribes in the mountains which(who) are mixed with the blacks the Tuareg tribes and the Arabic families yamanite also slaves Somalian or ethoupiens because tribes zennete berbers frequented the South of Egypt By buying of the slaves or the others the goods
For me my family always keeps(guards) line(feature) of our former(ancient) parends big we are half fair and half white brown and not black looks at this video of youtube
face of berbers north africa
Alger( music)kabyle
I only mean that the current berbers is crossed with the other peoples of desert
Malika, you’re right, some Berber tribes named Kotama and Zenata of the Middle Ages had invaded Egypt to the Sudan, other Berber tribes invaded Mali and Ghana from Moorish empire , all the tribes of the Sahara are not directly Tuaregs, Egypt is ruled by Ait Ziri family of Berber origin from Tunisia, this noble family found melted the Fatimid empire in the Middle East by kotama tribes of Morocco and Algeria, Cairo capital of Egypt, founded by the Berber of Morocco and Algeria was populated mainly by those BERBERS come from the northern of Africa ,until now ! several Egyptians bear the names of Moroccan origin, and you can send anthropologists of Egyptian history about the events of Middle Ages! for your information the Fatimid empire is the first Shiite empire in which the new invaders have committed war crimes against the Sunnis of Egypt and that several Berber tribes decided to migrated to the south when they fade independent kingdoms in sudan!
Egyptian historians even argue that the kotama tribes are continued their migrations to Mesopotamia! to all plz consult history of fatimid empire , it’s the first berber empire in middle east from medieval age’s
thx to all
I have images of the army al mowahade the Berber dynasty of Moroccan origin of the mountain atlass …..But comment are in Arabic
wawwww My God these photos are very former(ancient) make by the Berber dynasty mowahade even and not pulled(fired) by the imagination
You go to notice the presence of a minority black
And berbèrs is always white and Fair-haired man(Blond)
http://www.ssislam.com/Tareek%20islam/aL%20Dwal%20%2017.htm
The first image shows royal messengers chretien alfonso
The second image shows the victory of the army berber on the chretien armed in the battle of saint sebastien degomez
Three images which follow show the clothes of the soldiers berbers
I use the translation English French to explain to you hehehehehe
I think mathilda that these images will be you useful
Thank you Malika.
thank you mathilda for all your effort.
to djillali
there is no such thing as an arab race in north africa .
our DNA doesn’t lie.
politicians and the merchants of religion do lie without shame !
the so called ‘arab ancestry’ is pure fantasy !
it was made up by people looking for power and prestige.
anyway, why not take some of your precious time and read this PDF document.
GENETIC STRUCTURE OF ALGERIAN POPULATIONS
Click to access Algeria1.pdf
regards
a video – trailer about the city of al-hoceima / alhuceimas in the rif region, the rifians look typically mediterranean.
Arabs are Southeastern Mediterranean and Middle Eastern, period.
Anyone from North Africa with anything other than full Berber DNA does not genetically correlate with the native peoples of the region.
Dalough:
I don’t view many of the Rif people in your last post as being very Mediterranean (certainly not European Mediterranean). More like far North Eastern African / Middle Eastern.
In this recent autosomal study (Worldwide Human Relationships Inferred from Genome-Wide Patterns of Variation, Jun Z. Li, 2008) the Mozabites who are a saharan population from the algerian Mzab were analysed.
What is very interesting is that these Mozabites who are considered (apart from the tuaregs) to have the most “Black african” ancestry show in fact only around 12% Black ancestry !
thanks for the stuff Frenchy,
… and here is a picture of Zidane the most famous (french) berber in the world
other very famous french of berber ancestry are :
Isabelle Adjani : http://www.prland.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/isabelle-adjani.jpg
Dany Boon :
Alain Bachung
Karim Benzema
and many others.
And as we can see they have nothing to do with “sub-saharan Africans” or even “Arabs”…
..I forgot the most famous Edith Piaf whose grand mother was a algerian Berber
ANTHROPOLOGIQUE
who defines how a mediterranean type should look like ?
let me remind you,that the mediterranean coast of north africa is almost equal in size to the european one .
so, you shouldn’t dictate how a mediterranian type should look like ! (euro-centric ? )
besides, I don’t know what part of the middle east you are trying to compare to (Iran, lebanon, syria ,turkiye, arabia ………?
regards
Mr Delouh
Sorry It takes me time to answer you,I was in Algeria for a while because my kabyle mother passed away ,God bless her. To start,let you know that Arab is not a race but an ethnie(there is just four existents races a’ savoir White,Black,Yellow and Red ),I belong to the first without doubt. But based on your study of 4ooo algerian recruits it is insignificant to show an origin because where I lived is a city of 100.000 people and nobody heared about a genetic testing even in a big city as ORAN. Not to mention just myself,I knew a lot of people who knew their arabic descent just by their family name as les Aoufi, Talha ,Zoubir… To end my comment, after the independence of Algeria it is your cousins Chaoui who governed my country from 1962 to 2000,ask them why they lied about the history and did not talk about it.They ignore it
I am not waiting to tell me from where I come, I already knew ,my origin is from Irak specialy Arab Djabour who fighted hard the invasion of the us army. Be a berber or an Arab does mean nothing to me. I leave for you my place because my country now is CANADA , Iam proud to be part of a multiculturale society.
Who comes first to life, the Hen or the egg is a topic of a third world.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Don Blake reckons there is no race or races because Anthropologists don’t believe in the existence of race. Really! Last time I was at university studying sciences, my speciality is biological sciences, Anthropology was in the Humanities faculty and hardly any units of Anthropology contained much science beyond high school level. Show me an Anthropologist with a science degree. They hardly exist. Coon was no scientist. John R Baker was a scientist who wrote the book called Race but he was not an Anthropologist. In other words, the sayings of Anthropologists on race is not worth a plug nickle.
Haplogroups like R1b or J1 or R1a1 are essentially Eurasian in origin which means non sub Saharan African and where Africans have those haplogroups it is due to admixing with Eurasians. That is the result of genetic studies by scientists trained in genetics and molecular biology not anthropologist trained in cultures or linguistics or some other pseudo science like study.
The comments
Mr Faux Franchy
Why you are so proud?
Subsaharian people they do have their famous footballeur the maestro PELE (Edson Arants DO Naciemiento) and Mr Obama(powerful human on earth) ,Mohamed Ali … Berber means North africa.
If you are an endemic pure berber you should not leave your ecosystem to became a’ ton tour invader (like the Arabs) for french people and Mr le Pen .and racaille for Sarkozy
Miss Mathilda Franchy comments are arrogants envers others and they not supposed to be posted .His approach does not seem to be of somebody educated and intelligent .
Mr Obama, even if he is considered as “Black” is however not genetically Sub-saharian as about 50% of his genes are european… A huge difference
Mr Djaber, the iraqui arab from algeria who lives now in canada,
Please, do not pollute this very serious site with your bullshit. Mathilda does not deserve this.
And, please again try to improve your english, it is a pity for someone living in such a country as canada.
Why do not you come back to Iraq, your original homeland?
Pure Berbers are non-Arab and, of course,the original North Africans. Native origin Berbers genetically correlate much more with Western Europeans. Today, the majority of so-called “Berbers” are essentially a mixture of Arab and negro. Such people are only Berber in culture. True autochthonous Berbers are a fairly small minority and found essentially in the higher mountain ranges of Morocco and Algeria.
To Augustine:
Why to not call things by their names
I am too, comes from a mixture marriage:Father arab and mother kabyle. But because of my look as an Arab even my maternal side family called me Arby (arab) .
Mr Obama looks Black, He considers himself Black. His mother’s genetic materiel are recessive not dominant.He does not look even moiety.
Mr proudkabyle ,as Ms Mathilda said ,the origin
of berbers is from the near east , you too ,you could have your descents from Mesopotamia (Irak) like me.
Lets go back together
Have a look at this:http://panoramio.com/photo/15135048
…arab, arabaitan(OHG)/arbeit(ger)=work,
hmmm, a(r)ab/ (tl)ap/ba=tlapa(N)=land=
tlalli(N)/pa(N)=paint,
flame=tlatla(N)/pa(N)=paint.
(a)rab/rabotat(russ)=a(r)beit=work.
arabs are tlapas, paintballers, hunters,
they come from the race of aplu(Etruscan)=
apollo, arts and apples and pomes/apollome/
plums, they use tlapa/tla(m)pa/lamps
alladin. they are abel(bible), they are not
cain/in ca(N)=the being, thinking reed
people/tlaca(N)=body/caña=cane=acatl(N),
not fishers, and not bodys/tlaca tlatlaca
tlacame. how is this possible? we are
all motla(N)/mo(r)tla/mortal, but the arabs
believe they are water/atl, altia, alaua,
allah. ojalá(sp)=if allah wishes, and tlapa,
aplu, apollo, the sun. they may have taken
sun worship from the egyptians? where?
their calendar is the moon, so they were
once run by women as we all should be today.
ah, but they have the horse, definitely
they are tlapa/gobekli spawn, grainers,
desert khazars, zatal huyuk lupanares,
bull people, ocelot people,
airyana(avestan)=ailia(N)=ally/-yana=
yani(N)=pilgrim(nomad=noma/nomatka(N/adv)=still, the same, always, spontaneous).
so, pilgrims, yani=llano(sp)=expanse, plain,
prairie/(pr)airie/airyana=nomads who work
for others, always the same, spontaneous.
how can one hope to change a people like that?
wandering warriors of the moon in love with
water altars, air/ailia(N)=working for others
never themsleves, and fire paint,
who believe they have no bodies and are
apples on the heaven tree ready to fall,
upwards?
…berber/ b/v/uel/rb/v/uel/r(letra)=
iueliiueli(N)=powerfulpowerful/iveryivery(letra)=ivoryivory, hmmmm, they are neander
blond, red, dark brown.
spanish racism is
clear sign they are related ibero/berobero/
verovero/iueli iueli, yes, from there.
they call themselves, maliki/
malhuia quiahuitl(N)=to honor the tree/ki,
and, the sephardics=toshavim=toxaua(N/verb)=toss out(ballast),shower.
the -im ending is found in elohim/
(oc)elome(N/pl)=birthing cave animal of
tlatlatzolteotl, iueli/ivory statue 35k bc
just found(nytimes).
the isles, ceuta/ceuhtiuh(N)=decline, switch off/ceuhyan(N)=where one rests/
ceui(N)=to become cold/cetl(N)=ice.
mellila/mlilt(arab)/melelti, meletiani(N)=
repented, turbulent, fm, elleloa(N)=
hand out, cause pain, fm, elli(N)=liver, chest,
stomach=(b)elly(E).
…hmmm, berbers are from iberia, they’re linguistically connected: iberia/berber.
let me get a berber glossary. tks
…berberi(gk)=nacre, mother of pearl, hmmm,
wonder if they’re trying to say ivory/ivery/
iueli(N)=powerful, the bear word/uel/ver/ber,
which referred to the mastodon during the
gravettian? quite a shot in the dark.
berberion(gk)=shabby garment(raghead).
i definitely don’t accept the facile, barbar(russ)/
ualual(N)/warwar etymology. confusion rains.
ah, their euro is mtDNA, dated 50k bc,
when europe in bear/deer culture, then they
go to caucasus 30k, then noma, nomatka(N)=
spontaneous, the same/nomad to n.afrika.
their name for themselves, mazyes from
mazigh, son of canon(from ham/deer is more
like it, myazo/meat in russian), why, it’s
the word mazatl, day 7 booktunes. could
it be that old, from 50k bc. stranger things
have happened, but this is near the top.
the egyptians called them, meshwesh,
berber version, mashwsh=mazatl(7).
7=the food/sustenance number and
may have survived from berber euro/
mtDNA. hmmm, more words:
tefetuth(bb)=butterfly/tepetototl(N)=
mountain/tepeptl tototl/bird, hmmm,
that one’s from the caucasus, but,the altai
has more butterflys than anybody.
tilemte(bb)=food, looks like, tilinia(N)=
stretch the bow, with tetl(N)=stone tacked
to it, one way of getting food. tlinqui is
a weaving word later.
asif(bb)=river, cipactli(N/day1,souls),
the turkish for dunes=eksibe=ec(atl)s/cip/be
(letra)=ecatl cipactli(N)=wind dragon/river.
adu/wadu(bb)=wind(but the word, water/atl),
the wind brings water. the bb’s not exactly
first in line for language, which is the reason
for their arab appelation of barbaros(gk),
applied to their tongue).
amghar(bb)=leader, am(a)ca/ghar(letra)=
amaca(N)=watergiver=atl maca.
ils(bb)=tongue, (t)il(inqui)(letra)=
tilinqui(N)/lincua(Lat)/lengua(sp).
weaving word.
tarbat(bb)=girl, aha, t/tla(r)p/ba(ca)tl(letra)=
tlapacatl(N)=to wash clothes, hmmm,
semitic overtones, tlapacca-(N)=the prefix
for the patience, resignation words, the
rebecca root words. tlapa is cave word, first
lamps/tla(m)pa from hunter animal fat,
also the palli/pa/paint/phallic word,
tlapa/lapps(deer people north).
azur(bb)=root, tlaza(N)=throw down, on to
raza/raiz(sp)=root.
izi(bb)=fly, whiz(E)/uitz(N)=arrive, e.g.,
ecaitz(basque)/ecauitz(N)=ecatl uitz=
windcome.
a(r)gas(bb)=man, aga(arab)/ahauh(mayan/
day20/booktones)/aua(N)=water owner.
ul(bb)=heart, yollotl(N)=heart.
ixf(bb)=head, ixf/pia(letra)=ixpia(N)=
face/ix(tli)-pia/piety, guard, the later
word, espy/spy.
in language, 50k is not a long time.
…gadzooks, you published it, mati, tks. for
another look at the same subject, try the
tzopilotl wordpress, post berberi/berberion.
ah, mazyes=mazatl yectli(N)=excellent(yes)
deer.
…linguistic archeology is something new
and very old. new, because we haven’t had
pie nauatl before, that is, haven’t used it
as the data base for language. old, in that
it has always been there as the incarnation
of spirit and soul , always been for
peoples ancient or new. the wild connexions
going back thousands of years using one
word, one utterance/itoa(N) take some
getting used to, in sending and receiving,
one can be way off the mark and sound like
a crack-pot papanatas(sp)/ninny, or one
can be right on in the most incredible of ways,
riding haplogroups like the circus horse
that it is through the hoops of science,
and there are many. it is difficult for
one rider to assimilate all the habits of
the piebald horse of nauatl and most
difficult is the handling of interpretation
which can range from wild surmise
to the snick of the lock/tloc of certainty.
in this aspect, lingarch and letra differ
from demonstrable empires of science,
except perhaps aviation, for we are dealing
with fluiditys of sound passed down throough
the lips of what seems like an eternity
always receding before us, whose
earthly name is history, but i can assure
you the one thing that man has created
that is closest to whatever eternity he
ever has aspired to, is language, and i
ask a little more respect for its findings
and its eminence in the workings of
this world where it is the only manifestation
of man’s unconquerable drive to not be
forgotten in a universe so lonely and
fobidding he had to invent himself the
gods to mistreat him. tks
Obviously North African Berbers are white; no one with the slightest acquaintance with the region would argue otherwise. But this idea that the Tuareg are somehow closely related to the Beja is problematic to say the least. I don’t know how strong the genetic arguments are (although I notice they score even closer to the Berbers than to the Beja – 480 vs. 558), but Van Sertima’s pseudoscientific etymologies and far-fetched comparisons cannot possibly be taken seriously. (Where do I begin? How am I even supposed to refute a book that compares a Nubian (?) word for “oryx” with a Tuareg root for “female” or “earth” and the (presumably Geez) name of a king of Aksum, or that claims without citation that the Mazikes were Beja, or that the “Makhorenes” (sic) of Nubia were spread to Algeria, or that the Tuareg veil “was once used to keep them from breathing on the sacred fire”?)
Anyway – apart from interpretation issues (Beja>Tuareg or Tuareg>Beja?) – there’s an obvious potential problem with the genetic data: the “Tuareg” are a heterogeneous group. Apart from the caste divisions (he says the studies generally treat the ex-slaves separately, but doesn’t mention anything about the blacksmiths), they include at least one Western Berber-speaking tribe (the Ayt-Tawari) and several others which probably shifted from Western Berber to Tuareg; and, from some perspectives, they also include three nomadic Northern Songhay tribes, the Idaksahak, Igdalen, and Iberogan. I’d like to see which tribes and castes Cavalli-Sforza’s data came from before drawing any conclusions.
the darck berber you mention are berber mixed with slave and arabic invader we call them in berber “a verca ” it mean slave the berber who live in high land are white they loock nordic/mediteranean the sami live in north europe if they shary dna with berber it mean that somme north tribe of europe probably during ice age go further down in penesula and even north africa
– mozabit are not berber we used them in war they com from midelest (and also dna give me right)and they are shite in religion and give them the right to stail in north africa
-touareg are outsider dominated by the berber who give them culture and the art of war
-kabyle there is two the great : (werre the pure wiht berber are) werre the peaple never mixe with arab and turck as they have the hate for all stangea and consider him inverior, the small herre whit berber mixed with slave and
arab/turck invader they loock darcker somtimes whit and have berber culture and tongue
the great try
do dont mix with the small
-chaoui are : berber/arab/jew/turk admixture
they are the most enmy of the great kabyle in nortrh africa
herre is the pseudo berber of algeria as conclusion in spite of the great kabyle who are decent of pure berber and whit all are “bastard”
in addition i say that in north africa all parte who was inhabited by the berber you find blonde blue eyed peapel among the population and less werre they unhabited lick sahara
concerning morroco it the samme thing all peapel mixed white arabo turk and slave may be a litel minority in the high land the video you poste dont loock for me berber at all and also the pic they are arab from midel est or better a mixture of both
in spite of the kabyle of great kabily all are mixed – notte also that in north africa you find blonde blue eyed peapel among the population in the region who werre inhabited by berber during antiquity and less in the region who was not inhabited by berber lick sahara and south of north africa
…another addition to the, noma, nomatka,
nomatzinco(N)= still, the same, spontaneous,
always=nomad: meat/matr(ON)/
mats(Goth)/mat,matam(OSax)/maz(OHG)/
myaso(rus)/mazat, cmazat(rus)=annoint.
mazatl ce uentli seven se(r)ve, tonalamatl.
matlatl(N)=net, matlalli, matlallin(N)=
dark green, deep blue(netland).
ma(N)=hunt land/sea with net,
one goes from deer to fishing
all in one verb, ma=ma(n).
slayerx13
go back playing computer games. Kabyle and chaoui intermarry all the time!!!
am hold for cpu gamme !and yes kabyle from “SMALL KABYLIE “marry with chaoui and evry thing else in north africa but not from the great.
Cavalli-sforza is not necessarily right about his claims that afroasiatic–given that Greenberg, and nearly all of the mainstream historical linguists say that the phylum arose in Africa. The place of origin of the U group if it is 60,000 years of age as Torroni says would have to be Africa.
At another level it would be wise to work from evolutionary models and cautious thinking. The peopling issue and the culture issue might be different things. There are no Berbers in the Near East–and no textual evidence–or hints in the Assyrian and other documents suggest that there were Berbers there. The m35/81 Y variant is essentially restricted to Africa and has a coalescence time that is nearly Holocene which fits the linguistic evidence. Rapid microevolution coupled with social and sexual selection can alter gene frequencies. The U haplogroup is likely African in origin–and it is not surprising that it was found in northern Africa. Given that Cromagnon and later western Europeans are not biogeographically European in origin it is not clear why there is all of this emotion about Africa–there is no getting around Africa’s role in the macroclade that led to humans.
The place of origin of the U group if it is 60,000 years of age as Torroni says would have to be Africa
Ah no, as modern humans were out of Africa by about 85k ago at the latest. Modern Humans were in Australia at 60k ago. M81 I’d actually put down as Neolithic and expanding with the population movenment from East to West that you see at that time., as M81 appears to come from the Nile delta.
I’ve seen a lot of academic dispute about the origins of Afro Asiatic- and no, Africa is not the generally accepted point of origin for it. In particluar I have issues with Dr Ehrets work, which has proto cushitic at 10k old (herding sheep and goats) when the only place goats and sheep were 10k ago was syria and Northwards of there. Reconstructions of PAA show up Levantine and NOT African animals and plants. The real problem with an African origin for PAA now is that Chadic speakers all chow high amounts of Eurasian male ancestry that arrived with the Neolithic and their sheep and goats, which really doesn’t help the ‘Africa’ side of the coin toss. The African AA speakers all show Neolithic input coming from the nile delta and into their area, but there’s no suitable populaiton or cultural movementout of Africa to account for the fact Semitic was close enough to loan words to proto Indo Europeans when they (IE’s) first got agriculture.
To all :
After all these years of human infestation , I find it both unnecessary and childish to prove that a certain people where of a certain complexion ,after all; humans of all shades have contributed to the ill being of planet earth (including all of you, you tree hugging, save the whale freaks: you belong to the same pathetic race).
I sometimes wish that the E.T. crowds were right so that all this nonsense of which human is better would disappear.
As a Mediterranean North African I would have no problems siding with the Aliens as they kick ass (mine included) and then we’ll find out who’s superior.
El
mathilda37
you know what i think, i think people are confusing the word (black Moor) with the color of skin?. infact black as in the word also comes from Moor… the fact that there also know as sea people,people of the black sea!. Mauri was the genesis of the name of the ancient kingdom of Mauretania!.Moor is sometimes used in a wider context to describe any person from North Africa.
The term Caucasian race (also Caucasoid) has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the indigenous populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, West Asia, Central Asia, and South Asia. Historically, the term has been used to describe the entire population of these regions, Caucasus Mountains= Caucasian race ..grt blog keep it coming very interesting..
“Chadic speakers all chow high amounts of Eurasian male ancestry that arrived with the Neolithic and their sheep and goats, which really doesn’t help the ‘Africa’ side of the coin toss”…
“high eurasian ancestry”—NONSENSE,how can they have high eurasian ancestry when it is the 3rd most observed in terms of genetics and the majority of their dna is Haplogroup E which is common amongst other africans?
Regardless of what you think about ehrets work,you are not a qualified Linguist,therefore,you cannot state his works as being fraudulent. just because it doesnt agree with your eurocentric view of AE’s and africans as a whole of being “eurasian” b/c they dont meet up to your stereotypical perspective of a “big nose and lip”african.
Chadic speakers have high Eurasian ancestry on the Y chr, the Ouldeme have about 95% R1b, and Cameroon as a whole was about 40% R1b.
Joseph, plenty if linguists and other scholars have issue with the quality of Ehrets work for the same reasons I do.
I suggest if you don’t like non- Afrocentric sites that you don’t come here again.
Christopher Ehret
Professor of History, African Studies Chair
University of California at Los Angeles
Ancient Egyptian civilization was, in ways and to an extent usually not recognized, fundamentally African. The evidence of both language and culture reveals these African roots.
The origins of Egyptian ethnicity lay in the areas south of Egypt. The ancient Egyptian language belonged to the Afrasian family (also called Afroasiatic or, formerly, Hamito-Semitic). The speakers of the earliest Afrasian languages, according to recent studies, were a set of peoples whose lands between 15,000 and 13,000 B.C. stretched from Nubia in the west to far northern Somalia in the east. They supported themselves by gathering wild grains. The first elements of Egyptian culture were laid down two thousand years later, between 12,000 and 10,000 B.C., when some of these Afrasian communities expanded northward into Egypt, bringing with them a language directly ancestral to ancient Egyptian. They also introduced to Egypt the idea of using wild grains as food.
A new religion came with them as well. Its central tenet explains the often localized origins of later Egyptian gods: the earliest Afrasians were, properly speaking, neither monotheistic nor polytheistic. Instead, each local community, comprising a clan or a group of related clans, had its own distinct deity and centered its religious observances on that deity. This belief system persists today among several Afrasian peoples of far southwest Ethiopia. And as Biblical scholars have shown, Yahweh, god of the ancient Hebrews, an Afrasian people of the Semitic group, was originally also such a deity. The connection of many of Egypt’s predynastic gods to particular localities is surely a modified version of this early Afrasian belief. Political unification in the late fourth millennium brought the Egyptian deities together in a new polytheistic system. But their local origins remain amply apparent in the records that have come down to us.
During the long era between about 10,000 and 6000 B.C., new kinds of southern influences diffused into Egypt. During these millennia, the Sahara had a wetter climate than it has today, with grassland or steppes in many areas that are now almost absolute desert. New wild animals, most notably the cow, spread widely in the eastern Sahara in this period.
One of the exciting archeological events of the past twenty years was the discovery that the peoples of the steppes and grasslands to the immediate south of Egypt domesticated these cattle, as early as 9000 to 8000 B.C. The societies involved in this momentous development included Afrasians and neighboring peoples whose languages belonged to a second major African language family, Nilo-Saharan (Wendorf, Schild, Close 1984; Wendorf, et al. 1982). The earliest domestic cattle came to Egypt apparently from these southern neighbors, probably before 6000 B.C., not, as we used to think, from the Middle East.
One major technological advance, pottery-making, was also initiated as early as 9000 B.C. by the Nilo-Saharans and Afrasians who lived to the south of Egypt. Soon thereafter, pots spread to Egyptian sites, almost 2,000 years before the first pottery was made in the Middle East.
Very late in the same span of time, the cultivating of crops began in Egypt. Since most of Egypt belonged then to the Mediterranean climatic zone, many of the new food plants came from areas of similar climate in the Middle East. Two domestic animals of Middle Eastern origin, the sheep and the goat, also entered northeastern Africa from the north during this era.
But several notable early Egyptian crops came from Sudanic agriculture, independently invented between 7500 and 6000 B.C. by the Nilo-Saharan peoples (Ehret 1993:104-125). One such cultivated crop was the edible gourd. The botanical evidence is confirmed in this case by linguistics: Egyptian bdt, or “bed of gourds” (Late Egyptian bdt, “gourd; cucumber”), is a borrowing of the Nilo-Saharan word *bud, “edible gourd.” Other early Egyptian crops of Sudanic origin included watermelons and castor beans. (To learn more on how historians use linguistic evidence, see note at end of this article.)
Between about 5000 and 3000 B.C. a new era of southern cultural influences took shape. Increasing aridity pushed more of the human population of the eastern Sahara into areas with good access to the waters of the Nile, and along the Nile the bottomlands were for the first time cleared and farmed. The Egyptian stretches of the river came to form the northern edge of a newly emergent Middle Nile Culture Area, which extended far south up the river, well into the middle of modern-day Sudan. Peoples speaking languages of the Eastern Sahelian branch of the Nilo-Saharan family inhabited the heartland of this region.
From the Middle Nile, Egypt gained new items of livelihood between 5000 and 3000 B.C. One of these was a kind of cattle pen: its Egyptian name, s3 (earlier *sr), can be derived from the Eastern Sahelian term *sar. Egyptian pg3, “bowl,” (presumably from earlier pgr), a borrowing of Nilo-Saharan *poKur, “wooden bowl or trough,” reveals still another adoption in material culture that most probably belongs to this era.
One key feature of classical Egyptian political culture, usually assumed to have begun in Egypt, also shows strong links to the southern influences of this period. We refer here to a particular kind of sacral chiefship that entailed, in its earliest versions, the sending of servants into the afterlife along with the deceased chief. The deep roots and wide occurrence of this custom among peoples who spoke Eastern Sahelian languages strongly imply that sacral chiefship began not as a specifically Egyptian invention, but instead as a widely shared development of the Middle Nile Culture Area.
After about 3500 B.C., however, Egypt would have started to take on a new role vis-a-vis the Middle Nile region, simply because of its greater concentration of population. Growing pressures on land and resources soon enhanced and transformed the political powers of sacral chiefs. Unification followed, and the local deities of predynastic times became gods in a new polytheism, while sacral chiefs gave way to a divine king. At the same time, Egypt passed from the wings to center stage in the unfolding human drama of northeastern Africa.
A Note on the Use of Linguistic Evidence for History
Languages provide a powerful set of tools for probing the cultural history of the peoples who spoke them. Determining the relationships between particular languages, such as the languages of the Afrasian or the Nilo-Saharan family, gives us an outline history of the societies that spoke those languages in the past. And because each word in a language has its own individual history, the vocabulary of every language forms a huge archive of documents. If we can trace a particular word back to the common ancestor language of a language family, then we know that the item of culture connoted by the word was known to the people who spoke the ancestral tongue. If the word underwent a meaning change between then and now, a corresponding change must have taken place in the cultural idea or practice referred to by the word. In contrast, if a word was borrowed from another language, it attests to a thing or development that passed from the one culture to the other. The English borrowing, for example, of castle, duke, parliament, and many other political and legal terms from Old Norman French are evidence of a Norman period of rule in England, a fact confirmed by documents.
References Cited:
Ehret, Christopher, Nilo-Saharans and the Saharo-Sahelian Neolithic. In African Archaeology: Food, Metals and Towns. T. Shaw, P Sinclair, B. Andah, and A. Okpoko, eds. pp. 104-125. London: Routledge. 1993
Ehret, Christopher, Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): Vowels, Tone Consonants, and Vocabulary. Los Angeles: University of California Press, Berkeley. 1995
Wendorf, F., et al., Saharan Exploitation of Plants 8000 Years B.P. Nature 359:721-724. 1982
Wendorf, F., R. Schild, and A. Close, eds. Cattle-Keepers of the Eastern Sahara. Dallas: Southern Methodist University, Department of Anthropology. 1984
Let me just comment on and correct this Ehret paper..
The origins of Egyptian ethnicity lay in the areas south of Egypt.
Well yes and no. The DNA shows a large migration into North Africa from the Levant about 8k ago, and into Southern Egypt Nubia from the western desert about 10k ago. It would be an African culture with near eastern ceramics, crops and people. As for Afro Asiatic being from South of Egypt, even African origin supporters generally don’t pick this area as the origin of Afro Asiatic. There is now a growing body of evidence to suggest Afrasian actually comes from Asia (long story).
They also introduced to Egypt the idea of using wild grains as food
WIld grains were being used as food in the near east from about 20,000 years ago. There was a migration from the near east into North Africa (Capsian) about 10k ago. WHich is moot as Egyptians were harvesting wild grains about 16,000 years ago (they have flint sickles from that era).
One of the exciting archeological events of the past twenty years was the discovery that the peoples of the steppes and grasslands to the immediate south of Egypt domesticated these cattle, as early as 9000 to 8000 B.C.
The Nabta PLaya cattle have been shown to be wild cattle. They were probably being captured from the wild and kept, as you see this behaviour in another Saharan site with antelope.
But several notable early Egyptian crops came from Sudanic agriculture, independently invented between 7500 and 6000 B.C. by the Nilo-Saharan peoples
NO. This is based on his linguistic dates which are generally about 35% out of sync. So 9,000 BP turns into 6,000 BP. Its a long story to do with goats and sheep.
almost 2,000 years before the first pottery was made in the Middle East
Actually there are pots of a comparable age in Iran. People in the near east prefered to use lighter pitch covered leather or plasterware bowls for a long time. Asian ceramics arrive in lower Egypt with the neolithic (pretty cruddy compared to the Nubian). To be fair, they only discovered the Iranian pot a few years ago..
Never asked by anyone: if Egyptian culture came from the western Sahara why didn’t Egyptians speak Nilo Saharan like Nubians?
i have been researching my genes and heritage for some time now. although i commend your research nothing can explain how much race and language makes up who you are. as an african american who has never been to africa i cannot tell a berber who’s ancestors been in africa for at least 3,000 years that they are “caucausian” and im am a “true” african because i am darker or have ancestry from where ever darker people are in africa? lest they look at me and laugh. also scientist say african people have more dna variation (because of early history africa was important with MANY civilizations their was early racial intergration okay.) so back to me actually because i do have some plain indian blood (from north america) you will find it difficult to match my dna to anyone from africa. which is a reason why it is rare to match a african american dna to a group or region in africa even if you can clearly tell in our features that we have african ancestors!genetics, and language is best experienced by influence like for instance i am christain and speak english (not a big deal because i’m from the united states.) actually not speaking from charts and graphs i know that culture is your true identity marker. as an american i love baseball and movies and participate in most holiday observations; as i have been taught. just like in most african american families it is a normal thing at family gatherings for the oldest people to tell stories and the younger ones listen and the older you are the more you are respected in the family you will receive many gifts at family reunions and people will vigh for your attention and the older children watch the younger children who knows how and where this tradition started but it here and mostly your heritage makes you who you are if someone told me tommorow i was part japanese it still would’t change my identity that has been intergrated in my familiy’s structure. all i could do is smile say and ‘that’s nice’ and accept it. god bless.
Egyptian people described a tribe of Lybia called “Libu” as having alot of Blonde Haired or Light eyes people among them. According to a modern French History , there had been a vast migration of Lybian tribes (Berbers) to western parts (as Algeria , which was already inhabitted by Berbers called Numidians) these “neighbours” invaders were called “Zenatis” and now represent a big majority of the Berbers o f Algeria and Rifans.
I think that the Libu tribe was surely a part of these Zenatis..that would be why , you find more Light complexions among Berbers of Algeria , than these of Lybia , because most of Libus settled through Algeria : example : Chawi , Kabylian and Rifans are Zenati tribes.
I’m not Pro-something!
My mothe is Algerian and my father is of Sephardic descent.
I have this article very interesting. As some who is Black African from Western Nigeria, I have always known that Berbers are not black africans in any shape or form, that why africa is always been mainly divided into two ,the North (Berbers, Arabs etc) and the rest which mainly Black African.
I would not call an Ethiopian black african, everybody back home knowns the diifference and no one cares, because we all have our own diverse and wonderful rich cultures whether it be Berbers, Arabs or Black African all of which by the way is very, very diverse with individual cultures, langugues, history etc.
I think the afrocentric thing most be a Black Western idea, not a Black African one.
Tayo.
You are are man of common sense, and I totally agree with what you have writen.
And yes afrocentrism is a Black Westen Idea; mainly a Black-American Ideology.
I hope some of those Afrocentrists will read your post here on Matild`s blog, because these Afrocentrists from North-America have never been outside their own country let-alone Africa with all its human diversity. But they won`t be pleased with what you have writen; because it goes against their warped Ideology. I would like to thank you for your comments!
ps I am a Kabyle Berber.
Thank you for the great site, it is very interesting to see different views, I am chaoui berber from Aures Algeria residing in the USA, my village is a small one in the Auresean mountains called T’kout, it has not been Arabnisd and all are very white, blond to brown hair, green, blue, and brown eyes. We still do old ceremonies and speak only berber, many are still pagans in the area, with many new customs brought from the Jewish.. We were not touched by the Arabs nor can you see any impact of what the Arabs brought during the Islamic movement. There are many old cave paintings that are prehistoric in the mountain areas showing white people killing and eating animals along with ceremony paintings.. I do not believe that they would have lied about the color of their skin back then, but as there were so many invasions in my ancestors lands many areas did get mixed.. I have read one ancient Roman book that said when they had landed and went into the mountains, they found a berber queen Dihya Damia who was white, her people were white with light colored hair and barbaric..thus the name berber came upon us.. do you really think historical books and paintings lie? we are so full of hate now a days we get colored blind.. again thank you for the wonderful site I have bookmarked it and welcome you to come to my village to explore our paintings, mountains, and old villages that are prehistoric
Mathilda:
Can you do us a big favor and respond to the clown know as “Genocenrist” over on eupedia.com as regards Berber origins (Berber thread). I can only argue to a small extent, since as I’m lacking information and don’t have the time.
Wow! What an amazing blog! I was researching information about the people of the Canary Islands —– where my family is from, and I came across this blog. Many thanks Mathilda37 !
Matilda
May I ask why my last post, where I replied to Tayo has not been posted? Was there something in my reply to Tayo that you found offensive?
Was there something in my reply to Tayo that you found offensive
No, I haven’t been to the blog in months, and I need to pass all comments due to sexually explicict abusive material being posted here before.
Thanks for sharring importent information in this blog.
It was very nice.
thank you for this rich blog where infos are interressant. africa will beleave great!
At the guy who said Afrocentrism is a “black” western idea you are totally wrong. Many Africans know their history and also practice a pan-Africanism such as Molefi Kete Asante and Cheikh Diop who I believe is from Senegal.
I will agree that their is a such thing as Afrocentrism but there is also a such thing as Eurocentrism. Who is to say one overides the other in correctness? It all depends on your worldview and how you look at things. The so called “credible sources” that everybody chooses to believes will always be RIGHT to one person and WRONG to another. So in essence we are all biased to some extent. However, genetics are recorded blueprints of history, but they don’t ALWAYs tell us the entire history. I believe one should study the oral traditions of a people and compare their orgin with the current culture. Its not always about black, white, arab, etc. Because people fell to realize that the stereotypical Arab is not the ONLY natives to the middle east. There was a large extent Negritos, and other NATIVE “black” people (non-african) who established civilizations there. Im ranting, but basically what i’m trying to say is everyone is entitled to believe what they want to believe. But at the end of the day humanity started at one place.
But at the end of the day humanity started at one place
Actually no it didn’t. The DNA syudies show we have Nenaderthal DNA in us too.
was a large extent Negritos, and other NATIVE “black” people (non-african) who established civilizations there.
They are there, but there’s no evidence they predate the Islamic slave trade or built the civilisations there.
Dear Mathilda
A comment
Every body dream with extraterrestrial inteigence. On said inteligence came from space and spread all over from space? Some Legens seems said that
We belive to know prety good, how human spread over earth but at time we suppose inteligence were with all of them from the begining Why? Don´t seem very clever think that human born, from the very begining with all the “extras” specialli with the “inteligence packet ” Is more natural, (Evolucionism), think tan diferents human groups essais his own way to inteligence.
And the inteligence suddenlt was just in a point of the planet in this very moment.
We can also thing that the inteligence born just in one pllace in earth and was extended from this point to all over by both invasions and sex /rape blabla by spreaded the smarts genes ( the big diversiti genes in some places can be reinterpreted laike that a imposed mixed with the intruder genes)
The clever people sure, must be taken by the rest of people as if they where Gods or…extraterrestrial (so the Leyends)
Time to spread all over? minimun 30.000 years (Any voluntier?)
Suposed this…find the starting the point!
Is … amazing.
Enjoy & Good luck