Negroes in the Black Sea Area???

[drooperdoo]

Can anyone run down the persistent rumors of negroes in Southern Russia, in the Abkhazia area?

The first two people in history to make reference to the so-called black Colchians are Herodotus and Pliny.

At first, I assumed that by "black," Herodotus meant "swarthy," and that these were merely dark Caucasoids.

But no. It might not be that simple. With their extremely dark skin and kinky hair (and their custom of circumcision), Herodotus himself theorized that they were Ethiopians brought to Southern Russia by the Egyptians, who used them as vassals to found a colony.

According to him, a conquering pharoah by the name of Senwosret [the Greeks called him Sesostris] conquered most Asia and Asia minor. According to Egyptians priests, interviewed by Herodotus, Sesostris marched through Syria ,Turkey, Colchis, southern Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, and the eastern part of Greece. In Colchis he had left a colony [probably to establish a trade route, becuase of the rich natural resources of that area. Incidently Colchis, years later, became a very prosperous trade port]. "In this way he traversed the whole continent of Asia, whence he passed on into Europe. Returning to Egypt from Thrace, he came, on his way, to the banks of the river Phasis. Here I cannot say with any certainty what took place. Either he of his own accord detached a body of troops from his main army and left them to colonise the country, or else a certain number of his soldiers, wearied with their long wanderings, deserted, and established themselves on the banks of this stream."
Herodotus, The History, II, 103-104
"I asked some questions both in Colchis and in Egypt, and found that the Colchians remebered the Egyptians more distinctly than the Egyptians remembered them. The Egyptians did, however, say that they thought the original Colchians were men from Sesostris's army."
Herodotus, The History, II, 104.

As recently as the 20th Century, two Russian scholars attested to the fact that there are LITERAL negro communities in the Black Sea region of ancient provenance--and that they still exist! The authors of these books are named Vradii and Dmitri Gulia.

Googling the names, I came to a site where someone wrote the following:

"Two [blacks from the modern era] who rose to prominence in the early years of the Soviet Union were Shaaban Abash and Bashir Shambe. After the October 1917 Revolution, Abash, a shepherd, joined the forces supporting the Bolsheviks, and was subsequently elected to the Central Executive Commitee of the Abkhazian Soviet. Shambe also enlisted in the Red Army and later joined the Georgian Communist Party and Tbilisi. Oppinions differ on the current situation of the Caucasus blacks. It is thought that over the years, many have intermarried and assimilated into Abkhazian or wider Soviet society. In 1992, the Russian journalist Yelena Khanga reported that her mother Lily Golden-Hanga visited some of the Black villages in the 1960s and discovered that the inhabitants were living in poverty, isolated from other local peoples. Golden-Hanga reported her findings to her longtime friend Svetlana Allilueva, Joseph Stalin's daughter, who defected to the West in 1966 and was at the time writing a book on Russia. Allilueva included Golden-Hanga's findings in her book "Only One Year" published in the USA in 1969."

[Mike the Jedi]

That really is fascinating stuff.

The thing is, if I remember correctly, Herodotus wasn't talking about a specific group of Colchians, but of Colchians in general. That's why I find it difficult to believe the ancestors of the Georgians would've been a bunch of nappy-headed Negroes.

But I'm open to anything these days.

[drooperdoo]

Yeah, but descriptions of people from the same area describe them as plainly Caucasoid. Jason and the Argonauts takes place in Colchis. Descriptions abound of fair skin and [occasionally] blue eyes. Art work from the period also portrays people in Colchis [and the Black Sea region, in general] as white--as in this piece of artwork portraying a Colchian.



So Herodotus, having traveled to the region, would have known this.

So I don't think anyone's implying that modern Georgians came from negroes who only entered the region a mere few thousand years ago.

Modern Georgians are descended from people who were in the area as far back as 30,000 years ago. The negroes are the newbies.

So not even Herodotus was implying that the whites came from the blacks. They were just an oddity, an anomaly--a colony, if one believes the Egyptian accounts. And he mentioned them precisely BECAUSE they stood out.

* This casts a whole new light on the 19th century case of "Zana the Wild Woman," where an alleged female bigfoot was captured in Russia. She was described as having black skin, a prognathous jaw and thick lips. Caged by the local populace, she was raped by local villagers who got the "savage" drunk and produced several children. The offspring were said to have had black skin and were powerfully-built like their mother.
Lovers of anomalies delight in the case of Zana--but now she's starting to sound eerily like a negro, who was horrifyingly treated like an Alma, a Bigfoot--when in fact probability dictates that--as rare as blacks are in rural 19th Century Russia--she was probably from the Colchis colony of Ethiopians. A probability wratched up to a higher key when one learns that she was "captured" in Abkhazia--precisely where the "Colchian blacks" are from! Here's a link to Zana's story:
www.bigfootencounters.com/creatures/zana2.htm

[Mike the Jedi]

If this is all true, then it actually supports that the Egyptians were black Africans. Remember, Herodotus compared the Colchians specifically to Egyptians, not to Ethiopians. Here is the quote:

"CIV. For it is plain to see that the Colchians are Egyptians; and what I say, I myself noted before I heard it from others. When it occurred to me, I inquired of both peoples; and the Colchians remembered the Egyptians better than the Egyptians remembered the Colchians; [2] the Egyptians said that they considered the Colchians part of Sesostris' army. I myself guessed it, partly because they are dark-skinned and woolly-haired; though that indeed counts for nothing, since other peoples are, too; but my better proof was that the Colchians and Egyptians and Ethiopians are the only nations that have from the first practised circumcision. [3] The Phoenicians and the Syrians of Palestine acknowledge that they learned the custom from the Egyptians, and the Syrians of the valleys of the Thermodon and the Parthenius, as well as their neighbors the Macrones, say that they learned it lately from the Colchians. These are the only nations that circumcise, and it is seen that they do just as the Egyptians. [4] But as to the Egyptians and Ethiopians themselves, I cannot say which nation learned it from the other; for it is evidently a very ancient custom. That the others learned it through traffic with Egypt, I consider clearly proved by this: that Phoenicians who traffic with Hellas cease to imitate the Egyptians in this matter and do not circumcise their children."

[drooperdoo]

Mike,
The Egypt of Herodotus's time was multi-racial. They had already absorbed Ethiopia to the south (as well as a bunch of other places, in Asia, Africa and--to judge by the Colchian colony--southern Russia).

So Herodotus wouldn't have thought for an instant that ALL Egyptians were black, merely that they had them.

Proof of this comes from his description of India. He says that in the North Indians are olive-skinned and look much like Egyptians, whereas in the Dravidian south they are black-skinned and snub-nosed "like Ethiopians".

So right there, you have the ancient world acknowleding that Egyptians DIDN'T look like Ethiopians. Merely that the presence of Ethiopians in Colchis was a result of Egyptian conquest.

It's like being in Europe during World War I, seeing a black soldier in France and hearing someone say, "Oh, it looks like the Americans are here". That Americans had blacks wasn't implying that George Washington was a negro. Likewise, that Egyptians had black Ethiopian subjects wasn't implying that ethnic Egyptians were black.

[Mike the Jedi]

Why don't we go dig Herodotus up and ask him?

By the way, there are fair Georgians. But most of them I've seen have basically the same pigmentation as Greeks.

[drooperdoo]

Mjora,
It's easy to dismiss Herodotus--until Pliny (working independently) describes the same people.

If you want to discount Pliny, that's fine . . . but then there are the two modern anthropologists Vradii and Gulia, who have actually visited the villages and documented the people--as well as that journalist Golden-Hanga.

The evidence starts to mount. It becomes more than just the word of one man.

P.S.--Georgians being fair is irrelevant to the discussion since no one is saying that the Georgians descended from the negroes. The negroes are, rather, an unrelated colony. To use fair Georgians in order to make the negroes go away is as nonsensical as saying that because Swedes are fair it's impossible to have Arabs in Sweden.
One doesn't cancel out the other.

[Mike the Jedi]

lol... even if I didn't see the name, I can always tell it's Droop just by the way he writes.

[platypus]

sitemaker.umich.edu/alainalemon/files/ara_31_2002.pdf

pdf text on the subject

[Forrester]

drooperdoo said:

Yeah, but descriptions of people from the same area describe them as plainly Caucasoid. Jason and the Argonauts takes place in Colchis. Descriptions abound of fair skin and [occasionally] blue eyes. Art work from the period also portrays people in Colchis [and the Black Sea region, in general] as white--as in this piece of artwork portraying a Colchian.

That's Achilles. I would know - it was my avatar for years.

images.google.com/images?svnum=10&q=Achilles+fresco&btnG=Search

[Mike the Jedi]

Indeed. Dienekes used that as an avatar as well.

[drooperdoo]

Thanks for the correction, Forrester. I found the image in Google's Image Library by keying in the word "Colchian". It turned up that image so I posted it.

It's always possible that the person who listed it as that was in error. So I apologize for expanding the error by blindly posting it merely because Google had it listed as a "Colchian".

Thanks.

[Mike the Jedi]

lol... you could have just said... "ooops, my bad." We would've forgiven you anyway.

[TURTURRO!LMAOAO!]

I find this extremely extremely unlikely, Only twice Pharaos with their armies crossed the euphrates, and did not make it that far, and the egyptians, altough not horrible sailors, never had a navy or merchant fleet to make is as far as colchis, phoenicians and greeks controlled egyptian trade.

Most likely that colchians descended from egyptians was just a "folk explanation" for the looks of some inhabitants of the place.

[drooperdoo]

Turturro,

The Tigris and Euphrates are further east--and irrelevant to our discussion. The river in question here is the river Phrasis in the Caucasus.
If you look at a map, you'll realize that it's a straight shot north from terriitories that the Egyptians were known to have annexed in Antiquity.
As for it being impossible for them getting a few hundred miles farther north--- You're overlooking one small fact: The pharaoh Sesostris was ALREADY ancient when Herodotus heard about him. He lived a thousand to two thousand years beforehand.

Why is this significant?

Later pharaohs in their campaigns conquered countries all up and down the Levant, but they were stopped when they got to Anatolia. Why? --The Hittite Empire.

It was like hitting a brick wall for the Egyptians.

The pharaoh Sesostris existed in the pre-Hittite age. During his time-period, Anatolia didn't have a single coherent empire, not even a single coherent nation. They were just scattered city-states. So Sestoris wouldn't have encountered the "brick wall" that later pharaohs did.

So--knowing that--it makes sense that Egypt could very easily have wandered a few hundred miles farther north and hit the Caucasus. Look at a map. Georgia and Armenia are like a 50 mile drive from the rest of the countries in the Middle East.

These aren't great distances.

*Footnote: It would also explain why such a colony would have gotten cut off from the rest of the Egyptian empire--once empires like the Hurrians and Hittites rose. It would have cut off the colonists and strangled any way they had of getting back.