Where in Africa does Africa start?

[Cameo]

Where in Africa does Africa start? Race, genetics and African Studies across the Sahara

cohesion.rice.edu/CentersAndInst/SAFA/emplibrary/MacEachern,S.SAfA2006.pdf

Quotable.

"Studies from the Sahelian and Sudanic zones have yielded evidence for inter- and intraregional genetic diversity, as well as evidence for relationships with populations at long distances, in sub-Saharan Africa, the Sahara, North Africa and beyond. These data do not support conceptions of racial boundaries in the Sahara: populations intermediate geographically tend to be intermediate genetically, and there is
abundant evidence for substantial genetic interchange at long distances and across geographical barriers."


I guess this paper effectively drives another stake in the heart of those who wish to divide Africa up into zones based on the racialist models of "Negroid" and Medit K-zoid Africa.

[Mike the Jedi]

Africa starts at Gaza. End of story.

Of course the Sahara is an intermediate "racial" zone. Just look at the Tuareg. All this interregional genetic stuff is nothing new to any of us, so you really need to get over yourself. Those old "racialist models" are based on something called phenotype by the way. Looks, not lineage. You think the morphological similarities between North Africans and West Eurasians can all be chalked up to coincidence? God forbid is that RACIST?


A Libyan girl


A Greek girl

Yes, the racial maps Africa made in yesteryears have been overlysimplistic. That doesn't mean you get a free pass to deny the existence of Caucasoids in the dark continent, bub. If you want to do that, go to EgyptSearch. You'll get lots of support there.

Seriously, why are you constantly trying to write off the South Mediterranid component in North Africa? Why does that idea offend you so? Is it because you harbor a secret desire to call all of Africa "black"? Why does it bother you that there are Mediterranid-featured people in North Africa? If you cared about African diversity, you would admit that they are there, but you seem to be intent on destroying that idea because it threatens your "Africa must = black" world view. I bet if someone came up with the theory of proto-Caucasoid morphology originating in Africa then your head would explode 'cause in your mind Caucasoid and Africa are polar opposites. I've said all I've got to say on the matter.

[drooperdoo]

See? This stupidity comes from politicization of geographic and ethnic terms. It distorts the reality. the construct of "Africa" equaling "black" is as new as the term "African-American" being a euphemism for negro.

Ever since then, there was the tendency to distort reality and try to make an entire continent the domain of one race--which it never was.

Even in the oldest genetic models, Africa was divided into two main repositories of racial groups: sub-Saharans in one corner and proto-Caucasoids in the East. So, even from the earliest times--even before the Mediterranean colonization of North Africa--the continent was home for more than one race.

My own example is Asia. Jews are in Asia, so is China. Who would be retarded enough to pretend that they're the same race by dint of living on the same geographical landmass???

Why try to do that to Africa . . . or any other continent?

It's dunderheaded.

[Mike the Jedi]

Exactly, Droop. I have thought of that Asian analogy, as well.

Anyway, I'm guessing the author was being facetious when he said "where in Africa does Africa start?" when what he clearly means is "where in Africa does black Africa start?" as if black and Africa are the same damn thing. I dare somebody to go tell Zidane or Qaddaffi they aren't TRUE Africans. Blacks in Africa differ a lot too, possibly more than Caucasoids in the whole of West Eurasia do. Not sure about that.

Anyway, I've said all I've got to say on the matter. None of this is anything new. And Charlie will just take the "argument" around in circles like he always does.

[drooperdoo]

Didn't the ancient world actually lump Egypt in with Asia?

I recall seeing old maps from the Roman Era, when this was done.

Ethnically and culturally, it makes sense--if not geographically.

But, then again, we're still in an era where we pretend that Europe is a separate continent, even though it's stuck to Asia--and not just a little bit.

So if you're going to pretend that Europe is separate from Asia, then it makes sense to lump Egypt, Lybia and the rest of North Africa in with Asia, affecting an imaginary separation from the rest of the African continent.

* It might piss off blacks that the Roman World also referred to the whole continent of Africa as "Libya," and even later when "Africa" was coined as a term it came from a Berber tribe [the Awriga]. It makes sense that Europe would see Africa in terms of North Africans [i.e., Caucasoids], because those are the peoples they predominantly came into contact with. So this whole idea of "Africa" equaling only black people is extremely new in historical terms.

[Mike the Jedi]

The Greeks did that at least, but I don't think it makes much sense at all actually, as Egypt was an African civilization with deep connetions to the south. I think Herodotus even noted how odd including it in Asia was.

Definitely agreed about that last point on the original Africans (the Awriga)..

[drooperdoo]

Mike,
The languages of North Africa--the so-called Hamiitic family--are related to the languages of the Near East. Not one iota, however, to black languages from, say, the Congo.

Likewise, genetically, North Africans are extraoedinarily close to populations from the Near East. That's why, when tracing the origins of the Berbers, for instance, archaeo-geneticists have to hedge and say "They came either from the area now known as Egypt, or farther out into the Near East."

In either case, none of these North African peoples are even remotely related to, say, Kenyans.

To try and make them closer to Kenyans than to Syrians is silly--and, I daresay, you know it.

* By the way, the Egyptians recognized five main world races [the white, red, brown, yellow and black.] They called themselves the Red Race. But significantly they called the Libyans--not any European group--"The White Race," and they portrayed the Libyans as blond and in many pictures with blue eyes. This was probably the same aboriginal North African stock that led to the blonde Canary Islanders, whom the Europeans were later fascinated with. So I'm curious as to why you're trying to make a closer connection between sub-Saharans and North Africans than between North Africans and people from the Levant and Southern Europe. (Perhaps I'm not just understanding you.)

[Mike the Jedi]

No one uses Hamitic anymore. That term should've stayed in the Bible (as should have Semitic but that's a story for another time). The Afro-Asiatic family is no longer divided up like that.

Indeed, you're not understanding me. The Egyptians didn't have direct cultural connections to Niger-Congo groups obviously. But they did have connections to the land immediately south of them. The land that would be called Nubia, Cush, etc. I'm talking the origin of Egyptian culture here, not the origin of the Egyptian race.

[drooperdoo]

Mike,
Yes, but Nubians weren't black--as they're portrayed by Afrocentrists in universities today. Here are Egyptian portrayals of them:





They were originally from out of the Near East, and looked more like Osama Bin Laden than, say, Gary Coleman.

Although--over the centuries--it must be conceded that they were slowly snowed in by negroids and, today, their phenotype is quite squarely in the black camp. But, in ancient times, no--as the portrayals demonstrate--it was different.

As for Cushites---

In point of fact, there were two separate races called "Cushites" by the ancients . . . kind of how we call people from India Indians and people from North America Indians. Two separate peoples with the same name.

In the ancient world, one group of Cushites were Caucasoid, while the other are generally thought to be negroid.

But no matter. You already know all this--and far better than I do.

But my point is basically this: Yes, Egyptians had cultural contacts with blacks to the south. Significantly, however, the Egyptians ranged them as a separate race. They were the black race, as opposed to the red race. The Egyptians conquered them and took their land . . . kind of like how the Portuguese Empire conquered large masses of black Africa later on. Or how Italy took over Ethiopia in the 1930s.
But just as owning Ethiopia didn't magically turn Italians into negroes, conquering portions of black Africa didn't make Egyptians into sub-Saharan Africans, nor did it link their languages to theirs, nor their phenotypes.
If anything Ethiopians and Somalis speak Afro-Asiatic languages today because they were conquered by Caucasoids, not the other way around.
And that's the tragedy of so-called Afrocentrism. They try to imply that the North Africans were shaped by the blacks to the south.
That's akin to a black man in New Jersey speaking English, and claiming that Anglo-Saxons got their language from sub-Saharan Africa.
Putting the cart before the horse, so to speak.

[Anodyne]

Off topic, but, I'm not sure the Canary Islanders were a population where blonds popped up regularly. Sometimes a small physcial difference between different groups comes to define them physically to others.

[Mike the Jedi]

lol... Cameo will probably have an aneurysm after reading your last post, Droop.

I'll just say this for now: the prevailing consensus is that the Nubians were Ethiop-skinned and that Afro-Asiatic originated in Africa.

[drooperdoo]

Compare me to North African Qaddafi:

[Mike the Jedi]

It's so easy to see Qaddafi as a Pharaoh it's ridiculous.

[Fred]

mike said:

lol... Cameo will probably have an aneurysm after reading your last post, Droop.

I'll just say this for now: the prevailing consensus is that the Nubians were Ethiop-skinned and that Afro-Asiatic originated in Africa.

I've never heard of a prevailing consensus, but you make your point.

Many would choose to say, however, that it's now popular to assume Afro-Asiatic originated in Africa, because most of the scholars working on it aren't of the highest caliber. They base their assumptions entirely upon a single point, namely that the family reaches a much greater diversity in Africa than it does in the Near East and Levant. But none of these specialists have so far proven clever enough to note that Indo-Iranian, for example, reaches a much greater diversity in South Asia than it does in its original homeland of Central Asia.

The field is generally unimpressed with the work done on Afro-Asiatic.

[Mike the Jedi]

Yes, I agree with that. I just think that many of the linguists of days long past automatically assumed the "Hamitic" languages originated in Asia. Because obviously Africans couldn't do anything themselves and stuff.