Although I am sensitive to the left-wing academic new-speak terms like 'intersectionality', Dr. Futo makes excellent points about African identity in the Mediterranean similar to Egyptologist Dr. Aaron De Souza's InBetween Blog. Except her point is that 'black' identity was not limited to Sub-Sahara but rather the Mediterranean Sea and that blacks were clearly native to North Africa including Egypt.
Colorlines in Classical North Africa Last week, my Ancient Identities class discussed texts on ancient north Africa--Libya, Carthage, and Numidia. In the texts, one of the things that the students discovered is that north Africa seems to have a lot of different types of peoples living in it and that no one seemed to be all that interested in what color they were, though we know that these people were not all of the same skin tone. At one point in his description of Libya, Herodotus (4.197) tells us that the native populations of the continent were Ethiopians and Libyans (which included Marusians, aka Mauri, among others) and that the Phoenicians and Greeks were immigrants.
Typically, we read that Ethiopian is the term that the ancients used to refer to people with dark skin tones, those we would call black, and that these are often also referred to as sub-Saharan Africans. In a recent blog article, Dr. Caitlin Green sums up earlier scholarship and attempts to make sense of their arguments that the increase in 'sub-Saharan,' i.e. black Africans, in the Mediterranean in the Roman period by suggesting it was possibly a result of the slave trade by the Garamantes--she herself uses 'sub-Saharan' is quotes to indicate the inaccuracy of the term. Herodotus, however, clearly places black Africans in northwest and north central Africa and not as slaves but as indigenous and early. And according to Herodotus, they are living north of the Sahara, since the Sahara beyond its edges merges into the uninhabitable zone and then Ocean. He states that they live "south" of the Libyans, but "south" for Herodotus is still north of or in the Sahara.
As far as Herodotus and others well into the Roman period were concerned, 'sub-Saharan' either didn't exist or it was an uninhabitable zone in between them and the Antichthones, 'opposite-land' (as Pomponius Mela calls the mystical southern continent). Strabo, too, writing in the the 1st century BCE-CE, writes of groups of black Africans living in north western Africa--the Pharusians and Nigritae, whom he places near the 'western Ethiopians' (17.3.7). How do we know they are likely black? Because they are said to be like the Ethiopians and the Pharusians, in particularly, are linked to southern Indians, whom many ancient authors think either were immigrants from Africa or migrated to Africa. The Mauri (later Moors) are also located in northwest Africa, but Mauri, like Berber, is not necessarily a clear term that associates with skin tone in antiquity--evidence links them more to geography and nomadic lifestyle and when skin colors are mentioned, they range from light to dark.
In other words, there were black Africans living north of and in the Sahara in antiquity. Herodotus never mentions their skin tone as warranting discussion, likely because he had placed them in the torrid zone on the map and environment dictated they would be dark skinned. The Phoenicians and Greeks came there with their lighter brown skin, more northern Libyans were environmentally browner than Greeks and Phoenicians, but lighter than the Ethiopians and others.
Why do I care about this? Well, for a number of reasons. The first one is that I have frequently been told that individuals like Augustine of Hippo, whose father was a Berber, could not possibly have been black African. And because whenever the issue of blackness in northern African spaces is discussed, there is pushback (especially concerning Egypt) even though we have ample visual and literary evidence that north Africa and West Africa in antiquity were not singular in skin tone. But there is an investment in trying to keep it as 'white' as possible. I often recall to mind that, as the Roman historian Sallust reminds us, many ancients thought Africa was part of Europe (BJ 17.3). I'm sure many an anti-black African ignores or does't know this or assumes it makes them 'white'.
The other reason is because my class starts on ancient texts on Ethiopia tomorrow and I asked them to read an article by a Late Antiquity/Early Medieval religion scholar ("Racism, Color Symbolism, and Color Prejudice" by David Goldenberg) who argues that there was clear color prejudice in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds in contrast to Frank Snowden's contention that antiquity was "Before Color Prejudice." Of course, all scholars pretty much see the problematics of Snowden's arguments, but Goldenberg's are also problematic. The first is that he has to hunt through about 4-5 definitions of racism (or, Ben Isaac's proto-racisms) before he lands on one that fits his needs. Second, he, like Snowden, basically finds evidence by looking for texts on Ethiopians or where 'blackness' is a specific point of discussion.
Many of the texts on Ethiopians are non-derogatory--they are praised and admired for various reasons. The texts on blackness, however, tend to carry negative connotations--it is clear that characters in Juvenal and Petronius, at least, do not find the physiology of black Africans attractive. They don't find people who are pale (i.e. anyone from northern Europe) attractive either. Their own somatic norm--a light brown--is preferred aesthetically. What Goldenberg and others miss, however, are all the texts that discuss people who are clearly black without ever mentioning their color at all. If you include those texts in the discussion and unskew the evidence, the number of ancient Greek and Roman texts that make clearly negative statements that see black skin as denoting both physical and mental or moral defectiveness is surprisingly small. It exists, but not as the norm.
We see clear racism (or proto-racism) in our ancient texts, but it is distinctively different, as Goldenberg states, from anti-black racism as it exists today and has existed for centuries. He isn't necessarily on point about the obviousness of color prejudice in Greek sources (he has a point that Juvenal clearly doesn't like dark skin, but Juvenal hates on everyone). What Goldenberg is really valuable for, though, is tracing the negative connotations of the color black--from associations with death, ill-omen, and evil--and its transference to people. Perhaps unsurprisingly to some and surprisingly to others, it is in the early Christian (really starting in Origen) and patristic literature that we see the prejudice against blackness truly become a 'thing.' As Goldenberg writes:
"The innovation of Christianity was not in the essential nature of the association of black and evil. It was, rather, in the degree of application of the association. In the church fathers, the theme of Ethiopian blackness became a crucial component of the Christian focus on the battle between good and evil, which pervades patristic writing."
Ethiopians in Christian writings are even associated with devils and demons. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the conversion of black slaves in the southern United States was resisted by many slave owners--not only might it mean that these slaves would need to be treated as their neighbors in God's eyes, but also that, legally, it might mean they would need to be freed. Many a colonial legislature passed laws declaring that Christianity didn't fundamentally change the nature or soul of the black slaves. If blackness is evil, the logic goes, then how could black peoples become otherwise without changing skin color? Christianity has this notion embedded from its early(though not earliest) phases.
The question of when black skin color became a target of group prejudice is one that my students come back to again and again and I am sure it will come up this week as we read texts about and look at representations of ancient Ethiopians through Greek and Roman eyes. Not everyone agrees on how neutral the descriptions are--there are scholars who argue that Herodotus was clearly prejudiced against the blackness--but he doesn't even bother to remark on blackness on many occasions when discussing peoples who are most definitely balck and his assumption that Indian and Ethiopian semen must be black (3.101.2; an easily refutable hypothesis that Aristotle bluntly refutes at Hist. Anim. 523a17-8) may be more an attempt to understand how it is that Indians and Ethiopians gave birth to dark skinned children even when outside of the heat of their native territories--the heat was thought to burn the skin (or the semen) thus making people darker.
I can't say exactly how any of the ancients understood skin color as an environmentally, and yet heritable trait precisely; they are clearly puzzled themselves. What we can say, however, is that black Africans lived throughout the continent as it was known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, including in Egypt and western and central Libya at least as early as the 5th century BCE. Their territories skirted on the Sahara or they were thought to have lived as Nomads within it; in other words, they weren't strictly 'sub-Saharan.' But, is prejudice against blackness coincident with their appearance in the historical imagination of the Greeks and Romans? I would argue no. And the racist desires of some people to keep them out of north Africa altogether in Classical antiquity should not make us overlook the fact that they were there, not as merchants, not as slaves, but as indigenous, permanent residents according to our Greek and Roman sources.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
^ I take it that paper is from our fellow poster Tristan Samuels.
Tristan writes some good papers though I disagree with his use of the phrase "critical race theory" which is actually a Marxist theory. I prefer the phrase 'critical thought on race theory' which is exactly what Tristan does in his works.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
Okay, I read Tristan's paper. It's pretty good and raises a lot of excellent points. The one thing I was surprised he missed was the simple fact that the Greeks called the Egyptians "melanochroi" which is their term for 'black colored'. But he's correct that as soon as one brings up the fact that the Greeks and Romans refer to North Africans as 'black' then Euronuts would come up with silly counter arguments like they weren't "as black" as Sub-Saharans OR they would say they were black but not "negro" the way Sub-Saharans are. He even brings up the point that this same argument was made of Aethiopians themselves who we know today as 'Nubians' and that despite being darker than Egyptians they too were "caucasoid" like them. As if the Greco-Romans even knew of such modern racial concepts. The Greco-Romans simply referred to native Africans south of the Mediterranean as 'black'.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
Anyway, Dr. Futo like many other Classicists make it clear that the so-called 'colorline' separating 'white' from 'black' did not begin "south of the Sahara" as many Euronuts would have everyone believe but began in the Mediterranean Sea. North Africans, including Egyptians, were labeled as black i.e. Greek melanochroi and Latin atri. Yet these labels get glossed over if not ignored altogether due to the obvious inconvenience.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
This is going to be a bit of a vent, but I feel like I need to do it anyway.
I really wish people were more open-minded to the possibility that most or at least many ancient North Africans (both Egyptians and Maghrebis) were significantly darker-skinned than commonly portrayed in media. Why does that position remain controversial? I know there are racist "Arab" North Africans who want to scrub the region's history clean of "Black" influence or at least minimize it, but surely they can't have so much control of the conversation. Even many non-racists seem reluctant to imagine ancient North Africans as anything other than pale instead of dark brown.
I mean, how can anyone look at ancient North African artwork like this and come to the conclusion that the people would have all been lighter-skinned?
Of course, I'm sure there were lighter-skinned people in North Africa even in ancient times as well, particularly along the Maghrebi coast and the Nile Delta (the areas most accessible to Eurasian back-migrants). But there were a lot more darker-skinned people in the region than popularly believed, and they probably were the majority at least in Egypt in earlier periods (Numidians and Carthaginians I am less certain about since painted depictions of them from their time are hard to come by).
BTW, this specific piece of rock art is from The Jebel Ousselat site in the Atlas Mountains of Tunisia, and probably dates between 6200 and 4200 BC. It could very well be the work of Capsian or Iberomaurusian-related people.
quote:The local Touareg groups who lived on the Tassili Plateau until the 1970s, and seasonally inhabited the painted shelters, have always known about the Saharan engravings and paintings. They were aware of the great age of these images and they considered 'Round Head' paintings the work of the ancient black population who previously lived there.
p3
quote:Black people of different appearance were therefore living in the Tassili and most probably the whole central Sahara as early as the 10th millenium BP.
p22
- Jitka Soukopova, Round Heads: The Earliest Rock Paintings in the Sahara, 2012
quote:At Boulder Hill, 400 metres to the north of the NK4 quarrying site, lay the body of the second-earliest human so far discovered in Egypt. He was lying on his back with his head to the west, and a bifacial axe was placed near his face, this being the first attested piece of funerary equipment in a land that was to become the most prolific source of such grave goods. A second grave, found about 30 metres to the east of the first, consisted only of a skeleton stretched out on its back, completely crushed and with its skull missing. Some foetus bones and fragments of ostrich eggs accompanied this wretched and incomplete corpse, which unfortunately cannot be scientifically dated, since the organic carbon content was insufficient to permit radiocarbon analysis, thus dissuading the excavators from attempting the same procedure on the first, almost complete body...Thus we have, standing firmly on his own two feet, the second-earliest riverbank-dweller in the Nile valley (the Taramsa Hill body being earlier). With a cranial capacity of at least 1400 cm’, somewhat negroid features (such as the praenasal fossa and alveolar prognathism).
p43
quote:Three individuals, ‘identified as ‘negroid’, comprising a woman and two children, were buried at Amekni towards the end of the seventh millennium Bc (one of the children’s burials having yielded a calibrated radiocarbon date of 6100 Bc).
p71
quote:A team of Egyptian, American and Polish archaeologists (under the aegis of the so-called Combined Prehistoric Expedition) discovered site E29-G1 (between Qasr el-Sagha and Kom Aushim), which was a human burial associated with the Qarunian settlement layer (Henneberg et al. 1989). The skeleton, laid out on itseft side in a flexed position, with its head to the east and face towards the south, was found in the lacustrine sands of the pre-Moeris lake at about 17 metres above sea level. The body was that of a forty-year-old woman with a height of about 1.6 metres, who was of a more modern racial type than the classic ‘Mechtoid’ of the Fakhurian culture, being generally more gracile, having large teeth and thick jaws bearing some resemblance to the modern ‘negroid’ type.
p82
quote:Only a few offerings accompanied the contracted bodies of the deceased, one of whom was wearing body jewellery made from ostrich eggshells. With regard to the anthropological evidence, only very mineralized fragments of skeletons have survived in 17 of the graves. In one instance (M20), it has proved possible to reconstruct the skull, which is apparently somewhat long and straight (a trait that is undoubtedly exaggerated by the absence of any anatomical connection with the torso), with a massive mandible; the large lower mandible (interpreted by Derry as a negroid characteristic) is exaggerated by the removal of the incisors from the upper jaw. This trait of incisor extraction is found both in modern African populations and in the skeletons from Jebel Moya, a cemetery of uncertain date situated to the west of Sennar (in the latter case mainly among women).
p92-93
quote:The Predynastic, a vague term that apparently comprises everything that took place before the first dynasties, in fact serves to define the time when the people of the Nile valley, between the First Cataract and the Mediterranean, were emerging from their long period of Nilotic adaptation.
p152
- Béatrix Midant-Reynes, The prehistory of Egypt : from the first Egyptians to the first pharaohs, 2000
Posts: 200 | From: Nibiru | Registered: Mar 2023
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quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: I mean, how can anyone look at ancient North African artwork like this and come to the conclusion that the people would have all been lighter-skinned?
None of it looks realistic to me, but even the fresco's that do look more realistic dont necessarily signify anything
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: Facial features aren't enough to indicate "race" or population affinity anymore than skin color is.
Savino di lernia classifies these types as "white"
And this is what makes it really difficult for me to understand, What exactly is any different from what he or you are saying to what King is saying here?
Savino di lernia classifies these types as "white"
And this is what makes it really difficult for me to understand, What exactly is any different from what he or you are saying to what King is saying here?
The people in that particular rock art still look dark-skinned to me. Understand, I'm not talking about "race" here (a concept which should have no place in modern anthropology), but rather skin color.
posted
^ The problem is that many people try to project modern concepts of "race" into ancient times and onto ancient peoples whose concepts differed.
For example, the Greco-Romans did not have concepts of "caucasoid" or "negroid" races, but they acknowledged that nations and peoples south of the Mediterranean were very dark skinned. This not to say they didn't recognized differences amongst them anymore that there were differences between them (Greeks and Romans) as well as other Europeans.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ The problem is that many people try to project modern concepts of "race" into ancient times and onto ancient peoples whose concepts differed.
Agreed. This is my problem with Frank Snowden’s approach, which equates the Greek term “Aethiopian” with our modern “Negroid”. He seems to think that any ethnic group not described as “Aethiopian” could not have been Black or dark-skinned, when that wasn’t necessarily the case.
posted
^ Yes Snowden did indeed subscribe to racial notions of his white peers. The irony is that their use of "Aethiopian" was restricted to Nubians especially of central Sudan even though anthropologically they were no more "negro" than the Egyptians. It would be odd that Greeks produced all those depictions of black people as "Sub-Saharan" Africans but no depictions of Africans on the Mediterranean coasts.
Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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Savino di lernia classifies these types as "white"
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP:
The people in that particular rock art still look dark-skinned to me. Understand, I'm not talking about "race" here (a concept which should have no place in modern anthropology), but rather skin color.
Do either of you think that those pastoralist groups could be the ancestors of modern pastoral Fulanis? I know Van Sertima made a connection, although some of his work is outdated.
Posts: 200 | From: Nibiru | Registered: Mar 2023
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Savino di lernia classifies these types as "white"
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP:
The people in that particular rock art still look dark-skinned to me. Understand, I'm not talking about "race" here (a concept which should have no place in modern anthropology), but rather skin color.
Do either of you think that those pastoralist groups could be the ancestors of modern pastoral Fulanis? I know Van Sertima made a connection, although some of his work is outdated.
That's not impossible. I wonder what he based his argument on?
posted
This issue isn't about race but about skin color. Europeans have been obsessed with ancient Eurasian whites in North Africa for years. Many French anthropologists promote this going as far as seeing ancient Eurasian whites in ancient Saharan rock art. And of course it is the French who created Berber Studies as a discipline and Encyclopedia Berbere.
Posts: 8889 | Registered: May 2005
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Savino di lernia classifies these types as "white"
quote:Originally posted by Shebitku:
Do either of you think that those pastoralist groups could be the ancestors of modern pastoral Fulanis? I know Van Sertima made a connection, although some of his work is outdated.
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP:
That's not impossible. I wonder what he based his argument on?
quote:Probably the best living example in North Africa of those originally nomadic peoples called Libyans are the modem day "red" or pastoraLFulani (as opposed to the settled Fulani) especially belonging to the area of Niger and Mali. Though they themselves are probably descendants of only one of the waves of Libyans from the east, they represent the black Berber or hamitic" prototype which has existed in the Sahara for at least 5,000 years. At Jabbaren the rock art shows cattle transporting the armature of huts which is a practice maintained by the Fulani and the head gear, clothing, and most typical physical characteristics of the human figures of the pastoral period are said to resemble the present day Fulani.
p120
Ivan Van Sertima, Golden Age Of The Moor
quote:Originally posted by DougM:
This issue isn't about race but about skin color. Europeans have been obsessed with ancient Eurasian whites in North Africa for years. Many French anthropologists promote this going as far as seeing ancient Eurasian whites in ancient Saharan rock art. And of course it is the French who created Berber Studies as a discipline and Encyclopedia Berbere.
Actually "Berber nationalism" begins with a beurette named Mohand Arav Bessaoud. In the 1960's, he moved to France and established the "Berber academy" (which is essentially Kabyle nationalism). Then he adopted the Tuareg script to accommodate Kabyle language, and the pseudo "Amazigh" identity spread from there....
Later on, their French father's, like, Desanges (1980), cosign them and declare that "The original berbers were a blue eyed or a near blue eyed race"
Posts: 200 | From: Nibiru | Registered: Mar 2023
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quote:Originally posted by Shebitku: Actually "Berber nationalism" begins with a beurette named Mohand Arav Bessaoud. In the 1960's, he moved to France and established the "Berber academy" (which is essentially Kabyle nationalism). Then he adopted the Tuareg script to accommodate Kabyle language, and the pseudo "Amazigh" identity spread from there....
Later on, their French father's, like, Desanges (1980), cosign them and declare that "The original berbers were a blue eyed or a near blue eyed race"
Now I know why so many of these North African ethno-nationalist trolls you see on the Internet are French or French-speaking. That guy has a lot to answer for!
posted
A good book on the origins of modern Berber identity:
"Inventing the Berbers"
quote: Before the Arabs conquered northwest Africa in the seventh century, Ramzi Rouighi asserts, there were no Berbers. There were Moors (Mauri), Mauretanians, Africans, and many tribes and tribal federations such as the Leuathae or Musulami; and before the Arabs, no one thought that these groups shared a common ancestry, culture, or language. Certainly, there were groups considered barbarians by the Romans, but "Barbarian," or its cognate, "Berber" was not an ethnonym, nor was it exclusive to North Africa. Yet today, it is common to see studies of the Christianization or Romanization of the Berbers, or of their resistance to foreign conquerors like the Carthaginians, Vandals, or Arabs. Archaeologists and linguists routinely describe proto-Berber groups and languages in even more ancient times, while biologists look for Berber DNA markers that go back thousands of years. Taking the pervasiveness of such anachronisms as a point of departure, Inventing the Berbers examines the emergence of the Berbers as a distinct category in early Arabic texts and probes the ways in which later Arabic sources, shaped by contemporary events, imagined the Berbers as a people and the Maghrib as their home.
Key both to Rouighi's understanding of the medieval phenomenon of the "berberization" of North Africa and its reverberations in the modern world is the Kitāb al-'ibar of Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406), the third book of which purports to provide the history of the Berbers and the dynasties that ruled in the Maghrib. As translated into French in 1858, Rouighi argues, the book served to establish a racialized conception of Berber indigenousness for the French colonial powers who erected a fundamental opposition between the two groups thought to constitute the native populations of North Africa, Arabs and Berbers. Inventing the Berbers thus demonstrates the ways in which the nineteenth-century interpretation of a medieval text has not only served as the basis for modern historical scholarship but also has had an effect on colonial and postcolonial policies and communal identities throughout Europe and North Africa.
posted
A circular discussion that totally avoids the fact that black skinned people have always been in Africa and the ancient world. This isn't an issue of "race" in the ancient world, but an issue of skin color and the presence of black skin in the ancient world, especially in Africa. Most black Africans don't identify themselves based on their skin color just like most Europeans and Asians didn't either. That said, the fact that the word Kem has been translated to mean the color black has caused no end of consternation among scholars. And they constantly keep trying to duck and dodge the point that 'black' wasn't a mark of inferiority in the ancient Nile Valley or "foreign" identity in the dynastic kingdom.
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posted
That video tries to make a correlation between phenotype and genetic lineage that is totally unscientific. A person could have high amounts of West African ancestry and still be very light skinned, while a person could be dark skinned and have high amounts of "Iberomaurisan" ancestry. Genetic lineage and phenotype are two totally different and separate things.
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Not really... it's a bit misleading because the average Moroccan sample he used is based on only 9 samples from Casablanca, a place with Arab and recent West African ancestry. The average Moroccan typically exhibits lower Natufian and West African ancestry. Here is the average of hundreds of Moroccan samples, which you can compare to what he presents :
Also, there is no evidence of a substantial impact of the Phoenician/Roman settlers, as their numbers were too few. Additionally, he states that the Arab influence mostly came during the 7th/8th century AD, while in reality, most of it occurred after the Hilalian invasion of the 11th century. Furthermore, the presence of West African ancestry did not suddenly appear with the Islamic slave trade; it can be traced back to the Iron Age since samples from this period already indicate a west african shift. Some West African specific lineages were also detected among Iron Age samples. Also, North Africans scoring Iberian ancestry on commercial tests don't necessarily indicate a recent Morisco input. It simply means that those Mediterranean North Africans are more European shifted compared to their more southern references, like the Mozabites. This pattern is already observed in some of the ancient samples we have. Furthermore, individuals with recent Morisco ancestry tend to show much higher European ancestry, and their G25 results also exhibit a stronger European shift compared to Mediterranean North Africans, such as Riffians or Kabyles.
For example, here I compare the average North Moroccan sample, which would cluster with ancient North Africans such as the Guanches of the Canary Islands and would score around 20% Iberian on commercial tests. Below, you have three samples from Tetuan (a city that hosted thousands of Moriscos) of people with Morisco ancestors. As you can see, their European ancestry is much higher, and they have very low indigenous North African ancestry :
and here the three moroccans with morisco ancestors :
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ I take it that paper is from our fellow poster Tristan Samuels.
Tristan writes some good papers though I disagree with his use of the phrase "critical race theory" which is actually a Marxist theory. I prefer the phrase 'critical thought on race theory' which is exactly what Tristan does in his works.
What is a concise definition of critical race theory so we know what you are talking about?
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quote:Originally posted by Antalas: The average Moroccan typically exhibits lower Natufian and West African ancestry. Here is the average of hundreds of Moroccan samples, which you can compare to what he presents :
We see at the top 41.8% Anatolian, Barcin
Barcin Hoyuk (Bursa province, Turkey), a Late Neolithic settlement that spans six centuries from 6600–6000 BC
So since the YDNA of Barcin hoyuk individuals were mainly several clades of G2 and some C1a2, H2, I2c and J2a as well but since these Y haplogroups groups are very low in modern Moroccans it strongly suggests that the 41.8% Anatolian ancestry comes from female ancestry, mainly H and some J (the female J)
Males and females from Anatolia could have migrated together and settled in Morocco but the male lineages did not persist over time, yet the female did
So how might this break down between the Moroccan component that is aboriginal African and the non-aboriginal component? Let's keep things simple for a rough draft and say Iberomaurusian and Natufians are half aboriginal African and half not (a similar male and female part breakdown)
So about 20% aboriginal African and then add to that 7% Yoruba
So would you agree a reasonable rough guess is that the average modern Moroccan is about 27% aboriginal African > if going by the above chart?
Also, populations in Morocco who would have had a greater aboriginal African percentage may no longer exist
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Anyway, Dr. Futo like many other Classicists make it clear that the so-called 'colorline' separating 'white' from 'black' did not begin "south of the Sahara" as many Euronuts would have everyone believe but began in the Mediterranean Sea. North Africans, including Egyptians, were labeled as black i.e. Greek melanochroi and Latin atri. Yet these labels get glossed over if not ignored altogether due to the obvious inconvenience.
melanochroi is a word coined by T. H. Huxley in 1870 complied from Greek, from melas: dark + ōchros: pale.
I don't agree with much of this but as per the meaning of the word, according to T.H. Huxley:
quote: "the dark whites, whom I have proposed to call " Melanochroi," and the fair whites, or " Xanthochroi."
You must be thinking of melanchroes, a word Herodotus used (seemingly one time only) translated below as "dark skinned"
quote: Herodotus, The Histories, with an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920.
Hdt. 2.104
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.
___________________________________________ In classical antiquity and Greco-Roman geography, Colchis was an exonym for the Georgian polity of Egrisi located on the coast of the Black Sea, centered in present-day western Georgia. Its population, the Colchians, are generally thought to have been early Kartvelian-speakers a language family indigenous to the South Caucasus and spoken primarily in Georgia. _________________________________________
T.H. Huxley 1870, on his made up word "melanochroi":
quote: The four great groups of mankind, the areas of which have now been defined, occupy the whole world, with the exception of western and southern Europe, cis-Saharal Africa, Asia Minor, Syria, Arabia, Persia, and Hindostan. In these regions are found, more or less mixed with Xanthochroi (Nordic) and Mongoloids, and extending to a greater or less distance into the conterminous Xanthochroic, Mongoloid, Negroid, and Australioid areas, the men whom I have termed Melanchroi, or dark whites.Under its best form this type is exhibited by many Irishmen, Welshmen, and Bretons, by Spaniards, South Italians, Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, and high-caste Brahmins. A man of this group may, in point of physical beauty and intellectual energy, be the equal of the best of the Xanthochroi: but he presents a great contrast, in other respects, to the latter type; for the skin, though clear and transparent, is of a more or less brown hue, deepening to olive, the hair, fine and wavy, is black, and the eyes are of a like hue. The average stature, however, is ordinarily lower than in the Xanthochroic type, and the make of the frame is usually lighter. In Hindostan the Melanochroi pass by innumerable gradations into the Australioid type of the Dekhan, while in Europe they shade off by endless varieties of intermixture into the Xanthochroi.
I have great doubts if the Melanochroi are to be regarded as a primitive modification of mankind in the sense in which that term applies to the Australioids, Negroids, Mongoloids, and Xanthochroi. On the contrary, I am much disposed to think that the Melanochroi are the result of an intermixture between the Xanthochroi and the Australioids. It is to the Xanthochroi and Melanochroi, taken together, that the absurd denomination of "Caucasian" is usually applied.
quote: 232 METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY
Between the forks of the Y lies the Mediterranean ;the stem of it is Arabia. The stem is bathed by the Indian Ocean, the western ends of the forks by the Atlantic. The majority of the people in habiting the area thus roughly defined have, like the Xanthochroi, prominent noses, pale skins and wavy hair, with abundant beards ; but, unlike them, the hair is black or dark and the eyes usually so. They may thence be called the MELANOCHROI. Such people are found in the British Islands, in Western and Southern Gaul, in Spain, in Italy south of the Po, in parts of Greece, in Syria and Arabia, stretching as far northward and eastward as the Caucasus and Persia. They are the chief inhabitants of Africa north of the Sahara, and, like the Xanthochroi, they end in the Canary Islands. They are known as Kelts, Iberians, Etruscans, Romans, Pelasgians, Berbers, Semites. The majority of them are long-headed, and of smaller stature than the Xanthochroi.¹ It is needless to remark upon the civilization of these two great stocks. With them has originated every thing that is highest in science, in art, in law, in politics, and in mechanical inventions. In their hands, at the present moment, lies the order of the social world, and to them its progress is committed .
237 Of the eleven different stocks enumerated, seven have been known to us for less than 400 years ; and of these seven not one possessed a fragment of written history at the time itcame into contact with European civilization. The other four-the Negroes, Mongolians, Xanthochroi, and Melanochroi-have always existed in some of the localities in which they are now found, nor do the negroes ever seem to have voluntarily travelled beyond the limits of their present area. But ancient history is in a great measure the record of the mutual encroachments of the other three stocks. On the whole, however, it is wonderful how little change has been effected by these mutual invasions and intermixtures. As at the present time, so at the dawn of history, the Melanochroi the fringed the Atlantic and the Mediterranean ; Xanthochroi occupied most of Central and Eastern Europe, and much of Western and Central Asia ; while Mongolians held the extreme east of the Old World. So far as history teaches us, the populations of Europe, Asia and Africa were, twenty¹ centuries ago, just what they are now, in their broad features and general distribution.
260 BRITISH ETHNOLOGY V So far as the physical evidence goes, it is perfectly consistent with the hypothesis that the only constituent stocks of that population, now, or at any other period about which we have evidence, are the dark whites, whom I have proposed to call " Melanochroi," and the fair whites, or " Xanthochroi." at IV. The Xanthochroi and the Melanochroi of Britain are, speaking broadly, distributed, present, as they were in the time of Tacitus ; and their representatives on the continent of Europe have the same general distribution as at the earliest period of which we have any record.
262 The conclusions which I draw from these and other facts are (1) That the Melanochroi and the Xanthochroi are two separate races in the bio logical sense of the word race ; (2) That they have had the same general distribution as at present from the earliest times of which any record exists on the continent of Europe ; (3) That the popula tion of the British Islands is derived from them, and from them only. The people of Europe, however, owe their national names, not to their physical character istics , but to their languages, or to their political relations ; which, it is plain, need not have the slightest relation to these characteristics .
p 4-5 On the Geographical Distribution of the Chief Modifications of Mankind By Thomas Henry Huxley Journal of the Ethnological Society of London (1870) Scientific Memoirs III
her point is that 'black' identity was not limited to Sub-Sahara but rather the Mediterranean Sea and that blacks were clearly native to North Africa including Egypt.
what is the identity of the majority of people in the Maghreb today?
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Tazarah
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Anyway, Dr. Futo like many other Classicists make it clear that the so-called 'colorline' separating 'white' from 'black' did not begin "south of the Sahara" as many Euronuts would have everyone believe but began in the Mediterranean Sea. North Africans, including Egyptians, were labeled as black i.e. Greek melanochroi and Latin atri. Yet these labels get glossed over if not ignored altogether due to the obvious inconvenience.
I love Djehuti
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So about 20% aboriginal African and then add to that 7% Yoruba
So would you agree a reasonable rough guess is that the average modern Moroccan is about 27% aboriginal African > if going by the above chart?
Also, populations in Morocco who would have had a greater aboriginal African percentage may no longer exist
Estimates of aboriginal African ancestry in the Iberomaurusian population vary significantly. According to the Shum Laka paper, it suggests approximately 56% - if I remember correctly. Additionally, if we assume Moroccans have an average of 30% IBM and 5-10% West African ancestry, we can hypothesize that Moroccans possess around 20-25% of Aboriginal African ancestry, of which the greatest part would be native to North Africa. North Africans are basically old world quadroons.
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Just want to make some clarifications here about what "North Africa" means and doesn't mean. "North Africa" is not simply Morocco and coastal areas of Morocco. Most of these modern papers and studies talking of ancient North Africa are focusing exclusively on the coastal areas of North Africa, when that was not the epicenter of North African history throughout the last 10,000 years or more.
If you are going to discuss the actual phenotype of "North Africa" you have to be specific because Europeans in the classical area would only have been talking of peoples in areas closest to the Mediterranean. And it is abundantly clear that in those regions black people were always present in antiquity. But beyond coastal North Africa lay the interior of North Africa, which is the Sahara which is thousands of square miles of land and has also always been populated by black Africans. And 10,000 years ago, was wet, making it the heartland of ancient North Africa of that time. Obviously, these areas were not first settled by or substantially impacted by Eurasians in these times. And then of course you also have the Nile Valley which also flows through North Africa. The point is that indigenous African civilization, culture and transition to Neolithic lifestyles happened in the Sahara and Sahel during the era of the last Saharan Wet phase in North Africa. Coastal North Africa would not transition to a neolithic lifestyle until later.
All that to say that "Iberomarusian" ancestry is not a marker defining what makes a North African as it is limited to Morocco. Saying such things is pseudo scientific nonsense. Ancient North African ancestry is not simply the result of mixing between Iberians and aboriginal Africans as implied by Iberomarusian. In fact the earliest Iberomarusian samples had no European ancestry at all.
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All that to say that "Iberomarusian" ancestry is not a marker defining what makes a North African as it is limited to Morocco. Saying such things is pseudo scientific nonsense. Ancient North African ancestry is not simply the result of mixing between Iberians and aboriginal Africans as implied by Iberomarusian. In fact the earliest Iberomarusian samples had no European ancestry at all.
Using the word "North African" as a type of person is too vague and it is better not to use it all. Instead if we speak separately of
Maghrebians
People of the Nile Valley
Sahelians
Then there are much less semantic and goal post moving games that can be played if the far too broad term "North African" is used as a type of people and even geographically, arbitrary subjective definitions of what constitutes "North Africa". None of this is necessary Similarly unquantifiable "white " and "black", people like to use these words, dividing the word into to two artificial parts so they can keep changing who fits into each category to suit their needs at at at a given moment and then tweak the meaning in some other argument Similarly "Colorlines" is a bogus topic which should be dismantled rather than attempts made to justify such a thing exists or try to suggest Greeks even had "colorlines" and on the DL people raising these imagined "colorlines" an interpretation of what certain Greeks wrote because they probably want there to be a "colorline"
And if you want to talk about the green Sahara period and describe people of the time, you will need to indicate human remains sites to support what you are saying, otherwise it's all speculation
And if you refer to any human remains site then you will also have to determine if representatives of that populations still exist today
quote:Originally posted by Doug M: All that to say that "Iberomarusian" ancestry is not a marker defining what makes a North African as it is limited to Morocco.
Y DNA Haplogroup E1b1b1b reaches an average frequency of 45% across the Maghreb . J-M267 is the second most-frequent haplogroup, accounting for around 30%. This is not confined to Morocco nor are mitochondrial haplogroups in the region
quote:Originally posted by Doug M:
the earliest Iberomarusian samples had no European ancestry at all.
prove it with a source please
and you should be using the term "Eurasian" because we have just looked at data suggesting Moroccans have 41.8% Anatolian ancestry, that is West Asia not Europe
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Tazarah
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I somehow forgot about this gem. Slave trading colonies were established by the ancient Romans, Greeks, Turks and Genoese in the black sea region. Research shows that negro slaves in the region were frequently listed as Arabs and Jews.
This defeats the false notion that "negro" blacks were only classified as "ethiopian" or "aethiopian" by ancient Romans and Greeks.
"Russia and the Negro: Blacks in Russian History and Thought" by Allison Blakely, page 11 (1986) Howard University Press
posted
^ I think I've read that passage many years ago on this forum. If that's true I find it interesting as to who these black people were. Were they related to the Colchians or perhaps the Roma (Gypsies) on their way to Europe??
As to Lioness, I'm not using Huxley's made up term but the original Greek Mελανοχρωτος (singular) or Μελανοχρωτοι (plural) transliterated as Melanokhrôtos and Melanokhrôtoi respectively. The shortened form is Melankhroi-- all meaning black skinnned.
This is NOT the same as Melanchaeni meaning black-robed! So nice try.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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Honestly, I never really gave that much thought to Herodotus describing the Colchians as standing out from other populations along the Black Sea for their dark complexions. I wonder where such people really would have come from and how they would have arrived in the Caucasus. If not an African origin like Herodotus proposes, maybe a South Asian one like that of the Roma (as DJ mentions)?
quote:The original Greek reads "μελάγχροες", which has often been translated as 'dark-skinned'. However, the word is likely a composite of the words 'μέλι' (honey) and 'έγχρωμος' (coloured) - so a more accurate translation is 'tan'. Herodotus admitted that his description of the skin colour and the hair texture of the Colchians were unremarkable because there were people with similar characteristics - by which he probably meant that there were similar looking people in the region. Herodotus began his assumption that the Colchians were related to the Egyptians by the tan/honey colour of their skin and length and style of their hair, but was only able to 'confirm' this upon noticing that both practiced circumcision, which he compared with the Egyptians and Ethiopians, but also the Arameans, Asyrians and Phoenicians. Simultaneously, Herodotus distinguished between Egyptians and Ethiopians - the latter of whom are explicitly described as black skinned - thus the Egyptians and Colchians he was describing were more likely just as tan as the other people in the Aegean and Anatolia.
Not sure I believe it since "melas" does literally translate to "black", whereas "melis" is the word for "honey".
posted
^ There is a difference between the Greek word Mελανο (Melano)--black and Mέλι (Meli)-- honey.
This reminds me of Swenet pointing out the fact that ever since the 2nd Intermediate Period with the Hyksos invasion during the New Kingdom there was a higher frequency of people being described as "honey colored".
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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What does eventual human remains and aDNA say about the descendancy and phenotype of the Colchians? Have there been any aDNA studies? And what can be read from the DNA of todays inhabitants of the area?
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: You must be thinking of melanchroes, a word Herodotus used
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti:
Lioness, I'm not using Huxley's made up term but the original Greek
this is what you wrote "melanochroi"^^
With that spelling T.H. Huxley said in 1870: "the men whom I have termed Melanochroi, or dark whites." ("ochroi" derived from the Greek word “ochre,” meaning pale yellow)
although it seems close to Melanokhrôtoi (Black-skinned) but that is not the spelling you originally used as we can see above
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Hesiod, Catalogues of Women Fragment 40A (from the Oxyrhynchus Papyri) (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or C7th B.C.) :
"To the lands of the Massagetai and of the proud Hemikunes (Hemicynes) (Half-Dog Men), of the Katoudaioi (Catoudaei) (Underground-Folk) and of the feeble Pygmaioi (Pygmies); and to the tribes of the boundless Melanokhrotoi (Melanchroti) (Black-Skins) and the Libys (North-Africans). Huge Gaia (the Earth) bare these to Epaphos--soothsaying people, knowing seercraft by the will of Zeus the lord of oracles, but deceivers, to the end that men whose thought passes their utterance might be subject to the gods and suffer harm--Aithiopes (Ethiopians) and Libys (Libyans) and mare-milking Skythioi (Scythians). For verily Epaphos was the child of the almighty Son of Kronos (Cronus) [Zeus], and from him sprang the dark Libys and high-souled Aithiopes, and the Katoudaioi (Underground-Folk) and feeble Pygmaioi. All these are the offspring of the lord, the Loud-thunderer [i.e. Zeus as the father of Epaphos]."
quote: Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle, Homerica. Translated by Evelyn-White, H G. Loeb Classical Library Volume 57. London: William Heinemann, 1914.
FRAGMENT 40A - CHASE OF THE HARPIES Oxyrhynchus Papyri 1358 fr. 2 (3rd cent. A.D.):28 ((lacuna -- Slight remains of 7 lines)) "(ll. 8-35) (The Sons of Boreas pursued the Harpies) to the lands of the Massagetae and of the proud Half-Dog men, of the Underground-folk and of the feeble Pygmies; and to the tribes of the boundless Black-skins and the Libyans. Huge Earth bare these to Epaphus -- soothsaying people, knowing seercraft by the will of Zeus the lord of oracles, but deceivers, to the end that men whose thought passes their utterance29 might be subject to the gods and suffer harm -- Aethiopians and Libyans and mare-milking Scythians. For verily Epaphus was the child of the almighty Son of Cronos, and from him sprang the dark Libyans, and high-souled Aethiopians, and the Underground-folk and feeble Pygmies. All these are the offspring of the lord, the Loud-thunderer. Round about all these (the Sons of Boreas) sped in darting flight . . . of the well-horsed Hyperboreans -- whom Earth the all-nourishing bare far off by the tumbling streams of deep-flowing Eridanus . . . of amber, feeding her wide-scattered offspring -- and about the steep Fawn mountain and rugged Etna to the isle Ortygia and the people sprung from Laestrygon who was the son of wide-reigning Poseidon. Twice ranged the Sons of Boreas along this coast and wheeled round and about yearning to catch the Harpies, while they strove to escape and avoid them. And they sped to the tribe of the haughty Cephallenians, the people of patient-souled Odysseus whom in aftertime Calypso the queenly nymph detained for Poseidon. Then they came to the land of the lord the son of Ares . . . they heard. Yet still (the Sons of Boreas) ever pursued them with instant feet. So they (the Harpies) sped over the sea and through the fruitless air . . . "
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: this is what you wrote "melanochroi"^^
With that spelling T.H. Huxley said in 1870: "the men whom I have termed Melanochroi, or dark whites." ("ochroi" derived from the Greek word “ochre,” meaning pale yellow)
although it seems close to Melanokhrôtoi (Black-skinned) but that is not the spelling you originally used as we can see above
LOL Huxley is clearly mistaken since the word melanochroi is a compound of two words-- melano (black) and chroi (colors) which is the plural of chrōa (color). Chrota/Khrota is colored which is more specific.
There is no "ochroi" as in ochres! Huxley made that sh*t up! LMAO
But if that's what he thinks...
From dictionary.com: ochre [ oh-ker]-- an earthy pigment containing ferric oxide, typically with clay, varying from light yellow to brown or red.
As for your search on 'melanokhrotoi', your source says the Melanokhrotoi tribe are the children of Epaphos and Gaia. Gaia is the Earth goddess but who is Epaphos?? From Wiki: In Greek mythology, Epaphus (/ˈɛpəfəs/; Ancient Greek: Ἔπᾰφος), also called Apis[1] or Munantius[2], was a son of the Greek God Zeus and king of Egypt.
FAMILY: Epaphus was the son of Zeus[3] and Io[4] and thus, Ceroessa's brother.[5] With his wife, Memphis[6] (or according to others, Cassiopeia[7]), he had one daughter, Libya[8] while some accounts added another one who bore the name Lysianassa.[9] These daughters later became mothers of Poseidon's sons, Belus, Agenor and possibly, Lelex to the former and Busiris to the latter. In other versions of the myth, Epaphus was also called father of Thebe,[10] who was mother of Aegyptus[11] and Heracles[12] by Zeus. Through these daughters, Epaphus was the ancestor of the "dark Libyans, and high-souled Aethiopians, and the Underground-folk and feeble Pygmies"
You're done, 'lioness'.
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I already the Greek text source on Melanokhrotoi: so we can read it in context but you are not posting the text sources because you don't want people to see the context
Melanokhrotoi:
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,:
Hesiod, Catalogues of Women Fragment 40A (from the Oxyrhynchus Papyri) (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or C7th B.C.) :
"To the lands of the Massagetai and of the proud Hemikunes (Hemicynes) (Half-Dog Men), of the Katoudaioi (Catoudaei) (Underground-Folk) and of the feeble Pygmaioi (Pygmies); and to the tribes of the boundless (Melanchroti) (Black-Skins) and the Libys (North-Africans). Huge Gaia (the Earth) bare these to Epaphos--soothsaying people, knowing seercraft by the will of Zeus the lord of oracles, but deceivers, to the end that men whose thought passes their utterance might be subject to the gods and suffer harm--Aithiopes (Ethiopians) and Libys (Libyans) and mare-milking Skythioi (Scythians). For verily Epaphos was the child of the almighty Son of Kronos (Cronus) [Zeus], and from him sprang the dark Libys and high-souled Aithiopes, and the Katoudaioi (Underground-Folk) and feeble Pygmaioi. All these are the offspring of the lord, the Loud-thunderer [i.e. Zeus as the father of Epaphos]."
Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle, Homerica. Translated by Evelyn-White, H G. Loeb Classical Library Volume 57. London: William Heinemann, 1914.
FRAGMENT 40A - CHASE OF THE HARPIES Oxyrhynchus Papyri 1358 fr. 2 (3rd cent. A.D.):28 ((lacuna -- Slight remains of 7 lines)) "(ll. 8-35)
(The Sons of Boreas pursued the Harpies) to the lands of the Massagetae and of the proud Half-Dog men, of the Underground-folk and of the feeble Pygmies; and to the tribes of the boundless Black-skins and the Libyans. Huge Earth bare these to Epaphus -- soothsaying people, knowing seercraft by the will of Zeus the lord of oracles, but deceivers, to the end that men whose thought passes their utterance29 might be subject to the gods and suffer harm -- Aethiopians and Libyans and mare-milking Scythians. For verily Epaphus was the child of the almighty Son of Cronos, and from him sprang the dark Libyans, and high-souled Aethiopians, and the Underground-folk and feeble Pygmies. All these are the offspring of the lord, the Loud-thunderer. Round about all these (the Sons of Boreas) sped in darting flight . . . of the well-horsed Hyperboreans -- whom Earth the all-nourishing bare far off by the tumbling streams of deep-flowing Eridanus . . . of amber, feeding her wide-scattered offspring -- and about the steep Fawn mountain and rugged Etna to the isle Ortygia and the people sprung from Laestrygon who was the son of wide-reigning Poseidon. Twice ranged the Sons of Boreas along this coast and wheeled round and about yearning to catch the Harpies, while they strove to escape and avoid them. And they sped to the tribe of the haughty Cephallenians, the people of patient-souled Odysseus whom in aftertime Calypso the queenly nymph detained for Poseidon. Then they came to the land of the lord the son of Ares . . . they heard. Yet still (the Sons of Boreas) ever pursued them with instant feet. So they (the Harpies) sped over the sea and through the fruitless air . . . "
Your goal is to show that the Greeks indicated a border, that everything below the Mediterranean were people darker than them not a very remarkable the idea, that people to the south of Greece would be darker than them
but you are looking for "colorline" and to speak of such a line is to racialize the color because there is no such line, that is aan artificial construct
But to pursue this further you will need a Greek authors, more than one discussing such an artificial borderline and it should not be discussing mythology, sons of Zeus, half-dog men and so on.
So I suggest you abandon "Melanokhrotoi" and instead look for further instances, QUOTED IN GREEK TEXTS PARAGRAPHS (translated) paragraphs for context and source of the word "melanchroes"
and I think there are more than just the one from Herodotus which I quoted who said:
quote: Herodotus, The Histories, with an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920.
"Hdt. 2.104 quote: 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 melanchroes (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.
So how does this work? You were yearning for a racial border line at the Mediterranean and claim that the Greeks divided the world into "blacks" and "whites" at that location but Colchi is above the Mediterranean in Georgia
So were these native Georgians or were they Egyptians from an Egyptian army who settled there? If that was they case they would probably be darker than native Colchian If not, unreliable legend and hearsay
which would be unremarkable
So all this is folly If Greeks said people to the South were darker, so what? Indians are darker than Greeks also, so what ?
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There is no "ochroi" as in ochres! Huxley made that sh*t up! LMAO
Athenaeus of Naucratis was a Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourishing about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD.
quote: From Athenaeus'! however we learn of another kind of kernos. In his discussion of the various kinds of cups and their uses he says: ‘ Kernos, a vessel made of earthenware, having in it many little cups fastened to it, in which are white poppies, wheat, barley, pulse, vetch, ochroi, lentils; and he who carries it after the fashion of the carrier of the liknon, tastes of these things, as Ammonius relates in his third book On Altars and Sacrifices.’ A second and rather fuller notice of the kernos is given by Athenaeus? a little later in discussing the kotylos. ‘Polemon in his treatise “ On the Dian Fleece” says, “And after this he performs the rite and takes it from the chamber and distributes it to those who have borne the kernos aloft.”’ Then follows an amplified list of the contents of the kernos. The additions are italicized: ‘ sage, white poppies, wheat, barley, pulse, vetch, ochroi, lentils, beans, spelt, oats, a cake, honey, oil, wine, milk, sheep's wool wnwashed,
pl n a postulated subdivision of the Caucasoid race, characterized by dark hair and pale complexion
ORIGIN OF MELANOCHROI 1 C19: New Latin (coined by T. H. Huxley), from Greek, from melas dark + ōchros pale
(although I have not been able to verify in a quote by Huxley if this is how he broke down the word)
admit it, you screwed up using the wrong spelling
This Huxley stuff is interesting but irrelevant, remember who you agreed to work on your pride issues and trouble with admitting errors which you have yet to do in 20 years
The spelling you should be pursuing is
melanchroes
and see if you can find some other examples of it's use by Greek writers beyond Herodotus Using full complete sentence paragraphs of translated Greek text where the word occurs and with source citedPosts: 42919 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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^ The point was already proven lying snake. The ancient Greek word melanochroi had NOTHING to do with ochre but refers to color and Epaphus is the forefather of Africans including Libyans and Egyptians as well as Sudanese.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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Let us know when you find the proper word because this is getting ridiculous
You're wasting everybody's time with this stubborn wrongness
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Okay, I read Tristan's paper. It's pretty good and raises a lot of excellent points. The one thing I was surprised he missed was the simple fact that the Greeks called the Egyptians "melanochroi" which is their term for 'black colored'.
Ok show us these texts, give us some paragraphs of Greek text translated into English where they are calling Egyptians melanochroi or is the emperor missing clothes?
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Tazarah
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Lioness,
why are you no longer a mod?
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