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From what I understand it was Black Africans of various ethnic groups that mostly inhabited the Central Sahara both in Pre-Historic times as well as in antiquity. With groups such as the Sanhaja Berbers and Arab Speaking communities moving into the Sahara (at least in great numbers) relatively recently around the 4th or 5th Century.
The descendants of these Black indigenous Saharan groups can be seen in populations such as the Nubian's of Southern Egypt/North-Sudan. Tebou and Zaghawa of Southern Libya/Northern Chad.
I've heard it mentioned that the Haratin are the indigenous Black Africans of Mauritania however I've also read information which seems to contradict this and instead suggests they were slaves brought into Mauritania by Berbers from the "Bilad As Sudan" so I'm not completely sure...As for Southern Algeria I have never known a single indigenous Black ethnic group from this specific region and have always known of it being associated with the Tuaregs.
So my question is whom are the Black Saharan descendants of Southern Algeria and Mauritania? Who were they historically and where are they today?
Can any experts shed some light on this? Thank You
Djehuti Member # 6698
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^ Well I'm no "expert" but from what I've read from old sources like Briggs, Bates, etc. it is uncertain what the etymology of the term 'Haratin' itself is, but what is certain is that the name describes a lowly class or caste of agricultural serfs under the rule of Berber tribes. They are NOT a single ethnic group but comprised of various communities all across the Maghreb. While it is true that some Haratin are descended from slaves from farther south, that is not the case for all of them. For example the Haratin of Morocco and parts of the Western Sahara have different physical features that are distinct from Haratin of other regions and various DNA studies have shown they also possess unique lineages and markers that show close affinity to Berbers one hand but Pygmies on another (I don't have that study on me, but hopefully someone can find it). Even before DNA tests, the Haratin of Morocco and northern Algeria predominantly had blood type B factors more similar to those of pharaonic Egyptians.
So to be fair the Sahara has been home to a variety of populations. So you can't really say one group only is aboriginal while others are not.
LoStranger Member # 23740
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: So to be fair the Sahara has been home to a variety of populations. So you can't really say one group only is aboriginal while others are not.
Ah right so were some Berbers also aboriginal to the Sahara? or did they originate from further north (in the Mediterranean) as my first posted suggested?
Djehuti Member # 6698
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Berber languages themselves originate in Africa but as for populations while many did originate in the continent there was also obvious geneflow from Europe hence why there are white Berbers.
BrandonP Member # 3735
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My hunch is that the Trans-Saharan trade has muddied up the populations of the Maghreb enough to paint a distorted picture of how people in the region might have looked before then. This would have happened in both directions, too. You would have had people from the northern coastline moving south into the Atlas and Sahara as well as people from the Sahel moving north. I wouldn’t be surprised if even the slave trade was more bidirectional than just the media trope of Amazigh or Arabs enslaving Sahelians. Seems likely to me that the Sahelian kingdoms would have had the same appetites for exotic slaves as the Arabs and Amazigh they traded with.
I do remember that some modern Saharan populations have predominantly North African Y-DNA combined with predominantly West African mtDNA. That’s hard to reconcile with imagining these populations as simply relict Proto-Amazigh people. Even so, we have no shortage of prehistoric rock art from the Sahara showing dark-skinned human subjects, so we know melanated people of some kind were present in the Central Sahara long before the historical Trans-Saharan trade.
As for who the first Proto-Amazigh people actually were, there's rock art from Djebel Ousselat in central Tunisia showing what might be them (archaeologists often identify the Neolithic Capsian culture of that time period with Proto-Amazigh speakers):
BrandonP Member # 3735
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Berber languages themselves originate in Africa but as for populations while many did originate in the continent there was also obvious geneflow from Europe hence why there are white Berbers.
I remember you have argued that many light-skinned modern North Africans trace their phenotype to prehistoric admixture with Iberian populations. That's probably a factor in the western Maghreb, but what I want to ask right now is whether the light-skinned Libyans (or Tehenu) you see in Egyptian paintings descend from such a mixture as well.
Do they really represent an eastward migration of Iberian-admixed Maghrebis? The tendency has been to portray them as Amazigh-speakers, or perhaps sharing a "Libyco-Berber" linguistic heritage with Amazigh further west. The Egyptian portrayals do show them with Amazigh-style tattooing, and of course there are the Amazigh living at the Siwa oasis today, but AFAIK, that's all the grounds we have for even assuming the Tehenu of the Bronze Age were Amazigh like those further west in the Maghreb.
How do we know the Tehenu don't descend from a separate European migration across the Mediterranean from the one we presume impacted western Maghrebis? Alternatively, how do we know they're not descended from Hyksos or a related group of Levantine migrants who ventured west of the Delta and took on North African customs? How confident can we be that there's a strong connection between the Tehenu in eastern Libya and the Iberian-admixed Maghrebis further west?
Antalas Member # 23506
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quote:Originally posted by BrandonP:
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Berber languages themselves originate in Africa but as for populations while many did originate in the continent there was also obvious geneflow from Europe hence why there are white Berbers.
I remember you have argued that many light-skinned modern North Africans trace their phenotype to prehistoric admixture with Iberian populations. That's probably a factor in the western Maghreb, but what I want to ask right now is whether the light-skinned Libyans (or Tehenu) you see in Egyptian paintings descend from such a mixture as well.
Do they really represent an eastward migration of Iberian-admixed Maghrebis? The tendency has been to portray them as Amazigh-speakers, or perhaps sharing a "Libyco-Berber" linguistic heritage with Amazigh further west. The Egyptian portrayals do show them with Amazigh-style tattooing, and of course there are the Amazigh living at the Siwa oasis today, but AFAIK, that's all the grounds we have for even assuming the Tehenu of the Bronze Age were Amazigh like those further west in the Maghreb.
How do we know the Tehenu don't descend from a separate European migration across the Mediterranean from the one we presume impacted western Maghrebis? Alternatively, how do we know they're not descended from Hyksos or a related group of Levantine migrants who ventured west of the Delta and took on North African customs? How confident can we be that there's a strong connection between the Tehenu in eastern Libya and the Iberian-admixed Maghrebis further west?
What are you even talking about ? They literally spoke the same language as NW Africans :
quote:By examining this onomastic material, I attempted to verify the hypothesis of a linguistic relationship between the language spoken by the Western peoples who gradually settled in Egypt from the middle of the second millennium and the language of the indigenous people encountered by the Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans when they set foot on African soil. The results of this investigation were positive, as I was surprised - and pleased - to discover that the same morphological series (recurrent sequences) were found in both linguistic groups. Furthermore, several personal names known from Libyan, Phoenician, Latin, Latin-Punic, and Greek inscriptions from Classical Antiquity already appear as such in Egyptian documents: the Mashouash and other Lebou, these "Libyans" of Egypt, spoke a language related to the dialects practiced by the Libyans of Greek authors.
Frédéric Colin, Le "vieux libyque" dans les sources égyptiennes (du Nouvel Empire à l'époque romaine) et l'histoire des peuples libycophones dans le nord de l'Afrique,in: Bulletin archéologique du C.T.H.S., nouv. sér., Afrique du Nord, fasc. 25, p. 13
Doug M Member # 7650
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quote:Originally posted by LoStranger: From what I understand it was Black Africans of various ethnic groups that mostly inhabited the Central Sahara both in Pre-Historic times as well as in antiquity. With groups such as the Sanhaja Berbers and Arab Speaking communities moving into the Sahara (at least in great numbers) relatively recently around the 4th or 5th Century.
The descendants of these Black indigenous Saharan groups can be seen in populations such as the Nubian's of Southern Egypt/North-Sudan. Tebou and Zaghawa of Southern Libya/Northern Chad.
I've heard it mentioned that the Haratin are the indigenous Black Africans of Mauritania however I've also read information which seems to contradict this and instead suggests they were slaves brought into Mauritania by Berbers from the "Bilad As Sudan" so I'm not completely sure...As for Southern Algeria I have never known a single indigenous Black ethnic group from this specific region and have always known of it being associated with the Tuaregs.
So my question is whom are the Black Saharan descendants of Southern Algeria and Mauritania? Who were they historically and where are they today?
Can any experts shed some light on this? Thank You
Who said they left? Last I checked there are still plenty of black populations in the Central Sahara. What do you consider the central Sahara? Because technically that would be in or around Northern Niger, Northern Chad, Southern Libya and Southern Algeria. And generally this area is about 700 miles from the Libyan Mediterranean coast, 1000 miles from the Tunisian mediterranean coast and 1500 miles from Gibraltar. And the Sahara itself covers an area larger than the continental United States. So suffice to say that is a large area and it is obvious that because of the drying Sahara, the population density would have been very low, which is what allows foreign DNA elements to have such a statistically large impact. But that doesn't mean descendants of the original inhabitants are no longer there.
Shebitku Member # 23742
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quote:Originally posted by LoStranger:
So my question is whom are the Black Saharan descendants of Southern Algeria and Mauritania? Who were they historically and where are they today?
Why not mention Southern Morocco?
But anyway
The Fulani pastoralists, Haratin's, Imraguen, Toubou's, Zaghawa's, Dawwada, Haddad, Idaksahak, some Hausa and Kanuri groups etc
You also have many"black" tribes in the south of North African countries who now identify as arabs, certain Tuareg tribes are also racially "black"
In terms of Mauritania specifically the Mande peoples are the true natives.
quote: Originally posted by BrandonP:
How do we know the Tehenu don't descend from a separate European migration across the Mediterranean from the one we presume impacted western Maghrebis? Alternatively, how do we know they're not descended from Hyksos or a related group of Levantine migrants who ventured west of the Delta and took on North African customs? How confident can we be that there's a strong connection between the Tehenu in eastern Libya and the Iberian-admixed Maghrebis further west?
Indeed the Northern Libyan tribes became affiliated and admixed with "Sherden" like Sea peoples, while the Southern tribes retained groups that, someone like Antalas, would consider to be racially "black"
quote:In the 19th and 20th dynasty, Egypt suffered massive invasions by Libyans in alliance with groups of "Sea Peoples", particularly under Merenptah and Ramesses III.
Thomas Schneider, Language Contact in Ancient Egypt, 2023
Djehuti Member # 6698
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I've posted this in a couple of other threads--from Chapter 2 of Oric Bates' book, The Eastern Libyans Thk origin, whether European, Asiatic, or African, of the Hamitic race—which, with the Arabs, now shares that part of Africa which lies north of lat. lo"' N.—yet awaits solution. A host of theories, a few of them plausible, none of them sufficiently supported, and most of them in direct contradiction to each other, have been launched as solutions to this problem, and have but rendered it more obscure...
Genetics has solved the question and shows that so-called Hamitic peoples originated in Africa.
At present, and until a great mass of new and scientifically gathered evidence shall have been collected, only one main fact is indisputable—viz. that the so-called Hamitic race has absorbed a number of foreign ethnic elements, which it has not succeeded in wholly assimilating physically, though it has imposed upon them this or that Hamitic dialect. The original pure Hamitic type seems to be that found among the Saharan Berbers—a type tall, spare, long-limbed, and dark (brun); hair black or dark brown, straight or wavy; head dolichocephalic, orthognathous; nose slightly aquiline or straight; eyes dark and piercing, set rather widely apart; mouth well-defined; facial capillary system slightly developed; movements generally slow and dignified. In the west, between the Wady Dra'ah ("Wed Draa") and the Senegal, this type has become fused with the Negro elements from the south, the resultant type sharing the physical peculiarities of both progenitors. The same thing appears to have happened in the case of the various Hamitic peoples of East Africa.
The most important extra-African elements among the Hamites are the brachycephalic Berbers and the blonds. Both, as one would a priori expect, are found in the north. The brachycephals are, almost certainly, invaders, since they form but a small group near the northern seaboard of the dolichocephalic African continent. The blonds are much more numerous, but are even more clearly of extra-African origin. Various theories have been advanced to account for the presence of this xanthochroid element in Africa, it even having been asserted that the blonds owed their origin to the Vandals. This is, however, not only in itself incredible, owing to the number and distribution of the xanthochroids in the fastnesses of Morocco, but is even flatly contradicted by the ancient evidence. Whatever may be the true significance of the word Tehenu, which some would have to mean "fair" or "bright " (scil. "people"), evidence of a more satisfactory nature is to be found in the Egyptian monuments. For whereas the Libyan in earlier Egyptian art is regularly a brun, later representations exist showing Libyans not only blond, but even with red hair and blue eyes." Classical notices of blond Africans also exist; and though they are few, they are explicit. The Greek colonists of Cyrene are mentioned by Callimachus as dancing with the blond Libyan women...
From Carlton Coon's book Races of Europe
Again from Coon's book, a photo of a “gracile Mediterranean” Shluh Berber of Morocco
modern day Shluh Moroccan
So the descendants of the original (black) populations of the Central Sahara still remain. By the way, the populations of Sahara were diverse and include groups like the ancestors of the Fulani are another branch of such populations.
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