quote:You know, it really is your insistence on binding race to geography that is dragging your psueoscience under the sand.
^Ironically says the "red rock" who contends that "true blacks" have been isolated beneath the Sahara desert. Of course before being exposed as a pseudoscholar who masters in visual arts more so than African history and migrations, as evidenced by all of those pretty pictures, though lack of substantiation for your claims.
quote:India is Africa's sister
India has very little to do with Africa, though Clyde Winters may object to that. lol.. In any event, evidence for such a relationship is always appreciated. Given your linguistic folly, I have no reason to believe you.
quote:The Semetic Language was born in Ethiopia and came to fruition in Yemen. You really need to have a look at a map. Yemen bridges India to East Africa. The Indo-Aryan dialects of the semetic language originate there. Abraham i.e. Ibrahim, i.e., Avrham- in Old Egyptian that means of Brahman. Son of Brahman that lived in Ur. But I did no intend for that post to derail the more significant issue.
I'm not concerned with what bridges what, since two things are apparent:
1) Ancient Egyptians didn't speak Semitic 2) There are no Indo-Aryan dialects in Semitic unless you're speaking of some sort of mongrelization or loan words that I'm unaware of. These are two completely different language phyla and Indians by and large exclusively speak Dravic and Indo-European.
quote: languages spoken in the Indian subcontinent. The languages of the region are generally classified as belonging to the following families: Indo-European (the Indo-Iranian branch in particular), Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic (Munda in particular), and Sino-Tibetan. Fourteen languages are mentioned in the constitution of India: Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Gujarati, Sanskrit, [etc.].....
quote:Early I posted a photo of an indiginous Northern Saharan with tawny ochre skin and mongoloid folds around his eyes-pepper corn hair. He and his people are responsible for the majority of the oldest pictographs around the Sahara.
I strongly suggest that you take a look at this thread here: OT: Saharan Rock Art
^Similarities in dress, customs, and appearance have already been noted extensively. A lot of these people are ancestors of possibly Fulani, Dogon, and Chadic peoples, as well as early ancient Egyptians and proto-berber-speakers. The vast majority of whom were black Africans, which is more than obvious from the depictions alone. There is no evidence of any people with so-called "Mongoloid eyefolds", etc, which is also seen among the Khoisan.
In conclusion, you've brought us nothing new. More of the same history distortions, bunk race concepts, and hot rhetoric, but no evidence or proof.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by osiriun: Actually Melanesian people of New Guinea are closer related to Taiwanese people than African.
The Negritoes left Africa a long time ago and as a result are not closely related to Africans as much as Greek people are.
Are you describing the indigenous Taiwanese versus the Chinese ethnic Taiwanese? Could you please clarify? If the Melenesians are more closely related to the dominant cultural and ethnic population of Mongoloid Asiatics that would be compelling. Alternatively,the Melenesians would be closely related to the original inhabitants of Taiwan and thusly closely related to the ancestors of the Micronesians and Polynesians?
Would the Negritos be a single group or do they represent different genetic lineages? Do Africans present a single group or are Africans representative of diverse genetic lineages? Are all Africans more closely related to Greeks? Or, are some Africans more closely related to "Caucasian" Greeks than "Black" Pygmoid/Negritos?
Posts: 152 | From: Boston MA USA | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by osiriun: Actually Melanesian people of New Guinea are closer related to Taiwanese people than African.
The Negritoes left Africa a long time ago and as a result are not closely related to Africans as much as Greek people are.
Thank you.. I'm not the only one I see catching all of these elementary factual errors..
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
| IP: Logged |
posted
The Indo-Aryan dialects of the Semetic Language were originally a trade language made up of many borrowed words and terms. The Indians of Western India were integral trade partners with Ethiopia and Egypt. The bridge between them is Yemen. Have a look see. Perhaps you are blinded by your blackness?
India is closer to Egypt than Most of Africa- hence the genetic and haplotype similarities between Southern Indians and Eastern Africans. Since the migration between continents was performed almost soley by male humans one should not expect the mtDNA of Indians to show up in Ethiopia. Or the mtDNA of Ethiopians to show up in India. one can however find the mtDNA of Indians and Ethiopians in Egypt, Somalia and Madagascar.
Why are you so skeptical? It never ceases to amaze me how people can come to be experts on another people. Case in point, I remember as a new student at a boarding school entering the library. The librarian looked at me and asked what nationality I was. I said "Egyptian". She said to me " You must be Nubian then." Evidently she had read all about Egypt in books right there in that library and no discussion to the contrary could change her mind. She was a passionate Egyptofile and knew rather book learned a great deal about Egypt. While she never visited -hated the heat - she had her opinions - most based on her late father's intrepetation of the Old Testament- she was nonetheless, Caucasian, a librarian easily thirty years my senior and naturally- right.
I'm from the Northern Eastern Sahara and my family has always lived there and yet you- a westerner are going to try and convince me that your comprehension of the subject matter is somehow more viable?
Posts: 152 | From: Boston MA USA | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
I am amazed that the prime discussants on this site are basically absent from the discussion taking place in this thread.
Because it is a discussion that has been seen many times before, and I can sum it up into what I refer to as the "Orionix Syndrom". The working premise here is basically that, substantially-melaninated [largely of eumelanin] skin or what appears to be certain shades of "chocolate-brown skin" isn't really "black", unless it is of the sort seen in Dinkas. It is essentially the same argument that AMR1 clings onto. Hence, the invocation of African biological and cultural diversity is appealed to, only insofar as it is supposed to buttress this ideology - nothing more or less. Within this diversity, affinities across the broad spectrum of Africans is overlooked. In otherwords, the differences are over-amplified and the affinities are over-diminished.
I'm willing entertain a few questions about certain claims made by Maahes:
Other African ethnicities indigenous to Eastern Africa that are not peoples of the Black Rock but rather Peoples of the Oryx and any one of a dozen other East African ethnicites- described in some literature as long headed peoples- or Nihilotic peoples were and are very dark skinned-they include the Somalians, the Yemenites, the Ethiopian Highlanders and many but not all of the Sudanese. - Maahes
- What ethnicities do the “Black Rock” people comprise?
- What ethnicities do the “Peoples of the Oryx” comprise?
- What ethnicities do the “Nilotic” people comprise?
-What is the difference between “Nilotic” people and the “Black Rock” people?
- Which Nilotic group is found in Yemen?
The dynasty fathers that arrived from further south often legitmized their ascendency by marriage with sepat heiresses - endemic to Egypt. Why? Because the land was passed down from mother to daughter. - Maahes
Does this include lower Ta-Seti?
East Africa and West Asia are as related to one another as the Black Maned Saharan Lion is to the Asiatic Lion. They are related as closely as Andammen Island Pygmoid Indigene and the Central African Pygmoid Indigene…
The choice of photos I left off with last included endangered indigenous cultures of South East Asia that are clearly blacker than your average African. They are truly Black. I also included Khung! and Orang Asli -one anothers closest genetic relatives yet one is rndemic to Africa and the other Malaysia. - Maahes
And the lineage indicators that tell us this, are…?
The ancient Egyptians were nearly as closely related ethnically speaking to the Somalians and Ethiopians as they were to the peoples of Western India. - Maahes
And you learnt this from what genetic indicators?
They have always lived in the Sahara just as pale eyed, pale haired Tjemehu have always lived in the Sahara. Neither is any more or less African than the other. - Maahes
Any evidence that pale skinned people have always lived in the Sahara? And how do you quantify “pale skin”?
Ethnozoology ever heard of it? Yup- the origins of domestic animals and plants...Great subject matter. For example, myrhh and frankincense came from the Horn of Africa. But where my friend do spices like cinnamon, fennel, and clove derive? Where did the domesticated horse or better yet the genetic strain of domestic horses in Mittani come from? Where did the Ethiopians get bananas? - Maahes
You could ask that question towards just about any other part of Africa; for instance, where does banana in West Africa, or even they type that is cooked - different from your average sweet banana, come from?
Where did all those cattle come from anyway? - Maahes
Good question; where do African cattles come from?
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Sundiata: Ironically says the "red rock" who contends that "true blacks" have been isolated beneath the Sahara desert. Of course before being exposed as a pseudoscholar who masters in visual arts more so than African history and migrations, as evidenced by all of those pretty pictures, though lack of substantiation for your claims.[QUOTE]
I never said that Black People were not present in the Sahara. You are projecting your willful ignorance again. Perhaps you should read more carefully? If this misquote of what I have written is evidence that I am a psuedo-scholar what can that make you? You have yet to substantiate or refute a single assertion made in the peer-reviewed papers I've made available as reference of my position. You on the other hand are wearing your genes a little too tight. Any more pressure and that camel's toe may split.
The Lower Ta-Seti and Inyotef Ta-Seti were Eastern and Western Nilotic respectively- based upon their recorded ceramics and specific cattle breeds. Eastern Nilotic tribes remain in Southern Yemen and may have arrived there as thoroughly Egyptianized traders in Sabeah. There are many trade words shared between Southern Yemenites and Eritreans which in turn are shared as far away as Siwa and Farafra. I've left a link to an online book that discusses Haplotypes as they relate to certain critically endangered Asiatic "Negritos" a term i detest. Am searching for more references but please do see the relevant paper on the Somalian male haplotypey as it compares and contrasts with those of India, Ethiopia and Egypt.
I don;t know about "Pale Skinned" Fair eyed and Fair haired yes but I've never known of pale skinned save for the many populations where total or partial albinism is common as in Siwa and Bahiriya.
-------------------- The seed cannot sprout upwards without simultaneously sending roots into the ground. Posts: 152 | From: Boston MA USA | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Maahes: The Indo-Aryan dialects of the Semetic Language were originally a trade language made up of many borrowed words and terms. The Indians of Western India were integral trade partners with Ethiopia and Egypt. The bridge between them is Yemen. Have a look see. Perhaps you are blinded by your blackness?
Or maybe you're simply blinded by your own ignorance. I fail to see how a map proves the ethnic make-up of Ethiopia and ancient Egypt. At the end of the day, I reiterate that Indians do not traditionally speak Semitic languages and I've provided a citation which attests to this well-known, widely accepted fact. Your fringe theories have no bearing on what is already substantiated.
Even entertaining your sloppy evidence (if that's what you call it) for a second, I still fail to see what trade has to do with anything and why Ethiopians wouldn't share ties with Yemen before they would India, which they actually do, in addition to with Egypt. All confirmed here - Ethiopian Mitochondrial DNA Heritage: Tracking Gene Flow Across
quote:India is closer to Egypt than Most of Africa- hence the genetic and haplotype similarities between Southern Indians and Eastern Africans.
Obviously you need to take a quick look at your own map with foolishly ridiculous statements like this. This automatically renders your subsequent statement about genetic affinities, absurd as well, which is evidenced by the very study that I've just cited above, along with the study on male Somali that you've presented yourself.
Also, click here for another study on Egyptian mtdna, linking them again, to Ethiopia (not India).
quote:Since the migration between continents was performed almost soley by male humans
Are you on crack? This may be an inappropriate question, but it must be asked.
quote:one should not expect the mtDNA of Indians to show up in Ethiopia. Or the mtDNA of Ethiopians to show up in India. one can however find the mtDNA of Indians and Ethiopians in Egypt, Somalia and Madagascar.
As a cop-out you desperately gasp at more straws, depending studies of the Y-Chromosome to support your claims, but unfortunately for you, recent findings in a 2003 study by Lucotte and Mercer, the predominant haplotypes observed are African in origin, including more southernly material:
Lower Egypt (n=162); V=51.9%, XI=11.7%, and IV=1.2%.
Upper Egypt (n=66); V=24.2%, XI=28.8%, and IV=27.3%.
Lower Nubia (n=46); V=17.4%, XI=30.4%, and IV=39.1%.
The original inhabitants of the Sahara, were Blacks.
^^Goes to show how much you're grasping at straws.. Now please take a look at the thread that I've linked you to.
quote:Why are you so skeptical?
I'm extremely open minded, just not dumb and naive.
quote:It never ceases to amaze me how people can come to be experts on another people. Case in point, I remember as a new student at a boarding school entering the library. The librarian looked at me and asked what nationality I was. I said "Egyptian". She said to me " You must be Nubian then." Evidently she had read all about Egypt in books right there in that library and no discussion to the contrary could change her mind. She was a passionate Egyptofile and knew rather book learned a great deal about Egypt. While she never visited -hated the heat - she had her opinions - most based on her late father's intrepetation of the Old Testament- she was nonetheless, Caucasian, a librarian easily thirty years my senior and naturally- right.
I'm not concerned with your childish anecdotes; where's the evidence supporting your nonsense claims?
quote:I'm from the Northern Eastern Sahara and my family has always lived there and yet you- a westerner are going to try and convince me that your comprehension of the subject matter is somehow more viable?
Ad hominem to be disregarded..
What you are really telling me is that you're not black, therefore all of the evidence/facts we've shown you is wrong. This is pretty much what it boils down to; your own self-hatred.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Maahes: [QUOTE]Originally posted by Sundiata: Ironically says the "red rock" who contends that "true blacks" have been isolated beneath the Sahara desert. Of course before being exposed as a pseudoscholar who masters in visual arts more so than African history and migrations, as evidenced by all of those pretty pictures, though lack of substantiation for your claims.[QUOTE]
I never said that Black People were not present in the Sahara. You are projecting your willful ignorance again. Perhaps you should read more carefully? If this misquote of what I have written is evidence that I am a psuedo-scholar what can that make you? You have yet to substantiate or refute a single assertion made in the peer-reviewed papers I've made available as reference of my position. You on the other hand are wearing your genes a little too tight. Any more pressure and that camel's toe may split.
You have presented not one peer reviewed paper in support of your main premise, that ancient Egypt was not predominantly settled by Black Africans. I have not once mis-quoted you and all one has to do is go back to the front page to see that. Every claim you've made so far, from linguistics to genetics, has already been contradicted. Your delusions aside, the vast majority of what you type is just nonsense.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
| IP: Logged |
posted
"What ethnicities do the “Black Rock” people comprise?"
According to our tribal elders and they have been quoted as relevant authorities by Brugsch and others over time, the Peoples of the Black Rock are the Yam and the Irthet who spoke a different language than the Nyala and Fur of Sudan, Egypt's Western Desert and Libya.
-" What ethnicities do the “Peoples of the Oryx” comprise?"
Again, from the same source, the Wawat, the Setju/
-" What ethnicities do the “Nilotic” people comprise?" I think that Europeans have always called East Africans that speak Nilotic languages Nilotic. This would mean most of the above. However, the Cushitic branches of the East Africans- the Yam and the Fur specifically are not Nilotic nor are they Bantu. The easternmost tribal clans/ethnics- the long headed Oryx people -Wawat, Setju they are not speaking Nilotic but evidentally osteologically speaking they share a common origin. Their ( oryx) pottery is I think called Badarian. There was also another place called Eyrehem that was beleived to be the origin of the first dynastic mothers. It was somewhere in the Ethiopian highlands or Eritrea. This is where we received our Abysinnian Jackals that bred together with the Pygmoid's Central African Basenji would provide the genetic basis of our Egyptian hound stock.
Posts: 152 | From: Boston MA USA | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
What you are really telling me is that you're not black, therefore all of the evidence/facts we've shown you is wrong. This is pretty much what it boils down to; your own self-hatred."
Actually, it's your self-hatred that needs some restraint. Black Africans,Yellow Africans, Red Africans and Brown Africans were all very present from day one in the Sahara as I've said clearly. You jump around like a jerboa. Please stay on topic. The issue that raised your ire was the misquote where I wrote on another forum, that there were no Black Pharaohs in Egypt. I've explained why the term Pharaoh is incorrect which was my first point at the other forum where I;'ve been quoted out of context. The second point made is that to my knowledge for the fifth time, no Peoples of the Black Rock ever ruled as Soveriegns over the Great House. I know of no kings of the Peoples of the Black Rock. You are lumping together ethnic cultures endemic to the west side of the old second branch of the Nile with cultures from the east coast of Africa- Even though Im repeating myself again, I know what a Black person actually looks like. I do not consider the socio-political term of the westerner particularly useful in describing the diversity of language and culture much less ethnicity of East Africa much less the entire globe. While I am in America I tell people I am Black if they ask me. It's what I am culturally speaking in this nation where I live half the year. However, when i return home to Egypt or when I travel to Eritrea or the Sudan, Chad or Niger, Senegal etc. I identify myself as a member of my tribal clan and the nationality of our people. I wouldn't be so quick to jump to judgement. In Africa we are accustomed to meeting other ethnicities- all equally African of every different 'racial' type. And I have provided reference after reference. You cherry pick what you read and your arguments here prove that.
-------------------- The seed cannot sprout upwards without simultaneously sending roots into the ground. Posts: 152 | From: Boston MA USA | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Maahes: "What ethnicities do the “Black Rock” people comprise?"
According to our tribal elders
Your "tribal elders" are full of you know what..
quote:Originally posted by Maahes:
Actually, it's your self-hatred that needs some restraint.
"I know you are, but what am I"..
^This is what you're doing, which is why it won't be entertained. I stand by what was stated and am still waiting on evidence that these ancient Egyptians were not black Africans, or that they were more closely related to you, than the "true blacks" that you and your "tribal elders" like to dichotomize.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
| IP: Logged |
posted
And if you can actually read objectively - that is not skip through what you don't want to receive, you will learn that Southern Indians and many Northern Western Indian MINORITIES share haplotypey with Tamazight Egyptians/Libyans and Coptic Egyptians: http://www.dnatribes.com/news/2006_05_01_archive.html
-------------------- The seed cannot sprout upwards without simultaneously sending roots into the ground. Posts: 152 | From: Boston MA USA | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
What about origins of bananas or cattle from the above, did you want to emphasize, by full citations?
quote:Originally posted by Maahes:
The Lower Ta-Seti and Inyotef Ta-Seti were Eastern and Western Nilotic respectively- based upon their recorded ceramics and specific cattle breeds.
Firstly, that is not what the questioned asked. Secondly, Lower Ta-Seti is simply the northward section of the complex designated as "Ta-Seti". Don't know what bearing "eastern" or "western" Nilotic has on this, or what you even understand by "Nilotic".
quote:Originally posted by Maahes:
Eastern Nilotic tribes remain in Southern Yemen and may have arrived there as thoroughly Egyptianized traders in Sabeah.
What Nilotic languages do they speak in Yemen, and what ethnic designations do they go by?
quote:Originally posted by Maahes:
There are many trade words shared between Southern Yemenites and Eritreans which in turn are shared as far away as Siwa and Farafra. I've left a link to an online book that discusses Haplotypes as they relate to certain critically endangered Asiatic "Negritos" a term i detest.
Don't know, but to be safe, are you referring to short groups in Yemen as the "Nilotic" groups, or are you saying that they are part of this group. Are southern Yemenites and Eritreans "Nilotic" groups?
quote:Originally posted by Maahes:
Am searching for more references but please do see the relevant paper on the Somalian male haplotypey as it compares and contrasts with those of India, Ethiopia and Egypt.
Since you cited the piece, I'm guessing that you know which Somali paternal lineages closely relate to India. Which clusters are they?
quote:Originally posted by Maahes:
I don;t know about "Pale Skinned" Fair eyed and Fair haired yes but I've never known of pale skinned save for the many populations where total or partial albinism is common as in Siwa and Bahiriya.
Albinism as a rare condition or abnormality within a designated population due to genetic mishap, doesn't normally invoke the same understanding as that of "white" people, in the sense that the other is understood as being largely a product of natural selection.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
Your miscellaneous webpage in no way contradicts what I've already presented to you which has refuted your main points in searching for an Indian connection at the expense of a demonstrably more evident African one.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
| IP: Logged |
"What ethnicities do the “Black Rock” people comprise?"
According to our tribal elders and they have been quoted as relevant authorities by Brugsch and others over time, the Peoples of the Black Rock are the Yam and the Irthet who spoke a different language than the Nyala and Fur of Sudan, Egypt's Western Desert and Libya.
What my question was driving at, was the list of specific *contemporary* ethnic designations that constitute the "Black Rock".
quote:Originally posted by Maahes:
-" What ethnicities do the “Peoples of the Oryx” comprise?"
Again, from the same source, the Wawat, the Setju/
The same understanding noted above applies here. See above.
quote:Originally posted by Maahes:
-" What ethnicities do the “Nilotic” people comprise?"
I think that Europeans have always called East Africans that speak Nilotic languages Nilotic. This would mean most of the above. However, the Cushitic branches of the East Africans- the Yam and the Fur specifically are not Nilotic nor are they Bantu. The easternmost tribal clans/ethnics- the long headed Oryx people -Wawat, Setju they are not speaking Nilotic but evidentally osteologically speaking they share a common origin. Their ( oryx) pottery is I think called Badarian. There was also another place called Eyrehem that was beleived to be the origin of the first dynastic mothers. It was somewhere in the Ethiopian highlands or Eritrea. This is where we received our Abysinnian Jackals that bred together with the Pygmoid's Central African Basenji would provide the genetic basis of our Egyptian hound stock.
Yes, but I'd like to know what *you* understand by "Nilotic" groups; their respective ethnic designations, their languages, where they specifically inhabit, and what sets them apart from groups outside of this, like say; Cushitic speakers, Bantu speakers and so forth. Is there a difference between "Nilotic groups" as you put forth, and "Nilo-Saharan" speakers?
Ps - Please don't forget to cite which scholarly publications back you up.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
"This is what you're doing, which is why it won't be entertained. I stand by what was stated and am still waiting on evidence that these ancient Egyptians were not black Africans, or that they were more closely related to you, than the "true blacks" that you and your "tribal elders" like to dichotomize."
What? Are you pond fondling me? You're attempting to switch horses. Nice try. You don't even know what a black African is. Dynastic Egyptians were an ethnic and cultural admixture. This has been fully verified by any number of excellant peer-reviewed papers on the subject a few which I have left links to. Where you get off playing the blacker than though game I can only guess.
THe very specific African tribal clans however, played no part in Dynastic Egyptian rule aside from trading partner and or competing rivals of allied vassal kingdoms.
I'm of the mindset that Egypt and most of eastern Sudan were fairly contiguous ethnically and culturally. I believe that this Saharan divide theory is crap. What you refuse to wrap your brain around is an idea that perhaps, we Africans prefer to be known and defined by the terms and names presented to us by our ancestors. We are not what the Europeans call us. We are not living in little boxes in the natural history museum. We are living breathing, steadily evolving people. You don't own us. You don't see past the European's claims. I invite you to meet the land beyond Punt- India the land of the Lotus and you laugh in contempt. Why those people aren't related to Africans... I present you with data to support that assertion that India is as closely related to East Africa as East Africa is to West Africa and again you scoff and pull straw dogs. The argument I'm attempting to make would clear your head of the anectdated racist theology of the Eurocentric that sees only black and white in the world. I attempted to introduce you to peoples you have probably never thought about- as a challenge- can you care about dark-skinned people that are not living in Africa today? That is indigenous Asiatics or Melenesians? Or are you attached to the continent of Africa as the wellspring of your sense of identity? Your reaction or rather the omission of any interest in these black peoples of Asia suggests to me that you are not capable of comprehending human biodiversity. You are too emotionally attached and are thus not objective about the scientific data that clearly demonstrates that certain haplotypes- gene groups - are fairly endemic to regions within Africa and not shared throughout. Many of these genes seem to travel with language groups. This is the diversity Im on about.
If you insist on calling Somalians and Ethiopians Black rather than what they call themselves you are in effect negating their self-identities are you not? They are the ancestors of Egypt and major traders with India for countless centuries. Our African cattle came from South East Asia. Our bananas the staple of our diets not just the American consumed variety the whole diversity of bananas all originated in South East Asia.
My argument stands, Afrocentric odeology is a reflection of Eurocentric cultural imperialism. It fails to acknowledge the great relationship between cultures that don't fit in the parameters of greater and lesser of the Victorian era. It claims the cultures of countries with well documented histories. An Afrocentric can argue that the earliest Egyptians were "black" when an Ecosystematist would point out that at that very point in the history of Africa, the endemic people of the Sahara were these people: and these people:
They would migrate into Asia to become these peoples:
who in turn would migrate to Tasmania to become these people: and these people:
Because the Eurocentric pioneers of Australia could only see "Black" they failed to see the significance of the diversity before them. Both indigenous peoples of Tasmania and the Pygmies of Australia are now extinct forever.
European colonialists and before them Aryan conquerors of Persia failed to see the diversity of the " Blacks" of India and they too waged genocide against these Asiatics.
Getting back to Africa- the period of time when the ancestors of these Asiatic "Blacks" left Africa and migrated into Asia and beyond- this is when Blacks dominated the Saharan landscape but at this moment in time, they had yet to evolve into
They would emerge at about the same time as the Asiatic " Blacks" but on the continent of Africa.
This last photo of a Masai illustrates a Nilotic people that most certainly were amongst the founders of pre-dynastic Egypt, especially in Dahkhla and the Western Desert, and some scholars have suggested that the cattle culture of Egypt and Ethiopia is closely related to that of the Masai versus the Dinka.
In this chronology I am attempting to illustrate something paramount about the evolution of human biodiversity within Sahara and adjacent regions. At the time of human migration out of Africa, the ancestors of soon to be Asiatic "black" races were the dominant peoples. From them all other 'races' evolved in kind. If you claim to belong to their cultural identity than you must adopt the Asiatic "blacks", the Melenesians and the Tasmanians as well as the Australian Aborigines as one and the same people. It's a time issue.
As for citations and providing contemporary ethnicities that is pretty silly. I don't see alot of that going on here. You can try and push an Upper Egyptian against a fence but he has grown up pushing the ass end of a water buffalo over a field. We are patient and dedicated to fact.
We are stubborn and butt of many Cairene jokes that use the Saite as the stupid savage in every punch line.
It's ironic that I'm being painted as an apologist here. But what an interesting dialogue has transpired. Thank the God for internet. At any rate- the Fur are the Darfur. The Nyala are also now pushed down from Libya living only in Siwa and Darfur/Chad. The Oryx - I don't recall enough about the tribes of Ethiopia but will ask a lingual archeologist consultant colleague of mine to present me with that information.
Regardless, I think we can all note that none are interested in discussing the cattle or the banana even while they are the major staples of East African nutrition. I think that speaks volumes about this 'debate' one in which Westerners project a sense of dispossesion upon East North Africans that refuse to be rolled in the white flour of Europia.
Posts: 152 | From: Boston MA USA | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Maahes is constantly contradicting himself on many points that he think are critical. His logic and argument is so inherently flawed that to argue against it, all one has to do is 1) quote his contradictions and 2) post already substantiated and WELL KNOWN FACTS about African history and prehistory. His mentality is so badly distorted and masochistic that he pretends not to see the bigger picture and the bigger truth. He knows that "black rock" in his tribe is a euphemism for "true negro". He understands that the concept "black" includes people who are brown to dark brown. He understands that the data and evidence about the Ancient Egyptians show that they were brown to dark brown (even very dark brown = black). He is just a self hating, kemephobic, African hating, well black African. He is pretending not to understand and playing the ignorance card by restating "they were not black rock". When he says this, however, he is playing a synonymous punning word game with its meaning. The first meaning that they were not a specific MODERN ethnic or tribal group; which they weren't because that is the wrong concept to view these ancient people around and in Ancient Egypt and secondly that they were not "true Negros". If you entertain the "true negro" myth and suspend disbelief he is also wrong on that end as well. Studies do show that about 1/3 of the first dynasty had what some called the mythical true negro facial skeleton and the ancient Egyptian as a whole were also "super-negro" in terms of skeletal body plan.
Maahes your plead to ignorance is not going to save you!
Interesting thread.
Posts: 318 | From: PA. USA | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Zakaria Goneim believed that Sekhmekhet and other ruling caste lineages of the old dynasties were most closely related to the "Fuzzies" or Bejas/ Ptjaywhw of the Eastern Sudan and Upper Egypt. The vast majority of Saite are thusly derived of Ptjaywhw/ Fuzzy stock. Another peoples that originally came from Itjay and Farafra and throughout the entire Sahara are the Haritins - closely allied to the Tuareg and Siwan Tamazight "Berbers". These peoples were brought from Eastern Africa, westward with the expansion of Islam and slavery. anyone that meets a Haritan will readily recognize the characteristically African features.
Any one in the west that would see either Haritan or Bejas would say-"Black" but that would be an oversimplification. The Europeans were hard pressed to acknowledge these "blacks" as indigenous Saharans so they took to calling them blacks and we all know what happened when the Mahdist rebels got all worked up- we are still dealing with some of it.
-------------------- The seed cannot sprout upwards without simultaneously sending roots into the ground. Posts: 152 | From: Boston MA USA | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
nthropology is not my area of expertise. However, I do believe this is a reasonable approach to the issue of race.
A dimension of this so-called debate that distrurbs me are the implicit and sometimes explicit assertions by some that race is a non-issue, that it doesn't matter. I have to wonder if these individuals practice what they preach. Sure race matters. It matters for all of us.
On the related topic of racism I believe is not monolithic but multi-faceted and very natural if viewed within the context of obtaining some real or perceived benefit that allows a particular group or individual to thrive or have advantage over others. A one Mr. Howard Schwartz articulated well the phenomena of racism as it pertains to the individual and I quote:
"From a psychoanalytic point of view, racism is a form of projective identification. Roughly that means that certain ways of seeing ourselves that are unacceptable to us are projected outward onto others where we can try to control them. It is a way of preserving our fantasy of our own perfection. In the case of racism, unacceptable ideas about the self are projected onto members of another race, which is then hated and attacked, as if we could destroy those hated parts of ourselves by destroying the members of the other race. An individual who structures his or her life on the basis of this projective identification is a racist.
It's important to note, though, that the basic psychological process has nothing to do with race. Anything outside the self will do: people who believe differently than we do, another nation, indeed, even our own nation, seen as a malevolent force outside ourselves. Our parents can suffice, or our students, or our spouses. For that matter, racists themselves can serve as a focus for our projective identification, which may magnify their power and their malevolence and cause us to see them where they are not.
The point here is that projective identification is basically an intra-psychic process which comes to look like a relationship to others because we cannot accept it as an intra-psychic process. It is, moreover, something which, if we are honest with ourselves about ourselves, we can all find ourselves engaging in. Fact is, the capacity to be honest with oneself about oneself is the best and maybe the only means of relinquishing projective identification. It can also help us greatly in appreciating the substratum of our common, flawed humanity."
Racism appears to be a collection of behaviors and not a single entity.
Charles Curtis
-------------------- The seed cannot sprout upwards without simultaneously sending roots into the ground. Posts: 152 | From: Boston MA USA | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
^I don't have the patience right now to answer the same repetition and truth by assertion fallacies. I only hope that you go back and view what has already been discussed, while also browsing this forum a bit more as you may learn something new and find that a lot of your pre-conceived notions and beliefs aren't well grounded in the available data.
Two things I'll quickly address:
1)Austrics and Melanesians are among some of the most genetically distant people on earth, in comparison to Africans given their early migration out of the continent and subsequent isolation, so you attributing a recent African identity to them is just foolish. Africans far and wide are more closely related to European Nords than they are to most Melanesians, Austrics, etc... Your 1 dimensional world view however, only sees phenotype ("black"), and therefore assume that there is some type of relationship here, basing entire false histories on this assumption.
2) The original Saharans are depicted here and all over this thread; it isn't up to debate what they looked like since they left images behind for all to see. - ot: Saharan rock art
^And that's about all I have to say for now.. It's hard to enlighten anyone to anything when they feel they've learned all there is to know, when in your case, Maahes, that is so far from the truth. Keins is also dead on about you constantly contradicting yourself, but I won't get into that again.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Keins: Maahes is constantly contradicting himself on many points that he think are critical. His logic and argument is so inherently flawed that to argue against it, all one has to do is 1) quote his contradictions and 2) post already substantiated and WELL KNOWN FACTS about African history and prehistory. His mentality is so badly distorted and masochistic that he pretends not to see the bigger picture and the bigger truth. He knows that "black rock" in his tribe is a euphemism for "true negro". He understands that the concept "black" includes people who are brown to dark brown. He understands that the data and evidence about the Ancient Egyptians show that they were brown to dark brown (even very dark brown = black). He is just a self hating, kemephobic, African hating, well black African. He is pretending not to understand and playing the ignorance card by restating "they were not black rock". When he says this, however, he is playing a synonymous punning word game with its meaning. The first meaning that they were not a specific MODERN ethnic or tribal group; which they weren't because that is the wrong concept to view these ancient people around and in Ancient Egypt and secondly that they were not "true Negros". If you entertain the "true negro" myth and suspend disbelief he is also wrong on that end as well. Studies do show that about 1/3 of the first dynasty had what some called the mythical true negro facial skeleton and the ancient Egyptian as a whole were also "super-negro" in terms of skeletal body plan.
Maahes your plead to ignorance is not going to save you!
Interesting thread.
Excellent assessment of his nonsense style of rhetorical tongue twisting btw.. I agree completely.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
| IP: Logged |
posted
Maahes's argument has degenerated from "brown, not (quite?) black" to incoherent babbling about haphazardly-connected topics that would otherwise never be found together.
Posts: 1024 | Registered: Jun 2006
| IP: Logged |
You haven't yet produced the scientific citations that support this assertion. You've simply provided a link that doesn't even work.
quote:Originally posted by Maahes:
Our bananas the staple of our diets not just the American consumed variety the whole diversity of bananas all originated in South East Asia.
What do you suppose banana introduction from Southeast Asia is supposed to prove? African plants have made their way into Asia as well. So what of it?
quote:Originally posted by Maahes:
As for citations and providing contemporary ethnicities that is pretty silly. I don't see alot of that going on here.
Why? Could it be because you don't actually know what you mean by terms like "Black Rock" people, "Nilotic", "Oryx people" and so forth, when you use such terms? For instance, was it silly when you noted "Nilotics" and mentioned certain ethnic groups therein? Why is it silly for you to be expected to elaborate on the concise ethnicities within what you refer to as "Nilotes", "Black Rock" people, and the like, and demonstrate to us what is mutually exclusive about these groups?
Remember, you took the initiative of bringing up these constructs into the discourse, as well as naming a few but certain ethnic groups supposedly a part of them.
quote:Originally posted by Maahes:
Regardless, I think we can all note that none are interested in discussing the cattle or the banana even while they are the major staples of East African nutrition. I think that speaks volumes about this 'debate' one in which Westerners project a sense of dispossesion upon East North Africans that refuse to be rolled in the white flour of Europia.
Cattle has certainly long been an important domestic in the African landscape, but you produce no evidence of its introduction into Africa from elsewhere.
As for bananas, yes, they are quite popular in certain parts of Africa, but bananas are by no means invariably important across Africa. Just as they are present in East Africa, they are present in Central, West, North and South Africa; West Africa in particular, sports the world's largest genetically diverse plantain bananas. And as I said moments ago, African domesticated plants turn up in Asia as well; and …?
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
One thing I have learned is that not only the Sudan a modern day political and ethnic crisis, but it is also an archaeological crisis as well. There are hundreds, if not thousands of archaeological sites in Sudan that are at risk of being lost forever. This includes the sites being submerged under THREE dams being built on the Nile, including Meroe, as well as the ancient kingdoms that existed to the WEST of the Nile in places like Darfur (how many have heard of the Daju or Tunjur?):
quote: he Tunjur, or Tungur, are a Muslim people estimated around 176.000 people, living in central Darfur, a province of Sudan. They are mainly farmers, and closely associated with the Fur, even if differently from these they have been fully Arabised. As the Fur and the Zaghawa, since the start of the Darfur conflict in February 2003 many Tunjur have been displaced and some killed. A number of Tunjur has taken part to the fight against the Sudanese government fighting under the banners of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM).
[edit] Fragments of a history
Historically, the Tunjur were one of the ruling dynasties of Darfur, ca. 1200-1600 AD. Little is known about them, or about their predecessors (the Daju) or their successors (the Keira), beyond the fact that they were probably centralised, slave-based polities sharing a fondness for stone walling, and the timing of Islamisation is unclear.
It is not known why the Tunjur dynasty collapsed, apparently in the late sixteenth century; oral tradition suggests that the last Tunjur ruler Shau Dorshid was “driven out by his own subjects because of his dispiriting habit of making them cut the tops off mountains for him to build palaces on” (Balfour Paul, 1955, 13). His capital is said to have been the site of Ain Farah, which lies in the Furnung Hills some 130 kilometres north-west of El Fasher and comprises large-scale stone and brick walling. It has an enduring appeal and has been visited or described many times. Ain Farah moved one author to quote Macaulay – “like an eagle’s nest that hangs on the crest”, for it is built some 100 metres above the spring, is characterised by several hundred brick and stone structures and terraces, and is defended by steep ridges and by a massive stone wall three or four kilometres long. There is a brick and stone edifice which appears to have served as a mosque, a large stone group which may have served as a public building, and a main group on the highest point of the ridge, described variously as a royal residence or military defence.
Archaeological work is still in its beginning stages, but survey of a sample of houses and excavation of a grave was undertaken by Mohammed (1986) during his survey of Darfur. The grave contained a flexed burial and over 200 iron beads, an ostrich eggshell necklace, a perforated cowrie shell, and iron jewellery. One of the corroded iron objects yielded a surprisingly early date (1500 +/- 200 bp, Q 3155), falling at least six and perhaps as many as eleven centuries before the likely time of the Tunjur; Mohammed interprets this as signifying a pre-Islamic presence and continuation into Islamic times.
The Sudan has one of the greatest concentration of archaeological sites spanning from deep pre-history right up to modern times and all of it is being SYSTEMATICALLY destroyed. This is a perfect example of what has happened across Africa in the last 500 years, a SYSTEMATIC destruction of African people, history and culture, which only produces the fragmented and destructive mindset and personalities that seem to be prominent in Africa today and that of course was the whole intent.
Posts: 8897 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I can see that alot of writers on this forum prescribe to a them and us mentality.
Nothing I write here is actually read, suggesting that the comprehension level of my writing is low or the readers are only speed reading/cherry picking what I'm writing.
But then it doesn't really matter. I know what I am and you are angry with Egyptians for stating the obvious. We are Egyptians- not black, not brown just EGYPTIAN.
Genetics and domestic cattle origins Daniel G. Bradley, Ronan T. Loftus, Patrick Cunningham, David E. MacHugh email: Daniel G. Bradley (dbradley@tcd.ie) Daniel G. Bradley is Lecturer, Patrick Cunningham is Professor of Animal Genetics, and Ronan T. Loftus and David E. MacHugh are Research Fellows in the Department of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin. As a group they have been investigating the genetic diversity of domestic cattle for almost a decade. Department of Genetics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland.
10.1002/(SICI)1520-6505(1998)6:3<79::AID-EVAN2>3.0.CO;2-R About DOI
The domestication of bananas took place in southeastern Asia. Many species of wild bananas still occur in New Guinea, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Recent archaeological and palaeoenvironmental evidence at Kuk Swamp in the Western Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea suggests that banana cultivation there goes back to at least 5000 BC, and possibly to 8000 BC. [4] This would make the New Guinean highlands the place where bananas were first domesticated. It is likely that other species of wild bananas were later also domesticated elsewhere in southeastern Asia.
-------------------- The seed cannot sprout upwards without simultaneously sending roots into the ground. Posts: 152 | From: Boston MA USA | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
You are the only one speaking nonsense about us versus them in ancient Egypt being based around a people with NO amount of brown skin. The ancient Egyptians depicted themselves as brown and there are many brown and even dark brown, ie black Egyptians in Egypt to this day. Therefore, whatever you are talking it is purely rhetorical nonsense and has no basis in fact concerning the ethnic history and diversity of features along the ancient or modern Nile Valley and Sahara.
So you have now changed from brown isn't black to no brown at all. All of which is indicative of a mind desperate to purge reality from the history of the Nile Valley.
The ancient Egyptians came in a wide array of shapes and sizes, but many of them during the dynastic period were QUITE BROWN from light, to medium to very dark brown, with a good number and probably most being in the medium to dark category in the Old, Middle and New Kingdom. The rhetoric you are speaking of goes against all of the facts.
Posts: 8897 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I misspoke. I meant to write Black or White and wrote instead Black or Brown which is nonsense considering I am certainly dark brown. Regardless, the manner in which you attack proves to me we are not one and the same people. Where I come from we use our manners to encourage the best in others. We don't selectively choose fragments of dialogue and behave like a troop of baboons on a leopard. Your emotional teeth baring is bare assed and hysterical. I stand by my assertions. I am what I am.
You can make any claim that you wish to regarding MY ancestors. It won't make any difference in the world today or tommorow. They are my ancestors and this is my culture. I don't mind sharing my culture with you. I don't mind collaborating with people of other cultures but in a time and place when Americans are detested the world over for being irrationally rigid thinkers, one would hope that the more educated amongst them would resist the urge to dominate every discussion with racist dogma. One day soon, you will I hope and pray, wake up and realize how much of your masters' ideological methedology- the manner in which you debate your views- they are not objective-you are prejudiced and entitled to your views. Welcome to the rat race boys.
If any person on this forum would like to actually discuss Egypt's 18th Dynasty as it relates to the film please do write me a personal message.
Anyone else reading this thread that is left confused by confusion all you need is LOVE. If you are a budding Afrocentric you might want to read: The History and Geography of Human Genes By L. L. (Luigi Luca) Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, Alberto Piazza There is a fairly extensive online version you can peruse through.
Posts: 152 | From: Boston MA USA | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Maahes: I misspoke. I meant to write Black or White and wrote instead Black or Brown which is nonsense considering I am certainly dark brown. Regardless, the manner in which you attack proves to me we are not one and the same people. Where I come from we use our manners to encourage the best in others. We don't selectively choose fragments of dialogue and behave like a troop of baboons on a leopard. Your emotional teeth baring is bare assed and hysterical. I stand by my assertions. I am what I am.
You can make any claim that you wish to regarding MY ancestors. It won't make any difference in the world today or tommorow. They are my ancestors and this is my culture. I don't mind sharing my culture with you. I don't mind collaborating with people of other cultures but in a time and place when Americans are detested the world over for being irrationally rigid thinkers, one would hope that the more educated amongst them would resist the urge to dominate every discussion with racist dogma. One day soon, you will I hope and pray, wake up and realize how much of your masters' ideological methedology- the manner in which you debate your views- they are not objective-you are prejudiced and entitled to your views. Welcome to the rat race boys.
If any person on this forum would like to actually discuss Egypt's 18th Dynasty as it relates to the film please do write me a personal message.
Anyone else reading this thread that is left confused by confusion all you need is LOVE. If you are a budding Afrocentric you might want to read: The History and Geography of Human Genes By L. L. (Luigi Luca) Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, Alberto Piazza There is a fairly extensive online version you can peruse through.
Bottom line is this...
1) Someone exposed you for the racialist mind-raped fraud that you are by quoting you verbatim in which you expressed a belief that there were never any "Black" kings or "Negroes" in AE society.
2) You were called out on this directly and was asked for at least a speck of evidence to support these claims, yet all we've received in turn was double talk, emotional rants, and persistent accusations about motives.
3) Disregarding the trolling, I among others present copious amounts of evidence and proof by way of language, culture, geography, biology, common sense, and notions of "race", that you simply shun by whining about how "this is your culture" and that everyone on this site are just biased afrocentrists.
There is no use discussing anything with you and it is genuinely observable that you lack in the history department but as noted by your expertise and comments here, you are better with the fictional side of things, so I understand.. A few things you've been totally refuted on:
* You claimed that there were no "Black kings" who ruled Egypt. I provided an academic reference which stated otherwise
* You claimed that "Negroes" only appeared late in dynastic history. You were shown a dictionary definition of the word, indicating that such a term has no scientific validity, while at the same time shown data alluding to the presence of people inhabiting Egypt since the civilization's inception who possessed traits usually attributed to whom the term was applied to, though now simply referred to as tropical Africans.
* You claimed that Indians traditionally speak Semitic in order to support your claim that Ethiopians and Indians are related, both in turn being related to ancient Egyptians, yet this idea under scrutiny reveals that Indians are outliners in this regard and that Ethiopia and Egypt are mutually exclusive from them as far as language, culture, geography, and biohistory.
The rest of your responses, as noted by almost every single user who has commented, consisted of nothing but babbling and trivial irrelevancies. It was apparent that you had nothing to offer the moment you started crying and threatening to leave, claiming that you regretted ever posting here, after you were confronted and pressured to support your cracky claims. I've considered the conversation over, a long time ago, you are very ignorant in my view in that you're stubborn and won't let go of your own tribal dogma; dogma that has nothing to do with genuine fact finding or analytical examination of a given subject. You're just faithful to your screwed, misguided interpretation of history and brain dead logic. I hope some day you come around but in my opinion you are worse than the Eurocentrics.
quote:Anyone else reading this thread that is left confused by confusion
Anyone who's been reading this forum for a while shouldn't at all be confused about anything other than your switcharoo, non-responsive style of argumentation. They'd probably above all else, think of you as a loon and continue to browse the forum in search of real information. Good day..
I truly recommend that you be ignored from here on out until you have something intelligent to say..
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Maahes: Oh my - You guys are really lame. My family members are all Africans. There are many different ethnicities of Africans. You are deluded if you believe that all Africans are Black. But then I doubt that any of you know what Black people even look like. American Blacks are not the Dinka, they are not the Irthet and certainly not the Yam or MAzoi. But why am I even attempting to have this dialogue with you. Have you ever been to Africa? Have you ever lived in the Sahara? Obviously you haven't because you are confusing colour with ethnicity and culture. It's not your fault that you come from a racist country. But I logged on here because someone working on the film told me I aught to. I almost regret that now. A few people have completely derailed the intellectual conversation and turned it into a stupidity fest. What is your objective? You want to tell an Egyptian that she or he is Black? Go ahead. I wrote a film that places American Blacks in major parts as Egyptians. This should speak to my acceptance of Egypt as an African country. In America you can fence off other countries and keep unwanted ethnic types from mixing into your population. In Egypt we have no such fences and never have. The only barrier is the desert and the river. Sorry to leave off this way but I know longer see any need to waste my time here. I am an academic and spend months at a time in the refugee camps of Chad, Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea. I don't have the time or the interest in enabling the sort of willful ignorance that Eurocentrics/Afrocentrics tend to perpetuate.
The continent of Africa is vast. There are indigenous peoples of the continent with blonde hair and light eyes. There are indigenous people with yellow skin and diminutive stature with mongoloid folds around the eyes. There are indiginous people with blue black skin whgose average height is well over 5'10". There are indiginous Africans with reddish brown skin whose average height is under six feet. I could go on and on here. But I can't because I'm very very busy. Good Luck.
And oh my, my suspensions were correct! You are just like Masreyya, a former Egyptian poster in here who denied that the ancient Egyptians (her ancestors) as indigenous Africans were black and tried to claim that modern (foreign-mixed) Egyptians are the same as her ancient ancestors.
You relegate true black Africans to more southerly groups like "Dinka"! LOL.
Here is some news for you:
Black Africans are indigenous to *all* of Africa and to every part of that continent
Most modern day North Africans including Egyptians are mixed. Especially Egyptians considering all the invasions and immigrations that happened throughout its history..
Hence the diversity in complexions and features that you yourself presented
quote:Originally posted by Maahes:
Yet you deny the two facts above and seem to go with the Hawass fantasy of non-black yet indigenous Africans. Now how lame is that?!
Posts: 26286 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged |
And, keep in mind, I can also show you videos of people who look JUST AS BLACK in Sudan and the Sahara with similar features and complexions, which means the diversity in Egypt is no SPECIAL distinct "race" unto itself.
Ohh. Wait I found one YOU might like. I guess this is what you call the typical Sudanese Nubian, not black African:
But then it doesn't really matter. I know what I am and you are angry with Egyptians for stating the obvious. We are Egyptians- not black, not brown just EGYPTIAN.
Genetics and domestic cattle origins Daniel G. Bradley, Ronan T. Loftus, Patrick Cunningham, David E. MacHugh email: Daniel G. Bradley (dbradley@tcd.ie) Daniel G. Bradley is Lecturer, Patrick Cunningham is Professor of Animal Genetics, and Ronan T. Loftus and David E. MacHugh are Research Fellows in the Department of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin. As a group they have been investigating the genetic diversity of domestic cattle for almost a decade. Department of Genetics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland.
You cite Bradely et al., as though they somehow support your idea of African cattle and domestication being the result of introduction from outside. Far from it:
Timeline and signs of domestication in the Saharan expanse, with a recap of this dated/old but perhaps still instructive study [my insertions - bolded dates in brackets]:
Are the early Holocene cattle in the Eastern Sahara domestic or wild?
Fred Wendorf & Romuald Schild (Evolutionary Anthropology 3(4), 1994)
[Note: The references and diagrams are not included. Please consult the original article]
Questions relating to the antiquity of domestic cattle in the Sahara are among the most controversial in North African prehistory. It is generally believed that cattle were first domesticated in southwest Asia, particularly Anatolia, or in southeast Europe, where their remains have been found in several sites dated between 9,000 and 8,000 years ago. The discovery, in several small sites in the Western Desert of Egypt, of large bovid bones identified as domestic cattle and having radiocarbon dates ranging between 9,500 and 8,000 B.P. has raised the possibility that there was a separate, independent center for cattle domestication in northeast Africa. However, it has not been universally accepted that these bones are from cattle or, if so, that the cattle were domestic.
Disputes about the large bovid remains and whether or not they represent domestic cattle do not have to do only with issues of primacy and the multiple independent developments of pastoralism and food production. Of greater importance, perhaps, is the possible role of pastoralism in facilitating human exploitation of harsh, unfavorable environments and the adjustments people made to live in them. Examination of the data may help us understand the processes involved in the development of pastoralist societies.
The evidence from the Eastern Sahara Today the Eastern Sahara is a desert with a rainfall of less than 1 mm per year. It is almost completely devoid of life. Until recently, when paved roads were built and several deep water-wells were dug, the desert was unpopulated except at a few large oases such as Farafra, Dakhla, and Kharga, where artesian water was available.
In the early Holocene, the Eastern Sahara had more rainfall, probably between 100 and 200 mm per year in its Egyptian area The rain probably fell during the summer. This inference is drawn from the fact that the plant remains in the early Holocene archeological sites are the same as those growing today several hundred kilometers to the south, on the northern margin of the Sahel and the adjacent Sahara, which are in a summer rain-fall regime. The quantity of rainfall was sufficient for seasonal pools or playas to form in large depressions. There may also have been permanent water about 250 km farther south at Sehima, and there certainly were permanent lakes near Merga in northern Sudan about 500 km south of the Egyptian border. Nevertheless, the Eastern Sahara was, at best, a marginal and highly unstable environment with frequent droughts and episodes of hyper-aridity.
The Eastern Sahara in Egypt was not an environment that could have supported wild cattle nor one where the earliest domestication of cattle would have been like likely to occur. Cattle need to drink every day or at least every other day and there was no permanent water anywhere in the area.
[ca. 11ky - 12ky BP]
Early Neolithic
Radiocarbon dates indicate that the early Holocene rains began sometime before 10,000 B.P., perhaps as early as 11,000 or 12,000 B.P. However, there is no evidence of human presence before 9,500 B.P. except for a radiocarbon date of around 10,000 years ago from a hearth west of Dakhla. The earliest sites with large bovid remains are imbedded in playa sediments that overlay several meters of still older Holocene playa deposits.
All of these sites contain well-made, bladelet-based lithic assemblages. Straight-backed pointed bladelets, perforators, and large endscrapers made on reused Middle Paleolithic artifacts are the characteristic tools. A few grinding stones and rare sherds of pottery also occur. The pottery is well made; the pieces are decorated over their entire exterior surfaces with deep impressions formed with a comb or wand in what is sometimes referred to as the Early Khartoum style.
[ca. 8,200y - 9,500y BP]
These assemblages have been classified as the El Adam type of the Early Neolithic. Several radiocarbon dates place the complex between 9,500 and 8,900 B.P. There is no evidence that there were wells during this period. It is assumed, then, that these sites represent occupations that took place after the summer rains and before the driest time of the year when surface water was no anger available. Three of these sites, E-77-7, E-79-8, and E-80-4, all having only El Adam archeology and all located between km and 250 km west of Abu Simbel, have yielded, through excavation, more than 20 bones and teeth of large bovids that have been identified as Bos. These occurred along with several hundred bones of gazelle (Gazella dorcas and G. dama) and hare (Lepus capensis); a few bones of jackal (Canis aureus), turtle (Testudo sp.); and birds (Otis tarda and Anas querquedula); the large shell of a bivalve (Aspatharia rubens), probably of Nilotic origin; and various snail shells (Bulinus truncatus and Zoorecus insularis).
After a period of aridity around 8,800 years ago, when the desert may have been abandoned, the area was re-occupied by groups with a lithic tool-kit that emphasized elongated scalene triangles. The grinding stones, scrapers, and rare pieces of pottery that are present characterize the El Ghorab type of Early Neolithic and have been dated between 8,600 and 8,200 B.P. Oval slab-lined houses occur during this phase; all of them located in the lower pans of natural drainage basins. However, there are no known wells, suggesting that the desert still was not occupied during the driest part of the year. Faunal remains are poorly preserved in these sites and indeed, only one bone of a large bovid was recovered from the four sites with fauna in these sites the Dorcas gazelle is the most numerous, followed by hare, together with single bones of wild cat (Felis silvestris), porcupine (Hystrix cristata), desert hedge-hog (Paraechinus aethiopicus) an amphibian, and a bird.
[ca. 7,900y - 8,200k BP]
Another brief period of aridity be-tween 8.200 and 8,100 B.P. coincides with the end of the El Ghorab type of Early Neolithic in the desert. With the return of greater rainfall between 8.100 and 8+000 B.P., a new variety of Early Neolithic, the El Nabta type, appeared in the area. El Nabta sites are often larger than the previous Early Neolithic sites and usually have several large, deep wells, some with adjacent shallow basins that might have been used to water stock. A variety of lithic and bone tools occur in these sites, including stemmed points with pointed and retouched bases, perforators, burins, scrapers. notched pieces, bone points, and scalene triangles measuring about one centimeter. Grinding stones and shreds of pottery are more numerous than in the earlier sites, but still are not abundant. Their deeply impressed designs are similar to those on objects recovered from sites of the El Adam and El Ghorab types of Early Neolithic. Occasional pieces have "dotted wavy line" decoration.
Radiocarbon dates place the El Nabta sites between 8,100 and 7,900 B.P. One of these, E-75-6, is much larger than the others and consists of a series of shallow, oval hut floors arranged in two, possibly three, parallel lines. Beside each house was one or more bell-shaped storage pits; nearby were several deep (2.5 m) and shallow (1.5 m) water-wells. This site, located near the bottom of a large basin, was flooded by the summer rains. The houses were repeatedly used, probably during harvests in fall and winter Several thousand remains of edible plants have been recovered from these house floors. They include seeds, fruits, and tubers representing 44 different kinds of plants, including sorghum and millets. All of the plants are morphologically wild, but chemical analysis by infrared spectroscopy of the lipids in the sorghum indicates that this plant may have been cultivated. Of the four El Nabta sites that have yielded fauna, two contained bones of a large bovid identified as Bos. The faunal samples from the other two sites are very small.
[ca. 7,700y - 6,500y BP]
Middle Neolithic
Another brief period of aridity separated the El Nabta Early Neolithic from the succeeding Middle Neolithic, which is marked by the much greater abundance of pottery. In addition, each piece of pottery is decorated over its entire exterior surface with closely packed comb- or paddle-impressed designs. Some of the pots are large, and analysis of the clays indicates that they were made locally. There were also some changes in lithic tools. More of them were made of local rocks, but there was sufficient continuity in lithic typology to suggest that the preceding Nabta population was also involved.
Radiocarbon dates indicated an age for the Middle Neolithic between 7,700 and 6,500 B.P. The sites from the early part of this period range from one or two house homesteads in some of the smaller playas to multi-house villages in the larger basins. There is also one very large settlement along the beach line of the largest playa in the area, as well as, small camps on the sandsheets and the plateaus beyond the basins. This variation in site size has been interpreted as reflecting a seasonally responsive settlement system in which the population dispersed into small villages in the lower pans of the basins during most of the year, particularly the dry season, then, during the wet season, aggregated into a large community along the edge of the high-water stand of the largest playa.
Various house types are represented in the villages: some are circular and semi-subterranean (30 to 40 cm deep), some slab-lined, and others appear to have had walls of sticks and clay (wattle and daub). All of the sites have large, deep walk-in wells and storage pits. Except for the small camps, most of the sites appear to have been reused many times, with new house floors placed on top of the silt deposited during the preceding flood.
Excavations at five Middle Neolithic sites have yielded more than 50 bones from large bovids. Most of these bones came from the large "aggregation" site (E-75-8) at the margin of the largest playa in the area and from the early Middle Neolithic site E-77-l, dated before 7,000 B.P., which is located on a dune adjacent to another large playa. Each of the other three Middle Neolithic sites yielded only one to three large bovid bones.
Around 7,000 B.P., the remains of small livestock (sheep or goats) appear in several Middle Neolithic sites at Nabta. Because there are no progenitors for sheep or goats in Africa, these caprovines were almost certainly introduced from southwest Asia.
The faunal remains in many of these sites are extensive, including not only the same species recovered from the Early Neolithic sites, but also lizards (Lacertilia sp.) ground squirrel (Euxerus erythropus), field rat (Aricanthis nioloticus), hyena (Hyaena hyaena), and sand fox (Vulpes rueppelii). One bone is from either orstx (Oryx dammah) or addax (Addax nasosulcatus), The most nurmerous remains are those of hare and the Dorcas gazelle. Nevertheless, the paucity of the fauna and the absence, except for cattle and small livestock, of animals that require permanent water suggests a rather poor environment, most likely comparable to the northernmost Sahel today with about 200 mm of rain or less annually.
The Middle Neolithic was brought to an end by another major but brief period of aridity slightly before 6,500 B.P., when the water table fell several meters and the floors of many basins were deflated and reshaped, The area probably was abandoned at this time.
[ca. 6,500y - 5,300y BP]
Late Neolithic
With the increase in rainfall that began around 6,500 years ago. human groups again appeared in the area, but this time with ceramic and lithic traditions that differed from those of the preceding Middle Neolithic. This new complex, identified as Late Neolithic, is distinguished by pottery that is polished and sometimes smudged on the interiors. This pottery resembles that found in the slightly later (about 5,400 or, possibly, 6,300 B.P.) Baderian sites in the Nile Valley of Upper Egypt. [12, 13] It seems likely that an as yet undiscovered early pre-Badarian Neolithic was present in that area and either stimulated or was the source of the Late Neolithic pottery in the Sahara. It is unlikely, however, that this hypothetical early Nilotic Neolithic will date much earlier than 6,500 B.P. There are terminal Paleolithic sites along the Nile that are dated to around 7,000 B.P. and it is highly improbable that two such different life-ways could co-exist exist for long in the closely constrained environment of the Nile Valley.
Late Neolithic sites in the Egyptian Sahara consist mostly of numerous hearths representing many separate episodes of occupation. The hearths are long and oval, dug slightly into the surface of the ground, and filled with charcoal and fire-cracked rocks. No houses are known. Most of the sites are dry-season camps located in the lower parts of basins that were flooded by the seasonal rains. Many of the sites are associated with several large, deep wells.
Many of the Late Neolithic tools are made on "side-blow flakes" that have been retouched into denticulates and notched pieces There are also a few bifacial arrowheads, often with tapering stems, or, rarely with concave bases similar to those found in the Fayum Neolithic where they date between 6,400 and 5,7OO years ago. The end of the Late Neolithic in the Eastern Sahara is not well established.The period may have tasted until around 5,300 B.P. when this part of the Sahara was abandoned.
Due to poor preservation faunal remains in Late Neolithic sites are not as abundant as those from the Middle Neolithic. However, the Late and Middle Neolithic samples generally include the same animals suggesting that the environment was also generally similar during these periods. Although large bovids are also present in three Late Nealithic sites, and more frequently than in the faunal assemblages of the preceding period, they still are a minor component of the sample.
The Late Neolithic Nabta is marked by interesting signs of increased social complexity, including several alignments of updght slabs (2 x 3 m) imbedded in, and sometimes almost covered by, the playa sediments. Circles of smaller uptight stabs may calendrical devices. Stone-covered tumuli are also present; two of the smaller ones contain cow burials, one in a prepared and sealed pit. none of the more than 30 large tumuli thus far located, which are by large, roughly shaped blocks of stone, has been excavated.
Even the earliest of these early Holocene Eastern Sahara sites have been attributed to cattle pastoralists. It is presumed that these Early Neolithic groups came into the desert from an as yet unidentified area where wild cattle were present and the initial steps toward their domestication been taken.
This area may have been the Nile Valley between the First and Second Cataracts, where wild cattle were present. Moreover, lithic industries were closely similar to those in the earliest Saharan sites. It has been suggested that cattle may have facilitated human use of the Sahara by providing a mobile, dependable, and renewable source of food in the font of milk and blood. The use of cattle as a renewable resource rather than for meat is seen as a possible explanation for the paucity of cattle remains in most of the Saharan sites. Such use in a desert, where other foods were so limited, may have initiated the modern East African pattern of cattle pastonlism in which cattle are important as a symbol of prestige, are primarily used for milk and blood, and rarely are killed for meat.
It is assumed, because of the apparrent absence of wells at the earliest sites, that the first pastoralists used the desert only after the summer rains, when water was still present in the larger drainage basins. After 8,000 years ago, when large, deep wells were dug, the pastoralists probably resided in the desert year-round.
**Linguistic evidence**
In addition to the archeological and paleontological evidence, recent linguistic studies indicate the presence of early pastoralists in the Eastern Sahara. Detailed analysis of Nilo-Saharan root words has provided "convincing evidence" that the early cultural history of that language family included a pastoralist and food producing way of life, and that this occurred in what is today the south-western Sahara and Sahel belt.
The Nilo-Saharan family of languages is divided into a complex array of branches and subgroups that reflect an enormous time depth. Just one of the subgroups, Kir is as internally complex as the lndo-European family of languages and is believed to have a comparable age. The Sudanese branch is of special interest here. This is particularly true of the Northern Sudanese subfamily that includes a Saharo-Sahelian subgroup, the early homeland of which is placed in northwest Sudan and northeast Chad. Today, the groups that speak Saharo-Sahelian are dispersed from the Niger river eastward to northwestern Ethiopian highlands.
The Proto-Northern Sudanic language contains root words such as "to drive," "cow, "grain,""ear of grain," and "grindstone." Any of these might apply to food production, but another root word meaning "to milk" is cetainly the most convincing evidence of incipient pastoralism.
There are also root words for "temporary shelter" and "to make a pot." In the succeeding Proto-Saharo-Sahelian language, there are root words for "to cultivate", "to prepare field", to "clear" (of weeds), and "cultivated field." this is the first unambiguous linguistic evidence of cultivation. There are also words for "thombush cattle pen," "fence," "yard," "grannary," as well as "to herd" and "cattle." In the following Proto-Sahelian period, there are root words for "goat," "sheep," "ram," and "lamb," indicating the presence of small livestock.
There are root words for "cow," "bull," "ox," and "young cow" or "heifer" and, indeed, a variety of terms relating to cultivation and permanent houses.
On the basis of known historical changes in some of the language, Ehret estimates that the Proto-Northern Sudanic language family, which includes the first root words indicating cattle pastoralism, should be dated about 10,000 years ago. He also estimates that the Proto-Saharan-Sahelian language family, which has words indicating not only more complex cattle pastroalism, but the first indications of cultivation, occurred around 9,000 years ago. He places the Proto-Sahelian language at about 8,500 years ago.
These age estimates are just that, and should not be used to suggest any other chronology. Nevertheless, the sequence of cultural changes is remarkably similar to that in the archeology of the Eastern Sahara and, with some minor adjustments for the beginning of cultivation and for' the inclusion of "sheep" and "goat," reasonably closely to the radiocarbon chronology.
Evidence from other parts of North Africa The antiquity of the known domes-tic cattle elsewhere in North Africa does not offer much encouragement with regard to the presence of early domestic cattle in the Eastern Sahara. Gautier recently summarized the available data, noting that domestic cattle were present in coastal Maurita-nia and Mali around 4,200 years ago and at Capeletti in the mountains of northern Algeria about 6,500 years ago. At about that same time, they may have been present in the Coastal Neolithic of the Maghreb. Farther south in the Central Sahara, domestic cattle were present at Meniet and Erg d'Admco, both of which date around 5,400 years ago, and at Adrar Rous, where a complete skeleton of a domestic cow is dated 5,760 +/- 500 years B.P ].
Domestic cattle have been found in western Libya at Ti-n-torha North and Uan Muhuggiag, where the lowest level with domestic cattle and small livestock (sheep and goats) dated at 7,438 t 1,200 B.P. At Uan Muhuggiag, there is also a skull of a domestic cow dated 5,950 +/- 120 years. In northern Chad at Gabrong and in the Serir Tibesti, cattle and small livestock were certainly present by 6,000 B.P. and may have been there as early as 7,500 B.P. We are skeptical, however, about the presence of livestock at Uan Muhuggiag and the Serir Tibesti before 7,OO0 B.P., when small livestock first appear in the Eastern Sahara, if we must assume that these animals reached the central Sahara by way of Egypt and the Nile Valley. This also casts doubt on the 7,500 B.P. dates for cattle in these sites.
The earliest domestic cattle in the lower Nile Valley have been found at Merimda, in levels that have several radiocarbon dates ranging between 6,000 and 5,400 B.P. and in the Fayum Neolithic, which dates from 6,400 to 5, 400 B.P. These sites also have domestic pigs and either sheep or goats. In Upper Egypt, the earliest confirmed domestic cattle are in the Predynastic site of El Khattara, dated at 5,300 B.P. However, domestic cattle were almost certainly present in the earliest Badarian Neolithic, which dates before 5,400 B.P. and possibly were there as early as 6,300 B.P. Farther south, in Sudan near Khartoum, the first do-mestic cattle and small livestock oc-curred together in the Khartoum Neolithic, which began around 6,000 B.P.
It is probably significant that none of the early Holocene faunal assemblages in the Nile Valley from the Fayum south to Khartoum that date between 9,000 and 7,000 B.P contains the remains of cattle that have been identified as domestic It is this absence of any evidence of recognizable incipient cattle domestication in the Nile Valley or elsewhere in North Africa that cautions us to consider carefully the evidence of early domestic cattle in the Eastern Sahara.
Other opinions
Numerous scholars, including Clutton-Brock, Robertshaw, Muzolini, and Smith, have debated about whether the large bovids are cattle or buffalo and stated that if they are cattle, they probably were wild.
It has also been suggested, because the large bovid bones are so rare, that the Bos were possibly intrusive and not associated with the dated occupations where they occurred That argument is not convincing The occupations at many of the sites with large bovids were limited to only one type of Early Neolithic. Moreover, the bovids were recovered from excavations at 15 Neolithic sites dating before 6,500 years ago and, in fact, were found at every site that yielded more than 41 specimens of identifiable faunal remains. Unfortunately, it is not possible to date these large bovid hones directly. Several attempts have been made and each was unsuccessful. Apparently, collagen is not preserved in bones found in hyper-arid environments. It should also be noted that the large bovid hones are not fossilized, and thus are not geological intrusions. Also, there are no large bovids living in the Eastern Sahara today nor have there been for several thousands of years.
It has been suggested that the faunal samples from the archeological sites do not reflect the range of animals that existed in that environment. However, Gautier has identified a long list of animals from these sites and, except for gazelles and hares, none is common. Beyond that, all are small and desert-adjusted. These faunal samples probably reflect the expected range of animals living in the desert at that time.
Smith made the most detailed criticism of Gautier's hypothesis about domestic cattle, basing his objections on two major points. The first is environmental. He noted that Churcher identified wild cattle, African buffalo, hartebeests zebras, and gazelles from an "Early Neolithic" context at Dakhleh Oasis, 300 km north of Bir Kiseiba. If this is a true Early Neolithic faunal assemblage, however, the area would have required a much wetter environment than is indicated by the geological evidence. In fact, this Dakhleh assemblage includes species that require much more moisture than do the species that were in the Nile Valley at this time. This suggests that the environment at Dakhleh was richer and more hospitable than that along the Nile, which is highly unlikely, to say the least. Also, Equus, even in the Late Paleolithic, seems to have been confined to the Red Sea Hills and the east bank of the Nile. [39] The Dakhleh fauna closely resembles that found with lacustrine deposits in the Eastern Sahara and dating to the Last Interglacial, while they are associated with Middle Paleolithic artifacts. It seems likely that this Dakhleh fauna was derived born deposits of the Middle Paleolithic and was somehow mixed with Neolithic artifacts. Churcher (personal communication) accepts this as a possible explanation.
Smith also noted that the Eastern Sahara faunal assemblages do not include the addax, which is still found today in the Central Sahara, or the oryx, giraffe, rhinoceros, or elephant he would expect to see in even the driest environments. There are, of course, two bones of either addax or oryx in the collections. Also, giraffes survived until recently in areas of the Gilf Kebir where there was water. There is, however, no evidence of giraffe on the plains of the Eastern Sahara after the lakes of the Last Interglacial became dry between 70,000 and 65,000 years ago. Occasional elephant teeth and a partial skull have been found in the Neolithic sites, but the elephant skull is more mineralized than are the bones of other fauna recovered from the same site. That skull, as well as the elephant teeth found in other sites, are regarded as Middle Paleolithic or earlier fossils collected by Neolithic people. In our view, the Eastern Sahara was simply too dry for these larger mammals, all of which, except the ele-phant, require nearby water. (The elephant is known to range considerable distances away from water)
Smith's other argument is osteological. He noted that Gautier was very cautious in his identifications, using circumstantial evidence to establish the identity of species. Smith observed that large bovid remains from the Eastern Sahara are within the size range of wild cattle in both Europe and North Africa, but that some are larger than known domestic cattle. He suggested that these large bovids could just as well be African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) or giant buffalo (Pelorovis antiquus). Both possibilities, however, can be rejected on osteometric and morphological grounds. The entire collection was carefully re-examined to resolve this particular question and the initial identification of the hones as those of Bus was confirmed.
It seems possible that we have not been adequately clear in our discussion of the sedimentary and other geological data that support the argument that there was no permanent water in this part of the Sahara. Perhaps, also, our critics' personal experience in the Sahara has been limited to its more tropical and luxurious areas where permanent lakes existed in the Early Holocene. If so, this may have left them with a distorted view of the environment in the Eastern Sahara, where there are numerous deflated basins. In the center of many of these basins are extensive remnants of typical playa clays, which grade to silts and sands toward their margins. Diatomites, freshwater limestones, and other organogenic evidence of permanent water do not occur. There are no aquatic species of invertebrates and none of the fauna except large bovids requires permanent water. It is for these reasons that we reject the hypothesis that cattle were an integral part of the natural, wild fauna of the Eastern Sahara in the early Holocene. In this area under these conditions, cattle had to have been under human control, and thus at least incipiently domestic. The cattle had to have been moved from one grazing area and water hole to another and then, when the drainage basins became dry returned to a place with permanent water.
Wild cattle were numerous in the Nile Valley at this time. It might be hypothesized that after the summer rains the cattle ranged westward on their own to graze and the new grass then returned to the valley before the dry season. Although it is possible that this could have happened at Nabta, which is only 100 km from the Nile, it is extremely unlikely to have occurred at Bir Kiseiba, about 250 km west of the Nile. Also, this hypothesis makes little ecological sense. If large cattle went far out into the desert, why didn't medium-size animals do the same? This is a particularly important question with regard to the hartebeest, which is also common in the Nile Valley and is better adapted to aridity than are cattle.
We have also considered the possibility that the cattle bones are remnants of food brought to the desert from the Nile Valley by groups of hunters. However, this is unlikely, for almost all of the bones recovered are lower limb elements, which have little or no meat and frequently are discarded at killing and butchery sites.
Conclusion
How can we accommodate the conflicting evidence regarding cattle pastoralists during the early Holocene in the Eastern Sahara? In particular, how can we propose that the first steps to-ward cattle domestication began in the Nile Valley, perhaps during the Late Pleistocene, when there is so little faunal evidence to support that hypothesis? The answer may lie in the identification of the cattle remains found in the Late Paleolithic sites in Sudanese and Egyptian Nubia. It has been suggested that it would be very difficult to separate the bones of the incipiently domestic cattle from those of wild cattle. When the first cattle were discovered in the Eastern Sahara, Gautier rechecked the Bos remains that had been found in all of the Late Paleolithic Nilotic sites. He gave particular attention to those from the Qadan site at Tushka, dated 14, 500 B.P., where cattle skulls were used as head markers for several human burials, and those from the Ark-inian site with a 14C date around 10,500 B.P. The Arkinian site was of special interest because the little lithic assemblage from there closely resembles the assemblages from the earliest El Nabta type Neolithic in the Eastern Sahara. Gautier found that the cattle in both the Qadan and Arkinian sites fell in two size groups one of which he considered to be males, the other females both groups were identified as being wild Bos primigenius.
Recently, however, work in a killing and butchery site near Esna, Egypt, dated 19,100 B.P., yielded the remains of six very large Bos, much larger than any other previously recovered in the Nile Valley. Indeed, these Bos are even larger than those from much older Middle Paleolithic sites. On the basis of this discovery, Gautier has suggested that Bos primigenius bulls in the Nile Valley may well have been much larger than was previously believed, and that the larger Bos from the Qadan and Arkinian sites were female wild Bos. If so, the smaller animals in those assemblages may have been these ones that were in an early stage of domestication. Morphologically, the Eastern Sahara cattle would then be well within the range of these incipiently domestic cattle. The additional work planned at the Esna butchery site may clarify this hypothesis.
By employing the method of "strong inferences," which involves formulating alternative hypotheses, testing them to exclude one or more, arid adopting those that remain, we have concluded that domestic cattle probably were present in the Eastern Sahara as early as 9,000 years ago and, perhaps earlier. At the same time, we recognize that there is no such thing as proof and that science advances only by disproofs. Future evidence may suggest a better hypothesis or indeed, this controversy may be conclusively resolved if DNA testing now under way determines that the Bos remains found in African and Southwest Asian archeological sites belong to the same closely related gene pool or that they represent two populations that have been separated for many thousands of years. Until then, Gautier's hypothesis of domestic cattle in the Eastern Sahara during the Early Holocene remains reasonable, if insecure.
The levels and patterns of mitochondrial sequence diversity uncovered in this study do not point toward a simple model of a single for African and European cattle within the 10,000 year time frame of domestic history. The possibility may be argued that two divergent lineages coexisted in a single ancestral domestic population and that differential loss of these occurred in two daughter groups, but this represents the most labored interpretation of the genetic data. Alternatively, the biological separation observed could be the result of the adoption of local wild oxen into existing European or African herds by early herders. However, the evidence is most suggestive of two domestic origins that were either temporally or spatially separated and involved divergent strains of taurine progenitors. This is consistent with a Near Eastern origin for European cattle and an African origin for the breeds of that continent.
The dating of the putative African bovine population expansion, although comprising a rough estimate, seems older than that deduced in European patterns of variation. This provides some tentative support for an earlier and possibly Saharan domestication process that may have been independent of the latter Near Eastern influences, which are detectable through the presence of ovicaprid herding. - Bradley et al. 1996, Mitochondrial origins and the origins of African and European cattle.Posts: 1947 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
10.1002/(SICI)1520-6505(1998)6:3<79::AID-EVAN2>3.0.CO;2-R About DOI
The domestication of bananas took place in southeastern Asia. Many species of wild bananas still occur in New Guinea, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Recent archaeological and palaeoenvironmental evidence at Kuk Swamp in the Western Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea suggests that banana cultivation there goes back to at least 5000 BC, and possibly to 8000 BC. [4] This would make the New Guinean highlands the place where bananas were first domesticated. It is likely that other species of wild bananas were later also domesticated elsewhere in southeastern Asia.
Again, what is the relevancy of introduction of bananas into Africa from outside?
Since, you don't seem to be attaching any substance to bringing any point about 'bananas in Africa', let me see if I can make some sense out of it in my own way:
New evidence presented in this paper for the possible existence of bananas at Munsa, Uganda, during the 4th millennium BC considerably raises the stakes of the debate. This paper evaluates the plausibility of this evidence in light of what is known about the identification and taphonomy of Musaceae hydroliths, the history of bananas, and African and extra-African prehistory…
The presence of Musa Phytoliths in sediments at Munsa dating within the last 1000 or 1500 years is not surprising, given accepted wisdom concerning both the timing of the arrival of this crop in central Africa and the period of major development of banana farming. What is very surprising, however, is the apparent presence of Musa in Core M2C3C in sediments dating to before the late fourth millennium BC.
Recent research at Kuk has demonstrated that bananas were deliberately planted in the highlands of New Guinea by at least as early as 5000-4490 BC (6950-6440 cal BP) and that banana plants grew in this region in the earliest Holocene. Moreover, recent genetic studies have confirmed that the wild Eunusa seeded banana, Musa acuminata ssp. Banksii F. Muell., was domesticated in New Guinea and then dispersed to southeast Asia. Thus, M. acuminata was the progenitor of the A genomes of domesticated bananas.
However, the B genomes of domesticated bananas were derived from Musa balbisiana Colla, which occurs wild in parts of India, Sri Lanka, Burma, and southwest China. Evidence of wild banana seeds from an early Holocene site in Sri Lanka probably indicates exploitation of M. balbisiana. The first hybridization of A and B genomes probably occurred after AA cultivars were brought to south Asia from southeast Asia. The earliest archaeological evidence for such a domesticated A-B hybrid is probably that of the Musa Phytoliths from the Harappan site of K to Diji in Sindh, which dates to the second half of the third millennium BC. The location and ecological setting of Kot Diji indicates that these must have been domesticated bananas, which are unlikely to have been AA or AAA cultivars.
From these beginnings a remarkable diversity of banana cultivars arose as a result of human intervention, since banana plants cannot propagate by natural means. This diversity is particularly well represented among the AAB plantains in the rainforest regions of Africa, with at least 115 known cultivars. While **this implies a long history of cultivation and experimentation within Africa**, it is also likely that bananas may have been introduced to Africa several times. AA and AAA cultivars may have been introduced directly from southeast Asia, whereas AAB and ABB hybrids are more likely to have reached Africa from India or Sri Lanka. Thus, it is unfortunate that we cannot yet identify different banana genomes from their Phyloliths.
It has been suggested that the first bananas to arrive in Africa were plantains brought to the east coast of Africa across the Indian Ocean by 1000 BC, prior, in other words, to the settlement of Madagascar by Austronesians…
In this scenario, rapid acceptance and development of plantain cultivation in east Africa may have been facilitated by the indigenous inhabitants’ familiarity with Ensete, which they may have already “semi-cultivated” (but note the caution expressed by Philippson and Bahuchet). Indeed, Rossel has suggested that “the importance of the use of Ensete for technical purposes (fiber production) in eastern Africa, combined with the fact that Musa names in many cases borrowed from Ensete, leads [one] to think that an early success of Musa depended more on its usefulness for non-food pruposes (fibers, etc)”. From these auspicious beginnings, plantain cultivation and experimentation with propagation of new cultivars may have spread rapidly across the tropical belt of Africa.
^Consistent with the point I made earlier, about the largest diversity of plantain bananas found in Western Africa. Bananas may have well been initially introduced from southeast Asia, where it initially grew in the wild, something which perhaps was rare in Africa at the time, and then domesticated. As you can see, these bananas arrived in Africa quite early, possibly not long after early domestication took place in the vicinity of New Guinea, where transition from the wild to domestication was easily facilitated, well because, it was already available as a wild plant. However, as noted above, Africans took initiative in experimenting with making these plants develop in ways that make them easier to grow in the environments of the continent and more abundant, and “engineered” [modified] in ways to meet usages suited to local regional tastes.
Given the evidence for early domestication of bananas in New Guinea by the early 5th millennium BC, it would seem to be within the bounds of possibility for bananas to have reached Uganda by the mid to late 4th millennium BC, particularly if these were AA or AAA cultivars brought directly from southeast Asia. This would imply arrival of the plant on the east African coast long before the date of about 1000 BC suggested as a terminus ante quem by De Langhe et al. However, such an early arrival would also seem to be contradicted by the linguistic evidence linking the diepersal of bananas across Africa with Bantu languages, whose antiquity is not usually deemed to extend back as early as the 4th millennum BC…
A recent review of the evidence for early farming in Africa includes a map of sites with published archaeobotanical evidence relevant to the African agricultural origins; this map shows no sites whatsoever between Nkang in Cameroon, the site with 1st millennium BC banana Phytoliths, and sites in Zimbabwe. Indeed, the Nkang banana Phytoliths are the only archaeo-botanical evidence for prehistoric agriculture in the African rain forest. More generally the African archaeological evidence appears to indicate that, outside of Egypt, agriculture was a late phenomenon compared to other continents, “developing slightly before 1800 bc. [c. 2200 BC] in the southwestern and south-central Sahara and much later, from the middle of the first millennium bc. [mid-1st millennium BC] onwards, in other parts of the continent”. But the southern Asian evidence, with its earlier dates for African crops, shows the fallacy of this conclusion.
^Like I said, African domesticated plants turn up in Asia as well, and the author is quite right about the said fallacy, as I have noted a number of other developments in tropical Africa that attest to this fallacy.
The author goes on further to put a spotlight on bias in research - nurtured further by tunnel vision thinking, that hampers proper understanding of archaeobotanical history of tropical Africa, with this example:
Faunal remains mostly belong to wild species, including numerous fish, though a few domestic stock appear to be associated with this pottery at Gogo Falls,. With the exception of Gogo Falls, little effort has been made to recover plant remains from Kansyore sites. Thus, it is not surprising that no domestic plants have been found associated with this ceramic tradition, though a seed of the wild progenitor of domestic finger millet (Eleusine coracana subsp. Africana (Kem. -O’Byrne) Hilu & de Wet) was recovered at Gogo Falls. While the high densities of artifacts at Kansyore sites might suggest occupation by delayed-return hunter-gatherers, they might conceivably reflect sedentism anchored by the cultivation of bananas supplemented by fishing and broad-specturm foraging.
This is, of course, rank speculation but the probable existence of Kansyore sites in the Lake Victoria basin contemporary with the early banana Phytoliths on and adjacent to Kansyore sites a high priority for future fieldwork.
Ceramics identified at Kansyore have also been found in the Nguru Hills, which enjoy heavy rainfall and are located less than 150 km inland from the Tanzanian coast opposite Zanzibar, while claims have also been made that “Neolithic” pottery found on the coast, hinterland and islands of Tanzania may indicate the existence of agriculture by 3000BC. Thus, the potential may exist here for a cultural context that could have facilitated the diffusion of bananas, as well perhaps as canoe technology, from east African coast to the Great Lakes region. - J. B. Lejju et al. 2005, Africa's earliest bananas?
Yes, bananas may well have been initially introduced from outside, since it doesn't look like wild examples were endemic in Africa. On the same token, African plant domesticates show up in Asia. People trade when come into contact, no biggie. What now?
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Maahes needs to explain why the Ancient Kemetian language survives in the Wolof, Igbo, Yoruba, Ashanti, Swahili and others. In addition to this, can you explain how the Yoruba tribe came to retain 401 deities from Ancient Kemet yet you probably retain none, except for maybe what you learned from Dr. Hawass & Friends (Black rock and Red rock)?
Can you also explain how is it the pre-dynastic ancestors to Ancient Kemetians, known as the “Anu/Oru” is the same “Anu/Oru” remembered by many tribes in West Africa as their most distant ancestors?
And speaking of the desert separating the people of Africa and limiting or confining Blacks to the south, as you put it, you’re just way off and wrong in your interpretation. Black Africans have been masters of crossing the desert is the humble beginnings of human breathing. The video link below is just a small proof that crossing the Sahara desert had been mastered by Black Africans far longer than any European or Arab scientist can tell you.
(YouTube videos are non-linear, so even if the video is not fully buffered or loaded, you can still skip to 2:35 in time for the meat of my reference; though I'd recommend watching the whole thing.)
I’ll tell you something bold and direct, and more than this, it’s the actual truth that the great number of Black Africans today in West Africa directly descend from Ancient Kemetians and Ancient Meroe with awesome combinations whether you like it or not. By natural extension, this truth applies to other Black Africans in Central, Eastern, Southern and Northern parts of Africa as well of Blacks in the Diaspora. After all, African Americans and other Diaspora Blacks originate from Black Africans, particularly from West Africa but nonetheless, all Black Africans regardless.
Black Africans have always been highly mobile people and their strong sense of retaining and exercising their group and sub-group hierarchical self identities patterns becomes a natural database tracker for understanding their connection to their ancient past.
Lacking the abilities to satisfactory answer all the valid questions above renders many of your self-style humanist proposals pointless except for the expression of the genuine human heart to help the helpless (as you mentioned in your humanitarian work earlier). But first, one must deal with the inescapable reality that their entire view of a certain people with certain facial features (Black people/Negros/Negroid) who have been criminally shunned and erroneously viewed as a people who contributed nothing in history by those who literally initiated nothing but stole all they know from the very people they claim contributed nothing, was learned on them, effectively conditioning their bottom-line people view. Therefore, one must make the choice of going through some ordinary changes to knowing thyself or choosing the required extra-ordinary path of changing ones core values and people view. Believe me, it is difficult and daunting but far from lackluster; and for some, it is far more difficult than climbing ten mountains, but in the end result exhilarating mental and intellectual freedom awaits the person. This truth can only be understood and realized through individual personal experiences to self knowledge. At this stage, concepts like ”Black rock” and “Red rock” as reference points for human skin tones, at the very least, in current definition and primitive usage, becomes obsolete.
Posts: 213 | From: New York City, USA | Registered: Sep 2007
| IP: Logged |
posted
What do we have here. . . another Stolen Legacy. . .wanna be . .Johnny come lately. . . Arab born in Africa. Mistakenly calling his conquered land and history his. . .sounds familiar.
Or a confused African like some of the East African's on this board.
Good point Djehuti. -- - - And to add insult to your injury, your ancient Egyptian ancestors even called themselves 'black people'!! - - -
And oh my, my suspensions were correct! You are just like Masreyya, a former Egyptian poster in here who denied that the ancient Egyptians (her ancestors) as indigenous Africans were black and tried to claim that modern (foreign-mixed) Egyptians are the same as her ancient ancestors.
You relegate true black Africans to more southerly groups like "Dinka"! LOL.
Here is some news for you:
Black Africans are indigenous to *all* of Africa and to every part of that continent
Most modern day North Africans including Egyptians are mixed. Especially Egyptians considering all the invasions and immigrations that happened throughout its history..
Hence the diversity in complexions and features that you yourself presented
Yet you deny the two facts above and seem to go with the Hawass fantasy of non-black yet indigenous Africans. Now how lame is that?! [/qb][/QUOTE]
Posts: 12143 | From: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable | Registered: Jun 2007
| IP: Logged |
Oh yeah, and while I agree with Maahes that the Tunisian actor above is not "mulatto" (and such a label is a white racist connotation anyway), it is easy to see why someone would call him that since he like many North Africans are mixed being of indigenous (black) African ancestry with West Asian and/or European ancestry.
like the Auodad Tunisian woman:
Here is another Tunisian woman from rural Djerba who is of a more 'pristine' type that few people rarely see:
Posts: 26286 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
the american adoons are trying to force the racial concepts that their euro masters have taught them onto horn and north africans. i'm glad that there are people on this forum who are finally putting these jareers in their place.
Posts: 32 | Registered: Oct 2007
| IP: Logged |
posted
Hmm. I see that this is quickly going somewhere. Not certain where and I don't think it takes a person of average IQ to comprehend why this dialogue isn't as productive as it aught to be. What is your objective? What is mine?
I won't speak for yours as it seems pretty clear that you in the spin zone are attempting to ignite your own straw dogs.
My objective should be clear. I intend to educate Westerners with my ancestors history. My ancestors are East Africans from North Africa. We Africans do not refer to one another or ourselves as Black People. We prefer to be described as members of our respective tribal clans, tribes, religious groups or nationalities. You in America have no such tribal identification and this lack of a self-identity may be painful and even confusing for you. I feel for you and have empathy. It does not diminish in any capacity my sense of identity or the confidence that I place in our ancient oral histories. In my opinion,the terminology and nomenclature you've adopted here in many instances, is that of Eurocentric reductionists. It may read patronizing or even condescending to some of you. I can not be responsible for yoru emotional maturity. My opinions can have no impact on your sense of identity because I am not attempting to take anything away from you. To the contrary it is my intent to contribute to your understanding. But like many young people, you probably think you know everything there is to be known. Moreover, based upon the examples of your scholarship on this thread, those that I would classify as detractors of my position of human biodiversity before afrocentrism- their scholarship appears tainted with subjective emotionalism. They project a seething enmity that stems from their own experiences as Americans, descended of the Bantu/English Colonialist slave culture. But you should know, many Africans consider American "blacks" for lack of a better term, to be the chosen ones. Look at the lives you lead compared with your relatives in Benin or Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast or Niger. Look at the great potential your lives contain compared with those of the vast majority of African youths living in Africa at this very moment.
I am attempting to not parse words here. Candidly speaking, Americans of African descent are helping perpetuate violence and materialism across the globe- just like their "white oppressors". You are Americans after all. Prescribing to the rigid prejudices of Victorian era slave apologists is a dead end. It has been for a very long while. The Victorians were hard pressed to acknowledge tribal ethnicites in Africa. They preferred instead to group all Africans as Negroes. One day you may be free of these shackles. Until then you will suffer from the delusion of a Black Africa.
I've repeated myself repeatedly that there is and always has been without any doubt the presence of Black Africans in the Sahara and Egypt itself. As I have freely shared with you , while in the USA if anyone were to ask, I describe myself- define myself as BLACK> but this is a cultural identification . My expereince in America before 911 at any rate, was that of a Black American. White Americans in the rural region where I lived from age 2-13 had never seen any African descended person other than myself. I was the subject of endless racism including violence and harrasement, hospitalization from injuries at 11- I don't need to defend my self-identity as a Black American. When I am amongst other Black Americans as an adult in the USA in large cities like Chicago or New York, Boston or Los Angeles, there is a presupposition on the part of many young Black people that I am not "Black". " What you mixed with?" I often hear. There is a preconception that I must be mixed but both of my parents are Egyptians and half the year when I am living amongst members of my familial tribe in the Western desert, I find comfort in that I look like everyone else. We all look alike. I see children at every age stage that could have been me at any moment. No one asks me if I am Mixed because we have been living in the same valley as long as anyone can remember. We live in a valley after which we are all named. Members of our people have contributed tissue and blood samples for academic studies of population genetics including human biodiversity project that I've provided a link for. Some of you are assuming that because I write historical fiction screenplays that this is my training and vocation in life, when in fact, I am an evolutionary biologist, a wildlife conservationist and veterinary technician by training. These are the subjects that I earned my degrees in higher education... I also write documentaries and natural history essays. And as i've mentioned repeatedly, my greatest passion is humanitarian aid and endangered indigenous cultures. Have any of you actually been to Africa? What do you think you would experience in Darfur? Would you be sensitive enough to write down the tribal affiliation of the human beings under your responsibility- the displaced people living in a refugee camp that have come for aid? Would you accept what the woman said to you about her origins? If she were Fur and claimed so would you accept that? Or would you insist on writing down Black instead? If you were obliged to make a decision about translocating an entire village of Nyala ethnics into a refugee camp, would you be sensitive enough to insure that they were not crowded into a camp packed with Fur, even while the two share common physical features and skin tone- the Nyala are originally from Libya- they were shoved down into Darfur in history. They don't get along with the Fur. They are not one and the same people even if they share ancestors. Being Americans you have a difficult time comprehending what a Black African is. Because I know Africa well. Because I live there half the year and travel throughout the continent, because I spend a great deal of my time amongst Africans of widely different ethnicities, languages and cultures, I cannot prescribe to your great generalizations. It you not I that has a self-loathing deeply burned into your psyche. There is nothing but violence and suffering that I detest about Africans. And one can't blame the victim for suffering or being the scapegoat for misplaced enmity. Based upon some of your posts, an objective mind might come to the conclusion that you suffer from presuppositional bias- one that links hatred for people of specific skin colour or features, culture and/or language e.g. racism with African pride. In other words, my great love and understanding of Africans, my great passion to share my appreciation of our ancient roots and human biodiversity is being misunderstood by an emotionally vulnerable group who have inferiority complexes.
When I assert that no Peoples of the Black Rock have been hereditary chiefs or sovereign rulers in Dynastic Egypt I am confident that the majority of actual Egyptologists of every different bias will agree with me. When I assert that Nilotic ethnicities have always been present in Egypt and that they have indeed been foudners of whole generations of dynasties you choose to ignore that because I cannot describe these peoples as "black". Not because I detest black people. Not because I want to take anything away from black people- these are your own misconsceptions founded upon a degree of willful ignorance. Your definition of Black People belongs to Eurocentrics. My definition of Black People comes from my status as an indigenous Saharan. I know something about these respective groups. You may recognize traits like skin colour and facial features that you've been conditioned to accept as "Negroid". I do not accept this anectdated racial ideology. I don not beleive in the construct of "Negroe". I believe that there are many different ethnic types originally endemic to different widely separated regions of Africa. Peoples that you might recognize as "Black" in the USA are not black but brown and not because there is something wrong or inferior with being black mind you. We are not black anymore than you are. You think you are black because your masters told you that you were. You self identify with this blackness even while it is an over-generalization that does little to acknowledge other "black" peoples that live throughout the world. If we are to acknowledge the non-African "blacks" as members of our clique, then we can make a statement that the majority of Africa, Asia and OCeania were "black" originally.
My inclusion of India and "Negritos" in this thread is to throw light on the Afrocentrism - the biased world view of minds that attempt to overemphasize Africa just as Europeans overemphasized Europe in their worldview. There is more than just black and brown and white. History and human biodiversity cannot be defined in narrow racialist terminology any more than the evolutionary history of bananas or cattle. We are biological organisms. Science should not enable directional evolutionism and social darwinism. It should help enlighten the collective conscience recognize the global human condition. The universal human family. Not greater nor lesser than, just equal and as such significant for our own respective histories.
Posts: 152 | From: Boston MA USA | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
It is a simple point. A brown skinned person of African descent IN OUR OUTSIDE of Africa is called black because of their skin complexion. It is not a statement of culture, ethnicity, language or "race". All of this long winded arguing is meaningless, especially when one does not apply the same standard anywhere else. Is white European a controversial term? Is it controversial in Southern Europe? Is it controversial in Northern Europe or Central Europe? Does anyone consider the term white as a statement of one global culture, identity, language or ethnicity? No. Therefore, trying to pretend that black is such a statement of common global culture, identity, ethnicity, language or nationality among all the various populations of brown skinned peoples anywhere in the world is a reflection of your own MISLED beliefs about the word, not our misapplication of it.
Bottom line, unless you can prove that black means a single ethnicity, language, culture, nationality or a shared set of the same across any population in or out of Africa then your whole premise is totally baseless and unfounded.
Posts: 8897 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote: When I am amongst other Black Americans as an adult in the USA in large cities like Chicago or New York, Boston or Los Angeles, there is a presupposition on the part of many young Black people that I am not "Black". " What you mixed with?" I often hear. There is a preconception that I must be mixed but both of my parents are Egyptians and half the year when I am living amongst members of my familial tribe in the Western desert, I find comfort in that I look like everyone else.
that's because the adoons come from the jungles of congo. they have never seen anyone from africa that doesn't look congoid like themselves. their thinking is just the result of them being selected by other world populations for servtitude. in fact the euros in america have a saying that all the blacks there look alike.
quote: One day you may be free of these shackles.
how about maybe never. Posts: 32 | Registered: Oct 2007
| IP: Logged |
quote: It is a simple point. A brown skinned person of African descent IN OUR OUTSIDE of Africa is called black because of their skin complexion. It is not a statement of culture, ethnicity, language or "race". All of this long winded arguing is meaningless, especially when one does not apply the same standard anywhere else. Is white European a controversial term? Is it controversial in Southern Europe? Is it controversial in Northern Europe or Central Europe? Does anyone consider the term white as a statement of one global culture, identity, language or ethnicity? No. Therefore, trying to pretend that black is such a statement of common global culture, identity, ethnicity, language or nationality among all the various populations of brown skinned peoples anywhere in the world is a reflection of your own MISLED beliefs about the word, not our misapplication of it.
Bottom line, unless you can prove that black means a single ethnicity, language, culture, nationality or a shared set of the same across any population in or out of Africa then your whole premise is totally baseless and unfounded.
give it up jareer nobody from the horn or north africa is buying your adoon nonsense.
Posts: 32 | Registered: Oct 2007
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Maahes: Hmm. I see that this is quickly going somewhere. Not certain where and I don't think it takes a person of average IQ to comprehend why this dialogue isn't as productive as it aught to be. What is your objective? What is mine?
I won't speak for yours as it seems pretty clear that you in the spin zone are attempting to ignite your own straw dogs.
Obviously since you cannot speak for anyone else, the only thing you can do is speak for yourself.
quote:Originally posted by Maahes: My objective should be clear. I intend to educate Westerners with my ancestors history. My ancestors are East Africans from North Africa. We Africans do not refer to one another or ourselves as Black People. We prefer to be described as members of our respective tribal clans, tribes, religious groups or nationalities.
Fine. That still does not change that the overwhelming majority of East Africans are black. This is no different than the fact that the overwheming majority of Europeans are white, whether they be Croat, Polish, Scottish, Saxon, Basque, Slavic, Italian or so on. You again are equating skin color with nationality, ethnicity and culture which is two totally separate things. Black is no more a reference to nationality than white is, yet you insist on pretending that it is. Your objective is to somehow DENY that black as a term of skin color applies to the MAJORITY of Africans in Africa no matter their language, culture, ethnicity or nationality. YOU are the one making up ways of contradicting the OBVIOUS facts. People can call themselves what they want, but they cannot change how they look. A black African is a black African whether they are Nigerian, Somali, Tunisian or Zulu. Black is not a statement of shared culture, nationality, language or ethnicity. Black is a statement of shared skin color and phenotypes which are common to ALL of Africa no matter the language, culture or ethnicity of the various groups there.
quote:Originally posted by Maahes: You in America have no such tribal identification and this lack of a self-identity may be painful and even confusing for you. I feel for you and have empathy. It does not diminish in any capacity my sense of identity or the confidence that I place in our ancient oral histories. In my opinion,the terminology and nomenclature you've adopted here in many instances, is that of Eurocentric reductionists. It may read patronizing or even condescending to some of you. I can not be responsible for yoru emotional maturity. My opinions can have no impact on your sense of identity because I am not attempting to take anything away from you. To the contrary it is my intent to contribute to your understanding. But like many young people, you probably think you know everything there is to be known. Moreover, based upon the examples of your scholarship on this thread, those that I would classify as detractors of my position of human biodiversity before afrocentrism- their scholarship appears tainted with subjective emotionalism. They project a seething enmity that stems from their own experiences as Americans, descended of the Bantu/English Colonialist slave culture. But you should know, many Africans consider American "blacks" for lack of a better term, to be the chosen ones. Look at the lives you lead compared with your relatives in Benin or Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast or Niger. Look at the great potential your lives contain compared with those of the vast majority of African youths living in Africa at this very moment.
African blacks and American blacks are suffering from or have suffered from the SAME forces of colonialism and racism that brought Africans to America as slaves and killed tens of millions in Africa due to colonial exploitation. Africans in America were lumped together as blacks for purposes of economic exploitation of their labor. This does not change the fact that the majority of Africans in Africa are black. African Americans are not "enjoying" anything in America as they are not in control of the economics, politics or military. And why should they "enjoy" being in a country whose wealth was largely built on their oppression?
quote:Originally posted by Maahes: I am attempting to not parse words here. Candidly speaking, Americans of African descent are helping perpetuate violence and materialism across the globe- just like their "white oppressors". You are Americans after all. Prescribing to the rigid prejudices of Victorian era slave apologists is a dead end. It has been for a very long while. The Victorians were hard pressed to acknowledge tribal ethnicites in Africa. They preferred instead to group all Africans as Negroes. One day you may be free of these shackles. Until then you will suffer from the delusion of a Black Africa.
Obviously you are suffering from the delusions that African blacks introduced racism into Africa and the oppression of Africans based on skin color. The only peoples who introduced such oppression and classifications of Africans by skin color were WHITES. Read your history for a change and stop making up nonsense. Black is still a description of skin color for the majority of Africans in Africa, whether whites, Arabs or others want to consider it a mark of inferiority for a "race" or not. You continue to delude yourself into pretending that the skin color of Africans can be subdivided into different clans, ethnicities and nationalities, when no such divisions based on skin color exist in Africa. And if they do it represents the results of hundreds of years of racist domination of non Africans over large parts of Africa and a racial mindset imposed on Africans by whites and other foreigners.
quote:Originally posted by Maahes: I've repeated myself repeatedly that there is and always has been without any doubt the presence of Black Africans in the Sahara and Egypt itself. As I have freely shared with you , while in the USA if anyone were to ask, I describe myself- define myself as BLACK> but this is a cultural identification . My expereince in America before 911 at any rate, was that of a Black American. White Americans in the rural region where I lived from age 2-13 had never seen any African descended person other than myself. I was the subject of endless racism including violence and harrasement, hospitalization from injuries at 11- I don't need to defend my self-identity as a Black American. When I am amongst other Black Americans as an adult in the USA in large cities like Chicago or New York, Boston or Los Angeles, there is a presupposition on the part of many young Black people that I am not "Black". " What you mixed with?" I often hear. There is a preconception that I must be mixed but both of my parents are Egyptians and half the year when I am living amongst members of my familial tribe in the Western desert, I find comfort in that I look like everyone else. We all look alike. I see children at every age stage that could have been me at any moment. No one asks me if I am Mixed because we have been living in the same valley as long as anyone can remember. We live in a valley after which we are all named. Members of our people have contributed tissue and blood samples for academic studies of population genetics including human biodiversity project that I've provided a link for.
Black is not a cultural identification. You keep saying this and it is still wrong. The reason you got treated badly in America is because racism is about SKIN COLOR not CULTURE. You can try and run from it, but oppression of Africans by non Africans over the last few hundred years was not culture based, it was skin color based. They could care less what ethnic group you identify yourself as a part of, because all that mattered was skin color. You keep deluding yourself and trying to escape from this fact in order to present a distorted view of historical facts, which is the REAL cause of your confusion, not anything or anyone else.
quote:Originally posted by Maahes: H Some of you are assuming that because I write historical fiction screenplays that this is my training and vocation in life, when in fact, I am an evolutionary biologist, a wildlife conservationist and veterinary technician by training. These are the subjects that I earned my degrees in higher education... I also write documentaries and natural history essays. And as i've mentioned repeatedly, my greatest passion is humanitarian aid and endangered indigenous cultures. Have any of you actually been to Africa? What do you think you would experience in Darfur? Would you be sensitive enough to write down the tribal affiliation of the human beings under your responsibility- the displaced people living in a refugee camp that have come for aid? Would you accept what the woman said to you about her origins? If she were Fur and claimed so would you accept that? Or would you insist on writing down Black instead? If you were obliged to make a decision about translocating an entire village of Nyala ethnics into a refugee camp, would you be sensitive enough to insure that they were not crowded into a camp packed with Fur, even while the two share common physical features and skin tone- the Nyala are originally from Libya- they were shoved down into Darfur in history. They don't get along with the Fur. They are not one and the same people even if they share ancestors. Being Americans you have a difficult time comprehending what a Black African is. Because I know Africa well. Because I live there half the year and travel throughout the continent, because I spend a great deal of my time amongst Africans of widely different ethnicities, languages and cultures, I cannot prescribe to your great generalizations. It you not I that has a self-loathing deeply burned into your psyche. There is nothing but violence and suffering that I detest about Africans. And one can't blame the victim for suffering or being the scapegoat for misplaced enmity. Based upon some of your posts, an objective mind might come to the conclusion that you suffer from presuppositional bias- one that links hatred for people of specific skin colour or features, culture and/or language e.g. racism with African pride. In other words, my great love and understanding of Africans, my great passion to share my appreciation of our ancient roots and human biodiversity is being misunderstood by an emotionally vulnerable group who have inferiority complexes.
Ethnic conflict and differences exist everywhere. Skin color does not factor into this at all, as most ethnic conflict is between people of the SAME skin color. Hence you see many ethnic conflicts across Africa among people of the SAME complexion. That is a statement of fact, but in your contorted mind you cannot understand this, because ethnicity means skin color to you, but in reality it does not. None of this changes substantially the point being made, that black is a statement of skin color and not a description of ethnicity, culture, or nationality.
quote:Originally posted by Maahes: When I assert that no Peoples of the Black Rock have been hereditary chiefs or sovereign rulers in Dynastic Egypt I am confident that the majority of actual Egyptologists of every different bias will agree with me. When I assert that Nilotic ethnicities have always been present in Egypt and that they have indeed been foudners of whole generations of dynasties you choose to ignore that because I cannot describe these peoples as "black". Not because I detest black people. Not because I want to take anything away from black people- these are your own misconsceptions founded upon a degree of willful ignorance. Your definition of Black People belongs to Eurocentrics. My definition of Black People comes from my status as an indigenous Saharan. I know something about these respective groups. You may recognize traits like skin colour and facial features that you've been conditioned to accept as "Negroid". I do not accept this anectdated racial ideology. I don not beleive in the construct of "Negroe". I believe that there are many different ethnic types originally endemic to different widely separated regions of Africa. Peoples that you might recognize as "Black" in the USA are not black but brown and not because there is something wrong or inferior with being black mind you. We are not black anymore than you are. You think you are black because your masters told you that you were. You self identify with this blackness even while it is an over-generalization that does little to acknowledge other "black" peoples that live throughout the world. If we are to acknowledge the non-African "blacks" as members of our clique, then we can make a statement that the majority of Africa, Asia and OCeania were "black" originally.
Again you are trying to foist your own misunderstanding of the term black onto us and into a discussion about world culture and ethnicity which is completely on a tangent to the point being made. Black is a statement of skin color and does not attempt to describe all the various ethnic groups, nationalities and cultures found among black peoples around the world. You are confused because YOU believe skin color equals ethnicity, language or culture, when it doesn't.
quote:Originally posted by Maahes: My inclusion of India and "Negritos" in this thread is to throw light on the Afrocentrism - the biased world view of minds that attempt to overemphasize Africa just as Europeans overemphasized Europe in their worldview. There is more than just black and brown and white. History and human biodiversity cannot be defined in narrow racialist terminology any more than the evolutionary history of bananas or cattle. We are biological organisms. Science should not enable directional evolutionism and social darwinism. It should help enlighten the collective conscience recognize the global human condition. The universal human family. Not greater nor lesser than, just equal and as such significant for our own respective histories.
The inclusion of all these various peoples into your attempt to explain why skin color equals ethnicity and culture only further shows the knots into which you tie your own brain into. You are actually arguing with yourself because one side of your brain says skin color is not ethnicity, while the other says that it is. Therefore, blacks in Africa are not all black because they are of different ethnicities, yet blacks in Asia are blacks and African even though they do not live in the same continent or have the same culture, ethnicity or language. YOU need to resolve your own contradictions and stop throwing them on us.
Posts: 8897 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Given your linguistic folly, I have no reason to believe you.![[Confused]](confused.gif)
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
Are you for real??! LOL ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic