quote:

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Originally posted by Horemheb:
Exactly, only 75% of Africans are Negroes and according to UN demographic stats the vast majority live south of the desert. Diop comes into question when he starts talking about people hiding facts. He knew better than that and so do we.

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When I use a word,
'Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I chose it to mean-nothing less and nothing more.

The question is, 'said Alice,'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

The question is, 'said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be mastered-that all.'
-Lewis Carroll

Every definition is dangerous.
-Erasmus

quote:

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Originally posted by sneuropa:
Ok, Supercar,

What I'm saying is that you can't say that all Africans are Negroes. Many are obviously far closer related to peoples of Europe and Asia than to Bantu types. Would you call someone living in Spain or Yemen a Negro? What about someone in Africa that looked just like them- say a Morrocan or an Egyptian? There are many different races in Africa- of course they've all mixed, and so have Asians and Europeans and Africans mixed in the Mediterranean and in Egypt.

From the rock paintings in the Sahara we can see Negroes. So from other art and of cause skeletal remains etc we can tell that from the most ancient times the Nile was inhabited by Negroes. I'm not saying that Negroes never started Egyptian Civilisation- I reckon they probably did. But other than saying Egyptians have Negro blood, i don't see haw we can really believe Egyptians are Negroes; many look like people outside of Egypt and they are not Negro. Egyptians today, may have the blood of their Negro ancestors- but I may have Negro ancestors at some distant past but I'm "mZungu sana" white.

And so not all KMT were Negroes- many probably were pale skinned, and Euro-Semitic type looking. Others undoubtably were black and Negro. Mixed races and many races.

regards,
sneuropa

[This message has been edited by sneuropa (edited 24 September 2004).]

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Sneuropa, the one naive enough to think that Africans are or were a homogeneous group, is you. You claimed that only Bantu constitute Negroes, and called West Africans and central Africans, Bantus. This notwithstanding, that West Africa is merely a geographical term, not a euphemism for "Negro" or "Bantu", nor are they homogenous societies. This is indeed related to the flip-flopping techniques of convenience that Rasol spoke of earlier, when dealing with Sub-Saharan Africa. You talk of Moroccans and Egyptians in generalized tone, as if they constitute homogeneous societies, which are void of "Negroes" native to those regions. You go on to make yet another fallacious insinuation that, the fact that Egyptian society is heterogeneous, hasn’t already been acknowledged here. All posters here, who acknowledge the reality of black African foundations of the Nile valley civilizations, have also acknowledged the heterogeneity of Ancient Egypt at some point in time, in the pre-dynastic states. Foreigners did come to Egypt in Ancient times, as they do in modern times; so obviously, there are going to be people who don't look like "Negroes". But the frequency of foreign settlements in contemporary Egypt, is much greater than it was in the pre-dynastic times, and perhaps even early dynastic Egypt. Of importance, isn't whether there were heterogeneous societies in Lower Egypt in the Ancient times, but where the civilization largely developed. All available evidence points to cultural development progression from the South to the North, and not the other way around. The tropical African types, or Negroes, were the predominant group of the Upper or Southern portion of Egypt. This is still the case today, but because of political alienation, they have become relatively low key, compared to populations of the understandably cosmopolitan cities of middle to Lower Egypt. Egypt isn't unique as far as having cosmopolitan cities. Other African nations, like many other parts of world, have such cities. Being heterogeneous, has no bearing on Black African roots of the Ancient Egyptian culture that formed the basis for the civilization. You might want to actually go to various parts of Africa, before you make uninformed, and unscientific generalizations of Africa. Fiction writing on African history, isn't going to advance your knowledge of Africa, nor will it help you in public debates!

When I use a word,
'Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I chose it to mean-nothing less and nothing more. - Lewis Carol.

Marcus Garvey
January 16, 1923

The New York World under date of January 15, 1923, published a statement of Drs. Clark Wissler and Franz Boaz (the latter a professor of anthropology at Columbia University), confirming the statement of the French that Moroccan and Algerian troops used in the invasion of Germany were not to be classified as Negroes, because they were not of that race. How the French and these gentlemen arrive at such a conclusion is marvelous to understand.

The—custom of these anthropologists is whenever a black man, whether he be Moroccan, Algerian, Senegalese or what not, accomplishes anything of importance, he is no longer a Negro. The question, therefore, suggests itself, "Who and what is a Negro?" The answer is, "A Negro is a person of dark complexion or race, who has not accomplished anything and to whom others are not obligated for any useful service." If the Moroccans and Algerians were not needed by France at this time to augment their occupation of Germany or to save the French nation from extinction, they would have been called Negroes as usual, but now that they have rendered themselves useful to the higher appreciation of France they are no longer members of the Negro race, but can be classified among a higher type as made out by the two professors above mentioned......
Let us not be flattered by white anthropologists and statesmen who, from time to time, because of our success here, there or anywhere, try to make out that we are no longer members of the Negro race. If we were Negroes when we were down under the heel of oppression then we will be Negroes when we are up and liberated from such thraldom.

Professor George A. Kersnor, head of the Harvard—Boston expedition to the Egyptian Soudan, returned to America early in 1923 and, after de—scribing the genius of the Ethiopians and their high culture during the period of 750 B. C. to 350 A. D. in middle Africa, he declared the Ethiopians were not African Negroes. He described them as dark colored races ... showing a mixture of black blood. Imagine a dark colored man in middle Africa being anything else but a Negro. Some white men, whether they be professors or what not, certainly have a wide stretch of imagination.

He also bore the title Kins son of Kush.

quote:

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Originally posted by ausar:
Kendo,the name of the mummy is right on the link.

He also bore the title Kins son of Kush.

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ausar,
Where did you get the title son of Kush from?

How is the son of Kush used?
1) Kush as a country?
2) Kush as an actual ancestor?

He got that title from the pharaoh during the Eighteenth dyansty it became an administrative position.

[How is the son of Kush used?
1) Kush as a country?
2) Kush as an actual ancestor?]

Kings son of Kush was used as an administrative comment to keep watch over territories that Egyptians expanded to during the New Kingdom period. Since the New Kingdom Egyptian territory was expanded from Syria to the Fourth Cataract area in Lower Nubia.

Here's more details on the mummy and the titale King's Son of Kush:

http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/hierakonpolis/field/maiherpa.html

quote:

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Originally posted by ausar:
http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/hierakonpolis/field/maiherpa.html
A possible explanation for this is that A-Group society was so similar to that in predynastic Upper Egypt that there was a kind of equilibrium between them.

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So, what are the known distinctions between Ta Seti (A Group) and Pre Dynastic Kemet, besides the geographic (?), bearing in mind that the earliest known iconography of the crown of Ta Shemau (Upper Egypt) is found in Ta Seti?

* what are the known, linguistic and cultural differences between these two regions at this time, if any?

* assumming there were political differences why does the conical crown appear in both regions?

Early Egyptologist like Walter Emery[fan of the dyanstic race] argued that A-group only derived from the inspiration of Upper Egyptians. The reverse is true with the A-Group being the mother of Upper Egypt and the crown motif appears in Lower Nubia before it does in Upper Egypt. Ethnically these populations were not much different from each other,so it appears they shared a common culture.

Unification started around Naqada III.

In 1944 (Frank Snowden) became the first black student to graduate from Harvard University with a Ph.D. in classics. Posts for black academics were all but nonexistent in the north, but Snowden eventually landed a position at Howard University in Washington, D.C. In the decades that followed he rummaged through museums and libraries "from Copenhagen to the African desert," as he puts it, hunting down early images and descriptions of blacks. Wedged somewhere between Herodotus and Livy on the sagging bookshelves in his study, two slim but highly regarded volumes summarize what he found. "The Greco-Roman view of blacks," he writes in Blacks in Antiquity, "was a fundamental rejection of color as a criterion for evaluating men." In Before Color Prejudice he goes further, mentioning "a clear-cut respect among Mediterranean peoples for Ethiopians and their way of life." Snowden's triumph in these stubborn, single-minded books is to make racism seem less an instinct than an aberration. Like some Renaissance painters, he offers a glimpse of a future ennobled by the past: civil, cultured, color-blind.

It is a vision of paradise that, for many Americans, has long been out of focus. During the years that Snowden was collecting pictures of friezes, dreams of integration gave way to Black Nationalism, Black Power and Afrocentrism. By 1983, when Before Color Prejudice was published, the thought of looking to the classics for racial guidance would have struck many as laughable, if not insulting. Reared in African-American studies programs, taught to intone the seven principles of Kwanzaa, ignited by the writings of Malcolm X or Louis A. Farrakhan, today's students would rather celebrate race than ignore it. To them, Snowden's neoclassical paradise is a deeply Eurocentric place. In the five decades since he graduated from Harvard, no other black classicist has earned his Ph.D. there.

Burkhard Bilger implies that Loring Brace is the only physical anthropologist to have tried "to put Egyptian ancestry on firmer footing." That, of course, is far from the case. In the past decades there have been others, notably Shomarka O.Y. Keita, now at the University of Oxford. Keita sees the population of pre-Dynastic Upper Egypt as essentially related to the peoples of Nubia and to "elongated Africans," whereas he sees that of Lower Egypt as North Africans, similar to the population of the Maghreb. That commonsense view is the position of most Egyptologists, who, unlike Brace, do not see the Egyptians as sui generis or unrelated to surrounding peoples, and who have long since rejected the hypothesis of an extra-African "dynastic race."

The focus of the article, however, is Frank Snowden, and my views on him play a significant part. I think therefore that to make my position clear, I should quote what I wrote about him in volume one of Black Athena (pages 434-5):

A very small number of black academics, notably Frank Snowden, the leading professor in the field at the chief black university, Howard, have been successful within Classics. They have concentrated on gleaning what little credit the Aryan model allows to Blacks while accepting both its prohibitions: the nonacceptance of a black component of Egyptian culture, and the denial of the Afroasiatic formative elements in Greek civilization.
Ten years and many polemics later, I still hold to that assessment.

quote:

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What Brace also forgets is that by denying a phenotypical relationship between Egyptians and Sub-Saharan Africans, he was also denying that Northeastern Africans were black! Which is rediculous to *ANYONE* who has seen a Somalian or Ethiopian in person

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Recalling Brace comments on European alleged Neanderthal ancestry:

quote:

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The Beginning of Modern Humans" (editorial, June 15) states that a newly discovered Ethiopian skull more than 150,000 years old is "recognizably modern to paleoanthropologists but not to most of the rest of us." It does not look recognizably modern to _this_ paleoanthropologist, and it is a much less probable candidate for being the ancestor of the modern European human than the European Neanderthal is.

I have superimposed the outlines of the crania being compared. Statistical analysis of a battery of measurements shows that the European Neanderthal is more closely related to modern Europeans than to anyone else in the world. This can only be because there is an actual genetic relationship.

That splendid Ethiopian specimen is a good candidate for being an ancestor of Ethiopians, but not Europeans.

C. Loring Brace

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Using his flawed methodologies, Brace could well argue that only short ('Pigmy') type Africans qualify as true Africans as all other groups are more similar in height to Eurasian populations.

To relate this to Brace's study of the AE, how many African ethnic groups are the AE required to show skeletal affinity with (Somali, Ahmhara, Nubian, Oramo, Beja, Fulani, etc.), before you accept that this constitutes and African affinity?

Richard Poe on Brace Loring.

REGARDING GENETIC AND CRANIOMETRIC STUDIES: As you note, genetic studies tend to back up the findings of the older craniometric studies. They also tend to duplicate the same terminological confusion as did the craniometric studies.

The results of all such studies are dictated by the choice of samples, and by the decision of the researchers – often quite arbitrary or ill-considered – on how to classify or label those samples.

For instance, a 1996 study by Loring Brace, et. al. supposedly made a definitive classification of the ancient Egyptians according to computerized statistical analysis of skull measurements. Like the genetic study you cite, Loring’s study found that Egyptians did not cluster with "sub-Saharan" Africans.

This is not surprising. The people whom Loring selected to represent "sub-Saharan Africans" all lived in Gabon, Benin and Tanzania – places which Loring appears to have selected specifically because their inhabitants meet the skull measurements commonly associated with the "true Negro."

Well, you don’t need high-tech computerized analysis to figure out that people in Egypt do not look like people in Tanzania. Thus their skull measurements will be different and so will their genes.

However, physical or genetic identification with West Africans is not the ordinary criterion by which membership in the "black" race is adjudged in America.

Consider the sad fate of Ethiopian immigrant Mulugeta Seraw, beaten to death by Nazi skinheads in Portland, Oregon in 1988. Seraw’s attackers called him a "n-gg-r." Yet, like most Ethiopians, he was anthropologically "caucasoid" with regard to his facial features or skull type. No doubt, he would have clustered much closer to the Egyptians in any genetic survey than would people from Tanzania.

Had Loring Brace used people such as Mulugeta Seraw to represent "sub-Saharan Africans," he would have achieved a much different result.

In fact, Brace’s computer program showed that pre-dynastic Egyptians – that is, the older, original or founding race of Egypt – clustered with Nubia, India and Somalia – and somewhat more distantly with North Africa and Europe.

In other words, "Africa" or "sub-Saharan" Africa appeared in one cluster while India, Nubia, Somalia, Egypt, North Africa and Europe all appeared together in another, entirely different and unrelated cluster.

What this means is that Brace and his colleagues – whether deliberately or not – had chosen their samples and set their definitions in such a way as to exclude not only Egypt, but also Nubia and Somalia from the "African" cluster.

Unless you are prepared to agree that Nubians and Somalis do not qualify as black Africans, this clustering reveals a fatal flaw in Brace’s method. The only way he was able to exclude Egyptians from the African cluster was by rigging the experimental parameters in such a way as to exclude virtually all other northeastern African peoples as well.

It is in such ways that craniometric and genetic studies alike can be massaged to yield the sorts of results that researchers "want" – whether consciously or unconsciously – due to preexisting bias.

My problem with Brace clusters & clines goes to the very core of the 'racial science' terminological shell games that began when Johann Friedrich Blumenbach first coined the term Caucasian in the 1700's.

It's very important to know the origin of these terms and their shifting meanings in order to understand how fundamentally wrong the concepts associated with them are.

Blumenbach believed human beings originated in Eurasia. Specifically Caucasia. (roughy southern Russia, Northern Turkey and Iran - a term derived from Aryan) So, it is an an ethno-geographic term, implying a common stock of people originating in a specific region of the world.

The theory was, that this is where the white peoples of Europe come from. Many other peoples: 'caucasoids' are supposed to be descendant...derivitive, of the original European stock.

This is important to understand because the original geographic foundation of the idea of caucasian has been falsified, yet the term lives on, under different rationale.

Carleton Coon deserves dubious credit for expanding this concept to include the so called Medit. Race (Races of Europe). The basic premise is to identify a phenotypical similarity in a given population to the peoples of Europe, and then honor them with the dubious badge of Caucasoid (essentially...European-like) status.

So, under Carletoon Coonian anthropology we end up with Black African caucasoids. Black South Asian Caucasoids. Black Australian, Northern Chinese, and Mayan Indian caucasoids, all predicated on what essentially amounts to run amok European narcisism and ego tripping masquerading as science.

Brace has replaced the blatant race labeling with clusters and clines but essentially repeats the exact fallacy, as many have noted by now.

From Piltdown man to clusters & clines, its clear that some European scientists can not fac the truth that human beings do not originate in Europe, and therefore human physical variation and genetic inheritance (ethnicity) are also not centered upon Europe.

As for the AE, they have a related physical appearance, genetic inheritance, and cultural orientation with many other related African peoples, because that is what they were - African peoples. (caucasoid, clusters and clines, contrivances notwithstanding)

quote:

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Originally posted by rasol:
More opinions on issues pertinent to this thread:

Richard Poe on Brace Loring.

REGARDING GENETIC AND CRANIOMETRIC STUDIES: As you note, genetic studies tend to back up the findings of the older craniometric studies. They also tend to duplicate the same terminological confusion as did the craniometric studies.

The results of all such studies are dictated by the choice of samples, and by the decision of the researchers – often quite arbitrary or ill-considered – on how to classify or label those samples.

For instance, [b]a 1996 study by Loring Brace, et. al. supposedly made a definitive classification of the ancient Egyptians according to computerized statistical analysis of skull measurements. Like the genetic study you cite, Loring’s study found that Egyptians did not cluster with "sub-Saharan" Africans.

This is not surprising. The people whom Loring selected to represent "sub-Saharan Africans" all lived in Gabon, Benin and Tanzania – places which Loring appears to have selected specifically because their inhabitants meet the skull measurements commonly associated with the "true Negro."

Well, you don’t need high-tech computerized analysis to figure out that people in Egypt do not look like people in Tanzania. Thus their skull measurements will be different and so will their genes.

However, physical or genetic identification with West Africans is not the ordinary criterion by which membership in the "black" race is adjudged in America.

Consider the sad fate of Ethiopian immigrant Mulugeta Seraw, beaten to death by Nazi skinheads in Portland, Oregon in 1988. Seraw’s attackers called him a "n-gg-r." Yet, like most Ethiopians, he was anthropologically "caucasoid" with regard to his facial features or skull type. No doubt, he would have clustered much closer to the Egyptians in any genetic survey than would people from Tanzania.

Had Loring Brace used people such as Mulugeta Seraw to represent "sub-Saharan Africans," he would have achieved a much different result.

In fact, Brace’s computer program showed that pre-dynastic Egyptians – that is, the older, original or founding race of Egypt – clustered with Nubia, India and Somalia – and somewhat more distantly with North Africa and Europe.

In other words, "Africa" or "sub-Saharan" Africa appeared in one cluster while India, Nubia, Somalia, Egypt, North Africa and Europe all appeared together in another, entirely different and unrelated cluster.

What this means is that Brace and his colleagues – whether deliberately or not – had chosen their samples and set their definitions in such a way as to exclude not only Egypt, but also Nubia and Somalia from the "African" cluster.

Unless you are prepared to agree that Nubians and Somalis do not qualify as black Africans, this clustering reveals a fatal flaw in Brace’s method. The only way he was able to exclude Egyptians from the African cluster was by rigging the experimental parameters in such a way as to exclude virtually all other northeastern African peoples as well.

It is in such ways that craniometric and genetic studies alike can be massaged to yield the sorts of results that researchers "want" – whether consciously or unconsciously – due to preexisting bias.

My problem with Brace clusters & clines goes to the very core of the 'racial science' terminalogical shell games that began when Johann Friedrich Blumenbach first coined the term Caucasian in the 1700's.

It's very important to know the origin of these terms and their shifting meanings in order to understand how fundamentally wrong the concepts associated with them are.

Blumenbach believed human beings originated in Eurasia. Specifically Caucasia. (roughy southern Russia, Northern Turkey and Iran - a term derived from Aryan) So, it is an an ethno-geographic term, implying a common stock of people originating in a specific region of the world.

The theory was, that this is where the white peoples of Europe come from. Many other peoples: 'caucasoids' are supposed to be descendant...derivitive, of the original European stock.

This is important to understand because the original geographic foundation of the idea of caucasian has been falsified, yet the term lives on, under different rationale.

Carleton Coon deserves dubious credit for expanding this concept to include the so called Medit. Race (Races of Europe). The basic premise is to identify a phenotypical similarity in a given population to the peoples of Europe, and then honor them with the dubious badge of Caucasoid (essentially...European-like) status.

So, under Carletoon Coonian anthropology we end up with Black African caucasoids. Black South Asian Caucasoids. Black Australian, Northern Chinese, and Mayan Indian caucasoids, all predicated on what essentially amounts to run amok European narcisism and ego tripping masquerading as science.

Brace has replaced the blatant race labeling with clusters and clines but essentially repeats the exact fallacy, as many have noted by now.

From Piltdown man to clusters & clines, its clear that some European scientists can not fac the truth that human beings do not originate in Europe, and therefore human physical variation and genetic inheritance (ethnicity) are also not centered upon Europe.

As for the AE, they have a related physical appearance, genetic inheritance, and cultural orientation with many other related African peoples, because that is what they were - African peoples. (caucasoid, clusters and clines, contrivances notwithstanding)

[This message has been edited by rasol (edited 21 October 2004).][/B]

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quote:

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Originally posted by Horemheb:
Exactly, only 75% of Africans are Negroes and according to UN demographic stats the vast majority live south of the desert. Diop comes into question when he starts talking about people hiding facts. He knew better than that and so do we.

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Most of Africa's population lives south of the Sahara, so noting that most Blacks live south of the Sahara seems trite.

However, lets move on to more interesting topics, some comments from Somalionline:

* We are africans we are blacks. The only commonality we share with arabs is religion.
Our aqualine features and relatively softer hair does not in anyway make us look less africanish or more arabic. We still people of dark complexion ..hence Africans and proud we shall

* you checked any map lately the answer to your question should be easy. But some people have the tendency to confuse us with arabs, cuz of culture, reason being we share religion and long tradition of trade with arabs. Since "most" of our culture is from the quran and islam teachings, we happen to have a lot incommon with arabs, but that don't make us any less or more african. We are Africans and that's just a fact, i am not here to prove anything to anyone but who ever wants concrete evidence need to go and do research on history books and let us know your findings. peace

* Hello everyone
I think that Somali's are considered black Africans. Blacks just like whites have a wide range of groups that have distinct characteristics and/or features exclusive for them. Blacks are subdivided into different groups and *Cushitic* is one of those groups (Somalis, Ethiopians etc.) are East Africans different than brothers from West Africa but still Africans with an Esat African features. My conclusion is we are neither arabs nor whites we are black Africans and should be proud of it.

* Our ego says we are not Africans cause somehow our morphologies are a bit different from others. We are a proud race and because we are just that, we cant associate ourselves with the underdeveloped world because we think we are better and perhaps more developed but reality says otherwise and so we still Africans, underdeveloped and our geographical location is known as the Horn of Africa.
A lot of the Somalis I have encountered would like to be associated with the Arab race but that too would not hold water and would be unbecoming as we are totally different. What brings us together is the Moslem faith period.
Among ancient Egyptians, Somalia was known as the Land of Punt and was renowned for its frankincense and myrrh, which it still exports. Descriptions of the northern inhabitants of the region are found in The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, an A.D. 60 Greek guide to sailors, and in Ptolemy's Geography, compiled between the 2nd and 5th centuries; contact with Egyptian, Phoenician, Persian, Greek, and Roman traders dates to this time. In the 10th century, Chinese merchants returned home from Somalia with giraffes, leopards, and tortoises for the imperial menagerie. By this time, Arab and Persian merchants had established towns along the coasts of the northern plains and the Indian Ocean.

In a nutshell, whatever our desires we belong to the African continent and that makes us Africans and most of all Somalis.

Presidents of Somalia, Uganda, Kenya and Burundi