quote:The Hpal (np3,592) mitochondrial DNA marker is a selectively neutral mutation that is very common in sub-Saharan Africa and is almost absent in North African and European populations. It has been screened in a Meroitic sample from ancient Nubia through PCR amplification and posterior enzyme digestion, to evaluate the sub-Saharan genetic influences in this population. From 29 individuals analysed, only 15 yield positive amplifications, four of them (26.7%) displaying the sub-Saharan African marker. Hpa 1 (np3,592) marker is present in the sub-Saharan populations at a frequency of 68.7 on average. Thus, the frequency of genes from this area in the Merotic Nubian population can be estimated at around 39% (with a confidence interval from 22% to 55%). The frequency obtained fits in a south-north decreasing gradient of Hpa I (np3,592) along the African continent. Results suggest that morphological changes observed historically in the Nubian populations are more likely to be due to the existence of south-north gene flow through the Nile Valley than to in-situ evolution.
I don't get it. Why do all artistic depictions of these Sudanic peoples show them as black, but their genetics show them to be only distantly related to sub-Saharans?
Posts: 7069 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
This study says nothing about skin color and only says that this particular gene was not found among Meroites that was found in other African populations. NOTHING in this study suggests that this finding means that the Kushites were not black. YOU said that. It also says
quote: Results suggest that morphological changes observed historically in the Nubian populations are more likely to be due to the existence of south-north gene flow through the Nile Valley than to in-situ evolution.
Which means what?
That Africans from the SOUTH of Meroe have been impacting on the genetic development of these African populations. Whether these genes are LIKE other Africans in other parts of the continent is irrelevant. They are STILL African genes from IN AFRICA, meaning that ONE GENE does not DETERMINE Africanness or BLACKNESS.
Posts: 8889 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Tyrannosaurus: I don't get it. Why do all artistic depictions of these Sudanic peoples show them as black, but their genetics show them to be only distantly related to sub-Saharans?
Maybe these people on the wall were not the so-called kushites, or maybe the skeleton they took the above sample from was not of a Meroite. Alot of work in egyptology seems to be based on guessing. This can be attested by the fact that everytime they find a statue in egypt with a full lip or broad nosed individual it's directly being classified as a nubian, and most time with no further information to support it other than facial features.
Posts: 1420 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Doug M: This study says nothing about skin color and only says that this particular gene was not found among Meroites that was found in other African populations.
Actually it says that it was indeed found among them but not as high frequency as in "sub-saharan" Africa, 39% versus 68.7%.
Posts: 1420 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
^^Not to mention that the conductors of the tests presumably got their results from 'ancient' skeletal bones or specimens(?) without likely DNA degradation, which in itself should raise a red flag.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
^ Truth, one of the biggest difficulties with recovering ancient DNA is likely contamination.
In the famous case where it was thought that Dynosaur DNA was recovered from the blood of a 100+ million year old insect preserved in amber [which provided the hypothesis basis for the film, Jurassic Park], it was later determined that the DNA was from modern living organism due to subsequent contamination.
Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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I want to know what sub-Saharan populations they tested (as well as what other mtDNA markers are found in sub-Saharan Africa---maybe Kushites had a high number of some other sub-Saharan marker).
Sorry for being stupid again.
BTW, what's this PN2 clade everyone's talking about?
Posts: 7069 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004
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BTW, what's this PN2 clade everyone's talking about?
Your first time hearing about the PN2 clade [mentioned all the time here]. How long have you been visiting this forum, or is the 'registered' date an aberration?
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
^^The point is not so much whether specific genetic or chromosomal markers are SUB SAHARAN or not, it is whether it is AFRICAN IN ORIGIN. There is no doubt that there are many varieties of clades and other genetic signatures that are found throughout Africa. NONE of them indicate BLACKNESS as opposed to AFRICANNESS, meaning a population whose origins are IN AFRICA. There is NOTHING that you can glean from such studies that says that these people were NOT African and therefore NOT BLACK.
Posts: 8889 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
And one has be careful about the careless and lazy Eurocentric usage of "Sub-Saharan" Africa when such a geographically vast and genetically diverse area is covered. The Xhosas of South Africa are sub-Saharan but so are the Wolof of the Senegambia. The Twa are sub-Saharan but so too are the Dinka.
The question is: when the Eurocentric researchers talk about "Sub-Saharan" Africa one must immediately turn a critical eye on their sampling methods. How extensive and normal are their sampling techniques?
Posts: 5492 | Registered: Nov 2004
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^ Again, how many times must it be repeated (and in this forum of all places) that blacks being limited to "Sub-Sahara" is one of the biggest fallacies and misconeptions Eurocentrics have created.
And no offense T-rex, but what Supe said about you is what I've been saying for the past several months-- that you've been acting like you're new here. Or are you not the same person as Underpantsman??
PN2 clade is the Y-chromosomal clade associated with indigenous Africans after the great Out-of-African human migrations into Eurasia and is chracterized by the various E derived haplogroups.
The very topic question of this thread is all too silly and ridiculous since even the most racist whites are all pretty adamant about Kushite (Nubians) being black. And for obvious reasons.
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
I may sound stupid, but I don't know too much about geography. Can someone explain what Sub-Saharan is all about?
Posts: 603 | From: Mobile, Alabama | Registered: Jan 2007
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2) All countries with significant geography extending south of the sahara desert.
3) Apartheid ideology in Eurocentric political geography that attempts to limit that which is native to Africa to entity sub-sahara. This implicitly allows Eurocentrists to imply that anything of value North of said entity implicitly - defines something "European".
This ideology is easily extensible to the idea that anything found in "Sub-sahara" that is of value comes from North AFrica, which if you follow the insane logic of this discourse means that nothing of value can be claimed to be of sub-saharan provenance....and therefore, everything of value in African history actually belongs to Europe.
See Hamite Hypothesis [Seligman]:
The civilizations of Africa are the civilizations of the Hamites. Its history is the record of these people and of their interaction with the two African stocks, the Negro and the Bushman the incoming Hamites were pastoral Europeans, arriving in wave after wave, better armed as well as quicker witted than the dark agricultural negroes."Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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quote:This implicitly allows Eurocentrists to imply that anything of value North of said entity implicitly - defines something "European".
Northern Africans have been linked for thousand years with Europeans, even genetics indicate strong relationships with Europeans, it is clear that they are native Africans, but it would be naive to ignore interactions between North Africans and European(sexually and culturally). But at the end of the day there is a clear will among "Westerners" to separate leucoderm Africans from their darker counterparts...I don't think leucoderm North Africans are really annoyed by that(I lived with them)...I'm familiar with them...some might even be happy to be associated with European leucoderms...but that's the stupidity of human beings who believe in race...
Posts: 919 | From: AFRICA | Registered: Apr 2007
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posted
Gene flow as a product of geographical promixity and ultimately resource-driven bidirectional movement of people, is no excuse to do what Rasol just mentioned:
This implicitly allows Eurocentrists to imply that anything of value North of said entity implicitly - defines something "European".
^To do so, one can perhaps make an argument along similar lines about Southern Europe being more 'African'.
There is no biological break between North Africa and regions beyond it. Granted the aridity of the Sahara, it has never prevented human interaction between those situated in coastal Northern parts of the continent and the more inward regions; in fact, coastal North Afrcans were earliest trading partners of Sahelian-Sub-Saharan Africans. Coastal North Africa is objectively speaking, a geographical designation; it isn't Europe, nor is it a landmass of its own, sans the rest of Africa. Plus, whatever prejudices they feel towards other Africans southward and towards their neighbours northward, even if to a varying degree, coastal north Africans do appear to have a strong sense of an original/indigenous cultural and ethnic identity [the Tamazight one], which they make unmistakably clear, is not to be confused with that of their European neighbours.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Mystery Solver: Gene flow as a product of geographical promixity and ultimately resource-driven bidirectional movement of people, is no excuse to do what Rasol just mentioned:
This implicitly allows Eurocentrists to imply that anything of value North of said entity implicitly - defines something "European".
The very essence of Euro - centrism - is defining the world in terms of supposed relatedness to a Eurocentric paradigm.
Europe provably has nothing do with with Nile Valley Civilisation.
The Eurocentric discourse seeks to work around this difficulty with buzzwords such as:
- sub-sahara
- caucasoid
- negroid
- middle [and near] eastern
In this paradigm the Nile Valley is to be delivered unto Europe by way of caucasoid, middle east, and so justaposed to negroid sub-sahara.
Africanists over time come to realise that it is not enough to take this paradigm and argue with it, [ie negroid vs. caucasoid] on it's own terms.
When you do this, you have already lost and they have already won for you accepted their racist and Eurocentric world view, which their terminology exists soley to further.
We have to see thru the layer upon layer of falsehood and develope a new discourse.
Specifically we can start by recognising the following
- All of Africa - is African, including the Nile Valley, the Sahara and the Maghreb.
- The original population of Africa, including North Africa was Black.
- There are no *caucasians* native to North Africa.
Caucasians are properly ethnic natives of the Caucasus and do not constitute a mythical race called Caucasoid - propaganda ideology not withstanding.
Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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quote:This implicitly allows Eurocentrists to imply that anything of value North of said entity implicitly - defines something "European".
Northern Africans have been linked for thousand years with Europeans, even genetics indicate strong relationships with Europeans, it is clear that they are native Africans, but it would be naive to ignore interactions between North Africans and European(sexually and culturally). But at the end of the day there is a clear will among "Westerners" to separate leucoderm Africans from their darker counterparts...I don't think leucoderm North Africans are really annoyed by that(I lived with them)...I'm familiar with them...some might even be happy to be associated with European leucoderms...but that's the stupidity of human beings who believe in race...
But you are missing the point. Leucoderm Africans are the MINORITY in North Africa, even today. Only a LIMITED definition of North Africa which focuses on the COASTAL AREAS would produce such nonsense. North Africa stretches from the coast to Southern Chad and includes Niger, Chad, Mauretania, Sudan, Mali, Senegal, Eritrea, parts of Ethiopia and Nigeria. The idea that North AFrica is LIMITED to the extreme coastal areas is a PERFECT EXAMPLE of the Eurocentric white nonsense that we are talking about. This SAME NONSENSE ignores the fact that even these NORTHERN MOST countries of Africa have SIGNIFIGANT BLACK populations in their SOUTHERN REGIONS. And if you only split Africa into North and South with no Central, then obviously even MORE countries would be counted among those of North Africa.
To PRETEND that Libya, Algeria or Egypt is ONLY made up of LEUCODERMS or that LEUCODERMS are MORE INDIGENOUS than the BLACKS is EXACTLY THE PROBLEM. Leucoderm North Africans are NO MORE INDIGENOUS to North Africa than the BLACKS. In fact the FURTHER BACK you go in history the MORE BLACKS you will find. North African history and INDIGENOUS PEOPLE do NOT START IN THE MEDITERRANEAN, EUROPE OR WEST ASIA. They START IN East Africa and the SAHARA. Anyone trying to PUSH some NONSENSE that North African populations started SOMEWHERE OTHER than Africa itself is practicing ABSOLUTE NONSENSE. And ANYONE who suggest that LEUCODERM traits ORIGINATED among AFRICAN indigenous people is LIKEWISE PRODUCING NONSENSE. That sort of nonsense which says that BLACK Africans are FORIEGN to north Africa and therefore NOT North Africans is the BIGGEST BUNCH OF NONSENSE I have ever heard in my whole life. It is the same attitude that makes Mexicans FOREIGNERS in the U.S...... how ridiculous is that.
Posts: 8889 | Registered: May 2005
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^To do so, one can perhaps make an argument along similar lines about Southern Europe being more 'African'. In fact, coastal North Afrcans were earliest trading partners of Sahelian-Sub-Saharan Africans. Coastal North Africa is objectively speaking, a geographical designation; it isn't Europe, nor is it a landmass of its own, sans the rest of Africa. Plus, whatever prejudices they feel towards other Africans southward and towards their neighbours northward, even if to a varying degree, coastal north Africans do appear to have a strong sense of an original/indigenous cultural and ethnic identity [the Tamazight one], which they make unmistakably clear, is not to be confused with that of their European neighbours.
There is a Spanish saying that "Africa begins in the Pyreenees" due to the Muslim occupations but there is a big difference between the European and North AMerican version of history, and as an extent, group! Europeans see people from North Africa as Africans (albeit magrebin) because that is what they are. They are considered like Mexicans in the US. France is an extreme example but the suburbs are where the magrehin live in public housing. They are lumped with the East Africans and other French West Africans.
A Libyan or Algerian who comes to the US is an African American (sounds odd, doesn't it!) because of the hegemony that has twisted words and ideas into an ungodly alliance of power and destruction that will last for centuries.
Posts: 1290 | From: usa | Registered: May 2005
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posted
Actually the situation between Mexicans in the U.S and Americans is different than Magrebians in Europe. The difference is that the Mexicans ARE INDIGENOUS to the southwestern regions of the U.S. and the Magrebians are NOT indigenous to Europe. Two fundamentally different things all together. The analogy was being applied to the Africans from the Southern regions of Algeria, Libya, Egypt, etc, who are treated as if they are FOREIGN to North Africa when they ARE the indigenous people of North Africa. Just as the Mexicans ARE the indigenous people of the SouthWestern U.S.
Posts: 8889 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Doug M: Magrebians are NOT indigenous to Europe
So if they are not indigenous to europe and apparently from your previous posts not indigenious to africa either, then explain where these species dropped from?
Posts: 1420 | Registered: May 2005
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We differ in semantics in that the same area you would call SW US in this case, I would call the former Northern Mexico. I do not want to confuse the nation state of Mexico with the tribal groups now coming presently from Oaxaco (Zapotec) and Chiapas, Guatemala, Belize or Honduras. Tarahumara are truly indigenous to present parts of Arizona and their cousins in Mexico whereas Zapotec (Oaxacaquenos and others) are indiginous to their present state in Mexico, and they migrate to US in search of jobs.
I was only looking at the "foreigners" as external to the present nation state apparatus therfore immigrants (legal or otherwise)!
Thanks
Posts: 1290 | From: usa | Registered: May 2005
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We differ in semantics in that the same area you would call SW US in this case, I would call the former Northern Mexico. I do not want to confuse the nation state of Mexico with the tribal groups now coming presently from Oaxaco (Zapotec) and Chiapas, Guatemala, Belize or Honduras. Tarahumara are truly indigenous to present parts of Arizona and their cousins in Mexico whereas Zapotec (Oaxacaquenos and others) are indiginous to their present state in Mexico, and they migrate to US in search of jobs.
I was only looking at the "foreigners" as external to the present nation state apparatus therfore immigrants (legal or otherwise)!
Thanks
Posts: 1290 | From: usa | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Doug M: Magrebians are NOT indigenous to Europe
So if they are not indigenous to europe and apparently from your previous posts not indigenious to africa either, then explain where these species dropped from?
What are you talking about? Who are you talking about? One has nothing to do with another. Maghrebians are not Europeans. Maghrebians are Africans who live in the Maghreb. All Maghrebians are NOT WHITE. What I said earlier is that white skin is not INDIGENOUS to Africa, but Africans with white skin are STILL African because they do have African ancestry. However, what I was pointing out is that WHITE SKIN is not the ONLY feature of North Africa and does not DISTINGUISH North Africans from OTHER Africans as there are MANY North Africans and Maghrebians who are black. The ISSSUE becomes those who focus SOLELY on the white skinned Africans to the EXCLUSION of the blacks in order to create a FAKE dichotomy between WHITE North Africans and BLACK north Africans as if BLACKS have not ALWAYS BEEN IN NORTH AFRICA and are not INDIGENOUS TO NORTH AFRICA and ANCESTRAL to the POPULATIONS OF NORTH AFRICA. The fact that there ARE so many Maghrebians and other Africans in Europe shows the powerful draw of Europe for people in Africa searching for a better life. It is not a problem as this interaction has been going on forever. That does not change the fact that many North Africans have been and will always be black.
Posts: 8889 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
^ Right-- both to Doug as well as Rasol and Mystery.
But the topic of this thread was not about the Maghreb (northwest Africa), but about Kush! Non-black Kushites?? Never heard of such a thing! I dare someone to go to any of the white supremacist sites and tell them that, and even they would probably laugh! Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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Plenty of people have done it. I've been to several and yes they do laugh. I just laugh to myself inside. They just don't know how stupid they look. It's so ridiculous.
Posts: 603 | From: Mobile, Alabama | Registered: Jan 2007
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quote:Originally posted by rasol: 1) Africa south of the sahara desert.
2) All countries with significant geography extending south of the sahara desert.
3) Apartheid ideology in Eurocentric political geography that attempts to limit that which is native to Africa to entity sub-sahara. This implicitly allows Eurocentrists to imply that anything of value North of said entity implicitly - defines something "European".
This ideology is easily extensible to the idea that anything found in "Sub-sahara" that is of value comes from North AFrica, which if you follow the insane logic of this discourse means that nothing of value can be claimed to be of sub-saharan provenance....and therefore, everything of value in African history actually belongs to Europe.
See Hamite Hypothesis [Seligman]:
The civilizations of Africa are the civilizations of the Hamites. Its history is the record of these people and of their interaction with the two African stocks, the Negro and the Bushman the incoming Hamites were pastoral Europeans, arriving in wave after wave, better armed as well as quicker witted than the dark agricultural negroes."
100% of Eritrea is south of the Sahara, although it can be argued that the most NW part is partially in the Sahel.
You also left out countries with significant (but less than 50% territory & population South of the Sahara, like Sudan, Chad, etc..
Posts: 1024 | Registered: Jun 2006
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I don't think he made that map, but i agree with you that sudan which has the most darkest people in the whole of continent being placed as non-sub-saharan just shows how little this map has to do with reality but rather focused on politics.
We should also create our own international map, where "Africoids" strech the whole way up to the whole of Balkan at north and east to border Iran. It's not that hard to prove by genetics that these people have african derived makeup before even knowing who they really were.
Basically everyone inside this mentioned area are Africoid derived.
Posts: 1420 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
Correct it's not my map, and i'm not trying to validate sub-sahara - just the opposite.
Yonis is correctly getting at the point which is of the contrived political and ultimately non-African nature of the entity sub-sahara.
As a note of irony - Dutch Boer and Rhodie [Rhodesian] whites always hated sub-sahara because South Africa had to be included.
They insisted that South Africa and Rhodesia were a part of "the west."
There discourse and racial euphemism was 1st world vs. 3rd world.
White South Africa was a 1st world country with and unwanted immigrant population of 3rd worlders [Blacks].
This ideology in the south has been largely destroyed [though it still has a sneak legacy in free South Africa].
The North Africa vs. Sub Sahara discourse is essentially the same ideology servicing the same political interests.
Our task then is the same - to expose it for the vileness that it is, and then eventually destroy it.
Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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The regions, in geographical and political terms, are classified according to their common and similar characteristics. For instance, ‘continents’ are vast territories surrounded by seas. Peninsulas, mountains, rivers etc. determine the boundaries of geographical and political regions. Religions, sects or languages and dialects etc. may also be used to define a region (as for Islamic World, Latin America etc.). The income level is also useful for defining regions (like North-South). In short, for a territory to be distinctive from the others, it must have some meaningful particularities or at least some common characteristics.
When considered on the basis of these criteria, there is no region called the Middle East. Such a name was even non-existent up until the 20th Century. If we examine it carefully, the region presented in the recent years as “the Greater Middle East” is formed of different regions and the commonalities among the countries and people of the region, contrary to the general view, are quite few:
This so-called region neighbors two oceans (Indian and Atlantic) and six seas (Mediterranean, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Black Sea, Aegean Sea and the Caspian Sea). It extends to three continents (Africa, Asia and Europe). It consists of ten sub-regions (Southern and Northern Caucasus, Northern Africa, Arabia, Greater Palestine and Syria, Mesopotamia, the Caspian Basin, Central Asia (Turkistan), Indian Peninsula). Three monotheistic religions (Islam, Christianity and Judaism), with their numerous sects and schools of thought, exist in this region. Thousands of religious and moral faith, including atheism and paganism, are practiced in this wide geography and thus, it is one of the largest laboratories of the world. Although viewed by the West as all-Arab, the region consists of tens of different ethnic-linguistic communities, with Turks, Arabs and Persians as the main ones.
In other words, the region named as “the Greater Middle East” is, perhaps, the last geography to be named as a region in terms of homogeneity. As a matter of fact, it will be easily understood how different countries we are talking about when we compare the Afro-Arabic culture of Sudan and Franco-Afro-Arabic culture of Tunisia. Or when Turkey and Afghanistan is compared, it will be easily noticed how different these two countries are. It is equally strange to compare Egypt and Azerbaijan and to address them within the same region. Saudi Arabia and Kyrgyzstan, Cyprus and Qatar are too different to be included in the same region.
So, why is this claim? Why everybody keeps on insisting on saying the Middle East? How did this region that cannot be a region emerge? And while the Middle East cannot be a region, how did this “Greater Middle East” emerge?
The Midde East: An Anglo-American Invention
As we pointed out before, the term “Middle East” was not pronounced until the 20th Century. If it is compared with the names Anatolia, Mesopotamia or Caucasus, it can be argued that the “Middle East” is an artificial, produced, or even invented term. As for all the inventions, there are expectations from this invention as well. The term has a function and considered from this point, the region called the “Middle East”, in fact, means Britain, and then American Zone of Interest.
The French, up until the beginning of the 20th Century, made up the term “Near East” for the Ottoman territories. This territory begins where the Ottoman territory begins but its end point was not defined. There is agreement that regions like China and Japan are Far East. Particularly, the economic and military expansion of the British Empire towards China and its periphery in the 19th Century led to more frequent use of the distinction between the Near East and Far East.
The expression “Middle East” was first seen in September 1902, in London based National Review journal. The “inventor” of the expression was a naval military officer and scholar Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914). Mahan is the owner of the theory that the ruler of the world would be the power which ruled the seas. Mahan, who especially specialized on the naval force of the British Empire, was not an ordinary scholar. During his three-day visit to Britain in 1894, the British showed him close interest; he met with important personalities including the premier and the leader of the opposition and discussed significant issues with them. Cambridge and Oxford universities also granted him honorary doctorate title. The Times newspaper went even as far as comparing him with Copernicus.
The name of Mahan’s article in National Review was “The Persian Gulf and International Relations”. For Mahan, Britain, which needed to assure the security of India and Far East, needed to keep the route to these regions secure as well. And this would happen by making the Persian Gulf secure. Russia’s trans-Siberian line and its advance in the Central Asia in particular made the Russians get dangerously closer to the Pacific and India. In this context, Persian Gulf was the most important “jump stone” after the Suez Canal for passage to India. In order to contain the Russians, the Britain should, if necessary, cooperate with the Germans and watch out for the Russians. Hence for Mahan, here was “the Middle East”, that is, Persian Gulf and its periphery. According to this view, “the Middle East” would be most useful in keeping the Russians away from the Pacific and India. It also had a strategic significance in the preservation of the domination in the seas.
Mahan’s “Middle East” term attracted wide interest and The Times republished the article, then it published Vanatine Iganitius Chirol’s (1852-1929) articles “The Middle Eastern Question”. Later on, this article serial was collected in a book named “The Middle East Question or Some Problems of Indian Defence” in 1903. Chirol’s “Middle East” was larger than that of Mahan’s. Chirol, when using the term “Middle East”, not only implied the Persian Gulf but also all the territories on the way to India, that is, Iraq, Eastern Arabia, Afghanistan, Tibet and other regions of Asia. So, Chirol had a “much more enlarged Middle East concept” and his “Middle East” was also appropriate for new enlargements. According to Chirol, Anatolia and the Balkans were “the Near East”.
For Chirol, the most important function of the Middle East was the protection of India. But Russia’s exploitation of oil in Baku, the Caucasus was also an important factor. Russia’s oil wealth was a significant superiority and Britain had to “take care of” the Caucasus in a short while. Moreover, the Germans were getting stronger in the Near East, that is, in Anatolia and the Balkans and “the Middle East” would be a great acquisition for this “attack”. Finally, Chirol touched upon the importance of the Middle East while the rise of Japan in the Far East was taken into account.
The Greater Middle East Zone of Interest
In short, the Middle East was “British Zone of Interest”. Apart from that, it had no distinctive geographical or political peculiarity originating from its own. A non-“regional” power was giving a name and a mission to a territory which it was paying attention to for its own interests.
The Britain’s Middle East concept expanded as far as Egypt during and after the First World War. The increasing importance of oil and the World War were influential in the expansion of the definition of the region. The US used the terms “Near East” and “Middle East” together in the wake of the Second World War. But in essence, Britain’s “zone of interest” passed to the US hereafter. Now, it was the US which would define and expand the term.
To put it short, there is no region as Middle East in fact. The Middle East is neither “the middle of the East”, nor it is a region with homogeneous characteristics. The Middle East is the name given to a “zone of interest” and it implies an appetite which has no sense of getting full. The more the appetite grows, the larger the region becomes.Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
Yeap, and not to sound redundant, but a large part of what is called the Middle East, is actually an extension of Africa [Great Rift Valley plates] - we've been through that.
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