...
Post A Reply
my profile
|
directory
login
|
register
|
search
|
faq
|
forum home
»
EgyptSearch Forums
»
Egyptology
»
Whatever happened to the "type de Mechta" or the Mechta-Afalou?
» Post A Reply
Post A Reply
Login Name:
Password:
Message Icon:
Message:
HTML is not enabled.
UBB Code™ is enabled.
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Mystery Solver: [QB] ^Subtely *edited* version of the above: [QUOTE]Originally posted by Djehuti: Can Mystery or someone else please explain to me what the Metchta-Afalou type was in terms of anthropological remains in North Africa? Does the Metchtoid represent the earliest known modern human remains in North Africa or a later type? [/QUOTE]Already answered earlier, when this was posted: [b]My take[/b]: The specimens previously placed under the ‘Mechta-Afalou’ actually [b]don’t represent a “type”, but an assortment of specimens that share affinities in some respects, and not so much so in others.[/b] Even [b]“robusticity’[/b], which it seems has been seized by some to justify classification into a “type” or “categorization”, [b]varies[/b]. ^Which is not incompatible with Brace's observation on "Cro-magnon" as well: [i]Paul Broca himself had [b]promoted the view that the Basques represent the continuing existence of the kind of Upper Paleolithic population excavated at the Cro-Magnon rock[/b] shelter in the village of Les Eyzies in the Dordogne region of southwestern France in 1868 (38-40). Shortly thereafter the “old man” -“le vieillard” -found in that rock shelter was elevated to the [b]status of typifying a whole “Cro-Magnon race”[/b] regarded as ancestral to not only the Basques but also the aboriginal inhabitants of the Canary Islands (37, 41-44)… When the [b]Basques[/b] are run with the other samples used in Fig. 1, they link with Germany and more remotely with the Canary Islands. They are clearly European although the length of their twig indicates that they have a distinction all their own. It is clear, however, that [b]they do not represent a survival of the kind of craniofacial form indicated by Cro-Magnon any more than do the Canary Islanders, ***nor does either sample tie in with the Berbers of North Africa***[/b] as has previously been claimed (37, 44-45). … To test the analysis shown in Fig. 3, [b]Cro-Magnon[/b], represented by the x in Fig. 4, [b]was removed from the European Upper Palaeolithic sample[/b] and run as a single individual. [b]**Interestingly enough, Cro-Magnon is not close to any more recent sample**[/b]. Clearly [b]Cro-Magnon is not the same as the Basque or Canary Island samples[/b]. Fig. 4 plots the first and second canonical variates against each other, but that conclusion is even more strongly supported when canonical variate 3 (not shown here) is plotted with variate 1. If this analysis shows nothing else, [b]**it demonstrates that the oft-repeated European feeling that the Cro-Magnons are “us” (46) is more a product of anthropological folklore**[/b] than the result of the metric data available from the skeletal remains...[/i] - Brace et al. 2005 ...in [b]response to[/b] analyzing the following Groves' piece taken from his publication, “[i]The terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene populations of northern Africa[/i]”, 1999: [i]To the southeast, further cranially robust remains have been described from Nubia, on the Egyptian-Sudanese border (Anderson 1968; Wendorf 1968a, b; Carlson and Van Gerven 1977). Exactly the same process of gracilisation seems to have taken place in this region; Carlson and Van Gerven (1977) attributed it to a change in masticatory function, associated with the processes leading to the adoption of agriculture. The largest collection, from [b]Tushka and Sahaba[/b], was described by Anderson (1968); [b]he considered them in the context of “Negroid origins”[/b], but ended by concluding that they are strongly [b]resemble the “Maghrebian Cromagnoids”[/b], as he called Mechta-Afalou populations, but considered that they were [b]“half-way to ‘Negroidization’”[/b], and demonstrated the [b]late derivation of sub-Saharans from Caucasoids.[/b] There are [b]therefore a number of hypotheses about these terminal Pleistocene samples[/b], which we propose to test this paper: 1. That the [b]Mechta-Afalou populations are a generalized “robust” Homo sapiens[/b] population (Lahr 1994), or alternatively that [b]they are robust because they are “Cromagnoid” in morphology, i.e. resemble the Upper Paleolithic populations of Europe[/b] (Ferembach 1985, Brauer and Rimback 1990)[/i] Grove’s results, with regards to [b]‘robusticity’[/b]: [i]Lahr’s (1994) hypothesis, that the Maghrebian samples resemble the Cro-Magnons, is true as far as the males are concerned, but not for the females. Cro-Magnon females are robust, as are Co-magnon males; Taforalt females, however, are not so robust.[/i] As far as [b]morphology is concerned[/b], Grove’s approach to discriminant analysis yields: [i]The discriminant analysis shows that the [b]Nubian scatter is so wide[/b] that it is [b]some of the Nubian males, rather than any of the Maghrebian ones, the are Cromagnon males’ nearest neighbors[/b]. The [b]nearest neighbour of the Cromagnon females[/b], however, is the [b]sole Afalou female[/b]. The frequency if occurrence of the horizontal-oval [b]form of the mandibular foramen compares more closely to the Cro-Magnons in the Nubian than in the Maghrebian sample[/b]. In the Maghreb sample, it occurs in 1/15, ie. 6.7%, but in the Nubians in 4/18, that is 22.2% (in the Sahaba sample by itself, 4/14, or 28.6%). According to Frayer (1992), in 38 late upper Paleolithic specimens (approximately contemporary with the present samples) this form occurs in 5.3%, although in 9 Early Upper Paleolithic specimens it was seen in 44.4%.[/i] North African "Mediterraneans" [now defunct] and the so-called Mechtoid North African specimens were just part of early attempts of European researchers to seek a "European-like" component in north Africa, which in the case of the "Mechtoid" types, took the guise of using the so-called Cro-magnon specimen as the model to build the comparison around. Some of these researchers saw cranio-morphological resemblances between the so-called "Mechtoid" African specimens and the European "Cro-Magnon" specimen, as I noted earlier, yet were not totally oblivious to the differences as well, which prevented them calling the African examples as plainly "Cro-magnons"...just as there were attempts to associate what was dubbed "African Mediterraneans" with the other so-called "Mediterranean" specimens, who just so happened to also belong to this one big happy family of "caucasoids". Interestingly, as noted earlier herein, there had been some linkage drawn between the so-called "Mechtoid specimens" , i.e. the [i]Mechta-el-Arbi[/i], the [i]Afalou-bou-Rhummel[/i], the [i]Taforalt[/i] specimens and possibly the likes of the [i]Jebel Sahaba[/i] specimens of the Nile Valley, with what were dubbed as [i]"Mediterranean racial types"[/i]: Recap: [i]"The [b]Negroid increment of which there is evidence[/b] in some of our Northern Neolithic Series, [b]notably Kef-el-Agab 1 and Troglodytes 1[/b], may have well come in the same way from the South to *add* to the [b]*already* slightly **Negroid Hamitic cast** of the African Mediterraneans[/b] and of [b]their **partial derivative**, the Mechta-Afalou Type[/b].[/i]" - Briggs In another recap, Briggs goes onto to note that, again with regards to the so-called "Mediterranean racial type": [i]"...[b]Type B[/b] which [b]fits, in all essential respects, the usual definition of the Mediterranean racial type[/b], but sometimes shows also [b]certain morphological peculiarities[/b] commonly [b]known as "Boskopid,"[/b] as well as [b]Negroid features among females[/b]. Type B [b]therefore was classified as African Mediterranean[/b]...It may have well [b]acquired its "Boskopid" traits on the road, near the headwaters of the Nile[/b], and [b]kidnapped a few Negro or heavily Negroid women on its way west[/b] before turning northward [b]into Northwest Africa.[/b] The peculiar characteristics of such women could have been restricted largely to females, at least for a time, by artificial selection in the form of preferential mating."[/i] Source: Briggs, Stone Age Races of Northwest Africa, pgs 81,89. So, apparently both the so-called African "Cro-Magnoid-like" specimens [aka the "Mechtoid"/"Mechta-Afalou" type] in no way actaully represented a single cranio-morphometric type [wherein the "Cro-magnon" is used as the model of morphology], as the notes herein bring to light; the Maghrebian specimens are clearly distinguished from the so-called Mechtoid examples found in the Nile Valley, like the Sahaba specimens. We also know that the Megrebian examples, not in any way to be associated with contemporary northwest Africans, are clearly distinguished from the "Cro-Magnon" of Europe [seemingly acknowleged even in the terming of the "[b]North African[/b] Cro-Magn[b][i]oids[/i][/b]" appellation - "iod" implying "[i]likewise but not quite [what is the model]"[/i]], as demonstrated above in Groves' discriminant analysis where even some so-called "Nubian" specimens actually clustered closer to the European "Cro-magnoid specimens" than the Maghrebian examples. Yet, in Groves factor analysis, which he uses as his supposed gauging tool to term the "caucasoid" or "negroid" inclination of the specimens in question, the "Nubian" specimens were supposedly inclined towards the so-called "Negroid" tendencies, while the European "Cro-magnoid" specimens and the Maghrebian Taforalt series, to put it in Groves' terms: [i]On factor 2, Cro-Magnon, Taforalt, Norse and Egypt score positively, and Afalou and the sub-Saharan and Nubian samples score negatively.[/i] ^...where essentially groups who scored "positively", were implied to have an inclination towards the so-called "caucasoid" tendencies...but it gets interesting, in continuing with Groves' claims: [i][b]Factor 1 represents *robusticity*[/b], [b]factor 2 represents the **sub-Saharan/Caucasoid** contrast[/b]. The [b]Caucasoid populations[/b] (Egypt, Norse, Cro-Magnon) score positively on factor 2, the [b]sub-Saharan[/b] Teita score negatively. The modern [b]Dogon (Southern Mali) samples are intermediate[/b]. The fossil Nubians score strongly negative, as does the Asselar skull (Central Mali). What is especially [b]interesting is that Afalou also scores negatively, if only slightly[/b]; it [b]occupies the same morphological position[/b] as do the [b]modern Dogon[/b].[/i] So [as already noted yet again], a Maghrebian specimen, namely the Afalou specimens, occupy the same position as the "modern Dogon" [although a Dogon male scores positively], which is the "intermediary" position? Well, we know what the modern Dogon generally look like...but if anything, at the least, this is yet indication that even the Maghrebian series don't all converge into a single cranio-morphometric "type". [Note: Norse, Egypt, Dogon and Teita are supposed to be relatively modern examples from Howells' database - 1973] Just as the so-called "Cro-Magnoid" actually fails to show a single morphological type, so does the so-called "Mediterranean racial type", as can be seen from the pains at which various researchers were trying to reconcile the seemingly so-called "Boskopid" and "Negroid" traits in "African Mediterranean" specimens with the basic ideology behind the so-called "Mediterranean racial type". Obviously the so-called "African Mediterraneans" notably differed from their so-called "Mediterranean" counterparts from across the other side of the Mediterranean sea, prompting these researchers to explain away what Briggs dubs as "morphological peculiarities". Now of course, as far as I can tell at this point, we are not offered any specific extra-cranio-morphometric biological evidence that such "morphological peculiarities" were simply acquired from "miscegenation" between "African Mediterraneans" [whom by implication, were presumably devoid of such "morphological peculiarities" initially] and other groups which were presumably 'typified' by the said "morphological peculiarities", as opposed to being either relics or indicators of the natural micro-evolution of the said "African Mediterraneans". IMO, it seems that the attempt to draw up a type, around the Cro-Magnon model, as is the case to draw up a "Mediterranean racial type", is nothing more than futile Eurocentric attempt to create "types", more likely 'racial types', in which European specimens are presented as models, and extend this European family type into North Africa...as though an attempt to make North Africa into an extension of Europe, as opposed to its being factually [and objectively] part of Africa both geographically and biologically. The bio-anthropological goal of Eurocentric doctrine has historically been to create pseudo-scientific racial types or their subtely transparent "euphemisms", that will extend the associated "European-affiliated" family as much as possible into areas of interest. The pains at which Euro-researchers sought to create "types" around 'Euro-centered' or 'Euro-affiliated' models, can be exemplified in that seen in the following: recap: [i]“Arambourg et al. (1934) referred to these robust North Africans as the “Mechta-Arbi race”; Ferembach (1962) as Ibero-Maurusians, or Epipalaeolithic, after their lithocultural association. Briggs (1955) divided the Afalou and other samples into four “types” (Palaeomediterranean, African Mediterranean, African Alphine, and true Mechta-Afalou). Anderson (1968) considered them far too homogeneous to warrant this treatment, and indeed Briggs’s analysis is in the [b]typological tradition[/b] that held sway up until about 1940, but was [b]thereafter increasingly discarded[/b]”[/i] - C. Groves, 1999. [/QB][/QUOTE]
Instant Graemlins
Instant UBB Code™
What is UBB Code™?
Options
Disable Graemlins in this post.
*** Click here to review this topic. ***
Contact Us
|
EgyptSearch!
(c) 2015 EgyptSearch.com
Powered by UBB.classic™ 6.7.3