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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Doug M: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Supercar: [qb] As said time and again, the relatively 'pale' skin seen in coastal "Berber" speaking groups of northwest Africa can be attributed to gene flow from across the Mediterranean sea in southern Europe, particularly the Iberian peninsula. Nothing is more apparent about this than the heterogeneity of a single predominantly 'Berber' speaking nation, thereby making the populations therein bio-analytically 'intermediate' between the much darker sub-Saharan groups and the palest skin northern Eurasians, with 'berber' groups ranging from 'dark' skin or 'tawny' to relatively 'pale' [on par with southern Europeans] groups, just as they are from a genealogical standpoint and in cranio-metric trends. No artificial boundary can be drawn between the populations in the aforementioned skin tone gradients. 'Berber' languages come from an East African basal language, and so, even the 'pale' looking ones must not necessarily mislead one to assume that they are 'non-indigenous', although obviously some may well be, particularly self-proclaim 'Arabs' amongst them: [URL=http://www.egyptsearch.com/forums/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=002515][i]If anyone wants to know what 'old Berber' groups likely appeared, just look at the Siwa group. Also look at examples in Tunisia itself; from the members of the Kesra group that I've seen, many exhibit the light brown in skin tone. These visible variations, while clinal in coastal North Africa, should be instructive about the role of 'climate' on skin tone; temperature has little do with native skin tone gradients, while UV radiation and complimentary dietary vitamin D certainly do. The "lightest" in coastal North Africa, particularly in the west African portions, is very likely secondary to gene flow from their northern neighbours in southern Europe.[/i] [link to another but related discussion][/URL] That said, in order to understand these north Africans in a 'complete' African context, it is useful to re-emphasize the placement of 'Berber' speaking groups into a broader historical [and pre-historical] context, encompassing both bio-anthropology and cultural anthropology, as being done here [thus far, largely with the latter ]. [/qb][/QUOTE]I agree. Unfortunately for most of the history of archeaology and anthropology in Africa, foreigners have attempted to categorize an isolate groups by anything that they can consider a distinguishing feature of a certain population. This is long before the idea of cultural complexes, or related cultures that fell within a pattern of belief and expression. Berber is a meaningless term to begin with. It originally was used by foreigners, especially Muslims, as a reference to the populations they found in Africa as they conquered. This therefore is not a reference of any sort of historical or anthropological usefulness, since any number of groups were called Berbers from the beginning of the Muslim period, from throughout Northern Africa. So by using the term Berber as the basis of the identification of the various peoples, cultures and history of North Africa is inheritenly and excercise in distortion. African identity today is largely determined by foreigners and foreign ideologies and has nothing to do with Africans and their own definitions of identity. Religion, nationality and ethnicity are largely the result of foreign frameworks being applied to African people. Christianity and Islam have done much to smother the identity of African peoples historically. National boundaries were determined by foreigners who cared less about the traditional land areas occupied by various African groups. Ethnicity in Africa is based on all sorts of vague and misleading labels created by foreigners to categorize Africans more for the purpose of political power, subjugation and exploitation than any real attempt at understanding African identity. Berber, Sudanese, Ethiopian, Nubian, Tuareg and other terms are purely the result of such foreign designations and are actually quite meaningless. For me, it is not so much that there are people in North Africa that are of lighter complexion. The issue for me is to unravel the myriad layers of foreign labels and concepts to reveal the fact of the black African presence in North Africa that has always been there and has yet been denied. The truth is there if one seeks it and we should not allow the existence of populations who look more European to allow our common sense to be overriden. Once again it is a case of understanding how the modern identity in North Africa has been framed in terms of foreigners and begin to understand the identity of people based on their own views, not some manufactured nonsense. Also, it should not be forgotten that there are and historically have always been jet black Africans in North Africa who were not just slaves introduced from the South. They have existed throughout North Africa, from Morocco to Sudan and are not FOREIGN to North Africa. It is those who are descended from Europeans and elsewhere that are the foreigners, even if they have been there for a few thousand years or more. This doesnt make them more native or indigenous than those who were there and were always of darker skin complexion. If one really wants to see this, all one has to do is research the books, artwork and photos that Europeans made from the 1700s to early 1900s and see the descriptions and images for yourself. It must be remembered that many parts of North Africa have been swamped by the influx of foreign persons from the Islamic period to the modern day and that the ancient populations of indigenous, relatively unmixed Africans there have been overwhelmed in many ways. But that does not mean that they arent there. North Africa down to the Sahara is a huge place and is almost twice the size of the continental U.S. It would take forever for a person to actually go there and document all the various populations that exist, sometimes in groups numbering only a few thousand. This is the point I am getting at, which is that to rely on generalities and samples of a few hundred people in one or two places does nothing to tell the whole story. Which I why I agree with what you said about the need to put the history of North Africa into a complete African context. It is also important to remember that the history of North Africa over the last 1000 years is one of cruelty and intolerance, especially towards the indigenous black Africans of North Africa. This is the reason for the lack of a black African identity in North Africa. The modern countries that are most repressive in North Africa are exactly those who promote foreign ideaologies and identities in North Africa, including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Mauretania, Sudan and Egypt. All of these countries explicitly promote a foreign "Arab" identity and culture, along with dictatorial rule by Kings who seek to legitimize their ties by blood relationship to other rulers in the "Arab" world. You cannot explain the lack of a black African identity in North Africa without understanding this history, just like you cannot understand the current political and economic situation of black Africans anywhere in Africa without the same sort of historical context. Much of this geopolitical realignment of North Africa has also been used by Europeans to further their own aims and allow them to further isolate and disenfranchise black Africans. So, even though I do suggest researching the evidence from the 18th and 19th century European travellers, it must be remembered that this was an era of extreme predjudice especially against black Africans. All of the photos and excerpts I have posted here are to put the historical black African context into view in North Africa, against those who still try and deny it. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6256131.stm [QUOTE] They are known in Morocco as the "years of lead" - lead because of the heaviness in people's hearts, the lead of the darkness they saw around them and the lead of the bullets that shot them. [/QUOTE] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6256131.stm It is no coincidence that the U.S. has been alleged to use Morocco as one of the locations for secret torture chambers for terrorists. It also shows the ties between America, Europe and some of these countries, even as they have oppressed their people. Morocco has for centuries used harsh tactics to deal with the population and reinforce and entrench the growing power of the Arab ruling class. This is how they came to dominate the politics and economy of North Africa. For all the glittering palaces and architecture of Morocco, there is also a dark side of dungeons and decay in dungeons. There are also enclaves of European sovereignty in Morocco, which also shows the fact that Morocco has tended to try and balance coexistence with Europe and its own Arab identity. The flood of black Africans from places like Mali and Senegal through Morocco only reinforces the fact that black Africans have never been blocked from North Africa and that originally black Africans were present there both as indigenous people and migrants. Their current treatment by North African "arab" countries as well as Europeans only shows the level of hatred people have for black Africans. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4342594.stm A good book written in the 1800s that shows the presence of black Africans in Morocco as well as the European racist attitudes towards the same are found here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16526 download the 4.2 Mb file and look at the images. In it you will see the black Africans and if you read the book you will hear how they are described with the typical European attitude towards black Africans. You will also see the remnants of the Moors in Morocco and the headwraps that are featured on the coat of arms from Aragon. This was only 100 years ago, but 100 years is a long time and it is odd how you no longer see these types of black Africans in most images from modern Morocco. Just think what the situation was 800 years ago in the Moorish period. The arabization of North Africa is a process and part of this process is to promote an Arab identity and ethnicity in North Africa, to the exclusion of black Africans. The same thing can be said for all parts of North Africa, as photos from 100 years ago show more undeniably black Africans than you see there today, and many of them were certainly not slaves, but indigenous to the area. As an exercise in understanding the European desire to deny the black presence in North Africa, compare this attempt to explain description of the black Africans on the coat of arms of Aragon by modern historians to the photos in the link above. http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/fr-co.html Here are the images just for those too lazy to download the zip file :) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16526/16526-h/images/m1.jpg http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16526/16526-h/images/m55.jpg http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16526/16526-h/images/m26.jpg Another downloadable EBook from the 1800s that shows the contradictory European perception of Moors and Berbers: [QUOTE] Few who glibly use the word "Barbarian" pause to consider whether the present meaning attached to the name is justified or not, or whether the people of Barbary are indeed the uncivilized, uncouth, incapable lot their name would seem to imply to-day. In fact, the popular ignorance regarding the nearest point of Africa is even greater than of the actually less known central portions, where the white man penetrates with every risk. To declare that the inhabitants of the four Barbary States—Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripoli—are not "Blackamoors" at all, but white like ourselves, is to astonish most folk at the outset. [/QUOTE] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18764/18764-h/18764-h.htm It also shows the ignorance of Europeans, as the coastal Berbers who pride their white skin and look like Europeans, are descended from Europeans. Likewise, it is therefore ignorant to claim these people as an indigenous African race. It also shows the fact that many Europeans did not know that the Moors came from a wide swath of North and West Africa, even Arabia and not just the coasts of North Africa. It is this fact that has caused most of the confusion, because they do not grasp the fact that the people called Moors came from a large area of North Africa and not just the coast. Coastal white North Africans do not represent an ancient indigenous white race purely native to North Africa and they dont represent all Africans in North Africa. As we all know populations like the modern Tuaregs have been roaming the Sahara for thousands of years and they are black. So, once again this is a perfect example why we need to avoid the misperceptions and distortions of Europeans. It must be remembered that Moor is as much of a meaningless term as Berber is. The name Moor only refers to the skin color of many of the Islamic invaders of Spain. This description and name does nothing to really deepen the understanding of the people who made up the Islamic invaders from North Africa and it does nothing to explain their identity where they came from and where they went. The remnants of these "Moors" went back to North Africa, but they were under attack from warring factions of other North African groups as well as Arabs. This further fractured the remnants of the Moors. Some, like the veiled ones, became the modern Tuareg nomads. Some went back to Mauretania and some went into Senegal, Niger and Mali. Those that went to Mauretania fought a hundred year long war with the Arabs, where the Arabs eventually defeated these black Africans and implemented the racial caste system of white moor, black moor and negro. This is another example of the way words and identity have been tortured and abused by foreigners. The others who went further South became subject to the aggression of European whites looking for slaves. In fact, many remnants of the Moorish population in Morocco were also subject to slavery by Arabs in their quest to control North Africa for themselves. So there is a lot to the story of the Moors and it is not a simple one of white North Africans being the masters of black Africans to the South. This situation only came about after hundreds of years of warfare by Arabs and other Muslims against black Africans and black Africans being conquered by Europeans. Just as many of the black African Moors did not originally come from Morocoo (as no such country existed), many of them did not return there either, as the stories in the books being revealed from Timbuktu are starting to show. It must also be remembered that some of these black Muslims also participated in the slave trade and destroyed or conquered other black Africans. But most often they are not called Moors but "Arabs", as many other black Africans have been labelled as "Arabs" over time by Europeans and others, which again points out the sometime unreliability of these terms in reference to populations in Africa. The only reason I posted the link to this e-book is that it has some pictures, so that you can see more of what I am talking about. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18764/18764-h/18764-h.htm [/QB][/QUOTE]
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