Assuming that the above was a misspelling and that sirius2008 means "Black," I wouls like to know which meaning of the word was intended: African-American, sub-Saharan, or something else entirely. Please see The Rules paragraph 3.3.11 for details.
Sorry for the mispelling.
Yes, I meant North-Africans are not Sub-Saharans. Light eyes and hair are found in those populations for millenia, in much smaller proportions than Northern Europe though. Ramses II was red haired for instance, Algerian president is blue eyed, and so was Algerian hero Abd el-Kader (born in 1808). I am myself of Northern Algerian ancestry (does it violate the rules to tell about my personal background? If yes, I am sorry, keep in mind I am from France and I am not an expert of English), my gandfather has blue eyes, and so do many of my family members.
Those following maps are a bit old (and thus not always accurate) but are still used by modern anthropologists.
Joined: 30 Mar 2005 {Posts: 1082 } Location: New Jersey
Posted: Wed 26 Mar 2008 19:15 Post subject:
sirius2008 wrote:
Yes, I meant North-Africans are not Sub-Saharans. Light eyes and hair are found in those populations for millenia, in much smaller proportions than Northern Europe though. Ramses II was red haired for instance, Algerian president is blue eyed, and so was Algerian hero Abd el-Kader (born in 1808).
True, but North Africans do have sub-Saharan admixture, and some (not all, of course) show this admixture in their phenotypes.
Yes, I meant North-Africans are not Sub-Saharans. Light eyes and hair are found in those populations for millenia, in much smaller proportions than Northern Europe though. Ramses II was red haired for instance, Algerian president is blue eyed, and so was Algerian hero Abd el-Kader (born in 1808).
True, but North Africans do have sub-Saharan admixture, and some (not all, of course) show this admixture in their phenotypes.
Of course, many do, and it is generally visible through their very curly hair, their darker skin, and their typical African nose shape.
However, the majority of North-Africans are mainly of Berber or Egyptian stock, thus, finding light eyes or hair in those populations do not say that Black people show such traits.
By the way, William, in France we never hear about races and racial compositions, it is a taboo topic and is seen as a racist and even nazi thing for some historical reasons. That explains why I rarely see studies that talk about it exept in Anglo-Saxon sources, which seem more objective. My questions are, what is the percentage of Sub-Saharan blood in North-African and European populations, do most of them show Sub-Saharan admixture or only a part? When did those admixtures come, only through slavery or long before? Do most Sub-Saharans have European or North-African genes? If not, how come North-Africans or Europeans do have Sub-Saharan genes? Thank you for the answers.
I read on an other thread that:
African DNA has been found in most populations in Europe, as has Asiatic DNA. The purpose of the post is to show that sub-Saharan genes have entered the Italian population
Is that correct?
Finally, I have taken a look at your maps. Besides the one that shows the so-called "Mediterranean race"and other "races" who are now proven to be fake concepts, anthropological maps seem mostly accurate according to stereotypes at least, but it is sad that some illogical things make them lose some credibility, such as the Saharan populations of North Africa who are sometimes showed as having more light features than Northern Maghrebis (Northern Northwest Africans) and even than Southern Europeans. Those populations are Saharan not Sub-Saharan and are of the same stock as Northerners, but they are exposed to intense UV lights for centuries and developped a darker skin colour. I also found a map showing Saharan Maghrebis being as light skinned as Scandinavians, which cannot be taken seriously.
Last edited by sirius2008 on Wed 26 Mar 2008 19:50; edited 3 times in total
Joined: 30 Mar 2005 {Posts: 1082 } Location: New Jersey
Posted: Wed 26 Mar 2008 19:36 Post subject:
sirius2008 wrote:
However, the majority of North-Africans are mainly of Berber or Egyptian stock, thus, finding light eyes or hair in those populations do not say that Black people show such traits.
It depends on what you mean by Black. That is why this site demands precise terminology. Black can mean so many things. If you mean native sub-Saharan populations, then I must agree that I don't know of any who have naturally blue eyes. If you refer to Black-identified admixed North Africans (or USAmericans, or Latin Americans), then, yes, certainly it is possible.
However, the majority of North-Africans are mainly of Berber or Egyptian stock, thus, finding light eyes or hair in those populations do not say that Black people show such traits.
It depends on what you mean by Black. That is why this site demands precise terminology. Black can mean so many things. If you mean native sub-Saharan populations, then I must agree that I don't know of any who have naturally blue eyes. If you refer to Black-identified admixed North Africans (or USAmericans, or Latin Americans), then, yes, certainly it is possible.
In Europe or in Arabic countries including North-Africa, Black means a person from Sub-Saharan Africa or someone who is mainly of Sub-Saharan ancestry, for instance, Black people of the Americas and Arabic countries who descend from enslaved Africans. It is important to note that here, those who are half Black are called half Black people or mixed people, not Black people. But the USA probably has different standards due to its history I guess, that is why I understand your point now.
However to the U.S Census North-Africans are not identified as Black people, they're included in a separate racial group with Middle-Easterners.
I edited and completed my last post, you can read it.
Joined: 30 Mar 2005 {Posts: 1082 } Location: New Jersey
Posted: Wed 26 Mar 2008 20:43 Post subject:
In the U.S., the Black grouping is a socio-political endogamous group that doesn't have anything to do with skin color or African features. It is the only place I know of where European-looking people can be considered "Black" due to one or two drops of distant African ancestry. The rest of the world is likely to see this as silly, and I can understand your confusion.
You are correct that North Africans are not considered as Black here in America. Sometimes they are classified as White, despite their appearances.
Regarding your other post above, yes, biological races do not exist in humans, so most anthropologists have ceased using the term "race" and the various "racial" terms ("negroid," "caucasoid," "mongoloid"). And you're right, the maps must be taken with a grain of salt, as different researchers produce different maps, and sometimes they contradict eachother. But to illustrate general trends of hair color, eye color, skin color, etc., they can be useful. Thank you for the map with the von Luschan scale. I am familiar with his scale, and have seen this map before.
Now, for your questions on Europe, which I will attemp to answer one by one:
sirius2008 wrote:
By the way, William, in France we never hear about races and racial compositions, it is a taboo topic and is seen as a racist and even nazi thing for some historical reasons. That explains why I rarely see studies that talk about it exept in Anglo-Saxon sources, which seem more objective.
I have heard that about France. We discuss such things scientifically here, and we don't advance a racialist or racist agenda. This is all for the purposes of education.
sirius2008 wrote:
My questions are, what is the percentage of Sub-Saharan blood in North-African and European populations, do most of them show Sub-Saharan admixture or only a part?
Good question. On average, Mediterranean Europeans (Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Turkey) show about 5% or so sub-Saharan admixture. As stated in the other post, it is minor and trivial, and certainly not visible. Northern and Central Europeans show less admixture on average, but it is still there. Any country involved with the slave trade will show some minor admixture (Spain, Portgual, Italy, France, Holland, Britain, etc.). Sub-Saharan genes have been found in German and even Scandinavia.
sirius2008 wrote:
When did those admixtures come, only through slavery or long before?
The admixture came about in many ways and over many millennia. When Europe was repopulated after the last glacial maximum, people came from all over to repopulate the place. Over time, more and more people arrived. In the time of the ancients, such as the Phoencians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, etc. slaves and servants of all sorts employed all over their empires, and other folks came as craftsmen, students, etc. Still others were recruited as soldiers and mercenaries. During the Islamic occupation of Iberia, France, Sicily and southern Italy, and the Greek Islands, sub-Saharans were present. The Ottoman Turks employed sub-Saharans, and they controlled the entire Balkan region. The slave trade introduced more of this admixture into the countries involved.
sirius2008 wrote:
Do most Sub-Saharans have European or North-African genes? If not, how come North-Africans or Europeans do have Sub-Saharan genes? Thank you for the answers.
Yes, of course, sub-Saharans that came in contact with Europeans and North Africans also show genetics from these populations. It must be remembered that anyone who ever migrated, raided, invaded, or traded eventually mated!
In the U.S., the Black grouping is a socio-political endogamous group that doesn't have anything to do with skin color or African features. It is the only place I know of where European-looking people can be considered "Black" due to one or two drops of distant African ancestry. The rest of the world is likely to see this as silly, and I can understand your confusion.
I knew it was very ambigue but I ignored the fact Americans had such extreme standards. I have a 1/4 Black friend, his father is a Slavic Croatian and his mother is half Cameroonese (African) and half Alsatian (Germanic-speaking French). Would he be seen as Black in the US?
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You are correct that North Africans are not considered as Black here in America. Sometimes they are classified as White, despite their appearances.
This is an other strange concept to us. Although the US Census sees Arabs (and thus North-Africans) as White Caucasians, they do not consider themselves to be White, at least not in the sense of being of the same stock as Europeans. They consider themselves to be a separate racial group, and Europeans seem to think the same. In the Arab World, the term White ("Abyad" in Arabic) is not used to mention race as it is in the West, it is only used by people for a lighter skinned Arab while the term Brown ("Assmar" in Arabic) is used for darker skinned Arabs. For instance, a brother can be seen as a Brown person by the same person who would consider his sister to be a White person if she is fair skinned. Such charcaters often appear among Mediterranean populations, many siblings who have the same parents may show different skin tones.
Regardless of the personal interpretations of Americans and Arabs about the word White, being myself a North-African Arab and having visited both Europe and Maghreb I think that most North-Africans rather ressemble Middle-Easterners (Asian Arabs, Turks, Kurds, Iranians, and so on) in term of physical apparence.
The only people they ressemble in Europe are the Southerners, such as Greeks, Southern Italians, and many people of the Iberian peninsula, the Balkan peninsula, a few Southern French too, etc, and also some Russians and Ukrainians.
In addition, there are also a lot of people in Morocco and Egypt, as well as in the Arabian peninsula, who show visible African traits. I do not mention those who are clearly Black skinned and are of African ancestry, but those who are considered to be ethnic North-Africans and Arabians but seem to have foreign admixtures.
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I have heard that about France. We discuss such things scientifically here, and we don't advance a racialist or racist agenda. This is all for the purposes of education.
I guess you do not advance a racist agenda, I see it as a scientific work as well. I was very surprised when I fist heard an American telling me: "I love all races" a few years ago, because France is used to consider that people who classify human beings into races are racist. This is recent because before WWII and nazism people seemed to talk like this according to the vocabulary that old people still use today, but you seem to tell that anthropologists are now abandoning such concepts anyway.
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Good question. On average, Mediterranean Europeans (Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Turkey) show about 5% or so sub-Saharan admixture. As stated in the other post, it is minor and trivial, and certainly not visible.
Yes it can be seen as minor because of the remaining 95%, although 5% can also be seen as huge it represents only 1/20 after all (does it mean one Black ancestor out of 20 forfathers?). Is that an average number for the whole populations you cited, or do you mean that only some people belonging to those populations show 5% of Sub-Saharan ancestry?
Do you consider Turks as Europeans? Europeans don't, most Turks I know don't either. It is true that a part of Turkey lies in Europe (Eastern Thrace) and that its people are indigenous but about 95% of the country and people are in the Middle-East in Asia Minor, bordering Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
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Northern and Central Europeans show less admixture on average, but it is still there. Sub-Saharan genes have been found in German and even Scandinavia.
Do you mean the majority of Northern and Central Europeans have at least some Sub-Saharan admixtures? Or do you mean only some people from Northern and central Europe are proven to have Sub-Saharan genes?
I would like it if you could post some studies about it, in order to be officially informed about this topic I really had no clue about before.
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Any country involved with the slave trade will show some minor admixture (Spain, Portgual, Italy, France, Holland, Britain, etc.).
I would ask the same question, did the African slaves influence the whole populations of those regions (directly or indirectly) or only a minority?
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The admixture came about in many ways and over many millennia. When Europe was repopulated after the last glacial maximum, people came from all over to repopulate the place. Over time, more and more people arrived.
This would be more easy to understand than African slavery through millenia, because I cannot see how a minor number of slaves whether this number was high or not, could change the racial composition of millions of Europeans who already lived in those areas. For example, in 60 B.C France already had a population of 12 to 20 millions.
However, when Indo-European speaking peoples entered Europe they were already a lot of native people there, so it could be a valide explanation.
When we say that "Greeks came in the Balkans only a few millenia ago" (or "Slavs appeared in the Balkans in the 5th century A.D"), we only talk about their Indo-European invading ancestors, we forget about the already exisiting population that was there (Encarta says some came from the African continent and from Western Asia) and that fused with the new immigrants, making up modern Greeks.
Same for the rest of Europe, for instance Encarta says that when Germanic peoples entered Germany, this land was already inhabited by a mixture of natives and of people came from the Middle-East.
Finally, Portugese and Spaniards, descend from a mixture of the Iberians and of the invading Celts. Iberians were not Indo-European, and they lived there long before Indo-Europeans invaded the area. Some scholars even say they came from Northwestern Africa, and the period proposed implies that if it is true, they would have large ammounts of common genes with modern Northwestern Africans because at this time (a few millenia ago) the ancestors of today Northwestern Africans, the Berbers (who now identify as Arab too), were already in the land, where they arrived at least 8 millenia ago.
But, how can we tell that Iberians have North-African blood simply because their ancestors allegedly originate from this area that was not even called this way at this time? The exact expression would be they have common blood with Northwestern Africans, not that they have North-African blood, otherwise if in the futur scientists find out that half of the ancestors of North-western Africans came from a tribe that lived in today Austria and that also makes up half of the Austrians' genes, people would tell that Northwestern Africans have Austrian genes, which would be only an arbitrary point of view.
Hence, perhaps the same can be applied to the so-called Sub-Saharan admixture found in the populations we are talking about, exept of course for the recent contributions due to slaves captured from Sub-Saharan Africa.
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Yes, of course, sub-Saharans that came in contact with Europeans and North Africans also show genetics from these populations. It must be remembered that anyone who ever migrated, raided, invaded, or traded eventually mated!
I feel a bit embarassed because my lack of knowledges in English probably is the reason why you didn't understand all my questions.
I guess many Sub-Saharans have European and North-African genes (especially North-African genes because of the incursions of North-Africans into their lands for millenia), but what I mean is do the majority of them have such genes?
I do not know whether a huge number of people belonging to the same group as modern European and North-African populations, mixed with the ancestors of Sub-Saharans when Sub-Saharan Africa started to be entirely settled millenia ago.
However, everyone can notice that in Sub-Saharan Africa, there are black skinned Blacks, and brown skinned Blacks. The ones who are brown are very dark but still not Black and much lighter than other Sub-Saharans, and they are not an exeption they represent whole populations. But perhaps it is only due to UV lights that would be less intense in the regions inhabited by brown Sub-Saharans.
Brown skin:
Could the woman above have non Sub-Saharan admixtures for instance? She is supposed to be a pure African from Sub-Saharan Africa, however she really seems special.
Black skin:
By the way, I found this picture of a Sudanese child
Joined: 30 Mar 2005 {Posts: 1082 } Location: New Jersey
Posted: Thu 27 Mar 2008 16:59 Post subject:
sirius2008 wrote:
I knew it was very ambigue but I ignored the fact Americans had such extreme standards. I have a 1/4 Black friend, his father is a Slavic Croatian and his mother is half Cameroonese (African) and half Alsatian (Germanic-speaking French). Would he be seen as Black in the US?
Not necessarily automatically. Although I said before that Black in the U.S. is a socio-political endogamous group unrelated to phenotype, if someone is visibly African, they are generally automatically assigned to the Black grouping. Those who don't have visible African features, but have African ancestry, often redesignate themselves as White. But some populationss are exempt from being involuntarily assigned to the Black grouping, despite sometimes having visible African ancestry: Arabs and Latin Americans.
sirius2008 wrote:
This is an other strange concept to us. Although the US Census sees Arabs (and thus North-Africans) as White Caucasians, they do not consider themselves to be White, at least not in the sense of being of the same stock as Europeans. They consider themselves to be a separate racial group, and Europeans seem to think the same. In the Arab World, the term White ("Abyad" in Arabic) is not used to mention race as it is in the West, it is only used by people for a lighter skinned Arab while the term Brown ("Assmar" in Arabic) is used for darker skinned Arabs. For instance, a brother can be seen as a Brown person by the same person who would consider his sister to be a White person if she is fair skinned. Such charcaters often appear among Mediterranean populations, many siblings who have the same parents may show different skin tones.
Thanks for sharing the perspective of Arabs. I've always wondered how they classify themselves. The brother/sister example you gave is interesting, and is similar to Latin America, where "racial" designations refer to skin tone.
sirius2008 wrote:
Regardless of the personal interpretations of Americans and Arabs about the word White, being myself a North-African Arab and having visited both Europe and Maghreb I think that most North-Africans rather ressemble Middle-Easterners (Asian Arabs, Turks, Kurds, Iranians, and so on) in term of physical apparence. The only people they ressemble in Europe are the Southerners, such as Greeks, Southern Italians, and many people of the Iberian peninsula, the Balkan peninsula, a few Southern French too, etc, and also some Russians and Ukrainians.
Yes, I agree fully with this. North Africans seem to have their own genetic signatures as well. They have sub-Saharan and also European admixture, but they are largely their own grouping, genetically.
sirius2008 wrote:
In addition, there are also a lot of people in Morocco and Egypt, as well as in the Arabian peninsula, who show visible African traits. I do not mention those who are clearly Black skinned and are of African ancestry, but those who are considered to be ethnic North-Africans and Arabians but seem to have foreign admixtures.
Yes, indeed. I have seen such people myself. I travelled briefly in North Africa, always as side trips from southern Europe.
sirius2008 wrote:
I guess you do not advance a racist agenda, I see it as a scientific work as well. I was very surprised when I fist heard an American telling me: "I love all races" a few years ago, because France is used to consider that people who classify human beings into races are racist. This is recent because before WWII and nazism people seemed to talk like this according to the vocabulary that old people still use today, but you seem to tell that anthropologists are now abandoning such concepts anyway.
The vast majority of anthropologists do not believe in the existence of biological races anymore. Neither do geneticists. Ultimately, we all descend from sub-Saharan Africans, since this is where our earliest ancestors originated. Over time, as people spread around the globe, genes mutated, and that is what gives us AIMs (ancestry-informative markers). However, these do not equate to biological races. They merely point to broad geographical regions of ancestry. All people are mixed.
sirius2008 wrote:
Yes it can be seen as minor because of the remaining 95%, although 5% can also be seen as huge it represents only 1/20 after all (does it mean one Black ancestor out of 20 forfathers?).
You could look at it as roughly being the equivalent of that, although of course it doesn't mean that is the case. It means that of their autosomal genetic makeup, about 5 percent of the genes come ultimately from sub-Saharan Africa.
sirius2008 wrote:
Is that an average number for the whole populations you cited, or do you mean that only some people belonging to those populations show 5% of Sub-Saharan ancestry?
It is an average. Some show more, others show less or none.
sirius2008 wrote:
Do you consider Turks as Europeans? Europeans don't, most Turks I know don't either. It is true that a part of Turkey lies in Europe (Eastern Thrace) and that its people are indigenous but about 95% of the country and people are in the Middle-East in Asia Minor, bordering Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
I sometimes loosely consider Turks as Europeans. I realize that most Europeans don't. The Turks of Eastern Thrace also don't consider themselves to be European? I was wondering about this. I didn't know if the geoghraphically European Turks and the geographically Asiatic Turks use the Bosphorus to divide themselves.
sirius2008 wrote:
Do you mean the majority of Northern and Central Europeans have at least some Sub-Saharan admixtures? Or do you mean only some people from Northern and central Europe are proven to have Sub-Saharan genes? I would like it if you could post some studies about it, in order to be officially informed about this topic I really had no clue about before.
Not every person in these regions types with sub-Saharan genes, of course. I believe autosomal studies show that on average, northwestern Europeans type with about 1% or so sub-Saharan admixture.
sirius2008 wrote:
I would ask the same question, did the African slaves influence the whole populations of those regions (directly or indirectly) or only a minority?
It is hard to say just how much of the population was influenced. Over time, with people intermarrying, it naturally spread to far-flung areas as well. The majority of the DNA from our ancestors has been long ago discarded, so distant admixture is not always detectable. In southern Europe, for example, the southern regions, like southern peninsular Italy and Sicily, southern Iberia, etc. have on average higher levels of sub-Saharan ancestry than the northern regions of the Mediterranean, like northern Italy, northern Portugal, Galicia, Asturia, etc.
sirius2008 wrote:
This would be more easy to understand than African slavery through millenia, because I cannot see how a minor number of slaves whether this number was high or not, could change the racial composition of millions of Europeans who already lived in those areas. For example, in 60 B.C France already had a population of 12 to 20 millions. However, when Indo-European speaking peoples entered Europe they were already a lot of native people there, so it could be a valide explanation.
The absorption of African slaves did not change significantly the ethnography of Europe. So, you are correct. You are also correct about the already existing populations of Europe not being supplanted by newcomers, such as Indo-Europeans. Rather, they were likely absorbed into the already existing populations.
sirius2008 wrote:
Finally, Portugese and Spaniards, descend from a mixture of the Iberians and of the invading Celts. Iberians were not Indo-European, and they lived there long before Indo-Europeans invaded the area. Some scholars even say they came from Northwestern Africa, and the period proposed implies that if it is true, they would have large ammounts of common genes with modern Northwestern Africans because at this time (a few millenia ago) the ancestors of today Northwestern Africans, the Berbers (who now identify as Arab too), were already in the land, where they arrived at least 8 millenia ago. But, how can we tell that Iberians have North-African blood simply because their ancestors allegedly originate from this area that was not even called this way at this time? The exact expression would be they have common blood with Northwestern Africans, not that they have North-African blood[...]
That is all correct. It is not always possible to date a genetic mutation to a certain time, particularly within the last 5000 or so years, so, in the case of North African ancestry of Iberians, it is not possible genetically to distinguish between the migrations you speak of and later admixture with, say, Moorish invaders.
sirius2008 wrote:
I feel a bit embarassed because my lack of knowledges in English probably is the reason why you didn't understand all my questions. I guess many Sub-Saharans have European and North-African genes (especially North-African genes because of the incursions of North-Africans into their lands for millenia), but what I mean is do the majority of them have such genes? I do not know whether a huge number of people belonging to the same group as modern European and North-African populations, mixed with the ancestors of Sub-Saharans when Sub-Saharan Africa started to be entirely settled millenia ago. However, everyone can notice that in Sub-Saharan Africa, there are black skinned Blacks, and brown skinned Blacks. The ones who are brown are very dark but still not Black and much lighter than other Sub-Saharans, and they are not an exeption they represent whole populations. But perhaps it is only due to UV lights that would be less intense in the regions inhabited by brown Sub-Saharans.
Your English is fine. I don't know the percentages of sub-Saharans that have European or North African admixture. I have not specifically studied this. Certainly some have detectable admixture, and others don't. Yes, you are correct about the phenotypical diversity in Africa. There is no typical sub-Saharan population. And genetically, Africa is the most diverse continent on the planet. The wieldy term "sub-Saharan" is used by geneticists for the sake of convenience.
I encourage you to check out our Various Admixture Studies page. You'll find the answers to many of your questions by browsing the abstracts or full studies (if available) there. Also, thoroughly read the Italian page, which you have already seen. Two studies which I just received in their entirety are the following (on Apulians and Sicilians). Formerly, I just had the abstracts:
Ultimately, we all descend from sub-Saharan Africans, since this is where our earliest ancestors originated.
Yes, hominids came from this area. I know it may seem racist to some people but it seems like homonids shared some physical ressemblances (relatively speaking) with some Sub-Saharans (that is why many racist people call Blacks "monkeys" or "apes"), which means that regardless of our current apparence the fact is 100% of our ancestors ressembled the modern inhabitants of Sub-Saharan Africa anyway, they simply evolved to Negroid, Mongoloid, Caucasian (etc) "races".
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You could look at it as roughly being the equivalent of that, although of course it doesn't mean that is the case. It means that of their autosomal genetic makeup, about 5 percent of the genes come ultimately from sub-Saharan Africa.
Doesn't the percentage of genes represent the percentage of people who contributed to the genome? I mean, when a man and a woman have a baby, doesn't the child have 50% of genes from the mother and 50% from the father? I am not an expert in genetics but it seems logical to me, unless some chromosomes have more genes than others, and thus a mother who has richer chromosomes than her husband would have children whose genome would be made up of more than 50% of maternal genes with a minority of paternal genes (less than 50%).
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I sometimes loosely consider Turks as Europeans. I realize that most Europeans don't.
To not mention Kurds (20% of Turkey's population) who live in the heart of the Middle-East, Turks have always been a Middle-Eastern civilisation through their history, from the time of the Hittites and the Lidyans, to the time of the Ottoman Empire. They are the direct descendents of the ancient Anatolians, who were then Hellenised and finally adopted the Turkish language and culture from the Central Asian immigrants (they show a minor Central-Asian genetic influence). While they have always been attached to Midle-Eastern civilisations like ancient Egypt, Persia, Mesopotamia, etc, the only European civilisation they had cultural and historical ties with was Greece (like Iberia and the Islamic world). If they had remained under Greek rule as much of the Middle-East at this time (since the conquest of Alexander the Great), they would be considered to be European today as people of Cyprus or Malta (who speak an Arabic dialect) for instance, but their destiny changed with the Muslim advances in their territory, as the whole Middle-East and North-Africa, which became an eternal opposed and ennemy entity of Europe after the coming of Islam in the 7th century and the conversion of the majority of its inhabitants.
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The Turks of Eastern Thrace also don't consider themselves to be European? I was wondering about this. I didn't know if the geoghraphically European Turks and the geographically Asiatic Turks use the Bosphorus to divide themselves.
I have never met any Turk from the interior of Eastern Thrace, the main city is Edirne and it seems to be culturally Midlde-Eastern, but who knows. I do not think that they divide themselves because Istanbul is built on both European and Asian shores, and its people usually feel Middle-Eastern from those I know.
Of course the Turkish government and many intellectuals claim a European identity for some political reasons, it would be extremely good for Turkey's economy to adher to European Union, which finances 3.3% of Greece's anual GDP for example, but keep in mind Morocco and Tunisia made the same requests to adher to EU claiming a common history and a geographical proximity (North-Africa being 14 km from Europe). Of course we can say they share a "comon history" because of the centuries of Carthaginian and Islamic dominations of Europe, and of the Roman, Vandal, and Byzantine dominations of Maghreb. But it is like citing the contemporary European colonisation, it seems to be very subjective and such wishes come only from incompetent Maghrebi leaders who do not represent their nations, the same for French leaders who constantly talk about France and Algeria being fraternal brothers while people don't consider themselves to be a same family at all. There is a problem because many European intellectuals often try to attach Maghrebis to Europe, while they wouldn't agree if Maghrebis told Europeans are Maghrebis for instance. It is not a form of racism, a negative feeling, or an attempt to put distances between people, but the fact is those populations are not the same and do not have the same history, whether they shared historical periods or not today they consider themselves to be totally alien to each other, as a person of Maghrebi descent I can testify it. Thus, adhering to European Union for Maghrebi nations is like France and England adhering to African Union, it is nonsense. Some Western leaders proposed the idea of a Mediterranean Union including Southern Mediterraneans (Arabs) and Northern Meditteraneans (Europeans and Turks), which seems more logical.
To talk again about Turks, the majority are opposed to an adhesion to EU according to polls, and it seems obvious when you talk to Turks that they feel nothing but Middle-Eastern, just like the Greeks of Cyprus and the hundreds of Agean islands who are both technically parts of Asia, feel European regardless of their geographical location. By the way, Europe is only a part of the Eurasian continent, it is only an arbitrary boundary. After the Greco-Turkish war that followed WWI, both countries agreed to make an exchange of populations. Hundreds of thousands of Greeks who lived in Asia Minor are now in Europe, and hundreds of thousands of Turks who lived in Europe are now in Asia minor, which tells again how geographical location doesn't matter in such cases.
Finally, Egypt is located on both Africa and Asia (the Sinai peninsula), but the people of Sinai do not feel they are Asian Arabs, they are definitely North-Africans.
Last edited by sirius2008 on Fri 28 Mar 2008 03:13; edited 3 times in total
Ultimately, we all descend from sub-Saharan Africans, since this is where our earliest ancestors originated.
Yes, hominids came from this area.
I don't think that William was refering to hominids. I think he was refering to H. sapiens, human beings exactly like us, complete with art, music, religion, etc.
sirius2008 wrote:
100% of our ancestors ressembled the modern inhabitants of Sub-Saharan Africa anyway, they simply evolved to Negroid, Mongoloid, Caucasian (etc) "races".
The modern inhabitants of Africa span a wider range of variation than the rest of the globe combined. The band that swam the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb 70kya numbered only a few thousand. So the latter must have been a sub-set of the former (probably a sub-set of Ethiopia/Somalia/Eritrea). What this band looked like is not all that certain. (Other than that they were not as depigmented as modern northern Europeans, since the Euro depigmentation adaptation is much more recent than that.)
I don't think that William was refering to hominids. I think he was refering to H. sapiens, human beings exactly like us, complete with art, music, religion, etc.
Didn't our ancestors become Homo sapiens after they settled new continents? I do not know about this.
Were Homo sapiens already representative of the modern human "races" before they left Sub-Saharan Africa, or did they evolve later?
I don't talk about facades such as the skin tones, the eyes and hair colours, who appeared later apparently. I reffer to the skeleton shape for instance, since Asians, "Caucasians", and Africans, seem to have different shapes in particular in their skull.
Didn't our ancestors become Homo sapiens after they settled new continents?
No. The people who left Africa about 70 kya were us in every measurable way. There is no way to tell if a skeleton is from someone who died yesterday or someone who died 160 kya in Africa.
sirius2008 wrote:
Were Homo sapiens already representative of the modern human "races" before they left Sub-Saharan Africa, or did they evolve later?
Unless you can define "modern human races" objectively (see Introduction to Science-as-Process) the question is meaningless. If you are asking about breadth of variation, the small band that left Africa about 70 kya were of necessity less internally diverse than the rest of Africa. Their descendants have increased in variation as they expanded over the globe, although they still do not vary as much globally as the people within Africa.
Well, I cannot define "races" properly since they do not really exist. I will remake my question:
When the ancestors of the modern people of Oceania, Eurasia, and Americas, left Africa tens of thousands of years ago, did they have about the same apparence (besides skin tones and eyes and hair colours as I said) as their descendents or did they evolve later?
Did they all have the face of Sub-Saharans and then evolved?
Other questions:
1) Did the distant ancestors of Sub-Saharans (not slaves and recent immigrants of course) ever left the continent in history and then came back or are they the only "race" that never left the cradle of humanity?
2) Did North-Africans leave Africa through Asia as most humans and then entered Africa back and settled its Northern part, or did they simply go to the North when the Sahara desert that separates the 2 Africas was a fertile land?
Just like for the Egyptians, there are many hypothesises of the origin of Northwestern Africans. Some think they came from Northeastern Africa and perhaps came from Southwestern Asia before to enter there. Some think they came from the Iberian peninsula, long before the arrival of Indo-European peoples in the area. The original languages of North-Africans whether they are Maghrebis (Berber tongue) or Egyptians (ancient Egyptian tongue) both belong to the Chamitic branch of the Chamito-Semitic language family.
I realise I ask a lot of questions and perhaps you cannot help me, those topics are so interesting and since people often make mistakes I like to have many opinions from different people. I am very suspicious since I personally noticed many scientists themselves make big errors. For instance, I emailed an anthropologist who published his studies about this subject, and strangely it apperaed that in our debate he started to reffer to the mainly Arabic-speaking population of Northwestern Africa as if they were the descendents of the Middle-Eastern settlers who came in the area since the 7th century, he also implied they were genetically different from the Berber-speaking locals (who also speak Arabic and whose majority identify as both Berber and Arab).
Most anthropologists and historians I talked to told me however than besides they adopted the Arab civilisation and language, those Arab populations are mainly of original Berber stock. I also recently read a genetic study telling the racial compositions of the Arabic-speaking and Berber-speaking peoples of the region are identical. The same can be said for Egyptian Arabs, who are mainly descended from ancient Egyptians and not from Southwestern Asia's Arabs.
When the ancestors of the modern people of Oceania, Eurasia, and Americas, left Africa tens of thousands of years ago, did they have about the same apparence (besides skin tones and eyes and hair colours as I said) as [the descendants of those who remained behind in Africa] or did they evolve later? Did they all have the face of Sub-Saharans and then evolved?
No one has yet framed a falsifiable hypothesis for this question, so there is no evidence either way. Some (myself included) suspect that they looked like Ethiopians or Khoisan today, since these are the sole existing samples of the source population of the band that left Africa. (Long before the agriculture-driven Bantu expansion.) Others suggest that it is possible that they had darker complexion, since Andaman Islanders are among the oldest post-diaspora populations and are very dark. Lacking evidence supporting a falsifiable hypothesis, I would not bet money either way.
sirius2008 wrote:
1) Did the distant ancestors of Sub-Saharans (not slaves and recent immigrants of course) ever left the continent in history and then came back or are they the only "race" that never left the cradle of humanity? 2) Did North-Africans leave Africa through Asia as most humans and then entered Africa back and settled its Northern part, or did they simply go to the North when the Sahara desert that separates the 2 Africas was a fertile land?
I am no expert on Berber phylogeography. William can point you to studies of this. But I would caution that your questions may be unanaswerable because they are founded on bad assumptions. Basically, you are asking where the Berbers came from. The answer depends on the time-frame. Consider examples going back in time.
1. Within the past thousand years (more or less), Arab-speaking Muslims brought their culture and religion to what is today western north Africa. What fraction of this inflow was genetic replacement, and what fraction was simply cultural adoption? Let me give you a comparable example. The Indo-European invasion of Europe was about 85 percent cultural adoption and only 15 percent genetic if you look at matrilineal DNA. In other words, the pre-Indo-European cultures of Europe were almost entitrely replaced, but 85 percent of the female lineages remained the same ones that had been in Europe since the ice melted. But if you look at Y chromosomes, the picture reverses. About 85 percent of Y lineages were replaced by the Indo-European invasion and only 15 percent survived. This pattern (female lineages remain but male lineages are replaced) is the hallmark of conquest. And so if you ask, "Do today's Europeans descend mostly from Indo-European invaders or from the former paleolithic peoples of Europe?" The answer is "yes." It all depends on how you look at it. You see the same pattern in Africa with the Bantu expansion. Similarly, although to my knowledge no one has good data on the Muslim conquests, the answer is probably the same: most matrilineal haplotypes probably survived but most Y lineages were replaced.
2. Now look back another thousand years, when Rome had bustlng cities throughout north Africa. Do today's north Africans descend from the Romans or from the native (pre-Islam) Berbers? Again, the answer is undoubtedly "both."
3. Now look back another thousand years, when the Phoenicians had bustlng cities throughout north Africa. Do today's north Africans descend from the Phoenicians or from the native (pre-Roman) Berbers? Again, the answer is undoubtedly "both."
4. Now look back another thousand years, and another, and another, and repeat this thought over and over sixty times, each time considering the flow of culture and language, as well as of genes. Oh, and do not think that Ys always travel and replace each other, and mtDNAs remain behind and survive. That just happens to be the pattern of conquest. The pattern of slavery is precisely the opposite: the female lineages travel and replace each other and the male lineages survive.
People have always wandered, migrated, enslaved, and conquered each other. The studies I have seen of north Africa show that, while Asian, Sub-Saharan, and European DNA is detectable in North Africa, most of the mtDNA has been there unchanged since for least 10 millennia, since Paleolithic times. Can we look back even earlier?
Unfortunately, looking back earlier than that is still mostly guesswork. Very little data has been collected on Paleolithic phylogeography. Between 15 kya and 60 kya, there were undoubtedly migrations north and south (both ways) across the region that eventually became the Sahara, and there were undoubtedly migrations east and west (both ways) across Suez. But no one has produced a falsifiable hypothesis on this.
Let me give you a small but typical example of the problem. My own Y haplotype happens to be R1* (pronounced "are-one-star"). Before R1* was spread to the New World by the transatlantic slave trade, R1* was found only among natives of Northern Cameroon. There is no question that R1* is native to sub-Saharan Africa. And yet, R1* is a direct descendant of a haplotype (R) found only in Asia. And this descent happened thousands of years after the original out-of-Africa diaspora. Furthermore the descendants of R1* (R1a and R1b) are found only in Europe. What conceivable scenario could have produced this pattern: R (only in Asia) gives birth to R1* (only in Cameroon) which gives birth to R1a and R1b (only in Europe)? And all of this happened long after our emergence from Africa? All you can really say is that someone migrated from somewhere to somewhere else, and their descendants migrated even further, but all of the intervening traces have vanished.
In conclusion, please ask William to point you to articles on north African phylogeography. But do not expect simple answers to the question of where the Berbers (or anyone else) "came from." The question assumes that populations have not been wandering, migrating, conquering, and enslaving each other for 60 millennia, but we have.
Last edited by fwsweet on Wed 07 May 2008 18:07; edited 1 time in total
I have read your whole text with attention and it is very interesting, thanks.
As for your comments about the genome of modern Europeans, I guess you mean that the invading Indo-European males mixed with the native women (or raped them) and left (or killed) the native men, but what happened to the Indo-European females, why is only 15% of their DNA found in modern Europeans?
As for Northwestern Africa, it is true that there were migrations between the North and the South before the region that is now the Sahara became a harsh desert, so it is an other reason why North-Africans have Sub-Saharan genes, plus slavery of the recent past centuries.
I wonder if there were already natives when the migrating ancestors of the Berbers arrived in Northwestern Africa about 10.000 years ago (why not Black natives?), and whether they fused or not (most likely as in most cases, and it would be an other reason that would explain Sub-Saharan genes). Not to mention I also wonder what would be the proportion of native and invading people genes in our modern genome.
* Perhaps the Berber identity actually developed only after the migrating ancestors of Berbers arrived in the area, whether they found it empty or peopled.
* Or perhaps they already had their culture and language when they arrived in the area and found it empty.
* Perhaps they found it peopled and imposed their Berber "civilisation".
*Or perhaps they found it peopled and adopted the alleged Berber "civilisation" of the natives.
It is so frustrating to not know !!! We know that there were already natives in Europe long before the Indo-European invasions, in addition we know that European language family was alien and was imposed on the natives (or perhaps it could be a mixture of both native and alien languages?), and according to you we even know the percentage of native and invading blood (even the details at that, maternal and paternal lineages) of modern Europeans, not to mention your claim about the proportion of cultural traits inherited from natives and invaders, yet we do not know anything about the obscure origins of Northwestern Africans...
However, that is also because it is a more distant period, and thus more difficult to know.
Finally, I do not know if we can compare Northwestern Africa of the 7th century to the European continent of the time of the Indo-European invasions millenia ago. The Arab invasions of the 600s in this area were realised by soldiers, who were in a much smaller number than the natives, while the Indo-European invaders were not making a simple imperialistic conquest in the name of an empire that would only rule it, they were actually constituted of whole populations who were migrating and colonising a new territory as Europeans later did in Americas and Oceania. Thus, the percentage of alien genes are totally different in the 2 cases.
Of course we can say that the populations (or some people who make up those populations) who were conquered by Romans have some admixtures from the Italian peninsula of the antic era, we can also tell the same for those who came in contact with the Levantine Canaanites (Phoenicians), who are considered to be the direct ancestors of Palestinians and coastal Syrians and Lebanese by the way. However, it is most likely that their genetic influence was minor, according to the studies I read. Romans were not known to colonise territories as Europeans did in the New World and Oceania, they were rather trying to force the conquered natives to adopt their civilisation thanks to the domination of their troops. Of course those troops probably raped a lot of women too, but not necessarilly the entire populations of those regions.
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Some (myself included) suspect that they looked like Ethiopians or Khoisan today, since these are the sole existing samples of the source population of the band that left Africa.
Interesting analysis.
By the way, Ethiopians have a specific sukll shape and are relatively light skinned compared to other Sub-Saharans, even the Falasha Jews seem only half Black in apparence.
Since history says the Semitic language and culture of Ethiopia were brought to the area by South Arabian immigrants who founded and ruled the Kingdom of Aksum, would it be possible that Ethiopians are different from other Sub-Saharans because of an alleged large part of Arabian genes?
but what happened to the Indo-European females, why is only 15% of their DNA found in modern Europeans?
I cannot even guess. But I suspect that some people have speculated hypotheses involving males being more likely than females to leave home in search of adventure
sirius2008 wrote:
We know that there were already natives in Europe long before the Indo-European invasions
Yes, since about 35 kya. But Europe was virtually depopulated during the last glaciation, its inhabitants living in Mediterranean refugia. Europe was then re-populated starting about 16 kya when the ice began to melt, and the Indo-Europeans arrived only a few millennia later.
sirius2008 wrote:
yet we do not know anything about the obscure origins of Northwestern Africans... However, that is also because it is a more distant period, and thus more difficult to know.
And also because the technology of phylogeography (indeed virtually all post-17th century technology) was invented by Western culture. So quite naturally it was first used to investigate the roots of Western culture. But this will spread slowly as other cultures absorb such technology.
sirius2008 wrote:
would it be possible that Ethiopians are different from other Sub-Saharans because of an alleged large part of Arabian genes?
Yes, Ethiopia (and other people of the horn) owe a great deal to Arab (and Islamic) culture. And many are genetically mixed. But there are also many Ethiopians who to this day are still genetically similar to the pre-Bantu hunter-gatherers that inhabited most of Africa. See this thread for a graphic and discussion of the Bantu expansion. See this article to see why I say that the unmixed Ethiopians and the Khoisan are the last two remnants of Africa's paleolithinc inhabitants before the Bantu expansion. To use an analogy with Europe, if the Bantus are like the Indo-Europeans (agriculture-enabled conquerors), then the Ethiopians and Khoisan resemble the Basques (remnants of the prior population).
And also because the technology of phylogeography (indeed virtually all post-17th century technology) was invented by Western culture. So quite naturally it was first used to investigate the roots of Western culture.
That is true, Westerners also intensified their researchs on the Middle-East as it is the cradle of human civilisation (Sumer) and concerns them too in an indirect way. But Northwestern Africa was much less studied.
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To use an analogy with Europe, if the Bantus are like the Indo-Europeans (agriculture-enabled conquerors), then the Ethiopians and Khoisan resemble the Basques (remnants of the prior population).
You mean physically or historically? Physically, they ressemble other Spanish and French people, but perhaps you don't reffer to their phenotype. I heard that a part of their ancestors could have been the Berbers.
And also because the technology of phylogeography (indeed virtually all post-17th century technology) was invented by Western culture. So quite naturally it was first used to investigate the roots of Western culture.
That is true, Westerners also intensified their researchs on the Middle-East as it is the cradle of human civilisation (Sumer) and concerns them too in an indirect way. But Northwestern Africa was much less studied.
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Yes, since about 35 kya.
What's irritating is the sources are very various, sometimes it says 35 k years ago, sometimes 50 k years ago as on the following map: http://www.handprint.com/LS/ANC/disp.html
The problem with scientific sources is they often contradict each other and confuse us, they should use a range instead to tell precise dates who will contradict each other then.
Quote:
To use an analogy with Europe, if the Bantus are like the Indo-Europeans (agriculture-enabled conquerors), then the Ethiopians and Khoisan resemble the Basques (remnants of the prior population).
You mean physically or historically? Physically, they ressemble other Spanish and French people, but perhaps you don't reffer to their phenotype. I heard that a part of their ancestors could have been the Berbers.
By the way, may I ask what are your qualifications, are you an anthropologist?
What's irritating is the sources are very various, sometimes it says 35 k years ago, sometimes 50 k years ago as on the following map: http://www.handprint.com/LS/ANC/disp.html The problem with scientific sources is they often contradict each other and confuse us, they should use a range instead to tell precise dates who will contradict each other then.
Scientific theories are continually refined as new data emerge. This is inherent to the process. People who want unchanging certainty tend to stick to religion and avoid science. Regarding your map showing our species in Europe 50 kya, I think it may be obsolescent and not take into account the latest findings. I recommend the latest edition of Richard G. Klein, The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins (Chicago: University of Chicago). It is the standard post-graduate text and is kept up to date with a new edition every couple of years.
sirius2008 wrote:
You mean physically or historically?
Historically. Genetically and linguistically, the Basques are a remnant of the ancient European hunter-gatherers who were replaced by the Indo-European farmers. Genetically and linguistically, the unmixed Ethiopians and Khoisan are a remnant of the ancient African hunter-gatherers who were replaced by the Bantu farmers.
sirius2008 wrote:
By the way, may I ask what are your qualifications, are you an anthropologist?
Yes, as well as a historian. My doctorate major is U.S. history. My minor is molecular anthropology.
Last edited by fwsweet on Mon 31 Mar 2008 14:56; edited 1 time in total
People who want unchanging certainty tend to stick to religion and avoid science.
You are right, although many people are religious and still believe in sciences.
But my point is since things change, we should not say "this happened" or "this happened at this date" if we are not sure, we should use the conditional tense and tell estimations not precise dates, we should make theories and hypothesises not telling facts if we are not sure they are facts.
Unfortunately, modern clerics in the 3 Abrahamic religions tend to not always adher to modern sciences. In the past, Muslim authorities believed that religion and sciences were two inseparable elements, but nowadays they seem to have joined Christian clerics in denying major historical facts.
Religious people are like scientists anyway, they evolve and change their interpretations through the centuries when they learn new knowledge, and perhaps in a few years they will adapt their view of the divine creation with the concept of human evolution.
But in any event, I do not know if we can blame them, because even if we are almost sure that human evolution is a fact, weren't our ancestors convinced in the same about many "facts" who are now proven to be false and are seen as ridiculous? Not only about anthropology, but also astronomy, one often reads in history books that countless theories concerning universe, who were followed for decades by the scientists of the past century, are now totally rejected and are seen as inconceivable.
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