thenilevalley

alTakruri · Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 638

Sneak a peek at a rare treat.

Roman mosaics extend over the entire empire. They're found
nearly everywhere the Mediterranean Sea laps a shore.

Who are these people?

Unless the text on the stamps says otherwise,
we now have primary graphic representations of
the indigenous North African black phenotype to
compare and contrast with other ancient black
phenotypes like the Egyptian, the Saharan, and
the middle and upper Nile Valley.

My guess is that the closest modern black people
to approximate the mosaics would still be found
in the same area (i.e., the Algerian chotts region).

NOTE: the original image was rescinded by ImageShack
so I edited in each individual stamp as a replacement
which I trust is an improvement over the original.

alTakruri · Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 638

Mediterranean North Africa once had its own specific phenotype
of blacks who differed from other blacks the same way say blacks
differ from region to region on the continent and across the Indian
Ocean and on into the Pacific.

Besides the Maurs,
other ancient dark North Africans were
* the Nigritae,
* the MelanoGaetuli, and
* the Western Aethiopians.
* LeukoAithiops are
also mentioned. Presumably, they resembled Aethiopians in some way
either physically, culturally, or both, except for their white colour. The
Pharusii were adjacent to the Western Aithiops and the Nigritae and
may have shared their complexion. Then there were the Troglodyte
Aethiopians in the vicinity of the Garamantes, some of whom were
pitch black.

My guess would be that those black Saharans who don't really resemble
west, central, or east Africans are the modern descendents of the old
black North Africans. Of course, since prehistory there's been an influx
of east Africans into the Sahara greatly influencing the phenotype. The
same is true for west African Sahelians who are even thought to
originate in the Sahara to some degree.

alTakruri · Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 638

Mediterranean North Africa once had its own specific phenotype
of blacks who differed from other blacks the same way say blacks
differ from region to region on the continent and across the Indian
Ocean and on into the Pacific.

Of course all over the continent Africans basically resemble
one another in some way or other. Yet, just as there are
"family looks" there are regional looks (and that doesn't
imply exclusivity).

Since the Sahara exhaled its authochthonous populations
to its southwest, southcentral, and southeast, there are
bound to be folk there with a "Saharan family look."

Conversely, since Africans from the west, south, and
east migrated to Saharan regions, their "family looks"
have to show up among Saharans.

I think the visages depicted in the mosaics probably
represent the authochthone northern Saharan to North
African littoral phenotypes.

alTakruri · Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 638

While not Algerian mosaics these images greatfully
posted elsewhere by the resourceful and cooperative
Ms. Wysinger (thank you very much Myra) may very
well depict the authochtone North Africans prior to or
without the incretion of north Med miscegenation.

Details on each one later as time permits but for now
they range from Minoan to Punic Carthaginian provenance.

Addendum:
1). OK, I've added the captions from the book.
Be aware Snowden uses the outdated racial wording
of his time and discipline (with which I disagree).

=============================================

Originally posted by Myra Wysinger:
The Image of the Black in Western Art , vol. 1,
from the Pharaohs to the Fall of the Roman Empire
Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1976

Fig. 142. Negroid profile carved in shell. From
Ayious Onouphrios. Early 2nd millenium BCE.
L: 4.5 cm. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum

Fig. 147. Head of a young mixed type. Fresco
fragment (detail). From Thera. About 1550-1500 BCE
H: appx. 10 cm. Athens, National Museum.

Fig. 203. Mask of an old woman. From Lipari,
necropolis. Mid 4th century BCE. Terracotta.
H: 7 cm. Lipari, Museo Archeologico Eoliano.

Fig. 204. Mask of a Negro. Mid 4th century BCE.
Terracotta. H: 22.5 cm. London, British Museum.

alTakruri · Joined: 27 Jun 2005 Posts: 638

Speakers of taMazight go back 7000 years. They are the iMazighen
of Ta Mazgha (Berbers of North Africa). Tamazight is an African
language of the Afrisan group. The Afrisan linguistic phylum
developed somewhere between the south-eastern Sahara
and the Horn and began splitting at least 6000 years ago.

Branches and probable date of split:
Kushitic - 8th millenium BCE
Egyptian - before the 7th millenium BCE
Omotic - 7th millenium BCE
Hausa - 7th millenium BCE
Semitic - 6th or 5th millenia BCE
Tamazight - 6th or 5th millenia BCE
(I. M. Diakonoff, Afrasian Languages, Moscow 1988)

Herodotus described Libyans as indigenees of Africa. Egyptian
records list immediately neighboring "Libyans" of two types, the
Tehenou and the Temehou (people created light/white skinned?).
This is simply recognizing that there was no uniform phenotype in
ancient Tamazgha. It is not saying there was only one phenotype
among the closest neighboring "Libyans."

Tehenou and Tamahou were not the same ethnic type. The first
adjacent "Libyan" people that the Egyptians refered to were the
Tehenou. In color paintings they are dark brown. They were the
local blacks of Libya. They were not Nilotics nor Bantu nor Sudanese.
They were a local Libyan ethnic group. (G. Moller, Die Aegypten und
ihre libyschen Nachbaren, ZDMG, Liepzig 1924 pg 78.)

Oric Bates who wrote on the Eastern Libyans says that
the before 12th dynasty Egyptians colored Tehenou dark
brown. The Eastern Libyans, London 1914, pp 43-45.

C. M. Daniels makes a similar report in The Garamantes of
Southern Libya, Wisconsin 1970, pg 27.

Later in time the Tamahou begin to appear in Egyptian paintings.
They are creamy colored often with light hair and eyes. This is
the type that absorbed and replaced the Tehenou.
(W. Holscher, Libyer und Agypter Beitrage zur Ethnologie und
Geschichte Libyscher Volkerschaften, AFU 5, Gluckstadt 1955)

Surely it is an injustice to the resurgance of Amazigh (Berber)
self-determination to deny this aspect of the ethno-history of
Tamazgha by writing the Tehenou out of history or denying
that they were dark and they were the first Libyan Imazighen.

Attached is a pic of emperor Septemius Severus, his Syrian
wife and their children. Septemius has dark skin, elongated
African features and flowing hair. His two sons take their
mother's complexion.