I get it.
I totally understand. The whole “white in a post-colonial, post-apartheid South Africa” thing. The terribleness of carrying the burden of your racist ancestors, for no other reason than being the wrong colour in the wrong place. The irony of having to prove your non-racist views at every turn thanks to things that happened before you were even born, despite the fact that you are well and truly not racist. It can’t be easy.
But I understand. I know. Because I’m your friend. You know, the type cynically known as the Token Black Guy. The one you enthusiastically point to whenever your Mzansiness is called into question. The one who gets to play wing, otherwise a field of only white okes playing rugby might smaak a bit too much of that other time. The one your grandfather embarrasses by loudly proclaiming “whatever happened to names like Smith?” because he can’t pronounce my surname. The one you play Nkalakatha for so he also feels in. I sympathise and I honestly feel angry on your behalf. I am living, breathing proof of how well you’ve embraced the new diaspora, aren’t I?
As if being a caring, sensitive, non-racist, non-sexist white person in post-apartheid South Africa wasn’t hard enough, that meanie Verashni goes and totally skeeves you out by writing that unfair column, mocking you. No way, bru. I mean, why do they keep banging on and on about race this and race that 16 years after the totally cool, new South Africa was born and 20 years after Mandela was released from jail? All that stuff doesn’t matter any more, surely? Isn’t that the point of the new Mzansi? Black, white, orange, green, purple — we’re all the same now. Aren’t we? It makes more sense these days to define demographics by economic standing, seeing as how there are so many, ahem, black diamonds around, doesn’t it?
I totally get it. In fact, I downright love some of the things you do. Like how you bought into the whole “One Nation, One Soul, One Beer, One Goal” vibe with heady abandon. Yaay, we’re all one big, happy-clappy bunch now, swaying gently to Freshlyground. I get why you don’t understand why people still insist on thinking, acting and staying within their racial boundaries, as if there were still a Group Areas Act of the mind. I can explain. You see, no one is really a South African. Not in the way you are, my dear non-racist, non-sexist, all-inclusive white person are. One is first Zulu/Xhosa/Sotho/Afrikaans before one is a South African. Mandela didn’t make that go away. Having no uniquely South African culture to fall back upon (honestly now, who’s going to claim Britishness, with all the historical baggage, handlebar moustaches and pith helmets?) you seized upon the eclectic Rainbow Nation identity, only to find that the rest of South Africa wasn’t joining in. You’ll have to bear with us, your less progressive countrymen for a bit longer. We’ll catch on, eventually. In the meantime, I suppose you’ll just have to deal with the irritation of trying to be non-racist in a country that consistently refuses to move on.
I know you’re a well-meaning bunch. You’re a charitable lot who try to do your bit for your less fortunate fellow South Africans. That’s why I tend to look the other way when the annoying traits — according to Verashni, and others, including this writer — rear their ugly heads. The entire more-hip-than-thou effort. The Rocking the Daisies, tattered T-shirt, single malt pretentious douchebaggery. (Yeah yeah, I know. Generalising.) I can put up with the self-congratulatory smugness, the angst-ridden navel gazing, the inability to accept that sometimes you can be wrong as well, and be it far from me to shoot down earnestness, but can’t you be a little less pretentious? Some of us really don’t care about your edgy music and all that. But I know you mean no harm. You’re really into this Rainbow Nation spiel. That’s the beauty of our brand new democracy — no race, culture, sex, political formation or suburban book club is beyond ridicule.
So yeah, let’s put it all behind us, shall we. Let’s simply move on. Black, white, orange, green, purple. We’re all the same now. Let’s pretend that 16 years of democracy can wash away hundreds of years of injustice and inhumanity. Let’s all act as if all is well, because that makes things less awkward for everyone.
I totally, totally understand.
Much love and thanks for those Ray-Bans,
Sipho
David Livingstone was one of the first white explorers of the interior of Africa.
When he let the people back home in Britain know about this Arab slave Trade still flourishing in Africa DECADES after slavery had been banned in Europe – there was a total outcry.
You can find him on Google as well.
Sorry- Livingstone’s Second Trip again( it got partially wiped out):
“Generally the Arabs obtained their ivory and slaves from the local rulers, who, armed with the imported guns, sent their warriors to hunt elephant and to raid the forests……often capturing slaves in the process…….the country around Lake Malawi was primary a slaving region, where the powerful Yao chiefs raided the ill-organised and defenseless peoples of the eastern lakeshore. The Bemba, and later the Ngoni, did the same on the west. It was along the trade route from Lake Malawi to the coast that Livingstone noted some of the worst atrocities:
“We passed a woman tied by the neck to a tree and dead……We saw others tied up in a similar manner……the explanation we got invariably was that the Arab who owned these victims was enraged at losing his money by the slaves being unable to march…….Today we came upon a man dead of starvation….….We passed village after village and gardens, all deserted”
Do those trips sound like slaves taken “for nursemaids and harems” to you? Like one of the articles in Google on The Arab Slave Trade pretends!
I don’t know which is worse! A black person with a never ending feeling of victimisation. Or a white person with a never ending feeling of guilt!
Johan
I totally agree – they both irritate me incredibly!
@Lyndal Beddy
My previous response disappeared. Oh well. Mike Davis has no connection to Kwanzaa. He is an atheist, and is moreover white, thus even less connection to Kwanzaa. He uses data from demographers and other scientists and historians. You still haven’t given me statistics, only a single incident, which thus fails to give a relevant scope for development of Arabized societies, underdevelopment of slave-providing societies, comparison with other slave-taking campaigns, etc.
Which article are you referring to in that last missive, and what is its significance? If it is ignored by all scholars, and most non-scholars, why are you putting so much attention on it? It recalls the Arthur Butz saga in USA.
There’s a South Park episode that explains this all away: white people should stop pretending like we understand how black people feel about what happened in the old days. We just don’t get it, and we never will, because it didn’t happen to us.
Johan Meyer
Kwanza is a cult based on historical perversions – you can believe in the fake history whatever colour your skin.
I have come across a few white novelists who have the same historical inaccuracies derived from Kwanza. But it is most prevelant among Americans because history is not a compulsory subject in their schools.
Have you Googled “Tsetse Fly Belt” yet?
@lyndall Beddy (Part 1)
So I should ignore that Davis is a scholar, relies, heavily on other scholars, and ascribe some nebulous ‘Kwanzaa’ affiliation to him? I usually judge writers by the arguments they make, and whether they present any claims I know to be wrong.
As for google, I get more or less the same hits with normal google as with google scholar, mainly because I use the latter regularly (I’m a researcher) – I think google uses cookies to modify results, but so far, even going down further, I see nothing that resembles a study relevant to what Davis is saying. None of the first twenty links pertain to historical and prehistorical density of Tsetse fly, which is understandable, as google scholar is aimed more at e.g. public health, physics and engineering than history. Likewise, even in physics, many papers are not indexed in google scholar.
Davis cites the argument that the ‘colonial’ (really, neocolonial, as the colonists were at most enablers)-driven exploitation and (in places) depopulation meant in practice that the small bushes that were the habitat of the Tsetse fly were no longer being cleared. Thus the larger problem.
In terms of a probable route of crossing, assuming that the Tsetse fly was dominant prior to human settling (a rather big assumption), a hot and dry summer, followed by an outbreak of fire, would be enough for humans to enter (and cross), and continue clearing the land.
@Lyndall Beddy (Part 2)
I’m aware of a ‘mythology’ of Iraqi ancestry among Hausa (strictly a belief that an Iraqi came to the area and fathered the ethnic group – who was the mother?), but I’ve never come across it (or anything similar) for Nubians. Likewise, I’ve not come across it for Fulani (neither in Nigeria, nor in Sudan). But how problematic is it? Compare it to non-Semitic (e.g. black and white) Christians, who insist that they are the descendants of (very Hebrew) ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’. Likewise, take the belief in RSA of an old leader called Nguni, who is said to be an Egyptian military leader, and came to lead (or is it father?) the ‘Nguni’ groups. Both the Nguni and the Hausa claims (with the latter being understood as an Iraqi leading a band that became a state-based ethnic group – the Hausa Sultans) are plausible, and we simply don’t (and can’t) have the relevant evidence. As an anecdote, take isiXhosa ‘ewe’, and compare it with western-Afro-Asiatic ‘Aywa’ (e.g. Tigray, Masri Arabic etc) – Ewe->Jebo is linguistically more plausible than Jebo->Ewe.
Johan Meyer
I was looking something else up and found this :
“the tsetse fly helped halt at the Sachel the Southwards advance of Islsam in West and Central Africa. In the jungles nearer the Equator, tsetse flies carry and transmit the lethal nagana virus to ungulates and thus, by killing livestock, hindered the equestrian and camel-riding Arabs in their penetration of Sub-Saharan Africa. Had it not been for the tsetse, Islam might have spread as far as the Cape of Good Hope, and the 360 million Africans who bear the Bible today might be chanting suras from the Qur’an”
“The Lost Kingdoms of Africa” by Jeffery Tayler
Johan Meyer
If you are a researcher you should read Jeffery Taylor, who is a Black American and fluent Arabic speaker, but does not write Kwanza. He travels the lands he writes about and speaks to the people.
I dont think Blacks want Whites to feel guilty, i think we want u to acknowledge our pain and suffering and not for them to be dismissed because we are a ‘Rainbow nation’ and we have to move on.
@Lyndall Beddy
As my field is more applied physics, I’m not sure how your argument is supposed to work – google merely tends to filter my results to the hard and soft sciences, while keeping fashionable conspiracy theories away. Then again, which variant(s) of Arabic? If he has no ties to Kwanzaa, does that mean that he speaks truthfully, necessarily? If he is basing his discussion on Arabs on e.g. contemporary views of Muslims and Arabs among Igbo, as an example, things would rest heavily on the attitudes of the individuals he interviews, and most people would seek relatively like-minded people to interview, and dismiss people they disagree with (see e.g. my review of ‘war junkie’ on my blog – the guy makes huge jumps in logic without batting an eyelid, on the basis of how he perceives people).
Finally, if I read nonsense or otherwise dubious information from Taylor (is he the Taylor you quoted above?), why should I take him seriously? Blacks are as capable as whites to talk rubbish, and that quote does beg multiple questions. I think I’ll stick to demographic and other (hard and social) scientific literature, thanks.
@Lyndall Beddy
Do you mean Kallen and Wallner, or are they editors? Did you have Jeffrey Tayler in mind, rather than Jeffrey Taylor? He wrote “Angry Wind”. I haven’t read the latter, but I do wonder, based on reviews, if he believes that Tuaregs and Hausas practice FGM (generally they don’t – incidence among Hausas in Nigeria is 0.4%, and the practice hardly exists among the Tuaregs – it is more frequent toward the coast, e.g. Igbo 45% and Yoruba 60%) – which is why I’m generally dubious of such authors. I’ll give him a read some time.
I’ve check previous remarks of yours elsewhere regarding FGM, and looked at reviews of his work, and finally it makes sense. You got your belief that Hausas, Tuaregs and other North-West African Muslims generally practice FGM from him, right? Think about it. He speaks Arabic. Aside from a few religious phrases, most of these Muslims don’t – they speak e.g. Fulani, Hausa, and various ‘berber’ languages. Only the very educated speak Arabic, and likely, they would have studied Arabic (and theology) at al-Azhar, where they may have heard of the practice, and apologetics for it. Egypt remains the origin. The UN and other (oriented to relevant research) bodies are not mistaken about the practice’s geographical and ethnic distribution. You are.
Johan Meyer
Actually from many sources including the Muslim Conference in Egypt to try and stop the practice which exists in 22 African countries.
Before we continue this conversation I need to know if you have been to Africa, and if so to which countries.
Otherwise we could talk past each other for ever.
@Lyndall Beddy
I was born and mainly raised in Cape Town, although I did spend about nine months on the Rand, and a few months in Botswana. I’ve been to Namibia twice. So much for my travels in Africa. Right now, I’m working in North America, but most of my friends are Igbo, though I have some Yoruba and Delta state friends, and two from Sudan (one from the south, half Dinko, half ‘jar’, and one Nubian from the North). I’m learning on and off to speak Igbo (Enugwu variety). I also have friends from Cameroon, Ghana, Eritrea and Mozambique (who learned some Afrikaans from an Afrikaner communist who came to help in Mozambique while it was under attack from the apartheid regime), several fellow Afrikaners, and some friends from south and east Asia. I’ve got quite a detailed understanding of the problems of each of these countries, as described by several of these friends, and have a detailed understanding of the problems of Jos and Delta state. I also occasionally do business through my one Igbo friend to sell used machinery in Nigeria. My Nigerian friends say that the thing that prevents them from inviting me to visit with them in ‘Nija’ is the security situation, with kidnapping (MEND and others) and all, even though I say no wahalla because of having lived in Parow by Elsies and all that. I frequently read the Nigerian press.
So tell me about Africa.
Johan Meyer
You have lived in South Africa, and spent time in Botswana and Namibia. You lived in Elsies River so are likely to be brown.
But all your friends in North America are from Arab North Africa. Is North America the USA or Canada ? – just to be clear.
Have I got this right? Are the North American friends emigrants or on contracts?
I doubt you were taught much more than the Great Trek in history at school.
I’m an Afrikaner, white etc (though I have some PE coloured ancestry) – I lived on the ‘edge’ of Parow, though we could occasionally hear the gang shootouts in Elsies, and some of the gang activity would occur not only on the other side of the rail, but even on the other side of Voortrekker.
I thought you said that Ghanans, Igbos, Yorubas, and Dinkas are not Arabs (certainly, I would insist that they are not). They tend to be darker skinned than RSA blacks. As for ‘Arab’ North Africa, I’ve had maybe three friends in the ‘Arab’ states (Egypt, Libya), but none of the other friends would describe themselves as Arabs, and only the one from southern Sudan would consider any of his fellow citizens as Arabs (the Lebanese have largely abandoned their businesses in west Africa in the face of Chinese competition).
I’ve lived in several parts of North America, though which parts need not concern you. Are you an intelligence agent?
As for my schooling, I was taught of both Livingstone and Stanley, Sheppard and several others whom I’ve since largely forgotten. I’ve done much reading on my own time, but all this is irrelevant, as we still don’t have meaningful statistics on the Arab and Ethiopian slave trade in Africa, and your argument about the Tsetse belt is illogical on its face, whether part of the (official) history or not.
One gets the citizenship to travel more freely…
@Lyndall Beddy
Seeing as you are so infatuated with Kwanzaa, I have to wonder, is this notion that west-Africans are to be Arabs (or Africans generally as Arabs) from Kwanzaa? If so, you truly have become what you hate. Igbo are staunchly Christian, and even they don’t confuse Hausas for Arabs (many of my Igbo friends have done national service, which is compulsory for university graduates, did it in Hausa areas, and even speak Hausa). They have their own bitterness toward Hausas, but none of this Arab business.
PS ‘Jar’ is not Arab.
A lot of people have taken offense to this article, probably because it’s all true. Is it such a surprise that most of the population haven’t moved on when they’re so used to being uneducated (or rather selectively educated) and told what to do? What a bonus for the new leadership to be handed a group that will do what they are told.
Thanks for the heads up Sipho, I will lower my expectations to be more realistic.
Johan Meyer
I did not say your friends were Arabs, I said they came from Arab North Africa. To be more clear Islam controlled North Africa.
Unless you had not noticed North Africa was colonised by Arabs and forceably Islamified by Jihad; and Southern Africa was mainly colonised by Brits so there was no forceable Christianification (the Brits being Protestants not Catholics).
There are, of course exceptions – like Ethiopia (Christain and in the North) and Rwanda (Roman Catholic) and Namibia (colonised by Germans).
But Africa’s main problems are where Islam and Christian/Animist meet( eg Nigeria,Sudan)
Read my latest post on Newstime for full details “The USA – where Myth is taught as History”, and you will get the point about Kwanza/African Renaissance
@Lyndall Beddy
So you are saying that Igbos (almost exclusively Christian, with a tiny Jewish minority – it is believed that the Igbos are in part descended from Egyptian Jews who moved to what is now west Africa) came from Arab North Africa? Aside from their partial Jewish ancestry, I cannot see how you can justify that.
As for where Islam and Christianity met, how about the Yoruba (Nigeria to Ghana)? In Nigeria, Yorubas are split 60% christian, 30% Muslim, 10% pre-Christian west-African monotheistic ‘animist’ religion, and they often marry. In other countries, the Yoruba are split about 50-50 Christian/Muslim. Moreover, the Jihads were carried out by Fulani, who are Niger-Congo, not Afro-Asiatic (Arab or otherwise).
As for the claim that Africa’s main problems come from the meeting of religions, Congo – 5 million dead, and about 20-25% of the African war dead of the last 50 years – caused Canadian actions in neighbouring Rwanda – where did Islam come in? Zimbabwe? Senegal (where the religions do meet)?
A question then about Kwanzaa: At which of these universities is it taught, and what portion of each university’s relevant faculty teach it? Nonsense circulates everywhere, but people have brains.
@Lyndall Beddy (Part 2)
I have to wonder – did you read what I said above? In Nigeria, in the mainly Christian South, you have FGM, but not in the Muslim North. Make sure you understand what I’m saying, so that you can at least know what evidence to look for to counter what I’m saying.
Another example: Eritrea: 50-50 Muslim/Christian, 98% FGM. Libya: 0% FGM. In India, it is found mainly among the descendants of East-African slaves who were brought to India by Arab and Ethiopian slave traders, and they are mainly Konkani speakers (Goa’s environs), e.g. Yellapur.
@Lyndall Beddy (part 3)
Part one should read “caused by Canadian actions”…
Here are some Nigerians’ reflections on Qaddafi, Jos etc.:
Beyond the Jos killings
Jos killings: A breach of many laws
Before blaming Ghadafi
Of course, what has been happening in Jos and the north is that agriculturalist ethnic groups like the Igbo buy land from various feudal potentates, thus making that land no longer available to pasturalists, e.g. the Fulani. The latter then try to move southward, and attack less defended groups, e.g. Tiv, thus the recent violence…
Johan Meyer
Kwanza is taught in every American University.
Here are some of the words of Mary Lefkowitz, American Classical Historian, about this mythology as detailed in her book “Not Out of Africa”:
”Although I had been completely unaware of it, there was in existence a whole literature that denied that the ancient Greeks were the inventors of democracy, philosophy, and science. There were books in circulation that claimed that Socrates and Cleopatra were of African descent, and that Greek philosophy had actually been stolen from Egypt. Not only were these books being read and widely distributed; some of these ideas were being taught in schools and even in universities……….no one seemed to think it was appropriate to ask for evidence……
…in February 1993,…Dr. Yosef A. A. ben-Jochannan was invited to give Wellesley’s Martin Luther King,Jr. memorial lecture. Posters described Dr. ben-Jochannan as a ‘distinguished Egyptologist’ and indeed that was how he was introduced by the then president of Wellesley College. But I knew from my research in Afrocentric literature that he was not what scholars would ordinarily describe as an Egyptologist, that is a scholar of Egyptian language and civilization. Rather he was an extreme Afrocentrist, author of many books describing how Greek civilization was stolen from Africa, how Aristotle robbed the library of Alexandria, and how the true Jews are Africans like himself.
(Part 1)
Johan Meyer (Part 2)
After Dr. ben-Jochannan made these same assertions once again in his lecture, I asked him during the question time why he said that Aristotle had come to Egypt with Alexander, and had stolen his philosophy from the library at Alexandria, when that Library had only been built after his death. Dr. ben-Jochannan was unable to answer the question, and said that he resented the tone of the question. Several students came up to me after the lecture and accused me of racism, suggesting that I had been brainwashed by white historians….Aristotle never went to Egypt, and while the date of the Library of Alexandria is not known precisely, it was certainly built some years after the city was founded, which was after both Aristotle’s and Alexander’s deaths.
@Lyndal Beddy (Part 1)
You haven’t answered the question, and have merely asserted that it is taught in every American university, with a quote that outright contradicts that statement. If that were the case, you’d be able to look up the relevant courses (many universities, for example, don’t teach specifically about Greek philosophy, except in the most introductory fashion (first years – new things are happening in philosophy – the material is more relevant to history students, and they would tend to read the relevant source material, and on occasion, secondary materials – first years might read a summary or interpretation of the original work).
Stated differently, demonstrate that Kwanzaa is ‘taught’ (how one would go about teaching Kwanzaa, or Confucianism, for that matter, is far from obvious – at most, one could present materials from the ‘school of thought,’ but you haven’t even demonstrated that much re US universities) at these different universities. Show that each university
has at least one instructor that teaches anything from Kwanzaa, or has taught something from Kwanzaa – even if in a critical fashion.
Living traditions create new work, and familiarity with the fundamentals of a given tradition, with some of the latest works, is generally how education works; it is certainly the path followed in the sciences, and also in the philosophy and sociology courses I took during my scientific education.
While it is nothing to be ashamed of in itself, I really doubt that you’ve ever attended a university.
@lyndall Beddt (part 2)
Three things struck me as I read up on Lefkowitz:
1. She only claims that ‘Afrocentrism’ (your Kwanzaa?) is taught on some universities.
2. People who cite her usually exaggerate her claims (you, this reviewer – how many Afrocentrists argued that Socrates was black? The one argument that does get made (and an interesting review, at that – the author is Bernal, one of Leifkowitz’s targets) is that Socrates may have had a black ancestor – which would not be terribly surprising, given tendencies of intermarriage at the time – see e.g. the intermarriage of Greek settlers (Philistines) with Semitic people (proto-Jews) in Israel/Palestine. Bernal argues balance of probabilities – go read Leifkowitz’s argument below.
3. Lefkowitz has the habit of occasionally confirming her opponents’ charges, e.g. with regards to linguistic training, which is precisely what Bernal charges. (Even then, when you don’t know the etymology of a word – I took some linguistics back in the day – you cannot automatically assume that said word is within the lineage of a language, in exactly the same fashion that you cannot say that it was a borrowing – you don’t know; Bernal is honest on this score, Leifkowitz umm.)
Johan Meyer
The native Egyptians were brown not black – there would have been no blacks to intermarry with.
Blacks only were brought North AFTER the Arab Conquest of North Africa,and the Arab slae trade, which brought blacks from the Congo Basin across the desert as slaves for the Meditteranean Arab rulers.
Which was about 1000 years after Socrates lived.
@Lyndall beddy
Your assumption is that no black states arose, e.g. in the Congo basin or elsewhere, and that no black nomads may have traveled and have come into contact with North Africa. I don’t think that there is any reason to decide the question up front – why can we not look at evidence (the first image on the left, and the second last one on the right, in the link – the rest aren’t as clearly central African; also, Ethiopia at the time meant Africa south of the Roman north-African provinces, ‘of burnt face,’ not the modern country). On the basis of that evidence, we can say that people with at least similar skin tone and facial features to modern Southern/Central/Western Africans were present in the Mediterranean several centuries before Socrates.
Johan Meyer,
Black Migrations in Africa: Jared Diamond in his book “Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the last 13,000 years” gives migration maps of populations throughout the world. In his chapter “How Africa Became Black” he shows the migration of the Black Bantu from their original homeland (Cameroon and close surrounds) South, starting from after 3000 BC and displacing and eliminating the indigenous pygmies and Khoisan who had lived there for perhaps tens of thousands of years, EXCEPT in Southern Africa, where he incorrectly attributes their survival to climate.
Protection of the Khoisan, and the not wiping out of locals, giving them protected Homelands, was British policy, not an accident of climate. Certainly a much better deal than the Americans gave their Pacific Island colonies – Google Hawaii and Samoa.
Certainly there would be intermarriage, but indications are that it is female DNA eg some of the Bantu killed the Khoisan men and took in the women.
Jared classifies both Libyans and Nubians as white (straight hair, light skins). Those are the classifications used by the Egyptians for 2 of their 4 races of mankind. Egyptian artifacts show no colour.
Which would mean the almost 2 million year old fossils in SA are either ancestors of the whole human race (branch theory) or of the Khoisan ( bush theory ), but certainly not of only blacks.
Again, you contradict yourself, on several levels. Whether climate or geography, Bantu groups were in contact with Khoisan groups long before the British came – were the Khoisan protecting themselves, was it the climate protecting them, or were the British (Dane Law? Angle/Saxon Kings? Britons, in north-western France?) protecting them (using some talisman or magic) in places like the old Cape province and the Kalahari, or even in parts of Tanzania up to the present? The argument is laughable.
Another self-contradiction – if we assume that Bantu expansion (the data is a bit limited for such far-reaching conclusions that Diamond draws, but something similar is surely true) started 3000 years ago, that would be time enough for them to get to the Mediterranean in time to have proto-Greeks make sculptures of them. But that assumes that they were Bantu – there are other black ethnic groups, e.g. in Mali.
As for the remains, how are they significant to the discussion? I certainly am aware of the Bantu migrations – they are in large part reconstructed from linguistic evidence (the Bantu languages are closely related to the Igboid language sub-family of Niger-Congo).
As for Libyans and Nubians, both look fairly similar to Egyptians (Nubians are a bit darker on average), and Berbers (of which the Libyans are a subgroup) share a close genetic similarity in their mDNA to the Sami of northern Europe – genetic exchange was common in the ancient world, whether by violence or other means.
Johan Meyer,
Egyptian artifacts – on metal or pottery- don’t give colour, and everyone has intermarried since the Arab Slave Trade started in the 7th century (many slaves were concubines) so what they look like now is meaningless.
There is no Khoisan culture or tribes left ANYWHERE in Africa (except the clicks and a LITTLE maternal DNA in some SOUTHERN black tibes) EXCEPT in the British Colonial areas.
And why would blacks change their culture? -killing the men and keeping the women was done everywhere, especially by Shaka,who killed so many tribes we only have 7 Bantu languages left (out of 500).
Some Pygmies still exist in Central Africa – but ALL of them have lost their languages and speak the local Bantu language.
In SA and Botswana we still have about 20 Khoisan languages, all completely different, unlike the 7 Bantu languages which all 500 derived from Ur-Bantu (presumably spoken in Cameroon).
Like Taiwan which has at least 13 original Polynesian languages – and therefore is regarded as the Homeland of Polynesian migrations over the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
@Lyndal Beddy
Remind me, how are Egyptian artifacts relevant, colour or not? The link I gave showed Mediterranean artifacts which clearly illustrated black African features (nose shape, hair, head build) centuries before Socrates – while the individuals would have to travel through Egypt or Libya (or at least North Africa) to get there, they wouldn’t have to change the demography of these places (except for themselves) to achieve that – your argument is incoherent. Nothing in my argument requires Egypt (or Libya) to be black. Does that help?
Also, there are two countries, called Namibia and Angola, that weren’t colonized by Britain, that have a substantial numbers of Khoisan speakers, though I take it that that is irrelevant to you.
How many of the lost tribes spoke separate languages? South Sudan has about 500 tribes, and about 100 languages. Evidence on the number of languages, please. Note also that your argument (actually, mine, above) about mDNA applies as much to whites (Dutch, English) as it does to blacks. How many of the people of the destroyed tribes were absorbed into other tribes, and how many were destroyed? I’d like a source for the estimate.
As for the Pygmies, it is not clear what their original language may be, although they might well be the descendants of the original Ubangian speakers – some speak Bantu languages, some Ubangian languages, and some central Sudanic languages.
@Lyndall Beddy
Explain your problem with this scenario to me:
Some blacks from the Cameroon (e.g.) area (about 2700 years ago) decide to go trek north, and hit the Mediterranean, where they come across proto-Greeks, and enter the antiquarian record as some proto-Greek makes a sculpture of the head of one of the black guys. Let’s assume for argument’s sake that they travel through Egypt. Has Egypt suddenly become black?
Khoisan related groups and languages persist in Namibia and Angola.
Pygmies speak languages from three different language families, namely Bantu, Nilo-Saharan, and Ubangian, and they are possibly the original Ubangian speaking macro-ethnic group.
What evidence can you supply for 500 Bantu languages in South Africa? 500 tribes/ethnic groups? South Sudan has about 500 tribes/ethnic groups, which speak 100 languages between them, many related.
Johan Meyer
The evidence on the lanuages is in both “Mother Tongue” by Bill Bryson and “Guns, Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond.
The evidence on the migrations is in the latter book, which he researched for 20 years and has all the supporting evidence from all the scientific disciplines. Read it – he gives all the evidence that blacks are ONLY indigenous to a very small area of Africa.
@Lyndall Beddy
And the science is still developing. Pygmy groups have been found that don’t speak Bantu languages, and some of the languages that they (and others) speak have been reclassified outside both (narrower) Bantu, and (broader) Niger-Congo, based on more careful consideration of the evidence – it appears that these languages merely borrowed a lot from the Niger-Congo languages (specifically Bantu), but are of a separate genesis (Ubangian) – why could originally Niger-Congo speaking groups not adopt a pygmy language? Often, dominating ethnic groups adopt the languages of the ethnic groups that they dominate, e.g. the Franks in France (they originally spoke a proto-Dutch) and the Manchurians, who dominated China (they spoke Manchu, although now there are only 70 Manchu speakers left, out of a population of 2 million Manchus).
Let blacks (Niger-Congo-based groups?) have an ancestral homeland that was very small three thousand years ago. How would that prevent their adventurers from getting to the Mediterranean?
Johan Meyer
I am more interested in how blacks got to Africa – it would appear it was in the migrations after the last Ice Age, from either New Guinea, Taiwan or Borneo.
I can’t repeat it all here – check my post on NewsTime
@Lyndall Beddy
I don’t think the evidence is sufficient for a definitive answer one way or the other. We know that humans brought the banana plant from Papua to Africa, and that happened about 5000 years ago, but is also quite possible that the trade and settlement occurred both ways.
You don’t define ‘black’ – do you mean features mostly associated with the Bantu ethnic groups, or would you include the features of the broader Niger-Congo group, especially on the south coast of west-Africa? How about Nilo-Saharan groups (quite ‘black’ generally)? Many of their features are not found in Southern Africa (outside coloured communities, in part from freed slaves from the Americas who settled here), and only fleetingly in central Africa. Even if the stereotypical features could be shown to be from elsewhere, one would still have to show that they avoided intermarriage with previous groups – a seemingly hopeless situation, for those who are familiar with the variability of facial build and other features among nominally black Africans.
Finally, please use citations (e.g. of papers, books) so that people can read the original sources themselves, and use hyperlinks – use a ‘less than’ sign, followed by a href, (no spaces), followed by an equal sign, a double quote, the address to find your other writing, another double quote, a “more than” sign, some phrase like ‘my article’, followed by “less than,” front slash (on the question mark button), an a and a “more than” sign.
@Lyndall Beddy
Actually, more I think of it, the more problematic your proposal becomes. Black Africans are the most genetically diverse group on earth, yet you mean to claim that they had a recent origin elsewhere? The longer a group remains in an area, the more diverse it becomes – when a group invades, it is typically very few individuals that form the new (invasive) group, and the invasive group typically suffers founder effects – Afrikaners are a case in point. While the Bantu can plausibly be traced to Cameroon, the broader Niger-Congo language family is stretched along the coast of west Africa, and is highly differentiated, which suggests that they’ve been there for several millennia at least. Likewise with Taiwan – ethnologue suggests far greater linguistic variation at the base level (i.e. on the level that would distinguish English from Bengali, e.g.) in Austronesian in Taiwan than elsewhere. This suggests strongly that the Negritos came from Africa, rather than being the remnants of Africans’ source populations, although the wikipedia page gives academic references that suggest that some groups are more closely related to Europeans and Egyptians (!!).
And would you include Nilo-Saharan groups among blacks (e.g. Luo, Nubians, Maasai, etc)?