I hate to be picky, but you have your dates and mess all wrong. Arabs didn’t buy into Islam until about 600A.D., thousands of years after the construction of the pyramids. One more, then I’m done nit-picking.

The Arabic language was not invented at the time of the pyramids either.

hence why we look more like north african and middle easterners
i am a african who is habesha eritrean semite and a middle easterner also.

So these people who want to be part of this great civilization need to know reality and admit racial mixing that occurred in ancient Egypt. You could see two brothers in same family with different skin colors that would put them in the west different racial categories.

Without looking it up to verify, my understanding is that Caucasians originated somewhere around the Cacasus (sp.?) mountain range somewhere around southern Russia? Their descendants spread out all over the Middle East, and from there, on into Europe by various routes. The Bantu peoples (black Africans) spread across central Africa, and down into southern Africa.

A black American friend I have explained to me that in America, most blacks are forced by other blacks to “choose” between black culture (which is mostly anti-white), and “white” culture (meaning “establishment” values, and not being anti-white). Sometimes this issue even divides the children in one family, with some brothers/sisters choosing the “black” culture, and others choosing the “white.”

There is another interesting thing I wanted to mention. People in America who are more than first- or second-generation, do not notice, or remark on people’s facial/racial characteristics as they do in other parts of the world. I have some American friends who had to live here almost fifteen years before they began to look at these characteristics like people here do. But there is a reason for this. It’s that in America, due to immigration from all parts of the world, PEOPLE ARE ALL MIXED UP. Some people have mixed genetic heritage, but that is not what I am talking about. I’m speaking that if you walk into an office, or a school classroom, or down the street in any major city in America, you will see a real variety of facial sizes, shapes, body types, ear, nose, mouth, or other variation. So, Americans don’t pay any special attention to these differences because they are so used to seeing so many different kinds of people.

In most parts of the world, especially the “Old World”, nearly everyone in a given region looks the SAME. For example, I recently visited a mountain village in the Middle Atlas of Morocco, and I noticed that nearly everyone in this village had a very distinctive head shape. So, if I were in another part of Morocco, or even in America, and saw someone with a head shape like that, I would immediately ask them if they were from this village in Morocco, or if their ancestors were from there. After the second generation, Americans don’t know about this kind of information any more (unless they have lived overseas).

Another example is the black people we see here in Morocco. Most people will be able to look at them immediately and know if they are from around here or not just by their facial shapes and characteristics. Among the blacks not from here, sometimes American blacks visiting will never be mistaken for Ethiopian blacks, for example, who look completely different in their facial characteristics. American blacks, to Moroccans, generally look much more like West African blacks (where indeed, most of their ancestors came from).

I just thought you might find that interesting.

Margot

I think most African Americans (AfAms) are greatly misinformed about the continent of Africa. Many think of Africa not as a continent with varied and diverse peoples and cultures but as one big country that was plundered for the benefit of slavery. A lot of AfAms (and white Americans for that matter) think that Africa is reflected in the faces of Minute Bol, Alex Wek, and Iman but not necessarily Quaddafi.

Sykes’ book “Seven Daughters of Eve” was an excellent book. For those who are a bit lazier and don’t want to mudddle through the reading might want to peep the video “The Journey of Man”. It explains how the human race evolved, leaving middle Africa and then moving northward through Egypt into what is now India and then upwards into Asia then Europe and then across the Bering Strait.

What I understand from the World History class I took in college some eons ago was that Northern Africa was more of a melange of people, especially in Egypt because it was a gateway to the Middle East and Europe –do you not find that to be true?

I think one of the confusing things to Americans (and in this context African Americans) is the use of the word Caucasian or Caucasoids. Here in the U.S. the world Caucasian usually denotes someone of European ancestry –like German or English. We rarely associate being white with being Persian (Iranian) or Lebanese or Arabic although these people are considered Caucasian.

I discovered during this conversation (in 1999) that a lot of black Americans think that ALL of Africa is black, or “belongs to the black man.” This is completely incorrect. Black Africa is basically sub-Saharan Africa. ALL the peoples of North Africa (Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania , much of Mali, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt were ALL peopled by CAUCASIANS. The coffee-color of North Africa comes from the SLAVE trade to North Africa (which incidentally, was not even outlawed in Mauritania until the 1980’s, but is found to be continuing there even to this day, in some areas), from some intermixing. However, there are relatively few black people in North Africa (maybe 1 - 2%, without making an official study). There are many more COMPLETELY-CAUCASIAN-looking North Africans than there are black North Africans. Some coffee-colored people have Negroid features, but relatively white skins, whereas the majority do not have Negroid features. Anyone who is interested in looking up the genetics could start by reading Bryan Sykes’ “The Seven Daughters of Eve.” Most of North Africa (north of the Sahara) was populated by Caucasians who moved across the northern Mediterranean, and crossed over into Africa from the Straits of Gibraltar, during prehistoric times. I think many African-Americans are EXTREMELY misinformed about this. (The Moroccans also trace their WHITE ancestry to the Phonecians, as well.)

Regarding facial reconstruction techniques, the color of the photo given in this post (of Tut reconstructed) looks very much like the coffee-color of most of North Africa. Look at the facial FEATURES–the NOSE, the MOUTH–it looks more like a Caucasian face–this is why they chose the color skin they did in this reconstruction. It could have been darker, but it could have been lighter as well. They are probably basing the color on looking at people of the same facial construction today, and looking at what color they are, then just extrapolating.

Margot in Marrakesh, Morocco
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