Origins Of African People/ Diversity In Africa/Picture Thread

Come on people,
Are you trying to tell me no Nigerian is knowledgeable enough on these matters as to be able to present any reliable info.

COME ON!

I got a reply ready on my desktop before i left off for an assignment, will drop it when i get back.

I posted an analysis on Fulani DNA the other day, which seems to place them squarely in west Africa and nowhere else. ie, while they may have distinct links to somewhere  outside west Africa, their main roots are to be found in west Africa itself. Of course I could have been reading the article wrong.

There was another article I read somewhere, about some ancient skeletons found in eastern or central Africa. These skeletons had skulls with non-negroid features, and the researchers wanted people to consider the possibility that facial characteristics which are considered exclusively Caucasoid, may actually not be that way at all. For instance, longer nose, narrower face and "Semitic" forehead. "Negroid" features can vary anywhere from broad to thin, and it doesnt necessarily have to indicate foreign ancestry.  Such characteristics could still be native to black Africa itself.This is from the researchers, not me. Lots of grey issues here, imo.







personally, I have a feeling both groups probably started migrating southwards around the same time. ie assuming the Bantu werent the late migrators while the "Hams" were the early ones. There's a distinction because people feel they're different on account of their facial structures and skin color, but sometimes they tend to give the impression they're from the same roots.






its being debated.




most likely have Arab blood.





very possible though one shouldnt overlook Yemen.




they say they're not, but if they are, then the mingling is from too far back to matter, I guess.

If they arent, then they could be simply African, and the bantu negroes the migrants from Egypt, the drying up of the sahara, or elsewhere.





Could be the Obama effect, though I noticed east Africans- especially Kenyans- didnt really place so much emphasis on tribe before the election violence last year. They're more laid back.

Mandingo

This topic is for grown ups who are not already brainwashed by European mindsets based on race.

When a grown as man uses the word MUTTs to describe anyone it is obvious his level of education.

As the the East/ West African comments. Thats an insult to your ancestors as well so now you realize why you have so many problems?

If you do have any sensible information to offer to this topic(which I doubt) you are very welcome to state them.

Source: Wikipedia

"Throughout humanity's prehistory, Africa (like all other continents) had no nation states, and was instead inhabited by groups of hunter-gatherers such as the Khoi and San.

At the end of the Ice Ages, estimated to have been around 10,500 BC, the Sahara had again become a green fertile valley, and its African populations returned from the interior and coastal highlands in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, the warming and drying climate meant that by 5000 BC the Sahara region was becoming increasingly dry and hostile. The population trekked out of the Sahara region towards the Nile Valley below the Second Cataract where they made permanent or semi-permanent settlements. A major climatic recession occurred, lessening the heavy and persistent rains in Central and Eastern Africa. Since this time dry conditions have prevailed in Eastern Africa, and increasingly during the last 200 years, in Ethiopia.

The domestication of cattle in Africa preceded agriculture and seems to have existed alongside hunter-gathering cultures. It is speculated that by 6000 BC cattle were already domesticated in North Africa.[17] In the Sahara-Nile complex, people domesticated many animals including the pack ass, and a small screw horned goat which was common from Algeria to Nubia. In the year 4000 BC the climate of the Sahara started to become drier at an exceedingly fast pace.[18] This climate change caused lakes and rivers to shrink significantly and caused increasing desertification. This, in turn, decreased the amount of land conducive to settlements and helped to cause migrations of farming communities to the more tropical climate of West Africa.
By the first millennium BC ironworking had been introduced in Northern Africa and quickly spread across the Sahara into the northern parts of sub-Saharan Africa[19] and by 500 BC metalworking began to become commonplace in West Africa. Ironworking was fully established by roughly 500 BC in many areas of East and West Africa, although other regions didn't begin ironworking until the early centuries AD. Copper objects from Egypt, North Africa, Nubia and Ethiopia dating from around 500 BC have been excavated in West Africa, suggesting that trans-saharan trade networks had been established by this date."

The parts in bold seek to emphasis the notion that there were migrations of peoples that were concentrated in central Africa closer to the Sahara and  a reintroduction of several of these groups of these people back into these regions following the first ice age. The E3a/E3b: West/ est African DNA tie could account for this plausible analysis as these is the single marker that connects The two sub groups going way back.



As for Khoisan people with golden brown skin tones. The picture below is of a typical san man. Though he is distinct in look. i don't see any variation of skin tones that cannot e attributed to any other African population.

interesting, since this indicates Bantu negroes are later migrants to their current locations.

another puzzle: why didnt bantu negroes domesticate the animals around them on a larger scale?

The cititaion does not reference any sources to verify that information.

The san and khoi proved very difficult to domesticate i.e be taken as slaves. There are accounts of european dutch trying to use the San as Slaves during the early settlements. This proved a waste of time as the san did not understand the concept of working for possesions or toiling simplly for a place to live and food to eat. They were predominately nomadic. This was the overwhelming reason the dutch had to source out slavery by way of india, mozambique and malaysia.

The tribes that inhabited the near coastal regions of the south of Africa were relatively peaceful and if you check there are not many accounts of war and domination except for the Zulu who were the last ethnic group to migrate south wards. There was no invasion of South Africa by so called "Bantu" tribes. Infact the reason for the migrations by central Africans can be seen as competiton that existed withing central african ethnic groups for land grazing settlements. The weaker groups obviously moved southward in search of land to graze their cattle.

The plausible reasoning for the low number of khoi and san before dutch settlements was due to their nomadic culture. travelling in larger groups would  prove fatal to the san if they actually bred in very high numbers as they scavanged for resources in the kalahari and elsewhere.

Their numbers must have been too small to prove threatening to the other groups and it is evident they did not specificallly device weapons for war or attack.

Who Are The Pygmies?
========================

Europeans regarded them as part of myths for long, the old Egyptian and Greek texts mentioned the existence of very short people in Africa. Ancient Greeks spoke about "Pugmaeus" ("foot" as a measure unit). But in 1874, a German explorer met the first pygmies ever seen by a European in the current Congo republic.

Still, pygmies are not dwarf individuals. Amongst those of pure blood, men have an average height of just 1.45 m (4 ft 10 in) and women of 1.33 m (4 ft, 1in)! They are not a dwarf variant of the Black Africans. Their body proportions are the same with those of humans, that's why their heads look large compared to the rest of the body. But otherwise, they are perfectly proportioned (the dwarfs are deformed).

This is an ancient race and only the Khoi-San people (bushmen), now restricted to South Africa, are older amongst current human races. They are closer to the so-called Asian Blacks, that inhabit much of India, New Guinea, Melanesia and Australia (Aborigines) and have a great deal of genes in many populations from South Asia and Polynesia.

Unlike typical African Blacks, pygmies have hairy bodies and faces and rather aquiline noses, not flattened and also a lighter skin. In fact, pygmies were amongst the first people to have left Africa to colonize Asia, and at a moment, they inhabited large areas of south Asia.

Modern relict populations of pygmy race are found not only in Africa, but also in many parts of southern Asia: Aeta in Philippines, Semang in Malaya, Mani in Thailand, the Andamanese tribes from the Andaman archipelago, Rampasasa from Flores island and many pygmy tribes inhabiting the mountains of New Guinea or in Vanuatu archipelago. A pygmy population went extinct in the middle of the 20th century in northeastern Australia (Queensland).

Pygmies were restricted to the most inhospitable places, isolated from the surrounding populations, like dense tropical forests, where they can still bear their traditional life style of hunters-gatherers, like humans did 200,000 -10.000 years ago.

Two millennia ago, pygmies inhabited most of Central Africa (Congo basin), but when the Bantu people (typical taller Black Africans) migration started from southeastern Nigeria, these newly arrived tribes, practicing agriculture and having an advanced iron technology, displaced easily the Stone Age pygmies.

Today, pygmies lost their initial languages, speaking neighboring Bantu idioms. In fact, they have to speak those languages, as they trade with their neighbors. Today, in Africa pygmies are found in Gabon, Camerun, Zaire, Congo, Central African Republic, Rwanda and Burundi. It is believed there are around 200.000 pygmies. African pygmies call themselves baKola, baBongo, baAka, baMbenzele, baTwa or baMbuti.

Pygmies live in "villages" (rather camps) made of 10-15 huts, placed in a circle. The huts are built by women from forest branches and leaves, resembling a cupola and are extremely small (even for the height of the pygmies, being a little more than 1 m (3 ft) height, so they must go on all fours to get inside. Inside they make a fire used for preparing the food and keeping away the wild animals. The huts are just sleeping places and rain shelters, as pygmy's life deploys outside.

Their settlements are rather camps, because pygmies are nomadic people. Efforts to settle them have had little success and sometimes they disappear for months in the heart of the forest.

Pygmies are usually monogamous but they can divorce easily or separate for living with another partner. The father or the oldest member of the camp is the most respected person, but there is not an authoritative leader. Children are extremely priced by the pygmies.

Pygmies enjoy playing music and use drums made of hollow tree trunks covered by a skin patch, copied from the Bantu people, and reed-made panpipes. They dance in a very expressive and agitated way, imitating the movements of the animals they want to hunt, as they believe this way they put a spell on the animals, hunting them easier.


 
Pygmies do not practice agriculture, their main source of food being the animals they hunt. In fact, their only domestic animals are dogs employed for hunting. They are extremely resistant and have special senses for detecting the prey in the dense forest. They use bows with arrows (poisoned with plant venoms that paralyze even the elephant hearts!), spears, maces and sometimes knifes, axes and the hunting webs, made of vines. They rarely use traps, heavily used by Bantu tribes. They can also use crossbows, a Bantu weapon.

Like Bushmen, they hunt on the run and in groups, chasing the prey till they can shoot their arrows. Pygmies hunt everything, from monkeys and birds to buffaloes, squirrels and other rodents, antelopes, wild pigs, and even the largest animals of the forest, the elephants.

When the hunt is abundant, they eat enormously, as the aliments can not be stored, and after that they can live for many weeks on minimal food. Hunt does not provide a steady supply, that's why the women's and children's task of gathering food is important: they collect forest fruit, berries, fungi, nuts, leaves, roots, rodents, snakes, lizards, frogs, termites and other insects, caterpillars, larvae, worms and honey. Surrounding Bantu people get these products mainly through trade with the pygmies.

In fact, pygmies make barter with the neighboring Black people: they offer extra hunt meat and the other forest products, receiving weapons, pots, knives, maces, axes, salt, fabrics, palm oil, manioc, green bananas, alcohol, tobacco and cannabis. Sometimes, pygmies are asked to work on coffee or cacao plantations. They work for a few weeks, but after being paid they disappear for months deep in the forest.

Pygmies have an excellent knowledge of the forest pharmacopeia, knowing plants that cure from gut worms to snake bites and eye diseases. They are very reticent in their relations with the neighboring people, as throughout time these varied from scorn to racism (being considered inferior and less intelligent by tall African people).

During the recent civil war from Zair, Lendu soldiers even committed acts of cannibalism against the pygmies. The Lendu superstition says that the pygmy viscera transmits magic powers, invulnerability and courage to the consumer.

During the years of conflict, the pygmies entered deeper into the forest, but they never abandoned it. Now, they got out of the forest, extremely frightened by the cannibalism accounts, joining the waves of refugees and having to survive as refugees in a hostile environment. About 3,000 of them have fled to neighboring countries.

Weakly adapted to the sunlight and food offered in the refugee camps (they still transport lighted fire and never eat raw food, including bananas and forest fruit, which are always roasted), many died of diseases.
================
Courtesy:  http://news.softpedia.com/news/Who-Are-the-Pygmies-72485.shtml

interesting photos.

What does the product of a pygmy and non-pygmy parent look like. I wonder.

as per average height.

I'm guessing as much, since pygmy females do mix with other tribes to some degree. There could also be some mixture from the dark skinned peoples who arent native to Africa.



I looked up some Masai photos on the web, and most of them look like regular Kenyans ie negroid. Not all of them have the different features we see on tv. Their colors and features range from regular black to the Ethiopian types, like most other kenyans. And Fulanis.

which lends credence to the fact that again there is no one African type all across the board to denote Khoisan as a seperate race of people. The terms negroid, congoid or capoid should be used carefully when describing African peoples as there is on going revision of these pseduo terminologies.  Again they are definitelly a distinct "peoples" by way of Phenotype but genetically speaking are not far off from fellow Africans. Please see Graph below.

Khoi and San people branched out from the same Mitrochondrial DNA "L" as other Africans but their Haplogroup L1 remained isolated for an extensive period of time as this haplogroup is near invisible in West, central or east African but can be found in the so called "bantu" populations of south Africa. Genetically this is what makes them distinct from other Africans.

East and West African branched out in the form of L2 and L3 Mitchondrial DNA respectively. These are exclusive lineages to Africans on the continent found no where else in the world in such high concentrations. What this means is that an east, west or south Africa are near descendants of the same group of people and changes only occured as a result of isolation and interbreeding.

I am still studying these genetic variants but from the information so far what I have come to understand is that the racial classifications of old do not necessarily fit anymore according to genetic studies of Africans today and one is able to see the continium of the peoples of Africa in terms of geno and pheno type.

This is the reason the terms Bantu or hamitic as defined is a means of seperating African peoples. I find it very Ignorant when ethiopians or somalians claim some sort of mixed ancestry from West Asia as opposed to defining themselves as a distinct African people with closely related origins with West Africans.

Again a lack of understanding of genotype as opposed to phenotype.
You should try to use your head alot more than your eyes when you clear your head of western racial profiling.


Source . Wikipedia: Topic : Somali people
Y DNA
"According to one prominent study on Y chromosomes published in the European Journal of Human Genetics, the Somalis are closely related to certain Ethiopian and Eritrean groups. The data suggests that the male Somali population is a branch of the East African population − closely related to the Oromos in Ethiopia and North Kenya − with predominant E3b1 cluster lineages that were introduced into the Somali population 4000−5000 years ago, and that the Somali male population has approximately 15% Y chromosomes from Eurasia and approximately 5% from sub-Saharan Africa.

Besides comprising the majority of the Y DNA in Somalis, the E1b1b (formerly E3b) genetic haplogroup also makes up the bulk of the paternal DNA of Ethiopians, Eritreans, Berbers, North African Arabs, as well as many Mediterranean and Balkan Europeans.[19] The M78 subclade of E1b1b is found in about 77% of Somali males which may represent the traces of an ancient migration into the Horn of Africa from the upper Egypt area.[18] After haplogroup E1b1b, the second most frequently occurring Y DNA haplogroup among Somalis is the Eurasian haplogroup T (M70),[20] which is found in slightly more than 10% of Somali males. Haplogroup T, like haplogroup E1b1b, is also typically found among populations of Northeast Africa, North Africa, Southwest Asia, and the Mediterranean"

What does this mean. 80% of somali genome is Region specific to Africa. It means the genes originate and mutated in East Africa. Specifically the E3b1 cluster.
The haplogroup "E" split two ways E3a predominant in West Africans and E3b Prominent in North/East Africans. if the somalians show a frequency of 80% of this haplogroup what this simply means is that a significant porportion of Somalians are not a mixed race.

The introduction of West asian genes specifically the M cluster is at a 15% frequency. Hardly significant enough to be considered a recent admixture of West asian genes. the tropical saharan mix of 5% is also too small to consider massive gene flow from tropical west africa.



Pleas try to understand that simply looking at someones facial features does not equate to them being of mixed heritage. its far deeper than what your western professors have filled your head with. Fulani and exclusive to West Africa and carry the predominant E3a cluster of this region yet phenotypically they can be squared even with some Ethiopians or east African features who you claim are admixtures.

Like wise using your pictorial analysis the Khoisan would be the more closely related to Chinese people as opposed Africans and the African Americans closer to the Europeans than West Africans.

Maybe you should call All AA's a distinct racial classification from West Africans if the mix is significant enough to do so.

If I had ten kids and 1 of them married an arab man and we moved to an isolated region and continued to interbreed with each other seperate from my other brothers spread out across Africa would that make me a distinct peoples or a distinct "race" from my brothers kids.

@ morpheus

I just saw your post on the AA thread





I dont think racist ideology alone accounts for the theory/hypothesis that Khoisans/Bushmen qualify as a separate race from Bantu blacks.

They're similar to central Africans because they used to be more widespread than they are today. Not to mention there's been a lot of intermingling and mixing since ancient times.  Just because they're regarded as black doesnt necessarily have to mean they're the same race as negroes, any more than Australoid blacks are considered Africans. If the dark skinned Indians were based in Africa, they'd also be classified as negroid.  And even the Khoisan languages are an entirely different family altogether from Bantus.


The Bantu expansion isnt a myth, I'm afraid. Many tribes have oral traditions indicating colonization of some sort, from antiquity.

I do see your points however.  The truth may be somewhere in between.

Racist ideology is not the sole account for the theory of Bantu vs Khoisan classifications however the point of view of the authors should not be discarded as most genetic, anthropological and racial classification research of Africans began with very many racial overtones and the incorrectly analysed data.

I am not one of these crazy peopel who keep shouting about the bad 'white man' and all but truly want to approach this matter in a very 'subjective" stance. I however cannot ignore these racial overtones when I come across them.

To classify Khoisan as a seperate "race" of people one should first define what one understands as  the meaning of  "race"

Source:Wikipedia: Race
"Conceptions of race, as well as specific ways of grouping races, vary by culture and over time, and are often controversial for scientific as well as social and political reasons. The controversy ultimately revolves around whether or not the concept of race is biologically warranted;[3][4] the ways in which political correctness might fuel either the affirmation or the denial of race;[5][6] and the degree to which perceived differences in ability and achievement, categorized on the basis of race, are a product of inherited (i.e., genetic) traits or environmental, social and cultural factors.

Some argue that although race is a valid taxonomic concept in other species, it cannot be applied to humans.[7] Many scientists have argued that race definitions are imprecise, arbitrary, derived from custom, have many exceptions, have many gradations, and that the numbers of races delineated vary according to the culture making the racial distinctions; thus they reject the notion that any definition of race pertaining to humans can have taxonomic rigour and validity.[8] Today many scientists study human genotypic and phenotypic variation using concepts such as "population" and "clinal gradation". Many contend that while racial categorizations may be marked by phenotypic or genotypic traits, the idea of race itself, and actual divisions of persons into races or racial groups, are social constructs.[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] However, the concept of race may be useful in forensic anthropology. According to forensic anthropologist George W. Gill, "race denial" not only contradicts biological evidence, but may stem from "politically motivated censorship" in the belief that "race promotes racism".[17]"

The last paragraph of using race in analysis of forensic anthropology is valid to me and seems the definition I can stomach.


To me khoisan are a distinct peoples of African origins with far more genetic (L haplogroup) and phenotypical similarities(variance of skin tones adapted to both Tropical and Arid land) to be categorized as a seperate race of people from other Africans. Mixing has nothing to do with it.

Austroloid can be defined as a seperate 'race" of people from Africans because Phenotypically and more than so genotypically they are different from Africans. More so the genetics than the phenotype having dark skin does not neccesarily make you African i.e the Melanin absorbing gene is inherited from their forebearers but doesn't put them in the same category as Africans much like Egyptians or Ethiopians.

I will accept the bantu expansion is partially plausible but have a lot of reservations.

Please can u elaborate on these "exceptional" features you mention that differentiate them from other asians.

For your information Koreans do have tiny upward slanting "eye folds"and are actually more similar to Japanese people than chinese people. get your facts straight and stop spewing rubbish. If you don't know simply say you don't know.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unVUFIYS-yI

As for your statement on African "tribes"(I am surpirsed you still use that term in this day and age). I know it is quite diffcult for you to differentiate one from th other but thats your European masters fault for not educating you bout it

Don't blame us for taking advantage of your IGNORANCE