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I've long come across claims made about some North African physical type, supposedly bearing similarities with the "Cro-Magnon" specimen found in France, yet still distinct enough to be termed as the type de Mechta or Mechta-Afalou. These physical types are claimed to have belonged to a group of anatomically modern humans, whose population sizes seem to show a gradient; size decreasing as one moves from west to east Africa. Some specimens found in the Nile Valley [specifically, upper Nile Valley regions], dating back to the Upper Paleolithic, are claimed to be of this type, i.e., the Mechta-Afalou. So, what is supposed to have happened to these physical "types"? Were they obsorbed by other incoming/expanding groups, or did they become extinct?
Recalling Brace et al. 2005, we were told:
The North African Epipalaeolithic sample was made based on specimens from Afalou and Taforalt in Morocco [Mechta-Afalou (?)]…
Paul Broca himself had promoted the view that the Basques represent the continuing existence of the kind of Upper Paleolithic population excavated at the Cro-Magnon rock shelter in the village of Les Eyzies in the Dordogne region of southwestern France in 1868 (38-40). Shortly thereafter the “old man” -“le vieillard” -found in that rock shelter was elevated to the status of typifying a whole “Cro-Magnon race” regarded as ancestral to not only the Basques but also the aboriginal inhabitants of the Canary Islands (37, 41-44)… When the Basques are run with the other samples used in Fig. 1, they link with Germany and more remotely with the Canary Islands. They are clearly European although the length of their twig indicates that they have a distinction all their own. It is clear, however, that they do not represent a survival of the kind of craniofacial form indicated by Cro-Magnon any more than do the Canary Islanders, nor does either sample tie in with the Berbers of North Africa as has previously been claimed (37, 44-45). …
To test the analysis shown in Fig. 3, Cro-Magnon, represented by the x in Fig. 4, was removed from the European Upper Palaeolithic sample and run as a single individual. Interestingly enough, Cro-Magnon is not close to any more recent sample.
Clearly Cro-Magnon is not the same as the Basque or Canary Island samples. Fig. 4 plots the first and second canonical variates against each other, but that conclusion is even more strongly supported when canonical variate 3 (not shown here) is plotted with variate 1. If this analysis shows nothing else, it demonstrates that the oft-repeated European feeling that the Cro-Magnons are “us” (46) is more a product of anthropological folklore than the result of the metric data available from the skeletal remains...
Keeping in mind the points raised above, let me just reiterate:
What is supposed to have happened to these physical "types"? Were they obsorbed by other incoming/expanding groups, or did they become extinct? What are we told about this, by the various scholars?
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Unfortunately, most of the material on the mectha-afalou is in French. Most material you read say that a very small percentage of contemporary Northern Africans show resemblence to the Mectha-Afalou. In the book The Berbers by Michael Brett and Elizabeth Fentress says the Mectha-Afalou is continued in the latter Capsian industry.
Capsians are usually seen as ancestral to modern Magrebian populations. In some books they are indigenous;while others say they migrated there from possibly Western Asia.
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Unfortunately, most of the material on the mectha-afalou is in French.
Perhaps our pal Pax Dahomensis will help us get our hands on some publications in that medium.
quote:ausar:
Most material you read say that a very small percentage of contemporary Northern Africans show resemblence to the Mectha-Afalou.
In the book The Berbers by Michael Brett and Elizabeth Fentress says the Mectha-Afalou is continued in the latter Capsian industry.
Do you have examples of the proponents, and the basis they have for claims about contemporary North African-Mechta Afalou connection? The Mechta have been compared with the Cro-Magnon, and we already know the conclusions reached by Brace et al, concerning the so-called Cro-Magnon and modern populations, not to mention the Berbers. The point is, if advocates claim that the the Mechta ressemble the Cro-Magnon, and the likes of Brace don't see such relationship between the Cro-Magnon and contemporary North Africans, then this would also imply more or less the same for the Mechta and contemporary North African comparison.
quote:ausar:
Capsians are usually seen as ancestral to modern Magrebian populations. In some books they are indigenous; while others say they migrated there from possibly Western Asia.
I am sure you are well aware of proclamations about "Mechtoid" skeletal finds in the Nile Valley, dating back to the "late" Middle Paleolithic and "late" Upper Paleolithic; and all this, in the Upper Nile Valley!
Thanks to notes on Andrea Byrnes' website, a poster in the Nile Valley forum, the following is brought to our attention:
A child burial was found at Taramsa-1 dating to this time (c.55,000BP): “The poorly preserved bones were those of a subadult ‘anatomically modern human’ similar in appearance to the Mechtoid populations of the north African Epipalaeolithic. The position of the body, as well as the depth of the pit in which it was found . . . suggest that the child had not died in this location but had been deliberately brought here to be buried” (Midant-Reynes 1992/2000 p.37).
And then...
"Gebel Sahaba produced 59 skeletons, all semi-contracted on their left sides (head orientated east, facing south). The graves are simple pits with sandstone capstones. Associated tools date the site to around 12,000 BP.
24 of the individuals appear to have met with **a violent and unnatural death** (chert points were embedded in bones and skulls, and severe cut-marks appear on some of the bones. Women and children represent around 50% of the cemetery. The features are mechtoid or “mechta-afalou” (Phillipson 1985, 1993, p.34). Dating relies mostly on typological associations. The toolkit includes burins, flakes, backed flakes, bladelets, end-scrapers and geometric microliths, and is very similar to and usually associated with the Qadan at around 1200 BP."
Interesting...the proposed fate of those "Mechtoid" remains, i.e., violent death in the Nile Valley region! Could this make a case for a near extinction via sustained violence against these groups? Surely, as anatomically modern humans, they must have had something going for them, to avoid this [extinction via violence brought to bear by other ethnic groups] from happening; e.g., "at least" retreat to some other location, no? Even then, would this necessarily apply to relatively larger populations in Western Africa?
Of note: it must be remembered though, there is a reason, notwithstanding attempts to draw connections with the Cro-Magnon, these Epipaleolithic North Africans are referred to as "Mechta-Aflou", rather than just another "Cro-Magnon".
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Snippets of studies, several of which have been posted in previous discussions, so as to allow reconstruction of what happened to these Saharo-Nile Valley Mechta Afalou, and where they come in, in the prehistoric peopling of the Nile Valley:
Midant-Reynes informs us about an Epipaleolithic Fayum specimen...
"The body was that of a 40 year old woman with a height of 1.6 meters, who was of a more modern racial type than the classic "Mechtoid" of the Fakhurian culture, being generally gracile, having large teeth and thick jaws bearing some resemblance to the modern "negroid' type." - B. Midant-Reynes, The Prehistory of Egypt, Pg 82.
Raises the question of the notwithstanding recognition of the Mechta-Afalou specimen as anatomically modern types, whether the comparison of their "modernity" with other anatomically modern human variants, lies in the "robusticity" of the remains, or the age, or both!
From Briggs, notwithstanding his obvious prejudiced tone, we have:
"The Negroid increment of which there is evidence in some of our Northern Neolithic Series, notably Kef-el-Agab 1 and Troglodytes 1, may have well come in the same way from the South to add to the already slightly Negroid Hamitic cast of the African Mediterraneans and of their partial derivative, the Mechta-Afalou Type."
...and what are we told about these so-called "African Mediterraneans", well...
"...Type B which fits, in all essential respects, the usual definition of the Mediterranean racial type, but sometimes shows also certain morphological peculiarities commonly known as "Boskopid," as well as Negroid features among females. Type B therefore was classified as African Mediterranean...It may have well acquired its "Boskopid" traits on the road, near the headwaters of the Nile, and kidnapped a few Negro or heavily Negroid women on its way west before turning northward into Northwest Africa. The peculiar characteristics of such women could have been restricted largely to females, at least for a time, by artificial selection in the form of preferential mating."
Source: Briggs, Stone Age Races of Northwest Africa, pgs 81,89.
Note: The so-called "Boskopid" is supposedly related to the South African Khoisan groups.
From Briggs' claims, it would appear that the Mechta-Afalou, just as their supposed "partial" ancestors, i.e., the African Mediterraneans, were NOT devoid of traits typologically attributed the "Negro".
Keeping in mind the likes of the Nazlet Kharter...and the earlier snippets I posted on finds of Upper Paleolithic/Epipaleolithic "Mechtoid" remains in the Upper Nile Valley [recalling that, the burial site of at least one specimen dated back to 55,000 BP, while that of several more other specimens dated to a much later period, i.e., 12,000 BP], it would be interesting to see where these "Mechtoid" groups fit in, in terms of chronology of their appearance in the region and social status during those time frames, when looking at Keita's mention of:
"Descriptions and photographs of late Paleolithic remains from Egypt indicate characteristics which distinguish them clearly from their European counterparts at 30,000 and 20,000 years BP (cf. Thomas 1984; Stewart 1985; Angel and Kelly 1986). These distinguishing characteristics, commonly called "Negroid," are shared with later Nile Valley and more southerly groups. It is not important to label "Negroid," only to note that they are shared with a wide range of African populations. Epipaleolithic "mesolithic" Nile Valley remains have these characteristics and diverge notably from their Maghreban and European counterparts in key cranio-facial characteristics (see comments in Keita 1990) although late Natufian hunters and early Anatolian farmers (Angel 1972) shared some of these traits, suggesting late Paleolithic migration out of Africa, as supported by archeology (Bar Yosef 1987). Lumping the epipaleolithic remains of the Nile Valley and even those from the Maghreb, into one group has little to support it..." - Keita, Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships, 1993.
Moreover,...
"...Wiercinski (1965) noted an increase in the "African" (Negroid) element in crania recovered from the early dynastic tombs of Abydos as compared to the previous period. His taxonomy, like others, seems to have a narrow conception the of the range of real "African" variability. In general, this restricted view presents all tropical Africans with narrow noses and faces as being related to or descended from an external, ultimately non-African peoples. However, narrow-faced, narrow-nosed populations have long been resident in Saharo-tropical Africa (Gabel 1966; Hiernaux 1975; Rightmire 1975; Schepartz 1987) and their origin need not be sought elsewhere. These traits are also indigenous. The variability in tropical Africa is expectedly naturally high. Given their longstanding presence, narrow noses and faces cannot be deemed "non-African"..." - Keita
I consider the Mechta-Afalou as Saharan groups, and I see no reason that, if these folks exhibited different combinations of the traits that Keita just mentioned (above), they should be deemed anything but "indigenous" Africans; their physical traits ought to be considered part of the African range of variability. If there is something else at work here, that suggests otherwise, I would like to know what that something is!
And now,...
"The phenotypic situation can also be interpreted as representing two differentiated African populations, with northerners having diverged early and notably from the southerners, or an early ancestral group, by drift and gene exchange with the Near East. (This however, would not negate their lineage relationship with southerners.) Later, depending on "starting" orientation, the dynastic Lower Egyptians by convergence, secondary to gene flow and micro-adaptation, either became more African "Negroid" (Howells 1973) or became more mediterranean "White" (Angel 1972). Making a neat north/south "racial" division in dynastic Egyptian epoch would be difficult (and theoretically unsound to most current workers), although trends can be recognized. These racial terms are unnecessary. The variability in the population in Upper Egypt increased, as its isolation decreased, with increasing social complexity of southern Egypt from the predynastic through dynastic periods (Keita 1992). The Upper Egyptian population apparently began to converge skeletally on Lower Egyptian patterns through the dynastic epoch; whether this is primarily due to gene flow or other factors has yet to be finally determined. The Lower Egyptian pattern is intermediate to that of the various northern Europeans and West African and Khoisan." - Keita.
Brings to mind, Briggs' talk of "Boskopoid" [khoisan-like (?)] characteristics of the "African Mediterraneans", who supposedly "kidnapped" what he calls "Negro" females on their journey to Northwest Africa. Could the Mechta-Afolou have carried these so-called "Boskopid" characteristics, as their "partial" ancestors [in reference to the "African Mediterraneans", according to Briggs]?
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This is all kind of confusing. Surely all of the groups mentiond from Mechta to "Afro-Mediterranean" to "Boskopid" are all indigenous tropical Africans, but still retaining discernable differences from each other.
What exactly are you asking Super?
I myself only wonder what has become of the Mechta, and does such a physical type still exist??
According to you or Ausar there are still a few populations in North Africa that carry 'Mechtoid' traits, so who are they?
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: This is all kind of confusing. Surely all of the groups mentiond from Mechta to "Afro-Mediterranean" to "Boskopid" are all indigenous tropical Africans, but still retaining discernable differences from each other.
What exactly are you asking Super?
It isn't so much as to what I am asking, but more to the point of:
"...so as to allow reconstruction of what happened to these Saharo-Nile Valley Mechta Afalou, and where they come in, in the prehistoric peopling of the Nile Valley..."
quote:Djehuti:
I myself only wonder what has become of the Mechta, and does such a physical type still exist??
According to you or Ausar there are still a few populations in North Africa that carry 'Mechtoid' traits, so who are they?
That is something I would like to know more about myself; what those traits are, and specific examples of these contemporary folks.
In the meantime, presented in previous discussions...
The present study revisits a subject that has been a source of long-standing bioarchaeological contention, namely, estimation of Nubian population origins and affinities. Using the Arizona State University dental anthropology system, frequencies of 36 crown, root, and intraoral osseous discrete traits in 12 late Pleistocene through early historic Nubian samples were recorded and analyzed. Specifically, intersample phenetic affinities, and an indication of which traits are most important in driving this variation, were determined through the application of correspondence analysis and the mean measure of divergence distance statistic. The results support previous work by the author and others indicating that population discontinuity, in the form of replacement or significant gene flow into an existing gene pool, occurred sometime after the Pleistocene. This analysis now suggests that the break occurred before the Final Neolithic. Samples from the latter through Christian periods exhibit relative homogeneity, which implies overall post-Pleistocene diachronic and regional population continuity. Yet there are several perceptible trends among these latter samples that: 1) are consistent with documented Nubian population history, 2) enable the testing of several existing peopling hypotheses, and 3) allow the formulation of new hypotheses, including a suggestion of two post-Pleistocene subgroups predicated on an age-based sample dichotomy. - Irish JD, Population continuity vs. discontinuity revisited: dental affinities among late Paleolithic through Christian-era Nubians.
...If anyone has access to the full study, you are certainly more than welcome to share it; I would like to be able to determine where these samples collected from, and the specific timeframes they have been dated back to, and when this supposed change in dental morphology supposedly occurred.
In any case, Keita had this to say about Irish JD's work, in relation to what is seen as a "change" in a cranial pattern, and how this can be interpreted:
"Recently Irish (Joel D.) and Turner (1990) and Turner and Markowitz (1990) have suggested that the populations of Nubia and Egypt of the agricultural periods were not primarily descendents of the geographical populations of mesolithic/epipaleolithic times. Based on dental morphology, they postulate as almost total replacement of the native /African epipaleolithic and neolithic groups by populations or peoples from further north (Europe or the near east?)
They take issue with the well-known post-pleistocene/hunting dental reduction and simplification hypothesis which postulate in situ microevolution driven by dietary change, with minimal gene flow (admixture).
However, as is well known and accepted, rapid evolution can occur. Also, rapid change in northeast Africa might be specifically anticipated because of the possibilities for punctuated microevolution (secondary to severe micro-selection and drift) in the early Holocene sahara, because of the isolated communities and cyclicial climatic changes there, and their possible subsequent human effects.
The earliest southern predynastic culture, Badari, owes key elements to post-dessication Saharan and also perhaps "Nubian" immigration. Biologically these people were essentially the SAME. It is also possible that the dental traits could have been introduced from an external source, and increased in frequency primarily because of natural selection, either for the trait or for growth pattern requiring less energy.
There is no evidence for sudden or gradual mass migration of Europeans or Near Easterners into the valley, as the term 'replacement' would imply.
There is limb ratio and craniofacial morphological and metric CONTINUITY in Upper-Egypt-Nubia in a broad sense from the late paleolithic through dynastic periods, although change occured." - Keita, Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships.
Hence, I would like to determine where/how the so-called Mechtoid groups come into such continuity or change, in the bio-evolutionary history of the Nile Valley inhabitants.
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Hence, I would like to determine where/how the so-called Mechtoid groups come into such continuity or change, in the bio-evolutionary history of the Nile Valley inhabitants.
At least based on "dental" traits, if Keita's statement is anything to go by, there is certainly continuity between the "Mechtoid" Nile Valley inhabitants and other known Nile Valley groups:
"As previously mentioned, a review of the photographs and descriptions of Nazlet Khater (30,000 BP), Wadi Kubanniya (20,000 BP), Jebel Sahaba-Wadi Halfa (12,000-6000 BP) and Badari-Nakada-Dynasty I (4400BC-3100 BCE) remains suggest CONTINUITY (Thomas 1984; Stewart 1985; Angel and Kelly 1986; Anderson 1968; Strouhal 1971; Morant 1925). Thomson and MacIver (1905) found continuity throughout the dynastic period. This is not to suggest that no Near Eastern immigration occurred, but it is to caution against the sole use of one kind of data when postulating mass human movements. All kinds of data must be used to choose between competing models of explanation." - Keita, 1993.
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From Collin Groves, whose reactionary approach to bio-anthropology is all too apparent, the following was presented in his paper of “The terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene populations of northern Africa”, 1999:
To the southeast, further cranially robust remains have been described from Nubia, on the Egyptian-Sudanese border (Anderson 1968; Wendorf 1968a, b; Carlson and Van Gerven 1977). Exactly the same process of gracilisation seems to have taken place in this region; Carlson and Van Gerven (1977) attributed it to a change in masticatory function, associated with the processes leading to the adoption of agriculture. The largest collection, from Tushka and Sahaba, was described by Anderson (1968); he considered them in the context of “Negroid origins”, but ended by concluding that they are strongly resemble the “Maghrebian Cromagnoids”, as he called Mechta-Afalou populations, but considered that they were “half-way to ‘Negroidization’”, and demonstrated the late derivation of sub-Saharans from Caucasoids.
There are therefore a number of hypotheses about these terminal Pleistocene samples, which we propose to test this paper:
1. That the Mechta-Afalou populations are a generalized “robust” Homo sapiens population (Lahr 1994), or alternatively that they are robust because they are “Cromagnoid” in morphology, i.e. resemble the Upper Paleolithic populations of Europe (Ferembach 1985, Brauer and Rimback 1990)
Grove’s results, with regards to ‘robusticity’:
Lahr’s (1994) hypothesis, that the Maghrebian samples resemble the Cro-Magnons, is true as far as the males are concerned, but not for the females. Cro-Magnon females are robust, as are Co-magnon males; Taforalt females, however, are not so robust.
As far as morphology is concerned, Grove’s approach to discriminant analysis yields:
The discriminant analysis shows that the Nubian scatter is so wide that it is some of the Nubian males, rather than any of the Maghrebian ones, the are Cromagnon males’ nearest neighbors. The nearest neighbour of the Cromagnon females, however, is the sole Afalou female.
The frequency if occurrence of the horizontal-oval form of the mandibular foramen compares more closely to the Cro-Magnons in the Nubian than in the Maghrebian sample. In the Maghreb sample, it occurs in 1/15, ie. 6.7%, but in the Nubians in 4/18, that is 22.2% (in the Sahaba sample by itself, 4/14, or 28.6%).
According to Frayer (1992), in 38 late upper Paleolithic specimens (approximately contemporary with the present samples) this form occurs in 5.3%, although in 9 Early Upper Paleolithic specimens it was seen in 44.4%.
My take: The specimens previously placed under the ‘Mechta-Afalou’ actually don’t represent a “type”, but an assortment of specimens that share affinities in some respects, and not so much so in others. Even “robusticity’, which it seems has been seized by some to justify classification into a “type” or “categorization”, varies.
2. That Afalou is slightly less robust than Taforalt (Chamla 1978).
Groves’ conclusion:
Afalou and Taforalt males are very close in all analyses, neither being more robust than the other; the (much smaller) female samples are not so close, indeed the Afalou female is more towards the robust end of the diagrams than are those from Taforalt. We conclude that, though they are much alike, the two samples should preferably be taken separately in future analysis.
3. That the Nubian sample represents a “Europoid” population undergoing “Negroidization” (Thoma 1973). or… that the Nubian samples belong to the Mechta-Afalou type and are not connected with “Negroid” (sub-Saharan) peoples (Anderson 1968).
Groves says:
This hypothesis cannot be supported. In all analyses, Nubia is well separated from Taforalt, with the Afalou somewhat intermediate. The differences are: longer, narrower calvaria; more development of parietal keel; less rugged occipital and basicranial regions; more prognathous; flatter nasal skeleton; less protruding mandibular syphilis; lower frequency of sharp infer lateral orbital margin; narrower biorbital, wider bizygomaxillary breadth; relatively wider intertribal breadth; lower basibregmatic height in males; less sexual dimorphism; males less robust, females more so. These features recall the differences of modern sub-Saharan (Negroid) populations from those of general Caucasoid type.
Groves concludes with (I‘ll relay my perspective in between his comments):
Today the North African and Sub-Saharan gene pools are separated by the Sahara arid zone.
My take: The Sahara never formed a barrier between North Africans and Saharo-tropical Africans. Even his own analysis of select upper Paleolithic African specimens and ‘select’ Howells’ collection of “contemporary” African specimens, is testament to this.
Moving along, with Groves, he continues…
a wide sparsely populated region whose people are intermediate morphologically between “Caucasoid” and “Negroid”. While the late and terminal Pleistocene populations of northern Africa were noticeably more robust than their present-day descendants (as were those of Europe), like them they were differentiated into more northerly “Caucasoid” and more southerly “Negroid” morphologies. **Yet the transition between these two geographic forms was much further north in the terminal Pleistocene than today**; the terminal Pleistocene Nubians and the Asselar skull are as “Negroid” as are the modern Teita of Kenya; the intermediates were the people of Afalou-bou-Rhummel in Algeria.
My take: This is quite telling, the idea that the so-called transition from “Negroid” to “Caucasoid” characteristics in African populations was much “further north” in the late Pleistocene, than is supposedly the case today. Yet, Groves does not indicate where this break in the said characteristics lie in that transitional belt.
Also, it is worth noting Groves’ mention of ‘robusticity’ in association with “descendants”. Here, the implication is that the reduction in robusticity is an evolutionary product, perhaps as a response to social behavior. Interestingly though, Groves’ says this about “Nubian” groups:
“The conclusion that the Caucasoid/Negroid transition zone was farther north at the end of the Pleistocene, and has shifted south since, then , converges on that of Turner and Markowitz (1990), who reached their conclusion on the basis of **dental characters**. Compared to the Sahaba and Tushka people, Meroitic to near-modern Nubians have a much lower frequency of incisor shoveling, enamel extension, 3-rooted lower first molars and 5-cusped lower second molars, and higher frequency of rocker jaw; all these traits approach later Nubians to Europeans, and the early Nubians to present-day subsaharans (Turner and Markowitz 1990).”
Some of these differences are quite substantial, and the authors argue strongly that only gene-flow the north could have accomplished it; in situ evolution could not have done so.
My take: It would seem that Groves doesn’t contest the notion of gene flow, using dental morphology as an indicator, yet the more significant changes in morphology from the so-called Upper Paleolithic Europeans ( Cro-Magnons in particular) and later European groups, is supposed to be the product of in situ evolution , and the use of the term “descendents” implying continuity. We all know where Keita stood on this issue:
"Recently Irish (Joel D.) and Turner (1990) and Turner and Markowitz (1990) have suggested that the populations of Nubia and Egypt of the agricultural periods were not primarily descendents of the geographical populations of mesolithic/epipaleolithic times. Based on dental morphology, they postulate as almost total replacement of the native /African epipaleolithic and neolithic groups by populations or peoples from further north (Europe or the near east?)
They take issue with the well-known post-pleistocene/hunting dental reduction and simplification hypothesis which postulate in situ microevolution driven by dietary change, with minimal gene flow (admixture).
However, as is well known and accepted, rapid evolution can occur. Also, rapid change in northeast Africa might be specifically anticipated because of the possibilities for punctuated microevolution (secondary to severe micro-selection and drift) in the early Holocene sahara, because of the isolated communities and cyclicial climatic changes there, and their possible subsequent human effects.
The earliest southern predynastic culture, Badari, owes key elements to post-dessication Saharan and also perhaps "Nubian" immigration. Biologically these people were essentially the SAME. It is also possible that the dental traits could have been introduced from an external source, and increased in frequency primarily because of natural selection, either for the trait or for growth pattern requiring less energy.
There is no evidence for sudden or gradual mass migration of Europeans or Near Easterners into the valley, as the term 'replacement' would imply.
There is limb ratio and craniofacial morphological and metric CONTINUITY in Upper-Egypt-Nubia in a broad sense from the late paleolithic through dynastic periods, although change occured." - Keita, Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships.
And as presented earlier, with respect to dental analysis:
"As previously mentioned, a review of the photographs and descriptions of Nazlet Khater (30,000 BP), Wadi Kubanniya (20,000 BP), Jebel Sahaba-Wadi Halfa (12,000-6000 BP) and Badari-Nakada-Dynasty I (4400BC-3100 BCE) remains suggest CONTINUITY (Thomas 1984; Stewart 1985; Angel and Kelly 1986; Anderson 1968; Strouhal 1971; Morant 1925). Thomson and MacIver (1905) found continuity throughout the dynastic period. This is not to suggest that no Near Eastern immigration occurred, but it is to caution against the sole use of one kind of data when postulating mass human movements. All kinds of data must be used to choose between competing models of explanation.” - Keita.
Back to Groves:
…These climatic fluctuations surely bear on the genetic question. The climate of Nubia in the Qadan period was less arid than today, corresponding to one of Butzer’s short high-water substages of the Nile, and the fundamentally sub-Saharan affinities of the Sahaba/Tushka people may thus result from the northward extension of Afrotropical subarid vegetation belts. Aridity in the Sahara, however, still held sway; comparatively little gene-flow penetrated it, leaving the contemporary Maghrebian population (Taforalt) fully “Cromagnon” in type. The early Holocene climatic amelioration, with its northward spread well north, such that now Maghrebians became of distinctly intermediate type (Afalou), and even as late as 6,000 BP fully “Negroid” people still occupied northern Mali (Asselar). In this scheme, the distribution of “Negroid” peoples, and of the transition zone to their north, fluctuated according to climatic vicissitudes.
And, Keita:
“The supra-Atlas mountains and coastal northern Africans are viewed here as perhaps being more, but not only, related to southern Europeans, primarily by gene flow. Given that Berber languages are not creoles, which, if they were, might indicate massive European contact, it may be well to view the gene flow as having occurred steadily over a long time…”
"Early southern Egyptian/Nubian and Saharan remains are clearly a part of the Saharo-tropical range of variation. Northern modern Berber-speakers are frequently notably "European," in phenotype but even they have tropical African "marker" gene frequencies than those found in southern Europeans. "Blacks" have long lived in northern Africa (see review in Keita 1990)." - Keita.
Brace recently showed how Neolithic and Bronze age Europeans in various European regions less resemble the contemporary counterparts, and how the so-called Cro-Magnon is quite distinct from contemporary Maghrebian groups. I found it interesting that Groves retained the term “Cro-Magnon” [which he seems to associate with "Caucasoids"] in association with Upper Paleolithic/ late Pleistocene north African specimens, instead of replacing it with “Caucasoid”. If anything, Groves own analysis is testament to how problematic his resort to typological terms like “Caucasoid” and “Negroid” are. When taken to perspective, it becomes apparent that the so-called “Mechtoid” groups found in the Upper Nile Valley, are actually remains of folks who had substantial affinity with Saharo-tropical Africans…it doesn’t reflect a type called “Mechta-Afalou”. In fact, the latter isn’t even a type, and we’ve just seen that. Mechta-Afalou, should therefore be dropped, and not forwarded as though it represents a well defined and disparate entity!
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Moreover, just as Howell's collection falls short of representing a broader spectrum of regional inter-African variability, so is Groves' even smaller selection from this collection for comparative analysis, using the select "contemporary" groups as a basis for comparing the late Paleolithic/early Holocene specimens.
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The means of selected modern samples from the dataset of Howells (1973) were entered along with those of the fossil samples into a factor analysis to assess the interrelationships of the samples.
The males of the Afalou, Taforalt and Cro-Magnon samples lie far to the right on the diagram (Fig. 4), on factor 1, followed by Nubia male, Asselar, Cro-Magnon female, and Norse and Egypt male; to the left (scoring low on factor 1) are Dogon and Teita males, and the females of the remaining samples. On factor 2, Cro-Magnon, Taforalt, Norse and Egypt score positively, and Afalou and the sub-Saharan and Nubian samples score negatively.
Factor 1 represents robusticity, factor 2 represents the sub-Saharan/Caucasoid contrast. The Caucasoid populations (Egypt, Norse, Cro-Magnon) score positively on factor 2, the sub-Saharan Teita score negatively. The modern Dogon (Southern Mali) samples are intermediate. The fossil Nubians [who were described as being Mechtoid] score strongly negative, as does the Asselar skull (Central Mali). What is especially interesting is that Afalou also scores negatively, if only slightly; it occupies the same morphological position as do the modern Dogon.
My take: Of note, is that in the figure in question [unfortunately I have no way of presenting it here], the Dogon which Groves' analysis deems "intermediate", it just so happens that the male specimen fell on the "positive" end, while the female counterpart on the "negative" end. Meanwhile, as claimed in Groves' notes above, the Nubian fossils which have been described as being "Mechtoid", report "negatively".
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Despite all I'd read about Africa, my first impressions upon being there were overwhelming. As I walked the streets of Windhoek, the capital of newly independent Namibia, I saw black Herero people and black Ovambo; I saw Nama, a group quite unlike the blacks in appearance; I saw whites, descendants of recent European immigrants; and outside Windhoek I saw the last of the formerly widespread Kalahari Bushmen struggling for survival. These people were no longer pictures in a textbook; they were living humans, right in front of me. But what most surprised me was a street sign on one of downtown Windhoek's main roads. It read GOERING STREET.
Surely, I thought, no country could be so dominated by unrepentant Nazis that it would name a street after Hermann Goering, the notorious head of the Luftwaffe. As it turned out, the street actually commemorates Hermann's father, Heinrich, founding Reichskommissar of the German colony of South-West Africa, which would later be renamed Namibia. But Heinrich is no less a problematic figure than his son: his legacy includes one of the most vicious attacks ever carried out by European colonists on Africans, Germany's 1904 War of Extermination against the Herero. Today, while events in neighboring South Africa command the world's attention, Namibia, too, struggles to deal with its colonial history and establish a multiracial society. Namibia illustrated for me how inseparable Africa's past is from its present.
Most Americans think of native Africans as black and of white Africans as recent intruders; and when they think of Africa's racial history they think of European colonialism and slave trading. But very different types of peoples occupied much of Africa until as recently as a few thousand years ago. Even before the arrival of white colonialists, the continent harbored five of what many consider to be the world's six major divisions of humanity, the so-called human races, three of which are native to Africa. To this day nearly 30 percent of the world's languages are spoken only in Africa. No other continent even approaches this human diversity, and no other continent can rival Africa in the complexity of its human past.
The diversity of Africa's peoples results from its diverse geography and long prehistory. Africa is the only continent to extend from the northern to the southern temperate zone; it encompasses some of the world's driest deserts, largest tropical rain forests, and highest equatorial mountains. Humans have lived in Africa far longer than anywhere else: our remote ancestors originated there some 7 million years ago. With so much time, Africa's peoples have woven a complex, fascinating story of human interaction, a story that includes two of the most dramatic population movements of the past 5,000 years: the Bantu expansion and the Indonesian colonization of Madagascar. All those interactions are now tangled up in politics because the details of who arrived where before whom are shaping Africa today.
How did the five divisions of humanity in Africa get to be where they are today? Why did blacks come to be so widespread, instead of one or more of the four other groups whose existence Americans tend to forget? How can we ever hope to wrest the answers to these questions from Africa's past without written evidence of the sort that taught us about the spread of the Roman Empire?
African prehistory is a detective story on a grand scale, still only partly solved. Clues can be derived from the present: from the peoples living today in Africa, the languages they speak, and their plant crops and domestic animals. Clues can also be dug up from the past, from the bones and artifacts of long-dead peoples. By examining these clues one at a time and then combining all of them, we can begin to reconstruct who moved where at what time in Africa, and what let them move--with enormous consequences for the modern continent.
As I mentioned, the africa encountered by the first European explorers in the fifteenth century was already home to five human races: blacks, whites, Pygmies, Khoisan, and Asians. The only race not found in Africa is the aboriginal Australians and their relatives.
Now, I know that classifying people into arbitrary races is stereotyping. Each of these groups is actually very diverse, and lumping people as different as the Zulu, Masai, and Ibo under the single heading "blacks" ignores the differences between them. So does lumping Africa's Egyptians and Berbers with each other and with Europe's Swedes under the single heading "whites." The divisions between blacks, whites, and the other major groups are arbitrary anyway because each group shades into the others. All the human groups on Earth have mated with humans of every other group they've encountered. Nevertheless, recognizing these major groups and calling them by these inexact names is a shorthand that makes it easier to understand history. By analogy, it's also useful to divide classical music into periods like "baroque," "classical," and "romantic," even though each period is diverse and shades into other periods.
By the time European colonialists arrived, most of Africa's major population movements had already taken place (see map on next page). Blacks occupied the largest area, from the southern Sahara to most of sub-Saharan Africa. The ancestors of most African Americans came from Africa's western coastal zone, but similar peoples occupied East Africa as well, north to the Sudan and south to the southeast coast of South Africa. They were mostly farmers or herders, as were the native African whites, who occupied Africa's northern coastal zone and the northern Sahara. (Few of those northern Africans--the Egyptians, Libyans, and Moroccans, for instance-- would be confused with a blond, blue-eyed Swede, but they're often considered white because they have lighter skin and straighter hair than the peoples to the south.)
At the same time, the Pygmies were already living in groups widely scattered through the central African rain forest. Although they were traditionally hunter-gatherers, they also traded with or worked for neighboring black farmers. Like their neighbors, the Pygmies are dark- skinned and have tightly curled hair, but that hair is more thickly distributed over their body and face. They also are much smaller in size and have more prominent foreheads, eyes, and teeth.
The Khoisan (pronounced COY-san) are perhaps the group least familiar to Americans today. In the 1400s they were actually two groups, found over much of southern Africa: large-statured Khoi herders, pejoratively known as Hottentots, and smaller San hunter-gatherers, pejoratively called Bushmen. Most of the Khoi populations no longer exist; European colonists shot, displaced, or infected many of them, and the survivors interbred with Europeans. Though the San hunter-gatherers were similarly shot, displaced, and infected, a dwindling number managed to preserve their distinctness in Namibian desert areas unsuitable for agriculture. (They're the people depicted some years ago in the widely seen film The Gods Must Be Crazy.) The Khoisan today look quite unlike African blacks: they have light brown skin sometimes described as yellow, and their hair is even more tightly coiled.
Of these population distributions, that of North Africa's whites is the least surprising because physically similar peoples live in adjacent areas of the Middle East and Europe. Throughout recorded history people have been moving back and forth between Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. But the puzzling placements of blacks, Pygmies, and Khoisan hint at past population upheavals. Today there are just 200,000 Pygmies scattered amid 120 million blacks. This fragmentation suggests that Pygmy hunters lived throughout the equatorial forests until they were displaced and isolated into small groups by the arrival of black farmers. Similarly, the Khoisan area of southern Africa is surprisingly small for a people so distinct in anatomy and language. Could the Khoisan as well have been originally more widespread until their more northerly populations were somehow eliminated?
Perhaps the greatest puzzle, however, involves the island of Madagascar, which lies just 250 miles off the coast of southeastern Africa, much closer to Africa than to any other continent. It's in Madagascar that the fifth African race is found. Madagascar's people prove to be a mixture of two elements: African blacks and--surprisingly, given the separation seemingly dictated by the whole expanse of the Indian Ocean--Southeast Asians, specifically Indonesians. As it happens, the language of the Malagasy people is very close to the Ma'anyan language spoken on the Indonesian island of Borneo, over 4,000 miles away. No one even remotely resembling the Borneans lives within thousands of miles of Madagascar.
These Indonesians, their language, and their modified culture were already established on Madagascar by the time it was first visited by Europeans in 1500. To me this is the single most astonishing fact of human geography in the whole world. It's as if Columbus, on reaching Cuba, had found it occupied by blue-eyed, towheaded Scandinavians speaking a language close to Swedish, even though the nearby North American continent was inhabited by Indians speaking Indian languages. How on earth could prehistoric people of Borneo, presumably voyaging in boats without maps or compasses, have ended up in Madagascar?
The case of Madagascar shows how peoples' languages, as well as their physical appearance, can yield important clues to their origins. Similarly, there's much to be learned from African languages that can't be gleaned from African faces. In 1963 the mind-boggling complexities of Africa's 1,500 languages were simplified by the great linguist Joseph Greenberg of Stanford. Greenberg recognized that all those languages can be divided into just four broad families. And, because languages of a given language family tend to be spoken by distinct peoples, in Africa there are some rough correspondences between the language families and the anatomically defined human groups (see map at right). For instance, Nilo- Saharan and Niger-Congo speakers are black, and Khoisan speakers are Khoisan. Afro-Asiatic languages, however, are spoken by a wide variety of both whites and blacks. The language of Madagascar belongs to yet another, non-African category, the Austronesian language family.
What about the Pygmies? They're the only one of Africa's five races that lacks a distinct language: each band of Pygmies speaks the language of its neighboring black farmers. If you compare a given language as spoken by Pygmies with the same language as spoken by blacks, however, the Pygmy version contains unique words and, sometimes, distinctive sounds. That makes sense, of course: originally the Pygmies, living in a place as distinctive as the equatorial African rain forest, must have been sufficiently isolated to develop their own language family. Today, however, those languages' disappearance and the Pygmies' highly fragmented distribution both suggest that the Pygmy homeland was engulfed by invading black farmers. The remaining small bands of Pygmies adopted the invaders' languages, with only traces of their original languages surviving in a few words and sounds.
The distribution of Khoisan languages testifies to an even more dramatic engulfing. Those languages are famously unique--they're the ones that use clicks as consonants. All the existing Khoisan languages are confined to southern Africa, with two exceptions: the click-laden Hadza and Sandawe languages spoken in Tanzania, some 1,500 miles from their nearest linguistic kin.
In addition, clicks have made it into a few of the Niger-Congo languages of southern Africa, such as Zulu and Xhosa (which is the language of Nelson Mandela). Clicks or Khoisan words also appear in two Afro-Asiatic languages spoken by blacks in Kenya, stranded even farther from the Khoisan peoples of today than are the Hadza and Sandawe speakers of Tanzania. All this suggests that Khoisan languages and peoples formerly extended far north into Africa until the Khoisan, like the Pygmies, were engulfed by the blacks, leaving behind only a linguistic legacy to testify to their former presence.
Perhaps the most important discovery from linguistic sleuthing, however, involves the Niger-Congo language family, which today is spread all over West Africa and most of subequatorial Africa. Its current enormous range seems to give no clue as to precisely where the family originated. However, Greenberg has pointed out that the Bantu languages of subequatorial Africa, once thought to be their own language family, are actually a subfamily of the Niger-Congo language family. (Technically they're a sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-subfamily.) These Bantu languages today account for nearly half of the 1,032 Niger-Congo languages, and Bantu speakers account for more than half (nearly 200 million) of the Niger-Congo speakers. Yet all 494 Bantu languages are so similar to one another that they've been facetiously described as 494 dialects of a single language.
There are some 170 other such Niger-Congo subfamilies, most of which are crammed into West Africa, a small fraction of the entire Niger- Congo range. Even the most distinctive Bantu languages, as well as the Niger-Congo languages most closely related to Bantu, are concentrated there, in a tiny area of Cameroon and adjacent east and central Nigeria.
From Greenberg's evidence it seems obvious that the Niger-Congo language family arose in West Africa, while the Bantu subfamily arose at the east end of that range, in Cameroon and Nigeria, and then spread out over most of subequatorial Africa. That spread must have begun sufficiently long ago that the ancestral Bantu language had time to split into 494 daughter languages, but nevertheless recently enough that all those daughter languages are still very similar to one another. Since all Niger- Congo speakers--including the Bantu speakers--are black, it would be nearly impossible to infer who migrated in which direction just from the evidence of physical anthropology.
To make this type of linguistic reasoning clear, let me give you an example: the geographic origins of the English language. Today the largest number of people whose first language is English live in North America, with others scattered over the globe in Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries. If we knew nothing else about language distribution and history, we might have guessed that the English language arose in North America and was carried overseas by colonists.
But we know better: we know that each of those countries has its own English dialect and that all those English dialects make up just one subgroup of the Germanic language family. The other subgroups--the various Scandinavian, German, and Dutch languages--are crammed into northwestern Europe. Frisian, the Germanic language most closely related to English, is stuck in a tiny coastal area of Holland and western Germany. Hence a linguist would immediately deduce--correctly--that the English language arose on the northwestern coast of Europe and spread around the world from there.
Essentially the same reasoning tells us that the nearly 200 million Bantu-speaking people now flung over much of the map of Africa arose in Cameroon and Nigeria. Thus linguistics tells us not only that the Pygmies and the Khoisan, who formerly ranged widely over the continent, were engulfed by blacks; it also tells us that the blacks who did the engulfing were Bantu speakers. But what it can't tell us is what allowed the Bantu speakers to displace the Pygmies and Khoisan.
To answer that question we need to look at a different type of surviving evidence, that of domesticated plants and animals. Why is this evidence so crucial? Because farming and herding yield far more calories per acre than does hunting wild animals or gathering wild plants. As a result, population densities of farmers and herders are typically at least ten times those of hunter-gatherers. That's not to say that farmers are happier, healthier, or in any way superior to hunter-gatherers. They are, however, more numerous. And that alone is enough to allow them to kill or displace the hunter-gatherers.
In addition, human diseases such as smallpox and measles developed from diseases plaguing domestic animals. The farmers eventually become resistant to those diseases, but hunter-gatherers don't have the opportunity. So when hunter-gatherers first come into contact with farmers, they tend to die in droves from the farmers' diseases (see "The Arrow of Disease," October 1992).
Finally, only in a farming society--with its stored food surpluses and concentrated villages--do people have the chance to specialize, to become full-time metalworkers, soldiers, kings, and bureaucrats. Hence the farmers, and not the hunter-gatherers, are the ones who develop swords and guns, standing armies, and political organization. Add that to their sheer numbers and their germs, and it's easy to see how the farmers in Africa were able to push the hunter-gatherers aside.
But where in Africa did domesticated plants and animals first appear? What peoples, by accident of their geographic location, inherited those plants and animals and thereby the means to engulf their geographically less-endowed neighbors?
When Europeans reached sub-Saharan Africa in the 1400s, Africans were growing five sets of crops (see map at right). The first set was grown only in North Africa, extending as far as the highlands of Ethiopia. North Africa's rain falls mostly in the winter months--the region enjoys a Mediterranean climate--so all its original crops are adapted to germinating and growing with winter rains. Archeological evidence tells us that such crops--wheat, barley, peas, beans, and grapes, to name a few--were first domesticated in the Middle East around 10,000 years ago. So it makes sense that they would have spread into climatically similar and adjacent areas of North Africa, laying the foundation for the rise of ancient Egyptian civilization. Indeed, these crops are familiar to us precisely because they also spread into climatically similar and adjacent areas of Europe--and from there to America and Australia--and became some of the staple crops of temperate-zone agriculture around the world.
There's little rain and little agriculture in the Sahara, but just south of the desert, in the Sahel zone, the rain returns. The Sahel rains, however, fall in the summer. So even if winter-rain-adapted Middle Eastern crops could somehow have crossed the Sahara, it would still have been hard to grow them in the summer-rain Sahel zone. Instead, here the Europeans found the second and third sets of African crops, both of which are adapted to summer rains and the area's less variable day length.
Set number two is made up of plants whose ancestors were widely distributed from west to east across the Sahel zone and were probably domesticated there as well. They include sorghum and pearl millet, which became the staple cereals of much of sub-Saharan Africa, as well as cotton, sesame, watermelon, and black-eyed peas. Sorghum proved so valuable that it is now grown in hot, dry areas on all the continents.
The wild ancestors of the third set of African crops are found only in Ethiopia and were probably domesticated there. Indeed, most of them are still grown only there: few Americans have ever tasted Ethiopia's finger millet beer, its oily noog, its narcotic chat, or its national bread, which is made from a tiny-seeded cereal called teff. But we all have the ancient Ethiopian farmers to thank for the domestication of a plant we know exceedingly well: the coffee plant, which remained confined to Ethiopia until it caught on in Arabia and then spread around the globe.
The fourth set of African crops was domesticated from wild ancestors in the wet climate of West Africa. Some of them, including African rice, have remained virtually confined there; others, such as African yams, eventually spread throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa; and two, the oil palm and the kola nut, spread to other continents. West Africans were chewing the caffeine-containing kola nut as a stimulant long before the Coca-Cola Company enticed Americans to drink its extracts.
The plants in the last batch of African crops are also adapted to wet climates. Bananas, Asian yams, and taro were widespread in sub-Saharan Africa when the Europeans arrived, and Asian rice was well established on the coast of East Africa. But these crops didn't come from Africa. They came from Southeast Asia, and their presence in Africa would be astonishing if the presence of Indonesians in Madagascar hadn't already alerted us to Africa's prehistoric Asian connection.
Let's consider the four indigenous groups of crops. All four-- from North Africa, the Sahel, Ethiopia, and West Africa--came from north of the equator. No wonder the Niger-Congo speakers, people who also came from north of the equator, were able to displace Africa's equatorial Pygmies and subequatorial Khoisan peoples. The Khoisan and the Pygmies weren't unsuited for the farming life; it was just that southern Africa's wild plants were unsuitable for domestication. Even the Bantu and the white farmers, heirs to thousands of years of farming experience, have rarely been able to develop southern Africa's native plants into food crops.
Because there are so few of them, summarizing Africa's domesticated animal species is much easier than summarizing its plants. The list doesn't include even one of the big wild mammals for which Africa is famous--its zebras and wildebeests, its rhinos and hippos, its giraffes and Cape buffalo. The wild ancestors of domestic cattle, pigs, dogs, and house cats were native to North Africa but also to western Asia, so we can't be sure where they were first domesticated. The rest of Africa's domestic mammals must have been domesticated somewhere else because their wild ancestors occur only in Eurasia. Africa's sheep and goats were domesticated in western Asia, its chickens in Southeast Asia, its horses in southern Russia, and its camels probably in Arabia. The one exception is the donkey, which is widely believed to have been domesticated in North Africa.
Many of Africa's food staples and domesticated animals thus had to travel a long way from their point of origin, both inside and outside Africa. Some people were just luckier than others, inheriting suites of domesticable wild plant and animal species. We have to suspect that some of the "lucky" Africans parlayed their advantage into an engulfing of their neighbors.
But all the evidence I've presented thus far--evidence from modern human and language distributions and from modern crops and domestic animals--is only an indirect means to reconstruct the past. To get direct evidence about who was living where when, and what they were eating or growing, we need to turn to archeology and the things it turns up: the bones of people and their domestic animals, the remains of the pottery and the stone and iron tools they made, and the remains of the buildings they constructed.
This evidence can help explain at least some of the mystery of Madagascar. Archeologists exploring the island report that Indonesians arrived before A.D. 800, possibly as early as 300, and in a full-fledged expedition: the earliest human settlements on Madagascar include the remains of iron tools, livestock, and crops. This was no small canoeload of fishermen blown off course.
Clues to how this expedition came about can be found in an ancient book of sailors' directions, the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, which was written by an anonymous merchant living in Egypt around A.D. 100. The merchant describes an already thriving sea trade connecting India and Egypt with the coast of East Africa. When Islam began to spread after the beginning of the ninth century, Indian Ocean trade became well documented archeologically by copious quantities of Middle Eastern and occasionally even Chinese products such as pottery, glass, and porcelain found in East African coastal settlements. The traders waited for favorable winds to let them cross the Indian Ocean directly between East Africa and India.
But there was an equally vigorous sea trade from India eastward, to Indonesia. Perhaps the Indonesian colonists of Madagascar reached India by that route, then fell in with the westward trade route to East Africa, where they joined with Africans and discovered Madagascar. The union of Indonesians and East Africans appears to live on today in Madagascar's basically Indonesian language, which contains loan words from coastal Kenyan Bantu languages. But there's a problem: there are no corresponding Indonesian loan words in Kenyan languages. Indeed, there are few Indonesian traces in East Africa besides some musical instruments like the xylophone and the zither and the Indonesian crops discussed earlier. Is it possible that the Indonesians, instead of taking the easier route to Madagascar via India and East Africa, somehow--incredibly--sailed straight across the Indian Ocean, discovered Madagascar, and only later got plugged into East African trade routes? We still don't know the answer.
The same sorts of archeological evidence found in Madagascar can be found on the African continent itself. In some cases they can help prove hypotheses that the other evidence could never fully resolve. For instance, linguistic and population distribution evidence merely suggests that the Khoisan were once widespread in the drier parts of subequatorial Africa. But archeologists in Zambia, to the north of the modern Khoisan range, have in fact found skulls of people resembling the modern Khoisan, as well as stone tools resembling those the Khoisan peoples were making in southern Africa when the Europeans arrived.
There are, of course, cases in which archeology can't help. We assume from indirect evidence that Pygmies were once widespread in the wet rain forest of central Africa, but it's difficult for archeologists to test this assumption: although they've found artifacts to show that people were there, they have yet to discover ancient human skeletons.
Archeology also helps us determine the actual dates and places for the rise of farming and herding in Africa, which, as I've said, is the key to understanding how one group of people was able to conquer the whole continent. Any reader steeped in the history of Western civilization would be forgiven for assuming that African food production began in ancient Egypt's Nile Valley, land of pharaohs and pyramids. After all, by 3000 B.C., Egypt was undoubtedly the site of Africa's most complex society. Yet the earliest evidence for food production in Africa comes not from the Nile Valley but from, believe it or not, the Sahara.
Archeologists are able to say this because they have become expert at identifying and dating plants from remains as fragmentary as charred seeds recognizable only under a microscope. Although today much of the Sahara is so dry that it can't even support grass, archeologists have found evidence that between 9000 and 4000 B.C. the Sahara was more humid; there were numerous lakes, and the desert teemed with game. The Saharans tended cattle and made pottery, then began to keep sheep and goats; they may even have started to domesticate sorghum and millet. This Saharan pastoralism began well before food production got its start in Egypt, in 5200 B.C., when a full package of western Asian winter crops and livestock arrived. Farming then spread to West Africa and Ethiopia. By around 2500 B.C. cattle herders had already crossed the modern border of Ethiopia into northern Kenya.
Linguistics offers another way to date the arrival of crops: by comparing words for crops in related modern languages that diverged from each other at various times in the past. It thus becomes clear, for instance, that the people who were domesticating sorghum and millet in the Sahara thousands of years ago spoke languages ancestral to modern Nilo-Saharan languages. Similarly, the people who first domesticated the wet- country crops of West Africa spoke languages ancestral to the modern Niger-Congo languages. The people who spoke ancestral Afro-Asiatic languages were certainly involved in the introduction of Middle Eastern crops into North Africa and may have been responsible for the domestication of crops native to Ethiopia.
Analyzing the names of crops leaves us with evidence that there were at least three ancestral languages spoken in Africa thousands of years ago: ancestral Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Congo, and Afro-Asiatic. And other linguistic evidence points to an ancestral Khoisan language (that evidence, however, doesn't come from crop names, since the ancestral Khoisan people didn't domesticate any crops). Surely, since Africa harbors 1,500 languages today, it was big enough to harbor more than four ancestral languages in the past. But all those other languages must have disappeared, either because the peoples speaking them lost their original languages, as the Pygmies did, or because the peoples themselves disappeared.
^^Apparently the author does not consider Pygmies to be 'blacks' despite their dark color and similar features to Bantus. And apparently Khoisan are also a distinct 'race' all their own because of their dissimilarities, yet the author considers North Africans to be part of the same "division" as Europeans, and 'Middle-Easterners' despite the differences that exist within peoples of those regions, and despite the fact that there were and still ARE black populations living in North Africa today.
It's this old pseudo-anthropology that persists which is the reason why there are folks who speak of North African "caucasoids" and "Mediterraneans". Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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^Interesting enough. Attempts to box in real inter-African variability into "types" is a futile business in biology/science, just as the usage of the "Saharan" belt does nothing to provide biological seperation of North Africans from those on the Saharo-tropical regions prehistorically, historically or recently, or the 'artificial' geographical displacement of Nile Valley folks [by using terms like "Near Eastern"] from the rest of the continent. Groves' analysis has so many holes, and as with other studies with apparent shortcomings, we can still learn from them, by understanding the ideology and preconceived notions that lead to these shortcomings.
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I've been reading alot of very old newspaper articles recently and this is what was first written about Afalou in the NY Times:
quote: "The discovery of a new race of neolithic man at Afalou, Algeria, with strange resemblances to the Natufians recently found in Palestine, was announced by the french scientists, Marcellin Boulle and Heri Vallois. Like the Natufians, these hitherto unknown people had some of their incisor teeth knocked out in early life and their limb bones were strong. Their discoverers were unable to connect them with either the Neanderthal man or the Negro or with mediterranean types of modern times."
It's interseting that they were likened to Natufians yet their discoverers found no connection with "the Negro"
Posts: 1038 | From: Franklin Park, NJ | Registered: Aug 2005
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I've been reading alot of very old newspaper articles recently and this is what was first written about Afalou in the NY Times:
quote: "The discovery of a new race of neolithic man at Afalou, Algeria, with strange resemblances to the Natufians recently found in Palestine, was announced by the french scientists, Marcellin Boulle and Heri Vallois. Like the Natufians, these hitherto unknown people had some of their incisor teeth knocked out in early life and their limb bones were strong. Their discoverers were unable to connect them with either the Neanderthal man or the Negro or with mediterranean types of modern times."
It's interseting that they were likened to Natufians yet their discoverers found no connection with "the Negro"
Perhaps, the "generalized" modern type?!
Don’t know what date the NY times piece was released or the full report, but it could be possible [aside from not having yet fully studied the specimens for finer details] that the claim for not being able to draw a connection with the said “types”, has something to do with the notion that the Afalou supposedly resemble or have affinities with the Upper European specimen named Cro-Magnon [who have been viewed as European ancestors]. Remember that Elliot Smith denied any possible ties between the Natufians and the “Negro” type(s), even though other Eurocentric scholars of his time at least acknowledged traits which they associated with the “Negro” type(s). If Afalou was deemed to have been “Negroid”, while resembling the Cro-Magnon, then this would be tantamount to saying that European ancestors, as Cro-Magnons, were “Negroid” or had “Negroid” tendencies as well. Would the Eurocentric scholars of that era have gone that far? I think you can draw your own conclusions on this.
We have already been informed of the indicators of retention of tropically adapted traits in late Upper Paleolithic/Epipaleolithic European [modern human] specimens, alongside the cold-adapted indicators. The Cro-Magnons don’t tie with contemporary coastal Berbers, as Brace points out, while Briggs and Groves’ seem to imply that the Afalou are not devoid of the so-called “Negroid” traits, painting them as “Intermediate” specimens. Groves’ comparison of the Afalou with the Dogon as being “intermediate”, is particularly interesting, given that we have an idea of what the Dogons look like.
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“Arambourg et al. (1934) referred to these robust North Africans as the “Mechta-Arbi race”; Ferembach (1962) as Ibero-Maurusians, or Epipalaeolithic, after their lithocultural association. Briggs (1955) divided the Afalou and other samples into four “types” (Palaeomediterranean, African Mediterranean, African Alphine, and true Mechta-Afalou). Anderson (1968) considered them far too homogeneous to warrant this treatment, and indeed Briggs’s analysis is in the typological tradition that held sway up until about 1940, but was thereafter increasingly discarded” - C. Groves, 1999.
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quote:Supercar wrote: Perhaps, the "generalized" modern type?!
Don’t know what date the NY times piece was released or the full report, but it could be possible [aside from not having yet fully studied the specimens for finer details] that the claim for not being able to draw a connection with the said “types”, has something to do with the notion that the Afalou supposedly resemble or have affinities with the Upper European specimen named Cro-Magnon [who have been viewed as European ancestors]. Remember that Elliot Smith denied any possible ties between the Natufians and the “Negro” type(s), even though other Eurocentric scholars of his time at least acknowledged traits which they associated with the “Negro” type(s). If Afalou was deemed to have been “Negroid”, while resembling the Cro-Magnon, then this would be tantamount to saying that European ancestors, as Cro-Magnons, were “Negroid” or had “Negroid” tendencies as well. Would the Eurocentric scholars of that era have gone that far? I think you can draw your own conclusions on this.
The NYTimes piece is dated August 6th 1932. I get the feeling that Anglo-French rivalry may have had something to do with the assignment of Afalou as a "new" or "different" type (not that I accept the legitimacy of typological classifcations). The British unearthed the Natufians so the French may have felt the need to come up with their own "type."
I agree with you that if cro-magnons were "negroid" and Afalou resembled cro-magnons then the inference about Afalou easily follows.
Posts: 1038 | From: Franklin Park, NJ | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Briggs (1955) divided the Afalou and other samples into four “types” (Palaeomediterranean, African Mediterranean, African Alphine, and true Mechta-Afalou).
This sort of confusion stems directly from the fallacy of viewing human beings as distinct types.
Posts: 1038 | From: Franklin Park, NJ | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Briggs (1955) divided the Afalou and other samples into four “types” (Palaeomediterranean, African Mediterranean, African Alphine, and true Mechta-Afalou).
This sort of confusion stems directly from the fallacy of viewing human beings as distinct types.
Briggs must have felt that he saw enough variations between the North African samples, so as to warrent the said four "types". But as Groves points out, others later, felt that the samples were less heterogenous to warrent Briggs' kind of labeling, into four African "types".
quote:Groves:
Exactly the same process of gracilisation seems to have taken place in this region; Carlson and Van Gerven (1977) attributed it to a change in masticatory function, associated with the processes leading to the adoption of agriculture. The largest collection, from Tushka and Sahaba, was described by Anderson (1968); he considered them in the context of “Negroid origins”, but ended by concluding that they are strongly resemble the “Maghrebian Cromagnoids”, as he called Mechta-Afalou populations, but considered that they were “half-way to ‘Negroidization’”, and demonstrated the late derivation of sub-Saharans from Caucasoids.
Briggs, as pointed out earlier, felt that the North African samples, the African Mediterraneans, weren't devoid of "Negroid" traits, but acquired these from "Negro" females on their migration path. Anderson on the other hand, interestingly uses "Negroidization", meaning that the originally "Caucasoid" groups evolved into the "Negro" [Sub-Saharan as Groves put it] type. "Caucasoids" spawning "Negroids"; I wonder where I heard that before?
How about the "Caucasoidization" [we all know why this term doesn't exist] of the original "Negroids"? LOL.
Posts: 5964 | Registered: Jan 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Pax Dahomensis: What is the exact reference of the francophone article you are interested in Supercar?
Hi Pax,
Oh nothing specific. Just any material that would shed more light on the supposed fate of the so-called "Mechtoid" groups, particularly those who are claimed to have lived in the western Sahara/Northwest Africa. As Ausar mentioned, most material on this matter appears to have been published in French. In any case, it has been revealed here that the typological concepts applied here, including the term "Mechtoid" is misleading, and hence, any hypothesis on the fate of the said groups along those lines, is highly likely to be equally misleading.
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posted
Funny. This Groves fellow doesn't seem to know that cattle domestication in Africa is just as early as that of the 'Western Asia'/Middle East/Balkans-Europe, if not earlier (the latter being highly probable)......
Posts: 11 | From: california | Registered: May 2006
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quote:Briggs, as pointed out earlier, felt that the North African samples, the African Mediterraneans, weren't devoid of "Negroid" traits, but acquired these from "Negro" females on their migration path. Anderson on the other hand, interestingly uses "Negroidization", meaning that the originally "Caucasoid" groups evolved into the "Negro" [Sub-Saharan as Groves put it] type. "Caucasoids" spawning "Negroids"; I wonder where I heard that before?
How about the "Caucasoidization" [we all know why this term doesn't exist] of the original "Negroids"? LOL.
More likely in my opinion, since the UV levels of north Africa don't treat light skin very well. Light skin makes no sense for an indigenous north African people.
Posts: 7069 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004
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More likely in my opinion, since the UV levels of north Africa don't treat light skin very well. Light skin makes no sense for an indigenous north African people.
Yep; the only reason various coastal North African groups exhibit low levels of melanin has to do with gene flow from Northern Eurasia, not the supra-tropical north African enviroment, which doesn't have the type of environment to warrent such extreme regulation of melanin content of indigenous tropical African migrants into the region. Look at the Khoisan groups; they live in the sub-tropics, and yet retain visible skin pigmentation.
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More likely in my opinion, since the UV levels of north Africa don't treat light skin very well. Light skin makes no sense for an indigenous north African people.
Yep; the only reason various coastal North African groups exhibit low levels of melanin has to do with gene flow from Northern Eurasia, not the supra-tropical north African enviroment, which doesn't have the type of environment to warrent such extreme regulation of melanin content of indigenous tropical African migrants into the region. Look at the Khoisan groups; they live in the sub-tropics, and yet retain visible skin pigmentation.
Also, most native Americans live in temperate latitudes, yet non-natives used to call them redskins (and they called us "palefaces")! Both natives and Euro-Americans have long noted a difference in skin color despite living in similar latitudes. Living in the tropics may necessarily make your skin dark or medium, but living in temperate climates apparently does not make you white.
Posts: 7069 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
"More recent studies by physical anthropologists have substantiated and extended these observations; a recent review and analysis of data from more than 100 populations (Relethford 1997) found that skin reflectance is lowest at the equator, then gradually increases, about 8% per 10° of latitude in the Northern Hemisphere and about 4% per 10° of latitude in the Southern Hemisphere. This pattern is inversely correlated with levels of UV irradiation, which are greater in the Southern than in the Northern Hemisphere." - Gregory Barsh
^^Understand that various factors also play into the skin pigmentation variability, in addition to effects of UV irradiation; things like level of access to vitamin D, not to mention when a given group migrated to or else has been living in the said latitudes or environments:
"...most anthropologists accept the notion that differences in UV irradiation have driven selection for dark human skin at the equator and for light human skin at greater latitudes. What remains controversial are the exact mechanisms of selection.
The most popular theory posits that protection offered by dark skin from UV irradiation becomes a liability in more polar latitudes due to vitamin D deficiency (Murray 1934). UVB (short-wavelength UV) converts 7-dehydrocholesterol into an essential precursor of cholecaliferol (vitamin D3); when not otherwise provided by dietary supplements, deficiency for vitamin D causes rickets, a characteristic pattern of growth abnormalities and bony deformities.
An oft-cited anecdote in support of the vitamin D hypothesis is that Arctic populations whose skin is relatively dark given their latitude, such as the Inuit and the Lapp, have had a diet that is historically rich in vitamin D.
Sensitivity of modern humans to vitamin D deficiency is evident from the widespread occurrence of rickets in 19th-century industrial Europe, but whether dark-skinned humans migrating to polar latitudes tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago experienced similar problems is open to question. In any case, a risk for vitamin D deficiency can only explain selection for light skin.
Among several mechanisms suggested to provide a selective advantage for dark skin in conditions of high UV irradiation (Loomis 1967; Robins 1991; Jablonski and Chaplin 2000), the most tenable are protection from sunburn and skin cancer due to the physical barrier imposed by epidermal melanin." - Gregory S. Barsh, associate professor of Departments of Genetics and Pediatrics and an associate investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States.
Above figure: Biochemistry and Histology of Different Skin Types
"(A) Activation of the melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R) promotes the synthesis of eumelanin at the expense of pheomelanin, although oxidation of tyrosine by tyrosinase (TYR) is required for synthesis of both pigment types. The membrane-associated transport protein (MATP) and the pink-eyed dilution protein (P) are melanosomal membrane components that contribute to the extent of pigment synthesis within melanosomes. (B) There is a gradient of melanosome size and number in dark, intermediate, and light skin; in addition, melanosomes of dark skin are more widely dispersed. This diagram is based on one published by Sturm et al. (1998) and summarizes data from Szabo et al. (1969), Toda et al. (1972), and Konrad and Wolff (1973) based on individuals whose recent ancestors were from Africa, Asia, or Europe." - Courtesy of G. Barsh; used in his article.
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posted
More perspectives on factors in skin tone variations even within "natives" living in the same lattitudes:
By Frank W. Sweet
"...the strongest version of OOA2, supported by molecular evidence, gives Europeans no more time on site to develop their world-unique complexion than it gives to light brown Asians at European latitudes, or to light brown Native Americans at African latitudes.
And so, the questions are: why are Europeans pink? Why are Mayas and Incas not dark brown? Some obviously visible regional adaptations do not seem to have had enough time to become fixed, and yet there they are. Other expected adaptations have had just as much time to unfold, and yet there they are not.
II. The Solution: Solar UV, Diet, and Genes
Three factors explain the odd distribution of global skin tone variation under the strong OOA2 scenario (as mentioned, nothing needs explaining under the MRE scenario). The first factor applies to everyone. Overwhelming clinical and experimental evidence reveals that epidermal melanin’s adaptive role is to regulate the amount of solar ultraviolet penetrating to the dermal layer—enough UV for vitamin D synthesis but not so much as to destroy folate. The second applies to Europeans. Humans ingest vitamin D from certain foods, which supplements that synthesized from solar UV. The third applies to Native Americans.
The very dark complexion of Africans, Andaman Islanders, Melanesians, and Australian Aborigines requires at least five genes working in concert. Once the trait is lost in a population, it cannot be regained.
Skin Melanin Blocks Solar Ultraviolet
As mentioned earlier, the default human complexion is apparently the light brown of the Khoisan and Ethiopian peoples. It is easy to see one’s own complexion as normal and others as needing explanation, but this is an illusion.
The map below, for example, shows that C.S. Coon saw everyone from Norway southwards to and including Senegambia, Ethiopia, and Sri Lanka as of the “Caucasoid subspecies” (Coon 1962, 6-7).
In fact, both the deep darkness of the Bantu people and the extraordinary near-albino lightness of the Scandinavians seem to be relatively recent and selectively driven adaptations. One is a paleness adaptation. The other is a darkness adaptation. Recent evidence suggests two different mechanisms to explain the two different adaptations.
The darkness adaptation enhances folic acid (folate) synthesis. Too little epidermal melanin for low latitudes allows intense UV to penetrate the skin, preventing or degrading folic acid synthesis, thus reducing folate levels. In pregnant females this produces neural tube defects in the fetus, causing such congenital abnormalities as craniorachischisis, anencephalus, and spina bifida. High levels of distributed epidermal melanin blocks UV and enables normal gestation at low latitudes (Jablonski and Chaplin 2000). Admittedly, some prior authors (Robins 1991, 210) had not seen evidence that fair-skinned residents of low latitudes suffered worse from folate deficiency than dark-skinned ones, but a collection of recent studies cited by Jablonski and Chaplin provide just such evidence. Hence, it seems confirmed that the darkness adaptation overcomes a threat to Darwinian fitness in its most unalloyed form—rate of successful reproduction.
The lightness adaptation enhances calciferol (vitamin D) synthesis. Too much epidermal melanin for the latitude blocks UV penetration essential to the dermal synthesis of calciferol or vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiency causes skeletal neonatal abnormalities (skull, chest, and leg malformations), rickets being the best known. Again, some mid-twentieth-century authors were not convinced that dark-skinned residents of temperate regions were more susceptible to rickets than light-skinned ones. But public health studies in the U.S. and Europe collected so much evidence of this, that vitamin D is now routinely added to milk in the West for precisely this reason. Hence, the paleness adaptation also overcomes a direct Darwinian threat to successful reproduction.
Other explanations have been offered. Some have suggested that vitamin D synthesis alone suffices to produce the global pattern of skin tone (Loomis 1967), but this sole-cause hypothesis has not withstood scrutiny. Others have suggested that dark complexion reduces the incidence of skin cancer, improves thermoregulation (ability to sweat), or camouflages the hunter. Others say that light skin is less at risk from cold injury. Some speculate that skin tone is merely an unselected by-product of adaptations to disease and parasites (Robins 1991, 187-211). But such hypotheses suffer from one of three flaws. Either they propose adaptations to a non-Darwinian threat (skin cancer strikes long after offspring are on their own), they assume that one complexion extreme or the other is the norm (in fact, both extremes are adaptations), or they lack clinical or experimental evidence.
Both adaptations, paleness and darkness, are positively selected for by natural selection to allow only the most beneficial amount of solar UV to penetrate the skin. The map below (Jablonski and Chaplin 2000) depicts: “Predicted shading of skin colors for indigenous humans based on the results of a linear regression model in which skin reflectance (at 685 nm) for indigenous peoples in both hemispheres was allowed to respond to annual average UVMED for both hemispheres.” In other words, it shows what the regional variation of complexion would look like, if skin tone depended solely on solar ultraviolet radiation. The cited paper argues that both skin tone extremes are adaptations to solar UV, and so the trait’s regional variation depends only on sunlight intensity at ultraviolet wavelengths. On the plus side, the paper is extremely persuasive.
Compare the Jablonski-Chaplin map with actual skin tone measurements around the world, as depicted in Part I, above. The prediction is surprisingly accurate at the low latitudes of the Old World. The Jablonski-Chaplin hypothesis is confirmed in that variations in skin tone displayed by natives of lands within twenty-five degrees of the equator in Africa and Asia may indeed have evolved in response to solar ultraviolet radiation.
On the minus side, their argument suffers from three major discrepancies.
[*]First, the Jablonski-Chaplin map predicts Native South Americans of Colombia, Venezuela, and coastal Peru to be as dark as equatorial Africans. In fact, they are not much darker than native North Americans.
[*]Second, the Jablonski-Chaplin map predicts the Saami of Lapland, the Inuit people of Greenland and Canada, and the Aleuts of the Bering Sea and northern Siberia to be lighter-skinned than Scandinavians. In fact, they are darker.
[*]Third, the Jablonski-Chaplin map predicts a band of people stretching around the globe at 55 degrees north latitude (the natives of Kazakhstan, Irkutsk, Ulan Bator, northernmost Manchuria, the Aleutians, Juneau, Hudsons Bay, and Labrador) to be as fair as Danes. In fact, they are much darker.
Incidentally, the Jabloski prediction map has been widely published in the popular press (sometimes with attribution and sometimes without). It has appeared in the February 2001 Discover magazine and in the Winter 2000 California Wild magazine, and at several Internet sites. Oddly, the popular press often labels the map as showing actual skin tone distribution. California Wild said that its “patterns illustrate three zones of human skin tone.” Discover said that the map shows “the skin colors of indigenous people across the globe.” Of course, Jablonski and Chaplin would agree that it shows no such thing. It portrays prediction, not measurement.
In short, Jablonski and Chapel convincingly demonstrate that skin tone was naturally selected, via two different adaptations, to block just enough UV penetration to enable both folic acid and vitamin D synthesis. But their explanation alone does not suffice to explain this paper’s central puzzle. Two more points are necessary.
[*]The first focuses on dietary vitamin D to explain how and why Europeans became uniquely fair-complexioned, with lighter tone than any other group on earth, regardless of latitude.
[*]The second discusses the heredity of complexion to explain why equatorial Native Americans have not become as dark as equatorial Africans.
Vitamin D was Also Available in Diet of Pre-LGM Europeans
Understanding that the paleness adaptation is designed to enhance vitamin D synthesis is key to solving the European half of the puzzle Other animals also produce vitamin D and store it in their fat, just as humans do. The table at left shows the vitamin D content of common foods, as published by the National Institutes of Health (http://www.cc.nih.gov/ccc/supplements/vitd.html).
Prehistoric people did not consume fortified milk or cereal, of course. But, judging from their cave art and artifacts, they certainly ingested significant amounts of meat and fish. Assuming adequate caloric intake, their dietary content was well within the range of the current USDA recommended daily allowance (400 IU), especially when added to the vitamin D synthesized in the skin from sunlight. Late Paleolithic Europeans’ risk of neonatal defects caused by vitamin D deficiency was mitigated by two independent factors: solar UV and diet.
Jablonski and Chaplin show that, as modern humans migrated away from the equator to Europe, Siberia, the Arctic, and Beringia, the paleness adaptation compensated for decreased solar ultraviolet. This left them with the light brown or beige complexion common to everyone above the 55th parallel except Europeans.
Then, European diet changed with farming.
European agriculture began about ten millennia ago in the Near East and spread to the Baltic by five millennia ago (Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi, and Piazza 1994, 215-16, 256-57) (Chicago 1974, 16:304).[My emphasis: Neolithic expansion]
As in Asia, Africa, and America, the advent of agriculture saw a dietary shift from meat to grains. This reduced dietary vitamin D intake among farming peoples and so perhaps lightened their complexions slightly via the paleness adaptation. It was probably not significant outside Europe because domestic grains (corn, wheat, oats, sorghum, millet, rice) do not grow without intensive modern agricultural techniques above about 55 degrees of latitude. Higher latitudes are just too cold—the growing season is too short—to let crops compete successfully with herds as food source. Consequently, even post-Neolithic high-latitude peoples continued to have a diet rich in meat (and so, vitamin D). These include the Inuit (seagoing mammals), Aleuts (fish), Saami (reindeer), Mongols (horses), and Native North Americans (bison).
Only one spot on the globe enables economically competitive grain production above the 55th parallel. It is where the warm Gulf Stream washes into the North and Baltic Seas, keeping temperatures moderate despite dim near-Arctic sunlight. Around the planet, only circum-Baltic farmers could switch to a grain diet devoid of vitamin D, in a place where sunlight also lacked UV. And so, the extreme of the paleness adaptation is found only within 600 miles of this unique spot on earth.
The main objection to this hypothesis is its recency. Five or six millennia seems too short a time for such a genetic change. Three supporting arguments come to mind.
[*]First, as mentioned, acceptance of the strongest version of OOA2 unavoidably shortens the time available for any modern human regional variation, and yet variations are clearly present.
[*]Second, the European adult lactose tolerance adaptation was also inarguably caused by the Neolithic revolution—herding in this case (no one suggests that Paleolithic hunters milked their prey before spearing it)—and so it must have unfolded in the same time frame.
[*]Third, paleness and lactose tolerance are both neotenous adaptations that merely delay an existing developmental change until later in the organism’s life (until past its life-span, in these cases). Skin, like hair, normally darkens at puberty (Relethford, Lees, and Bayard 1985).
And females, who have other neotenous features (associated with human sexual dimorphism) are slightly lighter-skinned on average than men (Rebato and others 1999). The point is that neotenous adaptations can be very fast indeed—as fast as one generation for some salamanders (Gould 1977, 319). [Otherwise important distinctions among neoteny, paedomorphosis, and postdisplacement are irrelevant to the point being made.]
An alternative explanation is that the extraordinary paleness of Europeans was due to sexual selection—it was more attractive to the opposite sex (Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi, and Piazza 1994, 145). The problem with this speculation is that sexual selection normally results in a trait’s strong sexual dimorphism.
Incidentally, Cavalli-Sforza also advocates a Neolithic time frame for both the paleness and lactose tolerance adaptations, but offers no mechanism for the former. Ultimately, it all depends on evidence. The hypothesis presented here will be contradicted when someone finds evidence as early as Magdalenian cave art, that Paleolithic Europeans were as fair complexioned as Neolithic Europeans.
Once Lost, Dark Skin Could Not be Regained by Native Americans
Understanding that several genes must work together to produce the darkness adaptation is key to solving the Native American half of the puzzle.
Since 1910, researchers have known that human skin pigmentation is polygenic, depending on just a few codominant additive genes of essentially two alleles each. We have known that complexion is polygenic, rather than the result of one gene with many alleles, because breeding of palest with darkest yields a spectrum of offspring genotypes from the same parents, not just the four Mendelian ones. We have known that human pigmentation genes are additive and codominant because half the offspring of differently skin-toned parents have a complexion between that of their parents, no matter how similar the parents. We have known that at least three genes are involved because histograms of population skin reflectance yield continuous, not discrete, values (Stern 1973, 443-65), (Cavalli-Sforza and Bodmer 1971, 527-31).
Where knowledge has improved over the past century has been in precisely how many genes are involved and their specific loci. As of 1998, five human pigmentation genes had been identified. Their symbols and genome loci are: “TYR” at 11q14-21, “TYRP1” at 9p23, “TYRP2” at 13q31-32, “P” at 15q11.2-12, and “MC1R” at 16q24.3 (Sturm, Box, and Ramsay 1998).
Subsequent work has identified five non-synonymous polymorphisms at the MC1R site (Rana and others 1999). Polymorphisms have been related to phenotype (Harding and others 2000). And gene-enzyme-protein reaction chains have been identified (Kanetsky and others 2002).
Much of the genetic mechanism remains to be unraveled but one conclusion is pertinent to this essay. Several independent genes must work in concert to produce the deepest complexion—the extreme of the darkness adaptation.
Many things can go wrong and, when they do, the result is a lighter complexion. For instance, deleterious mutations at the five loci above result in various forms of albinism, whether the patient’s heritage is dark or pale. In other words, there are many random ways “accidentally” to evolve a light complexion. But no genetic defect can make the child of light-skinned parents come out dark. [Nelson’s syndrome does this, but it is due to a pituitary tumor, not to a mutation, nor to genetic variability (Robins 1991, 125-26).]
This essay suggests that as modern humans migrated into northeastern Asia, they became lighter in response to two selective pressures. Less darkness was needed to protect against folic acid destruction by solar UV penetrating the dermal layer and causing neonatal neural defects. And more paleness was needed to enhance vitamin D synthesis which, together with calciferol ingested in meat, prevented neonatal skeletal malformations. But these adaptations functioned by the loss of genetic coding for dark complexion.
The gene pool of the Native Americans who crossed through the Beringia bottleneck and populated the New World no longer had all the needed genes. The genetic variability subsequently available to their descendants simply did not include alleles at the five loci necessary to produce dark brown offspring.
In conclusion, this essay has tried to show that the growing consensus for an out-of-Africa scenario of modern human dispersal has produced a two-part puzzle of regional variation.
Europeans and equatorial Native Americans are both too light for their latitudes. One would expect Europeans to have a light brown complexion like everyone else at or above 55 degrees. One would expect equatorial Native Americans to be dark brown. The puzzle does not exist in a multiregional evolution scenario because MRE explains differences as either primordial (Coon 1962) or the result of differing duration of residence (Brace 2000).
This essay has offered falsifiable explanations that exploit recent genetic and anthropological findings to suggest that Europeans are unique because their diet became uniquely cereal-based and so deficient in vitamin D. Native Americans had already lost the alleles necessary for dark brown skin before they crossed Beringia.
posted
^^Brace Map, IMO, is not as good as the earlier Skin color map shown; this becomes obvious, when one realizes the darkest folks like the Dinka live in the upper Nile Valley, which the Brace and Montagu map doesn't seem to take into account.
Talking about skin color maps, like that of Brace and Montagu, Peter W. Sweet says:
The most eye-catching feature on the above maps is that the lightest complexion on earth is native only to the region within 600 miles of the Baltic and North seas. The feature is unique on the globe. One can further grasp its uniqueness by examining a similar plot of iso-color contour lines for the color gradients of human head hair. The figure below appears in (Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi, and Piazza 1994, 267), although it was first published in (Coon 1939, 270-71).
This map of head hair gradients shows that blondes are also native only to the region within 600 miles of the Baltic and North seas. With two minor exceptions, the genetic trait for blonde hair precisely matches that for fair complexion. Even the black-haired and beige-skinned Saami of northern Lapland can be discerned in both maps. (The two minor exceptions are the fair-skinned but brown-haired people of Bordeaux and the blonde but swarthy descendants of the Volga Rus.)
To be sure, not every researcher is comfortable with the above complexion maps. Their data were collected by comparing people with von Luschan’s ceramic tiles, numbered 1-36 from white to black. Some prefer supposedly more objective readings, taken with portable reflectance spectrophotometers (Robins 1991, 98-99). Others object to the whole idea of interpolating sample points to derive cline contours. As Robins put it, “for regions where no information existed, Biasutti simply filled in the map by extrapolation [sic: Robins clearly meant interpolation] from findings obtained in other [adjacent] areas!” (Robins 1991, 188) Hence, to avoid criticism, some researchers prefer simply to present tables or maps with unconnected sample points, such as the one below (Jablonski and Chaplin 2000). Unfortunately, this makes it nearly impossible to spot patterns.
In any event, tables with unconnected data points, and maps with or without interpolated cline contours, all tell the same story:
Europeans have lighter skin (and hair) than any other group on earth.
Conversely, equatorial Native Americans are not even remotely as dark as other groups at the same latitude. The traditional explanation was that Europeans had had more time to adapt. The traditional explanation no longer works.
Multiregional vs. Out of Africa hypothesis:
Peter Sweet continues…
Why did Europeans become pink even as Mongols and Inuits at the same or higher latitudes remained brown? Why did Mayas and Incas fail to become as dark brown as Africans or Melanesians of the same latitude?
The older scenario of multiregional evolution avoided the puzzle by affirming that the ancestors of modern Europeans had lived there for 250 millennia (ten thousand generations), whereas northeast Asia and the New World were populated, respectively, only 20 and 12 millennia ago (a few hundred generations), not enough time for natural selection to act. A review of the multiregional scenario and of three increasingly strong out-of-Africa scenarios may make this clearer.
In 1960, scholarly consensus had settled that the first members of genus Homo (erectus or ergaster, depending on terminology) emerged in Africa about two million years ago and dispersed throughout Eurasia starting about one million years ago. It was believed that modern humans evolved from older forms simultaneously in China, Southeast Asia, Europe, and Africa. Because this happened over a period of one million years, regional variation did not need explanation.
Indeed, forty years ago, it was routinely believed that each of the “races” was an “incipient subspecies” that had evolved independently (Jordan 1968, 584). Modern Chinese have a high incidence of shovel-shaped incisors because their ancestral H. erectus had shovel-shaped incisors (Coon 1962, 454). Australian Aborigines have sloping foreheads because their ancestral H. erectus had sloping foreheads (Klein 1999, 504). Modern Europeans have fair complexion because their ancestral H. neanderthalensis had fair complexions (Brace 2000, 300), and so forth. Observed regional variation in skin tone did not pose a puzzle because it supported and was supported by multiregional evolution.
Since 1990, widespread consensus has been reached that a second dispersal out of Africa occurred between 50 and 60 millennia ago and that this dispersal comprised anatomically modern humans. That this second dispersal actually took place, even though modern humans may have already evolved in Eurasia, is the weakest form of a hypothesis hereinafter called Out-of-Africa 2 (OOA2, for short). A very few scholars still insist that no such dispersal as OOA2 ever happened (Wolpoff, Hawks, and Caspari 2000).
These holdouts do not object to multiple people movements having occurred between Africa and Eurasia throughout the late Pleistocene. It is the idea of a “first” anatomically modern human dispersal that is objectionable. Either way, acceptance of this weakest form of OOA2 did not seriously challenge the prior view of regional complexion variation. Presumably, the African newcomers simply interbred with the local anatomically modern human populations, perhaps darkening them a bit, but having little other effect.
This stronger form of OOA2 began to undermine the old explanation of regional complexion variation. If African newcomers were a new species, only marginally able to interbreed with local archaic humans, then why should their hybrid descendants inherit the local (archaic human) complexion phenotype everywhere? The answer focused on timing differences. It was said that Europeans were unique because only they had had time to adapt.They alone fully adapted to their latitude because only their Neandertal ancestors had been cold-adapted for 250 millennia. Archaic-modern hybrids did not reach northeastern Asia until 20 millennia ago and did not populate the Arctic or the equatorial New World until 12 millennia ago—not enough time for them to turn pink or dark brown, respectively.
Since 2000, the strongest OOA2 hypothesis has emerged, advocated by a slim majority. It says that the dispersal of African-evolved anatomically modern humans represented a new bio-species. It says that modern humans totally replaced the populations of older species (H. erectus, H. neanderthalensis, H. heidelbergensis) everywhere, with little or no hybridization. A large minority opposition suggests that miscegenation could have happened, either by gene flow before OOA2 or by interbreeding after the dispersal (Relethford 2001, 54-66).
This strongest version of the OOA2 scenario is well supported by molecular evidence.
Two sets of Neandertal-modern DNA comparisons have been made, one from Feldhofer in western Europe, the other from Mesmaiskaya in the northern Caucasus. Both show a neanderthalensis-sapiens split 370 to 850 millennia ago, using Pan troglodytes as outgroup (Relethford 2001, 178-87). This finding challenges the relevance of Neandertal adaptations, to modern human regional variation. Additionally, phylogeographic analyses of mtDNA and SR-Y clades, suggest that the region around the Baltic and North Seas was depopulated during the last glacial maximum and only re-colonized after 16 millennia ago (Torroni and others 2001).
People took refuge in Spain and Italy during the last glaciation. Consequently, any clear regional variation, such as the complexion pattern actually seen, must have evolved after they returned.
In fact, SR-Y studies (Underhill and others 2001) suggest that the New World was colonized before post-glacial Europe was re-colonized. Apparently, Beringia re-submerged before the Alpine glaciers receded.
--- IMO, artwork is relatively trivial compared to other explanations above; nonetheless, Peter Sweet continues:
Evidence from Art
Admittedly, the notion that circum-Baltic European lightening took place after the last glacial maximum, not before, demands independent evidence. Two lines of artistic evidence corroborate it: Magdalenian cave art and Egyptian sculpture. The hunting scene above, one of many examples showing dark-brown bowmen shooting medium-brown deer, was painted in what is now France fifteen to thirteen millennia ago. Judging by the artists’ palettes, Europeans then had not yet lost their brown complexion.
Regarding Egypt, it is alleged (Sturm, Box, and Ramsay 1998) that, “the first depiction of variable pigmentation in man dates back to about 1300 BC and was found on the walls of the tomb of Sethos I.” As it turns out, this is too late. The earliest such depiction is a statue painted in Egypt in 2613 BC, nearly five millennia ago. It portrays Prince Rahotep and his Consort Nefret, of the Old Kingdom, early Fourth Dynasty (Kahane 1967). He is brown. She is pink.
Of course, nothing above is meant to imply that pre-LGM Europeans were as dark as Africans. Evidence suggests that early modern humans had a medium complexion, like that of today’s Khoisan or Ethiopians. The very dark complexion of central Africans also seems to be a recent adaptation (Semino and others 2002). To be sure, prior studies had suggested Mbuti pygmies as most resembling the first moderns, but current molecular evidence points to the Khoisan and Ethiopians.
Also, nothing above suggests that every group on earth has had enough time to adapt locally. Polynesians began colonizing the Pacific (Santa Cruz, Vanatu) three millennia ago, and finished up in New Zealand less than one millennium ago (Sykes 2001). The point is that, if Europeans had enough time to become pink, then so did Asians, Inuits, Aleuts, and Saami. For that matter, if Europeans had enough time to become pink, then equatorial Native Americans had enough time to become dark brown.
------
Gist of all this talk about skin tone:
The early Sahelian-North African groups termed as the so-called "Mechta-Afalou" and the so-called "Mechtoid" groups found in the lower Nile Valley region, were all very likely to have fallen within the African ranges of dark skin, rather than pale skin.
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Have Africans always been black? - along the lines of Underhill’s question in an e-mail correspondence.
Well, within the contemporary scientific community, for all those who have studied alleles responsible for producing skin pigment production, the consensus is that: dark skin is the default anatomically modern human complexion, as well as that of several predecessors in Africa.
"...most anthropologists accept the notion that differences in UV irradiation have driven selection for dark human skin at the equator…” - Gregory Barsh
“The very dark complexion of Africans, Andaman Islanders, Melanesians, and Australian Aborigines requires at least five genes working in concert. Once the trait is lost in a population, it cannot be regained…
the default human complexion is apparently the light brown of the Khoisan and Ethiopian peoples.” - Peter W. Sweet
Many things can go wrong and, when they do, the result is a lighter complexion. For instance, deleterious mutations at the five loci above result in various forms of albinism, whether the patient’s heritage is dark or pale. In other words, there are many random ways “accidentally” to evolve a light complexion.
But no genetic defect can make the child of light-skinned parents come out dark. [Nelson’s syndrome does this, but it is due to a pituitary tumor, not to a mutation, nor to genetic variability (Robins 1991, 125-26).] - P. Sweet
Given analysis of the gradient of human complexion along latitudes, in consideration to other factors like diet, as both G. Barsh and P. Sweet make note of, again there is no reason to not see the great possibility that the folks whose remains had been "termed" as such:
…the so-called "Mechta-Afalou" and the so-called "Mechtoid" groups found in the lower Nile Valley region, were all very likely to have fallen within the African ranges of dark skin, rather than pale skin.
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^As noted above: A child burial was found at Taramsa-1 dating to this time (c.55,000BP): “The poorly preserved bones were those of a sub-adult ‘anatomically modern human’ similar in appearance to the Mechtoid populations of the north African Epipalaeolithic. The position of the body, as well as the depth of the pit in which it was found . . . suggest that the child had not died in this location but had been deliberately brought here to be buried” (Midant-Reynes 1992/2000 p.37).
Nazlet Khater specimen ~ 30,000 years BP
Wadi Kubanniya specimen ~ 20,000 years BP
Tushka specimens ~ 14,500 +/- 490 years BP [Wendorf 1968, and personal communication per Groves 1999]
Jebel Sahaba-Wadi Halfa specimens ~ 12,000-6000 years BP [Sahaba specimens ~ 13,700 +/- 300 Wendorf 1968, per Groves 1999]
^Sahaba specimens ~ 13,700 +/- 600 years BP [Wendorf 1968, and personal communication per Groves 1999]
West Africa:
Mechta-el-Arbi specimens ~ 8,500 years ago. [dates per Groves 1999]
Taforalt specimens ~ 10,800 +/- 241 years BP to 12,070 +/- 400 years BP. [Roche 1963, dates per Groves 1999]
Afalou-bou-Rhummel specimens ~ date back to about the same time frame as the Taforalt specimens, although are proclaimed to be "*somewhat* later in date". [no specific dates provided by Groves 1999]
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Can Mystery or someone else please explain to me what the Metchta-Afalou type was in terms of anthropological remains in North Africa? Does the Metchtoid represent the earliest known modern human remains in North Africa or a later type?
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Can Mystery or someone else please explain to me what the Metchta-Afalou type was in terms of anthropological remains in North Africa? Does the Metchtoid represent the earliest known modern human remains in North Africa or a later type?
Already answered earlier, when this was posted:
My take: The specimens previously placed under the ‘Mechta-Afalou’ actually don’t represent a “type”, but an assortment of specimens that share affinities in some respects, and not so much so in others. Even “robusticity’, which it seems has been seized by some to justify classification into a “type” or “categorization”, varies.
^Which is not incompatible with Brace's observation on "Cro-magnon" as well:
Paul Broca himself had promoted the view that the Basques represent the continuing existence of the kind of Upper Paleolithic population excavated at the Cro-Magnon rock shelter in the village of Les Eyzies in the Dordogne region of southwestern France in 1868 (38-40). Shortly thereafter the “old man” -“le vieillard” -found in that rock shelter was elevated to the status of typifying a whole “Cro-Magnon race” regarded as ancestral to not only the Basques but also the aboriginal inhabitants of the Canary Islands (37, 41-44)…
When the Basques are run with the other samples used in Fig. 1, they link with Germany and more remotely with the Canary Islands. They are clearly European although the length of their twig indicates that they have a distinction all their own. It is clear, however, that they do not represent a survival of the kind of craniofacial form indicated by Cro-Magnon any more than do the Canary Islanders, ***nor does either sample tie in with the Berbers of North Africa*** as has previously been claimed (37, 44-45). …
To test the analysis shown in Fig. 3, Cro-Magnon, represented by the x in Fig. 4, was removed from the European Upper Palaeolithic sample and run as a single individual. **Interestingly enough, Cro-Magnon is not close to any more recent sample**.
Clearly Cro-Magnon is not the same as the Basque or Canary Island samples. Fig. 4 plots the first and second canonical variates against each other, but that conclusion is even more strongly supported when canonical variate 3 (not shown here) is plotted with variate 1. If this analysis shows nothing else, **it demonstrates that the oft-repeated European feeling that the Cro-Magnons are “us” (46) is more a product of anthropological folklore** than the result of the metric data available from the skeletal remains... - Brace et al. 2005
...in response to analyzing the following Groves' piece taken from his publication, “The terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene populations of northern Africa”, 1999:
To the southeast, further cranially robust remains have been described from Nubia, on the Egyptian-Sudanese border (Anderson 1968; Wendorf 1968a, b; Carlson and Van Gerven 1977). Exactly the same process of gracilisation seems to have taken place in this region; Carlson and Van Gerven (1977) attributed it to a change in masticatory function, associated with the processes leading to the adoption of agriculture. The largest collection, from Tushka and Sahaba, was described by Anderson (1968); he considered them in the context of “Negroid origins”, but ended by concluding that they are strongly resemble the “Maghrebian Cromagnoids”, as he called Mechta-Afalou populations, but considered that they were “half-way to ‘Negroidization’”, and demonstrated the late derivation of sub-Saharans from Caucasoids.
There are therefore a number of hypotheses about these terminal Pleistocene samples, which we propose to test this paper:
1. That the Mechta-Afalou populations are a generalized “robust” Homo sapiens population (Lahr 1994), or alternatively that they are robust because they are “Cromagnoid” in morphology, i.e. resemble the Upper Paleolithic populations of Europe (Ferembach 1985, Brauer and Rimback 1990)
Grove’s results, with regards to ‘robusticity’:
Lahr’s (1994) hypothesis, that the Maghrebian samples resemble the Cro-Magnons, is true as far as the males are concerned, but not for the females. Cro-Magnon females are robust, as are Co-magnon males; Taforalt females, however, are not so robust.
As far as morphology is concerned, Grove’s approach to discriminant analysis yields:
The discriminant analysis shows that the Nubian scatter is so wide that it is some of the Nubian males, rather than any of the Maghrebian ones, the are Cromagnon males’ nearest neighbors. The nearest neighbour of the Cromagnon females, however, is the sole Afalou female.
The frequency if occurrence of the horizontal-oval form of the mandibular foramen compares more closely to the Cro-Magnons in the Nubian than in the Maghrebian sample. In the Maghreb sample, it occurs in 1/15, ie. 6.7%, but in the Nubians in 4/18, that is 22.2% (in the Sahaba sample by itself, 4/14, or 28.6%).
According to Frayer (1992), in 38 late upper Paleolithic specimens (approximately contemporary with the present samples) this form occurs in 5.3%, although in 9 Early Upper Paleolithic specimens it was seen in 44.4%.
North African "Mediterraneans" [now defunct] and the so-called Mechtoid North African specimens were just part of early attempts of European researchers to seek a "European-like" component in north Africa, which took the guise of using the so-called Cro-magnon specimen as the model to build the comparison around. Some of these researchers saw cranio-morphological resemblances between the so-called "Mechtoid" North African specimens, as I noted earlier, yet were not totally oblivious to the differences as well, which prevented them calling these specimens as plainly "Cro-magnons"...just as there were attempts to associate what these early European researchers dubbed, "African Mediterraneans", with the other so-called "Mediterranean" specimens, who just so happened to also belong to this one big happy family of "caucasoids".
Interestingly, as noted earlier herein, there has been some linkage drawn between the so-called "Mechtoid specimens" or "North African Cro-Magnoids", i.e. the Mechta-el-Arbi, the Afalou-bou-Rhummel, the Taforalt specimens and possibly the likes of the Jebel Sahaba specimens of the Nile Valley, with the what are dubbed as "Mediterranean racial types":
Recap: "The Negroid increment of which there is evidence in some of our Northern Neolithic Series, notably Kef-el-Agab 1 and Troglodytes 1, may have well come in the same way from the South to *add* to the *already* slightly **Negroid Hamitic cast** of the African Mediterraneans and of their **partial derivative**, the Mechta-Afalou Type." - Briggs
In another recap, Briggs goes onto to note that, again with regards to the so-called "Mediterranean racial type":
"...Type B which fits, in all essential respects, the usual definition of the Mediterranean racial type, but sometimes shows also certain morphological peculiarities commonly known as "Boskopid," as well as Negroid features among females. Type B therefore was classified as African Mediterranean...It may have well acquired its "Boskopid" traits on the road, near the headwaters of the Nile, and kidnapped a few Negro or heavily Negroid women on its way west before turning northward into Northwest Africa. The peculiar characteristics of such women could have been restricted largely to females, at least for a time, by artificial selection in the form of preferential mating."
Source: Briggs, Stone Age Races of Northwest Africa, pgs 81,89.
So, apparently both the so-called North African "Cro-Magnoids" or "Mechtoids" in no way actaully represented a single morphological type, presumably "Cro-magnon" as the model of morphology, as the notes herein bring to light; the Maghrebian specimens are clearly distinguished from the so-called Mechtoid examples found in the Nile Valley, like the Sahaba specimens. We also know that the Megrebian examples, not in any way to be associated with contemporary northwest Africans, are clearly distinguished from the "Cro-Magnon" of Europe [seemingly acknowleged even in the coining of the "North African Cro-Magnoids" appellation - "iod" implying "likewise but not quite [what is the model]"], as demonstrated above in Groves' discriminant analysis where even some so-called "Nubian" specimens actually clustered closer to the European "Cro-magnoid specimens" than the Maghrebian examples. Yet, in Groves factor analysis, which he uses as his supposed gauging tool to term the "caucasoid" or "negroid" inclination of the specimens in question, the "Nubian" specimens were supposedly inclined towards the so-called "Negroid" tendencies, while the European "Cro-magnoid" specimens and the Maghrebian specimens, to put it in Groves' terms:
On factor 2, Cro-Magnon, Taforalt, Norse and Egypt score positively, and Afalou and the sub-Saharan and Nubian samples score negatively.
^...where essentially groups who scored "positively", were implied to have an inclination towards the so-called "caucasoid" tendencies...but it gets interesting, in continuing with Groves' claims:
Factor 1 represents *robusticity*, factor 2 represents the **sub-Saharan/Caucasoid** contrast. The Caucasoid populations (Egypt, Norse, Cro-Magnon) score positively on factor 2, the sub-Saharan Teita score negatively. The modern Dogon (Southern Mali) samples are intermediate. The fossil Nubians score strongly negative, as does the Asselar skull (Central Mali). What is especially interesting is that Afalou also scores negatively, if only slightly; it occupies the same morphological position as do the modern Dogon.
So [as already noted yet again], a Maghrebian specimen, namely the Afalou specimens, occupy the same position as the "modern Dogon" would, which is the "intermediary" position? Well, we know what the modern Dogon generally look like...but if anything, at the least, this is yet indication that even the Maghrebian series don't all converge into a single cranio-morphometric "type".
Just as the so-called "Cro-magnoid" actually fails to show a single morphological type, so does the so-called "Mediterranean racial type", as can be seen from the pains at which various researchers were trying to reconcile the seemingly so-called "Boskopid" and "Negroid" traits in "African Mediterranean" specimens with the basic ideology behind the so-called "Mediterranean racial type". Obviously the so-called "African Mediterraneans" notably differed from their so-called "Mediterranean" counterparts from across the other side of the Mediterranean sea, prompting these researchers to explain away, what Briggs dubs as "morphological peculiarities". Now of course, as far as I can tell at this point, we are not offered any specific extra-cranio-morphometric biological evidence that such "morphological peculiarities" were simply acquired from "miscigenation" between "African Mediterraneans" [whom by implication, were presumably devoid of such "morphological peculiarities" initially] and other groups which were presumably 'typified' by the said "morphological peculiarities", as opposed to being either relics or indicators of the natural micro-evolution of the said "African Mediterraneans". IMO, it seems that the attempt to draw up a type, around the Cro-Magnon model, as is the case to draw up a "Mediterranean racial type", is nothing more than futile Eurocentric attempt to create "types", more likely 'racial types', in which European specimens are presented as models, and extend this European family type into North Africa...as though an attempt to make North Africa into an extension of Europe, as opposed to its being factually [and objectively] part of Africa both geographically and biologically. The bio-anthropological goal of Eurocentric doctrine has historically been to create pseudo-scientific racial types or their subtely transparent "euphemisms", that will extend the associated "European-affiliated" family as much as possible into areas of interest. The pains at which Euro-researchers sought to create "types" around 'Euro-centered' or 'Euro-affiliated' models, can be exemplified in that seen in the following:
recap: “Arambourg et al. (1934) referred to these robust North Africans as the “Mechta-Arbi race”; Ferembach (1962) as Ibero-Maurusians, or Epipalaeolithic, after their lithocultural association. Briggs (1955) divided the Afalou and other samples into four “types” (Palaeomediterranean, African Mediterranean, African Alphine, and true Mechta-Afalou). Anderson (1968) considered them far too homogeneous to warrant this treatment, and indeed Briggs’s analysis is in the typological tradition that held sway up until about 1940, but was thereafter increasingly discarded” - C. Groves, 1999.
Can Mystery or someone else please explain to me what the Metchta-Afalou type was in terms of anthropological remains in North Africa? Does the Metchtoid represent the earliest known modern human remains in North Africa or a later type?
Already answered earlier, when this was posted:
My take: The specimens previously placed under the ‘Mechta-Afalou’ actually don’t represent a “type”, but an assortment of specimens that share affinities in some respects, and not so much so in others. Even “robusticity’, which it seems has been seized by some to justify classification into a “type” or “categorization”, varies.
^Which is not incompatible with Brace's observation on "Cro-magnon" as well:
Paul Broca himself had promoted the view that the Basques represent the continuing existence of the kind of Upper Paleolithic population excavated at the Cro-Magnon rock shelter in the village of Les Eyzies in the Dordogne region of southwestern France in 1868 (38-40). Shortly thereafter the “old man” -“le vieillard” -found in that rock shelter was elevated to the status of typifying a whole “Cro-Magnon race” regarded as ancestral to not only the Basques but also the aboriginal inhabitants of the Canary Islands (37, 41-44)…
When the Basques are run with the other samples used in Fig. 1, they link with Germany and more remotely with the Canary Islands. They are clearly European although the length of their twig indicates that they have a distinction all their own. It is clear, however, that they do not represent a survival of the kind of craniofacial form indicated by Cro-Magnon any more than do the Canary Islanders, ***nor does either sample tie in with the Berbers of North Africa*** as has previously been claimed (37, 44-45). …
To test the analysis shown in Fig. 3, Cro-Magnon, represented by the x in Fig. 4, was removed from the European Upper Palaeolithic sample and run as a single individual. **Interestingly enough, Cro-Magnon is not close to any more recent sample**.
Clearly Cro-Magnon is not the same as the Basque or Canary Island samples. Fig. 4 plots the first and second canonical variates against each other, but that conclusion is even more strongly supported when canonical variate 3 (not shown here) is plotted with variate 1. If this analysis shows nothing else, **it demonstrates that the oft-repeated European feeling that the Cro-Magnons are “us” (46) is more a product of anthropological folklore** than the result of the metric data available from the skeletal remains... - Brace et al. 2005
...in response to analyzing the following Groves' piece taken from his publication, “The terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene populations of northern Africa”, 1999:
To the southeast, further cranially robust remains have been described from Nubia, on the Egyptian-Sudanese border (Anderson 1968; Wendorf 1968a, b; Carlson and Van Gerven 1977). Exactly the same process of gracilisation seems to have taken place in this region; Carlson and Van Gerven (1977) attributed it to a change in masticatory function, associated with the processes leading to the adoption of agriculture. The largest collection, from Tushka and Sahaba, was described by Anderson (1968); he considered them in the context of “Negroid origins”, but ended by concluding that they are strongly resemble the “Maghrebian Cromagnoids”, as he called Mechta-Afalou populations, but considered that they were “half-way to ‘Negroidization’”, and demonstrated the late derivation of sub-Saharans from Caucasoids.
There are therefore a number of hypotheses about these terminal Pleistocene samples, which we propose to test this paper:
1. That the Mechta-Afalou populations are a generalized “robust” Homo sapiens population (Lahr 1994), or alternatively that they are robust because they are “Cromagnoid” in morphology, i.e. resemble the Upper Paleolithic populations of Europe (Ferembach 1985, Brauer and Rimback 1990)
Grove’s results, with regards to ‘robusticity’:
Lahr’s (1994) hypothesis, that the Maghrebian samples resemble the Cro-Magnons, is true as far as the males are concerned, but not for the females. Cro-Magnon females are robust, as are Co-magnon males; Taforalt females, however, are not so robust.
As far as morphology is concerned, Grove’s approach to discriminant analysis yields:
The discriminant analysis shows that the Nubian scatter is so wide that it is some of the Nubian males, rather than any of the Maghrebian ones, the are Cromagnon males’ nearest neighbors. The nearest neighbour of the Cromagnon females, however, is the sole Afalou female.
The frequency if occurrence of the horizontal-oval form of the mandibular foramen compares more closely to the Cro-Magnons in the Nubian than in the Maghrebian sample. In the Maghreb sample, it occurs in 1/15, ie. 6.7%, but in the Nubians in 4/18, that is 22.2% (in the Sahaba sample by itself, 4/14, or 28.6%).
According to Frayer (1992), in 38 late upper Paleolithic specimens (approximately contemporary with the present samples) this form occurs in 5.3%, although in 9 Early Upper Paleolithic specimens it was seen in 44.4%.
North African "Mediterraneans" [now defunct] and the so-called Mechtoid North African specimens were just part of early attempts of European researchers to seek a "European-like" component in north Africa, which in the case of the "Mechtoid" types, took the guise of using the so-called Cro-magnon specimen as the model to build the comparison around. Some of these researchers saw cranio-morphological resemblances between the so-called "Mechtoid" African specimens and the European "Cro-Magnon" specimen, as I noted earlier, yet were not totally oblivious to the differences as well, which prevented them calling the African examples as plainly "Cro-magnons"...just as there were attempts to associate what was dubbed "African Mediterraneans" with the other so-called "Mediterranean" specimens, who just so happened to also belong to this one big happy family of "caucasoids".
Interestingly, as noted earlier herein, there had been some linkage drawn between the so-called "Mechtoid specimens" , i.e. the Mechta-el-Arbi, the Afalou-bou-Rhummel, the Taforalt specimens and possibly the likes of the Jebel Sahaba specimens of the Nile Valley, with what were dubbed as "Mediterranean racial types":
Recap: "The Negroid increment of which there is evidence in some of our Northern Neolithic Series, notably Kef-el-Agab 1 and Troglodytes 1, may have well come in the same way from the South to *add* to the *already* slightly **Negroid Hamitic cast** of the African Mediterraneans and of their **partial derivative**, the Mechta-Afalou Type." - Briggs
In another recap, Briggs goes onto to note that, again with regards to the so-called "Mediterranean racial type":
"...Type B which fits, in all essential respects, the usual definition of the Mediterranean racial type, but sometimes shows also certain morphological peculiarities commonly known as "Boskopid," as well as Negroid features among females. Type B therefore was classified as African Mediterranean...It may have well acquired its "Boskopid" traits on the road, near the headwaters of the Nile, and kidnapped a few Negro or heavily Negroid women on its way west before turning northward into Northwest Africa. The peculiar characteristics of such women could have been restricted largely to females, at least for a time, by artificial selection in the form of preferential mating."
Source: Briggs, Stone Age Races of Northwest Africa, pgs 81,89.
So, apparently both the so-called African "Cro-Magnoid-like" specimens [aka the "Mechtoid"/"Mechta-Afalou" type] in no way actaully represented a single cranio-morphometric type [wherein the "Cro-magnon" is used as the model of morphology], as the notes herein bring to light; the Maghrebian specimens are clearly distinguished from the so-called Mechtoid examples found in the Nile Valley, like the Sahaba specimens. We also know that the Megrebian examples, not in any way to be associated with contemporary northwest Africans, are clearly distinguished from the "Cro-Magnon" of Europe [seemingly acknowleged even in the terming of the "North African Cro-Magnoids" appellation - "iod" implying "likewise but not quite [what is the model]"], as demonstrated above in Groves' discriminant analysis where even some so-called "Nubian" specimens actually clustered closer to the European "Cro-magnoid specimens" than the Maghrebian examples. Yet, in Groves factor analysis, which he uses as his supposed gauging tool to term the "caucasoid" or "negroid" inclination of the specimens in question, the "Nubian" specimens were supposedly inclined towards the so-called "Negroid" tendencies, while the European "Cro-magnoid" specimens and the Maghrebian Taforalt series, to put it in Groves' terms:
On factor 2, Cro-Magnon, Taforalt, Norse and Egypt score positively, and Afalou and the sub-Saharan and Nubian samples score negatively.
^...where essentially groups who scored "positively", were implied to have an inclination towards the so-called "caucasoid" tendencies...but it gets interesting, in continuing with Groves' claims:
Factor 1 represents *robusticity*, factor 2 represents the **sub-Saharan/Caucasoid** contrast. The Caucasoid populations (Egypt, Norse, Cro-Magnon) score positively on factor 2, the sub-Saharan Teita score negatively. The modern Dogon (Southern Mali) samples are intermediate. The fossil Nubians score strongly negative, as does the Asselar skull (Central Mali). What is especially interesting is that Afalou also scores negatively, if only slightly; it occupies the same morphological position as do the modern Dogon.
So [as already noted yet again], a Maghrebian specimen, namely the Afalou specimens, occupy the same position as the "modern Dogon" [although a Dogon male scores positively], which is the "intermediary" position? Well, we know what the modern Dogon generally look like...but if anything, at the least, this is yet indication that even the Maghrebian series don't all converge into a single cranio-morphometric "type".
[Note: Norse, Egypt, Dogon and Teita are supposed to be relatively modern examples from Howells' database - 1973]
Just as the so-called "Cro-Magnoid" actually fails to show a single morphological type, so does the so-called "Mediterranean racial type", as can be seen from the pains at which various researchers were trying to reconcile the seemingly so-called "Boskopid" and "Negroid" traits in "African Mediterranean" specimens with the basic ideology behind the so-called "Mediterranean racial type". Obviously the so-called "African Mediterraneans" notably differed from their so-called "Mediterranean" counterparts from across the other side of the Mediterranean sea, prompting these researchers to explain away what Briggs dubs as "morphological peculiarities". Now of course, as far as I can tell at this point, we are not offered any specific extra-cranio-morphometric biological evidence that such "morphological peculiarities" were simply acquired from "miscegenation" between "African Mediterraneans" [whom by implication, were presumably devoid of such "morphological peculiarities" initially] and other groups which were presumably 'typified' by the said "morphological peculiarities", as opposed to being either relics or indicators of the natural micro-evolution of the said "African Mediterraneans". IMO, it seems that the attempt to draw up a type, around the Cro-Magnon model, as is the case to draw up a "Mediterranean racial type", is nothing more than futile Eurocentric attempt to create "types", more likely 'racial types', in which European specimens are presented as models, and extend this European family type into North Africa...as though an attempt to make North Africa into an extension of Europe, as opposed to its being factually [and objectively] part of Africa both geographically and biologically. The bio-anthropological goal of Eurocentric doctrine has historically been to create pseudo-scientific racial types or their subtely transparent "euphemisms", that will extend the associated "European-affiliated" family as much as possible into areas of interest. The pains at which Euro-researchers sought to create "types" around 'Euro-centered' or 'Euro-affiliated' models, can be exemplified in that seen in the following:
recap: “Arambourg et al. (1934) referred to these robust North Africans as the “Mechta-Arbi race”; Ferembach (1962) as Ibero-Maurusians, or Epipalaeolithic, after their lithocultural association. Briggs (1955) divided the Afalou and other samples into four “types” (Palaeomediterranean, African Mediterranean, African Alphine, and true Mechta-Afalou). Anderson (1968) considered them far too homogeneous to warrant this treatment, and indeed Briggs’s analysis is in the typological tradition that held sway up until about 1940, but was thereafter increasingly discarded” - C. Groves, 1999.
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Encyclopedia of Prehistory - Volume 1: Africa Published in conjunction with the Human Relations Area Files (Encyclopedia of Prehistory) (Hardcover) by Peter N. Peregrine (Editor), Melvin Ember (Editor)
Population, Health, and Disease. Over 100 human skeletons of Late Paleolithic age are known from Egypt and adjacent Sudan. Physically, they are all classified as Homo Sapiens. They are grouped with the Mechtoids of the Maghreb, but details of their teeth indicate that they are a separate population, with many similarities to groups in sub-Saharan Africa.
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Population, Health, and Disease. Over 100 human skeletons of Late Paleolithic age are known from Egypt and adjacent Sudan. Physically, they are all classified as Homo Sapiens. They are grouped with the Mechtoids of the Maghreb, but details of their teeth indicate that they are a separate population, with many similarities to groups in sub-Saharan Africa.
...and as demonstrated, even the Maghrebian series don't form a singular type.
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^ Thus the mistake of trying to identify a certain craniometric 'type' when craniometric diversity among humans, let alone Africans is too great. It is basically the same mistake in trying to identify a 'racial' type.
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^ Indeed, and I see that some of the info here can be used against the scientifically illiterate idiots in the Ancient Egypt board. Then again, if they are scientifically illiterate I don't know what good it would do. Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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This report posits the likelihood of breeding on Eurasian females by NA males to go back to the "Mechta-Afalou" and it also advocates continuity in Eurasian mtDNA prevalence over a 12ky period from 10,000 BCE to now.
posted
Then what those authors are in effect saying, is that Eurasian maternal gene flow preceded the emergence of contemporary coastal Northwestern African populations, going by human paleontological record of that area alone, as noted earlier [e.g. Brace's Neolithic "Algerian" samples clustered away from the modern counterparts]. Non-recombining Y-DNA loci markers also are consistent with paleontological record in this regard.
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-------------------- Without data you are just another person with an opinion - Deming Posts: 12143 | From: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable | Registered: Jun 2007
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EXCELLENT READING MATERIAL!!!! So did the Khoi homeland extend all the way to North Africa then into S. Europe. Never new there was a major difference between the Khoi and San
Quote;
In the 1400s they were actually two groups, found over much of southern Africa: large-statured Khoi herders, pejoratively known as Hottentots, and smaller San hunter-gatherers, pejoratively called Bushmen. Most of the Khoi populations no longer exist;
and
This is all kind of confusing. Surely all of the groups mentiond from Mechta to "Afro-Mediterranean" to "Boskopid"/Khoisan are all indigenous tropical Africans, but still retaining discernable differences from each other
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posted
How can skulls tell us they were tropical? Briggs' four types are all based on cranial data alone.
Actually, for Briggs there were three base types who by intermingling produced his fourth type. All of them however were African though he posited, without any evidence, they originated in the "Near East." But they all assuredly were indigenous African.
When we strip away the Near East bias we see Briggs' point of origin for, in chronological order:
* Type A Palaemediterranean - local Algerian : wide nose, distinct mid-facial prognathism * Type B African Mediterranean - the Sudan : long narrow nose, moderately to markedly prognathous * Type C African Alpine - Singa (Blue Nile) : short nose, slight total & alveolar prognatism * Type D Mechta-Afalou - Palaemediterranean (Afalou) + African Mediterranean (Mechta) w/African Alpine
Although he calls them types, Briggs notes that not even within one type is there any strict homogeneity. I.e., Briggs writes that in the Afalou bou Rhummel cave the lowest strata is PalaeMed but level above it has 14 Mechta-Afalou, 03 mixed PalaeMed, 05 mixed AfrMed, 07 mixed AfrAlp.
Coon is not one whose interpretations I'd rely on but in his Origin of Races -- another volume of my now lost personal library -- he lists all the fossil finds and, iirc, gives their measurements.
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I might be overlooking crucial information here, like say, the duplication of EpiPaleolithic/early Holocene Maghrebi specimens in Europe at the very same time they occur in north Africa, against my current understanding that no pre-LGM and/or LGM European specimens in the Maghreb have been implicated in anthropological journals I've come across, but one would think that any European arrival would coincide with the onset of the LGM, not after it. A European emigration cannot be attributed to the Neolithic package either, because that came to Europe at a much later time frame than the ages of so-called "Iberomaurusians" would allow. These glaring loose ends don't seem to phase some of the unalert minds out there, who simply digest any Eurocentric offered explanation that comes their way. Euro folk explanation is then taken for granted, because of this god-like complex bestowed upon them. To date, I've seen only Eurocentric-driven attempts to connect the diverse north African specimens--i.e. from the Maghreb to the Nile Valley--with discrete Upper Paleolithic specimens of Europe, which were indiscriminately and erroneously referred to as "Cro-Magnon". It goes without saying, that none of those European samples are duplicitous of the EpiPaleolithic/early Holocene north African specimens--none! But who knows, maybe somebody on this forum will bring material forward and surprise me to the contrary, by proving beyond doubt for the first time, that the early Holocene/EpiPaleolithic north African specimens are in fact settler European immigrants who somehow managed to isolate themselves from Africans.
posted
Gracias! to both! Reading Medit Race by Sergi and then some of Evans stuff was an eye opener. I always thought there was movement of Africans through the Straits of Gibraltar. Sergis book confirmed that. That was my premise with 20page confufle with Rasol.
Whether one(Sergi) believes in the Hamitic race is another thing but his method of investigation was on point. To your point Explorer, timeline is important in getting a true picture of what happened. Sergi did that excellently. He ignored the extant people living in North Africa and Europe/Southern Europe but instead examined the skulls from different period in pre-history. Therein lies his premise. That is how competent mind should work. Now only if Geneticist will take the same approach. ie analzye specimens from different period in time.
Will check out the link to your blog.
@ Sage - Thanks for the lead(Briggs) and summation of the types. There is so much reference to North African types in contemporary Anthropological Lit ie 1930's onwards. This thread and Briggs will probably help understand who they are.
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posted
I stand corrected Explorer. You did a lot of work already on the subject(your blog)
-------------------- Without data you are just another person with an opinion - Deming Posts: 12143 | From: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable | Registered: Jun 2007
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posted
Sabeh Frigi Lotfi Cherni Karima Fadhlaoui-zid Amel Benammar-Elgaaied Ancient Local Evolution of African mtDNA Haplogroups in Tunisian Berber Populations Human Biology - Volume 82, Number 4, August 2010, pp. 367-384
Wayne State University Press
Abstract:
Our objective is to highlight the age of sub-Saharan gene flows in North Africa and particularly in Tunisia. Therefore we analyzed in a broad phylogeographic context sub-Saharan mtDNA haplogroups of Tunisian Berber populations considered representative of ancient settlement. More than 2,000 sequences were collected from the literature, and networks were constructed. The results show that the most ancient haplogroup is L3*, which would have been introduced to North Africa from eastern sub-Saharan populations around 20,000 years ago. Our results also point to a less ancient western sub-Saharan gene flow to Tunisia, including haplogroups L2a and L3b. This conclusion points to an ancient African gene flow to Tunisia before 20,000 BP. These findings parallel the more recent findings of both archaeology and linguistics on the prehistory of Africa. The present work suggests that sub-Saharan contributions to North Africa have experienced several complex population processes after the occupation of the region by anatomically modern humans. Our results reveal that Berber speakers have a foundational biogeographic root in Africa and that deep African lineages have continued to evolve in supra-Saharan Africa.
-------------------- Without data you are just another person with an opinion - Deming Posts: 12143 | From: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable | Registered: Jun 2007
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posted
^ Of course. It is a wonder how Eurocentrists were able to get away with the lie of separate North and Sub-Saharan populations in the first place!
By the way, here are some Roman era mosaics depicting indigenous people of Carthage (Tunisia).
Obviously these people are what we consider to be 'black'.
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