Roxana Cooper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Don Barone Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Hi Motion.
> >
> > Discussing race in regards to Ancient
> Egyptians is
> > as far as I know Taboo !
>
> Correction: questioning Afrocentric views is the
> taboo!

Actually I would say that arguing from any form of ethnocentric perspective is taboo.


>
> > Seems that to even think that the early
> dynasties
> > or any dynasties for that matter might have
> been
> > Black causes no end of controversey and is
> deemed
> > not important. Why I have no idea, and Queen
> Tiye
> > being Black is also a no go for disucssion.
>
>
> There is evidence of persons of sub-Saharan
> African extraction in the
> highest social ranks as far back as the 4th
> Dynasty, however ancient and
> modern Egyptians alike consider themselves
> distinct from their southern
> neighbors culturally as they are physically.
>

When were there ever any sub-saharan Africans in Egypt? Please show me any evidence of said persons being from below the Sahara at any time in Egypt's history. All of Egypt and Northern Sudan are within or above the Sahara. As far as I know, Egypt only reached down to Southern areas of the Sudan in maybe the 18th dynasty. So, I question your understanding of geography as well as your understanding of African anthropology.

> Queen Tiye is *CONSTANTLY* described and
> depicted as 'black', this dispite
> the fact that we possess the mummies of both her
> parents *neither* of whom is
> 'black'. Tiye must have been adopted?? And of
> course Nefertiti is consistently
> depicted as a nice, toasty brown dispite the
> pinky-beige complexion of her best
> known likeness.

And I guess it is a problem for an African Queen to be black? I mean what specifically is so odd about this statement? To suggest that it is odd or unusual for an indigenous African Queen to be black is what is so laughable as to not be taken seriously, yet some people consistently insist that such a concept makes sense in ancient Egypt. Tiye's parent's were indigenous Africans from around Akhmim in Upper Egypt. There are today and have always been black Africans in this area. There is no evidence that either of Tiye's parents were not native Egyptians.

>
> Frankly Don suggesting the AEs *weren't* 'black'
> is the no go area!
>
>
All Egyptians were not black. All Egyptians are not black. That is not the point. The point is that the ancient Egyptians derived from ancient Africans in the Sahara and to the South of Egypt and it is from the south that the traditions that led to ancient dynastic Egypt originated. Therefore, to suggest that this represented some non black impetus or input into the Nile Valley or that the cultural and social framework was imported from outside Africa and not from among populations of black Africans is totally incorrect. This base formed the core of Egyptian culture and world view which lasted throughout the dynastic period right down to the late period.

Pottery in the Sahara and regions south of Egypt are the oldest in the Nile Valley:

Quote

As far as Uan Muhuggiag is concerned, its pottery appears to be decorated with techniques belonging to the later phase of the a fore­mentioned trend. The most common is the "return" technique, which consists in the compass-like application of a two-toothed tool, going over the last line of dots, thus ensuring equal spacing between all the dots of the pattern. This results to be the most common technique of decoration all over the Sahara during the 7-6 millennia B.P., including most of the so­called "punctations".

Despite similarities and parallelism, substantial dissimilarities are also recognizable between the Saharan and the Nilotic areas. Many elements point, therefore, to a normal framework of exchange and contacts between adjacent regions, sometimes influencing the local production, but never in terms of predominance of one region over the other.

The elaboration of true and proper typological structures, which are subsequently compared with a view to reconstructing local cultural sequences, determining relationships between different areas and establishing general regional chronologies, makes the choice of basic elements for consideration one of the most difficult problems of any study.

From: [www.arkamani.org]

It is also from the Uan Muhuggiag culture of the central Sahara that the earliest evidence for mummification was found, predating that of Egypt. These mummies are called "black" mummies because of their obvious physical relationships to black people in Africa. To suggest that such people therefore migrated to the Nile valley and were not the majority of the population on the Nile valley in ancient times is absolutely ridiculous. Not because of any sort of Afrocentric taboo, but because such statements go against the facts. The oldest and most ancient traditions in Egypt originated in the Sahara and to the South.

Earliest evidence of settled human activity on the Nile is in the Sudan:

Quote

By the end of the Old Stone Age, Nubian peoples, like those in the Near East and elsewhere, had begun utilizing sickle-like tools made of wood inset with small razor-sharp stone flakes. The purpose of such tools was for cutting grain, and it is the harvesting of grains and the learning of methods of food production - how to plant crops and how to domesticate animals - that marked the transition from the Old Stone Age (Paleolithic) to the New (Neolithic).

During the 1980's and 90's intensive exploration of the northern Sudan was undertaken by a number of prehistorians. These archaeologists discovered that from about 8000-4000 BC, people learned how to live in large permanent communities, where they produced an increasing proportion of their own food and acquired enough leisure time to create artistic utilitarian objects. Many of these ancient settlements were found in areas that are today absolute deserts. This has not only revealed that the climate was dramatically different in Neolithic times but also that the Nile itself once flowed through entirely different channels than it does today.

Recent surveys of the Bayuda Desert, north of modern Khartoum, Sudan, and the Sahara Desert, west of the Nile at Dongola, Sudan, and the Nubian Desert, east of Kerma, Sudan, have resulted not only in the discovery of major ancient settlement areas but also to a new understanding of the ancient course and tributaries of the Nile.

When a paved road was to be laid across the Bayuda Desert, connecting Omdurman (western Khartoum) with ed-Debba 210 miles (350 km) to the north, a team of the Sudan Archaeological Research Society (SARS) of London, collaborating with the Sudan Antiquities Dept., undertook an archaeological survey of the route. Their work revealed that this Ohio-sized territory, embraced by the Great Bend of the Nile, was once cut by a branch of the White Nile that flowed due north through the dry depression now known as the Wadi Muqaddam. This area, they found, was once well-watered, as revealed by the presence of many fish bones and fresh-water shells, and it supported many prehistoric settlements along its banks. Future excavations here will no doubt lead to important discoveries.

Another major Nile tributary, which has been dry for perhaps three thousand years, once flowed from Chad through the Sahara and intersected the Nile near modern Dongola, Sudan. This ancient river system, called the Wadi Howar, once kept the western desert of Sudan well watered, and from about 8000.to 1000 B.C. it nurtured extensive population groups along its banks. Recent surface surveys in this now lifeless region by Dr. Bergit Keding and a team from the Heinrich Barth Institute of the Univesity of Cologne, Germany, have revealed traces of many complex, previously unknown ancient cultures. Since there is no water or other means of supplying an archaeological expedition here, only very limited excavations have taken place, but future finds here will surely expand dramatically our knowledge of the Nubian Neolithic and the history of cultural evolution in Africa.

......

Although the settlement sites along the ancient Nile beds of the Wadi el-Khowi, east of Kerma, were all badly damaged by wind and water erosion, the cemeteries often survived because the graves were dug into low mounds. The joint French-Sudanese team has identified over thirty cemeteries, and three or four possess over a thousand burials each. Their major discovery was that a grave's position in the cemterey seemed to indicate the social standing of the owner within the community. The most important individuals, they found, were men, who were buried at the highest point of each cemetery mound. Their graves contained the most important objects - elaborately decorated pottery, fine tools and weapons - especially mace heads - made with with exotic stones, multiple armbands of ivory, grinding stones for eye cosmetics, and strange stone female figurines. Horns of domesticated cattle were sometimes laid on top of the bodies. These "chieftan's graves" were surrounded by lesser graves, predominantly female. Such data reveals that Nubian society, from at least 5000 BC, had become highly stratified.

From: [www.nubianet.org]

Cattle domestication in the Nile valley originated to the South and East:

Quote

This “stuff” was of a culture much more advanced than the Masara. In her initial years of scouting the desert, McDonald had identified and defined a separate culture she had placed later than the Masara. She hadn’t yet named it, but she knew it was quite separate from the Masara, and, importantly, it was more advanced technologically. The unnamed culture had pottery, fine leaf-shaped arrowheads, pleasing smooth stone tranchets for scraping, toggles of fine sandstone—what these were used for she hasn’t yet figured out—and elaborate jewelry-like marine shell bangles and beads of carnelian. When she saw this site, she knew the culture needed a name. “This site is Bashendi,” she says, reaching for a sandstone grinder that fits neatly into her palm.

Pointing out the smooth side, she says the Bashendi would have used these to grind local wild millet and sorghum. We trudge through the hard-packed sand with its wind-formed ripples to a circle she has excavated. “See how the walls on the north side are heavier, more reinforced,” she says. It implies the huts were occupied during the winter months of north wind. Most of the structures are round or oval and three to five meters across (10–16') but about a third of them are rectangular. Some have flagstone floors, and McDonald points out a crumbly material that may have been used to chink walls against the chilly wind. “Let’s go over the next couple of ridges. There’s something else I want to show you,” she says.

Over the second ridge lies the large circle that Krzyzaniak first spotted. It’s half the size of a football field, slightly oblong. McDonald walks around it, pointing out “entrances” in the two-meter-thick (6'6") walls that stand up to a meter high. What are your thoughts about what it was used for, I ask. “Local barn dance?” she quips mischievously. Then, seriously, “More likely an animal enclosure of some kind.” She points out that one of the entrances has a built-in enclosure like a hut circle: shelter for a herdsman, perhaps?

For the Bashendi, the Neolithic Revolution was an adaptation to the drying of their savannah into today’s desert. When they moved east to the Nile Valley, they brought cattle and agriculture.

Though it seemed a logical conclusion, she has found precious little evidence of what the large structure was really used for. “We found no post holes,” she says, “which you’d need if a structure this size were covered over.” She’s hoping to obtain some chemical or mineral studies that might tell her of animal-dung residues. But some proof comes from Churcher’s analysis of the teeth and bones collected from the first Bashendi site we visited. “The Bashendi had goats and cattle,” he told me earlier in his lab. “Whether they’re wild or domestic, though, we can’t really tell at this point. It can take up to a thousand years for the physical traits of domestication to show up in the record. But their teeth were well worn, and they were frequently older animals.” He went on to explain that this usually points to domestication—older animals wouldn’t normally be hunted. And it would indicate the animals weren’t kept for their meat, but more likely for blood and milk, the reasons the modern Masai to the south keep cattle.

From: [www.saudiaramcoworld.com]

Again, any suggestion that the ancient inhabitants of the Nile Valley who developed what became dynastic Egyptian culture were not primarily indigenous Africans from the South in Sudan and the Sahara is blatantly going against the facts of anthropology and archaeology. To suggest that the people from these areas were anything other than black Africans is absolute nonsense bordering on insanity.







Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/12/2007 01:52PM by Doug M.