See here:

[www.hallofmaat.com]

Your post embodies most of the lies and half truths that I point out.

These boys are not European. They are not tanned whites. They are African. They are not "other". Trying to pretend that they represent some "other" type of African who can be arbitrarily removed from the continuity of African variation in features and ethnicity across Africa is a lie and a half truth. There are Beja nomads from further South who also look like these children with straighter hair and thinner noses. You can find children looking like this from Egypt to Ethiopia and elsewhere in Africa. Again, trying to pigeonhole African features in Egypt into some "special" category separate from other Africans is a reflection of Europeans and other foreigners desperate to separate Egypt from Africa and to pretend that it is somewhere else other than in Africa. It is nonsense, unscientific and biased towards finding ways to lump certain African features with foreigners who have not one bit of African ancestry. And point blank, there are many blacks around Luxor and points south in Egypt. There is no need to try and pretend that they don't exist or are some "other" type of Africans. And this is not even going into those so-called "nubians" who have been along that part of the Nile since before there was an Egypt and are another example of the original features of Nile Valley Africans in Egypt.

The Beja are descendants of the ancient Medjay and other nomadic cattle rearing populations from Southern Egypt and Sudan. They are a perfect example of the types of populations that would have been migrating from the Sahara. They are not whites, they are not some "other" type of African. They have long curly to straight hair and were often called "fuzzy wuzzies" by the British who encountered them and fought them and admired their bravery. They are a form of Nilotic African and closely related to ancient Egypt as well.

Unfortunately people like the Beja and other of the descendants of the original people along the Nile, including those of Upper Egypt and Northern Sudan are currently living in precarious times. The conflicts in the Sudan are forcing traditional African peoples to adopt a superficial Arab identity in order to obtain any support. More dams are being created to flood significant historical sites along the Nile in Lower Sudan, displacing more people. All of this is further destroying an ancient culture and ethnic continuity that is slowly being replaced by an arab identity and Islamic culture. Therefore, further separating the modern inhabitants from their ancient past and in some places replacing it with a foreign oriented identity and ethnicity.

The information on the Beja is scanty but here is some examples of them that shows their similarities to the boys you posted photos of:

[www.sudan101.com]
[www.sudantribune.com]

Beja nomad taken by David Haberlah and posted on Flickr under creative commons license





From:
[www.flickr.com]












Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/09/2007 07:01AM by Doug M.