Two Worlds in One Continent?

"Moving the goal post" is generally defined as a strategic ploy during an argumentative exchange or debate, where a person raises the bar or changes the burden of proof in order to make increasingly difficult the prospects of an opponent reaching a conclusion pertaining to his/her point of view. Such is well exemplified within the context of African studies as it concerns the arbitrary division of the continent, with the Sahara desert as its basis.

North Africa is sometimes (erroneously) treated as being "separate" or inherently distinct from the rest of Africa, along with its inhabitants. This in effect deviates from the geological and geographical assumption that Africa is a typologically coherent landmass with no apparent cut off point at the Sahara desert. Redefining geography however, is necessary in redefining history.

Early Euro scholars who were unsuccessful in reconciling African cultural advances, most overtly visible in Africa's northeast quadrant, found great difficulty explaining their innate intellectual superiority over indigenous Africans and those of African descent. In effect, such theories were proposed, i.e, Seligman, and other proponents of what was to be known as the "Hamitic race" of Africa . These "Hamites" varied physically, though generally conformed to the narrow faced morphology, which at the time was seen as comprising traits that were indicative of "Caucasoid" ancestry. This, notwithstanding that the very name "Hamite" is derived from the biblical patriarch and father of the African nations, "Ham" (meaning "burnt", or "hot"), who had initially been described by scholars of middle eastern traditions as being "Black".

Hamites were proposed to have entered Africa during the Neolithic via Southwest Asia or Europe, bringing with them a language and culture directly ancestral to ancient Egypt, the Berbers, Nubia, Ethiopia, Somalia, and numerous peoples/nations spanning from northwest to northeast Africa. These Hamites were also deemed to hold a monopoly on "civilization", where ever it may have been found. Cultural superiority was one of their main attributes. The doors however, began to close on these lofty assumptions with the partial help of Joseph Greenberg, who found that the so-called "Hamitic" languages had no linguistic ties to the predominant languages of Europe and Asia, but overwhelming relationships to the African languages of East, North, and to a lesser extent, West Africa. It was suggested that this group of languages [or "family"] all had a single common origin sometime preceding the Neolithic, in "sub-Saharan" east Africa. It was so labeled "Afro-Asiatic", reflecting its wide distribution through out both Africa and southwest Asia, however, scholars generally agree today that its origins likely lie within the borders of modern-day Ethiopia (or neighboring area) based on the principle of highest diversity and least moves.

Anthropologically, the "Hamites" ruse was exposed further by the work of the esteemed anthropologist, Jean Hiernaux. Hiernaux, based on his own observations found that the narrow faced morphology of east Africa, generally attributed to migrating "Hamites" from Southwest Asia or Europe, had been present in Africa since pre-historic times, long preceding any hypothetical back migration of "Hamites". In fact, the phenotypic diversity in "sub-Saharan" Africa alone, encompassed more than 85% of the world's variation, including the much coveted cephalic index.

The Italian geneticist, Cavalli-Sforza's research also corroborated these observations, showing the populations of Africa to contain the highest amount of genetic diversity at the expense of non-African populations, whose diversity is in the main, but a sub-set of the diversity within the one east African population that left Africa some 50-70,000 years ago. Thus, the Hamite theory was ultimately discarded, though a new emphasis was then placed on describing North Africans and Africans immediately south of the Sahara, as being inherently different. This practice continues today under the guise of a "Black" and non-Black Africa, without any exploration on the purely scientific meaning of these labels. Is this a false dichotomy? According to recent research, it actually is.

The Howard University Professor and Smithsonian Institution affiliate, Dr. Shomarka Keita assessed remains spanning various time periods through out various locales in Northern Africa. What was discovered is contrary to the belief that the Sahara has ever been a barrier for genetic exchange and cultural interaction. Much variation was observed through out the Mahgreb to Egypt. For instance, late dynastic Northern Egyptians were found to be morphometrically similar to populations of Northwest Africa, who in turn were noted to possess a range of phenotypes that cumilatively are shown to be intermediate to what has been observed in various Northern European and tropical African populations, while early dynastic Southern Egyptians clustered closest with the groups from tropical Africa.

Frank Snowden, a classicist also noted similar variation in north Africa, citing ancient Greek descriptions of the presence of what was claimed to be populations of "Ethiopian", "part-Ethiopian", and light skinned, sometimes seemingly "blond haired" appearance. MacEachern scanned numerous genetic studies and surveys of the various populations below, within, and above the Sahara, and exposed a similar reality. The Tuareg Berber [formally considered "Hamite'] for example, exhibit a spot in terms of genetic distance, that is intermediate between various sampled populations of modern people above and below the Sahara. Ancient DNA of North Africans in general, as inferred from archaeological sites in the Mid-Holocene, revealed the same. Populations below the Sahara, such as the Fulbe, Serer, Wolof, Chadic-speakers, etc, are found to have some similarities to many Berber-speaking populations of North Africa, while populations such as the Haratin, whose average phenotypical profile connotes what is usually seen as "Black", are thought to be autochthonous to the Sahara.

While many scholars associate certain physical attributes seen in some Berber-speakers as being representative of the original appearance of North Africa's ancient and pre-historic inhabitants, while also reporting that no substantial genetic interaction had taken place coinciding with the recent migrations of non-Africans subsequent to the start of the first millenium, such a notion is generally disputed. While an ancient migration of and/or interaction with non-Africans is apparent at some time in the past, given that half of the female lineages observed in Mahgrebian Berber-speakers are ultimately non-African in origin, much of the variation on the male's side can indeed effectively be attributed to population movements from Asia into Northern Africa during population events as recent as the Islamic incursions (Nebel, 2002). Besides, much of the "non-African" female variation would have been introduced by populations not much differentiated (physically) from the parent African populations who were the source of human dispersal through out the world, as the associated lineages are nearly 50,000 years old and as Keita points out, the said genes in effect would be re-worked and thus, rejoin the natural flow of African biohistory. So it is apparent that genotype doesn't necessarily conform to phenotype and there is little proof that a sub-set of the diversity seen in present day populations of Northern Africa, can be used as a baseline representation of what North Africans have generally always looked like. As a consequence of the above facts and the related, there is no historical, biological, or cultural justification for splitting Africa into two regions with the edge of the Sahara desert as their border. In fact, the Sahara hadn't always existed. As recent as the Neolithic, the area that is now the Sahara desert, was mostly wet land and savanna.



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