The Moors re-civilized Europe after the fall of Rome

[Marblehead]

You are grasping at straws now.

 

And now you are suggesting that the Black Africans were slaves which would be to say that they had nothing to do with keeping the sciences alive because slaves are normally rather uneducated.

[Nungali]

Of course, once the previous arguments against this had been squashed, this topic was forgotten and those rebuttals not even responded to.

 

Why can't you all just admit this simple historical fact? It's not about the side details, etc., etc., etc.. This is the fact I'm trying to show, but nobody will admit that I have proven them wrong about it. They argue on the side details while skirting around the principle issue.

 

I think you missed some of the subtleties of the conversation .

[Apech]

I think you missed some of the subtleties of the conversation .

 

Yep right over my head too.

[Nungali]

Yep right over my head too.

 

 

[Apech]

 

 

Ok I get it now.

[GrandmasterP]

 

Ok I get it now.

 

Pomeranians make great teachers.

 

:-)

[Harmonious Emptiness]

You are grasping at straws now.

 

And now you are suggesting that the Black Africans were slaves which would be to say that they had nothing to do with keeping the sciences alive because slaves are normally rather uneducated.

 

Not when they've been freed and hold high positions in society, which they did in this case.

[Marblehead]

Not when they've been freed and hold high positions in society, which they did in this case.

Now I can't aruge with this. It has happened in many cases. In fact, in American history there were Blacks who did some wonderful things to make life better for all Americans while still a slave to someone else.

 

But that still does not change the root arguement. There were not that many Blacks within the population of Moors who conquered Spain and all the sciences that they brought with them was Arabic, not sub-Saharan African.

[Apech]

Now I can't aruge with this. It has happened in many cases. In fact, in American history there were Blacks who did some wonderful things to make life better for all Americans while still a slave to someone else.

 

But that still does not change the root arguement. There were not that many Blacks within the population of Moors who conquered Spain and all the sciences that they brought with them was Arabic, not sub-Saharan African.

 

 

The science was actually based on the study of ancient Greek manuscripts and then developed by the Arabs. This is the same knowledge which sparked the renaissance in Europe. If you accept the idea that some of this knowledge is based on what Greeks learned from the Egyptians, who were sub-Saharan African despite all attempts to show otherwise ... then some at least of this knowledge is African in origin. When the Victorians first started to look at Ancient history in the 19th Century this was all distorted in order to pretend that the origins of civilisation were with northern Europeans, or peoples who were somehow similar to them in appearance ... when actually this is not the case. The Northern Europeans were late comers.

[Marblehead]

Well, we can go back before the Greeks and find that the sciences were born in what are now the Arabic nations and it was a fact that Greek and Egyptian knowledge grew out of the knowledge that was born in what later became Persia.

 

I will agree with you that the later Europeans did great injustice to the people of Africa, especially sub-Sahara Africa. There were even very evolved civilizations in Northern Africa prior to the Egyptians (who are a mixture of Arabic and original African peoples).

 

But this still doesn't change anything I have said in this thread so far.

[Apech]

Well, we can go back before the Greeks and find that the sciences were born in what are now the Arabic nations and it was a fact that Greek and Egyptian knowledge grew out of the knowledge that was born in what later became Persia.

 

I will agree with you that the later Europeans did great injustice to the people of Africa, especially sub-Sahara Africa. There were even very evolved civilizations in Northern Africa prior to the Egyptians (who are a mixture of Arabic and original African peoples).

 

But this still doesn't change anything I have said in this thread so far.

 

Egyptian knowledge did not come from Persia.

[Marblehead]

Egyptian knowledge did not come from Persia.

Not all but some of it did.

[Apech]

Not all but some of it did.

 

Where did you get this idea from?

[Marblehead]

Where did you get this idea from?

Idea? It's not mine. It has been presented many time in documentaries regarding the area. And it has been presented as fact, not some willy-nilly ideas by this or that special interest group.

 

I don't keep records of such things as they do not directly effect my life one way or another. But I'm sure if you really want to prove me wrong you could try to find good scientific information to disprove what I have said.

 

Check it out when you have the time. I would welcome being proven wrong.

[Apech]

Idea? It's not mine. It has been presented many time in documentaries regarding the area. And it has been presented as fact, not some willy-nilly ideas by this or that special interest group.

 

I don't keep records of such things as they do not directly effect my life one way or another. But I'm sure if you really want to prove me wrong you could try to find good scientific information to disprove what I have said.

 

Check it out when you have the time. I would welcome being proven wrong.

 

 

I don't really need to as I have studied Ancient Egypt for several decades. The Old Kingdom culture was pure Egyptian and based on peoples migrating out of the Sahara desert (which was going through the drying phase after the end of the Ice Age) ... there was some limited trade with neighbouring countries but the culture and knowledge was purely homegrown. In the middle Kingdom there was some trade with Crete, the Lebanon and so on and some cultural input as well. In the New Kingdom Egypt built and empire and so there was much more interaction and cultural exchange. But it was mainly in the Late Period and following conquest most significantly by Alexander the Great that foreign influences came in. However the Egyptian culture and knowledge remained more or less intact from at least 3000 BC to maybe 400 AD.

[Marblehead]

Very good response. And I don't question what you did say. What you didn't say was anything about the pre-Persian Empire peoples who migrated to those areas prior to the Old Kingdom.

 

Consider if you will that the peoples of that time were not pure African but a mixture of Black Africans and the people who eventually became under the control of the Persian Empire.

 

Migrations of people have been moving back a forth every since people first migrated out of Africa.

[Apech]

Very good response. And I don't question what you did say. What you didn't say was anything about the pre-Persian Empire peoples who migrated to those areas prior to the Old Kingdom.

 

Consider if you will that the peoples of that time were not pure African but a mixture of Black Africans and the people who eventually became under the control of the Persian Empire.

 

Migrations of people have been moving back a forth every since people first migrated out of Africa.

 

 

Well, there is evidence of migration from the Sahara to the Nile Valley. That's quite clear ...rock drawings and other evidence showing this happening so as far as I am concerned that is proven fact. Some of the artifacts show evidence of some knowledge of astronomy and geometry since they are aligned to constellations and so on. Also after the Ice Age from say 11,000 or 12,000 BC there was a lot of migration due to climate change. There is also evidence of advanced skills in stone working from this period.

 

So in a sense you are right that people migrated. However the groups of peoples have nothing to do with modern nationalities (and by modern I mean from the historical period), languages or culture ... so its pretty meaningless to say 'knowledge' came from Persia or anywhere actually. Its clear that there was a general shared knowledge amongst the people who survived the Ice Age and to look for an origin in any one place (except for Africa since that is the origin of Homo Sapiens) makes no sense really. When those people stopped moving and started to develop settled communities ... then distinct language, culture and forms of expression of knowledge started to appear.

[Nungali]

Migrations of people have been moving back a forth every since people first migrated out of Africa.

 

Then we owe all populations and all civilisations to 'Africans' ... excuse me ... black Africans ... because that is what this thread is really about isnt it ? I have no problem with the concept, although I have no idea how skin colour was determined or percieved 'back then' ... whatever.

 

I accept the brilliance of black people so I dont need convincing, if someone doesnt accept that and is bigoted, I doubt anything we can say will change them.

 

Marblehead; " Consider if you will that the peoples of that time were not pure African but a mixture of Black Africans and the people who eventually became under the control of the Persian Empire." . Hmmm .... I guess one could say that, I am always forgetting dates and how they fir together . They were a mix .... like most great cultures ... many of which welcomed diversity and did not suffer from racial prejudices ( and here might be a BIG lesson ??? ).

 

I have found it hard to track material on the origins of the Egyptians before they came to the Sahara ... I assumed they evolved in Africa, interbred, went out, came back interbred more and settled in the once fertile Sahara area and when that dried out moved increasingly moved into the Nile Valley. I have also read they were an early branch of the proto-Indian European peoples that migrated very early, which I now believe (as of yesterday ) may have been a component , post Sahara development.

 

" All human populations exhibit biological variation in one way or another, and there is no single way to be biologically African—not by DNA, skin color, hair form, blood type, or variation of face and nose."

 

" There has been scholarly interest in the biological variation and genealogical relationship of the ancient Egyptians to other populations outside of the Egyptian Nile Valley. There is no scientific reason to believe that the primary ancestors of the Egyptian population emerged and evolved outside of northeast Africa ..... the craniofacial patterns of ancient Egyptian show a range of similarities to other African populations, Near Easterners, and Europeans.* Overall, these studies can be interpreted as suggesting that the Egyptian Nile Valley's indigenous population had a craniofacial pattern that evolved and emerged in northeastern Africa, whose geography in relationship to climate largely explains the variation." (my emphasis).

 

[ * The use of craniofacial criteria as reliable indicators of population grouping or ethnicity are now disputed - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_Egypt - @ Anthropometric indicators . ]

 

"The basic overall genetic profile of the modern population is consistent with the diversity of ancient populations that would have been indigenous to northeastern Africa and subject to the range of evolutionary influences over time, although researchers vary in the details of their explanations of those influences."

 

" The titles for the king, major officials, and the royal insignia are Egyptian, which is of interest because one old theory held that the dynastic Egyptians or their elites came from the Near East; however, the archaeological evidence shows that they came from southern Egypt."

 

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/geopedia/Ancient_Egypt

 

"It is now largely agreed that Dynastic Egyptians were indigenous to the Nile area. About 5,000 years ago, theSahara area dried out, and part of the indigenous Saharan population retreated east towards the Nile Valley. In addition, peoples from the Middle East entered the Nile Valley, bringing with them wheat, barley, sheep, goats, and possibly cattle." - so, of course, right at the beginning we have a mix.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy

 

" About 5,000 years ago the wet phase of the Sahara came to an end. The Saharan population retreated to the south towards the Sahel, and East towards the Nile Valley. It was these populations, in addition to Neolithic farmers from the Near East, that played a major role in the formation of the Egyptian state as they brought their food crops, sheep, goats and cattle to the Nile Valley"

 

" Toby Wilkinson, in his book Genesis of the Pharaohs, proposes an origin for the Egyptians somewhere in theEastern Desert.^[17] He presents evidence that much of predynastic Egypt duplicated the traditional African cattle-culture typical of Southern Sudanese and East African pastoralists of today. Kendall agrees with Wilkinson's interpretation that ancient rock art in the region may depict the first examples of the royal crowns, while also pointing to Qustul in Nubia as a likely candidate for the origins of the white crown, being that the earliest known example of it was discovered in this area."

 

" There is also evidence that sheep and goats were introduced into Nabta from Southwest Asia about 8,000 years ago.^[2] There is some speculation that this culture is likely to be the predecessor of the Egyptians, based on cultural similarities and social complexity which is thought to be reflective of Egypt's Old Kingdom."

 

" In general, various DNA studies have found that the gene frequencies of modern North African populations are intermediate between those of the Near East, southern Europe and Sub Saharan Africa,^[25] though the frequency distributions of the non-recombining portion of the Y chromosome of modern Egyptian population appear to be much more similar to those of the Middle East than to any sub-Saharan African population, suggesting a much larger Eurasian genetic component."

 

[ There were many other studies which gave validity (until quiet recently actually) to the sub-Saharan African origin but many of those methods are considered invalid or modified now, like the craniofacial criteria mentioned above , also things such as limb elongation and other varieties have been shown to be a result of climate and temperature adaptation .]

 

" Anthropologist C. Loring Brace points out that limb elongation is "clearly related to the dissipation of metabolically generated heat" in areas of higher ambient temperature. He also stated that "skin color intensification and distal limb elongation is apparent wherever people have been long-term residents of the tropics". He also points out that the term "super negroid" is inappropriate, as it is also applied to non negroid populations. These features have been observed among Egyptian samples."

 

" A 2006 bioarchaeological study on the dental morphology of ancient Egyptians by Prof. Joel Irish shows dental traits characteristic of current indigenous North Africans and to a lesser extent Middle Eastern and southernEuropean populations, but not at all to Sub-Saharan populations."

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_Egypt

 

 

Yet again , I suppose, the idea can be given regarding origins ... its an idea that I have given several times; imagine a large board with contours, valleys mountains and rivers, now dump a handful of different coloured marbles (purely to mark distinction), now tilt and swirl the board around , that is a model of 'who came from where'. Depending on the time one looks , that is where people came from ... even to go back 1000 years ... those people probably came from somewhere else. Any group or culture has mixed 'ethnicity' ... and I suspect, the better the mix, the better the culture.

Edited April 21, 2014 by Nungali

[Harmonious Emptiness]

Thanks for posting those excerpts Nungali, but

 

cranio-facial and dental similarities don't determine white, so why do they determine "black."

 

They were black, while maybe appearing more East African. By the "one drop rule," they would be considered as Black (which is an identifiable group, requiring capitalization, while most white people don't really culturally identify as "White," they just mean their skin is white).

Edited April 22, 2014 by Harmonious Emptiness

[Marblehead]

Well, there is evidence ...

We are close enough to agreement here that I care not to continue to push this any further.

[Marblehead]

Marblehead; " Consider if you will that the peoples of that time were not pure African but a mixture of Black Africans and the people who eventually became under the control of the Persian Empire." . Hmmm .... I guess one could say that, I am always forgetting dates and how they fir together . They were a mix .... like most great cultures ... many of which welcomed diversity and did not suffer from racial prejudices ( and here might be a BIG lesson ??? ).

That is exactly the point I have been putting forth this entire thread.

[Marblehead]

I am probably finished posting in this thread.

[Nungali]

Thanks for posting those excerpts Nungali, but

 

cranio-facial and dental similarities don't determine white, so why do they determine "black."

 

?

They dont ;

 

" The use of craniofacial criteria as reliable indicators of population grouping or ethnicity are now disputed - http://en.wikipedia....istory_of_Egypt - @ Anthropometric indicators . "

 

They were black, while maybe appearing more East African. By the "one drop rule," they would be considered as Black (which is an identifiable group, requiring capitalization, while most white people don't really culturally identify as "White," they just mean their skin is white).

 

I dont understand all this ... I will put it down to a cultural difference. I live in Australia ... I dont know where you live, it might play out totally different there?

 

Here ; white people can be 'adopted' and then their cultural identity is also 'black' and that is something the black people want to do (its part of their culture, they love adopting people). I have no idea what you mean by white people not culturally identifying as white .... I have seen that all the time.

 

IMO the 'one drop rule' (if I am understanding you) seems ridiculous ... a drop of blood is insignificant compared to the content of one's heart. Man ... I am so 'black' ( ) the Kooris insist I MUST have had a secret aboriginal father or grandfather. But I dont have 'a drop' of blood. ... Here ... legally one has to show 1/8 ancestry ... to get the benefits So people being classified as 'aboriginal' can be 'as white' as a freshly dug up witchety grub. We have been slowly dragging our country away from a 'white culture' towards a multi-cultural culture ever since the disassembly of the White Australian policy. Over here, culturally identifying as white is something we try to avoid .Supposedly we are a 'multi-cultural' society, although different levels of support is given to cultures that need it.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

IMO the 'one drop rule' (if I am understanding you) seems ridiculous

Wikipedia.org on the 'One drop rule'

 

A 'little more' than ridiculous, it was a horrible injustice.

[Harmonious Emptiness]

Okay, so then you agree or not that 1) the Moors, and 2) Ancient Egyptians were primarily (racially) Black or no?