Update on Investigation into the "Mysterious" EpiPaleolithic Maghrebi Remains!

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Introduction

This entry is supposed to serve as an update and add-on to a blog entry that was first published here back in May 5th, 2010, under the heading, An Investigation into the "Mysterious" Mesolithic Maghrebi populations. The arguments made there—in the main, are still quite sound, but over the years, some DNA-assignment shuffling within the reconstructed human mtDNA phylogenetic network had taken place. This sort of thing happens quite a bit in the field of molecular genetics, usually in the form of either changing the phylogenetic location of a newly identified clade or a preexisting one, and/or renaming entire clades with new naming schemes, since researchers tend to see information about larger phenomena in the form of fragments. As such, sometimes previous information (source material), especially on newly identified clades, becomes obscure or rarer. To address a situation such as this, in the few occasions where they may have occurred, this entry has revisited elements of the aforementioned entry, modify as necessary, or simply add to information previously posted. 

Trivia on the Natufians

In 1928, Charles Lambert had uncovered, during a preliminary investigation at el- Wad, the first prehistoric art object discovered in the Near East, a finely carved bone animal head. He had also discovered human, later identified as Natufian, burials. - Courtesy of the University of Cambridge, the department of archeology.

The "Natufians", the reputed "first farmers" of the Neolithic "Near East", had gone from being regarded as mere "cannibals" by observers of the day shortly after being uncovered in the late 1920s to becoming widely recognized as "pioneers" of the farming economy that took hold in the Neolithic era and was subsequently swept into Europe.

An Investigation into the "Mysterious" Mesolithic Maghrebi populations

The present discussion takes off from the trail of a previous one posted here on the examination of the "Mechta-Afalou" and the European "Cro-Magnons" as elements of a monophyletic unit constituting a taxonomic "type". That previous discussion had put a spotlight on the futility of such a thesis, which varied quite widely in its specifics as one went from the subjective taxonomic regime of one researcher to the next. In that same discussion, the following was noted:  "the Mechtoid concept and its supposed relationship with Cro-Magnon, is nothing more than another Eurocentric way of trying to relate North Africa to Europe...essentially a *wishful* desire to see north Africa as more an extension of Europe than the actual continent [Africa] its attached to".

Indeed, there has been a long indirectly-stated desire to make the coastal northern piece of the African continent an extension of Europe, and territory which has traditionally been THE domain of European-descended peoples than of autochthonous Africans, which are generally treated as "newcomers" to the region. In other words, some sort of a "natural" apartheid was put in place in the late Upper Paleolithic until some time in the early Holocene, preventing autochthonous Africans from inhabiting the place, while the same region was supposedly hospitable to "European immigrants". This theme blatantly makes its reappearance in another study that has fairly recently enjoyed elevated circulation and has become a citation-favorite within online 'white' supremacist cult gatherings, undoubtedly attributable to the French-published study becoming more accessible as English-translated versions became more available on the net. The study in question comes from Kefi et al., under the heading: Mitochondrial Diversity of the Population of Taforalt (12,000 years b.p. - Morocco): A Genetic Study Approach to the Peopling of North Africa, 2005.

"Demic Diffusion" Dynastic models: R.I.P

Although by now intellectually relegated to a fringe-status [mainly radical Eurocentrist or affiliated cults] in the face of overwhelming & mounting evidence, there is still a crowd out there that is distressed by the prospect of the Dynastic Nile Valley complex being recognized, well, as autochthonous. The very idea that "sophisticated" or "advanced" complex culture(s) does not begin in Europe, but anywhere outside of Europe, upsets the white supremacist social "pyramid"; so, it comes as no surprise to see elements in this ideological bubble, whether they openly call themselves "gun-touting" conservative "patriots" or "liberal" humanity-loving "activists", cringe at the audacious nature of reality, that the very first sophisticated elaborate complex culture occurs just about anywhere outside of Europe, let alone Africa. The difference between the two camps of the white supremacist ideological bubble, is that the former is more forthright about their disquiet than the latter is.

The entity of "ancient Egyptian" social complex particularly presents a very unsettling situation in the white supremacist ideological bubble, because it has the distinction of being amongst the world's, and not just Africa's, earliest attestable elaborately sophisticated socio-cultural complexes, as well as being "aboriginally" African. Why is this? Well, the first reason had been already stated above, but second one entails the fact that white supremacy is hardwired in placing the darkest of people [skin pigmentation standpoint] at the bottom of their social ladder; think of it—though Eurocentrist elements would frown at such a deserved acknowledgment—as white supremacist "caste system". This is how said "caste system" works: at the top, is the lily white group, and from thereon, as groups progressively get darker, so is their position on the "pyramid" of this caste system determined accordingly—the darker a group gets, the lower its social status on the caste system's "gradient". It is for this reason that all sorts of rounds have been made at explaining away the "Africanity" of the 'ancient Egyptian' complex; including begrudging acknowledgments like,...

"well, yes it is African, but not black African" or "It was in Africa, but ancient Egypt's politics was more focused towards the Middle East, and should therefore more appropriately be seen as Middle Eastern", or "yes, ancient Egypt was physically located in Africa, but it's social complex was brought about by a horde of Middle Eastern immigrants", not to mention another common one: "they were a melting pot of all races [and so, ancient Egypt was brought about by this confederation of different "races"; "different races" presumably living in harmony back then than they are today]".

This one probably takes the cake, if not more forthright about its motivation by white supremacist agenda: "Western civilization history lessons places it [ancient Egypt] in the Middle East [and usually, as a prelude to western civilization history, and so it is], and that's that."

What the above is saying point blank, is that ancient Egypt should force-feedingly be "accepted" as "Middle East" or even "Western" because "we, westerners, say so; it doesn't have to have an ounce of fact to it, just needs to be accepted by those, who we [presumably] dominate". In other words, "we" use "geopolitical dominion" to assert and fabricate what should be accepted or not accepted; truth or reality never has anything to do with it. So, when reasonable people place "ancient Egypt" in its objective or true place, it upsets the white supremacist ideological bubble, because the said "geopolitical dominion" assertiveness is audaciously defied accordingly. Linked to this "assertiveness", the white supremacist "caste system" is defied by the condition of the darkest of groups developing elaborately sophisticated social complexes before the lily white European ones, which is what a "black African ancient Egypt" implicates.

Ideally, but harder to do intellectually, Eurocentrism would prefer just about every "meaningful" autochthonous development in Africa to be attributed to adjoining regions, which they'd prefer to call "outside" of Africa, like say, the portion of the Great Rift Valley of Africa in what they call the so-called "Near Eastern" side. This is not done out of any special Eurocentric love for "Near Easterners", but pretty much out of the necessity of upholding the usually unspoken white supremacy doctrine of Eurocentric-presumed "lighter" groups being on top of the Eurocentric-presumed "darker" groups in their "caste system". You see, from the Eurocentrist standpoint, the regions that they subjectively dub as the so-called "Near East", people with relatively lighter epidermal pigmentation are more prevalent in these areas than in the more southern climes of Africa; it matters not, whether these people are still generally considerably darker than most European populations. As far as white supremacy caste system is concerned, these groups are relatively nearer to "white" Europeans than the darker or darkest ones that them white Europeans are supposed to be naturally better than. This is why whenever archaeological finds in situ African continent come to the surface, which could potentially be indicative of some highly sophisticated—presumably quite ancient—social development at first glance, the Eurocentric doctrine is to first explore such findings in terms of demic diffusion models originating from adjoining "non-African" territories before exploring an autochthonous one; only if any number of demic diffusion models fail to sufficiently explain the findings, then is an autochthonous one begrudingly tolerated or accepted, well...at least until further down the road, new demic diffusion models come to mind. This is why for example, if one stops to think about it, notwithstanding what archaeology may say in tandem with say, linguistics and genetics, ideally Eurocentrism prefers to take for granted that any and essentially every animal domestication tradition in Africa must have initially been an imported trade from the so-called "Near East", the region that has become a Eurocentric propaganda entity of convenience, mainly because of its undisputed cases of more archaeological antecedents over that of Europe [otherwise, Europe ideally would be the first choice, as a "non-African" source].

Now, as many probably know by now, the "Near East" has been quite a fluid Eurocentric construct which has, depending on the occasion at hand, been used to cover portions of Northern Africa as well. Under this guise, huge chunks, if not all, of coastal Northern Africa cease to be part of mainland Africa, not out of geographical obscurity, but out of the information dissemination shroud, from repeated "western" mass media catchwords like the "Middle East", which is almost always used to include parts of coastal Northern Africa areas. This has happened so much so in the "western" world, that is not unreasonable to assume that some people in that part of the world are inclined to think that the so-called "Middle East" is its own continent. In this scenario, "Africa" becomes relegated to another Eurocentric-presumed catchword— for Africa's "darkies" bunch; at this point in the passage, we ought to know by now, how "darkies" fare in the Eurocentric "caste system". As soon as "Africa" is uttered, in the so-called "western" world, stereotypical images of these "darkies" come to mind at first instance, even though etymologically, the term traces its initial application on the continent in the coastal Northwestern African area.

Of course the Eurocentric dogma creeps in from time to time in "western" published journals, and as such, it boils down to a matter of the reading audience being sufficiently-researched in what they read, and thus, being able to sift out the objectively reasonable from the rest of the "noise" being radiated from these journals. Limb proportions for example, has been a recurring topic of science journals and book publications. One such that comes to mind for example, is Chris Stringer and Clive Gamble's publication, In Search of the Neanderthals: Solving the Puzzle of Human Origins. As the title suggests, the journey of investigation centers around Europe, for if one stops to think about it, the "search of the Neanderthals" is also linked to the search of "where Europeans came from" — their evolutionary journey. As a reader of this cite may know, within Eurocentric ideological circles, at one point Neanderthals were even considered as possible ancestors of contemporary Europeans; so putting this basic concept in mind, the 'western' fascination with Neanderthals becomes readily understood. In any event, limb proportions has become part of investigating the aforementioned evolutionary journey, and In Search of the Neanderthals explores this. Page 92 of the book for instance, provides us with average crural indices of sample candidates taken from different parts of the globe, and the respective temperatures of the prevailing or historic habitats of these candidates.

As a matter of basic intuition, one may know that skin or epidermal pigmentation is a function of the biological responsive measure to the level of the UV radiation, with diet playing a supplementary role; whereas in the case of body plan & limb proportions, the influencing factor is more a function of thermal regulation—optimized retention and loss of heat according to the temperature environment of the prevailing areas of habitat. In the tropics, not only are UV radiation levels higher, but so is temperature generally higher than those in temperate regions. So it should not be surprising to see a strong correlation between body plans and epidermal pigmentation.

"Tropical body plans" are thus strongly correlated with groups that generally have considerable epidermal melanin pigmentation, while "cold-adapted" body plans would be most expected of groups relaxed in epidermal eumelanin pigmentation [also see Allen's Rule for examples]. Of course, in some rather very rare occasions, some subtropical regions are known to sport high temperatures. In these isolated incidences, one might wonder if the correlation stands; well, it certainly depends on the biohistory of a population in said habitat, i.e. when they arrived, and their evolutionary status when said arrival took place, coupled with the UV radiation intensity [see previous posts: Skin pigmentation gene alleles & Skin pigmentation gene alleles — Part 2], the "openness" of the environment [ like forest, grassland, or desert] and the supplementary role of diet. Subtropical regions adjoining or not too far from the tropics are not expected to cause much or drastic change, though some change might well be expected depending on the duration of habitation in said environment and the accumulation of micro-evolutionary processes in tandem; one might for instance, expect to see an intermediary "mean" index of certain limb proportions amongst groups in temperate regions closer to the tropics than those in temperate regions of much far off latitudes, placing said groups between those of extreme tropic and sub-tropic climes. The "Bushman" groups of southern Africa for instance retain dark skin, albeit some relaxation of epidermal eumelanin pigmentation may have occurred as part of the micro-evolutionary processes, in consideration of long residency in mainly the southern hemisphere's lower-end tropical to sub-tropical areas of Africa. Their limb proportions, at least as indicated by the mean crural index [see C. Stringer and C. Gamble's In Search of the Neanderthals] may have undergone some change, but not too drastic to the point of displaying indices as low those seen in groups that historically reside(d) in far 'latitudinally'-distant temperate areas, including amongst Europeans. Consider the following crural indices, with purportedly associated mean annual temperatures indices of [some of which suggest "historically-associated"] environments of residency:

---

               crural     Mean annual temp C
              index

Lapps             79%           .25

modern Inuit      81.5%         4

Neanderthal       79%           -
[average]

Belgium           82.5%         10

S.African white   83.2%         8.5

Yugoslav          83.75%        8.4

American white    82.6%         9.8

Kalahari Bushman  83.4%         18

New Mexico Indian 84.6%         14

S.African black   86.4%         17

Arizona Indian    85.5%         18

Melanesian        84.8%%        23

Pygmy             85.1%         24.2

Egyptian          84.9%         26.1

American Black    85.25%        26 

---

Source: Courtesy C. Stringer and C. Gamble, In Search of the Neanderthals: Solving the Puzzle of Human Origins, pg 92.

The "Bushman" mean crural index is visibly not as low as groups associated with temperate regions [presumably in consideration of temporal divergence from ancestral populations] at greater latitudinal distances from the tropics; on the other hand, is it noticeably lower than groups accociated with latitudes that are in or much closer to the equatorial regions. The mean crural index of Neanderthal indicates that they likely displayed an extreme cold-adapted body build.

Crural indices are just one of the indicators of the likely inclination of the general body plan, and say nothing of the actual manifestation of the overall body build (body plan). Those percentages cited above are the mean values [of the leg's proximal section relative to the middle section without the feet segment], which hides the within-sample variability. The arm process [which includes the brachial index from the humerus to the radius & ulna; not in that table] has its own index to be taken into consideration, in the overall build of the body. These processes taken together, i.e. intermembral index, along with comparative measurements of its components in relation to the distal segments of the limbs, give a broader picture of the manifestation of the body build (plan), particularly in relation to the body's trunk; these indices together show that ancient Egyptians had what was dubbed as the "super-negroid" body plan. This is not surprising, considering that a portion of what is now called Egypt lies in the northern hemisphere of tropics, not to mention that Nile Valley populations were then relatively recent migrants from the tropical areas of the continent. Recalling Sonia Zakrzewski:

The nature of the body plan was also investigated by comparing the intermembral, brachial, and crural indices for these samples with values obtained from the literature. No significant differences were found in either index through time for either sex.

The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the “super-negroid” body plan described by Robins (1983). The values for the brachial and crural indices show that the distal segments of each limb are longer relative to the proximal segments than in many “African” populations (data from Aiello and Dean, 1990). - Sonia R. Zakrzewski, Variation in Ancient Egyptian Stature and Body Proportions

There you have it: As noted above, ancient Egyptians had longer distal segments relative to the proximal segments than many other African groups, thus giving ancient Egyptians that so-called "super-negroid" body plan.

It is interesting though that Zakrzewski cites Robins (1983), because notwithstanding what the results make all too obvious, Robins offers the sort of self-denial apologia towards the facts of the results her own tests bring to light, as exemplified above about other such denials in tandem with Eurocentric or white supremacy's imperialistic "assertiveness" to what should or shouldn't be accepted. Robins (1986) for instance, tells us:

Predynastic Egyptian stature and physical proportions

Abstract:

An attempt has been made to estimate male and female Egyptian stature from long bone length using Trotter & Gleser negro stature formulae, previous work by the authors having shown that these rather than white formulae give more consistent results with male dynastic material. Evidence is presented that the tibia length should include the spine in the later (1958) formulae and should exclude it in the earlier (1952) formulae. It is also shown that better results are obtained if the constants in the stature formulae are modified so as to conform more exactly with the basic data published by Trotter & Gleser. When consistency has been achieved in this way, predynastic proportions are founded to be such that distal segments of the limbs are even longer in relation to the proximal segments than they are in modern negroes. Such proportions are termed "super-negroid".

Introduction:

...Robins (1983) and Robins & Shute (1983) have shown that more consistent results are obtained from ancient Egyptian male skeletons if Trotter & Gleser formulae for negro are used, rather than those for whites which have always been applied in the past. This does not mean that ancient Egyptians were negroes; indeed, in their art they clearly distinguished between their own facial features and skin colour and those of people from further south. It does, however, suggest that their physical proportions were more like modern negroes than those of modern whites, with limbs that were relatively long compared with the trunk, and distal segments that were long compared with the proximal segments. If ancient Egyptian males had what may be termed negroid proportions, it seems reasonable that females did likewise.

Robins tells us that test results place them anatomically with "negroes", and yet, she seeks to moot this quantifiable fact with some subjective personal interpretation of what ancient Egyptian art supposedly communicates. In other words, her answer to defying the tangible results of a scientific test, was to turn to some intangible subjective personal opinion about Egyptian art; the two are worlds apart. It is akin to saying DNA revelation can be refuted by someone's subjective opinion about what some art may or may not be communicating, as a substitute for counter quantifiable DNA evidence. Furthermore, there is nothing moot about a finding that has been reproduced time and again, as for example, attested to Zakrzewski's reaffirmation. As for the supposition made about the ancient Egyptian female proportions as it relates to their male counterparts, this too had been confirmed in Zakrzewski's work.

Upon revisiting the above mentioned Zakrzewski study, we are told:

The ancient Egyptians have been described as having a “Negroid” body plan (Robins, 1983). Variations in the proximal to distal segments of each limb were therefore examined. Of the ratios considered, only maximum humerus length to maximum ulna length (XLH/XLU) showed statistically significant change through time. This change was a relative decrease in the length of the humerus as compared with the ulna, suggesting the development of an increasingly African body plan with time. This may also be the result of Nubian mercenaries being included in the sample from Gebelein.

Given the screwed up basis of "Nubian" in "western" discourse, one has to independently reaffirm what's actually being referenced. Now, if by 'Nubian', Zakrzewski is referring to people originating from beyond ancient Egypt's southern political border, and in what is now part of Sudan, then in the above, it appears that Zakrzewski is hinting on the so-called "super-negroid" body plan amongst them [so-called "Nubians"] as well. You know how it is; whenever anything is "increasingly African" in ancient Egypt, the presumed change has to somehow be attributed to an outside source preferably from south of Egypt, where a fictitious "black Africa" is "supposed to begin", according to dogmatic-preferences within Eurocentric circles. In any event, the results of Zakrzewski could not hide the fact that the rest of the Egyptian specimens tell the same story, aside from samples from Gebelein: the so-called "super-negroid" body plan! To reiterate from previous citation above,...

The values for the brachial and crural indices show that the distal segments of each limb are longer relative to the proximal segments than in many “African” populations (data from Aiello and Dean, 1990). This pattern is supported by Figure 7 a plot of population mean femoral and tibial lengths; (data from Ruff, 1994), which indicates that the Egyptians generally have tropical body plans.

The keywords: the Egyptians generally have tropical body plans.

...essentially meaning that this is so, even without considering any so-called "Nubian" presence, which is a too often used Eurocentric excuse to explain away any findings that render Egyptians too "negroid".

In other developments, relevant to the ongoing subject matter, the following was just recently been published:

Near Eastern Neolithic genetic input in a small oasis of the Egyptian Western Desert

Martina Kujanová 1 2, Luísa Pereira 3 4 *, Verónica Fernandes 3, Joana B. Pereira 3, Viktor erný

Abstract

The Egyptian Western Desert lies on an important geographic intersection between Africa and Asia. Genetic diversity of this region has been shaped, in part, by climatic changes in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene epochs marked by oscillating humid and arid periods. We present here a whole genome analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and high-resolution molecular analysis of nonrecombining Y-chromosomal (NRY) gene pools of a demographically small but autochthonous population from the Egyptian Western Desert oasis el-Hayez. Notwithstanding signs of expected genetic drift, we still found clear genetic evidence of a strong Near Eastern input that can be dated into the Neolithic. This is revealed by high frequencies and high internal variability of several mtDNA lineages from haplogroup T. The whole genome sequencing strategy and molecular dating allowed us to detect the accumulation of local mtDNA diversity to 5,138 ± 3,633 YBP. Similarly, theY-chromosome gene pool reveals high frequencies of the Near Eastern J1 and the North African E1b1b1b lineages, both generally known to have expanded within North Africa during the Neolithic. These results provide another piece of evidence of the relatively young population history of North Africa.

Am J Phys Anthropol, 2009

In response to the above, sure the small sample size is an issue [as apparent from the large margins of error], but look, the coalescence times simply tell us when the lineage itself expanded; it doesn't quite tell us when a lineage entered from locale A to locale B, without elaborate cluster information on how lineage 'X'—unique and respective in distribution pattern to locale A and locale B—could have entered say, locale B from locale A.

The present authors ignore Bovine-remains anthropology and DNA data, none of which is consistent with this:

"The complete mtDNA characterization of 35 unrelated individuals from el-Hayez revealed a local expansion in the last 6,000 years of two lineages belonging to the T1 Neolithic Near Eastern haplogroup. This suggests input of Near Eastern lineages during the Neolithic period in contradiction to the hypothesis that Northeastern Africa was an independent place of cattle domestication, as suggested by thee cultural context."

Human skeleton, Y or mtDNA is no substitute for actual cattle markers. It's just common sense. For instance, we have from previous analysis, which has been reaffirmed over and over again via lingustic examinations of domesticate terms, cattle DNA, and cattle remains [for example, also see: Fred Wendorf & Romuald Schild (Evolutionary Anthropology 3(4), 1994), Are the early Holocene cattle in the Eastern Sahara domestic or wild?],...

The Origins of African Cattle

The origins of cattle domestication and the dispersal of pastoralism in Africa have been contentiously debated in recent years. It has generally been assumed that domestic cattle were introduced into Africa from the Near East. Olivier Hanotte and colleagues [Science 296 [2002]], however, present genetic evidence of an indigenous origin for the earliest African domestic cattle, the humpless taurine [Bos Taurus]. They argue that cattle were domesticated in Africa prior to the introduction of two excotic domesticates: humped zebu cattle [B. indicus] from Asia and a genetic variant of taurine cattle from the Near East and Europe. Hanotte et al. used allele frequencies from 50 populations of modern cattle across the African continent to examine genetic variation. Their results reveal three ancient genetic signatures and each signature’s center of origin or region of entry. The native African taurine breed was independently domesticated in northeastern Africa, perhaps the eastern Sahara, and later migrated with pastoralist or crop-livestock farmers west and south. Asian zebu cattle were introduced along the east coast of Africa and in Madagascar and were most likely transported along a marine route from the Indian subcontinent. Finally, Near Eastern and European taurine cattle were primarily introduced along the shores of North Africa during the colonial period. These findings provide a genetic record of African cattle origins and migrations that have far-reaching implications for human migrations and the adaptive strategies used by African populations. They also require us to reexamine the models of domestication more broadly. - M. A. Kennedy

Archaeological attestations of the considerable distinct time frames of the Levantine agricultural Neolithic economy and that of the Nile Valley is also simply ignored, in lieu for an admittedly small sample of uniparental markers.

Predynastic Nile Valley human remains data is also ignored [as cited in Barry Kemp's publication - Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization, Robins (1983), and Zakrzewski's Variation in Ancient Egyptian Stature and Body Proportions]...

Early Dynastic Periods. When the Elephantine results were added to a broader pooling of the physical characteristics drawn from a wide geographic region which includes Africa, the Mediterranean and the Near East quite strong affinities emerge between Elephantine and populations from Nubia, supporting a strong south-north cline.

2. Moving to the opposite geographical extremity, the very small sample populations available from northern Egypt from before the 1st Dynasty (Merimda, Maadi and Wadi Digla) turn out to be significantly different from sample populations from early Palestine and Byblos, suggesting a lack of common ancestors over a long time. If there was a south-north cline of variation along the Nile valley it did not, from this limited evidence, continue smoothly into southern Palestine. The limb-length proportions of males from the Egyptian sites group them with Africans rather than with Europeans. - Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization

Anatomy of a Civilization has its own shortcomings elsewhere of course, but that's another topic for another day.

Linguistic indicators [as cited by Keita] shows that words for Levantine domesticates are not loan words from the so-called 'Near East'; recap:

Ovacaprines appear in the western desert before the Nile valley proper (Wendorf and Schild 2001). However,it is significant that ancient Egyptian words for the major Near Eastern domesticates - Sheep, goat, barley, and wheat - are not loans from either Semitic, Sumerian, or Indo-European. This argues against a mass settler colonization (at replacement levels) of the Nile valley from the Near East at this time. This is in contrast with some words for domesticates in some early Semitic languages, which are likely Sumerian loan words(Diakonoff 1981).

This evidence indicates that northern Nile valley peoples apparently incorporated the Near Eastern domesticates into a Nilotic foraging subsistence tradition on their own terms (Wetterstrom 1993). There was apparently no “Neolithic revolution” brought by settler colonization, but a gradual process of neolithicization (Midant-Reynes 2000).

As for the Y-DNA, Semino et al. 2004 gave a detailed layout of differentiation between Neolithic era J and post-Neolithic J dispersions; their data suggests that most of those J lineages in northern Africa which have counterparts in the so-called Near East, are post-Neolithic or recent dispersions. Much of the latter had been linked to Arab expansionist adventures into those areas.

To recap from above, the authors — i.e. Kujanová et al., of the work under study — say:

"Surprisingly, no other U-lineage (one U3b) is present, in particular U6, which is otherwise frequent throughout North Africa but more so in Western North Africa.

Indeed. Hg U6 seems to factor prominently in these "Neolithic" or else "Paleolithic demic diffusions into northern Africa" proposals [also see: Mitochondrial DNA M1 haplogroup: A Response To Ana M. Gonzalez et al. 2007], but time and again, its distribution pattern just doesn't seem to comply. Several different studies of the western oasis' populations tell the same story: the virtual rarity or absence of Hg U6, which is interesting given that this region is right on the path of the Sinai corridor through which any hypothetical so-called "Near Eastern" proto-U6 is expected to pass, in parallel with a hypothetical ancestor of Hg M1.

Is it possible that there were predynastic human movements into north Africa proper via the Sinai corridor? Yes, it's certainly possible and conceivable, but these events apparently didn't have the sort of impact, magnitude or oomph on the manifestation of autochthonous predynastic Nile Valley cultural development into the dynastic period that the usual "demic diffusion into Nile Valley" crowd would rather like to see. Prevailing and overwhelming evidence just doesn't bear it out, which is apparently a bad thing for business in the bubble of white supremacists, whatever stripes they come in, be it so-called 'liberals' or outright reactionaries.

Unwinding the Convoluted Character of the Emergence of Imazighen Groups

The sequence of events involved in the genesis of the diversity that we see today in Imazighen groups is something that not only generates a considerable degree of interest, but also one that continues to challenge even the experts who've spent a good deal of their time in unwinding the archaeological, cultural and biological developments that accompanied the development of the Imazighen.

Amongst the Imazighen, perhaps the tawny-hued coastal northwestern groups draw in the most curiousity, in terms of their seemingly asymmetric sourcing of their gene pool—comprising of Y DNA, predominantly made up of autochthonous African markers, and mtDNA, in most cases made up of largely "Eurasian"-tagged markers—and the question of when they attained their apparent tawny or "light-skin" epidermal phenotype, in a continent dominated largely by 'dark skin' [of varying degrees] autochthonous groups. All sorts of rounds of rationalizing and speculation have taken place over the years, in efforts to explain what appears to be an anomaly of some sort to some, from tying contemporary Imazighens to the so-called Mecthoid (or supposed "Cro-Magnoid") types of the EpiPaleolithic and Neolithic era to being outright descendents of the likes of Vandals, Arabs or "Near Easterners", as opposed to being descendents of autochthonous Africans with genetic influence from groups that spent their evolutionary history outside of mainland Africa. None of these of course, have born out to be based on facts consistent with evidence. To take the "Mechtoid" example for instance, attempts had been taken by Eurocentric scholars to suggest that these were the ancestors of contemporary coastal northwest African Imazighen populations, by arguing for their supposed "caucasoid" cranio-facial phenotype, the supposed morphological link with the European Cro-Magnon specimens, and by typifying them as "Mediterranean caucasiod" types [See: Mechta and Afalou: Do they and the so-called "Mechtoids" constitute a type with the "Cro-Magnon"? and Mechta-Afalou and the so-called Mechtoids: Continued!]

At least one study states this: 

the most ancient, i.e. those from Taforalt in Morocco, Afalou-bou-Rhummel in Algeria and Singa in the Sudan, cannot be considered as being either Negro or San, whereas the later Jebel Sahaba sample (c. 12000 B.P.), the Wadi Halfa (c. 11950 - 6400 B.P.) and the Mechta-el-Arbi individuals (c. 8500 B.P.) and the Jebel Moya sample (c. 2950 - 2350 B.P.) are not significantly removed from the Negro populations. - Santiago Genovés

Bearing in mind those ages provided in that extract above, it should be noted that from DNA analysis, it has been implied that the Imazighen ("Berbers") ancestor emerged ca. 8.2 kya or so [Arredi et al. 2004] in northeast Africa; given this, the northwest African samples here [the Taforalt, Afalou-bou-Rhummel, and the Mechta-el-Arbi] are all too old to be associated with the contemporary Imazighen. The age given to the Mechta-el-Arbi specimens is the only one that comes close to any age associated with contemporary Imazighen speakers; but even here, it is questionable, given that Imazighen expansion in northwest Africa is dated even more recently than the upper end 8 kya time frame—that expansion dates to ca. 2.3 kya or so. The point is, although some find it tempting to associate the contemporary Imazighen with these EpiPaleolithic and Neolithic era northwest African specimens, available data suggest otherwise.

Speaking of DNA, skin pigmentation analysis suggest that "west Eurasian" contribution likely explains the coastal northwest African 'outlier' skin tones; granted, it is quite highly likely that coastal northwest African Imazighen would have still undergone *some* level of skin tone lightening, even if they weren't influenced by "west Eurasians", as they moved to the sub-tropical areas, especially in the Atlas mountain areas. This skin lightening event though, would have likely produced—at most—the level of skin tones seen in the likes of the San "Bushmen" and the KhoiSans. The UV radiation levels in the supra-tropical and sub-tropical regions of Africa are simply not as acute as those found in the even more northerly latitudes of Europe, Asia and elsewhere. Recalling on Norton et al (clickable), we have... 

"The frequency of the SLC24A5 111*A allele outside of Europe is largely accounted for by high frequencies in geographically proximate populations in northern Africa, the Middle East, and Pakistan (ranging from 62% to 100%)."

"The relatively high frequencies of the derived allele in Central Asian, Middle Eastern, and North Africa seem likely to be due to gene flow with European populations."

Which also doesn't rule out the probability of North Africans receiving some of their skin tone variations from so-called "Middle Easterners" as well.

Citing Rando et al. 1998 [mtDNA analysis of Northwest African populations reveals genetic exchanges with European, Near Eastern and sub-Saharan populations] along the way,...

Here is a theory: Shortly after their emergence ca. 8 ky ago or so, nomadic pastoralist Imazighen groups dispersed from where they emerged in eastern Sahara, likely in the region straddling Egypt and Sudan, and moved northward [and also possibly westward in the Sahara]. Here, they would come into contact with arriving Neolithic groups from the so-called Near East, who would have also included E-M78* carriers [along with Hg J carriers], which made its way to the “Near East” at an earlier time frame. Being nomadic, these E-M78* and E-M81 Imazighen carriers would have likely been male-biased; however, their dispersal may have included notably Hg M1 carriers from their point of origin, amongst other common L type mtDNA lineages common in north Africa. The incoming Hg J and returning Hg E carriers would have been accommodated by “Eurasian” tagged mtDNA markers that are generally common to Europeans and “Near Easterners”, along with those more commonly found in the “Near East”. These would have presumably included some, if not somewhat limited, European mtDNA markers radiated from Last Glacial Maximum refugium centers in the so-called Near East, likely radiated from the likes of Anatolia. The following might prove to be insightful, notwithstanding outdated constructs that the authors apply in the course of their analysis... 

A great number of the 99 L3E sequences in our sample from the Berbers and other Moroccans, West-Saharans, and Mauritanians seem to be of European descent in view of the numerous matches (more than one fourth) with European but not Near Eastern sequences. The average transitional distance to the nearest neighbours in the European/Near Eastern mtDNA pool is as low as .4, which would correspond to an age of 8000 years. The same figure is also obtained for the L3 sequences from the Algerian Berbers (Corte-Real et al. 1996)...

Some further Near Eastern mtDNA lineages, more similar to extant European lineages, might have come along from the Near East with the (or some) ancestors of the Iberomaurusians, but the bulk of them probably arrived in North Africa with the posterior Mesolithic and Neolithic waves. There is thus a caveat with the European appearance of North African mtDNAs: the same lineage types that came from the Near East and dispersed along the southern Mediterranean littoral around the Last Glacial Maximum (possibly spreading the Gravettian cultures) or after the Younger Dryas (bringing the Neolithic) may also have taken the northern route along the Mediterranean sea. It is therefore difficult to establish at present a clear cut between European and Near Eastern mitochondrial lineages. Nevertheless, there is strong evidence for some European genetic input into North Africa, as for example testified by Haplogroups U5 (Richards et al. 1998) and V (Vandals, Portuguese and Spanish colonization).

The Neolithic hypothesis above seems like the more plausible scenario. And to exemplify the difficulty grappling researchers in unwinding the very complex history of the north African Imazighen,... 

In summary, the mitochondrial landscape of Northwest Africa appears to be quite complex, and cannot be studied in isolation from the European, Near Eastern or sub-Saharan mitochondrial background. Population affinity diagrams reflect essentially the north-south gradient, which is evident from cluster compositions, whereas sequence comparisons employing the mtDNA database reveal the traces in Northwest Africa of (1) Paleolithic settlement(s) before the Last Glacial Maximum, (2) Neolithic waves, and (3) migrations of northern Europeans (and possibly others, such as Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, and Iberians) in historical times.

These multiregional influences may explain the partially conflicting interpretations of North African data, which emphasize indigenous development and European/West Asian affinity (Irish, 1197, 1998) and a clear relationship to Iberians in particular (Arnaiz-Villena et al. 1995) or disclaim specific relationships to Iberians (Comas et al. 1998) and significant (Neolithic) demic diffusion from the Near East (Barbujani et al. 1994; Bosch, et al. 1997). 

These same Neolithic groups would have found their way to southeast Europe and onto islands therein, like Crete. However, because the nomadic Imazighen groups now situated in the coastal areas of northeast Africa were male-biased and with small effective population size, their mixing with the females that came along the Neolithic groups would have given the appearance of substantial intermixing. However, these nomadic pastoralist Imazighen groups would have not been the type that would have allowed arriving Neolithic groups to dominate them. So, it would appear that instead, the Neolithic elements who intermixed with them, adopted the languages and other aspects of the nomadic Imazighen groups, while their Neolithic traditions continued to stay with them. Consequently, the nomadic Imazighen groups too would be influenced by those traditions, resulting in settlement moves amongst them, like those near the oasis on the western desert of the Nile Valley. This is where they’d have likely made initial efforts to settle before moving to the far western areas. By the bronze age Holocene period, it would appear that some coastal North Africans had spilled over to southeast European areas, with Crete being an example of that. Other Imazighen nomads spread through the length of the Sahara, likely mixing with other groups therein; and again, being male-biased, they would have picked up mtDNA gene pools of those other groups. This would explain the gradient that authors like Rando et al. observed: 

The mitochondrial data of the Northwest African populations (Berber from Morocco and Algeria, Moroccans, West-Saharans, Mauritanians, Tuareg) show a mosaic composition of mtDNA types, with a pronounced gradient of sub-Saharan lineages from north to south: at the one extreme, the Berbers from Morocco have a predominantly European (Iberian) affinity, while at the other extreme, the Tuareg are closely related to sub-Saharan West Africans as represented by several Senegalese groups in this study, whereas the West-Saharans and Mauritanians are somewhat intermediate. It is remarkable that the Tuareg bear little mitochondrial resemblance to the Berber populations, although they speak a Berber language. 

Hg U6 would have invariably been spread across the Sahara, with relative frequency peaks in the western end of it. At any rate, subsequent intrusions into north Africa, e.g. the likes of Phoenicians, the Greco-Romans or the Vandals, would have likely left a rather limited genetic imprint only in centers of foreign administration. It is quite plausible that much of the European-specific maternal lineages came around the historic periods after those epochs, as perhaps best indicated in one of the extracts above, when the author said: "(3) migrations of northern Europeans (and possibly others, such as Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, and Iberians) in historical times." On the other hand, when the authors said, "sequence comparisons employing the mtDNA database reveal the traces in Northwest Africa of (1) Paleolithic settlement(s) before the Last Glacial Maximum", they were likely alluding to the likes of the autochthonous north African marker of U6, which at any rate, generally comprise a relatively smaller portion of the Imazighen mtDNA gene pool. It is not clear if much earlier contacts with the likes of Cretans would have contributed to Imazighen gene pool in a substantial way, but it’s certainly possible that some degree of genetic exchange with elements therein had resulted in a portion of mtDNA gene pool spilling into north Africa, perhaps by groups returning with African ancestry. Anyway, this could very well also have contributed to the frequency of seemingly European-specific mtDNA. Contact between Cretan inhabitants and north Africans have been spoken about on many occasions, and even implicated in images of antiquity, like the example below:

The characters with frizzy-looking hair—although with the resolution of the image above, it is rather difficult to ascertain—are said to be north Africans. Other images from the Minoans seem to invoke a considerably heterogenous or "mixed" people; the following are photographs of images on Minoan sarcophagi...

Sarcophagus portion #1:

 
Sarcophagus portion #1 blown up below:




 
Sarcophagus portion #2 blown up below:

In ancient Egyptian artwork:

In ancient Egyptian art, the first group to their western desert—in an area now dominated by Imazighen speaking populations—that *tentatively appears on their records from the predynastic era onwards, are the "Tjehenu/Tehenu"; these people were generally painted in dark hue as the Egyptians themselves were. In the old Dynastic era, one comes across another group of people in the western desert area of the Nile Valley; they were presumably referred to as the "Tjamahu/Tamahu". These latter group of people were generally depicted in the light-skin tone, in a manner not different from the Aamu, generally known by many as "Asiatics". The "Tehenu" were presumably located in the coastal areas on the western desert region, while the "Tamahou" were presumably located in the more southward areas of the western desert. The latter were generally depicted sporting interesting body tattoos, and feather head gear. There are also other groups attested to in the western desert areas; namely the "Meshwesh/Mashawash" and the "Libu/Lebu (Ribu/Rebu)", notably mentioned in the New Kingdom era [see Merneptah stele for example], in the Rameside period. Any group here or any combination of these groups may have been ancestors of the contemporary north African Imazighen. Below, is a repro of a wall relief depicting what appears to be a "Meshwesh" figure under captive, and other figures from the western desert areas, possibly the "Tjamahu" (Tamahu/Tamahou)...

 

A curious feature though about the Minoan art, is the seeming consistent [though not necessarily exclusively] depictions of the male figures in dark hue, with some being even in plain black tone; this seems to be the case in the ancient Egyptian example below, and the Minoan painted counterpart underneath that...

Below, is an occasion showing individuals in plain black hue...


Relaxing on visual aids, and resuming our theory at hand...

With substantial gene flow from European maternal gene pool in the historic period, it’s likely that some of the older Eurasian mtDNA markers may have experienced unfavorable genetic drift, lowering their relative frequency. Likewise, genetic drift may have worked favorably for the more historic European markers from the Iberian peninsula. Though not exclusively, the following examples of historic events must have surely had their own role to play, in contributing to coastal northwest African gene pool,...

 
Trafficking of women from the other side of the Mediterranean sea as slaves surely must have left its own mark. Then there were also sudden waves of migration to the north African coast during the fall of direct northwest African rule in the Iberian peninsula; no doubt families who reached the north African coast had left some genetic imprint therein. And of course, again, genetic drift has its own role to play in all this.

All that aside, a look at samplings so far undertaken in coastal northwest Africa suggests that these have generally relied on sampling small, scattered populations [see Cherni et al. 2005], giving fragmented or incomplete picture of northwest African maternal gene pool structure.
________________________________________________________________
*References:

— As noted in the paragraphs.

'*' corresponds to record that was/is taken into consideration with regards to the Tjehenu/Tehenu. For instance, the "Tehenu" Palette was subsequently discussed here: The So-called Tehenu Palette

Mechta and Afalou: Do they and the so-called "Mechtoids" constitute a type with the "Cro-Magnon"?

The “Mechta” have been characterized as African based “Cro-Magnon types”. Obviously enough morph-metric distinctions have been observed between the “Mechta” and the “Cro-Magnon” specimens, so as to assign them in distinct but related groups; however, does the “Mechta”, and ultimately “Cro-Magnon”, really represent a bio-anthropological “type”? Does it persist today? These are the questions that will be explored herein.

Let’s start this journey of brief exploration with an extract from Brace et al. 2005:

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...

That said, more extracts to examine…

From Andrea Byrnes' website, we are told:

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."

Present author's take: 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 populations in Western Africa, where relatively wider distribution of specimens tagged as “Mechta“ or “Mechtoids“ were recovered?

Continuing with examination of pieces of information from various sources:

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 [see extract below]...and the earlier snippets the present author 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.

From Keita, we have:

"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.

The last piece of the above is particularly interesting, because it goes back to the theme of the questions raised above, i.e. about the legitimacy of pooling the so-called “Mechtoid” or even “Cro-Magnoid” specimens together into types or typological entities.

Reading on, we are told:

"...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

Indeed, some of these features mentioned—such as the narrow nasal index, coupled with mild to low prevalence of prognathism and other characteristics generally associated with the stereotypical “Negro”—have undoubtedly influenced folks like Briggs to reckon certain prehistoric Saharan specimens to be part of the so-called “Mediterranean“ typological family, as was the case with what he dubbed as “African Mediterraneans”; right from the horse’s mouth: “**already slightly** Negroid Hamitic cast of the African Mediterraneans”

However, as pointed out in the extract above, such traits have long been resident to African natural environment, and their origins need no extra-African explanation.

As Hiernaux put it, and as Keita noted, morpho metric variability is quite high in sub-Saharan Africa alone:

Jean Hiernaux "The People of Africa" 1975
p.53, 54

"In sub-Saharan Africa, many anthropological characters show a wide range of population means or frequencies. In some of them, the whole world range is covered in the sub-continent. Here live the shortest and the tallest human populations, the one with the highest and the one with the lowest nose, the one with the thickest and the one with the thinnest lips in the world. In this area, the range of the average nose widths covers 92 per cent of the world range: only a narrow range of extremely low means are absent from the African record. Means for head diameters cover about 80 per cent of the world range; 60 per cent is the corresponding value for a variable once cherished by physical anthropologists, the cephalic index, or ratio of the head width to head length expressed as a percentage....." 

p.135-136

"A quick glance at Figures 4a and 4b will show that the relatively shortest noses occurs only in the tropics, and observation confirms the fact that the nasal bridges of the peoples in question are low as well as being short. At first it seems as though no consistent sense could be made from such an observation since such people as the inhabitants of East Africa right on the equator have appreciably longer, narrower, and higher noses than people in the Congo at the same latitude. A former generation of anthropologists used to explain this paradox by invoking an invasion by an itinerant "white" population from the Mediterranean area, although this solution raised more problems than it solved since the East Africans in question include some of the blackest people in the world with characteristically wooly hair and a body build unique among the world's populations for its extreme linearity and height."

More from Hiernaux:

"Now as mentioned in Chapter 3, the fossil record tells of tall people with long and narrow heads, faces and noses who lived a few thousand years BC in East Africa at such places as Gamble's Cave in the Kenya Rift Valley and at Olduvai in northern Tanzania. "There is every reason to believe that they are ancestral to the living 'Elongated East Africans'. Their features can be found in several living populations, who are very dark skinned and differ greatly from Europeans in anumber of body proportions. Neither of these populations, fossil and modern, should be considered to be closely related to Caucasoids of Europe and western Asia.."
(Hiernaux 1975:62)

The “characterizations” of the “African Mediterraneans” and their “partial derivative” Mechta-Afalou suggest that they could well attain a relative “intermediary” position between northern Eurasians and tropical Africans in a plot of averages of cranio-morphometric centriods. Centroid plots can hide the precise nature of variability within a sample, and so, to that extent, these “African Mediterranean” and “Mechta-Afalou” specimens may assume ‘intermediary’ position, as did the following in Keita‘s centroid plot, although the precise nature of variability respective to the former and Keita’s samples may well be discernable vis-à-vis one another…

“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.

To be able to determine whether “Mechtoids” or “Cra-Magnoids” represent a type, one has to examine elaborate cranio-morphometric comparative analysis between the specimens contained in these groupings, and Collin groves work gives us opportunity to do this to some extent:

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)

Groves' 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, Groves' 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%.

Present author's 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 (The present author will relay his perspective in between Groves' comments):

Today the North African and Sub-Saharan gene pools are separated by the Sahara arid zone.

Present author's 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.

Present author's 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 sub-Saharans (Turner and Markowitz 1990).

Some of these differences are quite substantial, and the authors argue strongly that only gene-flow from the north could have accomplished it; in situ evolution could not have done so."

Present author's 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 between those of the so-called Upper Paleolithic Europeans (Cro-Magnons in particular) and those of later European groups is supposed to be the product of in situ evolution , and the use of the term “descendants” 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 an isolated tool to draw conclusion:

"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 Afro-tropical sub-arid vegetation belts. Aridity in the Sahara, however, still held sway; comparatively little gene-flow penetrated it, leaving the contemporary Maghrebian population (Taforalt) fully “Cro-Magnon” 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, particularly in the case of northern European regions, and how the so-called Cro-Magnon is quite distinct from contemporary Maghrebian groups [and contemporary European samples for that matter]. 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!

To be continued!

Link to part 2:  http://exploring-africa.blogspot.com/2008/02/mechta-afalou-and-so-called-mechtoids.html