Black Kabyles/Black Berbers

There are ones who gleefully point out the Kabyles of the Atlas Mountains of Morrocco as the phenotypic paradigm of a people called “Berber” and by extension the “Moors”.

The Kabyles tribes that are given the greatest visibility (by those who come with an agenda to obfuscate African History) are those who look most like Eastern European admixture.

By presenting those people as the only and original Moors it is insinuated into the common consciousness that the great African statebuilders, architects and scientist who built the foundations of western civilization were somehow “white” or “off-white” in complexion.

Here is an account from 1834 by Scotman Thomas Campbell respecting the complexion of the 19th century Kabyle tribes he encountered: “The Kabyles dress like the Arabs and apart from a few tribes, are brown complexioned and black haired” p. 109 Barbary and Enlightenment: European Attitudes Toward the Maghreb in the 18th Century, Ann Thomson. Published 1987 by E. J. Bull.

In 1890 it was observed that: “The Kabyles or Kabaily of Algerian and Tunisian territories besides tillage, work the mines contained in their mountains. They live in huts made of branches of trees and covered with clay which resemble the Magalia of the old Numidians. They are of middle stature, their complexion brown and sometimes nearly black.” from The Encyclopedia Britannica: Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and General Literature Henry G. Allen Company p. 261 Volume I 1890.

Linguistics

The Kabyles speak a language called Tamazight derived from an East African branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family.

Tamazight, (which means the Amazigh (Berber) language) has existed since the furthest antiquity. It offers an original writing system, the Tifinagh alphabet, used and preserved until today.

The Amazigh language is spoken by some 30 million speakers in North Africa (from the Oasis of Siwa in Egypt to Morocco, passing through Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Niger, Mali, and Mauritania)

Black Berbers

The Fezzan people of Libya are Black Berbers, the Siwans of Egypt are Black Berbers, the true Western Desert indigenous people, who once roamed the North African coast between Tunisia and Morocco. They inhabited the area as early as 10,000 BC, first moving towards the coast, but later inland as other conquering invaders arrived. – See touregypt.net

The Tuaregs are also brown skinned people of the African desert otherwise called the so-called black berbers.

Genetics

The haplogroup E3b2 is defined by M81. Western scientists claim in many studies, that E3b2 is very common in northwestern Africa – with frequencies approaching 80% in some places. The genetic grouping seems to be associated with the northern and central Moroccan Berber ethnic group. E3b2 is supposedly rare in west and central Africa. Only one report has been received of its occurence in Mali.

E3b*-M35 lineages on the other hand is claimed by European geneticists to be confined almost exclusively to the so-called sub-Saharan populations. Except that it also occurs in Egypt (2.7%) and in Ethiopia (7%, – see Underhill et al. [2000]). The highest levels of E3b*-M35 are in Tanzania (37.2%), Kenya (13.8%), and among the Khoisans (11% in !Kung and 31% in Khwe). E3b*-M35 refers to E3b without downstream mutations. This is the original haplogroup.

Yet, this does not tell the whole story. E3b2 does not define the entire Berber clans including the Kabyles. The decision to characterize the haplogroup as “a Berber marker” follows an agenda given the widely varying groups of Berbers in existence today.

Berber groups such as the Mozabites, the Sheluls, the Siwans, the Tuaregs, the Jerbans (Tunisia) all carry genetic haplogroups commonly found across west Africa i.e. E3b-M35, i.e. the original E3b.

Nonetheless, the so-called Berber marker E3b2 is also an African genetic haplogroup. It probably arose from “founder effects” and “population drifts”‘ which produced a bottle-neck in the mountains of North west Africa aggregrating therein a certain sub-grouping of an African genetic haplogroup.

The majority of African Y chromosomes fall into either the M2 or M35 subclades of the PN2 clade. See Ornella Semino, A. Silvana Santachiara-Benerecetti, Francesco Falaschi, L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Peter Underhill, “Ethiopians and Khoisan Share the Deepest Clades of the Human Y-Chromosome Phylogeny”.

It appears that E3b, diverged in the horn of Africa into E3b1,2 and 3. These off-spring lineages and peoples then spread into North Africa and across the Levant.

According to Goncalves et al. 2005 “E3b2-M81 in North Africa may have arisen near Egypt or Somalia and then spread westwards along the upper boundary of Africa. This particular haplogroup has been observed at variable frequencies in Iberain populations…”

The composition of the Y- chromosome in the Kabyles is: 48% E3b2; 12% E3b* (xE3b2); 17% R1*(xR1a); and 23% F*(xH,I,J2,K). Both E3b* and R1* occur widely in tropical Africa, the so-called sub-Saharan Africa. E3b2 is a derivative of E2b*. Thus the Kabyles feature an overwhelming proportion of African male chromosome. (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v75n2/41184/41184.fg1.html),

The mtDNA makeup of Kabyles is: 66.12% general Western Eurasian (H, J, U, T, K, X, V and I), 22.58% specific Northwest African (U6, L3E), 8.07% Asian (M1, N, R) and 3.23% so-called sub-Saharan gene flow (L1-L3a).

Pale Skin Kabyles

Although one does find many Kabyles who appear like northern and eastern Europeans in phyenotype, this is probably attributable to admixture with European women slaves. It is widely acknowledged that the male gene of the kabyles are certainly tropical African in origin whereas their mtDNA genes (the female gene) harken back to some European roots.

There were also instances in recent history when groups of western and central Europeans migrated into north west Africa. 5th century visigoths and ostrogoths had managed to penetrate into the territory following the fall of Rome. Then there was the 1000 years intergnum between 7th century and 17 century AD when European slaves were liberally traded in north west Africa. Those were mostly domestic slaves who were sooner or later adopted into the families that owned them. Females were mostly used as courtesans or concubines. By the fall of the Moorish empire it had become fashion among certain polygamous Moors to have several European concubines mto satisfy their fever, the blonder the better.

It is interesting to note too that those groups of Kabyle Berber who happen to be pale have one of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world – along with Australian and South African whites. This is consistent with the data on pale skin Northern climate adapted people displaced into a sunnier environment.

The Black and Brown Kabyles who still live there in the mountains of Morocco are completely free of such afflicitions of climate like every other well adapted African people. For were that otherwise, the African sun would have long taken its toll in a merciless manner.

Thus, the Kabyles were not the so-called “whites’ of Europe neither can they be described as “off-whites” of some fantasy land. The Kabyles were and remain like any other African population in the western half of that continent, brown, black and beautiful, like all the children of Ham.

Jide Uwechia

January 25, 2009

See

http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard/Article/Kabylia-s-Berbers–the-Brethren-of-the-Kuchitic-Oromos-and-Sidamas–Demand-Autonomy-in-Algeria/112084

http://www.congres-mondial-amazigh.org/-/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=536&Itemid=51