White Aethiopians
Encyclopedia
White Aethiopians is a term found in ancient Roman literature which may have referred to the lighter skinned Berber
non-negroid populations of Saharan
-Africa.
(Nat. 5. 8):
Pomponius Mela
, Ptolemy
and Orosius
also wrote of the "White Aethiopians".
Speaking of the difference between modern thought and ancient times, Richard Smith warns that even apparently well-defined categories "like 'race' can be confusing". According to Smith, Ptolemy
placed two peoples, Leukaethiopes and Melanogaetulians ('Black Gaetulians') in the far west of North Africa, namely in southern Morocco
. The Leukaethiopes, "literally, 'white Ethiopians'" could also, Smith suggests, be described as "white black men", since in ancient times "the term 'Ethiopian' referred to skin color".
According to Richard Smith, Pliny the Elder
however places the Leukaethiopes south of the (Sahara
) desert between the white Gaetulians and the black Nigritae, with closest neighbours the Libyaegyptians, "literally the 'Egyptian Libyans', another oxymoron
"; but, Smith says, Pliny does not mention any black Gaetulians.
Edmund Dene Morel
, writing in 1902, confirms that both Ptolemy and Pliny speak of the "Leucæthiopes", but believes that Ptolemy places them "in the neighbourhood of the Gambia", whereas Pliny places them "a couple of degrees farther north". Morel then speculates on who those "light-complexioned 'Africans'" could have been; he believes they could not have been Arab
s, while (Morel argues) the Berber
were well-known to Pliny's source people, the Carthaginians, so they would have recognized Berbers if they had met them; so Morel concludes the "Leucæthiopes" were Fulani
, a suggestion first made, according to Morel, in 1799 by Major Rennel "in his notes on Park's
travels".
Richard Smith reports that "historians often assume" that both Leukaethiopes and Melanogaetulians "were of mixed race", or perhaps of some combination of race and culture: the Leukaethiopes on this suggestion, he writes, "were whites who lived in an Ethiopian-style culture". But Richard Smith concludes that the only safe conclusion is that "the ethnic map was very complex and thus very confusing" even to Ptolemy.
The next assumption, according to Smith, is that there was "some kind of awful ancient race war" in which white tribes like the Leukaethiopes "expelled or exterminated" the black tribes, but, writes Smith, there is no evidence for this.
Haegap Jeoung, writing of the attitude of Homer
and the ancient Greeks
, suggests that "the Ethiopians take their place as the other of the [ancient] Greeks, regardless of their skin
color. Remarkably, there are white Ethiopians. Not because the Ethiopians are black, but because they are the other, they become a matter of a discourse."
Arysio Santos mentions that both Herodotus
(History VIII:70) and Strabo
(Geography XV:21) "speak of two Ethiopias, one eastern, the other western". Santos says that Strabo also said that the ancient Greeks "designated as Ethiopia the whole of the southern countries towards the ocean", not just a region near Egypt. Santos then says that "the White Ethiopians very obviously came from the Far East, just as told by Ephorus
", and quotes Philostratus
(Vit. Apol. II:33f) as saying "The Indians are the wisest of mankind. The Ethiopians are a colony of them", immediately adding his own view that "The Ethiopia in question here is really Indonesia
".
, a 10th century traveller from Baghdad
, divides the Berber
clans into "the pure Sanhaja and the Banu Tanamak", the latter being "originally Sudan (i.e. black) whose skin and complexion became white because they live close to the North"; Smith reports Ibn Hawqal as listing 22 named kinds of Banu Tanamak but without saying whether they were "political, cultural, geographic, social, or linguistic in nature". The most likely scenario, suggests Smith, is the simplest: the Ethiopian tribes were absorbed by the Berber, and so perhaps Ibn Hawqal's "strange report of the Banu Tanamak" (who changed from black to white) echoed "a real event, the absorption of tribes".
Berber people
Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are continuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River. Historically they spoke the Berber language or varieties of it, which together form a branch...
non-negroid populations of Saharan
Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa as a geographical term refers to the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara. A political definition of Sub-Saharan Africa, instead, covers all African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara...
-Africa.
Classical period
Pliny the ElderPliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
(Nat. 5. 8):
Pomponius Mela
Pomponius Mela
Pomponius Mela, who wrote around AD 43, was the earliest Roman geographer. He was born in Tingentera and died c. AD 45.His short work occupies less than one hundred pages of ordinary print. It is laconic in style and deficient in method, but of pure Latinity, and occasionally relieved by pleasing...
, Ptolemy
Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy , was a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the...
and Orosius
Orosius
Paulus Orosius , less often Paul Orosius in English, was a Christian historian, theologian and student of Augustine of Hippo from Gallaecia...
also wrote of the "White Aethiopians".
Speaking of the difference between modern thought and ancient times, Richard Smith warns that even apparently well-defined categories "like 'race' can be confusing". According to Smith, Ptolemy
Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy , was a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the...
placed two peoples, Leukaethiopes and Melanogaetulians ('Black Gaetulians') in the far west of North Africa, namely in southern Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
. The Leukaethiopes, "literally, 'white Ethiopians'" could also, Smith suggests, be described as "white black men", since in ancient times "the term 'Ethiopian' referred to skin color".
According to Richard Smith, Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
however places the Leukaethiopes south of the (Sahara
Sahara
The Sahara is the world's second largest desert, after Antarctica. At over , it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as Europe or the United States. The Sahara stretches from the Red Sea, including parts of the Mediterranean coasts, to the outskirts of the Atlantic Ocean...
) desert between the white Gaetulians and the black Nigritae, with closest neighbours the Libyaegyptians, "literally the 'Egyptian Libyans', another oxymoron
Oxymoron
An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms...
"; but, Smith says, Pliny does not mention any black Gaetulians.
E. D. Morel
Edmund Dene Morel, originally Georges Eduard Pierre Achille Morel de Ville was a British journalist, author and socialist politician. In collaboration with Roger Casement, the Congo Reform Association and others, Morel, in newspapers such as his West African Mail, led a campaign against slavery...
, writing in 1902, confirms that both Ptolemy and Pliny speak of the "Leucæthiopes", but believes that Ptolemy places them "in the neighbourhood of the Gambia", whereas Pliny places them "a couple of degrees farther north". Morel then speculates on who those "light-complexioned 'Africans'" could have been; he believes they could not have been Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
s, while (Morel argues) the Berber
Berber
Berber may refer to:*a member of the Berber people**the Berber languages, a family of Afro-Asiatic languages**Berberism, a political-cultural term supporting a distinct Berber identity**Berber calendar**Berber cuisine...
were well-known to Pliny's source people, the Carthaginians, so they would have recognized Berbers if they had met them; so Morel concludes the "Leucæthiopes" were Fulani
Fula people
Fula people or Fulani or Fulbe are an ethnic group spread over many countries, predominantly in West Africa, but found also in Central Africa and Sudanese North Africa...
, a suggestion first made, according to Morel, in 1799 by Major Rennel "in his notes on Park's
Mungo Park (explorer)
Mungo Park was a Scottish explorer of the African continent. He was credited as being the first Westerner to encounter the Niger River.-Early life:...
travels".
Richard Smith reports that "historians often assume" that both Leukaethiopes and Melanogaetulians "were of mixed race", or perhaps of some combination of race and culture: the Leukaethiopes on this suggestion, he writes, "were whites who lived in an Ethiopian-style culture". But Richard Smith concludes that the only safe conclusion is that "the ethnic map was very complex and thus very confusing" even to Ptolemy.
The next assumption, according to Smith, is that there was "some kind of awful ancient race war" in which white tribes like the Leukaethiopes "expelled or exterminated" the black tribes, but, writes Smith, there is no evidence for this.
Haegap Jeoung, writing of the attitude of Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
and the ancient Greeks
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
, suggests that "the Ethiopians take their place as the other of the [ancient] Greeks, regardless of their skin
color. Remarkably, there are white Ethiopians. Not because the Ethiopians are black, but because they are the other, they become a matter of a discourse."
Arysio Santos mentions that both Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
(History VIII:70) and Strabo
Strabo
Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...
(Geography XV:21) "speak of two Ethiopias, one eastern, the other western". Santos says that Strabo also said that the ancient Greeks "designated as Ethiopia the whole of the southern countries towards the ocean", not just a region near Egypt. Santos then says that "the White Ethiopians very obviously came from the Far East, just as told by Ephorus
Ephorus
Ephorus or Ephoros , of Cyme in Aeolia, in Asia Minor, was an ancient Greek historian. Information on his biography is limited; he was the father of Demophilus, who followed in his footsteps as a historian, and to Plutarch's claim that Ephorus declined Alexander the Great's offer to join him on his...
", and quotes Philostratus
Philostratus
Philostratus or Lucius Flavius Philostratus , , called "the Athenian", was a Greek sophist of the Roman imperial period. His father was a minor sophist of the same name. He was born probably around 172, and is said by the Suda to have been living in the reign of emperor Philip the Arab . His death...
(Vit. Apol. II:33f) as saying "The Indians are the wisest of mankind. The Ethiopians are a colony of them", immediately adding his own view that "The Ethiopia in question here is really Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
".
Mediaeval period
According to Richard Smith, Ibn HawqalIbn Hawqal
Muḥammad Abū’l-Qāsim Ibn Ḥawqal was a 10th century Muslim writer, geographer, and chronicler. His famous work, written in 977, is called Ṣūrat al-’Arḍ ....
, a 10th century traveller from Baghdad
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
, divides the Berber
Berber
Berber may refer to:*a member of the Berber people**the Berber languages, a family of Afro-Asiatic languages**Berberism, a political-cultural term supporting a distinct Berber identity**Berber calendar**Berber cuisine...
clans into "the pure Sanhaja and the Banu Tanamak", the latter being "originally Sudan (i.e. black) whose skin and complexion became white because they live close to the North"; Smith reports Ibn Hawqal as listing 22 named kinds of Banu Tanamak but without saying whether they were "political, cultural, geographic, social, or linguistic in nature". The most likely scenario, suggests Smith, is the simplest: the Ethiopian tribes were absorbed by the Berber, and so perhaps Ibn Hawqal's "strange report of the Banu Tanamak" (who changed from black to white) echoed "a real event, the absorption of tribes".