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Cheikh Anta Diop - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cheikh Anta Diop

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Cheikh Anta Diop (29 December 1923–7 February 1986) was a Senegalese historian, anthropologist, physicist and politician who studied the human race's origins and pre-colonial African culture. He has been considered both one of the greatest African historians of the 20th century, and a racialist scientist.[1] On 7 February 1986, Diop, who was called a "modern pharaoh" of African studies, died in his sleep in Dakar. Diop was survived by a wife and three sons.

Contents

[edit] Early Life and Career

Cheikh Anta Diop was born in Diourbel, Senegal. His early education was in a traditional Islamic School. At the age of 23, he went to Paris in 1946 to become a physicist. He remained there for 15 years, studying physics under Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Marie Curie’s son-in-law, and ultimately translating parts of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity into his native Wolof.

Diop's education included African history, Egyptology, linguistics, anthropology, economics, and sociology.[2]

[edit] Research

In 1951, Diop submitted a Ph.D. thesis at the University of Paris in which he argued that ancient Egypt had in fact been a Black African culture. The thesis was rejected. Over the next nine years, Diop reworked the thesis, adding stronger evidentiary support. In 1960, he succeeded in the defense of his thesis and was awarded the Ph.D. degree.

In 1955, the thesis had been published in the popular press as a book titled Nations nègres et culture (Negro Nations and Culture). It would make him one of the most controversial historians of his time.[3]

After 1960, Diop went back to Senegal and continued writing. The University of Dakar established a radiocarbon laboratory to aid in research. Diop was named chairman of the lab. (After his death the university was named in his honor: Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar.) He had said, “In practice it is possible to determine directly the skin color and, hence, the ethnic affiliations of the ancient Egyptians by microscopic analysis in the laboratory; I doubt if the sagacity of the researchers who have studied the question has overlooked the possibility.”[4]

He published his technique and methodology for a dosage test, one of his most important breakthroughs, in scholarly journals. Diop used this technique to determine the melanin content of the Egyptian mummies. Forensic investigators later adopted this technique to determine the "racial identity" of badly burnt accident victims.[5]

Some critics[who?] have argued that Diop's melanin dosage test technique lacks sufficient evidence. They[who?] contend the test is inappropriate to apply to ancient Egyptian mummies, due to the effects of embalming and deterioration over time.[6]

In 1974, Cheikh Anta Diop participated in a UNESCO symposium in Cairo, where he presented his theories to other specialists in Egyptology. He also wrote the chapter about the origins of the Egyptians in the UNESCO General History of Africa.[7]

[edit] Life works

Diop's first work translated into English, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, was published in 1974. It gained a much wider audience for his work. He claimed that archaeological and anthropological evidence supported his view that Pharaohs were of Negroid origin. Some scholars draw heavily from Diop's groundbreaking work,[8], while others in the Western academic world do not accept all of Diop's theories.[9] However, Diop's work has posed important questions about the cultural bias inherent in scientific research.[10]

Diop showed [11]above all that European archaeologists before and after the Decolonization had understated and continued to understate the extent and possibility of Black civilizations.

The latest discoveries by the Swiss archaeologist Charles Bonnet at the site of Kerma shed some light on the theories of Diop. They show close cultural links between Nubia and Ancient Egypt, though the relationship had been acknowledged for years.[12] This does not necessarily imply a genetic relationship, however. Mainstream Egyptologists such as F. Yurco note that among peoples outside Egypt, the Nubians were closest ethnically to the Egyptians, shared the same culture in the predynastic period, and used the same pharaonoic political structure,[13] and that the peoples of the Nile Valley are one localized population, sharing a number of genetic and cultural traits.[14]


As regards African cultural unity, Diop argued that there was a shared continuity across African peoples that was more important than the varied development of different ethnic groups shown by differences among languages and cultures over time.[15]


[edit] Assessment of Diop's thought

Diop's thought has remained controversial, as noted above. Some 20 years after his death in 1986 however, there has been movement (if not always agreement) in the academy closer to many of his ideas. This convergence is summarized below.

[edit] Biased scholarship on Africa

Diop's charges on this point have largely proven true. When he wrote in the 1950s, 1960s and somewhat in the early 1970s, the field of African scholarship was heavily influenced by racial type analysis epitomized in the works of Carleton S. Coon. Coon used racial rankings of inferiority and superiority, defined "true Blacks" as only those of cultures south of the Sahara, and grouped some Africans with advanced cultures with Caucasian clusters.[16] Based on Coon's work, the Hamitic Hypothesis held that most advanced progress or cultural development in Africa was due to the invasions of mysterious Caucasoid Hamites. Similarly, the Dynastic Race Theory of Egypt asserted that a mass migration of Caucasoid peoples was needed to create the Egyptian kingships, as slower-witted Negro tribes were incapable.

Modern physical anthropologists, and linguists such as Joseph Greenberg, have discredited these theories and approaches, as well as Coon's racial types.[17] Diop's early condemnation of European bias in his 1954 work Nations Negres et Culture,[18] and in Evolution of the Negro World (See quote below) [19]has thus been supported by later scholarship.

A 2004 review of DNA research in African Archaeological Review for example, mirrors some of the criticisms of Diop - namely the tendency of some European researchers to make Africans seem a special case, somehow different from the rest of the world's normal population flow and mix- whether it be in matters of evolution or gene pool makeup. These researchers it is held often shift their categories and methods frequently to maintain this 'special case' outlook.

"The conclusion one is led to after an epistemological analysis of the extant evolutionary models and theories is that ideological considerations are at work here. The implicit goal on grounds of a naive hierarchical racialism is to make of Africa’s population a special case in the world’s genome bank. Consider, for example, the ideological switching of Nei and Roychoudhury. The authors first argue “preliminary studies of blood group gene frequencies suggest that the genetic distance between Caucasians and Japanese is no closer than that between Caucasians and Negroes” (Nei and Roychoudhury, 1972, p. 435). Yet some years later, the same authors argue, “African populations are genetically quite differentfrom other populations. Therefore, it is likely that the first evolutionary splitting of humans occurred between the African and non-African populations” (1993, p. 938)... There are even novel theories that seek with similar ideological considerations to split modern humanity during the late Pleistocene into anatomically modern and behaviorally modern humans.[20]

[edit] Physical variability of the African people

Diop consistently held that Africans could not be pigeonholed into a rigid type that existed somewhere south of the Sahara, but they varied widely in skin color, facial shape, hair type, height, and a number of additional factors, just like other normal human populations. In his "Evolution of the Negro World" in Presence Africaine (1964), Diop castigated European scholars who posited a separate evolution of various types of humankind and denied the African origin of homo sapiens.[21]

“ But it is only the most gratuitous theory that considers the Dinka, the Nouer and the Masai, among others, to be Caucasoids. What if an African ethnologist were to persist in recognizing as white-only the blond, blue-eyed Scandinavians, and systematically refused membership to the remaining Europeans, and Mediterraneans in particular—the French, Italians, Greek, Spanish, and Portuguese? Just as the inhabitants of Scandinavia and the Mediterranean countries must be considered as two extreme poles of the same anthropological reality, so should the Negroes of East and West Africa be considered as the two extremes in the reality of the Negro world. To say that a Shillouk, a Dinka, or a Nouer is a Caucasoid is for an African as devoid of sense and scientific interest as would be, to a European, an attitude that maintained that a Greek or a Latin were not of the same race ”

Critics of Diop cite a 1993 study that found the ancient Egyptians to be more related to North African, Somalian, European, Nubian and, more remotely, Indian populations, than with Sub-Saharan Africans.[22]. Diop however always maintained that Somalians, Nubians, Ethiopians and Egyptians were all part of a related range of African peoples in the Nilotic zone that also included peoples of the Sudan and parts of the Sahara, and that their cultural, genetic and material links could not be defined away or separated into a regrouped set of racial clusters.[23] Critics of this study in turn hold that it achieves its results by manipulation of data clusters and analysis categories - casting a very wide net to achieve generic, general statistical similarities with populations such as Europeans and Indians. At the same time, the statistical net is cast much more narrowly in the case of 'blacks' - carefully defining them as an extreme type south of the Sahara and excluding related populations like Somalians, Nubians and Ethiopians,[24] as well as the ancient Badarians, a key indigenous group.[25]

It is held that when the data are looked at in toto without the clustering manipulation and selective exclusions above, then a more accurate and realistic picture emerges of African diversity. For example, ancient Egyptian matches with Indians and Europeans are generic in nature (due to the broad categories used for matching purposes with these populations) and are not due to gene flow, and that ancient Egyptians such as the Badarians show greater statistical affinities to tropical African types and are not identical to Europeans.[26] As regards the key Badarian group, a 2005 study by anthropologist S. O. Y. Keita of Badarian crania in predynastic upper Egypt found that the predynastic Badarian series clusters much closer with the tropical African series than European samples. [27]

Diop's theory on variability is also supported by a number of scholars mapping human genes using modern DNA analysis. This has shown that most of human genetic variation (some 85–90%) occurs within localized population groups, and that race only can account for 6–10% of the variation. Arbitrarily classifying Masai, Ethiopians, Shillouk, Nubians, etc., as Caucasian is thus problematic, since all these peoples are northeast African populations and show normal variation well within the 85–90% specified by DNA analysis.[28] Modern physical anthropologists also question splitting of peoples into racial zones. They hold that such splitting is arbitrary insertion of data into pre-determined pigeonholes and the selective grouping of samples.[29] Diop's objections to how data on African peoples was being manipulated has thus been supported by the work of several modern scholars, using modern DNA analysis.

[edit] Egypt within the African context

Diop's arguments to place Egypt in the cultural and genetic context of Africa met a wide range of condemnation and rejection when he first proposed them. Nevertheless, by the 1980s, a number of mainstream scholars had moved closer to his position.

Scholars such as Bruce Trigger condemned the often shaky scholarship on such northeast African peoples as the Egyptians. He declared that the peoples of the region were all Africans, and decried the "bizarre and dangerous myths" of previously biased scholarship, "marred by a confusion of race, language, and culture and by an accompanying racism."[30] Trigger's conclusions were supported by Egyptologist Frank Yurco, who viewed the Egyptians, Nubians, Ethiopians, Somalians, etc. as one localized Nile valley population. He did not believe that such a population needed to be arbitrarily split into tribal or racial clusters.[31]

[edit] The Egyptians as a Black population

One of Diop's most controversial issues centers on the definition of who is a true Black person. Diop insisted on a broad interpretation similar to that used in classifying European populations as white.

He accused his critics of having used the narrowest possible definition of "Blacks" in order to differentiate various African groups like Nubians into a European or Caucasoid racial zone. Under the "true negro" approach, Diop contended that those peoples who did not meet the stereotypical classification were attributed to mixture with outside peoples, or were split off and assigned to Caucasoid clusters.

He also claimed that opponents were hypocritical in stating that the race of Egyptians was not important to define, but they did not hesitate to introduce race under new guises. For instance, Diop suggested that the uses of terminology like "Mediterranean" or "Middle Eastern," or statistically classifying all who did not meet the "true" Black stereotype as some other race, were all attempts to use race to differentiate among African peoples.

Diop's presentation of his concepts at the Cairo UNESCO symposium on "The peopling of ancient Egypt and the deciphering of the Meroitic script," in 1974, exposed the inconsistencies and contradictions in how African data was handled. This exposure remains a hallmark of Diop's contribution. As one scholar at the 1974 symposium put it:[32]

“ While acknowledging that the ancient Egyptian population was mixed, a fact confirmed by all the anthropological analyses, writers nevertheless speak of an Egyptian race, linking it to a well-defined human type, the white, Hamitic branch, also called Caucasoid, Mediterranean, Europid or Eurafricanid. There is a contradiction here: all the anthropologists agree in stressing the sizable proportion of the Negroid element—almost a third and sometimes more—in the ethnic [i.e. biological] mixture of the ancient Egyptian population, but nobody has yet defined what is meant by the term 'Negroid', nor has any explanation been proffered as to how this Negroid element, by mingling with a Mediterranean component often present in smaller proportions, could be assimilated into a purely Caucasoid race. ”
A majority of academics disavow the term black for the Egyptians, but there is no consensus on substitute terminology.[33] Some modern studies use DNA to define racial classifications, while others condemn this practice as selective filling of pre-defined, stereotypical categories.[34]
Diop's concept was of a fundamentally Black population that incorporated new elements over time, rather than mixed-race populations crossing arbitrarily assigned racial zones. Many academics reject the term black, however, or use it exclusively in the sense of a sub-Saharan type. One approach that has bridged the gap between Diop and his critics is the non-racial bio-evolutionary approach. This approach is associated with scholars who question the validity of race as a biological concept. They consider the Egyptians as (a) simply another Nile valley population or (b) part of a continuum of population gradation or variation among humans that is based on indigenous development, rather than using racial clusters or the concept of admixtures.[35] Under this approach, racial categories such as "Blacks" or "Caucasoids" are discarded in favor of localized populations showing a range of physical variation. This way of viewing the data rejected Diop's insistence on Blackness, but at the same time it acknowledged the inconsistency with which data on African peoples were manipulated and categorized.

[edit] The influence of Egypt

Diop never asserted, as some claim, that all of Africa follows an Egyptian cultural model. Instead he claims Egypt as an influential part of a "southern cradle" of civilization, an indigeous development based on the Nile Valley. While Diop holds that the Greeks learned from a superior Egyptian civilization, he does not argue that Greek culture is simply a derivative of Egypt. Instead he views the Greeks as forming part of a "northern cradle", distinctively growing out of certain climatic and cultural conditions.[36] His thought is thus not the "Stolen Legacy" argument of writers like George James or the "Black Athena" notions of Martin Bernal. Diop focuses on Africa, not Greece, contrary to the preoccupation of other Afrocentrists. Writers such as Mary Lefkowitz have argued that it is dubious to assign the complexity of Greek culture in any significant way to Egypt.[37] It should be noted however that Diop made few such claims.

[edit] Cultural unity of African peoples as part of a southern cradle

Diop attempted to demonstrate that the African peoples shared certain commonalities, including language roots and other cultural elements like regicide, circumcision, totems, etc. These he held, formed part of a tapestry that laid the basis for African cultural unity, that could assist in throwing off colonialism. His cultural theory attempted to show that Egypt was part of the African environment as opposed to incorporating it into Mediterranean or Middle Eastern venues.

These concepts are laid out in Diop's "TOWARDS THE AFRICAN RENAISSANCE: ESSAYS IN CULTURE AND DEVELOPMENT, 1946-1960,":[38] and "The Cultural Unity of Black Africa: The Domains of Patriarchy and of Matriarchy in Classical Antiquity,"[39] These concepts can be summarized as follows:

Southern Cradle-Egyptian Model:

  1. Abundance of vital resources.
  2. Sedentary-agricultural.
  3. Gentle, idealistic, peaceful nature with a spirit of justice.
  4. Matriarchal family.
  5. Emancipation of women in domestic life.
  6. Territorial state.
  7. Xenophilia.
  8. Cosmopolitanism.
  9. Social collectivism.
  10. Material solidarity - alleviating moral or material misery
  11. Idea of peace, justice, goodness and optimism.
  12. Literature emphasizes novel tales, fables and comedy.

Northern Cradle-Greek Model:

  1. Bareness of resources.
  2. Nomadic-hunting (piracy)
  3. Ferocious, warlike nature with spirit of survival.
  4. Patriarchal family.
  5. Debasement/enslavement of women.
  6. City state (fort)
  7. Xenophobia.
  8. Parochialism.
  9. Individualism.
  10. Moral solitude.
  11. Disgust for existence, pessimism.
  12. Literature favors tragedy.

Zones of Confluence: Meeting or mingling area for the two cradles above

Most anthropologists see commonalities in African culture but only in a very broad, generic sense, intimately linked with economic systems, etc. There are common patterns such as circumcision, matriarchy etc, but whether these are part of a unique, gentler, more positive "Southern cradle" of peoples, versus a more grasping, patriarchal flavored "Northern cradle" are considered problematic by some scholars, as is grouping the complexity of human cultures into two camps. Extremely warlike peoples for example like the Zulu appear quite frequently in the "Southern Cradle". Many cultures the world over show similar developments and a mixture of traits.[40]

Analyses of other scholars (Hiernaux 1975, Keita, 1990 et al.) eschew "southern" and "northern" camps and point to a narrower focus that demonstrates cultural, material and genetic connections between Egypt and other nearby African (Nubian, Saharan, and Sudanic) populations. These connections appear not only in linguistics, (see Languages demonstrating section below) but in cultural areas such as religion. As regards Egyptian religion for example, there appear to be more solid connections with the cultures of the Sudan and northeast Africa than Mesopotamia according to mainstream research:[41]

"It is doubtful whether Osiris can be regarded as equal to Tammuz or Adonis, or whether Hathor is related to the "Great Mother." There are closer relations with northeast African religions. The numerous animal cults (especially bovine cults and panther gods) and details of ritual dresses (animal tails, masks, grass aprons, etc) probably are of African origin. The kinship in particular shows some African elements, such as the king as the head ritualist (i.e., medicine man), the limitations and renewal of the reign (jubilees, regicide), and the position of the king's mother (a matriarchal element). Some of them can be found among the Ethiopians in Napata and Meroe, others among the Prenilotic tribes (Shilluk)."

[edit] Languages demonstrating African cultural unity

Diop rejected "white civilizer" flavored linguistic theories, such as that advanced by researcher Carl Meinhof, which held that an influx of Caucasoid or "Hamitic" speaking peoples entered Africa to dominate slower- witted negro tribes. More careful race-neutral scholarship after WWII, such as that of Greenberg, et al. largely supports Diop's rejection of the white civilizer approach.[42][43]

Diop further argued that the languages of Nile Valley peoples also demonstrated a broad commonality and unity organic to African peoples and attempted to demonstrate relationships between Ancient Egyptian, modern Coptic of Egypt and Wolof, a Senegalese language of West Africa, with the latter two having their origin in the former (Diop: Parenté génétique de l’egyptien pharaonique et des langues négro-africaines).[44] Diop's work has been further expanded by Afrocentric scholar Ivan Van Sertima.[45]

While modern linguistic studies have challenged Diop's Wolof language connection,[46], as regards the key Nile Valley peoples, they have moved away from earlier notions of a "Hamitic" race speaking Hamito-Semitic languages, and places the Egyptian language in a more localized context, centered around its general Saharan and Nilotic roots.(F. Yurco "An Egyptological Review", 1996)[47] Linguistic analysis (Diakanoff 1998) places the origin of the Afro-Asiatic languages in northeast Africa, with older strands south of Egypt, and newer elements straddling the Nile Delta and Sinai.[48]

Ironically, while much modern linguistic research throws Diop's Wolof claim into question, it also demonstrates African connections that Diop missed- namely several African languages that share features with Egyptian, such as the Chadic languages of west and central Africa, the Cushitic languages of northeast Africa, and the Semitic languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea.[49]

[edit] Broad black worldwide phenotype

While acknowledging the common genetic inheritance of all mankind and common evolutionary threads, Diop identified a black phenotype, stretching from India, to Australia to Africa, with physical similarities in terms of dark skin and a number of other characteristics. While a number of features such as dark skin are present in these far-flung populations, Afrocentric theories of rigid racial types have been criticized by contemporary scholars such as S. Keita, who holds that modern blood and DNA analysis places Australian and Papuan groups closer to populations of mainland Asia, as compared with stereotypical sub-Saharan "negroid" types.[50]

[edit] Diop as a racialist

Academic detractors charge Diop with racism based particularly on his claim that the ancient Egyptians were negroes. Defenders maintain that Diop's critics routinely misrepresent his views, typically defining negroes as a stereotypical 'true' type south of the Sahara to cast doubt on his work, since it is clear that many Egyptians would not meet this extreme stereotype.[51] Questions such as "Where the ancient Egyptians black?" are typically misrepresented and framed in these stereotypical terms, it is claimed, so as to quickly dismiss his work and avoid engaging it point by point.[52] Diop by contrast in his 'African Origin of Civilization,'[53] argues against the European stereotypical conception, holding that the range of peoples and phenotypes under the designation "negre" included those with a wide range of physical variability- from light brown skin and aquiline noses to jet black skin and frizzy hair- well within the diversity of peoples of the Nilotic region. Diop also acknowledged that the ancient Egyptians absorbed "foreign" genes at various times in their history (the Hyskos for example) but held that this admixture did not change their essential ethnicity. [54]

Diop also appeared to express doubts about the concept of race. At a UNESCO colloquium in Athens in 1981, he asserted: "I don't like to use the notion of race (which does not exist)...We must not attach an obsessional importance to it. It is a hazard of the evolution."[55] This outlook was unlike many of the contemporary white writers he questioned. Indeed he eschewed racial chauvinism, arguing: 'We apologise for returning to notions of race, cultural heritage, linguistic relationship, historical connections between peoples, and so on. I attach no more importance to these questions than they actually deserve in modern twentieth-century societies.'[56]

Diop repudiated racism or supremacist theories, arguing for a more balanced view of African history than it was getting during his era.[57] Nevertheless, since he struggled against how racial classifications were used by the European academy in relation to African peoples in his era, much of his work has a strong 'race-flavored' tint. A number of individuals such as US college professor Leonard Jeffries[58] have advanced a more chauvinist view, citing Diop's work.


[edit] Diop's thought and criticism of modern racial clustering

[edit] Diop and the arbitrary sorting of categories

Diop's fundamental criticism of scholarship on the African peoples was that classification schemes pigeonholed them into categories defined as narrowly as possible, while expanding definitions of Caucasoid groupings as broadly as possible. He held that this was both hypocrisy and bad scholarship, that ignored the wide range of indigenous variablility of African peoples.[59]

This fundamental criticism applies to the Jensen approach which uses a number of racial clustering techniqies. These techniques have in turn been challenged by more contemporary scholars (Keita and Kittles, Armelagos, et al.) for using pre-defined, arbitrary categories to cluster or assign various African peoples like the Egyptians, Ethiopians, and others into Caucasoid or "mixed" categories. Typical of this is Cavalli-Sforza's Extra-European Caucasoid grouping. What is at issue is not the fact that sub-Saharan populations share certain common traits, but (a) the narrow definition of such peoples using the Sahara as a rigid dividing line, (b)the separation of such populations from related peoples like Ethiopians, Nubians, Somalians, et. al, which are assigned to a "Caucasoid" grouping, usually under different labels (Eastern Hamite, Eurasian, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, etc).

Such definitions and groupings critics maintain, often publicly disavow the importance of race,[60] but in practice, continue to use racial groupings established in advance, and then sort data as much as possible into these pre-defined categories, rather than let the data speak for themselves. A related practice to pre-sorting is front-loading of indices - i.e. selective packing of measurement categories with numerous minor indicators so that markers typically seen as Negroid (prognathism for example) are downplayed in final sampling results.[61] When pre-sorting and similar methods are not used, different results appear than those obtained by Jensen, et al.[62]

[edit] Diop, racial self-identification and continent-wide DNA clustering

The research of Risch (see above) is sometimes referenced in defense of categorizations by race, but some writers note that Risch, like Lewotinin (1972) and other scholars, could only find race to account for 10-15% of human genetic variability. Other follow-up studies yields even more conservative results.[63] Rather than confirm racial categorization methods of Jensen, the work of Risch centers on persons who self-identify with or claim membership in a particular race. This self-identification often corresponds with DNA markers as to continent of ancestry, and is sometimes useful in medical treatments, but it says little about the sub-Saharan barrier or other African populations such as Ethiopians, Nubians, Egyptians or Somalians.

The research of Rosenberg and Jonathan K. Pritchard is sometimes referenced in relation to sub-Saharan groupings, But Rosenberg's and Pritchard's research also centers on persons who self-identify with a particular group, and clusters data based on vast geographic ranges and spaces, such as Europeans and Asians west of the Himalayas. Such broad continental-scale clustering says little about closely related Nilotic and Saharan populations (Nubians, Egyptians, Somalians, Ethiopians, Sudanese, etc) much closer to each other geographically, and sharing a number of common genetic, material and cultural elements. These are precisely the populations and regions most at issue in the writings of Diop. The Rosenberg/Pritchard studies also confirm what other scientists have found: that "90 percent of human genetic variation occurs within a population living on a given continent, whereas about 10 percent of the variation distinguishes continental populations."[64] It was this internal variation, particularly the Nilotic zone of peoples, that drew most of Diop's attention.

Diop referenced self-identification in a broad, general way as part of his argument that the ancient Egyptians viewed or identified themselves as "black", a claim centering around interpretation of the word "kemet" or "kmt." This claim is a matter of controversy, with supporters citing definitions as a description of what the ancient Egyptians called themselves,[65] and critics who maintain that the term refers to the dark soil of Egypt.[66]

[edit] Diop and criticism of the Saharan barrier thesis

Diop held that despite the Sahara, the genetic, physical and cultural elements of indigenous African peoples were both in place and always flowed in and out of Egypt, noting transmission routes via Nubia and the Sudan, and the earlier fertility of the Sahara. More contemporary critics assert that notions of the Sahara as a dominant barrier in isolating sub-Saharan populations are both flawed and simplistic in broad historical context, given the constant movement of people over time, the fluctuations of climate over time (the Sahara was once very fertile), and the substantial representation of "sub Saharan" traits in the Nile Valley among people like the Badari.

The entire region shows a basic unity based on both the Nile and Sahara, and cannot be arbitrarily diced up into pre-assigned racial zones. As Egyptologist Frank Yurco notes:

"Climatic cycles acted as a pump, alternately attracting African peoples onto the Sahara, then expelling them as the aridity returned (Keita 1990). Specialists in predynastic archaeology have recently proposed that the last climate-driven expulsion impelled the Saharans...into the Nile Valley ca. 5000-4500 BCE, where they intermingled with indigenous hunter-fisher-gatherer people already there (Hassan 1989; Wetterstorm 1993). Such was the origin of the distinct Egyptian populace, with its mix of agriculture/pastoralism and hunting/fishing. The resulting Badarian people, who developed the earliest Predynastic Egyptian culture, already exhibited the mix of North African and Sub-Saharan physical traits that have typified Egyptians ever since (Hassan 1985, Yurco 1989; Trigger 1978; Keita 1990; Brace et al. 1993)... Language research suggests that this Saharan-Nilotic population became speakers of the Afro-Asiatic languages... Semitic was evidently spoken by Saharans who crossed the Red Sea into Arabia and became ancestors of the Semitic speakers there, possibly around 7000 BC... In summary we may say that Egypt was a distinct North African culture rooted in the Nile Valley and on the Sahara."[67]

[edit] Diop and criticism of true Negro classification schemes

Diop held that scholarship in his era isolated extreme stereotypes as regards African populations, while ignoring or downplaying data on the ground showing the complex linkages between such populations. [68] Modern critics of the racial clustering approach coming after Diop echo this objection, using data from the oldest Nile Valley groupings as well as current peoples. This research has examined the ancient Badarian group, finding not only cultural and material linkages with those further south but physical correlations as well, including a southern modal cranial metric phentoype indicative of the Tropical African in the well-known Badarian group.

Such tropical elements were thus in place from the earliest beginnings of Egyptian civilization, not isolated somewhere South behind the Saharan barrier. This is considered to be an indigenous development based on microevolutionary principles (climate adaptation, drift and selection) and not the movement of large numbers of outside peoples into Egypt.[69]

As regards living peoples, the pattern of complexity repeats itself, calling into question the merging and splitting methods of Jensen, et al. Research in this area challenges the groupings used as (a) not reflecting today's genetic diversity in Africa, or (b) an inconsistent way to determine the racial characteristics of the Ancient Egyptians. Studies of some inhabitants of Gurna, a population with an ancient cultural history, in Upper Egypt, illustrate the point. In a 2004 study, 58 native inhabitants from upper Egypt were sampled for mtDNA.[70]

The conclusion was that some of the oldest native populations in Egypt can trace part of their genetic ancestral heritage to East Africa. Selectively lumping such peoples into arbitrary Mediterranean, Middle Eastern or Caucasoid categories because they do not meet the narrow definition of a "true" type, or selectively defining certain traits like aquiline features as Eurasian or Caucasoid, ignores the complexity of the DNA data on the ground. Critics note that similar narrow definitions are not attempted with groups often classified as Caucasoid.[71]

Our results suggest that the Gurna population has conserved the trace of an ancestral genetic structure from an ancestral East African population, characterized by a high M1 haplogroup frequency. The current structure of the Egyptian population may be the result of further influence of neighbouring populations on this ancestral population[72]

[edit] Diop and criticism of mixed-race theories

Diop disputed sweeping definitions of mixed races in relation to African populations, particularly when associated with the Nile Valley. He acknowledged the existence of 'mixed' peoples over the course of Egyptian history but also argued for indigeous variants already in situ as opposed to massive insertions of Hamites, Mediterraneans, Semites or Cascasoids into ancient groupings. Mixed race theories have also been challenged by contemporary scholars in relation to African genetic diversity. These researchers hold that they too often rely on a stereotypical conception of pure or distinct races that then go on to intermingle. However such conceptions are inconsistently applied when it comes to African peoples, where typically, a "true negro" is identified and defined as narrowly as possible, but no similar attempt is made to define a "true white". These methods it is held, downplay normal geographic variation and genetic diversity found in many human populations and have distorted a true picture of African peoples. (Brown and Armelagos 2001)[73]

Keita and Kittles (1999) argue that modern DNA analysis points to the need for more emphasis on clinal variation and gradations that are more than adequate to explain differences between peoples rather than pre-conceived racial clusters. Variation need not be the result of a "mix" from categories such as Negroid or Caucasoid, but may be simply a contiuum of peoples in that region from skin color, to facial features, to hair, to height. The present of aquiline features for example, may not be necessarily a result of race mixture with Caucasoids, but simply another local population variant in situ. On a bigger scale, the debate reflects the growing movement to minimize race as a biological construct in analyzing the origins of human populations.
Scholars such as Alan Templeton have also challenged the notion of mixed populations, holding that race as a biological concept is dubious and that only a minor percentage of human variability can be accounted for by distinct "races." They argue that modern DNA analysis presents a more accurate alternative, that of simply local population variants, gradations or continuums in human difference like skin color or facial shape or hair, rather than rigid categories. The notion of mixed races it is asserted, is built on the flawed assumptions of old racial models.[74]
“ Genetic surveys and the analysis of DNA haplotype trees show that human races are not distinct lineages, and that this is not due to recent admixture; human races are not and never were pure. Instead, human evolution has been and is characterized by many locally differentiated populations coexisting at any given time, but with sufficient genetic contact to make all of humanity a single lineage sharing a common evolutionary fate. ”

(Human Races: A Genetic and Evolutionary Perspective, Alan R. Templeton. American Anthropologist, 1998)[75]

[edit] Low importance of race as an element in genetic variability

Modern research challenges Diop's notion of a distinctive worldwide black phenotype. Researchers such as Lewontin (1972)[76] point out that the genetic affinities attributable to race only make up 6-10% of variant analysis. This is a threshold well below that used to analyze lineages in other species, leading many researches to question the validity of race as a biological construct. (Apportionment of Racial Diversity: A Review, Ryan A. Brown and George J. Armelagos, 2001, Evolutionary Anthropology, 10:34-40)[77] Lewontin's analysis has been validated and replicated by numerous other studies, using a wide range of different analytical methods- (Latter 1980, Nei and Roychoudhury 1982, Ryaman 1983, Dean 1994, Barbujani 1997). Other similar work using mtDNA analysis shows a larger variance within designated racial categories than outside (Excoffier 1992). Work such as Miller (1997) has found greater racial difference by focusing on specific loci, but these are comparatively rare (2 out of 17, and 4 out of 109 in re-analyses by other researchers), and are well within the range of other factors such as genetic drift and clinal variation. Restudies of loci data (Lewotin, Barbajuni, Latter, et. al as noted above) yield even more conservative estimates of race as a factor in genetic variability.[78] On the basis of this data, some scholars (Owens and King 1999) hold that skin color, hair and facial features and other factors are more attributable to climate selective factors rather than stereotypic racial differences.[79]

[edit] Diop and criticism of race-classification methodology

Diop fundamental disputes with classification methods is also echoed in part by criticism of modern DNA and skeletal study methodology. A number of scholars hold that the same pre-sorting methods used in older scholarship has been moved to DNA analysis. Such methodology it is held is often flawed by two weaknesses: (a) pre-sorting of data before the analysis begins[80] and (b)use of very narrow samples to represent African populations while drawing on a broader range of data to define European classifications. In one study for example one individual from Uganda was used to stand in for all Africans, but a broad range of data was used as a stand-in for European groupings.[81]

In addition, critics of these pre-sorting techniques note flawed results even within the pre-sorts, with sorting models not being able to correctly identify the region within which an individual originated, even though the models were front-loaded in advance to enhance the racial cluster approach. [82]

Other studies sometimes exclude or eliminate African data that do not meet the pre-set racial categories assigned by the authors. A 1988 study linking gene flow and languages for example repeatedly excluded African data on Chadic, Omotic and Cushitic speakers to create the impression that Ethiopians are an anomaly, Africans who speak the language of Caucasians.[83] In yet another DNA study, circa 1993, when gene-frequency clustering did not adhere to the designated Caucasian categories (European and Middle Eastern), the study's authors simply excluded the non-European DNA samples to achieve desired results. According to one critical review: "The data in effect were tailored to fit into the traditional racial schema."[84]

The methodology used in statistical studies of skeletal data has also been challenged by some researchers, not only as to the initial manipulation of categories, but in the results obtained with computer programs commonly used by researchers to find matches between sets of data correlated with geographic origins or race. A test of one such program for example matched ancient Nubian samples with people as far afield as Hispanics, Japanese and Easter Islanders. Such programs it is argued, grossly misclassifies ancient remains of African peoples like Nubians, and rely heavily on built-in assumptions as to rigid, "idealized" types and stereotyical features, that render them unreliable in classifying human variability. [85]

Some writers posit another alternative to human variability distinct from Cavalli-Sforza's core population concept. This is based on the single origin hypothesis, of all modern humanity emanating from Africa. Rather than the use of racial categories such as Extra-European Caucasoid, they advocate a localized population variant approach, which sees the fundamental range of peoples and types in a place, not as discrete core races migrating from one place to another, or blending with other distinct core races, but as simply local variants of an existing indigenous population.[86] Hence Egyptian populations for example can be considered variants of peoples in the Niolitic region, including Nubians and Ethiopians. Such populations vary in skin color, hair, facial shape, etc., and also share common cultural blending and features with others.


In the light of these contradictions and modern DNA analysis as discussed above, several scholars have called for a wider view of African genetic diversity, similar to that followed with European populations.[87] Populations like those in the Nile Valley can have a wide range of variation, hold Kittles and Keita in The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence as opposed to pigeonholing them into apriori groupings.[88] As Brown and Armelagos (2001) put it:

"In light of this, the low proportion of genetic variance across racial groupings strongly suggests a re-examination of the race concept. It no longer makes sense to adhere to arbitrary racial categories, or to expect that the next genetic study will provide the key to racial classifications."[89]

[edit] Diop and the African context

In summary, modern anthropological and DNA scholarship repeats and confirms many of the criticisms made by Diop as regards to arbitrary classifications and splitting of African peoples, and confirms the genetic linkages of Nile Valley peoples with other African groups, including East Africa, the Sahara, and the Sudan. This modern research also confirms older analyses, (Arkell and Ucko 1956, Shaw 1976, Falkenburger 1947, Strouhal 1971, Blanc 1964, et al.,[90]). This same modern scholarship however in turn challenges aspects of Diop's work, particularly his notions of a worldwide black phenotype.

Perhaps Diop's greatest achievement is his insistence in placing Nile Valley peoples in their local and African context, drawing a picture of a stable, ancient population deriving much of its genetic inheritance from that context, as opposed to attempts to split, cluster, subdivide, define and regroup them into other contexts. Such a vision of inherent unity and continuity, ironically, is also supported in part by modern mainstream Egyptologists such as Frank Yurco:
“ Certainly there was some foreign admixture [in Egypt], but basically a homogeneous African population had lived in the Nile Valley from ancient to modern times... [the] Badarian people, who developed the earliest Predynastic Egyptian culture, already exhibited the mix of North African and Sub-Saharan physical traits that have typified Egyptians ever since (Hassan 1985; Yurco 1989; Trigger 1978; Keita 1990.. et al.,)... The peoples of Egypt, the Sudan, and much of East African Ethiopia and Somalia are now generally regarded as a Nilotic continuity, with widely ranging physical features (complexions light to dark, various hair and craniofacial types) but with powerful common cultural traits, including cattle pastoralist traditions (Trigger 1978; Bard, Snowden, this volume). ”

(F. Yurco "An Egyptological Review," 1996)[91]

[edit] References

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  2. ^ Jackson and Rashidi, op. cit; Chris Gray, Conceptions of History in the Works of Cheikh Anta Diop and Theophile Obenga, (Karnak House:1989) 11-155
  3. ^ Cheikh, Anta Diop, The Cultural Unity of Negro Africa, (Paris: Presence Africaine, 1963), English translation: The Cultural Unity of Black Africa: The Domains of Patriarchy and of Matriarchy in Classical Antiquity, (Karnak House: 1989)
  4. ^ Chris Gray, Conceptions of History in the Works of Cheikh Anta Diop and Theophile Obenga, (Karnak House:1989) 11-155
  5. ^ Cheikh Anta Diop, The Pharoah of Knowledge - Free Speech Mauritania (2006)
  6. ^ Alain Froment, 1991. "Origine et evolution de l'Homme dans la Pensée de Cheikh Anta Diop: une Analyse Critique," Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, XXXI-1-2: 29-64.
  7. ^ UNESCO, "Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script; Proceedings", (Paris: 1978), pp. 3-134
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  22. ^ See S.O.Y. Keita and Rick A. Kittles,' The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence', American Anthropologist (1997) on study of C. Loring Brace et al., 'Clines and clusters versus "race"'(1993) and S.O.Y. Keita. "Early Nile Valley Farmers from El-Badari: Aboriginals or “European” Agro-Nostratic Immigrants? Craniometric Affinities Considered With Other Data". Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 191-208 (2005)
  23. ^ Diop, op. cit
  24. ^ S.O.Y. Keita and Rick A. Kittles,' The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence', American Anthropologist (1997); S.O.Y. Keita. "Early Nile Valley Farmers from El-Badari: Aboriginals or “European” Agro-Nostratic Immigrants? Craniometric Affinities Considered With Other Data". Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 191-208 (2005)
  25. ^ Keita, (2005) op. cit
  26. ^ Keita and Kittles (1997): op. cit; Keita (2005): op. cit; Keita, "Further studies of crania", op. cit.; Hiernaux J (1975) The People of Africa. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons; Hassan FA (1988) The predynastic of Egypt. J. World Prehist. 2: 135-185
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  32. ^ (24) Jean Vercoutter at the 1974 UNESCO conference. Quoted in Shomarka Keita, 'Communications', American Historical Review (October 1992), pp. 1355-6.
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  35. ^ <Apportionment of Racial Diversity: A Review, Ryan A. Brown and George J. Armelagos, 2001, Evolutionary Anthropology, 10:34-40 Web file:http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/bindon/ant275/reader/apportionment.pdf
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  37. ^ Mary Lefkotitz, Not Out of Africa
  38. ^ "TOWARDS THE AFRICAN RENAISSANCE: ESSAYS IN CULTURE AND DEVELOPMENT, 1946-1960." Trans. Egbuna P. Modum. London: The Estate of Cheikh Anta Diop and Karnak House, 1996.
  39. ^ Cheikh, Anta Diop, The Cultural Unity of Negro Africa, (Presence Africaine, Paris 1963), English translation: The Cultural Unity of Black Africa: The Domains of Patriarchy and of Matriarchy in Classical Antiquity, (Karnak House: 1989)
  40. ^ Philip L Stein and Bruce M Rowe, Physical Anthropology, (McGraw-Hill, 2002, pp. 54-326
  41. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508
  42. ^ Joseph H. Greenberg, The Languages of Africa. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966)
  43. ^ Russell G. Schuh, "The Use and Misuse of language in the study of African history" (1997), in: Ufahamu 25(1):36-81
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  45. ^ Ivan van Sertima, Egypt Revisited, Transaction Publishers: 1989, ISBN 0887387993
  46. ^ See for example http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/schuh/Papers/language_and_history.pdf + Russell G. Schuh, "The use and misuse of language in the study of + African history" (1997), in: Ufahamu 25(1):36-81 (in PDF, 152 kB).
  47. ^ Yurco, op. cit.
  48. ^ M.Diakonoff, Journal of Semitic Studies, 43,209 (1998)
  49. ^ Russell G. Schuh, "The Use and Misuse of language in the study of African history" (1997), in: Ufahamu 25(1):36-81
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  51. ^ J. D. Walker, "The Misrepresentation of Diop's Views," Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1. (Sep., 1995), pp. 77-85
  52. ^ Walker. op. cit
  53. ^ Diop op. cit. African Origin..
  54. ^ Walker, op. cit.
  55. ^ "Je n’aime pas employer la notion de race (qui n’existe pas) (...). On ne doit pas y attacher une importance obsessionnelle. C’est le hasard de l’évolution." Fabrice Hervieu Wané, Cheikh Anta Diop, restaurateur de la conscience noire, Le Monde diplomatique, January 1998
  56. ^ Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization, op. cit., p. 236.
  57. ^ Diop, op. cit
  58. ^ "Our Sacred Mission", speech at the Empire State Black Arts and Cultural Festival in Albany, New York, July 20, 1991
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  70. ^ Stevanovitch A, Gilles A, Bouzaid E, Kefi R, Paris F, Gayraud RP, Spadoni JL, El-Chenawi F, Beraud-Colomb E., "Mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity in a sedentary population from Egypt," Annals of Human Genetics, 2004 Jan;68 (Pt 1):23-39.
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  72. ^ Mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity in a sedentar...[Ann Hum Genet. 2004] - PubMed Result
  73. ^ Apportionment of Racial Diversity: A Review, Ryan A. Brown and George J. Armelagos, 2001, Evolutionary Anthropology, 10:34-40)[33]
  74. ^ Human Races: A Genetic and Evolutionary Perspective, Alan R. Templeton. American Anthropologist, 1998, 100:632-650; The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence, S. O. Y. Keita, Rick A. Kittles, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 99, No. 3 (Sep., 1997), pp. 534-544
  75. ^ Human Races: A Genetic and Evolutionary Perspective, Alan R. Templeton. American Anthropologist, 1998, 100:632-650
  76. ^ Lewontin R. 1972. The Apportionment of Human Diversity, Evol Biol 6:381–398
  77. ^ Apportionment of Racial Diversity: A Review, Ryan A. Brown and George J. Armelagos, 2001, Evolutionary Anthropology, 10:34-40 webfile:http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/bindon/ant275/reader/apportionment.pdf
  78. ^ Apportionment, op. cit.
  79. ^ Apportionment, op. cit.
  80. ^ Apportionment.. op. cit.
  81. ^ The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence, S. O. Y. Keita, Rick A. Kittles, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 99, No. 3 (Sep., 1997), pp. 534–544
  82. ^ Apportionment of Racial Diversity.. op. cit.
  83. ^ Keita and Kittles, "The persistence.." pp. cit
  84. ^ Keita and Kittles, "The persistence.." op. cit
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  86. ^ Kittle and Keita, op. cit.
  87. ^ Rick Kitties, and S. O. Y. Keita, "Interpreting African Genetic Diversity", African Archaeological Review, Vol. 16, No. 2,1999, p. 1-5
  88. ^ The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence, S. O. Y. Keita, Rick A. Kittles, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 99, No. 3 (Sep., 1997), pp. 534-544
  89. ^ Brown and Armelagos, "Apportionment of Racial Diversity.." op. cit.
  90. ^ S.O.Y Keita, 'Royal incest and Diffusion in Africa," American Ethnologist > Vol. 8, No. 2 (May, 1981), pp. 392-393
  91. ^ Frank Yurco, "An Egyptological Review," 1996 -in Mary R. Lefkowitz and Guy MacLean Rogers, Black Athena Revisited, 1996, The University of North Carolina Press, p. 62-100

[edit] Bibliography

English translations:

  • The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality
  • Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology
  • Precolonial Black Africa
  • Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State
  • The Cultural Unity of Black Africa: The Domains of Patriarchy and of Matriarchy in Classical Antiquity
  • Towards the African Renaissance: Essays in African Culture and Development, 1946-1960
  • The Peopling of Ancient Egypt & the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script

[edit] External links

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