THE RACES OF EUROPE

especially if the early Khargans were Libyans; and the lack of any considerable Arab admixture since the advent of Islam.

10. North africa, introduction

North Africa is today an integral part of the Mediterranean world, but it has not always been so. It is land taken over by Mediterraneans, rather than basic Mediterranean country; for this reason it, like Europe, is racially complicated by the survival of Neanderthal-inspired Upper Palaeolithic food-gatherers. This survival is important only in a few places and among small populations, and in this respect North Africa differs greatly from most of Europe. The Mediterranean inroads began here earlier than in Europe, and since North Africa was the highway over which many of the Mesolithic and Neolithic invasions of Europe passed, it is natural that it should have a more thoroughly Mediterranean com­plexion.

From the beginning of the third millennium onward, northern Africa enjoyed, throughout Egyptian and classical history, the hazy repute of a region peripheral to great centers of culture. From the beginning of the first millennium B.C., the Phoenician colony of Carthage spread eastern Mediterranean civilization into Tunisia; after the fall of Carthage, the Romans extended the enlightened area to include much of Algeria, while the Greeks had already colonized the coast of Cyrenaica. At the time of the Arab invasions, North Africa was fast becoming a backyard of Europe. The advent of Islam brought this process to a violent end, and it did not begin again until after the conquest of Algeria by Napoleon.

Ever since the earliest notices of North Africans on the Egyptian monuments, the native inhabitants of North Africa have spoken Hamitic languages of the closely knit Libyan family. There is very little dialectic difference between them, and it is possible for a Riffian, for example, to speak with an Algerian Kabyle. Similarly, the Berber speech of the natives of Siwa Oasis, on the eastern extremity of the Berber world, is surprisingly like that of the Braber tribes of the Moroccan Middle Atlas, some 3000 miles distant. When contrasted with the complex Cushitic family of Hamitic speech, Berber appears extremely homogeneous, and we are warned by linguistic principles that its spread over the immense Berber area cannot have been too remote in time. It is possible that earlier Berber languages have disappeared, and that the present ones owe their distribution to a relatively recent diffusion.

There are, however, remnants of pre-Hamitic speech in various parts of North Africa. The Guanche spoken in the Canary Islands, at the time of the Spanish conquest, early in the fifteenth century, was only partly Berber, and contained a large percentage of words of unknown linguistic

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affiliation.⁷⁸ In modern Riffian and in other Moroccan Berber dialects, there is a residue of non-Hamitic words in the local languages. For example, plant names ending in -nt or -nth may be seen in the word iminthi, meaning barley, and in shinti, meaning rye. These words have also been noticed in Indo-European languages of the northern Mediter­ranean shore, such as Greek and Albanian, and are generally attributed to the so-called Caucasic or Mediterranean linguistic group, which is the B element in Indo-European. It is very likely that agriculture, in­cluding the use of these two cereals, was introduced into North Africa by pre-Hamitic peoples.

Although there can be no doubt that Libyan Berber was spoken in the part of North Africa with which the Egyptians were in contact as early as 3000 B.C. and earlier, especially since there is a Libyan element in ancient Egyptian, we cannot assume the same for all of North Africa. It is possible that pre-Hamitic languages were spoken in Morocco and in isolated mountain regions in Algeria and Tunisia until much later, perhaps as late as the time of Christ, since there are strong Riffian tradi­tions of people living in remote valleys who did not speak languages identifiable as tashilhait, or Berber.

According to the Arabian genealogies, all Berbers are descended from two men: Berr ibn Branes and Berr ibn Botr.⁷⁹ These two Berrs, although possessing the same name, were not related. From them are descended the great families of Berbers such as the Masmuda, Senhaja, and Zenata. Of all these great families the earliest to spread seems to have been the Masmuda or Ghomara branch. This was followed traditionally by the Senhaja, who today include such varied peoples as the Siwans on the bor­derlands of Egypt, the Tuareg of the Sahara, and the Braber of the Middle Atlas in Morocco. The third great expansion was that of the Zenata, who were known in Roman times in Cyrenaica, but who did not reach Algeria and Morocco until the Middle Ages. In the thirteenth century these Zenata finally invaded Spain, conquering Arabs and earlier Berbers. One may compare the expansions of the Berber families to those of Kelts, Germans, Slavs, etc. in Europe.

⁷⁸ Hooton, E. A., The Ancient Inhabitants of the Canary Islands, pp. 16-19.

Abercromby, J., HAS, vol. 1, 1917, pp. 95-129.

⁷⁹ Goon, G. S., Tribes of the Rif, contains a survey of some of this material. See also Bates, O., The Eastern Libyans.

Bertholon, L., and Chantre, E., Recherches anthropologiques dans la Berberie Orientale.

Fournel, H., Les Berbers.

Gautier, E. F., Les Sihles Obscurs dans VHistoire du Maghreb; Sahara, the Great Desert.

Gsell, S., Histoire Ancienne de VAfrique du Nord.

The primary sources for this section are chiefly: Herodotus, Sallust, Procopius, el Bekri, Ibn Khaldun, Marmol, Leo Africanus.