This is false (as the Sahelians are not, and the nomades are berber, not 'black africa, it is badly informed, fallacious and offensive.
I have no more patience for these things and the tolerance for this. Make your assertions without knowledge, I leave this discussion.
Ramira’s right.During this time period, all these people were living in tribal, kinship based societies, without regard to whether they would be labeled as “black” or “non-black” by contemporary standards.
“Unwanted fringes of the Sahara” isn’t accurate. The Sahara region wasn’t the same as it is now, and there were a variety of conditions. What any of this has to do with lactose intolerance is a matter of some debate.
Moderator Note
It’s your perception, not a fact. And if you’re going to work yourself up into being offended by the discussion, take it to the Pit.
Dial it back or you may be subject to a warning.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
The OP’s question is related to the issue of Afro-Asiatic languages and their original homeland -the urheimat.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Expansion_of_Afroasiatic.svg
It’s clear that the region’s populations have experienced a great deal of migration and mixing, as well as periods of isolation.
[QUOTE=Nani]
If by “dark-skinned Africans” you mean black, then no, that wasn’t what you mostly found north of the Sahara, although there were some around. The people ñañi referred to as Amazigh are most commonly referred to as Berber (Amazigh or Imazigh are transliterations of their own name for themselves, Berber is what their neighbors called them)
[/QUOTE]
Quite so, and in fact the name “Berber” is sort of inherently derogatory since it’s a derivative of “Barbarian” (Greek Barbaros, adopted by the Romans then spread wide, because Lord knows the Romans thought they were the shiznit)
Thank you for all the information, this is really interesting and helpful.
One more question…ought I to start referring to Amazigh carpets? 
You can call them whatever you like as long as you don’t pay more than 10.000 dirham for them, no no my friend, I insist, don’t pay more than this, these other carpet merchants they’ll rip you off like that thinking you’re just a tourist but we’re friends so I’m slashing my prices for you, here look I’ll even give you the shirt off my back and sell them to you for 9.000 !
Egyptians were not living in such tribal societies, nor were other groups along the Mediterranean. I agree that the Sahara was far greener then, which I should since I said it first. As desertification spread, peoples who lived there were forced to move but ran into other peoples who were already there, so wound up living in fringe territories.
Anthropologists have no problem making the connection with lactose tolerance. Once-Green Sahara Hosted Early African Dairy Farms. That’s a popular account of a widely reported formal study, but the articles in anthropological journals go back 40 years or more. The Fulani, who are often cited as milk-drinkers, are certainly nomads but probably shouldn’t be characterized as an ethnic group because they are many cultures that share a language group.
None of this is remotely controversial. The Cambridge World History of Food says:
The only possible issue is the use of tribes rather than populations. That’s the correct biological term just as is lactase persistence rather than lactose tolerance. But its use is confusing outside a formal context.
Which comes from the Greek expression for mockingly imitating someone speaking a foreign language, “bar-bar-bar”, which may have been inspired by the phonology of Semitic languages. It’s sort of how like English speakers mock Chinese speakers by saying “Ching, chong chung”, mock Italian speakers by adding an “-o” to nouns, or mock Spanish speakers by adding an “-o” after nouns and an “el” before them. El bosso is telling you to get back to el worko!
North Africa was populated for a long time before the rise of what became ancient Egypt. Those peoples were tribal, including those in the Nile Valley.
At the risk of getting too deep into semantics, I think it’s clear that the Fulani are definitely an ethnic group.
Indeed.
There’s an amusing bit on that note in Aeschylus’ Persians.
Ostensibly the play is a look at the Greco-Persian Wars from the p.o.v. of the Persians (so it would fit into the “tragedy” mold, since you can’t have a tragedy that goes “It looked like we were screwed, but then we kicked all of the arses and won, then we lived happily ever after”), but Aeschylus couldn’t really keep the pretense throughout the play and the end result is still very Greek propaganda.
But anyway, come his account of the naval battle at Salamis, as recounted by a Persian messenger who was there to the Persian queen back home, and the messenger dutifully repeats, word for word, the battle hymn the Athenians sung during their surprise attack. Then goes something like “and for their part, our forces answered with the droning noise of the Persian tongue !”
That’s what I’m doing now, BTW. I’m making the droning noise of the English language. It feels very natural :p.
BTW, lest anyone think that Ramira speaks for the scientific community, you can look at this search from Google Scholar for lactose intolerance tribal, and limited to results since 2010 so they won’t be any nitpicking about whether tribal an older and now unused term. Lactose intolerance tribe produces similar results. The hits are spread across anthropology, biochem, and medical journals.
Since I was drawing a contrast to non-tribal, non-black populations on the one hand and other specifically black African populations on the other, the term black tribal peoples seemed appropriate. It still does.
In fairness, it might be better if you referred to them as nomadic or subsistence or whatever.
I did, in fact, in post #19. Their way of life is a critical factor in the discussion. However, it works only one way; their being nomadic is important but that doesn’t mean that all nomads have evolved lactose tolerance.
Roman Emperor Septimius Severus was from Lepcis Magna, in modern day Libya, of mixed Italian, Punic and possibly Libyan ancestry. Carthage was obviously the most famous of the North African states Rome faced off against, but there were others - Masinissa, a king descended from the Massylii, a Berber Federation, became famous when he joined Rome at Zama.
In Antiquity what we’d call sub-Saharan Africa was known as Aethiopia, Herodotus says of it *“Where the south declines towards the setting sun lies the country called Aethiopia, the last inhabited land in that direction. There gold is obtained in great plenty, huge elephants abound, with wild trees of all sorts, and ebony; and the men are taller, handsomer, and longer lived than anywhere else.”[5]
*
Diodorus distinguishes that there are distinct “tribes” but that they are hard to conquer, as due to their piety they enjoy the favour of the gods;*
“And they state that, by reason of their piety towards the deity, they manifestly enjoy the favour of the gods, inasmuch as they have never experienced the rule of an invader from abroad.”*
Lest you think it’s all sunshine and rainbows, there’s some good old, old, incredibly old fashioned racism on display too; “The majority of them, and especially those who dwell along the river, are black in colour and have flat noses and woolly hair. As for their spirit they are entirely savage and display the nature of a wild beast.”
On this you and clairobscur are absolutely right, and I concede the point. Thanks!
In a different conversation than the OP’s question, I think that my comment would have been better to point out that even though the population was vastly Amazigh groups, these coastal outposts and colonies were points of large cultural and economic interchange between Amazigh and other Mediterranean cultures. So even though the numbers of actual Phoenicians or later even Arabs was never very large, they had and have an outsized influence on the region and should be mentioned in some way, as opposed to the blanket “everyone was/is Amazigh” line that some of my friends push too much (YMMV). This represented a digression from the actual OP, though.
The way large numbers of North Africans are assuming a purely Arab identification, (and I guess, the name Maghreb itself) is a somewhat unprecedented phenomenon at least in scale, isn’t it? Do you think it’s due to modern state education?
Same as above 
The Vandals were probably the least influential of those groups, right?
No, all the peoples in the region were tribal until very recently.
The black vs non-black distinction you’re attempting to make here is arbitrary and un-scientific.
The Egyptian civilization was not tribal nor were the many other civilizations along the Mediterranean during the “Roman era” as specified in the OP. Civilizations are not tribal, even if some elements remain. Nor is the Roman Era “very recently”. At best, we are talking past one another and referencing widely different times and places.
Most of today’s populations south of the Sahara who are not descendents of indeed “very recent” immigrants are lactose intolerant; the percentages are high and very notable. Most Middle Eastern areas have populations that tend to be balanced between those who are lactose tolerant and lactose intolerant. It simply is not as significant or interesting that some nomadic tribal populations who are lactose tolerant share genetics with those Middle Eastern populations. All the ones that were mentioned in the quote I cited are African, however, so that qualifier is not of use.
This interesting genetic heritage was first noticed by anthropologists and explored by physicians who traveled to every corner of the world to do testing. More recently, geneticists have found this for themselves and reported on it as if no one had known about it for 40 years. The genetic connections between these particular tribes and those farther south are stronger in virtually every other way, making this mutation on gene 2 of especial interest.
So yes, I did use black tribal peoples are shorthand to make that distinction. I don’t know who thinks of tribal peoples as a racist slur. There are tribal peoples all over the world, of all different customs, genetic heritages, and shades of skin color. Some of them are black. Ramira herself notes that certain populations are black. If you are trying to make the use of “black” as “arbitrary and un-scientific”, start with her post, which preceded mine. If you are trying to make the use of “tribal” as “arbitrary and un-scientific”, then tell the entire scientific community.
I’ll tell you what term is “arbitrary and un-scientific,” though. It’s “ethnic group”.
I don’t think it is. That’s true for all of the Arab world (except the Arab peninsula, of course). Irak wasn’t orginally Arab, for instance (and there are still people there who don’t identify as Arabs). Turks identify as Turks and speak Turkish even though actual Turks came in late. And before that they tought of themselves as Greek even though Greeks were also latecomers. People in Britania became “Anglo-Saxons”. So, I think that a local culture being supplanted by the culture of the invaders is a quite common phenomenon.
Of course invaders are often assimilated, at the contrary. France is a Latin country. Celtic culture has been erased in Gaul by the Romans, but on the other hand it didn’t became Germanic despite being invaded and ruled for centuries by German people. No people I know of outside Mongolia identifies as Mongol despite their extensive conquests.
It might be uncommon that both cultures keep living side by side (like for Berbers and Arabs), but I’m not even sure of that. Basques are still around after having been dominated by all sorts of other people for some millenia. Dravidian languages are still in use long, long after Indo-Europeans came to India. And so on.
I wouldn’t know, but given that they didn’t stay “in charge” for long, I’d guess so.
I meant specifically in North Africa.
