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Berbers are white or caucasoid people?
Berbers are white or caucasoid people?
The thing about race classification, you can only tell someone's race by the color of their skin or the shape of their skull. With the advent of genetics, it appears that we are all a mix of something. For example I can now say that I decended from Germanic, Celtic, West Slavic tribes and the Romans without much scrutiny. Before genetics, it could considered offensive to say you were decended from Anglo-Saxons simply because they were sometimes considered "Germanic Barbarians" and popular to emphasize our "Civilized" Roman Component.
As for Berbers, As Far as race goes they were considered either Hamitic or Semetiche historically. However with genetic technology Berbers can nowadays claim ancestors like African, Roman, Phoenician; via Carthrage, and Middle Eastern ancestry; via Islamic Settlement.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)#/media/File:Meyers_b11_s0476a.jpg
Here is more information about the history of Berber culture.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berbers
I do admit, it's really difficult trying to explain and translate from Caucasoid race to Ancient civilizations. But thanks for posting more examples to my point.it is easier to describe Berbers not as a race but as speakers of a Berber language, or descendants thereof.
Y-DNA of the Berbers is quite well-known though
I'm not aware of any Ancient African/ Roman/Greek component in North Africa. I would caution that we don't yet know what yDna the Romans carried. We're all just speculating. However, if they had high percentages of relatively downstream R1b then it's highly unlikely they had much genetic impact in North Africa, as there's precious little of that in North Africa. Plus, while there were some Roman settlers in North Africa there weren't very many and they were very circumscribed as to location.
The genetic ties between the Berbers and all Europeans, not just Southern Europeans, is much older and stems from the Neolithic movements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Africa_during_Antiquity#Roman_era
You're right that the old terms like Caucasoid have limited usefulness, although I suppose in a general sense, Caucasoid might be "West Eurasian". People who are majority West Eurasians can have minority admixture from other groups. So, the Berbers are majority "West Eurasian", but can have SSA admixture in varying percentages, just like South Asians, at least more northern South Asians, can have majority West Eurasian with minority ASE. Some of them are more like mestizo populations or even more slanted toward non-West Eurasian ancestry.
Classical peoples seem to have considered Berbers to be civilized or at least worthy of civilization. St. Augustine is probably one of the most famous Berbers that is commonly seen as a "European" person (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo), despite being from Africa and originating from an African ethnic group. He probably neither looked like some random Irish guy nor looked like a Viking, but he was seemingly accepted into a European Christian milieu. This likely leads to one of two conclusions:
1) Berbers, or at least St. Augustine, were considered white or Caucasoid by other European peoples, especially Romans and Greeks.
2) Classical European peoples, especially Greeks and Romans, did not recognize, or at least did not emphasize as important, the concept of whiteness or being Caucasoid.
Twilight,
Absent ancient dna, which we've gotten only recently, how can the assignment of y dna lineages be anything but speculative? Granted, some speculations are more supported by modern dna studies, archaeology, linguistics, etc., than others, but major mistakes can be made. After all, many people thought until just recently that down stream R1b clades originated in, and spread from, the Atlantic seaboard.
Classical peoples seem to have considered Berbers to be civilized or at least worthy of civilization. St. Augustine is probably one of the most famous Berbers that is commonly seen as a "European" person (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo), despite being from Africa and originating from an African ethnic group. He probably neither looked like some random Irish guy nor looked like a Viking, but he was seemingly accepted into a European Christian milieu. This likely leads to one of two conclusions:
1) Berbers, or at least St. Augustine, were considered white or Caucasoid by other European peoples, especially Romans and Greeks.
2) Classical European peoples, especially Greeks and Romans, did not recognize, or at least did not emphasize as important, the concept of whiteness or being Caucasoid.
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