Are BERBERS of North Africa Indigenous White Africans?
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The Amazigh, are the indigenous inhabitants of North Africa. They number approximately 30 million and are distributed across several areas of North Africa that is Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, as well as some Saharan regions in Mauritania, Niger, Chad, Mali and Senegal.
Let's talk about their features. While there is no singular "Berber look," we can find certain features like light skin, blue or green eyes, and straight hair among them, especially in the Rif and Kabylie regions. Some other Berber groups of northern Mali, Niger, and Mauritania, such as the Touareg, have bigger fractions of sub-Saharan genetic makeup and hence can look black or mixed. This diversity in phenotype is a testament to the Amazigh's extensive genetic mixing over millennia. Amazigh themselves enclose genetically diverse groups and have a high degree of genetic heterogeneity. It is therefore difficult to assign a single subset of features to Amazigh.
Genetic data from present-day populations suggests that North African ancestry has contributions from four main sources: (i) an autochthonous Maghrebi component related to a back migration to Africa 12,000 years ago from Western Eurasia, these are essentially Neolinthic Anatolian farmers; (ii) a Middle Eastern component probably associated with the Arab conquest; (iii) a sub-Saharan component derived from trans-Saharan migrations; and (iv) a European component that has been linked to recent historic movements.”
The Tuareg Berbers are of the same stock as the (eurasian) North African Berbers. The difference lies in their migration southwards and their increased interactions (trade, marriage, and slave trade) with black Africans who had been living in the Sahara and the Sahel for thousands of years, resulting in a higher concentration of West African components in their DNA.
Here are 10 Surprising facts about the Amazigh that you probably didn’t know.
Research reveals strong genetic af
