White Aethiopians

White Aethiopians (Leucaethiopes) is a term found in ancient Roman literature which may have referred to the lighter skinned Berber non-negroid populations of Saharan-Africa. The term is used by Pliny the Elder, and is also mentioned by Pomponius Mela, Ptolemy and Orosius. These authorities do not, however, agree on the geographical location of the White Aethiopians.

The 10th-century traveller Ibn Hawqal describes a similar situation among the Berber, which Richard Smith suggests may reflect "a real event, the absorption of tribes" from Ethiopia.

Classical origins

Location of the White Aethiopians in North Africa near Morocco, with the Black Gaetulians to their east and the Aethiopians across the Sahel region, according to Oric Bates, 1914.

Pliny the Elder wrote in section 5.8 of his Natural History that:

"If we pass through the interior of Africa in a southerly direction, beyond the Gætuli, after having traversed the intervening deserts, we shall find, first of all the Liby-Egyptians, and then the country where the Leucæthiopians dwell."

Oric Bates notes that Ptolemy wrote of the White Aethiopians and the Melanogaetulians, and compares this to the mention by Orosius of the "Libyoaethopians". Bates places the White Aethiopians in Morocco and the Melanogaetulians just to the east of them, claiming Ptolemy's authority for this, and arguing that "These descriptives are good evidence of the ancient opposition of whites and blacks in the Sahara, and of their fusion." Bates further compares these claims with what he argues is the "marked xanthochroid element of foreign (Nordic) origin" in Morocco, i.e. a mixing of light-skinned people from Northern Europe.

Pomponius Mela wrote, in Frank E. Romer's translation, that "On those shores washed by the Libyan Sea, however, are found the Libyan Aegyptians, the White Aethiopians, and, a populous and numerous nation, the Gaetuli. Then a region, uninhabitable in its entire length, covers a broad and vacant expanse."

Speaking of the difference between modern thought and ancient times, Richard Smith warns that even apparently well-defined categories "like 'race' can be confusing". According to Smith, Ptolemy placed two peoples, Leukaethiopes and Melanogaetulians ('Black Gaetulians') in the far west of North Africa, namely in southern Morocco. The Leukaethiopes, "literally, 'white Ethiopians'" could also, Smith suggests, be described as "white black men", since in ancient times "the term 'Ethiopian' referred to skin color".

According to Richard Smith, Pliny the Elder however places the Leukaethiopes south of the (Sahara) desert between the white Gaetulians and the black Nigritae, with closest neighbours the Libyaegyptians, "literally the 'Egyptian Libyans', another oxymoron"; but, Smith says, Pliny does not mention any black Gaetulians.

Fula women: Edmund Dene Morel conjectured that the White Ethiopians of classical times were Fula people

Edmund Dene Morel, writing in 1902, confirms that both Ptolemy and Pliny speak of the "Leucæthiopes", but believes that Ptolemy places them "in the neighbourhood of the Gambia", whereas Pliny places them "a couple of degrees farther north". Morel then speculates on who those "light-complexioned 'Africans'" could have been; he believes they could not have been Arabs, while (Morel argues) the Berber were well-known to Pliny's source people, the Carthaginians, so they would have recognized Berbers if they had met them; so Morel concludes the "Leucæthiopes" were Fulani, a suggestion first made, according to Morel, in 1799 by Major Rennel "in his notes on Park's travels".

Richard Smith reports that "historians often assume" that both Leukaethiopes and Melanogaetulians "were of mixed race", or perhaps of some combination of race and culture: the Leukaethiopes on this suggestion, he writes, "were whites who lived in an Ethiopian-style culture". But Richard Smith concludes that the only safe conclusion is that "the ethnic map was very complex and thus very confusing" even to Ptolemy.

The next assumption, according to Smith, is that there was "some kind of awful ancient race war" in which white tribes like the Leukaethiopes "expelled or exterminated" the black tribes, but, writes Smith, there is no evidence for this.

Haegap Jeoung, writing of the attitude of Homer and the ancient Greeks, suggests that "the Ethiopians take their place as the other of the [ancient] Greeks, regardless of their skin color. Remarkably, there are white Ethiopians. Not because the Ethiopians are black, but because they are the other, they become a matter of a discourse."

Arysio Santos mentions that both Herodotus (History VIII:70) and Strabo (Geography XV:21) "speak of two Ethiopias, one eastern, the other western". Santos says that Strabo also said that the ancient Greeks "designated as Ethiopia the whole of the southern countries towards the ocean", not just a region near Egypt. Santos then says that "the White Ethiopians very obviously came from the Far East, just as told by Ephorus", and quotes Philostratus (Vit. Apol. II:33f) as saying "The Indians are the wisest of mankind. The Ethiopians are a colony of them", immediately adding his own view that "The Ethiopia in question here is really Indonesia".

Mediaeval reports

According to Richard Smith, Ibn Hawqal, a 10th-century traveller from Baghdad, divides the Berber clans into "the pure Sanhaja and the Banu Tanamak", the latter being "originally Sudan (i.e. black) whose skin and complexion became white because they live close to the North"; Smith reports Ibn Hawqal as listing 22 named kinds of Banu Tanamak but without saying whether they were "political, cultural, geographic, social, or linguistic in nature". The most likely scenario, suggests Smith, is the simplest: the Ethiopian tribes were absorbed by the Berber, and so perhaps Ibn Hawqal's "strange report of the Banu Tanamak" (who changed from black to white) echoed "a real event, the absorption of tribes".

Sources

• Bates, Oric. The Eastern Libyans. London: Macmillan & Co, 1914.
• Bostock, John (trans). The Natural History. Pliny the Elder. London: Taylor and Francis, 1855, vol. 1, pages 403–404.
• Dunton, Chris. Review of The First Ethiopians: The Image of Africa and Africans in the Early Mediterranean World by Malvern van Wyk Smith. Research in African Literatures. Vol 42, No 1, Spring 2011, pages 172–174.
• Jeoung, Haegap. An Africanist-Orientalist Discourse: The Other in Shakespeare and Hellenistic Tragedy. Louisiana State University PhD Thesis etd-0828103-180739. 25 August 2003.
• Morel, Edmund Dene. Affairs of West Africa. Library of African Study. Routledge, 1968. First published 1902. ISBN 978-0-7146-1702-2 page 142.
• De la Pena, Carolyn Thomas. "Bleaching the Ethiopians": Desegregating Race and Technology through Early X-ray Experiments. Technology and Culture, Vol 47, No 1, January 2006, pages 27–55.
• Marcus, Harold G. The black men who turned white: European attitudes towards Ethiopians 1850-1900. Unknown publisher, 1968.
• Romer, Frank E. Pomponius Mela's Description of the World. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. ISBN 0-472-10773-9 page 40.
• Santos, Arysio. Atlantis: The Lost Continent Finally Found. North Atlantic Books, 2011. ISBN 978-1-55643-956-8 page 135.
• Smith, Malvern van Wyk. The First Ethiopians: The Image of Africa and Africans in the Early Mediterranean World. Johannesburg: Wits UP, 2009. ISBN 978-1-86814-499-0
• Smith, Richard. What happened to the ancient Libyans? Chasing Sources across the Sahara from Herodotus to Ibn Khaldun. Journal of World History, Vol 14, No 4, Dec 2003, pages 459–500.