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The Ancient Races of Arabia

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Map 29. The distribution of races in Arabia

(from Pavel Bělíček: The Differential Analysis of the Wordwide Human Varieties, Prague 2018, Table 28, p. 83)

The Ethnic Composition of the Afro-Asiatic Family

Modern Arabs are regarded as members of the large Afro-Asiatic family without distinguishing several heterogeneous components. They all share the heritage of their prehistoric predecessors who have merged into the category of Orientalids.

Orientalids. The archaeological dominant of the Near East was determined by the Tabunian, Levallois-Mousterian and Amudian cultures that resulted in the tradition of retouched bifaces and leaf-shaped points. Their racial ethnic prevalence is nowadays manifested especially in tall large-headed skulls with a convex, hooked or aquiline nose. A complementary role was played by Levalloisian elements that added scrapers, blades, burins and long knives. Their influence added slender gracile phenotypes of Mediterranids and contributed to what is now meant by the racial variety of Orientalids. Linguists discern this assimilative cultural synthesis in the concept of Semitic languages. It is remarkable for ejectives, dental stops, fricatives β, θ, ð, γ, χ, as well as definite and indefinite articles.

The Ethnic and Racial Composition of the Arabian Peninsula

Arabs. The ethnic dominant of Saudi Arabia belongs to Arabs, who were known to Romans as Arabes and to the Hebrews as Arvi. The ancient Greeks knew their homeland as Αραβία, Aravia. In Assyrian annals their name was spelled as Arabi, Arubu, Aribi, Urbi. Arabs were originally camel-hunters and later camel-breeders adapted to life in arid desserts of Bactria. After domesticating the two-humped Bactrian camel in Central Asia, they spread its raising to the Mongolian Gobi and the Taklamakan Desert in west China. Later they headed for the west and colonised also the Syrian Desert. Around 3000 BC they domesticated also the single-humped dromedary on the Arabic Peninsula. In the Syrian Desert their caravans met Nabateans, who also lived in arid areas but specialised as goat-keepers.

Their similar geographical distribution made the Muslim geographer al-Hamdani (10^th century AD) think that Arabs were related to the Hebrew Nabateans and their name was derived from the Mesopotamian word Gharab for ‘west’. This etymology seems to be confirmed by the ancient traditional legends that assumed that the Arabs descended from Ya'rub , a king of Yemen. His contemporary was the historiographer al-Masʿūdī, who derived their origin from the Arabah Valley and recalled that the word arava originally meant ‘wilderness’.

In our view associations with Nabateans and Hebrews are misleading owing to the incompatibility of customs, dwellings and clothing. Their cultural ethnography betrays consanguinity with Sarmatians and their tribe called Aorsi, Arini or Aryans. Their closest brothers at the Levant were Arameans, who founded the Aramaic kingdom of Aram (830 BC). The modern spelling of their name originated by adding the plural suffix -b common in Western Asia. The Semitic descent of Arabs must be refused because the Semitic Akkadians in Mesopotamia wore turbans and loincloth. The Arabian clothing style bore much more resemblance to the Sumerian donkey-breeders of Sarmatian descent. The agglutinating nature of the Sumerian languages attests their remote Uralic provenience. The Uralo-Sarmatian hypothesis is corroborated by the Arabian appearance and clothing. They wore ankle-long gowns similar to the sari and a head-band or head-ring (keffiyeh) covering head with a square scarf. In addition, this tribal identity is ascertained by Arabian and Bedouin tents in the style of irregular marquee. They are similar to Tibetan tents and their distribution spans from Gibraltar to the Gobi.

Arabia was visited by several generations of eastern pastoralists of remote Sarmatian and Uralic origin. The Maurids probably stemmed from the wild Hyksos horseback riding raiders drifting with Amorites from Caucasian Ossetia. The Sumerids recruited from Sumerian and Shubartian donkey-breeders raising cattle (3500 BC). The Arabs were desert camel-breeders, who descended from another Sarmatian faction adapted to arid deserts. Their great nomadic mobility makes it difficult to distinguish further fraternal Sarmatoid factions such as Assyrians, Syrians, Sabaeans, Meroites, Axumites and Amharians. What joins them all into one ethnic stock are ethnonymic associations starting with the roots Mar-, Oset-/Asyr-, Arin-/Aors-, Sarm-/Samar- and Wal-/Ual-.

Agraei. The belt of tribes chaining the tribal settlements of Urukans, Agraei, Orcheni developed cultural patterns attributed to the megalithic kurgan tribes of Media. Urukan kings were honoured by sacred anointment, mummification and golden masks. Their less prominent sites were excavated also in the complexes of the Hafit culture (3200 – 2600 BC). It was remarkable for burial cairns of cupolar beehive architectural style. This suggests that the inhabitants of Ur and Uruk were Ugroid Scythoids.

Aethiopids. Arabs gave their name to Arabia in the Bronze Age thanks to their military predominance but its real autochthones were the Aethiopids, Caucasoid farmers of desert oases exposed to raids of Arabic caravans. Their ethnic superstratum looked similar to the Ubaidian peasants in Mesopotamia. They went out barebreasted without top dress only in fringed skirts. Their common features consisted of rectangular multi-roomed houses with flat roofs built out of clay or sundried bricks. South Arabia was their homeland and birthplace. Since 1.5 mil. years ago it had been occupied by the Acheulean plant-gatherers with preagriculturalist leanings and elaborate axe-tool industry for unearthing vegetal roots. In Egypt the local peasants were called fellahs, Egyptians (Greek Aigyptoi), Copts (Arabic qopt, qupt, gipt) derived from Greek Αἰγύπτιος, Aigýptios.1 In Eritrea and southern coasts of Persian they were called Aethiopes. Their habitations were spread from the Rwanda Hutu tribes to Eritrea in the Horn of Africa to the biblical Heteans, Hittim and the Anatolian Hattians. In these tribal settlements their flat-roofed multi-cellular labyrinths were built on tell-mounds heaped by repeated plantations.

Aethiopes and Aethiopids are usually classified as Europoids, which sounds reasonable, because their growth resulted into Pre-Indo-European group of Anatolian languages with s-plurals and animate/inanimate gender category. Their realm extended from Anatolia and the Levant to Elam, Susia and Harappa. In India their group encompassed Dravidian languages such as Kodagu, Gadaba, Kota and Kolami. Their common trait consisted in the plural ending -b and ergative constructions with the ergative case form in -s, which after transition to nominative accusative constructions turned into the IE plural marker -s. Copts, Syrians, Georgians and Armenians confessed Christianism even after the advent of Mahometanism, while the Europoid peasantry in the Oriens created its own Shiite mutation of Muslim faith with marked idolatric traits. It gave a definite stamp also to Arabic languages that abandoned Altaic vocalic synharmony and adopted the Europoid quantitative prosody with the cardinal triangle i – a - u and several degrees of vocalic length. The important common denominator of all Caucasian, Elamite or Gothonic nations is their ethnonymic association of phratries with the word roots Goth-/Kot-, Fars-/Pers-/Fris-, Sus-/Sas- and Elam-/Lang-.

Dilmun Littoralids. The Gothonic unity comprised almost all Acheulean tribes and as a result their descendant nationalities derived their descent from the same primordial phratries. However, it did not include all axe-tool makers because the ethnonyms of African Bantu people exhibit no agreement with the tribal nomenclature of Melanesians and Australids. On the other hand, this unity involved dispersed tribes of Europoid Litteralids, who heaped piles of shell midden along the coasts of the Erythraean Sea. Their infallible messenger could be discovered in the tribes of Dilmun culture (3,000 BC) of littoral beachcombers, who strewed mounds of shell midden on beach dunes. The ancient Sumerians knew them as bog people living on seafood and dwelling in withy-woven huts. Their modern descendants may be sought in the inhabitants of Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar. The bible mentioned these localities as the paradisaical Eden. Similar patterns of pottery were discovered in the Umm an-Nar Culture in the locality of the United Arab Emirates.

Extract from Pavel Bělíček: The Differential Analysis of the Wordwide Human Varieties, Prague 2018, pp. 73-83

Axe-tool cultures attributed to tall robust long-headed dolichocephals (their heritage linguistically survives in the Elamitoid subdivision tending to vocalic phonology with rich diphthongism, three-mora vowel quantity, quantitative prosody, voiced consonants, open syllables and disyllabic word stock):

* Oldowan artefacts of Homo erectus in Ubeidiya (Sea of Galilee, 1.5 mya) and at Kashafrud, Iran,

* Acheulean hand-axe industry found in the Bizat Ruhama group and Gesher Bnot Yaakov (1.4 mya),

* Acheulo-Yabrudian industry (215,000 BP) with hand-axes anticipating Macrolithic of Neothic period

* Macrolithic of tools in the Mesolitic Hilazon Tachtit cave site (12,000 BP),

* Gigantolithic industry of the Qaraoun culture in the Beqaa Valley in the Lebanese highlands dating

back to in the Mesolithic or Proto-Neolithic period,

* the Ubaid culture (Mesopotamia, 6500 BC), a Neolithic agriculturalist culture from Tell al-`Ubaid site with rectangular multi-roomed mud-brick houses in unwalled villages, Elamitoid origins.

Mousteroid cultures attributed to tall robust large-headed brachycephals with a convex nasal profile (their vestiges linguistically survive in the Berber group with reduced vowels, abundant ejectives, dental stops, tenuis stops, spirants and sonorants, k-plurals as well as definite and indefinite articles):

* Tabunian (Israel, cca 400,000 BP), Pre-Mousterian bifaces from Tabun Cave, analogous to industry

of Clactonian and Tayacian megafauna hunters,

* Galilee man excavated in Zuttiyeh cave (cca 400,000 BP), Levantine Homo heidelbergensis,

* Amudian Mousterian (60,000 BP) with retouched lancehead industry excavated in Kebara Cave,

* Megalithic constructions in proto-Canaanite Israel (Atlit Yam, c. 7000 BC),

* Neolithic megalith constructions in Canaan (Israel, c. 4000), Levantine dolmens in Rujm el-Hiri,

* Urukans and Orcheni in Sumer, Mesh-ki-ang-gasher’s dynasty with golden masks.

Levalloisian and Aurignacoid cultures ascribed to Cromagnon man, Pelasgids and Meditteranids:

* early flint tool industry from Yir'on, found on the Lebanese borders of Israel,

* Levalloisian technology in Syria, Canaan and Levant (500,000 BP, 125,000 BP),

* Mousterian Levallois or Levalloiso-Mousterian industry in Tabun Cave B, C, D, unit IX (250 kya),

* the Levantine Ahmarian culture(46,000 BP) with long prismatic knives,

* the Dabban Leptolithic (Cyrenaica 40,000 BP), types of blade and burin industry.

* Baradostian culture (Zagros region, 36,000 BC) of Aurignacian type, probably ancestral to Kurds,

* the Antelian Leptolithic (32,000 BP), burins and narrow prismatic blade points, it imported points of

the Font-Yves type to Europe, it was probably ancestral to Palestinians and Danites,

* Iberomaurisian Leptolithic (cca 24,000 BP), Proto-Mediterranean and Mechta-Afalou racial types,

* the Eastern Oranian Leptolithic (Haua Fteah in Libya), backed blades, endscrapers,

* the Eburran Aurignacian Leptolithic (Kenya, 13,000 BC), Lake Nakuru sites, burins, endscrapers,

large backed blades.

Microlithic cultures of Hebroid, Punoid, Cushitic and remote Turcoid descent (their consonantism is notable for tenuis stops, fricatives and sonorants, apical retroflex phonemes, velar, guttural and laryngeal consonants, back round vowels, rhotic affricates, r-plurals and the SOV word order):

* microblade cultures of Cushitic and Azande knife-throwers (33,000 BC) with Y-DNA hg R*-M173,

* Microlithic Kebaran culture (18,000 BC),

* the early Helwan phase in the Egyptian Fayyum, affiliated to Kebaran style,

* Microlithic Natufian industry (12,500 BC), cave dwellings, hunting antelopes and ovicaprids,

* Kiamian Microlithic (Damascus, 10.200 BC), Baz rockshelters,

* Harifian Microlithic (Sinai, Negev desert, 8,800 B.C.), late Natufian Microlithic points,

* Capsian Microlithic (Maghreb, 8000 BC), immigrants of the Natufian culture, ancestral to Kabyles

and Tuaregian goat-herders, Tassili petroglyphs and cave-paintings,

* Eburran industry (Kenya, 8,000 BC), later phases of Kenyan Aurignacian, crescent microliths.

Table 17. The typology of prehistoric cultures underlying Afro-Asiatic peoples

Berberids. The first Spanish conquistadors ofn the Canary Islands were surprised by meeting ‘tall, blonde and blue-eyed Tinerfeños’ (Tenerifians). Light skin, whitish complexion and blond-haired phenotypes are common also among other Berbers. Their visage need not be explained by rare hosts of Norman invaders and Iberian Littorids with campaniform pottery but may be due to the genes of the pure-blooded Berber Imazhigen. Their typical signs are red hair, light skin and Rh-negative O- blood group. Their dominant role in North Africa should not make us regard them as genetic patriarchs of the whole Berber phylum. Berbers are generally shorter, dolichocephalous, mesoskelic and mesorrhine people but these traits are due to secondary amalgamation. Genuine Berberids and Canarids are taller, fairer types with wide and coarse face.1 The basic subcomponents of their ethnic family are as follows:

Eteo-Berberids: taller types with fairer skin colour, wide and coarse face, protruding cheekbones,

prominent bizygomatic arches, great interorbital distance and strong heavy jaws. Probable ancestors

in the Roman era had ethnonyms starting with the word roots Bas-, Mas- and Sok-: Bacuates,

Mazices, Metagonitae, Massaesili, Macanitae, Musulmani, Musones, Masylli, Machlyes,

Nasamones, Baschitae and Sokna-Tasuknit. They passed through ancient regions called Byzacium

Vemporium, Byzacena and Bascisi Montes.

* Guanche Canarids: genuine Eteo-Berberids in the Canary Isles, notable for mummification burials.

* Imazighen: the trueborn Eteo-Berberids of archaic Epi-Aterian origin; they celebrated their revival in

the Bronze Age, when they spread megalithic constructions as a race of tall brachycephalous bowmen.

Berbero-Sarmatids: hosts of Sarmatian pastoralists spreading cattle-breeding to Africa after 4000 BC.

* Arabs: host of Arabian and Bedouin camel-breeders propagating pastoralism in arid deserts;

their abodes were remarkable for irregular four-pitch-roof marquee tents (cca 3,000 BC).

* Maurids: descendants of Hyksos and Amorite horseback riders, who looted the Lower Egypt

between 1800 and 1700 BC and continued their expeditions farther to Mauritania. Their travels in North Africa were lined with Roman tribal ethnonyms derived from roots As-, Mur-: Ausuriani, Asbytae, Aniritae. Their main plantations were founded in Marmarica, Morocco and Mauritania.

Berbero-Turanids: tribes of the Capsian Microlithic of remote Turcoid origin that were coming to

Africa from the Levantine Natufian (12,500 BC). Their probable ancestors in the Roman era may be

sought in Herpetidani, Garamantes, Hammonii. Modern descendants are seen in Kabyles, Tuaregs,

Canarii, who tend to live as goat-herders in rock-shelters and excelled in petroglyphs and rich rock-

art. They produced Tyrian purple dye and indigo-blue dye out of Muricidae rock snails.

* Capsian Microlithic (8000 BC) in Maghreb, goat-herding, rock shelters, rock-art and artifical caves,

* Eteo-Canarids descending from the tribes of Canarii in Gran Canaria and Gomeritas on La Gomera;

their names suggest a Cimbroid or Kimmeroid descent owing to the spread of the Capsian culture,

* the Tuareg ‘blue people’, who favour clothes coloured by indigo dye, they are renowned for Tassili

rock art discovered at the sites of Tassili-n-Ajjer in southern Algeria and dated back to 7,000 BP.

Berbero-Pelasgid: Mediterranids of Pelasgoid origin with blades, burins and long backed knives.

* Cyrenaicans: descendants of the Dabban Leptolithic (Pentapolis, 40,000 BP), who speak the Awjila

language common in the oasis of Awjila,

* the Iberomaurusian Leptolithic culture (cca 24,000 BP), whose bearers may have survived in the

Roman tribes of Dolopes; they belonged to gracile slender Mediterranids and good-looking Mechta-

Afalou racial types; their tribal endonym is probably hidden in the Tungusoid place name Tingitii and

frequent towns called Tingis.

Berbero-Elamitoids: the agricultural substratum of North Africa bearing Caucasoid traits; the Y-DNA haplogroups J1 and J2 and provide Berbers with dolichocephalic physiognomy; they are responsible for the architectural dominant of North Africa consisting in flat-roof clay houses and their subtype employing pisé mud-bricks. Despite their high percentage in Berber populations, their tribal kinsmen are unknown; possible candidates are the Eteo-Berbers, Barcitae, Ghadames and Ghadamsi. The district of Ghadames in western Morocco has four floors, an underground network of passageways, ground floor for store supplies, one floor for family and at the top open-air terraces reserved for women.

Berbero-Alpinids: short brachycephalous Lappids relevant as a starting point of Deverel Gaelids and Gravettian Gallids. After his death King Arthur’s soul wandered to Avalon situated in an unknown cradle-land in North Africa. Morocco is mentioned as a seat of brachycephalous Alpinids of shorter stature. In the Roman era Alpinoid settlements were transparently shining through in the place names such as Galapha, Banasa, Caloma or Ad Albulos.

Table 18. The heterogeneous tribal layers in the Berber subdivision of Afro-Asiatic

1 The Cambridge History of the Bible: Volume 1, From the Beginnings to Jerome, ed. P. R. Ackroyd, C. F. Evans et al., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, p. 28.

1 R. Knussmann: Vergleichende Biologie des Menschen: Lehrbuch der Anthropologie und Humangenetik. 2ed. Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, 1996.