Post by truthteacher2007 on Apr 28, 2010 9:41:19 GMT -5
Didn't know where else to put this, so I'm posting it here. Its an answer to Mathilda on the article by Joan Fletcher on Ancient Egyptian wigs and hair. Someone used the term negro to describe the Egyptians and Mathilda pulled out her studies clustering Nubians with "Caucasians". Both ideas I find false and inherantly based in a Eurocentice world view:
Very interesting article. I cant help but thinking that there is truely nothing new under the sun.
To Nefer and Mathilda though I'd like to say that trying to categorize people into groups such as negroid caucasoid etc is outdated and arbitrary. Real population groups do not fit neatly into little boxes. Another thing to consider is the assumtion that two people exhibiting differeing "racial characteristics" must be exclucive of each other,unrelated. This is not the case in real life. Certainly not in Egypt then and certainly not now.
There always has been a range of skin colors, hair textures and bone structures all across Africa. The tendency to group certain peoples in Africa as caucasians is based on outdated assuptions that Africans were inherantly and fundamentally different from non Africans ESPECIALLY Europeans. While it is true that there has been gene flow into Africa, this alone does not explain the occurance of certain features found there. While it may be true that some East Africans have a degree of Asian input, this does not change the fact that these people are fundamentally still Africans. A Nubian or even the average Egyptian, certainly Upper Egyptian, would look very out of place in a crowd in Beiruit or Teheran and no one would ever confuse a Somali for a Turk.
With regards to hair form, the ancient Egyptians, like there modern descendants showed a range of textures from straight to kinky. In fact the same chemical relaxers used by AfroAmericans and other people of African descent to straighten the hair is readily sold in every drug store all across Egypt today, particularly Dark and Lovely. The tendency of scholars to pointedly address these fact instead of skirting around them is what has left the door open for all sorts of wild alternative theories and assertations.
Another problem is misleading language. When refering to the wigs on didplay in the Cairo Museum Joan calls them "curly". The correct description of those wigs is AFROS. The hair in question is kinky, not curly as anyone can see by looking at this video I took last summer of the wigs in question:
Now to be honest, not every single Egyptian had an afro. There was a wig in the box in that disply that was of wavey hair. Wish they had displayed it properly. There was a range of textures as there still is today from straight to kinky. But for those who would like to say how come the mummies don't have afros, well, #1: they were usually shaved bald, #2: kinky hair is actually very veratile, comes in a range of textures from fine to coarse and very tight to very loose coils. This means that the appearance can chang quite derastically depending on how its treated. What may look wavey may actually be quite kinky if combed out. However, I've personally never seen an Egyptian wig that was made of pin straight hair. And judging from my friends, even when the hair is straight or wavey, the texture is often of a coarseness not common to European hair, but common for Africans and multiracial people.
I just wish for once that academics would do something to contribute to the process of moving us away from archaic theories of race, especially what WE think certain populations should look like based on our own ignorance and cultural biases instead of reinfircing them.
Very interesting article. I cant help but thinking that there is truely nothing new under the sun.
To Nefer and Mathilda though I'd like to say that trying to categorize people into groups such as negroid caucasoid etc is outdated and arbitrary. Real population groups do not fit neatly into little boxes. Another thing to consider is the assumtion that two people exhibiting differeing "racial characteristics" must be exclucive of each other,unrelated. This is not the case in real life. Certainly not in Egypt then and certainly not now.
There always has been a range of skin colors, hair textures and bone structures all across Africa. The tendency to group certain peoples in Africa as caucasians is based on outdated assuptions that Africans were inherantly and fundamentally different from non Africans ESPECIALLY Europeans. While it is true that there has been gene flow into Africa, this alone does not explain the occurance of certain features found there. While it may be true that some East Africans have a degree of Asian input, this does not change the fact that these people are fundamentally still Africans. A Nubian or even the average Egyptian, certainly Upper Egyptian, would look very out of place in a crowd in Beiruit or Teheran and no one would ever confuse a Somali for a Turk.
With regards to hair form, the ancient Egyptians, like there modern descendants showed a range of textures from straight to kinky. In fact the same chemical relaxers used by AfroAmericans and other people of African descent to straighten the hair is readily sold in every drug store all across Egypt today, particularly Dark and Lovely. The tendency of scholars to pointedly address these fact instead of skirting around them is what has left the door open for all sorts of wild alternative theories and assertations.
Another problem is misleading language. When refering to the wigs on didplay in the Cairo Museum Joan calls them "curly". The correct description of those wigs is AFROS. The hair in question is kinky, not curly as anyone can see by looking at this video I took last summer of the wigs in question:
Now to be honest, not every single Egyptian had an afro. There was a wig in the box in that disply that was of wavey hair. Wish they had displayed it properly. There was a range of textures as there still is today from straight to kinky. But for those who would like to say how come the mummies don't have afros, well, #1: they were usually shaved bald, #2: kinky hair is actually very veratile, comes in a range of textures from fine to coarse and very tight to very loose coils. This means that the appearance can chang quite derastically depending on how its treated. What may look wavey may actually be quite kinky if combed out. However, I've personally never seen an Egyptian wig that was made of pin straight hair. And judging from my friends, even when the hair is straight or wavey, the texture is often of a coarseness not common to European hair, but common for Africans and multiracial people.
I just wish for once that academics would do something to contribute to the process of moving us away from archaic theories of race, especially what WE think certain populations should look like based on our own ignorance and cultural biases instead of reinfircing them.