Hannibal, like all other ethnic Carthaginians, was Phoenician, and so must've looked Middle-Eastern.
Carthage wasn't a native African state. Sure they had black mercenaries in their army and were in frequent contact with them, but the Ethnic Carthaginian would identify closer to his cousins in Lebanon than a Black neighbor across the street.
Add to that fact that after the Alexander's conquest of Tyre - the mother-city of Carthage, many pure-blood Phoenicians from there run away to the colonies - to the Carthage. The time diffrence between the Punic Wars and Alexander's conquest is after all only 114 years - it's not enough time for the elite to mix with local people.
Calling the Romans "a white empire" is also a bit of a stretch, since a good number of them would be only marginally fairer skinned than their Punic opponents. A modern American would probably just call both of them latinos if they walked by him on the streets.
It's very accurate that race isn't biologically true - it doesn't exist on the same level as species and clades do. But I think it's important to remember that many modern people still believe in race despite of the evidence, so countering racist myths (like the one presented here), requires engaging with modern perceptions of race.
History is always much more complicated, nuanced and interesting than racist pundits want it to be.
Edit: to the Romans, of course, the Punics were decadents southerners, but they thought of themselves as just as distinct from Germanic peoples as modern Americans do from, say, Chinese.
But many modern people have different ideas about race. The specific American view of race which fronts skin color as the most important attribute and is all about the one drop rule stems from the American history with the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Other cultures had different experiences and so the concept of race still varies from place to place.
Calling the Romans "a white empire" is dumb, yes, but it is so for an entirely different reason: it existed centuries before the concept of race as we know it today. Back in the day, no one really gave a shit about skin color per se. While xenophobia abounded (like in all of human history, really), people were much more interested in where you were from (which lands, which tribe, which city, etc.).
Also, though not really applicable to the Roman Republic from the time of the Punic wars, the later Empire expanded to include lands from Britain to Egypt and the Levant - thus including people of a great variety of ethnicities, and with full citizenship to boot.
Not to mention how some continents have almost no notion that the African continent contains quite a lot of people who look Mediterranean rather than black.
And also most of north africa is not really what Americans know as black. The us stereotype blacks as being like west africans and project it on all other peoples.
And why is it so important for people to put race into it. The Carthaginian wars had little to do with race, color or what not, they were about two growing powers fighting for influence against each other.
Even they weren't necessarily all black.
North Africa on the Mediterranean coast was first inhabited by Berbers who resemble Middle Easterners, then they were invaded by the Arabs.
The Black majority starts in Sub-Saharan Africa.
...So... You are saying that just because some people lived in the african region it doesn't mean that they had to be black!?...
No... Who would have guessed?...
Which in turn was a greek colony, the colonies made colonies.
Tyre would be more accurate, and they were very much a greek state.
that bastard pygmalion..
You see a seafaring civilization, you have the greeks write chronicles about them.
Like sure, they where not from Athen, Just like Alexander was from Macedonia.
Tyre was a city founded by greeks, sure the inhabitants would not be "greek" and would call themself "Phoenican". Greece wasent a thing and was made up of cities - Athens stood as a pillar.
I do believe Tyre was founded by the greeks and Macedonia brought them back into the fold.
i agree with most of what you're saying but I cant find anything about Greeks fouding Tyre. To my knowledge it was one of the first places inhabited by the Phoenicians as a sea port town.
I read through the wikipedia article and couldn't find anything that suggested this. It says that Tyre is one of the oldest cities in history and that the Phoenicians were both genetically and culturally distinct from the Greeks. Do you have a source?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek\_colonisation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_colonisation)
I might be wrong?
seems like Occam's razor
where did they learn to build ships?
Alexander notes in his chronicles how wood from Tyre made the best ships.
Even now the flag of Lebanon is a big Tree.
They were the masters of the sea for sure
But the only contenders to the greeks, was either Egypt or Persia.
They did not spring up from nothing,
We know the greeks were colonising the mediterran in these times.
I don't exactly understand what you're trying to say but we have fairly clear documentation as to the origins of the Phoenicians. They were a continuation of the bronze age Canaanite culture.
Canaanites and Phoenicians are essentially the same, just existing in different ages of history (Canaanites are bronze age and Phoenicians are iron age). They have been in the Levant since the 5th millennium BC, so way before the Greeks started doing just about anything.
You can call them Arabic if you really stretch the definition of Arabic, but certainly not Greek in any way. I have no idea where you got that from
And probably don't know anything about Sub Saharan Africa's history, to actually know about people like Shaka Zulu or Ana Nzinga of Mbande Ndogo
Both were leaders who fought against European powers like the British and Portuguese and succeed.
US Americans in particular tend to immagine Africa as a completely "black" continent ignoring the fact that it's as large as Europe, North America and Australia combined and has the ethnic diversity one would expect from such large landmass.
The fact that they have culturally programmed themsleves to say *African-American* instead of black kinda short circuits their brains.
I think saying Afrian-American makes perfect sense in a domestic context.
People who were enslaved back them got ripped off their actual heritage/ identity and thus slavery, ocer the years created a new ethnicity.
All these people have in common is their ancestors (or some of them) originally being from Africa, regardless of actual ethnicity inside Africa, and their ancestors being enslaved. After slavery the original ethnicity/culture/whatever doesnt matter anymore, because its super hard to find out, thus creating the group of African-Americans.
This is also the difference between blacks in general and African-Americans. They are not the same, not even in domestic politics Murica.
But African American would also include the more recent MENA (Middle East North African) connotation, and those are more specifically labeled as Middle Eastern.
Are these the same people who also believe that some vikings were black and accepted in their society because the saga of Geirmundr Heljarskinn existed?
American Definitions of "black" or "white" never managed to describe European or African populations anyways.
Native Phonecians, Egyptians, Greeks Romans ect. Looked and still look like the average Tunisian, Egyptian, Greek Turkish or South-Italian person: Black Hair, Brown eyes, Tanned skin.
Debates like "was Cleopatra black" only happen because US Americans are either uneducated or want to enforce their arbitrary definitions of "race" and cultures onto the world.
People all over the world define themselves by the culture they were brought up in, the language they speak, the religion they follow, not some colour gradiant scale applied to their skin.
Just FYI, some of us are neither uneducated nor wanting to espouse the mouthbreathers' definition of "race".
You might try not stereotyping people when complaining abour people stereotyping others.
Hannibal, like all other ethnic Carthaginians, was Phoenician, and so must've looked Middle-Eastern. Carthage wasn't a native African state. Sure they had black mercenaries in their army and were in frequent contact with them, but the Ethnic Carthaginian would identify closer to his cousins in Lebanon than a Black neighbor across the street.
Also, native Tunisians aren't what most Americans or Europeans would call "black" either.
all of north africa looks middle-eastern/mediterranean, you have to go to sub-saharan africa for black people to be the majority.
Itβs almost as if the Mediterranean was a boost to people around its shores intermingling.
Also known as Amazigh
There are black North African who are native to North Africa. Not all blacks in North Africa were slaves
They're 98% arab, so that's not exactly shocking
Add to that fact that after the Alexander's conquest of Tyre - the mother-city of Carthage, many pure-blood Phoenicians from there run away to the colonies - to the Carthage. The time diffrence between the Punic Wars and Alexander's conquest is after all only 114 years - it's not enough time for the elite to mix with local people.
Calling the Romans "a white empire" is also a bit of a stretch, since a good number of them would be only marginally fairer skinned than their Punic opponents. A modern American would probably just call both of them latinos if they walked by him on the streets.
Race isn't real in the first place.
It's very accurate that race isn't biologically true - it doesn't exist on the same level as species and clades do. But I think it's important to remember that many modern people still believe in race despite of the evidence, so countering racist myths (like the one presented here), requires engaging with modern perceptions of race. History is always much more complicated, nuanced and interesting than racist pundits want it to be. Edit: to the Romans, of course, the Punics were decadents southerners, but they thought of themselves as just as distinct from Germanic peoples as modern Americans do from, say, Chinese.
But many modern people have different ideas about race. The specific American view of race which fronts skin color as the most important attribute and is all about the one drop rule stems from the American history with the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Other cultures had different experiences and so the concept of race still varies from place to place.
Calling the Romans "a white empire" is dumb, yes, but it is so for an entirely different reason: it existed centuries before the concept of race as we know it today. Back in the day, no one really gave a shit about skin color per se. While xenophobia abounded (like in all of human history, really), people were much more interested in where you were from (which lands, which tribe, which city, etc.). Also, though not really applicable to the Roman Republic from the time of the Punic wars, the later Empire expanded to include lands from Britain to Egypt and the Levant - thus including people of a great variety of ethnicities, and with full citizenship to boot.
abandon the American racial mindset and embrace the Italian way: the guy is well dressed? he good ππ» he got money? even gooder ππ»ππ»
He wears trousers. He is a barbarian
Well white Latinos exist obviously people think white is like one unified thing
Not to mention how some continents have almost no notion that the African continent contains quite a lot of people who look Mediterranean rather than black.
And also most of north africa is not really what Americans know as black. The us stereotype blacks as being like west africans and project it on all other peoples. And why is it so important for people to put race into it. The Carthaginian wars had little to do with race, color or what not, they were about two growing powers fighting for influence against each other.
I thinkthe Numidian Light Cavalry, which were employed by Carthage were closer to what Europeans and Americans would consider black
Even they weren't necessarily all black. North Africa on the Mediterranean coast was first inhabited by Berbers who resemble Middle Easterners, then they were invaded by the Arabs. The Black majority starts in Sub-Saharan Africa.
I've always seen them portrayed as black in books. Thanks for clarification
βοΈβοΈβοΈLEBANON MENTIONED π±π§π±π§π©π©βοΈβοΈ
...So... You are saying that just because some people lived in the african region it doesn't mean that they had to be black!?... No... Who would have guessed?...
They were a greek colony.
Phoenician
Which in turn was a greek colony, the colonies made colonies. Tyre would be more accurate, and they were very much a greek state. that bastard pygmalion..
the phoenicians did get influenced by the Greek (like most if not all Mediterranean civilizations did) but they can't be classified as Greek.
You see a seafaring civilization, you have the greeks write chronicles about them. Like sure, they where not from Athen, Just like Alexander was from Macedonia. Tyre was a city founded by greeks, sure the inhabitants would not be "greek" and would call themself "Phoenican". Greece wasent a thing and was made up of cities - Athens stood as a pillar. I do believe Tyre was founded by the greeks and Macedonia brought them back into the fold.
i agree with most of what you're saying but I cant find anything about Greeks fouding Tyre. To my knowledge it was one of the first places inhabited by the Phoenicians as a sea port town.
I read through the wikipedia article and couldn't find anything that suggested this. It says that Tyre is one of the oldest cities in history and that the Phoenicians were both genetically and culturally distinct from the Greeks. Do you have a source?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek\_colonisation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_colonisation) I might be wrong? seems like Occam's razor where did they learn to build ships?
> where did they learn to build ships? They invented the trireme. The Greeks learned from them
Alexander notes in his chronicles how wood from Tyre made the best ships. Even now the flag of Lebanon is a big Tree. They were the masters of the sea for sure But the only contenders to the greeks, was either Egypt or Persia. They did not spring up from nothing, We know the greeks were colonising the mediterran in these times.
I don't exactly understand what you're trying to say but we have fairly clear documentation as to the origins of the Phoenicians. They were a continuation of the bronze age Canaanite culture. Canaanites and Phoenicians are essentially the same, just existing in different ages of history (Canaanites are bronze age and Phoenicians are iron age). They have been in the Levant since the 5th millennium BC, so way before the Greeks started doing just about anything. You can call them Arabic if you really stretch the definition of Arabic, but certainly not Greek in any way. I have no idea where you got that from
Never where they from south african decent....
The same idiots who believe a woman of Greek ancestry was black because she was a ruler of Egypt.
They're not just idiots, they're also racist, they think everyone from Africa is black,
And probably don't know anything about Sub Saharan Africa's history, to actually know about people like Shaka Zulu or Ana Nzinga of Mbande Ndogo Both were leaders who fought against European powers like the British and Portuguese and succeed.
100%.
Americans. Just Americans.
Don't associate us with them..
Yes, please.
The ironic thing is every person I have seen argue that with a straight face had African ("black") ancestry.
Afrocentrism is a helluva drug
Any ethnocentrism tends to be. No group is immune from it.
It's likely he was a bit tanned, but like most of mediterraneans.
People who don't really know what Africa is.
When you're so lazy into learning history you just find it easier to blackwash someone.
US Americans in particular tend to immagine Africa as a completely "black" continent ignoring the fact that it's as large as Europe, North America and Australia combined and has the ethnic diversity one would expect from such large landmass. The fact that they have culturally programmed themsleves to say *African-American* instead of black kinda short circuits their brains.
I think saying Afrian-American makes perfect sense in a domestic context. People who were enslaved back them got ripped off their actual heritage/ identity and thus slavery, ocer the years created a new ethnicity. All these people have in common is their ancestors (or some of them) originally being from Africa, regardless of actual ethnicity inside Africa, and their ancestors being enslaved. After slavery the original ethnicity/culture/whatever doesnt matter anymore, because its super hard to find out, thus creating the group of African-Americans. This is also the difference between blacks in general and African-Americans. They are not the same, not even in domestic politics Murica.
But African American would also include the more recent MENA (Middle East North African) connotation, and those are more specifically labeled as Middle Eastern.
Her grandmother said so π€·
Americans think there are basically two types of people in this world
Some people really be looking at the map of africa thinking that every person that has lived there before european colonization was black, huh?
Probably the same people that claim that Cleopatra was black.
Letβs put it a step further - Hannibal was a black woman.
I don't care what anybody else says. My mother told me that Adolf Hitler was mexican. -that person, probably.
Trans General be dunking on Rome
I take offence to this.
It's funny how these people take a certain part of history, make it about racial stuff, then totally ignoring the history of sub-saharan Africa.
If anything, Hannibal would be more like modern day Arab or North African
Delusional uneducated idiots.
Isnt he African? check mate atheist :coffee:
Woah, did someone just realize africa had history prior to our modern racial definitions?
Are these the same people who also believe that some vikings were black and accepted in their society because the saga of Geirmundr Heljarskinn existed?
In the recent past, suprasaharan Africa was called white Africa, because of how similar North Africans look to southern Europeans
I guess they simply looked up where he was from, and obviously every African that ever existed was black
Other than this FB article is a clickbait, I can only add that Carthago delende est.
Ah yes assuming everyone in Africa is black to fight racism, while being racist with the same exact comment.
Regards
This is not a meme.
The meme is the people who believe anyone with any connection to Africa is black.
It's just rage bait.
Hmm, careful of those implications, fellow.
American Definitions of "black" or "white" never managed to describe European or African populations anyways. Native Phonecians, Egyptians, Greeks Romans ect. Looked and still look like the average Tunisian, Egyptian, Greek Turkish or South-Italian person: Black Hair, Brown eyes, Tanned skin. Debates like "was Cleopatra black" only happen because US Americans are either uneducated or want to enforce their arbitrary definitions of "race" and cultures onto the world. People all over the world define themselves by the culture they were brought up in, the language they speak, the religion they follow, not some colour gradiant scale applied to their skin.
Just FYI, some of us are neither uneducated nor wanting to espouse the mouthbreathers' definition of "race". You might try not stereotyping people when complaining abour people stereotyping others.