A Nubian Princess

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Beyond Nubia
The Nation Behind Our Word
The Olmec and Nubia Connection
The Far East and Nubia Connection
The India and Nubian Connection

A Tribute: Dr Huey P. Newton
A Portrayal
A Queen's Journey: Part One
A Queens' Journey: Part Two
A Queen's Journey: Part Three

"Why the passion to self-identify as "Nubian"? It is because 'Nubia' today denotes not just the geographical region comprising northern Sudan to southern Egypt, it has come to stand for all that has been lost, or stolen, from the historical record of black African contributions to civilization".

--Wonders of the African World by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

"The very first people of whom we have any archeological evidence in the area of northeastern Africa have been identified as Nubians. The Nubians are darker in complexion than the Arab or Copt and they have heavier facial features and coarser hair. They are believed to be the first Black people."

-- Bianche, The Nubians-People of the Ancient Nile.

The Nubians settled along the banks of the Nile from Aswan, south of Egypt, to the 6th cataract just south of Khartoum (capital of Sudan). Along this great river they developed one of the oldest and greatest civilizations in Africa. Until they lost their last kingdom (Christian Nubia) only 5 centuries ago, the Nubians remained the main rival to the other great African civilization, Egypt. The word Nubia comes from the ancient Egyptian word for gold because this is the place where gold from the interior of Africa made its way through these people's hands into the courts of the pharaoh.

I have wrapped myself in my people's
essence, learned to wear Africa's stole
of dark, soft energy like night vapors
rising from rain soaked furrows...

-- Aneb Kgositsile from "Fourth Decade"

The belief of a shadowy lake spirit originated in Africa. The spirit assumed the guise of a European-looking mermaid in the 20th century. "Mami Wata" is described as having long dark hair, very fair skin and compelling eyes. Although she may appear to her devotees (in dreams and visions) as a beautiful golden mermaid, complete with tail, she is also said to walk the streets of modern African cities in the guise of a gorgeous but elusive woman.

"... Things move - black shiny bodies, perfect bodies, bodies of sleek unearthly poise and beauty. Eyes languish, black eyes, - slow eyes, lovely and tender eyes in great formless faces..."

-- W.E.B. Dubois

As we know, it has been recently and scientifically proven through studies of DNA that all of humanity we see around us today has a common place of origin. Where is this common place of origin? All humans of today can ultimately trace their ancestral roots back to. . . Africa. The African people ARE the world’s Aborigines. The writings herein are split into informative pieces that touch on scientific facts of support from scholars and scientists from varying parts of the world.

Part I

The world is a diverse place. People come in all shapes and sizes, with obvious differences in abilities and appearances. There are many 'faces of Man' found throughout the world. Although the faces are different, the genetic structure, the DNA, is not so different as most people might believe. Over 99% of the DNA in all people is identical. This is not an accident. Most of the proteins that carry out the biochemical functions of a human body are made exactly the same from one person to the next. The remaining one percent, however, accounts for people's diversity. It can also be used as a tool to determine how genetically "related" people are.

By comparing mutations in the DNA of people who live in different parts of the world, geneticists are developing new theories about how humans populated the Earth. The evidence points to a common African origin. Much of the work has been based upon maternal lines. The DNA of present-day Africans is more diverse than that of people of other continents, indicating that humans have lived in Africa the longest.
http://www.freemaninstitute.com/RTGdna.htm
http://www.trussel.com/prehist/news214.htm

Come with me as we explore our world’s origins.
As we leave Africa, our first stop is in the region Middle America. From there we will travel to Europe and the Mediterranean. We will make subsequent stops in Arabia, and the Far East with regions including Thailand, China and India. We will also stop in Australia, and finally the United States. We will pause momentarily in India and Australia with special note. But for now, lets begin our journey with the Olmecs and the Nubians in Middle America.

Part II

The Maya were thought of as the "mother culture" of Mexico, and therefore the Olmec were either insignificant or Maya themselves, but in any case it was thought that the Olmec were later in development.
http://www.mesoweb.com/olmec

Then in 1939 a carving was discovered near one of the gigantic head with a characteristic Olmec design on one side and a date symbol on the other. This revealed a shocking truth: the Olmec had a far greater right to be considered the mother culture.

Authors Haslip-Viera, Ortiz de Montellano and Barbour (1997) have argued that Olmec civilization was not influenced by Africans and therefore Afro centrism should have no standing in higher education, but in fact it can be illustrated that the facial types associated with the Olmec people and Meroitic people are identical.

Moreover a comparison of Olmec heads and a bust of Taharqo illustrated striking similarities when they were placed along side each other (Winters, 1984b:47). The iconographic evidence of the ancient Nubians clearly indicate that there were many round faced, thick lipped, flat nosed Nubians described in the Classical literature (Snowden, 1996: 106) that fit the archtypical Olmec ruler type ( Haslip-Viera, Ortiz de Montellano and Barbour, 1997).

The ancient Nubians like African-Americans today were not monolithic, they had different hues of skin, facial features and nose shapes (Keita, 996: 104).

This is evident in from the wall-painting from the tomb-chapel of Sebekhotep at Thebes, c.1400 BC, which show Nubians, of different types bringing rings of gold, incense and other luxury items to the Egyptian Pharaoh (Taylor, 1991).

Many original populations of countries like Cambodia and the Philippines have similar characteristics. These characteristics might have been brought along when the first humans entered the Americas from Asia.

However, the fact that Olmec figurines such as the Tuxtla statuette excavation are inscribed with African writing used by the Mande people of West Africa (Wiener, 1922; Winters, 1979 , of Manding writing provide the "absolute proof" recovered by archaeologists from "controlled excavations in the New World" demanded by Haslip-Viera, Ortiz de Montellano and Barbour (1997: 419) to "proof"/confirm Olmec and African contact.

http://homepages.luc.edu/~cwinter/ortiz1.htm
http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/O/Olmec.asp
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/8919/decip1.html

Point to Ponder

In so many instances African and African-American history is either not known, has been purposely left out of our history books or re-written in such a way as minimize its affects on our world of today.

Whether or not the above information is palatable, it is most important to know that WE ARE ALL ONE group of interconnected people, beautifully diverse, and placed upon this earth to coexist--all with warm red blood.

Your Nubian Princess

Part III

One of the foremost tasks for contemporary African centered scholars is to provide an historical overview of the global African community. This is a critical task that must be completed in its entirety. This includes the history, culture and present condition of African people both at home and abroad. If not for the primordial migrations of early African people, humanity would have remained physically Africoid, and the rest of the world outside of the African continent absent of human life. This is our starting point as we continue on.

Thailand

Thailand has an extremely ancient but little known Black population. They are the forest dwelling people called Sekai, sometimes identified by the controversial term– "Negritos". These Black folks live in southern Thailand in the region straddling the border with northern Malaysia.

The Thailand National Museum houses some of the finest and most African looking Buddhist images in the world. In particular, those images that can be traced back to the cultural phase known as the Mon or Dvaravati cultural period when an independent kingdom flourished in southern Thailand from the sixth to the eleventh century. The Mon people, apparently highly Africoid, practiced Theravada Buddhism, and it seems that the present Thais adopted Buddhism from them. Indeed, more than ninety-five percent of the Thais today are Theravada Buddhists.

In 1883, the physical appearance of many Southeast Asian images of the Buddha were described by African-American scholar George Washington Williams thusly:

"In the temples of Siam [Thailand] we find the idols fashioned like unto Negroes.... Traces of this black race are still to be found along the Himalaya range from the Indus to Indo-China, and the Malay Peninsula, and in mixed form through the southern states to Ceylon."

Before Williams, with regard to the Buddha appearance, Godfrey Higgins,(1) in 1833, argued that:

"In the most ancient temples scattered throughout Asia, where his worship is yet continued, he is found black as jet, with the flat face, thick lips and curly hair of the Negro."

The Black community is extremely minute now but all over Thailand.
http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/thailand.html

The Philippines

In the Philippines there are 29 known language groups of "Negritos," spoken by the aboriginal peoples of that island nation. These Negritos, found on several islands (The Visayan Islands), number in total about 31,000. http://www.sil.org/silewp/1997/004/

Negros island which is among of the Visayan group is located in Central Philippines. It is separated from the island of Panay to the northwest by the Guimaras Strait and from Cebu island to the east by the Tañon Straits. The island is bordered on the north and south by the Visayan and Sulu seas, respectively
http://members.tripod.com/a_kocak0/filipin.htm

(1)Though not generally known in this day and age, Godfrey Higgins (1772-1833), archeologist, politician, humanitarian, social reformer, and author, was one of the most enlightened and educated men of early 19th century England. He was a well-known iconoclast, rationalist, and admirer of the Jews, who vehemently opposed any kind of persecution of this ancient religious group. He wrote two oversized volumes, totaling around 1600 pages of fine print, about the Jews' Indian origins. These two volumes, entitled Anacalypsis, are extremely rare. The last printing was done in 1965 by University Books, NY. It's a difficult book to read because the author painstakingly proved the minutest of details in his dissertation. Even good readers need several weeks to finish it.

Negritos

NEGRITOS (Span. for little Negroes ), the name originally given by the Spaniards to the aborigines of the Philippine Islands. The true Negritos are always of little stature (the majority under 5 ft.), have rounded forms and their skull is brachycephalic or subbrachycephalic, that is to say, it is relatively short and broad and of little height. Their skin is dark brown or black, sometimes somewhat yellowish, their hair woolly (scanty on face and body), and they have the flat nose and thick lips and other physical features of the Negro.

The aboriginal inhabitants of the islands were the Negritos, or Pygmies, also called Aetas or Balugas; they now constitute only a small percentage of the total population. The people of the Philippines are called Filipinos. Their ancestors, who were of Malay stock, came from the southeastern Asian mainland as well as from what is now Indonesia. From the 10th century, contacts with China resulted in a group of mixed Filipino-Chinese descent, who account for a minority of the population. A small percentage of Chinese nationals also live in the country. Spanish-Filipinos and Filipino-Americans may be distinguished by their fairer complexion, taller stature, and aquiline nose structure. The relatively small numbers of emigrants from the Indian subcontinent added to the population's racial mixture.
http://atlas.mapzones.com/philippines/philippines.php

CHINA

"Our work shows that modern humans first came to southeast Asia and then moved later to northern China," said Li Jin, a population geneticist at the University of Texas in Houston. "This supports the idea that modern humans
originated in Africa."

Jin said the study is based on analysis of the gene patterns from 43 different ethnic groups in China and Asia. He said the technique gives an indication of how people moved and mixed over thousands of generations. Migration clues are carried in genetic patterns, called microsatellites, that change rapidly over time. By analyzing these changes and linking them to earlier genetic patterns, researchers are able to plot the migration of ancient humans.

In China, an Africoid presence is visible from remote antiquity. The Shang, for example, China's first dynasts,
are described as having "black and oily skin." The famous Chinese sage Lao-Tze was "black in complexion."
http://www.trinicenter.com/FirstChinese.htm

Black Chinese

The rise of food production in China spawned several great prehistoric movements of human populations, or of cultural traits, or of both. One of the movements, within China itself, created the political and cultural phenomenon of China as we know it today

Samang Women	So overwhelming was this Chinese steamroller, termed the Austronesian expansion, that the former peoples of tropical Southeast Asia have left behind few traces in the region's modern populations. Just three relict groups of hunter- gatherers - the Semang Negritos of the Malay Peninsula, the Adaman Islanders, and the Veddoid Negritos of Sri Lank remain to suggest that tropical Southeast Asia's former inhabitants may have been dark-skinned and curly-haired, like modern New Guineans and unlike the light-skinned, straight-haired South Chinese and the modern tropical Southeast Asians who are their offshoots. Those relict Negritos of Southeast Asia may be the last survivors of the source population from which Australia and New Guinea highlands were colonized. http://www.niugini.com/wordpub/inde270398/feature2.htm	Samang Man

Part IV

(*please see Princess notes below before reading)

Since the first modern humans (Homo sapiens) were of African birth, the African presence globally can be demonstrated through the history of the Black populations that have inhabited the world within the span of recent humanity. Not only are African people the aboriginal people of the planet, however, there is abundant evidence to show that Black people created and sustained many of the world's earliest and most enduring civilizations. Such was the case in India.

India

The Associated Press(1),
“Scientists from the University of Padua in Italy examined hereditary material in cells found that modern humans followed a migration wave from Africa to Asia thousands of years ago after an earlier exodus to the Mediterranean and Greece. Blood samples of people from east Africa and India showed close genetic similarities indicating a common African ancestor.”

The Italian study was reported in the December 1998 issue of the Journal Nature Genetics.

Exceptionally valuable writings reflecting close relationships between Africa and early India have existed for more than two thousand years. In the first century B.C.E.(2), for example, the famous Greek historian Diodorus Siculus penned that, "From Ethiopia he (Osiris) passed through Arabia, bordering upon the Red Sea as far as India.... He built many cities in India, one of which he called Nysa, willing to have remembrance of that (Nysa) in Egypt, where he was brought up."

The literary work of the early Christian writer Eusebius preserves the tradition that, "In the reign of Amenophis III [the mighty Dynasty XVIII Egyptian king] a body of Ethiopians migrated from the country about the Indus, and settled in the valley of the Nile." And still another document from ancient times, the Itinerarium Alexandri, says that "India, taken as a whole, beginning from the north and embracing what of it is subject to Persia, is a continuation of Egypt and the Ethiopians."

(1) the world's oldest and largest news organization.

(2) BCE stands for "Before the common era." It is expected to replace BC, which means "Before Christ." BC and BCE are also identical in value. Most theologians and religious historians believe that the approximate birth date of Yeshua of Nazareth (Jesus) was in the fall, sometime between 4 and 7 BCE.

The term "common" simply means that this is the most frequently used calendar system: the Gregorian Calendar. There are many religious calendars in existence, but each of these are normally in use in only a small geographic area of the world -- typically by followers of a single religion.

In Greater India, more than a thousand years before the foundations of Greece and Rome, proud and industrious Black men and women known as Dravidians erected a powerful civilization. We are referring here to the Indus Valley civilization- -India's earliest high-culture, with major cities spread out along the course of the Indus River.

The Indus Valley civilization was at its height from about 2200 B.C.E. to 1700 B.C.E. This phase of its history is called the Harappan, the name being derived from Harappa, one of the earliest known Indus Valley cities.

In 1922, about 350 miles northeast of Harappa, another large Indus city, Mohenjo-daro (the Mound of the Dead) was identified. Mohenjo-daro and Harappa were apparently the chief administrative centers of the Indus Valley complex, and since their identification, several additional cities, including Chanhu-daro, Kalibangan, Quetta and Lothal have been excavated.

The decline and fall of the Indus Valley civilization has been linked to several factors, the most important of which were the increasingly frequent incursions of the White people known in history as Aryans--violent Indo-European tribes initially from central Eurasia and later Iran. Indeed, the name Iran means the "land of the Aryan." (we will discuss the Aryan Nation in the next section)

It is safe to say that when we speak of the Dravidians as a people we are speaking of the living descendants of the Harappan people of the ancient Indus Valley who were pushed into South India as the result of the Aryan invasions. This is certainly consistent with Dravidian traditions which recall flourishing cities that were either lost or destroyed in antiquity. The term "Dravidian," however, encompasses both an ethnic group and a linguistic group. The ethnic group is characterized by straight to wavy hair textures, combined with Africoid physical features. In reference to this Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop stated that:

"There are two well-defined Black races: one has a black skin and woolly hair; the other also has black skin, often exceptionally black, with straight hair, aquiline nose, thin lips, an acute cheekbone angle. We find a prototype of this race in India: the Dravidian. It is also known that certain Nubians likewise belong to the same Negro type...Thus, it is inexact, anti-scientific, to do anthropological research, encounter a Dravidian type, and then conclude that the Negro type is absent.”

From at least the third century C.E. three major Dravidian kingdoms existed in South India: the kingdoms of Pandya, Chera and Chola. Pandya was the southernmost Dravidian kingdom.

In 1288 and again in 1293 the Venetian traveler Marco Polo visited the Pandyan kingdom and left a vivid description of the land and its people. Polo exclaimed that:

"The darkest man is here the most highly esteemed and considered better than the others who are not so dark. Let me add that in very truth these people portray and depict their gods and their idols black and their devils white as snow. For they say that God and all the saints are black and the devils are all white. That is why they portray them as I have described."

The Travels of Marco Polo

Birth of the Untouchables

The White tribes that invaded India and disrupted Black civilization there are known as Aryans. The Aryans were not necessarily superior warriors to the Blacks but they were aggressive, developed sophisticated military technologies and glorified military virtues. After hundreds of years of intense martial conflict the Aryans succeeded in subjugating most of northern India. Throughout the vanquished territories a rigid, caste-segmented social order was established with the masses of conquered Blacks (called Shudras) essentially reduced to slaves to the Whites and imposed upon for service in any capacity required by their White conquerors.

This vicious new world order was cold-bloodily racist, with the Whites on top, the mixed races in the middle, and the overwhelming majority of Black people on the very bottom. In fact, the Aryan term varna, denoting one's societal status and used interchangeably with caste, literally means color or complexion and reflects a prevalent racial hierarchy. Truly, India is still a racist country. White supremacist David Duke claimed "that his 1970's visit to India was a turning point in his views on the superiority of the White race."

Caste law in India, based originally on race, regulated all aspects of life, including marriage, diet, education, place of residence and occupation. This is not to deny that there were certain elements of the Black aristocracy that managed to gain prominence in the dominant White social structure. The masses of conquered Black people, however, were regarded by the Whites as Untruth itself. The Whites claimed to have emerged from the mouth of God; the Blacks, on the other hand, were said to have emerged from the feet of God. This was the ugly reality for the Black masses in conquered India.

Servitude to Whites became the basis of the lives of the Black people of India for generation after generation after generation. With the passage of time, this brutally harsh, color-oriented, racially-based caste system became the foundation of the religion that is now practiced throughout all India. This is the religion known as Hinduism.

The existence of Untouchability has been justified within the context of Hindu religious thought as the ultimate and logical extensions of Karma and rebirth. Indus believe that persons are born Untouchables because of the accumulation of sins in previous lives. Hindu texts describe these people as foul and loathsome, and any physical contact with them was regarded as polluting.

Untouchables were usually forced to live in pitiful little settlements on the outskirts of Hindu communities. During certain periods in Indian history Untouchables were only allowed to enter the adjoining Hindu communities at night. Indeed, the Untouchables' very shadows were considered polluting, and they were required to beat drums and make loud noises to announce their approach. Untouchables had to attach brooms to their backs to erase any evidence of their presence.

www.public.asu.edu/~ntsmith1/india/Index.htm

Untouchables Today

The basis status of India's Untouchables has changed little since ancient times. On August 10, 1991 six Untouchables were shot to death in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. On August 16, 1991, an Untouchable woman was stripped in public and savagely beaten in the southern state of Andra Pradesh.

On September 6, 1991, in the western state of Maharastra, an Untouchable policeman was killed for entering a Hindu temple. Official Indian figures on violent crimes by caste Hindus against Untouchables have averaged more than 10,000 cases per year, with the figures continuing to rise. The Indian government listed 14,269 cases of atrocities by caste Hindus against Untouchables in 1989 alone. However, Indian human rights workers report that a large number of atrocities against Untouchables, including beatings, gang-rapes, arson and murders, are never recorded. Even when charges are formally filed, justice for Untouchables is rarely dispensed.

http://www.saxakali.com/CommunityLinkups/dalit3.htm

The Black Panther Party and the Dalit Panther Party

Possibly the most substantial percentage of Asia's Blacks can be identified among India's 160 million "Untouchables" or "Dalits." Frequently they are called "Outcastes." Indian nationalist leader and devout Hindu Mohandas K. Gandhi called them "Harijans," meaning "children of god." The official name given them in India's constitution (1951) is "Scheduled Castes." "Dalit," meaning "crushed and broken," is a name that has come into prominence only within the last four decades. "Dalit" reflects a radically different response to oppression.

The Dalit are demonstrating a rapidly expanding awareness of their African ancestry and their relationship to the struggle of Black people throughout the world. They seem particularly enamored of African-Americans. African-Americans, in general, seem almost idolized by the Dalit, and the Black Panther Party, in particular, is virtually revered. In April 1972, for example, the Dalit Panther Party was formed in Bombay, India. This organization takes its pride and inspiration directly from the Black Panther Party of the United States.

www.tribuneindia.com/2003/20031211/j&k.htm

members.tripod.com/ailecia/mumiaphotos/page6.html

This is a highly important development due to the fact that the Untouchables have historically been so systematically terrorized that many of them, even today, live in a perpetual state of extreme fear of their upper caste oppressors. This is especially evident in the villages. The formation of the Dalit Panthers and the corresponding philosophy that accompanies it signals a fundamental change in the annals of resistance, and Dalit Panther organizations have subsequently spread to other parts of India. In August 1972, the Dalit Panthers announced that the 25th anniversary of Indian independence would be celebrated as a day of mourning.

In 1981, in Bangalore, India Dravidian journalist V.T. Rajshekar published the first issue of Dalit Voice--the major English journal of the Black Untouchables. In a 1987 publication entitled the African Presence in Early Asia, Rajshekar stated that:

"The African-Americans also must know that their liberation struggle cannot be complete as long as their own blood-brothers and sisters living in far off Asia are suffering. It is true that African-Americans are also suffering, but our people here today are where African-Americans were two hundred years ago. African-American leaders can give our struggle tremendous support by bringing forth knowledge of the existence of such a huge chunk of Asian Blacks to the notice of both the American Black masses and the Black masses who dwell within the African continent itself."

Princess Notes:

I found this particular reading to be somewhat disturbing but because it is a part of this world's history, I could not leave it out. It is my sincere hope that our red blood will one day be basis for unity in our world. However, if you would like to read more indepth on this passage please visit the link below.

http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/india.html

Our next stop....Europe.

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