Origin of term black for melanated people predates US existence

Two mutations that decrease expression of this gene were found in high frequencies in people with the darkest skin. These variants arose about a half-million years ago, suggesting that human ancestors before that time may have had moderately ...

Until recently, researchers assumed that after human ancestors shed most body hair, sometime before 2 million years ago, they quickly evolved dark skin for protection from skin cancer and other harmful effects of UV radiation.

Thus, 18th century scholars and biologists sought to explain dark skin of all shades or "Blackness" not out of innate interest in differences in skin color but to understand and rationalize the new colonial sources of profit, legal systems, and other practices. As the field of anatomy emerged with the aid of microscopy, scientists began to examine skin at a deeper level. In 1665, after examining 1 sample of skin, Marcello Malpighi claimed to discover a new structure in dark human skin, a distinct mucous layer between the epidermis and dermis, which he termed rete mucosum.

The association between strong sunlight and dark skin existed in antiquity (Snowden Jr., 1970) and became more formalized over the centuries during which the climatic theory of skin color developed, in tandem with the humoral theory of medicine (Jablonski, 2012b).

هل تساءلت يوماً لماذا يملك السود أنفاً مفلطحاً وشعراً مجعداً!؟ وهل تعرف لماذا تبدو عيون الآسيويين مسحوبة للأعلى ووجوه الروس منتفخة (وكأنهم استيقظوا من النوم)!؟ هذه الاختلافات تشكل جزءاً مما يعرف بعلم السلالات أو الاثنولوجيا (ETHNOLOGY).

كما أظهرت الاختبارات ... أنه في الوقت الذي كان يمتاز فيه الإنسان الأوروبي القديم بالعين الزرقاء، كان شعره أسود، أو بنيا، وكانت بشرته داكنة...

L'anthropologue et généticienne Évelyne Heyer explique, lors d'une exposition sur la peau, que la population européenne était encore noire il y a 12 000 ans.

تشير التحليلات إلى أن ما يقارب 60% من الأفراد الذين عاشوا في أوروبا كانت بشرتهم داكنة، مقابل أقل من 10% فقط لصالح البشرة الفاتحة، بينما ...

N’en déplaise à Nadine Morano, certains de ses aïeux, notamment transalpins, devaient sûrement avoir la peau un peu plus foncée que sa permanente. Nombre de ses plus lointains ancêtres ont même toutes les chances d’avoir été… noirs. Et pour cause : l’unique foyer d’émigration de l’homo sapiens, seul genre Homo aujourd’hui présent sur la planète, est l’Afrique.

In his far-reaching project, Frank ... through a transdisciplinary examination of “Ethiopians.” Ethiopian, as Snowden demonstrates, became in the Greco-Roman world a catchall term for Black-skinned individuals, and particularly those from regions south of Egypt's first ...

[Snowden] skips secondary sources for the ancient evidence: writings, coins, epigraphs, papyri, pottery, etc. With data gleaned from these, he draws conclusions about the Ethiopian's (black's) place in the Greek, Roman, and early Christian eras, the white man's attitude toward him. What emerges from Snowden's painstakingly thorough study is that it was not a confrontation--that skin color was no obstacle to harmony in the ancient world.

In charting representations in the Hellenic world of black Egyptians, Aithiopians, Indians, and Greeks, Sarah Derbew dexterously disentangles the complex and varied ways in which blackness has been co-produced by ancient authors and artists; their readers, audiences, and viewers; and contemporary scholars. Exploring the precarious hold that race has on skin coloration, the author uncovers the many silences, suppressions, and misappropriations of blackness within modern studies of Greek antiquity.

25) staging of a conversation between the Athenian Solon and Scythian Anacharsis, following the latter’s observation of Athenian athletic practices, results in an assertion of the athletes’ “somewhat red and rather black” (ὑπέρυθροι εἰς τὸ μελάντερον [hyperythroi es to melanteron]) skin as a sign of healthy virility (pp. 149-154). Finally, Heliodorus’ Aithiopika, discussed in Chapter 6, demonstrates the instability of ancient racial designations with Chariclea, a “white” (see n5) child of “black” Aithiopian royalty, indicating that Aithiopian identity could circumscribe “whiteness” as well as “blackness” (p. 159). At its core, the book executes a radical recuperation of blackness in antiquity.

The ancients did not fall into ... black skin color was not a sign of inferiority. Greeks and Romans did not establish color as an obstacle to integration in society. An ancient society was one that for all its faults and failures never made color the basis for judging a man. ... In classical antiquity, terms such as afer, maurus, niger, ater, fuscus, perustus, or melas were commonly used in reference to darker-toned physical ...

Au début du XXe siècle, alors que les théories raciales étaient très répandues, ce terme était associé à la notion de « race noire » et désignait des individus à la couleur de peau plus ou moins foncée, souvent aux cheveux noirs et aux yeux bruns, originaires d'Afrique subsaharienne ...