Appearance of Africans

[Copperknickers II]

I've been interested in African ethnicities recently, and I realised that I would have absolutely no idea how to tell one African apart from another, even if one was from Senegal and one from Zimbabwe. Obviously, Africans are probably the most diverse 'race' on the planet genetically, so I can put this largely down to lack of familiarity with them since I can go for months on end without seeing a black person where I live, and when I do they are almost always from Nigeria or Ghana.

Obviously, even amongst Europeans let alone all white people, you can pretty quickly tell an ethnic Brit from an ethnic Spanish person 4 times out of 5 (even without the teeth) but what are the main different populations, or continuums, between Africans? Could anyone here tell apart a Liberian from an Angolan? And which do the Afro-Caribbean/Americans most resemble?

[CtrlAltDe1337]

Black Americans look very different than most Africans I've met. I'm not sure where they come from, but the African students at my university are generally darker-skinned, shorter, and have smaller lips than the black Americans you generally see. I can't tell the hair apart, and the nose-eye shape seems to be about the same. But I don't even know where the African guys come from, so I suppose its not very useful to the discussion here.


And its funny, because to an American, its pretty hard to tell the different European ethnicities apart. I was in London not long ago and I noted there were some differences, but they were very slight compared to the white/black/latino distinctions you have in the U.S.

[Menelik_I]

Could anyone here tell apart a Liberian from an Angolan?

I have been to Angola and I can attest that they do seem capable of telling apart Congolese people, mostly because of the skin whitening products they use and the side-effect it produces.

It is a little difficult for the foreign eye, but locals [Africans] generally make the person origin at first glance, but it is not always racial sometimes is the way they speak or the outward cultural appearances like clothing.

but what are the main different populations, or continuum, between Africans?

That is a more difficult question, because pre-1900 transport was so difficult that you had various cultures isolated from each other or at least having sparse communication that made cultural contamination difficult. Therefore you had a lot of cultural and ethnic groups all over the map.

Then after 1950 two things happened : Independence and the automobile.

Cars and road networks made transport much more easier, and for the first time people from various ethnic and cultural groups could meet and exchange more easily than before. But then this mixture was mostly concentrated at first within the newly independent states borders, so you have a process of cultural synthesis at the national level, especially when various ethnic groups are concentrated in big capitals and create a new cultural identity there.

Also sometime the border divide a cultural group in two, so you have people from two nationalities who are indistinguishable like the case of some Angolans and Congolese, except on their language (Portuguese & French)

So in fact the Nigerian or Liberian you meet might be able to tell someone from the interior of his country from someone from someone from Freetown.

There might be a process of cross border cultural intercourse in Western-Africa, but I am not the best person to talk about it.

You could go with a pure geneticist distinction between Bantu, Nilotics, Khoisans, and (don't remember), but that doesn't' capture the differences. Only thing I can tell you is that the divisions are not always physicals, sometimes they are cultural.

[Adar]

My trick is to decide what African football player they are the most similar too and then I guess on that ethnicity.

Otherwise I think this map gives a decent hint of different ethnical groups.

[Ludicus]

I've been interested in African ethnicities recently

Ask MKGlouisville.
---
Until the colour of a man's skin / Is of no more significance / than the colour of his eyes / - Me say war.
Bob Marley.

[Kitsunegari]

I find that black Americans most resemble Nigerians (understandably). In Namibia it seemed that there were both avg South African types and very short "Bushmen" two distinct types. I understand many east Africans are supposed to be very tall and long-limbed.

[Claudius Gothicus]

All Africans in here(Argentina and we are just recently receiving immigration from there) I've met are generally very dark skinned, muscular or slim and quite tall. In comparison to the local ''African descendants'' who are usually mixed, more light skinned and tend to be shorter.

Now I'm not exactly sure about where do these African dudes come from but from what I heard when the census of 2010 was being made most of them come from Guinea and Cameroon.

[Nutsack]

I believe black Americans are generally larger as mentioned earlier mainly because of the slave trade. I am however familiar enough to be able to tell most Ethiopians apart from Nigerians for example, but that's about as far as it goes. In most cases from what I gather is that africans from the drier mountaineous regions of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti are generally a bit lighter in skintone and shorter than people further west in the wetter lands of the continent. They also have significant differentes in facial appearance which I can't really explain because I never thoughts about it before.

I suppose the main differences in genetics are probably quite often determined by geographical boundaries. For example, along the wet western coast of Nigeria all the way to Senegal you might have similarities compared to the people along the Sahel region. For example, Mali just had an armed uprising by the Tuareg who live in the northern part of the country. They differ a lot from the people of southern Mali mainly because I believe they might have intermixed with the berber and arabs of nothern africa. The Tuareg inhabit a dry region while the southern parts of Mali is more humid.

Also, the mountains of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti is a geographical region which must have divided people for some time because there are some stronger differences between them and others I think. The same with the region around Rwanda compared to Tanzania and the Congo. I also think there are significant differences once you reath the southern part of the continent but I've only met one person from South Africa and he was white. So either albino or not indigenous, lol.