Black Hannibal?

[Old_Scratch]

Well, History (Channel) has released another terrible program called Barbarians Rising. An otherwise forgettable docudrama except for the controversy stirred up by the depiction of Hannibal as black, and it's not the first program to do so either. Is Black Hannibal getting mainstream acceptance? Is there any validity to this depiction, and how important is race in history?

https://youtu.be/hfIe9P13X8s

[Dromikaites]

We've already had a black Oliver Warbucks (Jamie Foxx) and a black Dracula (William Marshall). So why not a black Hannibal followed by a black Hannibal Lecter?

[Basil II the B.S]

Meh, ''History'' Channel had stuff about aliens, they stopped being a credible thing years ago.

What baffles me about Afrocentrism is the fact that they ignore legitimately great black civilizations like Mali, Ghana, Songhay (and slaves to America came mostly from there), Ethiopia to claim North African ones. It's nothing short of an insult towards their actual ancestors ''your achievements are not good enough, we want others''.
Mansa Musa was likely the richest man of all times, what more do they want?

[Spear Dog]

I know plenty of Lebanese, the descendants of the Phoenicians, and they can be very dark-skinned - particularly those that work all day in the sun. It is more than likely that a Phoenician colony in North Africa, after mixing with the locals for a few generations would be as dark-skinned as any mixed heritage African person is today. The guy in the clip is totally believable for a North African Hannibal.

[+Marius+]

I know plenty of Lebanese, the descendants of the Phoenicians, and they can be very dark-skinned - particularly those that work all day in the sun.

You westerners are so focused on skin color it is hilarious.

It is not about skin color, there are plenty of Caucasians darker than the dude in the clip, it is about race and facial structure.

This is how Tunisian men look like;

http://www.ftvb.org/evenements/fa3f9f70b.jpg


These blokes are Lebanese;

http://nna-leb.gov.lb/files/pictures...allpicture.jpg


Whichever way you go, you do not end up with the "WE WUZ KAANGS" dude.

What they did is the equivalent of Neal McDonough playing Saladin, because some dude once met a blonde Kurdish fellow and that somehow makes it right.

[Abdülmecid I]

To add some points to Marius' post.

I know plenty of Lebanese, the descendants of the Phoenicians, and they can be very dark-skinned - particularly those that work all day in the sun. It is more than likely that a Phoenician colony in North Africa, after mixing with the locals for a few generations would be as dark-skinned as any mixed heritage African person is today. The guy in the clip is totally believable for a North African Hannibal.

Well, I doubt that the luxurious lifestyle of a Carthaginian aristocrat would involve hard work under the sun, not to mention that History Channel's Hannibal had clear sub-Saharan characteristics, from the overly dark skin colour to his skull shape, which are very uncommon among the Berbers, the inhabitants of the North African coastline, when the Carthaginian colonists arrived. Moreover, mixing with the locals was probably in a very small scale. Even nowadays, "interracial" marriage is very often frowned upon by the society, so you can imagine how well it was accepted more than two thousand years ago. Also, privileged groups, from the Hapsburgs to the Lagids and the Spartans tend to avoid mixing with "foreign" people, in an effort to allow their own special group to monopolize the financial and political power. Consequently, I would guess that apart from the early stages of the colony, where the predominantly male colonists desperately needed to find a bride, the members of the Carthaginian elite basically married either each other or wealthy Phoenician newcomers. There were, of course, exceptions, but they hardly made any noticeable difference. For example, it is reported that during Alexander's campaign in India, the Indian aristocrats and military officers tended to be paler than the common people and their levies, which is perhaps a remnant of the immigration and the political domination of the Indo-Aryans in the Indian sub-continent. Even today, according to the caste system of India, a light skin is preferred to a dark one, probably due to the association of the former with the upper and leading classes of the society.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://genome.cshlp.org/content/11/6/994.full.pdf

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://download.springer.com/static/...ad64957f6640b3

[sumskilz]

The people genetically most similar to the ancient Phoenicians are the population isolates of the Levant, particularly the Samaritans, who look like this:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The people genetically closest to ancient North Africans are the more isolated Berber groups, who look like this:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

That said, Ancient DNA study finds Phoenician from Carthage had European ancestry, but keep in mind that's only his direct matrilineage, not his full genome.

I've written a lot about this and posted a lot of references in these two threads:

The Archaeogenetics of the Middle East

The Archaeogenetics of North Africa

And for those into skin color, Europeans actually had darker skin even 2,000 years ago and the alleles for lighter skin color came from the Middle East, they've just been under greater selection in Europe.

EDIT: I mean a bit darker than today, due to ongoing selection of SLC45A2:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Source: Eight thousand years of natural selection in Europe

[Condottiere 40K]

I don't know if North Africans prefer lighter skinned mates, but Indians certainly do.

Skin colour was a reflection of social status.

[krips22]

I don't know if North Africans prefer lighter skinned mates, but Indians certainly do.

Skin colour was a reflection of social status.

This is a rather general trend AFAIK, at least in our time. I know that many Indian and African women buy products to lighten their skin (which is an important problem because these products are generally dangerous to some extent, with repetitive use).
I also remember an Arab muslim (wannabe-) kamikaze (IIRC) on TV that said that he would deserve virgin women with white skin, in paradise - and anyway I remember reading in an article that light skin was more appreciated than dark skin in Arab countries.

[sumskilz]

This is a rather general trend AFAIK, at least in our time. I know that many Indian and African women buy products to lighten their skin (which is an important problem because these products are generally dangerous to some extent, with repetitive use).
I also remember an Arab muslim (wannabe-) kamikaze (IIRC) on TV that said that he would deserve virgin women with white skin, in paradise - and anyway I remember reading in an article that light skin was more appreciated than dark skin in Arab countries.

It's an exaggeration of sexual dimorphism. In any given population, women have lighter skin than men. A lot of cultural ideals have that same loose connection to biology.

Although that doesn't explain when skin color is related to status.

[Roma_Victrix]

I know plenty of Lebanese, the descendants of the Phoenicians, and they can be very dark-skinned - particularly those that work all day in the sun. It is more than likely that a Phoenician colony in North Africa, after mixing with the locals for a few generations would be as dark-skinned as any mixed heritage African person is today. The guy in the clip is totally believable for a North African Hannibal.

No. That is not how the ancient Carthaginians operated. The Carthaginians were mostly purebred Levantine Phoenicians, direct descendants of those early colonists from the city of Tyre in what is now Lebanon. They were deeply xenophobic and like a lot of city-states at the time only counted people as citizens if they were born to existing citizens. Naturalized citizenship was rare. The Carthaginians also looked down on the offspring of those who were only half-Carthaginian, not considering them full citizens, and usually barring them from running for public office and in elections. This was the case for people of mixed Carthaginian and Sardinian heritage, Libyan heritage, Celt-Iberian heritage, Balearic heritage, Gallic heritage, etc. Even Greeks who had some Carthaginian blood were discriminated against.

And even then you're wrong about the locals. The legitimately recorded (sub-Saharan) blacks of antiquity lived in Mauretania, which was further west in Morocco, and in what is now the Sudan (Nubia) and Ethiopia (Axum) far to the east of Carthage. The hinterlands around the city-state of Carthage and its satellite states were Berber Numidian tribesmen, who look like modern-day brown-skinned Tunisians, a Caucasoidal people who don't share much in common with people south of the Sahara Desert. Take for instance this Numidian king:



If he was a black man, he would have been depicted otherwise. He looks like your typical North African man living in Tunisia today. Just look at his aquiline nose, for that matter. If he had been a black from sub-Saharan Africa, his nose would have been much flatter and wider in general, like your typical Nigerian or Malian.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Oh, so that's the guy I'm gonna get that 10 million in inheritance from! He looks like an honest fellow, I'm sure there's no harm in sending him my SSN.

Seriously, these History channel shows are total B.S. I want to slap some sense into them but I'm not rich and famous so I can't.

[bigdaddy1204]

There is no basis for a black Hannibal. He was no more black than the Vikings were. (i.e. not at all). The odd thing though is that we should care. Apart from strict historical accuracy, I don't see that his skin colour is relevant.

There does seem to be a rather bizarre idea in Total War: Rome II and Attila that the Garamantes and one or two other North African peoples were black, which seems to be based on nothing more than ignorance. While black people in Aethiopia is legitimate, none of the other African factions should be depicted that way. Presumably the game developer doesn't know what people in North Africa actually look like. it, why not make them Chinese? It's just as unrealistic.

[Old_Scratch]

So, I think it's safe to say that Hannibal most likely did not appear as depicted in Barbarians Rising. That being said, why would History choose to do so? I think it has to do with our obsession with race here in the USA. I don't think as far as I know any central African countries depicting Hannibal as black, or claiming him as their heritage, nor do I believe that Scandinavian countries are depicting him of Nordic complexion. Unlike other parts of the world, in the US we don't have ancient and unique cultural heritage (unless you're Native American) so we have to assimilate the ancient cultures of other people. It's something that pretty much everyone in the US does regardless of skin color. There's people who claim to be Irish who've never even been to Ireland, people who claim to be Native American who have neither the appearance nor any cultural knowledge of Native Americans, and so on. And that, I believe, is how Black Hannibal was born.

[+Marius+]

That being said, why would History choose to do so?

Because one dude in the team probably demanded it and the rest of the crew had to yield or else be called racist and have their lives ruined.

That is how you got this back in 2009;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G67jG4chNEA&t=4m36s

Yes, those are Hamilcar and Hannibal Barca.

[Condottiere 40K]

Gaddafi seemed to love his black brothers, and he certainly paid them enough to love him. The rest of the Libyans, apparently not so much.

[You_Guess_Who]

There does seem to be a rather bizarre idea in Total War: Rome II and Attila that the Garamantes and one or two other North African peoples were black, which seems to be based on nothing more than ignorance. While black people in Aethiopia is legitimate, none of the other African factions should be depicted that way. Presumably the game developer doesn't know what people in North Africa actually look like. it, why not make them Chinese? It's just as unrealistic.

My problem with Total War Africans is just they are lazily-made.

Vandals have Light Moorish Lancers, but the Moorish factions themselves cannot recruit them, because they are generic desert faction with generic desert faction roster. Nubians like Blemmyes should be black, but they are just another "Generic Desert Kingdoms", with only select Nubian units with dark skin. And those Nubian units are in other generic desert factions, from Maghribi all the way to Arabia. CA made the Garamantes ruling family, nobles, and generals black, but the units still looks like the generic desert factions.

About the Garamantes, I'll just quote someone else on this, from a thread I started to ask about the Garamantes "blackness":

We already had that discussion at Total War forums, but there it got closed by a mod. So here again an overview of all different ethnicities in modern Fazzan, means southwestern Libya (This time in better quality tho):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As you can see its pretty mixed up. This also fits with anthropological investigations on Garamantian bones (Though the amount of bones was quite limited) aswell with reports of Medieval Arab historians, who listed Berbers, Arabs and Sub-Saharans as habitants of the Fezzan.

And for the History series itself, I don't even expect anything at this point, and just laughed at the Chi-Rho on Hannibal's helmet alongside my dad. This kind of Hurrdurr channel antics is what make me pleasantly surprised at how good are the Lusitanian's helmets and falcata.

[krips22]

@ You_guess_who: "My problem with Total War Africans is just they are lazily-made."

Bah, in "Rome Total War, Barbarian Invasions", the Vandals and the Goths are basically depicted as Huns (both in portraits of leaders/generals and units IIRC).


Now that I think of it, in "300", they depicted the Persians as blacks (or at least many of them IIRC) ... Is my memory correct?

[Old_Scratch]

And for the History series itself, I don't even expect anything at this point, and just laughed at the Chi-Rho on Hannibal's helmet alongside my dad.

Hah, I noticed that too. Also, in one of the trailers for the show they depicted ancient Rome having St. Peters Basilica.

[LinusLinothorax]

Stop white-washing history, everyone knows that Hannibal was black! This video proves it beyond doubt with totaly not handpicked or unrelated sources:
https://youtu.be/KVjVU5FX-pI?t=36s