Blonde Berbers

Blonde Berbers

The strange case of the blond Berbers with blue eyes:

The Berbers are a population of North Africa that numbers around 35 million people. A part of it, now not very big, has extremely light skin, blue eyes and blond hair. This population, strange for an area with dark-haired people, has been known since ancient times and was once, proportionately, much larger.

The Romans say, surely exaggerating, that there are more blonds in Africa (Tunisia) than in Germany.

But still in the early Middle Ages, the Berber queen Kahina, who ruled a confederation of Berbers and Berber-Romans (video link in comments), is described as having "honey-colored hair". Let's also remember that the Berbers built a fundamental component for Roman Africa: they were a substantial part of Heraclius' army, they had citizenship, they used Latin as their official language, their leaders proclaimed themselves "kings of the Romans" etc. Saint Augustine was of Berber or half-Berber origin.

And so let's ask ourselves the question "where do these blond Berbers with blue eyes come from?"

Excluding migrations of blond people in recent times, such as the Vandals, given that the Berbers are long before their arrival, and considering that the "mutation" of the blond origins in Europe, the most logical explanation is that the ancestors of the Berbers were pre proto-Celts or proto-Germans or other similar people who returned to Africa in prehistoric times due to climate changes or in search of a more hospitable land. Or, that they returned in more recent times, but always starting from that context, for example during the period of the great Celt migrations.

It is difficult to think that these are populations that showed the blond anomaly spontaneously, because they would have been reabsorbed by their dark-eyed brothers quickly... but I am not so expert in genetics as to exclude it totally.

Archaeological evidence tells us of an extremely ancient blonde population, dating back perhaps 50,000 years ago.

In the photo: blonde Berber girl in traditional clothes (photo found on the internet)