Well, I guess Aurora will not answer my post as this thread was started 5 years and half ago. However, I still want to tell I agree with her/he when she/he says those who state senseless statements such as "North-Africans are Black" or "ancient North-Africans were Black" are desperately trying to attribute the huge heritage of the area to Sub-Saharans, perhaps because they feel they do not have any legacy to pride themselves (which is false considering Sub-Saharan Africa has Ethiopia and several other good civilisations). In addition, Aurora, I do not know how you concluded that such illogical theories were universally admitted but from what I know there is no credible scientist who validated them in North-Africa or in the Western World, everyone knows the inhabitants of North-Africa are not Blacks but Arabs. The people of Egypt mostly descends from the ancient Egyptian society, and became a part of the Arab World after the adhesion of their ancient Egyptian ancestors to Islam in the 7th century. Northwestern Africa (Morocco to Libya) are mainly descended from the Berbers, the earliest people of the land, who now identify as a part of the Arab civilisation or both Arab and Berber cultures. Ancient Berbers and ancient Egyptians were not Black, they were Chamitic-speaking people belonging to the Chamito-Semitic language family, which is not related to Sub-Saharan tongues and includes Arabic, ancient Egyptian, and Berber.

I will respond to some claims other posters made.

* Kabyles are exactly of the same stock as other Northwestern Africans, which is Berber. The genetic influence of the Vandals occur in the whole Northern area of Maghreb, corresponding to their former state, and is marginal as the already exisiting population was much larger than the invaders.

* Most North-Africans do not live in the Sahara but in the fertile areas. Most Maghrebis live ihe Northern part of the region in the Atlas mountains, the high plateaux, and the coastal plains. For instance 90% of Algerians live in the fertile area of their country (about 3 sizes of England), only a minority is in the Sahara's oases. As for Egyptians, most of them live in the Nile Delta and on its banks.

* Black people and mixed people with Sub-Saharan ancestry are a very small minority in North-Africa, which is extremely homogenous in term of ethnicity as Blacks form a tiny minority. Whether there were and are some Black people in North-Africa as there were and are in Americas and Eurasia, doesn't mean North-Africans are Blacks.

* The Saharan region of North-Africa are almost entirely free of Black people, only Northern Africans are found there, with some descendents of Sub-Saharan slaves.

* Tuaregs and the other Berber-speaking people of the Southern Sahara are not Black people but are of Berber stock as well, they may be mixed and show a lot of Sub-Saharan traits because of the influence of geography (their lands are very close to Sub-Saharans) and history (they practiced slavery) but they still are not pure Black Africans and do not consider themselves to be Black. In addition, even if they were Blacks, they do not represent North-Africa in term of racial composition and history, they are not directly related to its ancient civilisations (Carthage and Egypt). As for Tibbus, they are not North-Africans but people from Chad, a Sub-Saharan nation, no wonder why they are Black.

Photography of typical South-Saharan Berbers as the Tuaregs: http://www.ergreg.com/imagesUP/Villes/3/P1010056bis.jpg

* Arabs are not considered as Black in the U.S, Southern Europeans and even Northern Europeans have about the same proportion of Sub-Saharan DNA as Arabs.

* With all due respect, Sub-Saharans did not invent civilisation, it was rather the Iraqi people at the time of Sumer.

* Arabs are not more racist than any human group, they just don't want to be forced to adher to concepts who are alien to them, such as African identity.

* While many Western "intellectuals" tell North-Africans were or/and are White to attribute to themselves the civilisations of the region, the Black "intellectuals" who claim North-Africans were or/and are Black do it for the same motivations, stealing other people's heritage.

Finally, I remind everyone that North-Africans consider themselves to be Arab and Arabo-Berber, certainly not Black. They see Sub-Saharan Africa as an alien entity that is not the same as theirs, as a matter of fact Africa is only the name of a landmass like Europe is only the name of the continent of Eurasia, which includes both Europe and Asia. Africa was originally the name of a region comprising modern Tunisia, plus parts of modern Algeria and Libya, this name was then applied to the rest of the landmass of modern Africa without the participation of Sub-Saharans, who never identified as Africans in the past.