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White Aethiopians (''Leucaethiopes'') is a term found in ancient Roman literature which may have referred to the lighter skinned Berber non-negroid populations of Saharan-Africa. The term is used by Pliny the Elder, and is also mentioned by Pomponius Mela, Ptolemy and Orosius. The 10th-century traveller Ibn Hawqal describes a similar situation among the Berber, which Richard Smith suggests may reflect "a real event, the absorption of tribes" from Ethiopia.〔 ==Classical origins== Pliny the Elder wrote in section 5.8 of his ''Natural History'' that: Pomponius Mela, Ptolemy and Orosius also wrote of the "White Aethiopians".〔''The Eastern Libyans'', Oric, Bates, London: Macmillan & Co, 1914.〕 Speaking of the difference between modern thought and ancient times, Richard Smith warns that even apparently well-defined categories "like 'race' can be confusing". According to Smith, Ptolemy placed two peoples, ''Leukaethiopes'' and ''Melanogaetulians'' ('Black Gaetulians') in the far west of North Africa, namely in southern Morocco. The Leukaethiopes, "literally, 'white Ethiopians'" could also, Smith suggests, be described as "white black men", since in ancient times "the term 'Ethiopian' referred to skin color".〔Richard Smith, page 475〕 According to Richard Smith, Pliny the Elder however places the Leukaethiopes south of the (Sahara) desert between the white Gaetulians and the black Nigritae, with closest neighbours the Libyaegyptians, "literally the 'Egyptian Libyans', another oxymoron"; but, Smith says, Pliny does not mention any black Gaetulians.〔 Edmund Dene Morel, writing in 1902, confirms that both Ptolemy and Pliny speak of the "Leucæthiopes", but believes that Ptolemy places them "in the neighbourhood of the Gambia", whereas Pliny places them "a couple of degrees farther north".〔Edmund Dene Morel, pages 141-142〕 Morel then speculates on who those "light-complexioned 'Africans'" could have been; he believes they could not have been Arabs, while (Morel argues) the Berber were well-known to Pliny's source people, the Carthaginians, so they would have recognized Berbers if they had met them; so Morel concludes the "Leucæthiopes" were Fulani, a suggestion first made, according to Morel, in 1799 by Major Rennel "in his notes on Park's travels".〔 Richard Smith reports that "historians often assume" that both Leukaethiopes and Melanogaetulians "were of mixed race", or perhaps of some combination of race and culture: the Leukaethiopes on this suggestion, he writes, "were whites who lived in an Ethiopian-style culture". But Richard Smith concludes that the only safe conclusion is that "the ethnic map was very complex and thus very confusing" even to Ptolemy.〔Richard Smith, page 476〕 The next assumption, according to Smith, is that there was "some kind of awful ancient race war" in which white tribes like the Leukaethiopes "expelled or exterminated" the black tribes, but, writes Smith, there is no evidence for this.〔Richard Smith, page 477〕 Haegap Jeoung, writing of the attitude of Homer and the ancient Greeks, suggests that "the Ethiopians take their place as the other of the () Greeks, regardless of their skin color. Remarkably, there are white Ethiopians. Not because the Ethiopians are black, but because they are the other, they become a matter of a discourse."〔Haegap Jeoung, page 12〕 Arysio Santos mentions that both Herodotus (History VIII:70) and Strabo (Geography XV:21) "speak of two Ethiopias, one eastern, the other western". Santos says that Strabo also said that the ancient Greeks "designated as Ethiopia the whole of the southern countries towards the ocean", not just a region near Egypt.〔Arysio Santos, pages 134-136〕 Santos then says that "the White Ethiopians very obviously came from the Far East, just as told by Ephorus", and quotes Philostratus (Vit. Apol. II:33f) as saying "The Indians are the wisest of mankind. The Ethiopians are a colony of them", immediately adding his own view that "The Ethiopia in question here is really Indonesia".〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「White Aethiopians」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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