Mechta-Afalou

As Mechta - Afalou was described by Northwest African skeletons from 1932, a group that has been defined according to their anatomical characteristics as a separate "race". Methodologically questionable and driven by racial ideas that were used in archeology and especially the anthropology of time, this idea is now considered obsolete. These kinds of assignments dive yet to this day in the popular scientific literature and until recently also in the literature on.

The term Mechta - Afalou goes back to the two sites Mechta el- Arbi and Afalou bou Rhummel in eastern Algeria. The former was excavated from 1907 to 1923 by Gustave Mercier and Albert Debruge, the latter of Camille Arambourg in the years 1928 until 1930.

Anatomically were the skeletons found there to modern humans, but were built more robust. They were described as " Mechta - Afalou " and filed in 1932 by Marcellin Boule and Henri V. Valois, but it is debatable whether it is, as postulated for over half a century to negotiated a separate " race".

This is even more unlikely than the already cited by the authors of sites on the one hand Capsien, on the other hand, belonged to the Ibéromaurusien and thus two very different archaeological cultures. Against this arrangement speaks beyond the one hand, that this only shows up on the basis of observed anatomical features Type in Libya, where he was assigned to the eastern Orange, but also in sites of Capsien in Tunisia and Algeria. Secondly, the findings of Capsien were made in so-called escargotières, in a kind of waste hills, on the other hand, the human remains of Ibéromaurusien found under rock overhangs.

In 1955, the " Mechta - Afalou - race" divided into four sub- types by sorting the skeletons by the naked eye appearance. As late as 1970, in this way more "races" defined. So different Marie Claude Chamla " Mechtoide " and " Mecht - Afalou " - the former being by definition " gracile " were referred to. This type had been discovered in the Algerian columnata. He was, however, in Medjez with the other type found in the same layer II.

This "race" of the Mechta - Afalou were assigned the Guanches of the Canary Islands for a long time and without further evidence.

Comments

• Paleoanthropology
• Archaeology ( Africa)
• Algeria