Why Mansa Musa Was White

This 2020 genetic study published in Molecular Biology of Evolution focuses on Mandinka DNA estimating 10 to 15 percent Berber admixture from a primary event 2500 years ago with a secondary pulse 1000 to 1500 years ago specifically at the start of the Mali Empire. And this 2023 study published in Genome Biology and Evolution focused on a fine scale analysis of Mandinka genomes showing 8 to 15 percent Eurasian ancestry dating back to 2500 years ago. That said, if modern Mandinka DNA shows an average of 15 percent ancient Eurasian admixture, this does not mean the ancient tribe two to five thousand years ago was necessarily 15 percent Eurasian.

The percentage of the ancient source population that was Eurasian at the time of admixture was likely much higher possibly around 30 percent or more which then became diluted over subsequent generations. The 15 percent in modern populations is the diluted result of an original admixture event or multiple events over many generations. For this percentage to persist, the original mixing population must have had a significantly higher proportion of Eurasian ancestry. Located on the southern tip of the Sahara Desert, the empire of Mali was one of the largest empires in West African history and at its height it spanned from the Atlantic coast to central parts of the Sahara Desert.

The empire was founded in 1235 and lasted until the early 1600s. All goods brought in and out of the empire were heavily taxed while all gold nuggets belonged to the king. Mali’s ruler adopted the title of Mansa and the empire’s most famous ruler was named Mansa Musa who underwent a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 accompanied by 60,000 individuals and large quantities of gold. Chroniclers of the times wrote that he distributed so much gold on his trip that he caused great inflation lasting a decade. He was credited with building the great mosque of Timbuktu in 1327 as well as the greatest 100,000 manuscripts, making it the largest library in Africa since the great library of Alexandria.

There’s been some controversy over the ethnicity and racial appearance of Mansa Musa with the most common version coming from a 1375 Catalan atlas on the right. On the left is a much earlier 1339 depiction from the map of Angelino Duca, the first ever made, just two years after Mansa Musa’s death in 1337. It’s clear that one of these depictions has been altered which seems to be the case with many early Arab and Islamic images of Moors who are white Berbers but have been black washed in an effort to appropriate history for seemingly political purposes.

For example, this image from 1285 shows a Christian and a more playing chess. This is a mural located on the ceiling of the hall of kings in Alhambra in Spain from the late 14th century and while depictions of the prophet Muhammad himself are rare in culture, here’s one from a Masonic poster depicting him with red hair as that is how he was described in Hadiths especially after the age of 40 when Muhammad used red henna to match the red color of his youth. So the same way that the history of the Berber Moors has been appropriated, so is the case with ancient Mali as this is how Mansa Musa is depicted in textbooks.

This is what Mansa Musa would likely look like resembling the earliest depiction of him from 1339 given the genetic studies which indicate admixture of a large Eurasian or North African Berber population inhabiting Mali and West Africa from two to five thousand years ago. This is further supported by the native indigenous people of the Canary Islands just off the West African coast who share genetic affinities with the native North African Berbers leaving behind blonde and red headed mummies and depicted with a fair phenotype by the contemporary Spanish explorers 500 years ago. White Berbers were involved in the gold mining and slave trade in Mali for many centuries before the time of Mansa Musa and the Mali Empire and although everything to do with Africa is falsely attributed to black populations of sub-Saharan hunter-gatherers by woke media and DEI academia, the reality is that the early empires of the ancient African continent were established by people of Eurasian or Aryan ancestry.

To drive the point home, these Nubian wall murals from the 1500s are from Dongola Sudan. Located on the banks of the Nile, old Dongola flourished for centuries as the capital of Markoria, one of the most important medieval African states filled with ancient Christian iconography. During excavations archaeologists have recently found a series of hidden rooms covered with spectacular and colorful depictions of the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, archangel Michael, and a Nubian king. Ancient Nubia, known for rich deposits of gold, hosted some of Africa’s earliest kingdoms with massive amounts of slave labor, became quite wealthy even ruling parts of Egypt for a brief time, but their pharaohs were never of sub-Saharan African descent despite what is taught by politically motivated universities which no longer try to educate people but to indoctrinate them into a false politically motivated view of history.

While it is true that there are sub-Saharan African mummies, it is also true that ancient pharaohs and nobility like to be buried with their slaves to have servants in the afterlife. In the fourth century BC the manufacture and trade of iron led to the rise of another empire, Kush, which became a powerful trading center located near the modern day border of Egypt and Sudan in northeast Africa. Much of Kush bordered the Sahara but the city of Meroe in the southern part of the country was dotted with trees. The people of Kush used this timber to fire the furnaces they used to produce iron.

In addition, Meroe had a rich supply of iron ore, the mineral from which iron is made. Meroe was also located not far from the Red Sea which gave Kush good access to the major trading centers further south. In addition to iron, the people of Kush traded gold, jewelry, pottery and ivory. But just as iron had an impact on the rise of Kush, it also had an effect on its fall. Meroe’s economy began to suffer during the fourth century AD. One reason for the decline may have been the loss of forests in Nubia where trees were harvested to fuel the iron industry.

In about AD 350 the neighboring kingdom of Aksum invaded Kush and the Kush empire fell. Today Kush is largely forgotten but the metal that helped build the empire is still important in all our lives today. Kushite mummy DNA, often studied alongside ancient Egyptian mummies, reveals significant genetic ties to the Near East and Europe with later influxes of Takabuti, a Kushite princess, suggests connections to European ancestry while overall ancient DNA shows a blend of North African and Near Eastern or Anatolian genetics. Takabuti’s mitochondrial DNA was determined to be H4A1, described as a predominantly European haplogroup and indicative of European heritage, but in the archaeological record also reported in guanche mummy remains from the Canary Islands, as well as 4000 year old remains from Germany and Bulgaria.

Stretching back thousands of years into antiquity, Caucasian or Eurasian rulers from the Kingdom of Kush controlled the vast territory along the banks of the Nile, ensuring the production of significant quantities of iron mined in large part by slave labor. The Phoenicians also mined copper and cypress as well as tin in Great Britain and even mined the best copper in Michigan USA which is uniquely mixed with silver. Even ancient Ethiopia had a different ruling demographic in antiquity but stretched back even before the time of Christ. The ancient Ethiopian genome reveals extensive Eurasian admixture going back 4,500 years, including genetic contributions from present-day Sardinians.

The famous stone carved churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia, were said by locals to be built by blonde angels, which may sound far-fetched but starts to make sense when one considers that inside is filled with swastikas, Templar crosses, inside of the seal of Solomon, as well as double-headed eagles. Given the extensive Eurasian or Arian admixture in the ancient Ethiopian genome, it should come as no surprise that this is how an Ethiopian king was depicted 1700 years ago. Monsemoussa’s estimative died in 1337 and would pass the title of Monse to his son, leading to a period of decline with the throne changing hands several times, mismanaged by people not from the original ruling family until 1433 when the empire of Mali was conquered by nomads and by the 17th century Mali had broken into a number of minor independent chiefdoms.

While there are still many cultural and esoteric mysteries surrounding the kingdom of Mali, many of the ancient manuscripts have been made available online, preserved for anyone to see. Monsemoussa’s library contained manuscripts mainly in Arabic, the language of Islamic scholarship, but also in local West African languages written using the Arabic script, as the African tribes did not have a written language of their own until then. The ancient African kingdoms, including those of sub-Saharan Africa like Mali, were established by North African people that shared genetic affinities with the white Berbers who, like Hannibal, the Phoenician general from Carthage had a fair complexion.

That said, modern movies about Monsemoussa and Hannibal feature black Afrocentric revisionism, which is just as comical as the Netflix series Vikings Valhalla, which casts the black woman as the Viking king of Norway. My name is Robert Sepper. I’m an anthropologist. My published work is available on Amazon and through all other major book outlets. If you’d like to support my work, you can do that through Patreon.com. There should be a link in the description. You can also click on the thanks tab below the video to leave a donation as part of a comment, or if you’d like to ask a question, and I will try my best to reply in a timely manner.

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