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Through the centuries Berbers have mixed with so many other ethnic groups, notably the Arabs, that they are now identified usually on a linguistic rather than a racial basis. Their languages, the Berber languages, form a branch of the Afroasiatic linguistic family comprising many closely related varieties, including Tachelhit, Central Atlas Tamazight , and Kabyle, with a total of roughly 14-25 million speakers. Many Berbers are bilingual in Arabic.
They are generally agreed to descend from the Neolithic Capsian culture, which appeared in North Africa around 10,000-8000 BC. The origins of this culture are unclear; according to the historian Christopher Ehret, the probably came from the African coast of the Red Sea. Some have regarded this culture's population as simply a continuation of the earlier MesolithicThe Mesolithic (middle stone age) is the period between the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods. It began at the end of the Pleistocene epoch around 10,000 years ago and ended with the introduction of farming, the date of which varied in each geographical r Ibero-Maurusian culture, which appeared about 15,000 BC, while others argue for a population change; the former view has some support from dental evidence[1]. Genetic evidence seems to indicate that the Berbers are descended from several waves of immigration into the area[2], some as much as 50,000 years old. However, the Berber language is Afro-AsiaticThe Afro-Asiatic languages are a language family of about 240 languages and 285 million people widespread throughout North Africa, East Africa, the Sahel, and Southwest Asia. Other names sometimes given to this family include "Afrasian", "Hamito-Semitic", and since most linguists regard Afro-Asiatic as originating somewhere near the coast of the Red Sea, this is usually taken to imply that the language was brought in from the east, with some degree of population change, no earlier than 15,000 BC[3], probably as part of the original spread of agriculture during the Neolithic. Some genetic studies argue that this expansion was specifically from the Middle EastThe Middle East is a geographical and cultural area comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. The Middle East is a subregion of Afr.[4] One study can even be taken to suggest a particular closeness between Berber and YemenThe Republic of Yemen is a country in the Arabian Peninsula in Southwest Asia, and is a part of the Middle East, bordering the Arabian Sea, Gulf of Aden, and Red Sea, between Oman and Saudi Arabia. History Main article: History of Yemen The ancient Greeki populations, a result which would not surprise the medieval Arab genealogists who traditionally maintained that the Berbers came from Yemen. However, population genetics remains a young science, whose results are not always easy to interpret.
Berbers have lived in North Africa since the earliest recorded time. References to them occur frequently in ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman sources. Berber groups are first mentioned in writing by the ancient Egyptians, who fought against the "Lebu" (Libyans) on their western borders, and in 945 BC were conquered by Lebu who founded the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty. They long remained the main population of the Western Desert ; the Byzantine chroniclers often complain of the "Mazices" (Amazigh) raiding outlying monasteries.
For many centuries the Berbers inhabited the coast of North Africa from Egypt to the Atlantic Ocean. In historical times, they have expanded south into the Sahara (displacing earlier black African populations such as the Azer and Bafour ), and have in turn been assimilated or displaced in much of North Africa by Arabs, particularly following the incursion of the Banu Hilal in the 11th century.