The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-04-27
WHITE RACE IS FOUND IN AFRICA
May Be Descendants Of
 Scandinavian Vikings

You go to Algeria, if you have tray eled farther afield in un- n-Baedekered lands, in a mood of complacent boredom the slightly shame-faced mood that prevades the explorer when he finds himself herding with tourists. You feel like a ships officer going out in the saloon of liner to join in his ship in a Chinese port, writes Basset Digby, in 3 letter, from Algeria to the Manchester Guardian. You are mere passenger instead of blazing q trail of your own.
 Yet, by merely sauntering into the mountains of Kabylia you make re- markable and quite unsuspected- dis covery-white Africans. 55' tfs
 White is. the elastic term, ethnoldg- icaliy, but these people really are white. Their skin is pale, their hair is fair. Their eyes are blue or green or pale gray And they really are African. They call themselves descendants of the Romans, but the evidence is all against that. Moreover, the Romans are not pale-skinned and blue-eyed.
 You will not find exclusively white settlements. The whites are sprinkled among the pale and the dark in the mountain villages. These Kabyle Yil- lages are nearly always on the top of ridges and peaks, not down in the sheltered hooks. This is the way with folk the world over who have found to their advantage that it is pleasanter to deal with a marauding foe who is "winded" by climb of two or three thousand feet
 Their dress is very sl0yenly, what ever their worldly circumstances. You never know whether you are talking to rich man or. tramp. They have rather Semitic appearance; hooked or Roman noses are the rule rather than the exception. They are sturdy, intelli- gent folg with pleasant features and frgnk eyes that meet yours without wayering. Though MosIems, of the Sunnite persuasion, the women are un- yelled. Ia. N ts.#.
 Their Mode Of Life ,.5,
 Farming is their subsistence and mules their draught beasts Boys and girls drive groups of sheep and cows to the damp ,pasturages of the high noun tain slopes, while their elders raise figs and olives, grapes and barley. Where a French settlement is near at hand the Kabyle children go to the same school and sit in the same classes as the chill dren of the French. Russia blends in the same way with her native Buriat, Kakut, and Kirghiz children in Siberia.
 So much for their mode of life. But who are these k mysterious, blue-eyed, white Africans with the straw -c0l0red hair and the fresh. ruddy complexion? They talk TaEnazirt, .HAnlitic tongue closely reihted to that of the Copts and the Somalis.. They have no alphabet or literature of their own. They are very .t1 that they are not mere half-breeds or the result of interbreeding with Euro peans of recent times. Their existence, study. them, was recorded even by authors of the third century B. c.
 SeFgi, the anthropOlogist, said they were ordinary Berbers. who had be- come bleaehed from living high up the but Quedenfeld demolished that theory by producing the Shl0h, who also live high up on mountains- much higher up-in the south of Mo rocco. The theory that these blond Kabyles are the descendants of the de- tachment> of Tandals whom Genseric led over to Africa from Gibraltar in 429 A. D., also has been demolished
 Scandinayian Evidence &
 It is significant that there are quan- titles of menhirs, dOlmens, cromlechs and megalithic tombs in the blond Kab- yle county. In Britain we have 6. way of attributing these monuments to the Druids, whom most people consider an early British priesthood that sent mis- sionaries to Brittany. Scientists, nat urally know better). must own. how ever, that I was much surprised to find an excellent Druid circIe,' complete with blood bath, on the edge of the cliffs few miles out of Malta Here, evidently, was a link in the long chain that leads down through Western from the Orkney Isles to the Sahara.
 It seems certain to me. and to archaeologists, who have been devoted special study to the palaeOhthic and remains in the megalithic tombs of Algeria, that here we have di- rect descendants of prehistoric influx of Scandinavian explorers. It is becom- ing increasingly apparent that the voyagers of merchant, adventures" began very many centuries earlier than tha Qa-callAd uioneara vuhnso vvanAar