I know there's a lot of controversy regarding this part of the world. Going back to ancient Egypt some say they were black(sub-saharan) while others say they were a different group who looked similar to modern Egyptians in skin tone and were maybe some kind of caucasian or semitic people
The carthaginians also have this issue with some claiming they were indistinguishable from the romans insofar as they were both mediterranean people
There's an idea that the people in the mediterranean, the greeks, romans, palestinians, north africans, turks, are all mediterranean people with a basic similarity in hair and skin tone and that they're almost the same except for their culture
Then we get to the middle ages and the "moors" appear. What were they? wikipedia says they were muslims who expanded and some went to europe, if they're muslims then I assume they had contact with Arabs. Are they arabs? are they a mixture of Arabs and the previously mentioned mediterranean north africans?
wikipedia says the moors were originally indigenous berbers. zidane the soccer player is said to be a berber. berbers are not sub saharan according to pictures of modern berbers. then wikipedia mentions arabs. so if they were berbers and arabs how are they depicted as sub saharans?
There's a difference between palestinians and sub-saharan africans. If palestinians can be said to have lived there for centuries and are a product of arabs mixing with the indigenous population then if they are similar to old north africans then the north africans can't be sub saharan and so why are moors depicted as sub saharans? Doing a google search of "libyan people" shows people who look like arabs but then some pictures of sub saharans with headlines of articles about "african slaves" "african migrants" "african refugees" and one says "being black in libya". There was an article about a Sudanese man traveling but being stuck because of the lockdown. Looking at Morocco its more diverse with some arab looking people and some black looking people and some mixed. Searching for "algeria people" shows some looking like arabs. "tunisia people" also shows arab looking people and so does "egypt people" with some mixed people thrown in
So if the moors were sub saharans as commonly depicted then how is north africa now mostly arab looking? where did they go? If north africans/arabs took slaves from south of the sahara and brought them north then that explains why there are black people in north africa but not how there are now arabs/brown caucasians there. And further back in history how did carthaginians look? were they similar to palestinians? I was told the phoenicians who are from around palestine/lebanon founded carthage. what about ancient egypt? were they similar to palestinians?
and going into palestinians what did the indigenous population look like? if they had a culture of the "bronze age" that stretched from greece to babylon to egypt then they probably looked similar enough i guess but maybe i'm wrong in that assumption. if the indigenous palestinians were black then wouldn't the arab mixture have them looking mixed with varying degrees of blackness and such like is found in brazil? but they look mostly arab. I was told the indigenous palestinians the canaanites and such were semitic people much like the arabs are another kind of semitic people.
its all confusing with people saying the moors are black but that doesn't make much sense to me.
The Greek historian Strabo compared Egyptian complexions to those of North India. Link.
As for the people of India, those in the south are like the Aethiopians in colour, although they are like the rest in respect to countenance and hair (for on account of the humidity of the air their hair does not curl), whereas those in the north are like the Egyptians.
I would interpret this as Egyptians being brown like those in Northern India. The comparison of South India to Aethiopians (a word meaning burnt-face in Greek) is interesting as the Greeks used it quite liberally for dark complexioned people, not to be confused with modern Ethiopia.
Egyptian accounts depict the Libyans as lighter skinned, always with lighter skin that the Egyptians themselves :
Overall the Egyptians’ representation of the Libyans varied slightly between the Old and New Kingdoms, although the basics were usually similar. It was almost always only men who were depicted, usually with long hair, light complexions, and wearing phallus sheaths.
The Garamantian civilization of late antiquity appears to be quite mixed - half of the population was light skinned Libyans, the other half mixed or black. This is consistent with contemporary berber populations having a high degree of ethnic variation. There is debate about the prevalence of slavery in the Garamantian kingdom.
I'm not as familiar with the middle ages but even in classical antiquity is would seem that the make up of North Africa was similar to today. I don't believe the Romans or Arabs could have replaced the indigenous populations nor are they the ancestors of the lighter skinned North Africans.