File talk:Map of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea.jpg

Berbers in East Africa?

Accuracy? The labels on this map are very dubious

I see this is user-made, and it's on a lot of pages. From whose perspective is it supposed to be? From Ancient Greeks' themselves or an objective historical map? Because there were never Berbers in the Horn of Africa and when was Pakistan/Indus River area ever called Scythia (normally a region somewhere around the Black Sea, depending on when and whom). Heck, Libya isn't even spelled right. What's the process by which maps get vetted? JesseRafe (talk) 01:50, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

One small correction: the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea does actually mention "Berbers" in Avalites (Zeila), the Market and Cape of Spices (Damo), and other towns on the northern Horn seaboard/"Berber Coast" (c.f. [1]). Middayexpress (talk) 16:30, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

And I could find historical sources that say "Indians" lived in the Caribbean and North and South America when the Europeans arrived. Doesn't make it true. Berbers as the term is accurately used did not live in that area. If the original language was Greek, then "Berber" just meant what we call "barbarian" -- and it meant someone who didn't speak Greek, not necessarily one who wasn't civilized. It was a generic term, not an ethnonym. No matter how you cut it, it shouldn't be listed the way it is implying it was the location of the actual Berber people.

Still this map is very inaccurate, and doesn't appear to be reflecting a contemporary view but as it looks like the other maps on wikipedia and not a historical one, and appears on many pages, looks like it's meant to be an accurate portrayal of peoples and nations at that time. Which is a significant problem.JesseRafe (talk) 15:04, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

The map can be corrected for the other apparent issues. However, the appellation "Berbers" must stay because that is precisely how the Periplus refers to the northern half of the Horn and its inhabitants (e.g. "Beyond this place, the coast trending toward the south, there is the Market and Cape of Spices, an abrupt promontory, at the very end of the Berber coast toward the east" [2]). The document's author also explicitly differentiates the "Berber" traders from the neighbouring "Wild-flesh-Eaters" and "Calf-Eaters". "Berber" here is an actual ethnic designation for a specific group of people, who inhabited areas in both the Horn and North Africa [3]:

"Barbaria, incidentally, refers presumably to the Berbers, who at that date still spread right across North Africa. The name survives in the modern Somali port of Berbera, and the Periplus writer states that "On the right-hand coast next below Berenice is the country of the Berbers," also locating them farther down the coast — this whole region being subject to one "Zoscales; who is miserly in his ways and always striving for more, but otherwise upright and acquainted with Greek literature." This "Zoscales" has been identified with Za Hakale, an Abyssinian monarch of the first century A.D. The prefix Za here is the honorific appropriate to Abyssinian kings, giving way in the third century to El, "indicating perhaps a change of dynasty from the Habash stock to the Sabaean," says Schoff."

Also note that "Berber" was the appellation that the Arabs likewise gave to the adjacent inhabitants of the Bilad al-Barbar ("Land of the Berbers"). It wasn't just the Greeks who referred to these "Berbers" as such (c.f. [4]). Middayexpress (talk) 17:45, 13 March 2013 (UTC)