-------- Original Message --------
Subject: (MG Africa)Why Africa's 'most beautiful' countries became
beautiful; and how you can cheat the good looks lottery
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 09:33:05 -0700
From: Semere Asmelash <semereasmelash_at_ymail_com_at_dehai_org>
To: dehai_at_dehai.org <dehai_at_dehai.org>
http://mgafrica.com/article/2014-09-24-how-africas-most-beautiful-countries-became-beautiful/
<
http://mgafrica.com/article/2014-09-24-how-africas-most-beautiful-countries-became-beautiful/>
Why Africa's 'most beautiful' countries became beautiful; and how you
can cheat the good looks lottery
24 Sep 2014 16:35Christine Mungai
<
http://mgafrica.com/author/christine-mungai>
Ethiopia, Eritrea, Rwanda, Somalia, Egypt, Ghana tend to top list of
nations with most beautiful women. It is all about history and
geography, really
Profile of Ethiopian beauty modelled by Gete Berhe (photo Jhennelle
Townsend/flickr). BELOW Miss Ghana 2012 Carranzer Naa Okailey Shooter,
then Cleopatra and Mark Antony ( Bloomingdale's 2009 Holiday
Window/Wally Gobetz).
/Profile of Ethiopian beauty modelled by Gete Berhe (photo Jhennelle
Townsend/flickr). BELOW Miss Ghana 2012 Carranzer Naa Okailey Shooter,
then Cleopatra and Mark Antony ( Bloomingdale's 2009 Holiday
Window/Wally Gobetz). /
<
http://mgafrica.com/article/2014-09-24-how-africas-most-beautiful-countries-became-beautiful>
RANKING Africa's most beautiful countries is a hugely controversial
affair, as recent attempts to do so proved, not least because nobody
wants to admit they are on the lower rung of the beauty chain, and,
obviously, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.
But sometimes it seems beholders are more or less in agreement over the
regions where you are likely to find Africa's most beautiful women.
Looking through a few recent totally unscientific rankings (you can find
them here
<
http://www.ranker.com/list/african-countries-with-the-most-beautiful-women/mtechman?source=share>,
here
<
http://www.hiiraan.com/news4/2014/Sept/56181/african_countries_with_the_most_beautiful_women.aspx#sthash.q6Wy197x.jwGXDgEy.dpbs>, and
here
<
http://msongo.blogspot.com/2013/06/african-countries-with-most-beautiful.html>),
a few countries keep propping up in the top slots. In no particular
order, they are:
* Ethiopia
* Eritrea
* Rwanda
* Somalia
* Egypt
* Ghana
If we go with what the pollsters say, it would seem that the Horn of
Africa, North and West Africa beats the rest of the continent in having
the most beautiful women. So how did it happen? Was it just a stroke of
luck, or are there other forces at play, that tend to shape a society
into becoming "more beautiful"? And did beauty play a political, even
security, role in societies before these times, when the focus is mostly
on its superficial aspects?
We dug up some facts about life in these places over the past few
thousand years, and some common threads begun to emerge that explain
"beauty". So if your country isn't on the list, here's a (half-serious,
in typical M&G Africa fashion) guide on how to make sure, in the next
few centuries, you get bragging rights too:
*The forest vs. desert people*
First, make sure you have enough food, especially protein---by not
living in the rainforest, because what societies in the past - and today
still - ate, played a role in the beauty of their women, as it did in
the masculinity of its men.
At first glance, rainforest seem like incredibly abundant places teeming
<
http://www.rainforestconservation.org/rainforest-primer/2-biodiversity/d-why-is-there-so-much-biodiversity-in-tropical-rainforests/>
with all sorts of plant and animal species. While this may be true, the
vast majority of the natural biodiversity found in rainforests aren't
good for humans to eat.
Because the ecosystem is so plentiful---thus swarming with potential
predators---both plants and animals have to devise ingenious ways to
protect themselves from being eaten, so many plants and animals are
poisonous.
And because the habitat is so dense, big animals can't move around
easily, so the forest has much more small animals---insects, rodents and
birds---than big ones.
As a result, and totally counter-intuitively, rainforests are some of
the most protein-deficient
<
http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/transcript1.html> places on
earth, and most people there have to eat all sorts of critters to
survive, from spiders, snails, bats---pretty much any meat they can get
their hands on. And even hunting whatever good creatures there are is a
tricky activity because you could wind up empty handed at the end of a
long hunt.
To make sure you have a steady supply of good, nutritious food, the most
energy-efficient way to do so is to raise grain and keep livestock.
Cereal grains support much bigger human populations than rainforests
ever could, but Africa's case was interesting---livestock was
domesticated before people started growing grain crops
<
http://factsanddetails.com/world/cat56/sub362/item1506.html>.
Archaeologists reckon the reason is because good quality wild grain was
so abundant in the savannahs of Africa that there was no reason to
settle down and farm. The first cultivated grain was pearl millet,
farmed around 2,000 BC, but cattle have been kept by humans from as
early as 5,900 BC.
The result is that pre-industrial semi-arid and/or open grassland
countries like Somalia, Eritrea, Egypt, Ethiopia where it was easy to
raise larger animals like cattle, allowed those societies more access to
proteins that, then, to put it simplistically, allowed their women the
nourishment to be "beautiful", than the ones in the Congo forests.
*Another wrinkle in the food story*
Still, even if you live in the flat lands and thus can more easily grow
grain, that wouldn't be enough - you must be able to store the surplus
grain. Again, geography helps. The most intensively farmed regions of
Africa have a dry season that allows cereals to dry out and be preserved
for lean times. So Africa's most food secure regions emerged not in the
forests, but in the flat, relatively well-watered plains.
With a steady supply of protein and carbohydrates, large, densely
populated societies could emerge, that required the centralisation of
power to maintain control. It is no coincidence that Africa's mightiest
empires <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Africa#Somalia>---such
as Egypt, Kanem-Bornu, Songhai, Ghana and Axum---emerged in the flat
lands bordering the heat of the desert, where there was enough water to
support agriculture, but also the weather was dry enough at times to
allow grains to dry out. These kinds of lands had enough grass, and
enough room, to support big livestock.
*Armies, trade, and beauty*
Centralising power meant that armies had to be raised to maintain
power---there was enough surplus food to feed the soldiers who did not
work, and the surpluses could also be traded for other goods. North
Africa was central to the Mediterranean trade, with cities like
Alexandria, Tripoli and Carthage being vital trade hubs.
The kingdom of Axum in Ethiopia had a powerful navy with trading links
<
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Aksum> as far as the Byzantium
in southern Europe and India. Somalia had numerous flourishing trade
centres <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Somalia#Ancient>, and
the Romans and Greeks believed the source of cinnamon to have been the
Somali peninsula, but in reality, the highly valued product was brought
to Somalia by way of Indian ships.
By colluding with the Indian and Gulf Arab traders, cinnamon was thus
exported to Europe at exorbitantly higher prices than it would have
been, making the cinnamon trade a very profitable revenue stream,
especially for the Somali merchants through whose hands large quantities
were shipped across ancient sea and land routes.
And a whole host of very wealthy kingdoms emerged on the Sahel in West
Africa, including Ghana, Mali and Kanem-Bornu. The Huffington Post even
ranked the legendary Mansa Musa of Mali as the " richest man of all time
<
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/17/mansa-musa-worlds-richest-man-all-time_n_1973840.html>",
worth a staggering $400 billion in today's terms after adjusting for
inflation. He gave away so much gold during his pilgrimage to Mecca that
the price of gold was depressed, and it took 12 years for gold to
recover its value in North Africa and Arabia.
Being hemmed in by mountains (which might account for Rwanda's presence
in the top Africa beauty league table) or deserts is another trade
advantage, as it gave empires on these frontiers monopoly power over the
goods coming from the interior to the trading centres. In the case of
Axum, for example, the formidable Ethiopian Highlands meant that traders
on the Red Sea couldn't cross the interior and get the ivory, gold and
emeralds that they wanted, leaving the Axumites to be the middlemen and
dictate the terms of trade.
Among other things, this monopoly over commerce, and mercantile trade
allowed the circulation of products for grooming. The Africans in the
rainforests thus didn't - and still don't have - henna, for example.
*Cleopatra and strategic beauty*
However, this wealth, centralised power and inequality tend to attract
war, insurrection and instability, as rival groups fight to control or
invade and capture resources.
It has been theorised that is where beauty becomes an advantage as it
gives poor families a chance at social mobility by marrying off their
daughters to rich men. Even during war, after the battle has died down,
historically the invaders would rather seize the beautiful girls of the
vanquished tribes and marry than kill them.
The case of Cleopatra partly elaborates this power element of beauty.
Cleapatra was a famous queen of ancient Egypt. She was beautiful,
intelligent and politically astute. She is perhaps more known her love
affairs with two Roman rulers; Julius Caesar (William Shakespeare wrote
about it), and Mark Antony.
To focus on that, however, would be to miss the bigger picture. When
Caesar came Egypt he helped her regain her throne. Cleopatra went with
Caesar to Rome and lived in one of his palaces.
After Caesar's death a power struggle broke out between his friend Mark
Antony. Mark Antony had fallen for Cleopatra and they started a
relationship. She helped him in his war against Octavian. In the end,
she bore three children for Mark Antony.
The moral here is that all princesses and queens are in a position
to play for power. But if like, Cleopatra, they are smart and beautiful
too, they can leverage it over rivals for the throne. In a sense, then,
it is the shortsighted who see only good looks in beautiful women.
Of course, there's a more direct reason to keep girls alive---in the
fertile grasslands of Africa, labour was the major constraint to how
much you could farm, land was plentiful. Therefore controlling people
was more important than controlling territory; having more wives meant
having more children, and more hands to work.
But beauty is only an advantage when there is already enough to eat;
though there isn't much research we could find to this, it follows from
the above that beautiful girls made an (already prosperous) in an
unstable neighbourhood to better survive conflict.
*What malaria has to do with*
There's one more card Africa's beauty deck---malaria. Sonia Shah's
brilliant book The Fever <
http://soniashah.com/books/the-fever/>outlines
how throughout history, malaria has shaped human settlement, economic
activity and prosperity. In modern times it has been shown to depress
GDP growth by 1.3% per year, and in times past, the effect could have
been much greater.
Although much of Africa is malaria-endemic, it isn't uniformly so
<
http://www.malaria.com/questions/malaria-africa/attachment/the-spatial-distribution-of-plasmodium-falciparum-malaria-endemi>.
Malarial parasites needs warm weather, abundant rainfall and stagnant
water to survive, so the Horn of Africa and much of the Sahel is too dry
to support malaria, while high altitudes in the Ethiopian highlands and
the Rwenzori ranges are too cool for the deadly disease---thus we see
our "most beautiful countries" largely escaping the malarial dragnet.
So a ranking of the most beautiful, especially women, in Africa actually
gives us important insights in the continent's history, how geography
shaped certain needs and allowed the traits necessary for phyical
survival to be nurtured and become more dominant.
So here's how to rig the genetic lottery to have more beautiful women:
don't live in the rainforest, have enough grain and meat to eat, get
rich, and get rid of mosquitoes. Now you know.
Received on Fri Sep 26 2014 - 15:20:17 EDT