Talk:Macrobians

Recent edits
There has been some edit-warring from an account with no other edit history. I judge this to be an obvious case of sockpuppetry, but I cannot be bothered to police or report this, I just applied semiprotection for the time being.

If there is some genuine issue with the article, please bring it up here. If you want to give this the status of a bona-fide content dispute, don't use sock accounts and make a coherent case please. If the sockpuppetry escalates, I will be forced to go through the proper channels after all. --dab (𒁳) 10:34, 5 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I would like to propose associating this page with the ancient civilization of Nok, in Nigeria, which would be contemporary with this account, and consistent with Herodotus. I think this would do due justice to scholarship and to all concerned. I cannot find any citations of this as of now. I think the frustration associated with this page has been the result of the bizarre refusal of contemporary scholars to associate this region with West African Civilization, an association Herodotus himself has no compunctions about. Why contemporary scholars, rather than ancient sources, would want to eliminate this obvious possibility on the matter is, I think, self-evident. Please can we tell the truth about this civilization - there is an advanced, ancient civilization located exactly at the location Herodotus describes, and contemporary with it. Nothing he says suggests the Horn of Africa or India. Please can we do justice to real African Civilization? Thank You.117.213.110.6 (talk) 04:40, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
 * i don't believe that's possible. you don't seem to have verifiable evidence. therefore, we can't really add anything here. 99.27.106.23 (talk) 22:25, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

False assumptions and conclusions
I've used Wikipedia for more than a decade now. It has been an invaluable part of my life, and continues to be so. I still firmly believe in the ideals and principles that guide the open source movement and always have.

Instead of submitting an edit that would satisfy objectivity, let alone academic rigor, resorted to faulty assumptions, accusations, and vulgar language. decided to add "India" as a possible location next to the introductory sentence with its identifying location being "The Horn of Africa". This creates a "False Equivalence", as if the two were supported by evidence equally.

This is obviously an issue of logical reasoning, verifiably credible evidence, and intellectual honesty. I don't know my way around the ropes with regards to Wikipedia powers, as has so prudently displayed; so I hope the powers that be can review and/or compare my last edit to.

I'd like for verifiable evidence and honest presentation to prevail over anything and as a new Wikipedia contributor this has been quite an abusive, and intimidating experience. - 5:17, 5 July 2013 (UTC)


 * No one really knows where Macrobia was, so it can't be said for certain that it was in the Horn. It might very well instead have been in India, as Pliny apparently suggested. Some authorities seem to have located the legendary territory further to the west, not far from Mauretania in present-day Morocco. Personally, I think it was perhaps situated somewhere in or near Meroe since this was an area that was at once south of Egypt and culturally similar. Meroe was also a center for gold production (hence the gold fetters), unlike the other areas. Pausanias likewise wrote that the Macrobians inhabited landlocked Meroe and adjacent areas . Middayexpress (talk) 19:10, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Edit request on 27 September 2013
I just want to add that the information on this article about Herodotus Macrobians is false and goes against Herodotus original text, because first of all the Macrobians dwelt on the southern sea in Libya south of the Pillars of Hercules (which Herodotus distinguishes from the Erythraean Sea in book 4.42) not Abyssinia or Somalia as old scholars have stated, because according to Herodotus in book 3.114-115 these Macrobian Ethiopians dwelt on the southwestern ends of the earth or the southwestern end of the African continent in the area of Senegal and Liberia, and according to Pliny natural history they dwelt west of the Nile, and Strabo also says that Cambyses army perished when he tried to crossed the sand dunes west of the nile river to reach these Ethiopians, and another account from Pseudo Scylax reports them dwelling south of Mauretania, so in conclusion these Ethiopians dwelt south of the Atlantic or what was known as the Aethiopian Sea and not in Somalia or Abyssinia, so please fix these errors and do Herodotus some justice, these Macrobians belong to the Libyo Ethiopian tribes who Herodotus called Autochthonous in book 4.197 and were in relation to the western Saharan Ammonians, Nasamonians, Garamantes and the Atlanteans and did not dwell on the Somali coast or the Red Sea which Herodotus and other Greek Historians called the Arabian Gulf, because anything east of the Nile was called the Arabian and west of the Nile was called the Libyan, so in other words Cambyses left the Nile and struck across the western desert after subduing the Ethiopians of the Nile, and these Macrobian Ethiopians were also Homer's western Ethiopians, so please provide more research if you can and place these Ethiopians in their rightful dwellings whch was on the Aethiopian Sea south of the Atlantic, we must correct the wrongs of the past and change history for TRUTH sake, thank you.

ArthurMayfield79 (talk) 17:50, 27 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made.. Articles cannot contain original research and are intended to reflect history, not change history. If you should reopen this request, please indicate the exact wording you'd like added or removed, provide reliable sources, and don't rely exclusively on commas to punctuate what you write. Rivertorch (talk) 21:05, 27 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Pausanias wrote that the Macrobians inhabited landlocked Meroe and adjacent areas . This may be uncertain, though, because he was writing after Herodotus, and Herodotus appears to have provided an erroneous description of Macrobia's location. Herodotus apparently believed that the Nile flowed from the west, which may have led to the geographical confusion . Middayexpress (talk) 15:08, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 March 2014
More accurate research and scholarship is needed for the location of Herodotus Macrobian Ethiopians. This article is based on poor scholarship and pseudo Geography.These Macrobians were a Ethiopian tribe of Libya who dwelt some were deep south of Mount Atlas or Atlantis along the Atlantic coast in the area Senegal and Mauritania according to the Periplus of Scylax, and Pliny locates them west of Meroe but doesn't say how far. Herodotus called the Horn of Africa southern Arabia were Myrrh, Frankincense and Cinnamon grows, and because it was east of the Nile. I demand that these Ethiopians be put in their rightful dwellings along the west coast of Africa and better honest non-bias scholarship is done on the geography of Herodotus, thank you.

ArthurMayfield79 (talk) 04:50, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

If you want to suggest a change, please request this in the form "Please replace XXX with YYY" or "Please add ZZZ between PPP and QQQ". Please also cite reliable sources to back up your request, without which no information should be added to any article. - Arjayay (talk) 09:56, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: as you have not requested a specific change.

Revert
Currently the the encyclopedic quality of the article is not sufficient. Most of the content written is uncited. For example:
 * "The clues given by Herodotus placing the ancient Macrobians in the southern land toward the far west of Africa place them in territory of modern-day Senegal and the Niger river region of Africa, also known to geographers as the Negro lands."
 * "The Macrobian tradition as being the most handsome of all men is a tradition still practiced today amongst the Wodaabe tribe of the Niger, Nigeria and Chad in their Gerewol festival, like the Macrobians the Wodaabe are also tall in stature and most handsome of men. And the tradition of the Macrobians choosing their Kings based on superior strength is also practiced amongst the wrestlers of Senegal, who ever is the strongest wrestler amongst them, he is crowned champion."
 * "Later authors such as Scylax in his periplus also place them south of the pillars of Hercules, and Scylax also reported a trade taking place between Phoenicians (Carthaginians) and tall Ethiopians (Macrobians)", this example is ill sourced, as in no details of the citation are given.

Much of the part under the section 'Geography of Cambyses's journey to the Land of the Long-Long Lived (Macrobian) Ethiopians', is refering to Aethiopia, which is distinct from the commentary of Herodotus of the mythical Macrobians, while the Athiopians were actually historical. This article is wrongfully implying that Macrobia is the same as Aethiopia, these were two dinstict entities in the Greek ecumene. This paragraph is also not reflecting it's source at all:
 * "After conquering Ethiopia south of Egypt with no food provision and no baggage beast, Cambyses entered upon the desert west of Ethiopia in order to try and reach the Macrobians dwelling at the ends of the earth or the opposite end of the continent, but after getting deeper into the desert and only accomplishing a fifth of the distance (south of Siwa), the army of Cambyses resulted to cannibalism on their own fellow troops.[18] When Cambyses heard of his army eating each other, he immediately stopped his expedition against the Macrobians and marched the remnant of his army back to Thebes on the Nile river of Egypt. And from Thebes they marched safely back to Memphis, where he ordered his Greek mercenaries to return to their homes. And must be noted, from Nubia or Ethiopia south of Egypt, Cambyses took the same western route as his army did from Thebes attempting to reach the Siwa Oasis, and according to the ancient geographer Strabo, Cambyses from Ethiopia had crossed the same western desert that his army had crossed from Thebes when "they were overwhelmed when a wind-storm struck them.."

Strabo Geography, book 17.1.54, is refering to Aethiopia, the word Macrobia (in any form) is not present at all. These instances occur throughout the article. It seems that only one user is editing this article and relying only on a single primary source (and wrongfully citing). This is why I have reverted the article before these edits were made. Kind regards. Runehelmet (talk) 17:24, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Let me make it clear to you, without the primary source you have nothing but made up pseudo history. And the secondary sources can never refute the primary source. And also your secondary source regarding the Macrobians is coming from geographers who lived over 2,000 years after Herodotus, that means your sources are very late and are just as good as made up. But let's stay in chronological order here, after Herodotus the only writer to mention the Macrobians was the Roman historian Pliny, who lived about 500 years after Herodotus and in Book 6.35 he placed the Macrobians to the west of Meroe (not in India), which he called the African (Libyan) side of the Nile but he doesn't say how far west of the Nile they dwelt, but Herodotus gave the most details about their location, saying they dwelt on the Libyan side of the Southern Sea, which is none other than the south Atlantic, because the southern Sea on the Arabian side to the east he called Erythrean or Red Sea and this was where the Horn of Africa was located. And in chapter 114 of the same book 3, he stated the Macrobians dwelt towards the farthest west (Sunset) of Libya, and this was also none other than the west coast of Africa. So it is clear to me that you are ignoring the facts coming from the primary source (Herodotus) in favor of theories coming from very late authorities, and all these theories (pseudo theories) goes against what the primary source is saying. In other words, I don't know what your intention is, but you are definitely making no sense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ArthurMayfield79 (talk • contribs) 16:07, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
 * First of all lets be civil ('you are definitely making no sense') and deter from edit warring, until a consensus is reached you should not revert. I'm not following any theories from late authorities, nor have I any intentions other than keeping the article in a clean and encyclopedic state. Using only primary sources is against Wikipedia's policiy:
 * "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources. Secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic's notability and to avoid novel interpretations of primary sources. All analyses and interpretive or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary or tertiary source, and must not be an original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors.....Policy: Unless restricted by another policy, primary sources that have been reputably published may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge. For example, an article about a novel may cite passages to describe the plot, but any interpretation needs a secondary source. Do not analyze, evaluate, interpret, or synthesize material found in a primary source yourself; instead, refer to reliable secondary sources that do so. Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them. Do not add unsourced material from your personal experience, because that would make Wikipedia a primary source of that material. Use extra caution when handling primary sources about living people; see WP:Biographies of living persons. Avoid misuse of primary sources, which is policy."
 * For example using Herodotus primary sources we would still assume that The Amazons were in Libya, but thanks to secondary and tertiary sources it has been found that the Amazons were probably historical Scythians. The Macrobians are, lets remind us, a legendary people. It is not a irrefutable historical fact, published in tertiary sources. In your arguments you have not addressed any of the issues I pointed out. And using your own thinking (Original research) to establish your views. Although Wikipedia is a place where multiple views can coexist, but only if properly cited without any bias from the editors. Let me restate, don't revert my edits until a consensus is found. I may be relatively inactive in Wikpedia (explaining my late response), I still want to see the articles in a good shape. Kind regards. Runehelmet (talk) 15:54, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

I can keep it civil, but I will also keep it truthful and logical. And I can understand the Wikipedia policy of citing secondary sources, but there's a problem when those secondary sources contradict the primary source. And if you are going to reject the primary source in favor of the secondary source then please refrain from using the term Macrobian and just stick to the term Somali or Somali, because it is from the primary source (Herodotus) that the word Macrobian is derived from. And there's a fact I must educate you on, and that fact is, the ancient writers from Herodotus to Pliny and Claudius Ptolemy saw Libya (later called Africa) as all land west of the Nile river, and divided the continent into three nations, which was Egypt, Ethiopia and Libya. Egypt and Ethiopia they saw as the entire Nile river and Red Sea coast to the east, because that cost paralleled with the eastern Nile Delta to the north, but the entire land west of Egypt and Ethiopia, from the west bank of the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean was called Libya. And according to Herodotus the nation of Macrobians dwelt not east of Libya near the Nile, not in the middle of Libya in the Sahara desert but they dwelt toward the farthest west of Libya along southern Sea coast, which was none other than the Atlantic, because only the African coast in the Atlantic stretches from North to south, from Morocco to Senegal and Gambia that is. And yes the Red Sea Coast of Africa also stretches from North to South, from Egypt to Somali land but this coast was never called Libya or Libyan. The sea of Libya was on the opposite side of the Red Sea to the west. Go ahead and keep this article the way it is, but keep in mind that the info about the Macrobians on your article is Pseudo and the sources posted are not supported by the Primary source but goes against it. And if Herodotus had left any blanks regarding the location of the Macrobians then you would be in your right to theorize and conjecture all you want, but truth is, Herodotus left no blanks regarding the location of the Macrobians and made it very clear that they dwelt in the southern regions of Libya towards the farthest west along the coast of the Sea. And if this is what Wikipedia is about, posting false info, then I want no part of it, but Wikipedia or no wikipedia I will get the truth out concerning the Macrobians. And all I ask of you is take my info into consideration and stop acting as if you have 100% facts, because you do not. And BTW, the ancient Geographers called the people along the Red Sea cost of Africa Troglodytes and this includes all the peoples from Eritrea to Somalia and there's no way these people were descendants of the Macrobians and the coast these Troglodytes dwelt on was never called Libya. And your info is not even a secondary source, but it is based on conjecture (a guess) that is as good as made up. I would like to debate you person to person on this topic, are you up for it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ArthurMayfield79 (talk • contribs) 23:36, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Do you have a youtube livestream, because if you do I will like to debate you on this topic, because I strongly you are wrong and disregarding the facts from the primary source and making up your own distorted history based on some opinions that has no ties to the primary source. Or if not livestream then we can debate here, Are you up for debate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ArthurMayfield79 (talk • contribs) 23:42, 16 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I would like to keep the debate within Wikipedia. Once again I'm not making any story nor distorted history, I'm only referring back to the status quo of the article. All of your above mentioned arguments are not countering my previous ones. Every statement must be supported by sources, preferably secondary, tertiary sources. Albeit primary sources, any statement must be cited, which I'm not seeing here. I only see your own hypothesis and theories, i.e. original research. Regards. Runehelmet (talk) 20:20, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

You can beat around the bush and dodge the facts all you want, but truth is, you are the one doing what you're accusing me of, which is citing your own hypothesis and theories. Even the late so-called secondary sources you posted are guilty of citing their own bias hypothesis and theories, and like I said before if the secondary source contradicts the primary then the secondary source should be disregarded and not applied. But let's be logical here, Herodotus makes it perfectly clear that the Macrobians dwelt towards the farthest southwest edge of Libya, while the people known as the Atlanteans, Garamantes and Ammonians dwelt eastward of the Macrobians in the interior of Libya and westward of Egypt and the Nile, so if the Macrobians were the farthest inhabitants towards the southwest of Libya, even farther west than the Garamantes and the Atlanteans of Atlas then how in the hell they could have dwelt in the Horn of Africa, which is on opposite side towards the southeast of the Continent, please answer that question for me. And if you're going to place the dwelling of the Macrobians in the Horn of Africa and disregard them as the people of Libya, then you might as well place the Carthaginians on the Red sea and place the Egyptians in Persia, which makes no sense. So now I hope you see how fraudulent your post is regarding the dwellings of the Macrobians. I mean you literally turn west into east and turned Libya into Arabia, you're displaying falsehood at it's best. But please do answer these questions and refute what I'm saying. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ArthurMayfield79 (talk • contribs) 04:47, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

The disputed version of this page was copy-pasted on 15 January 2019, complete with page-protection template, to create Macrobii Ethiopians. I've marked that page with template db-g12. 79.73.244.91 (talk) 15:16, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Saying "you are making no sense" is certainly not a violation of Wikipedia rules on civility. There is something very odd here. I think the disputed version of this page needs to be rewritten (for writing quality), but there is a real discrepancy between primary and secondary sources. In discussing Herodotus, I think we should limit ourselves to what Herodotus actually said first and foremost. Afterwards, if we want to cite secondary sources which say something different, then let's put that down in the article as a later historical reinterpretation. I think it is clear that the later centuries are re-interpreting Herodotus for political reasons, although that is outside the scope of this article or this talk. If Herodotus said that it was in the West to the south of Libya, and we know that there were West African civilizations to the south of Libya then it is not absurd that he would locate it there. But it does not matter whether what he says is absurd or not because our job is simply to report what Herodotus said here and not distort it with the picture from a later century. That picture should be listed too, but not as the primary interpretation. JackKausch (talk) 02:21, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Zealous Assertions
It has come to my attention that this article, and a few others on Ancient Africa, have become centers of zealous assertions related to the peopling of Ancient regions, their locations, and their modern correlatives, if they exist. Adding scholarly speculation, granted it is fair, is one thing, but asserting it as absolute fact is another. This article was particularly egregious in its contents, some of which read more like fiction literature than objective scholarship: "They were also, according to Herodotus, the "tallest and most handsome among all men". They were fierce warrior herders and wealthy seafarers according to Herodotus again. All descriptions of the people agree with the pastoral Somali figures who are tall, handsome warriors, with a diet mainly consisting of meat and milk. Somalis also have a rich maritime culture. This point of view was affirmed by the Indian scholar, Mamta Agarwal, who wrote "these people were none other than the inhabitants of Somaliland, opposite the Red Sea.[9][10]" Not only does Herodotus not say some of what is attributed to his text, the entire direction of this quote seems to be in romanticizing and/or glamorizing "traditional" Somali lifestyles, to which ends distortions are made. Important parts of of the older contents of this article, relating to the "fountain(s) of youth" which Herodotus claims existed among the Macrobian Ethiopians, are lost so that the editor can instead associate the Macrobians' mythical longevity with this "traditional" Somali lifestyle. — Preceding unsigned comment added by HiddenHistoryPedia (talk • contribs) 22:57, 3 January 2022 (UTC)