1. The people who populated West Africa were NOT ancestral to modern West Africans but Twa. Modern West Africans are mostly recent to the area.
2. Stay on topic. Nothing about this thread is related to Egypt and nor was anyone dikkriding Egypt here.
First of all salute to you and all the other brehs in here spreading knowledge. I am honored to have afro-american brehs interested in the history and culture of my and maybe your homeland.
I'm glad you mention that (some) ethnic groups who populated the Western Sudan where NOT ancestral to the area.
For instance my ethnic, the Soninke now in Mauritania, Mali and Senegal, our oral tradition says that we made a long migration from Sonna(Assouan*) in upper Egypt all through the Sahara which was not the dry desert we know now and settled in central Mali more precisely Jenné-Jenno which we called Diaka this was around the foundation of the city in 250 BC. Jenné is now in Macina, a region in Mali where fulani dominate. After time, another migration happened because of droughts to the Wagadu area in what is now southeastern Mauritania and Mali. But the tradition says that to the contrary of Diaka which was nearly empty swamplands we found and subjugated there a(twa/pygmy like?) autochtonous hunting and agricultural people called Kagoros or Kakolos. Now Ka koro literally means "the first ones here". These Kagoros were great warriors and resisted heavily but eventually got subdued by the Soninké. Some fled to the south and assimilated with Mandé groups, others stayed and became Soninké-ized until becoming indistinguishable. This theory is true because many of the noble clans within the Soninké society are originally Kagoro which assimilated into the Soninké. For instance the Camara or the Fofana. Camara are the founders of the ancient city of Walata now in southeast Mauritania and called Birou in Soninké language. The soninké again left this town because of droughts and settled further south along the Senegal River or across the border of the desert in Mali. The people living in Oualata are now arab-berber nomads mixed with original Soninké/Kagoro. As your family name is your passport in Mandé and Mandé influenced areas, it'd be hard to find Soninké not mixed with Kagoros.
There are still some pure kagoros left in Mali about 15.000 in 1960. And there are still many Soninké people who know they are originally Kagoros. The rest are assimilated in the numerous Mandé groups mostly in Mali.
*Local berbers used to call the Soninké people Aswaninké, literally those from Aswan. The Soninké call their ancestral home Soni or Choua(Aswan or Achwan). The suffix -nké meaning "people of" in mandé languages. So the Malinkés means people of Mali or Manding, the Khassonké means people of Khasso, the Diakhanké means people of Diakha. All these places are identifiable and located in the Western Sudan. That leaves us the question where was the Soni of the Soninké because there is no Soni in the Western Sudan area.
And we still see it today.
