The regions of Africa in the Sahel, the Sahara, and coastal areas consisted of different tribal groups that blended into each other through migration, cultural affiliations, commerce, marriages, conquest, and so on.

The Temahu, according to historians like Strabo, Josephus, and Diodorus...(also A.J Rogers in modern times), were a people bordering the oasis of Nubia and Sudan. Garamantes, according to Strabo(63BC-23AD) were a Black-skinned people who were used to raiding and pillaging on the fringes of the desert. "The Baja were a people around the Nile in Egypt and Sudan, fond of daggers, swords, scimitars, and camels, their hair was made curly(instead of weaving, like the male Luwata and Gatuli) by a hot knife". They're 'black' and weren't "good to have as a friend or foe". For the Gatuleg, Strabo described them as people whom "the robbery was a constant practice".

Beriberi(who made up most of what's today known as Berbers as well as Tuaregs, occupied locations that can be seen today as part of Mali, Niger, and Libya. They were known for their "obsession with red cruciforms which marked their women's faces". Among the Tuareg, the women educated the children and maintained the home.

Unlike the Arabs, the women's faces were not veiled whereas the men cover their faces. The Fulani were a nomadic tribe that was known for their holy wars that aided in spreading Islam throughout most of West Africa. They were herdsmen that prided in naming and calling their castles by the given names. They often 'buried their dead with piles of stones and a cattle horn atop'. The Libo, Tebu, etc, became the Libyans today... Wolof around the Senegal River, Soninke of Mauritania, Afar, detail, etc made up what was most of north Africa before the coming of the Persians, the Assyrians(during the reign of Asur Banipal), the Greeks, the Romans, and the coming of the Caucasoid groups known today as the Arabs in the 3rd century CE, a situation that intensified in the 7th and 8th century CE with the spread of Islam and the Arab slave trade as well as the trans-saharan trade.

The effects of concubinage, Barbary slavery, migration, and earlier encroachments of Europeans into Africa, contributed greatly to altering the population. The Arabs brought into North Africa, thousands of European slaves. These groups gained dominance after the fall of the Moors in Spain as Europe became more organized along national lines.