Gulf arabs and indians?

The royal families of most Arab gulf countries are from Bedouin tribes, but many people in eastern Arabia are Baharna, which is an ethnic group of non-Bedouin Arabs. Unlike nomadic Bedouins, these were mostly sedentary farmers and they are Shi'ites. They mostly have dark skin like Bedouins. Regarding marriage, there is a tradition among Bedouins, especially for women, that you should only marry people from your tribe. But many so called "Arabs" in this region are actually descended from immigrants who came here from Iran and other places in the past few hundred years, which could explain the difference.

Originally posted by Cryptic Just out of curiosity, do bedouin arabs have dark or light skin?   Also what about the small ethnic group in Oman whose native language is not Arabic.  I cant remember their name.  Do you know if they are indigenous to the area like the Arabs are/

Heh, well not all of them look the same though I see your point. Since I live in the region I can tell you there are many Arabs who have light skin. Arabs in general have lighter skin than Indians (at least the Indians who come here). I've seen many Indians who have green eyes though.

I often ask the same question about some Aboriginal Peoples in Southern australia , they too often get mistaken for people from the middle east ,  with brown skin  and eyes and dark wavy hair , having noted how the Dingo looks very much like the Canaanite dog I assume a very long time ago  ancient traders spread their genes  everywhere they traded ,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaan_Dog ,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingo  Today, the most common theory is that the dingo arrived in Australia about 4,000 years ago, because the oldest known fossils of dingoes were estimated to be about 3,500 years old  , and as I note many words shared in the Arabic and Aboriginal peoples languages  of Sth australia ,  Im convinced there were so called Phoenicians  trading with Australia at the time the Dingo arrived ,  when they roamed to seas several thousand years ago that also left behind SOME language

Based on fossil, molecular, and anthropogenic evidence, it is assumed that Australian dogs  called  dingoes once might have had a widespread distribution. These ancient dingoes would have associated to nomadic hunter-gatherer-societies and later with the rising agricultural centers. It is further assumed that they would have been tamed there and were then transported to various places in the world. Dingo-findings from Thailand and Vietnam are regarded as the oldest findings, which have been estimated to be respectively as old as 5,000–5,500 years. The age of findings from the highlands of Indonesia vary between a maximum of 5,000 to (in most cases) 2,500 to 3,000 years.