Recent studies find the ancient Egyptians had a tropical body plan like sub-Saharan 'black' Africans and were not cold-adapted like European type populations. Tropical body plans also indicate darker-skin.
QUOTE: "The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the "super-Negroid" body plan described by Robins (1983).. This pattern is supported by Figure 7 (a plot of population mean femoral and tibial lengths; data from Ruff, 1994), which indicates that the Egyptians generally have tropical body plans. Of the Egyptian samples, only the Badarian and Early Dynastic period populations have shorter tibiae than predicted from femoral length. Despite these differences, all samples lie relatively clustered together as compared to the other populations." (Zakrzewski, S.R. (2003). "Variation in ancient Egyptian stature and body proportions". American Journal of Physical Anthropology 121 (3): 219-229.
a 2008 Study puts the ancient Egyptians closer to US Blacks than whites:
Quotes:
"Intralimb (crural and brachial) indices are significantly higher in ancient Egyptians than in American Whites (except crural index among females), i.e., Egyptians have relatively longer distal segments (Table 4). Intralimb indices are not significantly different between Egyptians and American Blacks... Many of those who have studied ancient Egyptians have commented on their characteristically ''tropical'' or ''African'' body plan (Warren, 1897; Masali, 1972; Robins, 1983; Robins and Shute, 1983, 1984, 1986; Zakrzewski, 2003). Egyptians also fall within the range of modern African populations (Ruff and Walker, 1993), but close to the upper limit of modern Europeans as well, at least for the crural index (brachial indices are definitely more ''African'').. In terms of femoral and tibial length to total skeletal height proportions, we found that ancient Egyptians are significantly different from US Blacks, although still closer to Blacks than to Whites.
Comparisons of linear body proportions of Old Kingdom and non-Old Kingdom period individuals, and workers and high officials in our sample found no statistically significant differences among them. Zakrzewski (2003) also found little evidence for differences in linear body proportions of Egyptians over a wider temporal range. In general, recent studies of skeletal variation among ancient Egyptians support scenarios of biological continuity through time. Irish (2006) analyzed quantitative and qualitative dental traits of 996 Egyptians from Neolithic through Roman periods, reporting the presence of a few outliers but concluding that the dental samples appear to be largely homogeneous and that the affinities observed indicate overall biological uniformity and continuity from Predynastic through Dynastic and Postdynastic periods.
Zakrzewski (2007) provided a comprehensive summary of previous Egyptian craniometric studies and examined Egyptian crania from six time periods. She found that the earlier samples were relatively more homogeneous in comparison to the later groups. However, overall results indicated genetic continuity over the Egyptian Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods, albeit with a high level of genetic diversity within the population, suggesting an indigenous process of state formation. She also concluded that while the biological patterning of the Egyptian population varied across time, no consistent temporal or spatial trends are apparent. Thus, the stature estimation formulae developed here may be broadly applicable to all ancient Egyptian populations.." ("Stature estimation in ancient Egyptians: A new technique based on anatomical reconstruction of stature." Michelle H. Raxter, Christopher B. Ruff, Ayman Azab, Moushira Erfan, Muhammad Soliman, Aly El-Sawaf, (Am J Phys Anthropol. 2008, Jun;136(2):147-55
Older limb studies find the same:
"In this regard it is interesting to note that limb proportions of Predynastic Naqada people in Upper Egypt are reported to be "Super-Negroid," meaning that the distal segments are elongated in the fashion of tropical Africans.....skin color intensification and distal limb elongation are apparent wherever people have been long-term residents of the tropics." (C.L. Brace, 1993. Clines and clusters..")
"An attempt has been made to estimate male and female Egyptian stature from long bone length using Trotter & Gleser negro stature formulae, previous work by the authors having shown that these rather than white formulae give more consistent results with male dynastic material... When consistency has been achieved in this way, predynastic proportions are founded to be such that distal segments of the limbs are even longer in relation to the proximal segments than they are in modern negroes. Such proportions are termed "super-negroid"...
Robins (1983) and Robins & Shute (1983) have shown that more consistent results are obtained from ancient Egyptian male skeletons if Trotter & Gleser formulae for negro are used, rather than those for whites which have always been applied in the past. .. their physical proportions were more like modern negroes than those of modern whites, with limbs that were relatively long compared with the trunk, and distal segments that were long compared with the proximal segments. If ancient Egyptian males had what may be termed negroid proportions, it seems reasonable that females did likewise." (Robins G, Shute CCD. 1986. Predynastic Egyptian stature and physical proportions. Hum Evol 1:313-324. Ruff CB. 1994.)
Modern anthropology shows that the ancient Egyptians are well within the range of tropical Africa, contradicting older research in the 1990s that sought to deny any relationship. The anthropologist below, Nancy Lovell was recommended by Mary lefkowitz in Black Athena Revisted.
"There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas." (Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999) pp 328-332)
The ancient Badarians were quite representative of ancient Egyptians as a whole and showed clear links with tropical Africans to the south. They have been sometimes excluded in studies of the ancient Egyptian population, which shows continuity in its history, not mass influxes of foreigners until the late periods.
Quotes: "As a result of their facial prognathism, the Badarian sample has been described as forming a morphological cluster with Nubian, Tigrean, and other southern (or "Negroid") groups (Morant, 1935, 1937; Mukherjee et al., 1955; Nutter, 1958, Strouhal, 1971; Angel, 1972; Keita, 1990). Cranial nonmetric trait studies have found this group to be similar to other Egyptians, including much later material (Berry and Berry, 1967, 1972), but also to be significantly different from LPD material (Berry et al., 1967). Similarly, the study of dental nonmetric traits has suggested that the Badarian population is at the centroid of Egyptian dental samples (Irish, 2006), thereby suggesting similarity and hence continuity across Egyptian time periods. From the central location of the Badarian samples in Figure 2, the current study finds the Badarian to be relatively morphologically close to the centroid of all the Egyptian samples. The Badarian have been shown to exhibit greatest morphological similarity with the temporally successive EPD (Table 5). Finally, the biological distinctiveness of the Badarian from other Egyptian samples has also been demonstrated (Tables 6 and 7).
These results suggest that the EDyn do form a distinct morphological pattern. Their overlap with other Egyptian samples (in PC space, Fig. 2) suggests that although their morphology is distinctive, the pattern does overlap with the other time periods. These results therefore do not support the Petrie concept of a \Dynastic race" (Petrie, 1939; Derry, 1956). Instead, the results suggest that the Egyptian state was not the product of mass movement of populations into the Egyptian Nile region, but rather that it was the result of primarily indigenous development combined with prolonged small-scale migration, potentially from trade, military, or other contacts.
This evidence suggests that the process of state formation itself may have been mainly an indigenous process, but that it may have occurred in association with in-migration to the Abydos region of the Nile Valley. This potential in-migration may have occurred particularly during the EDyn and OK. A possible explanation is that the Egyptian state formed through increasing control of trade and raw materials, or due to military actions, potentially associated with the use of the Nile Valley as a corridor for prolonged small scale movements through the desert environment. (Sonia R. Zakrzewski. (2007). Population Continuity or Population Change: Formation of the Ancient Egyptian State. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 132:501-509)
Ancient Egyptians most related to other Africans and are part of a Nilotic continuity rather than something Mediterranean or Middle Eastern
"Certainly there was some foreign admixture [in Egypt], but basically a homogeneous African population had lived in the Nile Valley from ancient to modern times... [the] Badarian people, who developed the earliest Predynastic Egyptian culture, already exhibited the mix of North African and Sub-Saharan physical traits that have typified Egyptians ever since (Hassan 1985; Yurco 1989; Trigger 1978; Keita 1990.. et al.,)... The peoples of Egypt, the Sudan, and much of East African Ethiopia and Somalia are now generally regarded as a Nilotic continuity, with widely ranging physical features (complexions light to dark, various hair and craniofacial types) but with powerful common cultural traits, including cattle pastoralist traditions.." (Frank Yurco, "An Egyptological Review," 1996 -in Mary R. Lefkowitz and Guy MacLean Rogers, Black Athena Revisited, 1996, The University of North Carolina Press, p. 62-100)
African peoples are the most diverse in the world whether analyzed by DNA or skeletal or cranial methods. Attempts to deny this are rooted in racism and error. African people, particularly SUB-SAHARAN Africans, vary the most in how they look, more so than any other population in the world.
"Estimates of genetic diversity in major geographic regions are frequently made by pooling all individuals into regional aggregates. This method can potentially bias results if there are differences in population substructure within regions, since increased variation among local populations could inflate regional diversity. A preferred method of estimating regional diversity is to compute the mean diversity within local populations. Both methods are applied to a global sample of craniometric data consisting of 57 measurements taken on 1734 crania from 18 local populations in six geographic regions: sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, East Asia, Australasia, Polynesia, and the Americas. Each region is represented by three local populations.
Both methods for estimating regional diversity show sub-Saharan Africa to have the highest levels of phenotypic variation, consistent with many genetic studies." (Relethford, John "Global Analysis of Regional Differences in Craniometric Diversity and Population Substructure". Human Biology - Volume 73, Number 5, October 2001, pp. 629-636)
# "In addition, craniometric variation also shows agreement with genetic data in showing highest levels of diversity in sub-Saharan Africa than in other geographic regions (Relethford and Harpending, 1994). Further, there is a clear decline in levels of craniometric variation as geographic distance from East Africa increases (Manica et al., 2007; von Cramon-Taubadel and Lycett, 2008; Betti et al., 2009)." -- John H. Relethford* (2010). Population-Specific Deviations of Global Human Craniometric Variation From a Neutral Model. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 2010
"The living peoples of the African continent are diverse in facial characteristics, stature, skin color, hair form, genetics, and other characteristics. No one set of characteristics is more African than another. Variability is also found in "sub-Saharan" Africa, to which the word "Africa" is sometimes erroneously restricted. There is a problem with definitions. Sometimes Africa is defined using cultural factors, like language, that exclude developments that clearly arose in Africa. For example, sometimes even the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea) is excluded because of geography and language and the fact that some of its peoples have narrow noses and faces.
However, the Horn is at the same latitude as Nigeria, and its languages are African. The latitude of 15 degree passes through Timbuktu, surely in "sub-Saharan Africa," as well as Khartoum in Sudan; both are north of the Horn. Another false idea is that supra-Saharan and Saharan Africa were peopled after the emergence of "Europeans" or Near Easterners by populations coming from outside Africa. Hence, the ancient Egyptians in some writings have been de-Africanized. These ideas, which limit the definition of Africa and Africans, are rooted in racism and earlier, erroneous "scientific" approaches." (S. Keita, "The Diversity of Indigenous Africans," in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Clenko, Editor (1996), pp. 104-105. [10])
Modern DNA studies find even though some African peoples look different, they are genetically related through the PN2 transition clade of the Y-chromosone. Haplogroup E links numerous peoples together even though they don't look exactly the same.
"But the Y-chromosome clade defined by the PN2 transition (PN2/M35, PN2/M2) shatters the boundaries of phenotypically defined races and true breeding populations across a great geographical expanse. African peoples with a range of skin colors, hair forms and physiognomies have substantial percentages of males whose Y chromosomes form closely related clades with each other, but not with others who are phenotypically similar. The individuals in the morphologically or geographically defined 'races' are not characterized by 'private' distinct lineages restricted to each of them." (S O Y Keita, R A Kittles, et al. "Conceptualizing human variation," Nature Genetics 36, S17 - S20 (2004)
"Recall that the Horn-Nile Valley crania show, as a group, the largest overlap with other regions. A review of the recent literature indicates that there are male lineage ties between African peoples who have been traditionally labeled as being ''racially'' different, with ''racially'' implying an ontologically deep divide. The PN2 transition, a Y chromosome marker, defines a lineage (within the YAPþ derived haplogroup E or III) that emerged in Africa probably before the last glacial maximum, but after the migration of modern humans from Africa (see Semino et al., 2004). This mutation forms a clade that has two daughter subclades (defined by the biallelic markers M35/215 (or 215/M35) and M2) that unites numerous phenotypically variant African populations from the supra-Saharan, Saharan, and sub-Saharan regions.." (S.O.Y Keita. Exploring northeast African metric craniofacial variation at the individual level: A comparative study using principal component analysis. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 16:679-689, 2004.) keita2004neanalysis.htm
"Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages.. Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world." (Tishkoff SA, Williams SM., Genetic analysis of African populations: human evolution and complex disease. Nature Reviews Genetics. 2002 Aug (8):611-21.)
DNA of some modern Egyptians found a genetic ancestral heritage to East Africa: "The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diversity of 58 individuals from Upper Egypt, more than half (34 individuals) from Gurna, whose population has an ancient cultural history, were studied by sequencing the control-region and screening diagnostic RFLP markers. This sedentary population presented similarities to the Ethiopian population by the L1 and L2 macrohaplogroup frequency (20.6%), by the West Eurasian component (defined by haplogroups H to K and T to X) and particularly by a high frequency (17.6%) of haplogroup M1. We statistically and phylogenetically analysed and compared the Gurna population with other Egyptian, Near East and sub-Saharan Africa populations; AMOVA and Minimum Spanning Network analysis showed that the Gurna population was not isolated from neighbouring populations. Our results suggest that the Gurna population has conserved the trace of an ancestral genetic structure from an ancestral East African population, characterized by a high M1 haplogroup frequency. The current structure of the Egyptian population may be the result of further influence of neighbouring populations on this ancestral population." (Stevanovitch A, Gilles A, Bouzaid E, et al. (2004) Mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity in a sedentary population from Egypt.Ann Hum Genet. 68(Pt 1):23-39.)
Tishkoff et al on Africa having the most genetic diversity:
"Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages (see online link to Ethnologue). Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world(TABLE 1).However,most studies report only a few markers in divergent African populations, which makes it difficult to draw general conclusions about the levels and patterns of genetic diversity in these populations (FIG. 1). Because genetic studies have been biased towards more economically developed African countries that have key research or medical centres, populations from more underdeveloped or politically unstable regions of Africa remain undersampled (FIG. 1). Historically, human population genetic studies have relied on one or two African populations as being representative of African diversity, but recent studies show extensive genetic variation among even geographically close African populations, which indicates that there is not a single 'representative' African population." -- Tishkoff NATURE REVIEWS | GENETICS VOLUME 3 | AUGUST 2002
Mainstream scholars note that genetic studies often usen a narrow range of stereotyped samples to represent 'Africans', even splitting off peoples of the Horn of Africa as some seperate "non african" type or race.[b]
"Genetic studies that attempt to recover the biological history of the species have generally found that there is a split between their restricted African samples and "the rest of the world." These approaches conceptualize human population history as a series of bifurcations with each node being relatively uniform. The "Africans" usually used are either the short statured Aka or Mbuti, Khoisan speakers, or West African stereotypes, in keeping with a socially, not scientifically constructed concept of African. Studies using individuals as the unit of analysis evince a different pattern. A select subset of Africans called the "group of 49" forms a unit versus the rest of humankind. However the latter individuals ("rest of humankind") also includes non-East African sub-Saharans. Hence there is no "racial" split. As has been stated, the idea that human variation can be described as being structured by subspecies(races) that are treated as lineages is fundamentally false. In actuality, also, although averages are used, the gene studies usually give us histories that are not necessarily the same as population histories." (Writing African History Chapter 4, Physical Anthropology and African History, Shomarka Keita University of Rochester Press p.134
[b]Continent wide African DNA linkages "The most extensive pan-African haplotype (16189 16192 16223 16278 16294 16309 16390) is in the L2a1 haplogroup. This sequence is observed in West Africa among the Malinke, Wolof, and others; in North Africa among the Maure, Hausa, Fulbe, and others; in Central Africa among the Bamileke, Fali, and others; in South Africa among the Khoisan family including the Khwe and Bantu speakers; and in East Africa among the Kikuyu. Closely related variants are observed among the Tuareg in North and West Africa and among the East African Dinka and Somali." (-- Bert Ely , Jamie Lee Wilson , Fatimah Jackson and Bruce A Jackson. (2006). African-American mitochondrial DNAs often match mtDNAs found in multiple African ethnic groups. BMC Biology 2006, 4:34)
"It is of interest that the M35 and M2 lineages are united by a mutation - the PN2 transition. This PN2 defined clade originated in East Africa, where various populations have a notable frequency of its underived state. This would suggest that an ancient population in East Africa, or more correctly its males, form the basis of the ancestors of all African upper Paleolithic populations - and their subsequent descendants in the present day." (--Bengston, John D. (ed.), In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory: Essays in the four fields of anthropology. 2008. John Benjamins Publishing: pp. 3-16)
Egyptian Y-chromosome haplotypes show preponderance is with African clusters not Europe or the Near East
Recent DNA studies of the Sudan show genetic unity and linkage between the Sudanic, Horn, Egyptian, Nubian and other Nilotic peoples, confirming earlier skeletal/cranial studies and historical data. (Yurco (1989, 1996), Keita (1993,2004, 2005) Lovell (1999), Zakrewski (2003, 2007) et. al). Of note is that DNA data shows that some peoples linked to one of the oldest Egyptian populations, the original Copts, have a significant frequency of the B-M60 marker, indicating early colonization of Egypt by Nilotics in the state formation period.
QUOTES:
"Haplogroup E-M78, however, is more widely distributed and is thought to have an origin in eastern African. More recently, this haplogroup has been carefully dissected and was found to depict several well-established subclades with defined geographical clustering (Cruciani et al., 2006, 2007). Although this haplogroup is common to most Sudanese populations, it has exceptionally high frequency among populations like those of western Sudan (particularly Darfur) and the Beja in eastern Sudan... Although the PC plot places the Beja and Amhara from Ethiopia in one sub-cluster based on shared frequencies of the haplogroup J1, the distribution of M78 subclades (Table 2) indicates that the Beja are perhaps related as well to the Oromo on the basis of the considerable frequencies of E-V32 among Oromo in comparison to Amhara (Cruciani et al., 2007)...
These findings affirm the historical contact between Ethiopia and eastern Sudan (1998), and the fact that these populations speak languages of the Afroasiatic family tree reinforces the strong correlation between linguistic and genetic diversity (Cavalli-Sforza, 1997)."
"Genetic continuum of the Nubians with their kin in southern Egypt is indicated by comparable frequencies of E-V12 the predominant M78 subclade among southern Egyptians." [Hassan et al. Y-chromosome variation.." Am J. Phy Anthro. v137,3. 316-323
"The Copt samples displayed a most interesting Y-profile, enough (as much as that of Gaalien in Sudan) to suggest that they actually represent a living record of the peopling of Egypt. The significant frequency of B-M60 in this group might be a relic of a history of colonization of southern Egypt probably by Nilotics in the early state formation, something that conforms both to recorded history and to Egyptian mythology." Source: (Hisham Y. Hassan 1, Peter A. Underhill 2, Luca L. Cavalli-Sforza 2, Muntaser E. Ibrahim 1. (2008). Y-chromosome variation among Sudanese: Restricted gene flow, concordance with language, geography, and history. Am J Phys Anthropology, 2008. Volume 137 Issue 3, Pages 316 - 323)
Older research notes the physical makeup of the original Copts, now confirmed by recent DNA data above: "In Libya, which is mostly desert and oasis, there is a visible Negroid element in the sedentary populations, and at the same is true of the Fellahin of Egypt, whether Copt or Muslim. Osteological studies have shown that the Negroid element was stronger in predynastic times than at present, reflecting an early movement northward along the banks of the Nile, which were then heavily forested." (Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. "Populations, Human")
Haplogroup E3A and E3B represent more than 70% of the Y-chromosones on the African continent, with varying proportions found in different parts of the continent. In some African populations for example, E3B exceeds 80%. Migrations out of Africa, are responsible for the spread of E3b to Europe. Non-Africans thus acquired a sub-set f African genes through this migration.
"In Europe, the overall frequency pattern of haplogroup E-M78 does not support the hypothesis of a uniform spread of people from a single parental Near Eastern population... The Y chromosome specific biallelic marker DYS271 defines the most common haplogroup (E3a) currently found in sub-Saharan Africa. A sister clade, E3b (E-M215), is rare in sub-Saharan Africa, but very common in northern and eastern Africa. On the whole, these two clades represent more than 70% of the Y chromosomes of the African continent. A third clade belonging to E3 (E3c or E-M329) has been recently reported to be present only in eastern Africa, at low frequencies.. The new topology of the E3 haplogroup is suggestive of a relatively recent eastern African origin for the majority of the chromosomes presently found in sub-Saharan Africa."
"In conclusion, we detected the signatures of several distinct processes of migration and/or recurrent gene flow associated with the dispersal of haplogroup E3b lineages. Early events involved the dispersal of E-M78d chromosomes from eastern Africa into and out of Africa, as well as the introduction of the E-M34 subclade into Africa from the Near East. Later events involved short-range migrations within Africa (E-M78? and E-V6) and from northern Africa into Europe (E-M81 and E-M78ß), as well as an important range expansion from the Balkans to western and southern-central Europe (E-M78a). This latter expansion was the main contributor to the present distribution of E3b chromosomes in Europe."
(Cruciani, F, et. al. (2004) Phylogeographic Analysis of Haplogroup E3b (E-M215) Y Chromosomes Reveals Multiple Migratory Events Within and Out Of Africa, Am J Hum Genet. 74(5): 1014-1022.)
Somalis link much more heavily with African populations such as those in Kenya and Ethiopia than Middle Eastern or European ones according to DNA evidence. Eurasian genes only accounted for about 15% of the mix among Somalis, typically associated with recent Arab influence. On such key common DNA markers as E3b1, Europeans only weighed in at 5%, and Middle Easterners at approximately 6%. The overwhelming link of Somalis- over 85% of the total is with Africans. Kenya and Ethiopia are located in "sub-Saharan" Africa.
"The high frequency (77.6%) of haplogroup E3b1 was characteristic of male Somalis. The frequency of E3b1 was significantly lower in Ethiopian Oromos (35.9%), Ethiopian Amharas (22.9%), Egyptians (20.0%), Sudanese (17.5%), Kenyans (15.1%),10 Iraqis (6.3%), Northern Africans (6.1%), Southern Europeans (0.5-5.1%) and sub-Saharan populations." (Sanchez et al.,(2005) High frequencies of Y chromosome lineages characterized by E3b1, DYS19-11, DYS392-12 in Somali males, Eu J of Hum Genet (2005) 13, 856-866)[/i]
More on Haplogroup E here: from GENEBASE: http://www.genebase.com/app/item.php?aiId=35 "E1 is the predominant subclade, while E2 is much less frequent. Within E1, E1b1 (defined by SNP P2) is the most abundant and widespread representative, and accounts for most of Haplogroup E worldwide. E1b1 lineages vary in abundance over Africa and three main regions are evident from the distribution peaks of three subclades: E1b1a (SNP M2) in Sub-Saharan Africa, E1b1b1a (SNP M78) in East Africa and E1b1b1b (SNP M81) in Northwest Africa. The difference in geographic location of Haplogroup E subclades also aligns with distinct language groups supporting the idea that there is prevailing father to son transmission of language in Africa. "
------------------------------------------------------------------ Simplistic "race percentage" models are dubious in Africa which has the highest genetic diversity in the world. That diversity proceeded from deeper sub-Saharan Africa, to East and N.E. Africa, then to the rest of the globe. All other populations, including Europeans and "Middle easterners" carry this diversity which was built into Africa to begin with. Africans thus don't need any "race mix" to look different. Their diversity is built-in and supplied the whole globe. Any returnees or "backflow" to Africa looked like Africans. (Brace 2005, Hanihara 1996, Holliday 2003).
" These studies suggest a recent and primary subdivision between African and non-African populations, high levels of divergence among African populations, and a recent shared common ancestry of non-African populations, from a population originating in Africa. The intermediate position, between African and non-African populations, that the Ethiopian Jews and Somalis occupy in the PCA plot also has been observed in other genetic studies (Ritte et al. 1993; Passarino et al. 1998) and could be due either to shared common ancestry or to recent gene flow. The fact that the Ethiopians and Somalis have a subset of the sub-Saharan African haplotype diversity and that the non-African populations have a subset of the diversity present in Ethiopians and Somalis makes simple-admixture models less likely; rather, these observations support the hypothesis proposed by other nuclear-genetic studies (Tishkoff et al. 1996a, 1998a, 1998b; Kidd et al. 1998) that populations in northeastern Africa may have diverged from those in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa early in the history of modern African populations and that a subset of this northeastern-African population migrated out of Africa and populated the rest of the globe. These conclusions are supported by recent mtDNA analysis (Quintana-Murci et al. 1999)." [Tishkoff et al. (2000) Short Tandem-Repeat Polymorphism/Alu Haplotype Variation at the PLAT Locus: Implications for Modern Human Origins. Am J Hum Genet; 67:901-925]
Data on Ethiopian peoples like the Oromo are underreported even though they make up the largest group percentage wise in the Ethiopian population, (50%) and are often pooled with others, hiding and obscuring their overall contribution to the Ethiopian gene pool.
"This difference, not revealed in the study by Passarino et al. (1998), in which the Oromo were underrepresented, might reflect distinct population histories." (--Semino, et al. (2002). Ethiopians and Khoisan Share the Deepest Clades of the Human Y..")
"These data, together with those reported elsewhere (Ritte et al. 1993a, 1993b; Hammer et al. 2000) suggest that the Ethiopian Jews acquired their religion without substantial genetic admixture from Middle Eastern peoples and that they can be considered an ethnic group with essentially a continental African genetic composition." (Cruciani, et. al Am J Hum Genet. 2002 May; 70(5): 1197-1214. "A Back Migration from Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa Is Supported by High-Resolution Analysis of Human Y-Chromosome Haplotypes)
"An earlier generation of anthropologists tried to explain face form in the Horn of Africa as the result of admixture from hypothetical “wandering Caucasoids,”.. but that explanation founders on the paradox of why that supposedly potent “Caucasoid” people contributed a dominant quantity of genes for nose and face form but none for skin color or limb proportions." --CL Brace, 1993
[Afrocentric critic Mary Leftokwitz says Egypt was peopled by persons from sub-Saharan Africa:
"Recent work on skeletons and DNA suggests that the people who settled in the Nile valley, like all of humankind, came from somewhere south of the Sahara; they were not (as some nineteenth-century scholars had supposed) invaders from the North. See Bruce G. Trigger, "The Rise of Civilization in Egypt," Cambridge History of Africa (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), vol I, pp 489-90; S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54. (Mary Lefkotitz (1997). Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History. Basic Books. pg 242) [/QB][/QUOTE]
In Black Athena Revisited, Lefkowitz finds similarity between Egyptians and Sudanics and recommends the work of conservative anthropologist Nancy Lovell for more research on the subject.
Quote: "not surprisingly, the Egyptian skulls were not very distance from the Jebel Moya [a Neolithic site in the southern Sudan] skulls, but were much more distance from all others, including those from West Africa. Such a study suggests a closer genetic affinity between peoples in Egypt and the northern Sudan, which were close geographically and are known to have had considerable cultural contact throughout prehistory and pharaonic history... Clearly more analyses of the physical remains of ancient Egyptians need to be done using current techniques, such as those of Nancy Lovell at the University of Alberta is using in her work.."
Lefkotitz cites Keita 1993 in Not Out of Africa. Here is Keita on the Jebel Moya studies?
"Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Jebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have 'donated' people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)... Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese." [/img] S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54
Hereis the work of the anthropologist so strongly recommended by Lefkowitz, Nancy Lovell:
"There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas." (Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999) pp 328-332)
and
"must be placed in the context of hypotheses informed by archaeological, linguistic, geographic and other data. In such contexts, the physical anthropological evidence indicates that early Nile Valley populations can be identified as part of an African lineage, but exhibiting local variation. This variation represents the short and long term effects of evolutionary forces, such as gene flow, genetic drift, and natural selection, influenced by culture and geography." ("Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999). pp 328-332)
Obviously, this shows that the Egyptians were completely white, and how foolish the Afrocentrists are to reject this notion. After all Afrocentric critic Mary Lefkowitz recommends Lovell's research..
The same Nancy Lovell recommended by Lefkowitz studied dental traits among some high status persons of the key Egyptian Naqada group and found that they resembled the peoples of Nubia.
T. Prowse, and N. Lovell "Concordance of cranial and dental morphological traits and evidence for endogamy in ancient Egypt" American journal of physical anthropology. 1996, vol. 101, no2, pp. 237-246 (2 p.1/4)
A biological affinities study based on frequencies of cranial nonmetric traits in skeletal samples from three cemeteries at Predynastic Naqada, Egypt, confirms the results of a recent nonmetric dental morphological analysis. Both cranial and dental traits analyses indicate that the individuals buried in a cemetery characterized archaeologically as high status are significantly different from individuals buried in two other, apparently non-elite cemeteries and that the non-elite samples are not significantly different from each other. A comparison with neighboring Nile Valley skeletal samples suggests that the high status cemetery represents an endogamous ruling or elite segment of the local population at Naqada, which is more closely related to populations in northern Nubia than to neighboring populations in southern Egypt.
Lefkowitz warns against Eurocentric "racial" analysis as to the Egyptians and Nubians.
Quote: "The Nubian tribute-bearers are painted in two skin tones, black and dark brown. These tones do not necessarily represent actual skin tones in real life but may serve to distinguish each tribute-bearer from the next in a row in which the figures overlap. Alternatively, the brown-skinned people may be of Nubian origin, and the black-skinned ones may be farther south 9Trigger 1978, 33). The shading of skin tones in Egyptian tomb paintings, which varies considerably, may not be a certain criterion for distinguishing race. Specific symbols of ethnic identity can also vary. Identifying race in Egyptian representational art, again, is difficult to do- probably because race (as opposed to ethnic affiliation, that is, Egyptians versus all non-Egyptians) was not a criterion for differentiation used by the ancient Egyptians...
Northern Egypt shows more physical variation than the south, but not necessarily as part of any significant 'race' mix, but local, built-in variation. They were closer to southerners than any other peoples. In comparisons with "Middle Eastern" populations of the same ancient period, the Egyptians link more closely with other Africans than the Middle Easterners. Africans vary in how they look because they have the highest built-in molecular diversity to begin with.
QUOTE(s): "..sample populations available from northern Egypt from before the 1st Dynasty (Merimda, Maadi and Wadi Digla) turn out to be significantly different from sample populations from early Palestine and Byblos, suggesting a lack of common ancestors over a long time. If there was a south-north cline variation along the Nile valley it did not, from this limited evidence, continue smoothly on into southern Palestine. The limb-length proportions of males from the Egyptian sites group them with Africans rather than with Europeans." (Barry Kemp, "Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation. (2005) Routledge. p. 52-60)
"Individuals from different geographical regions frequently plotted near each other, revealing aspects of variation at the level of individuals that is obscured by concentrating on the most distinctive facial traits once used to construct ''types.''The high level of African interindividual variation in craniometric pattern is reminiscent of the great level of molecular diversity found in Africa." (S.O.Y Keita. Exploring northeast African metric craniofacial variation at the individual level: A comparative study using principal component analysis. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 16:679-689, 2004.)
Quote on northern Egypt analysis- the Qarunian (Faiyum) remains (c. 7000 BC) "The body was that of a forty-year old woman with a height of about 1.6 meters, who was of a more modern racial type than the classic 'Mechtoid' of the Fakhurian culture (see pp. 65-6), being generally more gracile, having large teeth and thick jaws bearing some resemblance to the modern 'negroid' type." (Beatrix Midant-Reynes, Ian Shaw (2000). The Prehistory of Egypt. Wiley-Blackwell. pg. 82)
Modern studies show diversity in how people look is heavily based on distance from sub-Saharan Africa, not merely climate. In genetically diverse Africa, broad-nosed people live on the cool or cold mountain slopes of East Africa or the hot, dry Sahara, and narrow-nosed peoples like many Fulani like in the wet tropics of West Africa. Yellowish-skinned San tribes live in the hot zones of Southern Africa.
"The relative importance of ancient demography and climate in determining worldwide patterns of human within-population phenotypic diversity is still open to debate. Several morphometric traits have been argued to be under selection by climatic factors, but it is unclear whether climate affects the global decline in morphological diversity with increasing geographical distance from sub-Saharan Africa. Using a large database of male and female skull measurements, we apply an explicit framework to quantify the relative role of climate and distance from Africa. We show that distance from sub-Saharan Africa is the sole determinant of human within-population phenotypic diversity, while climate plays no role. By selecting the most informative set of traits, it was possible to explain over half of the worldwide variation in phenotypic diversity. These results mirror those previously obtained for genetic markers and show that 'bones and molecules' are in perfect agreement for humans." (Distance from Africa, not climate, explains within-population phenotypic diversity in humans. (2008) by: Lia Betti, François Balloux, William Amos, Tsunehiko Hanihara, Andrea Manica, Proceedings B: Biological Sciences, 2008/12/02)
Analysis of skeletal and cranial remains reveals that the ancient Egyptians of the early Dynastic and pre-Dynastic phases, link closer to nearby Saharan, Sudanic and East African populations than Mediterranean and Middle Eastern peoples. Greeks, Romans, Hyskos, Arabs and others were to appear later in Egyptian history. Craniometric studies generally place ancient Upper Egyptian populations closer to the range of tropical Africans in the Nile Valley and East Africa than to Mediterraneans, or Middle Easterners.
QUOTE(s): S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54
"Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Kebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have 'donated' people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)... Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese." (Keita 1993)
"When the unlikely relationships [Indian matches] and eliminated, the Egyptian series are more similar overall to other African series than to European or Near Eastern (Byzantine or Palestinian) series." (Keita 1993)
"Populations and cultures now found south of the desert roamed far to the north. The culture of Upper Egypt, which became dynastic Egyptian civilization, could fairly be called a Sudanese transplant."(Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa: Their Interaction. Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa, by Joseph O. Vogel, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California (1997), pp. 465-472 )
"Analysis of crania is the traditional approach to assessing ancient population origins, relationships, and diversity. In studies based on anatomical traits and measurements of crania, similarities have been found between Nile Valley crania from 30,000, 20,000 and 12,000 years ago and various African remains from more recent times (see Thoma 1984; Brauer and Rimbach 1990; Angel and Kelley 1986; Keita 1993). Studies of crania from southern predynastic Egypt, from the formative period (4000-3100 B.C.), show them usually to be more similar to the crania of ancient Nubians, Kushites, Saharans, or modern groups from the Horn of Africa than to those of dynastic northern Egyptians or ancient or modern southern Europeans." (S. O. Y and A.J. Boyce, "The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians", in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 20-33)
"There is no archaeological, linguistic, or historical data which indicate a European or Asiatic invasion of, or migration to, the Nile Valley during First Dynasty times. Previous concepts about the origin of the First Dynasty Egyptians as being somehow external to the Nile Valley or less native are not supported by archaeology... In summary, the Abydos First Dynasty royal tomb contents reveal a notable craniometric heterogeneity. Southerners predominate. (Kieta, S. (1992) Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis of Crania From First Dynasty Egyptian Tombs, Using Multiple Discriminant Functions. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 87:245-254)"
"The predominant craniometric pattern in the Abydos royal tombs is 'southern' (tropical African variant), and this is consistent with what would be expected based on the literature and other results (Keita, 1990). This pattern is seen in both group and unknown analyses... Archaeology and history seem to provide the most parsimonious explanation for the variation in the royal tombs at Abydos.. Tomb design suggests the presence of northerners in the south in late Nakada times (Hoffman, 1988) when the unification probably took place. Delta names are attached to some of the tombs at Abydos (Gardiner, 1961; Yurco, 1990, personal communication), thus perhaps supporting Petrie's (1939) and Gardiner's contention that north-south marriages were undertaken to legitimize the hegemony of the south. The courtiers of northern elites would have accompanied them.
Given all of the above, it is probably not possible to view the Abydos royal tomb sample as representative of the general southern Upper Egyptian population of the time. Southern elites and/or their descendants eventually came to be buried in the north (Hoffman, 1988). Hence early Second Dynasty kings and Djoser (Dynasty 111) (Hayes, 1953) and his descendants are not buried in Abydos. Petrie (1939) states that the Third Dynasty, buried in the north, was of Sudanese origin, but southern Egypt is equally likely. This perhaps explains Harris and Weeks' (1973) suggested findings of southern morphologies in some Old Kingdom Giza remains, also verified in portraiture (Drake, 1987). Further study would be required to ascertain trends in the general population of both regions. The strong Sudanese affinity noted in the unknown analyses may reflect the Nubian interactions with upper Egypt in predynastic times prior to Egyptian unification (Williams, 1980,1986)..." (S. Keita (1992) Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis of Crania From First Dynasty Egyptian Tombs, Using Multiple Discriminant Functions. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 87:245-254)
"When the Elephantine results were added to a broader pooling of the physical characteristics drawn from a wide geographic region which includes Africa, the Mediterranean and the Near East quite strong affinities emerge between Elephantine and populations from Nubia, supporting a strong south-north cline. (Barry Kemp. (2006) Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. p. 54)
Gene flow into the Nubian area during the Neolithic was not from reputed "wandering Caucasoids" but from tropical, Sub-Saharan types.
"Prior to the Neolithic, populations of the Nile Valley in Nubia are very robust, and, because of a gap in the fossil record, it is difficult to connect them to later populations. Some have postulated a local evolution, due to diet change, while others postulated migrations, especially from the Sahara area. But between 5000 and 1000 BC, many cemeteries have supplied a large amount of skeletons, and the anatomical characters of Nubian populations are easier to follow-up. Twenty-seven archaeological samples (4 at 5000 BC, 5 at 4000 BC, 10 at 3000 BC, 3 at 2000 BC, 5 at 1000 BC), and 10 craniofacial measurements, have been considered. While cerebral skull is fairly stable, facial skull displays several regular modifications, and specially a reduction of facial and nasal heights, a broadening of the nose, and an increase of prognathism, while bizygomatic breadth is unchanged. These features illustrate a trend towards a growing resemblance with populations of Sub-Saharan Africa living in wet environments. However, paleoclimatological studies show that Nubia experienced an increasing aridification during that period. It is then unlikely that such a morphological change could be related to any local adaptive evolution to environment. Random drift is also unlikely, because the anatomical trend is relatively uniform during these millennia. It then seems more plausible that these changes correspond to the increasing presence of Southern populations migrating northward." -- Froment, A. (2002) Morphological micro-evolution of Nubian Populations from, A-Group to Christian Epochs: gene flow, not local adaptation. Am J Phys Anthropol [Suppl] 34:72.
Afrocentric critic Froment also notes: "Black populations of the Horn of Africa (Tigré and Somalia) fit well into Egyptian variations." (Froment, Alain, Origines du peuplement de l’Égypte ancienne: l’apport de l’anthropobiologie, Archéo-Nil 2 (Octobre 1992), 79-98)
Afrocentric critic C. Loring Brace's 2005 study groups ancient Egyptian populations like the Naqada closer to Nubians and Somalis than European, Mediterranean or Middle Eastern populations. Brace's study shows that the closest European linking with Africans in Egypt or Nubia are Middle Stone Age Portugese and Neolithics, OLDER populations more closely resembling AFRICANS than modern Europeans. Early Neolithic populations, like the Nautifians, in what is now Israel, show sub-Saharan 'negroid' affinities. (Brace, et al. The questionable contribution of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age to European craniofacial form, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2006 January 3; 103(1): p. 242-247.)
"The Niger-Congo speakers, Congo, Dahomey and Haya, cluster closely with each other and a bit less closely with the Nubian sample, both the recent and the Bronze Age Nubians, and more remotely with the Naqada Bronze Age sample of Egypt, the modern Somalis, and the Arabic-speaking Fellaheen (farmers) of Israel. When those samples are separated and run in a single analysis as in Fig. 1, there clearly is a tie between them that is diluted the farther one gets from sub-Saharan Africa" (Brace, 2005)
"The surprise is that the Neolithic peoples of Europe and their Bronze Age successors are not closely related to the modern inhabitants, although the prehistoric/modern ties are somewhat more apparent in southern Europe. It is a further surprise that the Epipalaeolithic Natufian of Israel from whom the Neolithic realm was assumed to arise has a clear link to Sub-Saharan Africa... Interestingly enough, however, the small Natufian sample falls between the Niger-Congo group and the other samples used. Fig. 2 shows the plot produced by the first two canonical variates, but the same thing happens when canonical variates 1 and 3 (not shown here) are used. This placement suggests that there may have been a Sub-Saharan African element in the make-up of the Natufians (the putative ancestors of the subsequent Neolithic), .. When canonical variates are plotted, neither sample ties in with Cro-Magnon as was once suggested. The data treated here support the idea that the Neolithic moved out of the Near East into the circum-Mediterranean areas and Europe by a process of demic diffusion but that subsequently the in situ residents of those areas, derived from the Late Pleistocene inhabitants, absorbed both the agricultural life way and the people who had brought it." (Brace, 2005)
Both skeletal/cranial and DNA studies by other authors confirm that some Neolithics did not derive from the Near East. They most likely resembled African populations. Hence comparisons using older European Neolithics versus Africans are comparisons with older prehistoric Europeans who looked more like Africans, than modern 'white' Europeans, as shown by Brace (2005), and Hanihara (1996) also, who states "Early West Asians looked like Africans."
"The absence of mtDNA haplogroup J in the ancient Portuguese Neolithic sample suggests that this population was not derived directly from Near Eastern farmers. The Mesolithic and Neolithic groups show genetic discontinuity implying colonisation at the Neolithic transition in Portugal." (CHANDLER, H.; SYKES, B.; ZILHÃO, J. (2005) - Using ancient DNA to examine genetic continuity at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Portugal, in ARIAS, P.; ONTAÑÓN, R.; GARCÍA-MONCÓ, C. (eds.) - «Actas del III Congreso del Neolítico en la Península Ibérica», Santander, Monografías del Instituto Internacional de Investigaciones Prehistóricas de Cantabria 1, p. 781-786.)
"Early Europeans still resembled modern tropical peoples - some resemble modern Australian and Africans, more than modern Europeans.. Nor does the picture get any clearer when we move on to the Cro-Magnons, the presumed ancestors of modern Europeans. Some were more like present-day Australians or Africans, judged by objective anatomical observations." (Christopher Stringer, Robin McKie (1998). African Exodus. Macmillan, p. 162)
Early Europeans, as recently as 6,000-9000 years ago, looked somewhat like Africans in terms of retained 'tropical' characteristics. Cold adaptation was to bring about several physical changes over time from the initial Out of Africa migrations to Europe. Retained traces of 'tropical' characteristics, indicate a "large African role in the origins of anatomically modern Europeans." (Holliday and Churchill 2003).
"Body proportions covary with climate, apparently as the result of climatic selection. Ontogenetic research and migrant studies have demonstrated that body proportions are largely genetically controlled and are under low selective rates; thus studies of body form can provide evidence for evolutionarily short-term dispersals and/or gene flow. Replacement predicts that the earliest modern Europeans will possess "tropical" body proportions (assuming Africa is the center of origin), while Regional Continuity permits only minor shifts in body shape, due to climatic change and/or improved cultural buffering. .. results refute the hypothesis of local continuity in Europe, and are consistent with an interpretation of elevated gene flow (and population dispersal?) from Africa, followed by subsequent climatic adaptation to colder conditions." (Holliday, Trenton (1997) Body proportions in Late Pleistocene Europe and modern human origins. Journal of Human Evolution, Volume 32, Issue 5, 1997, Pages 423-447)
".. while the Late Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic humans have significantly higher (i.e., tropically-adapted) brachial and crural indices than do recent Europeans, they also have shorter (i.e., cold-adapted) limbs. The somewhat paradoxical retention of "tropical" indices in the context of more "cold-adapted" limb length is best explained as evidence for Replacement in the European Late Pleistocene, followed by gradual cold adaptation in glacial Europe." (Holliday, Trenton (1999) Brachial and crural indices of European Late Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic humans. Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 36, Issue 5, May 1999, Pages 549-566)
"Stature, body mass, and body proportions are evaluated for the Cheddar Man (Gough's Cave 1) skeleton. Like many of his Mesolithic contemporaries, Gough's Cave 1 evinces relatively short estimated stature (ca. 166.2 cm [5' 5']) and low body mass (ca. 66 kg [146 lbs]). In body shape, he is similar to recent Europeans for most proportional indices. He differs, however, from most recent Europeans in his high crural index and tibial length/trunk height indices. Thus, while Gough's Cave 1 is characterized by a total morphological pattern considered 'cold-adapted', these latter two traits may be interpreted as evidence of a large African role in the origins of anatomically modern Europeans." (TRENTON W. HOLLIDAY a1 and STEVEN E. CHURCHILL. (2003). Gough's Cave 1 (Somerset, England): an assessment of body size and shape, Bulletin of the Natural History Museum: Geology, 58:37-44 Cambridge University Press)
More data showing early Europeans were tropically adapted types like Africans "Body proportions are under strong climatic selection and evince remarkable stability within regional lineages. As such, they offer a viable and robust alternative to cranio-facial data in assessing hypothesised continuity and replacement with the transition to agro-pastoralism in central Europe. Humero-clavicular, brachial and crural indices in a large sample (n=75) of Linienbandkeramik (LBK), Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age specimens from the middle Elbe-Saale-Werra valley (MESV) were compared with Eurasian and African terminal Pleistocene, European Mesolithic and geographically disparate recent human specimens. Mesolithic Europeans display considerable variation in humero-clavicular and brachial indices yet none approach the extreme "hyper-polar" morphology of LBK humans from the MESV. In contrast, Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age peoples display elongated brachial and crural indices reminiscent of terminal Pleistocene and "tropically adapted" recent humans. These marked morphological changes likely reflect exogenous immigration during the terminal Fourth millennium cal BC. Population expansion and diffusion is a function of increased mobility and settlement dispersal concomitant with significant technological and subsistence changes in later Neolithic societies during the late fourth millennium cal BCE." -- Gallagher et al. "Population continuity, demic diffusion and Neolithic origins in central-southern Germany: the evidence from body proportions." Homo. 2009;60(2):95-126. Epub 2009 Mar 4.
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Early West Asians looked like Africans. Thus any ancient returnees or "backflow" from West Asia back to Africa is by people who look like Africans to begin with. Brace 2005 shows this as to Europeans. Hanihara 1996, demonstrates this below as to West Asians (i.e. 'Middle easterners'). Also see above.
quote: "Distance analysis and factor analysis, based on Q-mode correlation coefficients, were applied to 23 craniofacial measurements in 1,802 recent and prehistoric crania from major geographical areas of the Old World. The major findings are as follows: 1) Australians show closer similarities to African populations than to Melanesians. 2) Recent Europeans align with East Asians, and early West Asians resemble Africans. 3) The Asian population complex with regional difference between northern and southern members is manifest. 4) Clinal variations of craniofacial features can be detected in the Afro-European region on the one hand, and Australasian and East Asian region on the other hand. 5) The craniofacial variations of major geographical groups are not necessarily consistent with their geographical distribution pattern. This may be a sign that the evolutionary divergence in craniofacial shape among recent populations of different geographical areas is of a highly limited degree. Taking all of these into account, a single origin for anatomically modern humans is the most parsimonious interpretation of the craniofacial variations presented in this study." (Hanihara T. Comparison of craniofacial features of major human groups. Am J Phys Anthropol. 1996 Mar;99(3):389-412.)
Older studies often show misclassification or exclusion of Nile Valley remains deemed 'negroid'. Although clearly of the "African" type, such remains were frequently relabeled "Mediterranean."
"Analyses of Egyptian crania are numerous. Vercoutter (1978) notes that ancient Egyptian crania have frequently all been lumped (implicitly or explicitly) as Mediterranean, although Negroid remains are recorded in substantial numbers by many workers... "Nutter (1958), using the Penrose statistic, demonstrated that Nagada I and Badari crania, both regarded as Negroid, were almost identical and that these were most similar to the Negroid Nubian series from Kerma studied by Collett (1933). [Collett, not accepting variability, excluded "clear negro" crania found in the Kerma series from her analysis, as did Morant (1925), implying that they were foreign..." (S. Keita (1990) Studies of Ancient Crania From Northern Africa. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 83:35-48)
Different features among Africans, particularly EAST AFRICANS, like narrow noses are not due to different "race" mixes but are part of the built-in physical diversity and variation of African peoples. Narrow noses appear in the oldest African populations for example, in Kenya's Gamble Cave complex. East Africans like Somalians or Kenyans do not need any outside race "mix" or migration to make them look the way they do.
QUOTE(s): ".. all their features can be found in several living populations of East Africa, like the Tutsi of Rwanda and Burundi, who are very dark skinned and differ greatly from Europeans in a number of body proportions.. There is every reason to believe that they are ancestral to the living 'Elongated East Africans'. Neither of these populations, fossil and modern, should be considered to be closely related to the populations of Europe and western Asia.. In skin colour, the Tutsi are darker than the Hutu, in the reverse direction to that leading to the caucasoids. Lip thickness provides a similar case: on an average the lips of the Tutsi are thicker than those of the Hutu." [Jean Hiernaux, The People of Africa (1975), pgs 42-43, 62-63)
"In sub-Saharan Africa, many anthropological characters show a wide range of population means or frequencies. In some of them, the whole world range is covered in the sub-continent. Here live the shortest and the tallest human populations, the one with the highest and the one with the lowest nose, the one with the thickest and the one with the thinnest lips in the world. In this area, the range of the average nose widths covers 92 per cent of the world range: only a narrow range of extremely low means are absent from the African record. Means for head diameters cover about 80 per cent of the world range; 60 per cent is the corresponding value for a variable once cherished by physical anthropologists, the cephalic index, or ratio of the head width to head length expressed as a percentage....." - Jean Hiernaux, "The People of Africa" 1975 p.53, 54
"Prehistoric human crania from Bromhead's Site, Willey's Kopje, Makalia Burial Site, Nakuru, and other localities in the Eastern Rift Valley of Kenya are reassessed using measurements and a multivariate statistical approach. Materials available for comparison include series of Bushman and Hottentot crania. South and East African Negroes, and Egyptians. Up to 34 cranial measurements taken on these series are utilized to construct three multiple discriminant frameworks, each of which can assign modern individuals to a correct group with considerable accuracy. When the prehistoric crania are classified with the help of these discriminants, results indicate that several of the skulls are best grouped with modern Negroes. This is especially clear in the case of individuals from Bromhead's Site, Willey's Kopje, and Nakuru, and the evidence hardly suggests post-Pleistocene domination of the Rift and surrounding territory by "Mediterranean" Caucasoids, as has been claimed. Recent linguistic and archaeological findings are also reviewed, and these seem to support application of the term Nilotic Negro to the early Rift populations." (Rightmire GP. New studies of post-Pleistocene human skeletal remains from the Rift Valley, Kenya. Am J Phys Anthropol. 1975 May;42(3):351-69. )
"....inhabitants of East Africa right on the equator have appreciably longer, narrower, and higher noses than people in the Congo at the same latitude. A former generation of anthropologists used to explain this paradox by invoking an invasion by an itinerant "white" population from the Mediterranean area, although this solution raised more problems than it solved since the East Africans in question include some of the blackest people in the world with characteristically wooly hair and a body build unique among the world's populations for its extreme linearity and height.... The relatively long noses of East Africa become explicable then when one realizes that much of the area is extremely dry for parts of the year." (C. Loring Brace, "Nonracial Approach Towards Human Diversity," cited in The Concept of Race, Edited by Ashley Montagu, The Free Press, 1980, pp. 135-136, 138)
"The .... excavations at Gogoshiis Qabe (Somalia) uncovered eleven virtually complete and articulated primary burials...Closest morphological affinities are with early Holocene skeletons from Lake Turkana, Kenya...and Lake Besaka, Ethiopia.." (S. Brandt, (1986) The Upper Pleistocene and early Holocene prehistory of the Horn of Africa. Journal African Archaeological Review. Volume 4, Number 1, Pages 41-82 )
"The role of tall, linearly built populations in eastern Africa's prehistory has always been debated. Traditionally, they are viewed as late migrants into the area. But as there is better palaeoanthropological and linguistic documentation for the earlier presence of these populations than for any other group in eastern Africa, it is far more likely that they are indigenous eastern Africans. ... prehistoric linear populations show resemblances to both Upper Pleistocene eastern African fossils and present-day, non-Bantu-speaking groups in eastern Africa, with minor differences stemming from changes in overall robusticity of the dentition and skeleton. This suggests a longstanding tradition of linear populations in eastern Africa, contributing to the indigenous development of cultural and biological diversity from the Pleistocene up to the present." (L . A . SCHEPARTZ, "Who were the later Pleistocene eastern Africans?" The African Archaeological Review, 6 (1988), pp. 57- 72)
Recent study shows ancient Egyptians physically more like tropically adapted Black Americans than White Americans, confirming older studies that show today's Egyptians in general are closer to US blacks than Northern Europeans, and Southern Europeans as well.
QUOTE(s): "We also compare Egyptian body proportions to those of modern American Blacks and Whites... Long bone stature regression equations were then derived for each sex. Our results confirm that, although ancient Egyptians are closer in body proportion to modern American Blacks than they are to American Whites, proportions in Blacks and Egyptians are not identical... Intralimb indices are not significantly different between Egyptians and American Blacks. ..brachial indices are definitely more 'African'... There is no evidence for significant variation in proportions among temporal or social groupings; thus, the new formulae may be broadly applicable to ancient Egyptian remains." ("Stature estimation in ancient Egyptians: A new technique based on anatomical reconstruction of stature." Michelle H. Raxter, Christopher B. Ruff, Ayman Azab, Moushira Erfan, Muhammad Soliman, Aly El-Sawaf, (Am J Phys Anthropol. 2008, Jun;136(2):147-55
Africa is the most genetically diverse region in the world with the original man being from East Africa according to conservative scholars:
"Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages.. Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world." (Tishkoff SA, Williams SM., Genetic analysis of African populations: human evolution and complex disease. Nature Reviews Genetics. 2002 Aug (8):611-21.)
" In other words, all non-Africans carry M168. Of course, Africans carrying the M168 mutation today are the descendants of the African subpopulation from which the migrants originated.... Thus, the Australian/Eurasian Adam (the ancestor of all non-Africans) was an East African Man." (Linda Stone, Paul F. Lurquin, L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Genes, Culture, and Human Evolution: A Synthesis, Wiley-Blackwell: 2006, pg 108)
The Natufians, early inhabitants of the Sinai - Israel- Palestine area, and reputed pioneers of several Neolithic agricultural and technological developments, appear to have had "Negroid" affinities. Important Natufian sites include Mt. Carmel, Jericho and several others.
"Against this background of disease, movement and pedomorphic reduction of body size one can identify Negroid (Ethiopic or Bushmanoid?) traits of nose and prognathism appearing in Natufian latest hunters (McCown, 1939) and in Anatolian and Macedonian first farmers, probably from Nubia via the unknown predecesors of the Badarians and Tasians....". (Biological Relations of Egyptians and Eastern Mediterranean Populations during pre-Dynastic and Dynastic Times. J. Lawrence Angel. Journal of Human Evolutiom. 1972:1, 1, Pg 307)
"The Mushabians moved into Sinai from the Nile Delta, bringing North African lithic chipping tecniques." ("Pleistocene connections between Africa and Southwest Asia: an archaeological perspective. O. Bar-Yosef. African Archaeological Review. 5 (1987) Pg 29)
"It is a further surprise that the Epipalaeolithic Natufian of Israel from whom the Neolithic realm was assumed to arise has a clear link to Sub-Saharan Africa... Interestingly enough, however, the small Natufian sample falls between the Niger-Congo group and the other samples used... This placement suggests that there may have been a Sub-Saharan African element in the make-up of the Natufians (the putative ancestors of the subsequent Neolithic.." (C.L Brace, et. al. 2005. The Questionable contribution of the Neolithic...)
Early inhabitants of the general Natufian Israel area show limb proportions suited to tropical peoples- similar to sub-Saharan's homeland
"However, the real revelation came when Erik [Trinkhaus] inserted his data on the Cro-Magnons of Europe and the Skhul-Qafzeh skeletons from Israel into the equations. In this case, he got a figure of 85 percent for the shinbone-thighbone ratio. Not only were they unlike the Neanderthals, but these people actually fell at the other extreme in their readings on the limb thermometer. The predicted average temperature of origin for folk with an 85% shin-thigh fraction, indicating much longer extremities relative to trunk length - was about 20 degrees higher than the Neanderthals', suggesting a subtropical- if not tropical- homeland!" (African Exodus By Christopher Stringer, Robin McKie, McMillan: pg 79-83)
The 1993 'Clines and Clusters' study by C.L. Brace, et. al. has been used to minmize or downplay the realtionship between Egypt and its African neighbors. For example it:
--Created an "African" or "sub-Saharan" group, but excluded the Maghreb (including parts of the Sahara and Sahel), the Sudan and the Horn area (Ethiopia and Somalia) even though these latter two are BELOW the Sahara, and thus "sub-Saharan".
--Excluded the Badari, and Naqada I and II, key Egyptian groups, thus obscuring the Sudanic/Saharan character of numerous early samples, noted in several earlier analyses. Ignored the formative range of the Saharans on Egypt, from the megaliths and cattle cults of the Nabta Playa to early mummification practices was ignored.
--Excluded the Nubian population of the Badari and early Naqada period, including the rich remains of the well documented Qustul culture, near the present Sudanese-Egyptian border, again obscuring the close relationship between the two peoples.
--Created a vague "Bronze Age" grouping of Nubians, and a "modern" group of medieval samples, an era long after the dynasties and when Nubia had experienced more gene flow of that and the later Arab incursions, beginning in the 700s. Sampling thus ignored the early Badari/Naqada Nubians, jumped the 25th Dynasty era, and shifted to the medieval era in the age range of the Arab conquests. Used Somalian samples that were modern, and thus within the range of recent gene flow (such as the Arab era), particularly on the coast.
--The result was a "comparison" finding that the ancient Egyptians had no relationship "at all" to other "sub-Saharan" peoples and were relatively distant from the Nubians and Somalians. peoples. This finding has been undermined by the subsequent research of several scholars, including limb proportion studies.
QUOTE(s):
"However, Brace et al. (1993) find that a series of upper Egyptian/Nubian epipalaeolithic crania affiliate by cluster analysis with groups they designate "sub-Saharan African" or just simply "African" (from which they incorrectly exclude the Maghreb, Sudan, and the Horn of Africa), whereas post-Badarian southern predynastic and a late dynastic northern series (called "E" or Gizeh) cluster together, and secondarily with Europeans. In the primary cluster with the Egyptian groups are also remains representing populations from the ancient Sudan and recent Somalia. Brace et al. (1993) seemingly interpret these results as indicating a population relationship from Scandinavia to the Horn of Africa, although the mechanism for this is not clearly stated; they also state that the Egyptians had no relationship with sub-Saharan Africans, a group that they nearly treat (incorrectly) as monolithic, although sometimes seemingly including Somalia, which directly undermines aspects of their claims. Sub-Saharan Africa does not define/delimit authentic Africanity." (S.O.Y. Keita. "Early Nile Valley Farmers from El-Badari: Aboriginals or "European" Agro-Nostratic Immigrants? Craniometric Affinities Considered With Other Data". Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 191-208 (2005)
Brace carefully excluded the Badari- a key native pre-dynastic group that led into the dynasties, and suggested possible European immigration to ancient Egypt. Keita put this to the test and found that the excluded group matched up more closely with Africans than Europeans.
"An examination of the distance hierarchies reveals the Badarian series to be more similar to the Teita in both analyses and always more similar to all of the African series than to the Norse and Berg groups (see Tables 3A & 3B and Figure 2). Essentially equal similarity is found with the Zalavar and Dogon series in the 11-variable analysis and with these and the Bushman in the one using 15 variables. The Badarian series clusters with the tropical African groups no matter which algorithm is employed (see Figures 3 and 4).. In none of them did the Badarian sample affiliate with the European series."(S.O.Y. Keita. Early Nile Valley Farmers from El-Badari: Aboriginals or "European" Agro-Nostratic Immigrants? Craniometric Affinities Considered With Other Data. Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 191-208 (2005)
More on the biased and skewed 'true negro' model
"Another example of the use of a socially constructed typological paradigm is in studies of the Nile Valley populations in which the concept of a biological African is restricted to those with a particular craniometric pattern (called in the past the 'True Negro' though no 'True White' was ever defined). Early Nubians, Egyptians, and even Somalians are viewed essentially as non-Africans, when in fact numerous lines of evidence and an evolutionary model make them a part of African biocultural/biogeographical history. The diversity of 'authentic' Africans is a reality. This diversity prevents biogeographical/biohistorical Africans from clustering into a single unit, no matter the kind of data." (The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence, S. O. Y. Keita, Rick A. Kittles, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 99, No. 3 (Sep., 1997), pp. 534-544)
"..presents all tropical Africans with narrower noses and faces as being related to or descended from external, ultimately non-African peoples. However, narrow-faced, narrow-nosed populations have long been resident in Saharo-tropical Africa... and their origin need not be sought elsewhere. These traits are also indigenous. The variability in tropical Africa is expectedly naturally high. Given their longstanding presence, narrow noses and faces cannot be deemed `non-African."(S.O.Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993), page 134 )
"Another example of the use of a socially constructed typological paradigm is in studies of the Nile Valley populations in which the concept of a biological African is restricted to those with a particular craniometric pattern (called in the past the 'True African' though no 'True White' was ever defined). Early Nubians, Egyptians, and even Somalians are viewed essentially as non-Africans, when in fact numerous lines of evidence and an evolutionary model make them a part of African biocultural/biogeographical history. The diversity of 'authentic' Africans is a reality. This diversity prevents biogeographical/biohistorical Africans from clustering into a single unit, no matter the kind of data." ---Keita and Kittles. "The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence." American Anthropologist 99, no. 3 (September 1997): 534-544
Hair and the 'true negro' "Strouhal (1971) microscopically examined some hair which had been preserved on a Badarian skull. The analysis was interpreted as suggesting a stereotypical tropical African-European hybrid (mulatto). However, this hair is grossly no different from that of Fulani, some Kanuri, or Somali and does not require a gene flow explanation any more than curly hair in Greece necessarily does. Extremely "woolly" hair is not the only kind native to tropical Africa." --(S. O. Y. Keita. (1993). "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54)
Sampling bias and the true negro. In some Nile Valley research sampling bias persists such as drawing samples from the far north of Egypt, boscuring the region's genetic complexity. The stereotypical "true negro" type is still used to artifically separate related peoples and obscure a fuller, more accurate picture of African genetic diversity. Sampling bias appears both in DNA studies (noted by Keita) and in cranial studies (noted by Egyptologist Barry Kemp).
QUOTE(s):
Keita on DNA studies drawing samples from the far north, an area with more foreign settlement and gene flow
"However, in some of the studies, only individuals from northern Egypt are sampled, and this could theoretically give a false impression of Egyptian variability (contrast Lucotte and Mercier 2003a with Manni et al. 2002), because this region has received more foreign settlers (and is nearer the Near East). Possible sample bias should be integrated into the discussion of results." (S.O.Y. Keita, A.J. Boyce, "Interpreting Geographical Patterns of Y Chromosome Variation1," History in Africa 32 (2005) 221-246 )
Egyptologist Barry Kemp on the worldwide CRANID database that used northern samples near the Mediterranean as "representative" of the ancient Egyptians, and classifying them in a "European" direction, while excluding key historic sites further south..
"If, on the other hand, CRANID had used one of the Elephantine populations of the same period, the geographic association would be much more with the African groups to the south. It is dangerous to take one set of skeletons and use them to characterize the population of the whole of Egypt." (Barry Kemp, Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation, Routledge: 2005, p. 55)
One of the oldest remains from Upper Egypt, shows strong sub-Saharan affinities, and early northern Egypt also shows sub-Saharan affinities through cultural traits- the 'Nubian complex' of technology and production.
"The morphometric affinities of the 33,000 year old skeleton from Nazlet Khater, Upper Egypt are examined using multivariate statistical procedures.. The results indicate a strong association between some of the sub-Saharan Middle Stone Age (MSA) specimens, and the Nazlet Khater mandible. Furthermore, the results suggest that variability between African populations during the Neolithic and Protohistoric periods was more pronounced than the range of variability observed among recent African and Levantine populations." (PINHASI Ron, SEMAL Patrick (2000). The position of the Nazlet Khater specimen among prehistoric and modern African and Levantine populations. Journal of human evolution. 2000, vol. 39, no3, pp. 269-288 )
"..Middle Paleolithic and the transition to the Upper Paleolithic in the Lower Nile Valley are described... the Middle Paleolithic or, more appropriately, Middle Stone Age of this region starts with the arrival of new populations from sub-Saharan Africa, as evidenced by the nature of the Early to Middle Stone Age transition in stratified sites. Throughout the late Middle Pleistocene technological change occurs leading to the establishment of the Nubian Complex by the onset of the Upper Pleistocene." (Van Peer, Philip. Did middle stone age moderns of sub-Saharan African descent trigger an upper paleolithic revolution in the lower nile valley? Anthropologie. vol. 42, no3, pp. 215-225)
Dental studies provide evidence that the ancient Egyptian population maintained a high degree of continuity into the early, mid and late Dynastic periods. A key ancient group, the Badari, found to link to tropical African metrics, was excluded by such studies as Brace (1993) but dental research shows they link well with later pre and Dynastic populations. J. Irish's 2006 dental study examined the ancient Badarian people excluded by Brace and found that they were a "good representative of what the common ancestor to all later predynastic and dynastic Egyptian peoples would be like." His dental results show that:
QUOTE:
"Despite the difference, Gebel Ramlah [the Western Desert- Saharan region] is closest to predynastic and early dynastic samples from Abydos, Hierakonpolis, and Badari.."
the Badarians were a "good representative of what the common ancestor to all later predynastic and dynastic Egyptian peoples would be like"
"A comparison of Badari to the Naqada and Hierakonpolis samples .. contradicts the idea of a foreign origin for the Naqada (Petrie, 1939; Baumgartel, 1970)"
Evidence in favor of continuity is also demonstrated by comparison of individual samples. "Naqada and especially Hierakonpolis share close affinities with First-Second Dynasty Abydos.. These findings do not support the concept of a foreign dynastic ''race''"
"Thus, despite increasing foreign influence after the Second Intermediate Period, not only did Egyptian culture remain intact (Lloyd, 2000a), but the people themselves, as represented by the dental samples, appear biologically constant as well."
(Joel D. Irish (2006). Who Were the Ancient Egyptians? Dental Affinities Among Neolithic Through Postdynastic Peoples. Am J Phys Anthropol. 2006 Apr;129(4):529-43.)
Africans have the highest dental diversity "Previous research by the first author revealed that, relative to other modern peoples, sub-Saharan Africans exhibit the highest frequencies of ancestral (or plesiomorphic) dental traits... The fact that sub-Saharan Africans express these apparently plesiomorphic characters, along with additional information on their affinity to other modern populations, evident intra-population heterogeneity, and a world-wide dental cline emanating from the sub-continent, provides further evidence that is consistent with an African origin model." (Irish JD, Guatelli-Steinberg D.(2003) Ancient teeth and modern human origins: an expanded comparison of African Plio-Pleistocene and recent world dental samples. Hum Evol. 2003 Aug;45(2):113-44. )
Dental studies confirm the data yielded by skeletal and cranial studies. The inhabitants of ancient Egypt, particularly in the formative era on into the early Dynastic ages, cluster more closely with African populations that with Europeans or Middle Easterners. These Nile Valley populations are continuous and of local origin, with no major contemporaneous migration or replacement events.
[quotes:]
"The question of the genetic origins of ancient Egyptians, particularly those during the Dynastic period, is relevant to the current study. Modern interpretations of Egyptian state formation propose an indigenous origin of the Dynastic civilization (Hassan, 1988). Early Egyptologists considered Upper and Lower Egyptians to be genetically distinct populations, and viewed the Dynastic period as characterized by a conquest of Upper Egypt by the Lower Egyptians. More recent interpretations contend that Egyptians from the south actually expanded into the northern regions during the Dynastic state unification (Hassan, 1988; Savage, 2001), and that the Predynastic populations of Upper and Lower Egypt are morphologically distinct from one another, but not sufficiently distinct to consider either non-indigenous (Zakrzewski, 2007). The Predynastic populations studied here, from Naqada and Badari, are both Upper Egyptian samples, while the Dynastic Egyptian sample (Tarkhan) is from Lower Egypt. The Dynastic Nubian sample is from Upper Nubia (Kerma). Previous analyses of cranial variation found the Badari and Early Predynastic Egyptians to be more similar to other African groups than to Mediterranean or European populations (Keita, 1990; Zakrzewski, 2002). In addition, the Badarians have been described as near the centroid of cranial and dental variation among Predynastic and Dynastic populations studied (Irish, 2006; Zakrzewski, 2007). This suggests that, at least through the Early Dynastic period, the inhabitants of the Nile valley were a continuous population of local origin, and no major migration or replacement events occurred during this time.
Studies of cranial morphology also support the use of a Nubian (Kerma) population for a comparison of the Dynastic period, as this group is likely to be more closely genetically related to the early Nile valley inhabitants than would be the Late Dynastic Egyptians, who likely experienced significant mixing with other Mediterranean populations (Zakrzewski, 2002). A craniometric study found the Naqada and Kerma populations to be morphologically similar (Keita, 1990). Given these and other prior studies suggesting continuity (Berry et al., 1967; Berry and Berry, 1972), and the lack of archaeological evidence of major migration or population replacement during the Neolithic transition in the Nile valley, we may cautiously interpret the dental health changes over time as primarily due to ecological, subsistence, and demographic changes experienced throughout the Nile valley region."
-- AP Starling, JT Stock. (2007). Dental Indicators of Health and Stress in Early Egyptian and Nubian Agriculturalists: A Difficult Transition and Gradual Recovery. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 134:520–528
Recent dental analyses show that reductions in tooth wear among ancient Nile Valley populations due to routine evolutionary processes and better food preparation techniques- contradicting claims of sweeping European or Middle Eastern influxes into the Nile Valley.
quote: "The study of ancient Egyptian skeletons from Amarna, Egypt reveals extensive tooth wear but very little dental crowding, unlike in modern Americans. In the early 20th century, Percy Raymond Begg focused his research on extreme tooth wear coincident with traditional diets to justify teeth removal during orthodontic treatment. Anthropologists studying skeletons that were excavated along the Nile Valley in Egypt and the Sudan have demonstrated reductions in tooth size and changes in the face, including decreased robustness associated with the development of agriculture, but without any increase in the frequency of dental crowding and malocclusion. For thousands of years, facial and dental reduction stayed in step, more or less. These analyses suggest it was not the reduction in tooth wear that increased crowding and malocclusion, but rather the tremendous reduction in the forces of mastication, which produced this extreme tooth wear and the subsequent reduced jaw involvement. Thus, as modern food preparation techniques spread throughout the world during the 19th century, so did dental crowding. This research provides support for the development of orthodontic therapies that increase jaw dimensions rather than the use of tooth removal to relieve crowding."
--Rose JC, Roblee RD. (2009) Origins of dental crowding and malocclusions: an anthropological perspective. Compend Contin Educ Dent. 2009 Jun;30(5):292-300.
Older dental studies contradicting claims of mass European or Middle Easter influxes, confirmed by modern cranial analysis.
"However, as is well known and accepted, rapid evolution can occur. Also, rapid change in northeast Africa might be specifically anticipated because of the possibilities for punctuated microevolution (secondary to severe micro-selection and drift) in the early Holocene Sahara, because of the isolated communities and cyclical climatic changes there, and their possible subsequent human effects. The earliest southern predynastic culture, Badari, owes key elements to post-desiccation Saharan and also perhaps "Nubian" immigration (Hassan 1988). Biologically these people were essentially the same (see above and discussion; Keita 1990). It is also possible that the dental traits could have been introduced from an external source, and increased in frequency primarily because of natural selection, either for the trait or for a growth pattern requiring less energy. There is no evidence for sudden or gradual mass migration of Europeans or Near Easterners into the valley, as the term "replacement" would imply. There is limb ratio and craniofacial morphological and metric continuity in Upper Egypt-Nubia in a broad sense from the late paleolithic through dynastic periods.." -- S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54.
"Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Jebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have 'donated' people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)... Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese."
"An examination of the distance hierarchies reveals the Badarian series to be more similar to the Teita in both analyses and always more similar to all of the African series than to the Norse and Berg groups (see Tables 3A & 3B and Figure 2). Essentially equal similarity is found with the Zalavar and Dogon series in the 11-variable analysis and with these and the Bushman in the one using 15 variables. The Badarian series clusters with the tropical African groups no matter which algorithm is employed (see Figures 3 and 4).. In none of them did the Badarian sample affiliate with the European series." --(S.O.Y. Keita. Early Nile Valley Farmers from El-Badari: Aboriginals or "European" Agro-Nostratic Immigrants? Craniometric Affinities Considered With Other Data. Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 191-208 (2005) S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54[/i] ------------------------------
Ancient Egyptian civilization was indigenous with continuity among its peoples, not an influx of Middle Easterners, Europeans or other outsiders like Arabs until relatively late in history
QUOTE(s): "Some have argued that various early Egyptians like the Badarians probably migrated northward from Nubia, while others see a wide-ranging movement of peoples across the breadth of the Sahara before the onset of desiccation. Whatever may be the origins of any particular people or civilization, however, it seems reasonably certain that the predynastic communities of the Nile valley were essentially indigenous in culture, drawing little inspiration from sources outside the continent during the several centuries directly preceding the onset of historical times..." (Robert July, Pre-Colonial Africa, 1975, p. 60-61)
"overall population continuity over the Predynastic and early Dynastic, and high levels of genetic heterogeneity, thereby suggesting that state formation occurred as a mainly indigenous process." (Zakrzewski, S.R. (2007). "Population continuity or population change: Formation of the ancient Egyptian state". American Journal of Physical Anthropology 132 (4): 501-509)
"the peoples of the steppes and grasslands to the immediate south of Egypt domesticated cattle, as early as 9000 to 8000 B.C. They included peoples from the Afroasiastic linguistic group and the second major African language family, Nilo-Saharan (Wendorf, Schild, Close 1984; Wendorf, et al. 1982). Thus the earliest domestic cattle may have come to Egypt from these southern neighbors, circa 6000 B.C., and not from the Middle East.[148] Pottery, another significant advance in material cultural may also have followed this pattern, initiatied "as early as 9000 B.C. by the Nilo-Saharans and Afrasians who lived to the south of Egypt. Soon thereafter, pots spread to Egyptian sites, almost 2,000 years before the first pottery was made in the Middle East." (Christopher Ehret, "Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture," in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 25-27)
X-ray Atlas of the Royal Mummies show some to be linked physically to Nubian types, and some documented royal officials are clearly "Negroid' like Pepi-seneb, an eminent scribe c. 2745 BC. Some royal New Kingdom mummies also show melanin frequencies consistent with Negroid origin.
# Harris and Wente note the prevalence of dental prognathism among Nubians. Often this is combined with malocclusion. Similar incidence can be found in other African peoples. For example, one study found that a sample taken from the Kenya showed 61.3% of Maasai had diastema; 84% of Kikuyu had overbite and 99% had overjet; and 24% of Kalenjin had anterior open bite. (J. Hassanali, GP Pokhariyal, "Anterior tooth relations in Kenyan Africans, Archives of Oral Biology 38 [Apr 1993] 337-42). Although these dental traits can often be acquired through habits like thumb-sucking, as noted by Harris and Wente, the high frequency in the royal mummies indicates a genetic origin as found in Africans.
quotes: "In terms of head shape, the XVIV and XX dynasties look more like the early Nubian skulls from the mesolithic with low vaults and sloping, curved foreheads.The XVII and XVIII dynasty skulls are shaped more like modern Nubians with globular skulls and high vaults." (An X-ray atlas of the royal mummies. Edited by J.E. Harris and E.F. Wente. (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980.) Review: Michael R. Zimmerman, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Volume 56, Issue 2 , (1981) Pages 207 - 208)
"While the Upper Nile Egyptians show phenotypic features that occur in higher frequencies in the Sudan and southward into East Africa (namely, facial prognathism, chamaerrhiny, and paedomorphic cranial architecture with specific modifications of the nasal aperature), these so-called Negroid features are not universal in the region of Thebes, Karnak, and Luxor." (Kennedy, Kenneth A.R., T. Plummer, J. Chinment, "Identification of the Eminent Dead: Pepi, A Scribe of Egypt," In Katherine J. Reichs (ed.), Forensic Osteology, 1986.)
X-Ray analysis of some royal mummies reveal strong Nubian affinities, also confirming Egyptologist Frank Yurco's findings as to such affinities. "The late XVII Dynasty and XVIII Dynasty royal mummies display the strongest Nubian affinities. In terms of maxillary protrusion as measured by SNA, the mean value for these Pharaohs is 84.21 comparable to that of African Americans. .. They exceed the latter in terms of ANB and SN-M Plane, but are closer to Caucasians in regards to SNB. However, the ability of SNA and SNB to predict maxillary and mandibular protrusion respectively has been questioned. Some studies suggest that measuring prognathism from the Frankfort horizontal would produce more reliable results (See RM Ricketts, RJ Schulhof, L Bagha. Orientation-sella-nasion or Frankfort horizontal. Am J Orthod 1976 Jun;69(6):648-654; also JW Moore. Variation of the sella-nasion plane and its effect on SNA and SNB. J Oral Surg. 1976 Jan; 34(1): 24-26).
In regards to head shape, the late XVII and XVIII dynasty mummies are very close to Nubian samples intermediate between the Mesolithic and Christian periods. The zygomatic arches are almost always vertical or forward and not receding."
--James Harris & Edward Wente, X-ray Atlas of the Royal Mummies (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1980)
2009 study finds the Nubians were ethnically the closest population to the ancient Egyptians not Europeans or Middle Easterners, confirming Egyptologist Frank Yurco's data from the 1980s and 1990s. Quotes: "The Mahalanobis D2 analysis uncovered close affinities between Nubians and Egyptians. Table 3 lists the Mahalanobis D2 distance matrix... In some cases, the statistics reveal that the Egyptian samples were more similar to Nubian samples than to other Egyptian samples (e.g. Gizeh and Hesa/Biga) and vice versa (e.g. Badari and Kerma, Naqada and Christian). These relationships are further depicted in the PCO plot (Fig. 2).
The clustering of the Nubian and Egyptian samples together supports this paper's hypothesis and demonstrates that there may be a close relationship between the two populations. This relationship is consistent with Berry and Berry (1972), among others, who noted a similarity between Nubians and Egyptians.
Both mtDNA (Krings et al., 1999) and Y-Chromosome data (Hassan et al., 2008; Keita, 2005; Lucotte and Mercier, 2003) indicate that migrations, usually bidirectional, occurred along the Nile. Thus, the osteological material used in this analysis also supports the DNA evidence.
On this basis, many have postulated that the Badarians are relatives to South African populations (Morant, 1935 G. Morant, A study of predynastic Egyptian skulls from Badari based on measurements taken by Miss BN Stoessiger and Professor DE Derry, Biometrika 27 (1935), pp. 293–309.Morant, 1935; Mukherjee et al., 1955; Irish and Konigsberg, 2007). The archaeological evidence points to this relationship as well. (Hassan, 1986) and (Hassan, 1988) noted similarities between Badarian pottery and the Neolithic Khartoum type, indicating an archaeological affinity among Badarians and Africans from more southern regions. Furthermore, like the Badarians, Naqada has also been classified with other African groups, namely the Teita (Crichton, 1996; Keita, 1990).
Nutter (1958) noted affinities between the Badarian and Naqada samples, a feature that Strouhal (1971) attributed to their skulls possessing “Negroid” traits. Keita (1992), using craniometrics, discovered that the Badarian series is distinctly different from the later Egyptian series, a conclusion that is mostly confirmed here. In the current analysis, the Badari sample more closely clusters with the Naqada sample and the Kerma sample. However, it also groups with the later pooled sample from Dynasties XVIII–XXV.
The reoccurring notation of Kerma affinities with Egyptian groups is not entirely surprising. Kerma was an integral part of the trade between Egypt and Nubia.
However, the archaeological evidence actually showed slow change in form over time (Adams, 1977) and the biological evidence demonstrated a similar trend in the skeletal data (e.g. Godde, in press; Van Gerven et al., 1977). These conclusions negate the possibility of invasion or migration causing the shifts in time periods. The results in this study are consistent with prior work; the Meroites and X-Group cluster with the remaining Nubian population and are not differentiated.
Gene flow may account for the homogeneity across these Nubian and Egyptian groups and is consistent with the biological diffusion precept. Small geographic distances between groups allow for the exchange of genes. The similarities uncovered by this study may be explained by another force, adaptation.. resemblance may be indicative of a common adaptation to a similar geographic location, rather than gene flow Egypt and Nubia have similar terrain and climate. Because of the similarity between and the overlapping of the two territories that would require similar adaptations to the environment, common adaptation cannot be discounted.
Gene flow appears likely between the Egyptians and Nubians, although common adaptations to a similar environment may have also been a factor in their cranial similarities. This study does not rule out the possibility that in situ biological evolution occurred at other times not represented by the samples in this analysis. "
-- Godde K. (2009) An Examination of Nubian and Egyptian biological distances: Support for biological diffusion or in situ development? Homo. 2009;60(5):389-404.
German Institute for Archaeology -excavation of the tombs of the nobles in Thebes-West, Upper Egypt. In several of the noble specimens: "The basal epithelial cells were packed with melanin as expected for specimens of Negroid origin." (Determination of optimal rehydration, fixation and staining methods for histological and immunohistochemical analysis of mummified soft tissues", Biotechnic & Histochemistry 2005, 80(1): 7_/13) Nubians are no "prequisite" for dark skin in ancient Egypt.
Nubians were ethnically the closest people to the Egyptians. Conflict between the two were typical clashes between kingdoms without the simplistic "racial" models drawn by some 20th century writers. Quote 1: "The ancient Egyptians referred to a region, located south of the third cataract the Nile River, in which Nubians dwelt as Kush.. Within such context, this phrase is not a racial slur. Throughout the history of ancient Egypt there were numerous, well documented instances that celebrate Nubian-Egyptian marriages. A study of these documents, particularly those dated to both the Egyptian New Kingdom (after 1550 B.C.E.) and to Dynasty XXV and early Dynasty XXVI (about 720-640 BCE), reveals that neither spouse nor any of the children of such unions suffered discrimination at the hands of the ancient Egyptians. Indeed such marriages were never an obstacle to social, economic, or political status, provided the individuals concerned conformed to generally accepted Egyptian social standards. Furthermore, at times, certain Nubian practices, such as tattooing for women, and the unisex fashion of wearing earrings, were wholeheartedly embraced by the ancient Egyptians." (Bianchi, 2004: p. 4)
'It is an extremely difficult task to attempt to describe the Nubians during the course of Egypt's New Kingdom, because their presence appears to have virtually evaporated from the archaeological record.. The result has been described as a wholesale Nubian assimilation into Egyptian society. This assimilation was so complete that it masked all Nubian ethnic identities insofar as archaeological remains are concerned beneath the impenetrable veneer of Egypt's material; culture.. In the Kushite Period, when Nubians ruled as Pharaohs in their own right, the material culture of Dynasty XXV (about 750-655 B.C.E.) was decidedly Egyptian in character.. Nubia's entire landscape up to the region of the Third Cataract was dotted with temples indistinguishable in style and decoration from contemporary temples erected in Egypt. The same observation obtains for the smaller number of typically Egyptian tombs in which these elite Nubian princes were interred. (Bianchi, 2004, p. 99-100)
- Robert Bianchi ( 2004). Daily Life of the Nubians. Greenwood Publishing Group
Yet more mainstream research shows the ancient Egyptians did not practice the racism of today's whites, and that Nubians and Egyptians mingled and intermarried freely despite OFFICIAL state dogma regarding foreign "enemies."
"..the Egyptians did not engage in the kind of racial prejudice seen in modern times. Modern racism largely revolves around differences in skin color. In particular, dark skin color was (and with some groups unfortunately still is) a sign of inferiority, regardless of individual achievement and sophistication. Miscegenation, or racial intermarriage, was considered immoral. At its worst, skin color distinguished between slaves and slaves and free people in the American South. In contrast, the ancient Egyptians, and indeed ancient Mediterranean peoples in general, did not make skin color a definitive criterion for racial discrimination (Snowden 1983). Slavery was not connected to race or even class. Royce (1982) notes that ethnic definitions stressing phenotype can inhibit the ability of individuals to cross ethnic boundaries, but the separation of language and culture (costume, hair style, etc) from biological phenotype (skin color, facial features), in social practice if not ideology, meant that foreigners could cross ethnic boundaries.
For example, Nubians like solider and royal confidant Mahirper achieved high position in Egyptian society as long as they assimilated to Egyptian cultural norms. Mahirper was raised at the Egyptian court with the future Pharaoh, and so may have been son of a Nubian prince. He held the important military title 'Fanbearer to the Right of the King." he was buried in the valley of the Kings, a privilege reserved only for kings and there immediate relatives. the burial itself was quote Lavish, with, among other things, high -quality coffins and expensive jewelry, reflecting Mahirper''s wealth and position.. In his Book of the Dead, he appears in every way Egyptian, except for his skin color and facial features (phenotype), which fit the Nubian stereotype.. In a similar way, Nubian mercenaries who settled in Egypt during the First Intermediate Period (c. 2150-2050 B.C.) were depicted on Egyptian funerary stelae in Egyptian dress with their Egyptian wives, but with Nubian physiognomy... Nubians, Asiatics and other peoples married freely with the Egyptians, and slaves were sometimes adopted into Egyptian families, at least among the elite. Asiatic gods and goddesses even found a place in the Egyptian pantheon (Redford 1992). It was the cultural identity of immigrants to Egypt that mattered to their success in Egyptian society, not their skin color or ancestry. Even when foreigners remained culturally foreign, more prosaic sources allowed that foreigners could act in positive ways and be incorporated into the civilized sphere. the ancient Egyptian construction of ethnic identities this reflects cultural chauvinism more than racism."
--Stuart Tyson Smith. (2003) Wretched Kush: ethnic identities and boundaries in Egypt's Nubian empire. Routledge, pp. 22-24
One of Egypt's greatest dynasties, the 12th, originated from dark-skinned Nubian stock, according to conservative Egyptologist F. Yurco (1989). The 12th Dynasty ruled approximately 1000 years BEFORE the well known "black" 25th Dynasty. Quote 2:
"the XIIth Dynasty (1991-1786 B.C.E.) originated from the Aswan region.4 As expected, strong Nubian features and dark coloring are seen in their sculpture and relief work. This dynasty ranks as among the greatest, whose fame far outlived its actual tenure on the throne. Especially interesting, it was a member of this dynasty- that decreed that no Nehsy (riverine Nubian of the principality of Kush), except such as came for trade or diplomatic reasons, should pass by the Egyptian fortress at the southern end of the Second Nile Cataract. Why would this royal family of Nubian ancestry ban other Nubians from coming into Egyptian territory? Because the Egyptian rulers of Nubian ancestry had become Egyptians culturally; as pharaohs, they exhibited typical Egyptian attitudes and adopted typical Egyptian policies."
- (F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989)
"Among the foreigners, the Nubians were closest ethnically to the Egyptians. In the late predynastic period (c. 3700-3150 B.C.E.), the Nubians shared the same culture as the Egyptians and even evolved the same pharaonic political structure." - (F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989)
Ancient Egyptian religion closer to the religion of African regions than to Mesopotamia, Europe or the Middle East
QUOTE(s): Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508 "A large number of gods go back to prehistoric times. The images of a cow and star goddess (Hathor), the falcon (Horus), and the human-shaped figures of the fertility god (Min) can be traced back to that period. Some rites, such as the "running of the Apil-bull," the "hoeing of the ground," and other fertility and hunting rites (e.g., the hippopotamus hunt) presumably date from early times.. Connections with the religions in southwest Asia cannot be traced with certainty." "It is doubtful whether Osiris can be regarded as equal to Tammuz or Adonis, or whether Hathor is related to the "Great Mother." There are closer relations with northeast African religions. The numerous animal cults (especially bovine cults and panther gods) and details of ritual dresses (animal tails, masks, grass aprons, etc) probably are of African origin. The kinship in particular shows some African elements, such as the king as the head ritualist (i.e., medicine man), the limitations and renewal of the reign (jubilees, regicide), and the position of the king's mother (a matriarchal element). Some of them can be found among the Ethiopians in Napata and Meroe, others among the Prenilotic tribes (Shilluk)." (Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508)
Egyptian dynastic civilization based from the 'darker' south (Upper Egypt) not the north (Lower Egypt)
QUOTE(s): "While not attempting to underestimate the contribution that Deltaic political and religious institutions made to those of a united Egypt, many Egyptologists now discount the idea that a united prehistoric kingdom of Lower Egypt ever existed."
"While communities such as Ma'adi appear to have played an important role in entrepots through which goods and ideas form south-west Asia filtered into the Nile Valley in later prehistoric times, the main cultural and political tradition that gave rise to the cultural pattern of Early Dynastic Egypt is to be found not in the north but in the south.": The Cambridge History of Africa: Volume 1, From the Earliest Times to c. 500 BC, (Cambridge University Press: 1982), Edited by J. Desmond Clark pp. 500-509
"..the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life." (Source: Shaw, Thurston (1976) Changes in African Archaeology in the Last Forty Years in African Studies since 1945. p. 156-68. London.)
Egyptian state founded from the south, and indigenous in character. Egyptians dominated Palestine in some eras.
"What is truly unique about this state is the integration of rule over an extensive geographic region, in contrast to other contemporaneous Near Easter polities in Nubia, Mesopotamia, Palestine and the Levant. Present evidence suggests that the state which emerged by the First Dynasty had its roots in the Nagada culture of Upper Egypt, where grave types, pottery and artifacts demonstrate an evolution of form from the Predynastic to the First Dynasty, This cannot be demonstrated for the material culture of Lower Egypt, which was eventually displaced by that which originated in Upper Egypt. Hierarchical society with much social and economic differentiation, as symbolized in the Nagada II cemeteries of Upper Egypt, does not seem to have been present, then, in Lower Egypt, a fact which supports an Upper Egyptian origin for the unified state. Thus archaeological evidence cannot support earlier theories that the founders of Egyptian civilization were an invading Dynastic race from the east.."
"Egyptian contact in the 4th millennium B.C. with SW Asia is undeniable, but the effect of this contact on state formation is Egypt is less clear... The unified state which emerged in Egypt in the 3rd millenium B.C. however, was unlike the polities in Mesopotamia, the Levant, northern Syria, or Early Bronze Age Palestine- in sociopolitical organization, material culture, and belief system. There was undoubtedly heightened commercial contact with SW Asia in the 4th millennium B.C., but the Early Dynastic state which emerged in Egypt is unique and religious in character." (Bard, Kathryn A. 1994 The Egyptian Predynastic: A Review of the Evidence. Journal of Field Archaeology 21(3):265-288.)
"From Petrie onwards, it was regularly suggested that despite the evidence of Predynastic cultures, Egyptian civilization of the 1st Dynasty appeared suddenly and must therefore have been introduced by an invading foreign 'race'. Since the 1970s however, excavations at Abydos and Hierakonpolis have clearly demonstrated the indigenous, Upper Egyptian roots of early civilization in Egypt.
Contact between northern Egypt and Palestine was overland, as evidence in northern Sinai demonstrates.. Israeli archealogists suggest that this evidence represents a commercial network established and controlled by the Egyptians as early as EBA Ia, and that this network was a major factor in the rise of the urban settlements found later in Palestine EBA II. Naomi Porat's technological study of ceramics from EBA sites in southern Palestine clearly demonstrates that in EBA Ib strata many of the pottery vessels used for food preparation were probably manufactured by Egyptian potters using Egyptian technology but local Palestinian clays. In EBA Ib strata there are also many storage jars made from Nile silt and marl wares, which must have been imported from Egypt. Not only did the Egyptians establish camps and way stations in northern Sinai, but the ceramic evidence also suggests that they established a highly organized network of settlements in southern Palestine where an Egyptian population was in residence." (Ian Shaw ed. (2003) The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt By Ian Shaw. Oxford University Press, page 40-63)
-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
| IP: Logged |
Much older scholarship shows cultural similarities between ancient Egypt and the rest of Africa, contradicting claims of Middle Eastern inspiration.
--Specific central African tool designs found at the well known Naqada, Badari and Fayum archaeological sites in Egypt (de Heinzelin 1962, Arkell and Ucko, 1956 et al). Shaw (1976) states that "the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life." Pottery evidence first seen in the Saharan Highlands then spreading to the Nile Valley (Flight 1973). Art motifs of Saharan rock paintings showing similarities to those in pharaonic art. A number of scholars suggest that these earlier artistic styles influenced later pharaonic art via Saharans leaving drier areas and moving into the Nile Valley taking their art styles with them (Mori 1964, Blanc 1964, et al)
--Earlier pioneering mummification outside Egypt. The oldest mummy in Africa is of a black Saharan child (Donadoni 1964, Blanc 1964) Frankfort (1956) suggests that it is thus possible to understand the pharaonic worldview by reference to the religious beliefs of these earlier African precursors. Attempts to suggest the root of such practices are due to Caucasoid civilizers from elsewhere are thus contradicted by the data on the ground.
--Several cultural practices of Egypt show strong similarities to an African totemic clan base. Childe (1969, 1978), Aldred (1978) and Strouhal (1971) demonstrate linkages with several African practices such as divine kingship and the king as divine rainmaker.
--Physical similarities of the early Nile valley populations with that of tropical Africans. Such connections are demonstrated in the work of numerous scholars such as Thompson and Randall Mclver 1905, Falkenburger 1947, and Strouhal 1971. The distance diagrams of Mukherjee, Rao and Trevor (1955) place the ancient Badarians genetically near 'black' tribes such as the Ashanti and the Taita. See also the "Issues of lumping under Mediterranean clusters" section above for similar older analyses.
--Serological (blood) evidence of genetic linkages. Paoli 1972 for example found a significant resemblance between ABO frequencies of dynastic Egyptians and the black northern Haratin who are held to be the probable descendants of the original Saharans (Hiernaux, 1975).
--Language similarities which include several hundred roots ascribable to African elements (UNESCO 1974)
--Ancient Egyptian origin stories ascribing origins of the gods and their ancestors to African locations to the south and west of Egypt (Davidson 1959)
--Advanced state building and political unity in Nubia, including writing, administrative apparatus and insignia some 300 years before dynastic Egypt, and the long demonstrated interchange between Nubia and Egypt (Williams 1980)
--Newer studies (Wendorf 2001, Wilkinson 1999, et al.) confirm these older analyses. Excavations from Nabta Playa, located about 100km west of Abu Simbel for example, suggest that the Neolithic inhabitants of the region were migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa, based on cultural similarities and social complexity which is thought to be reflective of Egypt's Old Kingdom
--Other scholars (Wilkinson 1999) present similar material and cultural evidence- including similarities between predynastic Egypt and traditional African cattle-culture, typical of Southern Sudanese and East African pastoralists of today, and various cultural and artistic data such as iconography on rock art found in both Egypt and in the Sudan.
Assorted demic diffusion theories holding a mass influx of Europeans or Middle Easterners to Africa bringing cattle and agriculture to the natives is not supported by credible evidence. Indigenous development is most likely.
"Furthermore, the archaeology of northern Africa DOES NOT SUPPORT demic diffusion of farming from the Near East. The evidence presented by Wetterstrom indicates that early African farmers in the Fayum initially INCORPORATED Near Eastern domesticates INTO an INDIGENOUS foraging strategy, and only OVER TIME developed a dependence on horticulture. This is inconsistent with in-migrating farming settlers, who would have brought a more ABRUPT change in subsistence strategy. "The same archaeological pattern occurs west of Egypt, where domestic animals and, later, grains were GRADUALLY adopted after 8000 yr B.P. into the established pre-agricultural Capsian culture, present across the northern Sahara since 10,000 yr B.P. From this continuity, it has been argued that the pre-food-production Capsian peoples spoke languages ancestral to the Berber and/or Chadic branches of Afroasiatic, placing the proto-Afroasiatic period distinctly before 10,000 yr B.P."
Source: The Origins of Afroasiatic Christopher Ehret, S. O. Y. Keita, Paul Newman;, and Peter Bellwood Science 3 December 2004: Vol. 306. no. 5702, p. 1680
Recent studies of the Siwa Berber population in Egypt, puts them closer to sub-Saharan populations that other populations.
"Admixture values based on Alu/STR combinations indicate that sub-Saharan flow in North Africa ranged from 16% (North East Moroccan Berbers) to 35% (remaining samples) with the exception of Siwa berbers who showed the highest admixture value (51%)" -- --Gonzalez et al on the Siwa (Egyptian Oasis) Berbers. "Population Relationships in the Mediterranean Revealed by Autosomal Genetic Data" 2009, Amer Jrn Phy. Anth.
When claims of European or 'Mediterranean' migrant influx to ancient Egypt before the Hyskos/Greek/Roman era are analyzed research data conclusively debunks them. Quote from "Early Nile Valley Farmers From El-Badari"
Male Badarian crania were analyzed using the generalized distance of Mahalanobis in a comparative analysis with other African and European series from the Howells?s database. The study was carried out to examine the affinities of the Badarians to evaluate, in preliminary fashion, a demic diffusion hypothesis that postulates that horticulture and the Afroasiatic language family were brought ultimately from southern Europe. (The assumption was made that the southern Europeans would be more similar to the central and northern Europeans than to any indigenous African populations.) The Badarians show a greater affinity to indigenous Africans while not being identical. This suggests that the Badarians were more affiliated with local and an indigenous African population than with Europeans. (S.O.Y. Keita. "Early Nile Valley Farmers from El-Badari: Aboriginals or "European" Agro-Nostratic Immigrants? Craniometric Affinities Considered With Other Data". Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 191-208 (2005)
The Sahara and the Sudan seem to have provided a major source for the genesis of Egyptian civilization contributing many of its unique elements.
QUOTE(s): "a critical factor in the rise of social complexity and the subsequent emergence of the Egyptian state in Upper Egypt (Hoffman 1979; Hassan 1988). If so, Egypt owes a major debt to those early pastoral groups in the Sahara; they may have provided Egypt with many of those features that still distinguish it from its neighbors to the east." Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 17, 97-123 (1998), "Nabta Playa and Its Role in Northeastern African Prehistory," Fred Wendorf and Romuald Schild.
"Over the last two decades, numerous contemporary (Khartoum Neolithic) sites and cemeteries have been excavated in the Central Sudan.. The most striking point to emerge is the overall similarity of early neolithic developments inhabitation, exchange, material culture and mortuary customs in the Khartoum region to those underway at the same time in the Egyptian Nile Valley, far to the north." (Wengrow, David (2003) "Landscapes of Knowledge, Idioms of Power: The African Foundations of Ancient Egyptian Civilization Reconsidered," in Ancient Egypt in Africa, David O'Connor and Andrew Reid, eds. Ancient Egypt in Africa. London: University College London Press, 2003, pp. 119-137)
"Sub-Saharan" genetic elements found as far afield as the Turkish and Greek regions
F. X. Ricaut, M. Waelkens. (2008). Cranial Discrete Traits in a Byzantine Population and Eastern Mediterranean Population Movements Human Biology - Volume 80, Number 5, October 2008, pp. 535-564
"A late Pleistocene-early Holocene northward migration (from Africa to the Levant and to Anatolia) of these populations has been hypothesized from skeletal data (Angel 1972, 1973; Brace 2005) and from archaeological data, as indicated by the probable Nile Valley origin of the "Mesolithic" (epi-Paleolithic) Mushabi culture found in the Levant (Bar Yosef 1987). This migration finds some support in the presence in Mediterranean populations (Sicily, Greece, southern Turkey, etc.; Patrinos et al.; Schiliro et al. 1990) of the Benin sickle cell haplotype. This haplotype originated in West Africa and is probably associated with the spread of malaria to southern Europe through an eastern Mediterranean route (Salares et al. 2004) following the expansion of both human and mosquito populations brought about by the advent of the Neolithic transition (Hume et al 2003; Joy et al. 2003; Rich et al 1998). This northward migration of northeastern African populations carrying sub-Saharan biological elements is concordant with the morphological homogeneity of the Natufian populations (Bocquentin 2003), which present morphological affinity with sub-Saharan populations (Angel 1972; Brace et al. 2005). In addition, the Neolithic revolution was assumed to arise in the late Pleistocene Natufians and subsequently spread into Anatolia and Europe (Bar-Yosef 2002), and the first Anatolian farmers, Neolithic to Bronze Age Mediterraneans and to some degree other Neolithic-Bronze Age Europeans, show morphological affinities with the Natufians (and indirectly with sub-Saharan populations; Angel 1972; Brace et al 2005), in concordance with a process of demic diffusion accompanying the extension of the Neolithic revolution (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994)."
"Following the numerous interactions among eastern Mediterranean and Levantine populations and regions, caused by the introduction of agriculture from the Levant into Anatolia and southeastern Europe, there was, beginning in the Bronze Age, a period of increasing interactions in the eastern Mediterranean, mainly during the Greek, Roman, and Islamic periods. These interactions resulted in the development of trading networks, military campaigns, and settler colonization. Major changes took place during this period, which may have accentuated or diluted the sub-Saharan components of earlier Anatolian populations. The second option seems more likely, because even though the population from Sagalassos territory was interacting with northeastern African and Levantine populations [trade relationships with Egypt (Arndt et al. 2003), involvement of thousands of mercenaries from Pisidia (Sagalassos region) in the war around 300 B.C. between the Ptolemaic kingdom (centered in Egypt) and the Seleucid kingdom (Syria/Mesopotamia/Anatolia), etc.], the major cultural and population interactions involving the Anatolian populations since the Bronze Age occurred with the Mediterranean populations form southeastern Europe, as suggested from historical and genetic data."
""In this context it is likely that Bronze Age events may have facilitated the southward diffusion of populations carrying northern and central European biological elements and may have contributed to some degree of admixture between northern and central Europeans and Anatolians, and on a larger scale, between northeastern Mediterraneans and Anatolians. Even if we do not know which populations were involved, historical and archaeological data suggest, for instance, the 2nd millennium B.C. Minoan and later Mycenaean occupation of Anatolian coast, the arrival in Anatolia in the early 1st millennium B.C. of the Phrygians coming from Thrace, and later the arrival of settlers from Macedonia in Pisidia and in the Sagalassos territory (under Seleucid rule). The coming of the Dorians from Northern Greece and central Europe (the Dorians are claimed to be one of the main groups at the origin of the ancient Greeks) may have also brought northern and central European biological elements into southern populations. Indeed, the Dorians may have migrated southward to the Peloponnese, across the southern Aegean and Create, and later reached Asia Minor."
Ancient Egyptian language is part of the Afrasian or Afroasiatic group which has its origins in Africa, and together with other archaeological evidence firmly makes it an African culture. Acording to mainstream research:
QUOTE(s):
"Ancient Egyptian civilization was, in ways and to an extent usually not recognized, fundamentally African. The evidence of both language and culture reveals these African roots. The origins of Egyptian ethnicity lay in the areas south of Egypt. The ancient Egyptian language belonged to the Afrasian family (also called Afroasiatic or, formerly, Hamito-Semitic). The speakers of the earliest Afrasian languages, according to recent studies, were a set of peoples whose lands between 15,000 and 13,000 B.C. stretched from Nubia in the west to far northern Somalia in the east. They supported themselves by gathering wild grains. The first elements of Egyptian culture were laid down two thousand years later, between 12,000 and 10,000 B.C., when some of these Afrasian communities expanded northward into Egypt, bringing with them a language directly ancestral to ancient Egyptian. They also introduced to Egypt the idea of using wild grains as food." (Christopher Ehret (1996) "Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture." In Egypt in Africa Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press)
"Ancient Egypt belongs to a language group known as 'Afroasiatic' (formerly called Hamito-Semitic) and its closest relatives are other north-east African languages from Somalia to Chad. Egypt's cultural features, both material and ideological and particularly in the earliest phases, show clear connections with that same broad area. In sum, ancient Egypt was an African culture, developed by African peoples, who had wide ranging contacts in north Africa and western Asia." (Morkot, Robert (2005) The Egyptians: An Introduction. Routledge. p. 10)
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ANCIENT EGYPTIANS AND HAIR ----------
Mummification actices and dyeing of hair Hair studies of mummies note that color is often influenced by environmental factors at burial sites. Brothwell and Spearman (ref in Fletcher's works-1963) point out that reddish-brown ancient color hair is usually the result of partial oxidation of the melanin pigment. Other causes of hair color "blonding" involve bleaching, caused by the alkaline in the mummification process. Color also varies due to the Egyptian practice of dyeing hair with henna. Other samples show individuals lightening the hair using vegetable colorants. Thus variations in hair color among mummies do not necessarily suggest the presence of blond or red-haired Europeans or Near Easterners flitting about Egypt before being mummified, but the influence of environmental factors. --------
Egyptian practice of putting locks of hair in mummy wrappings.
Racial analysis is also made problematic by the Egyptian practice of burying hair, in many "votive or funerary deposits buried separately from the body, a practice found from Predynastic to Roman times despite its frequent omission from excavation reports." (Fletcher 2002) In examining hair samples Fletcher (2004) notes that care is needed to determine what is natural scalp hair, versus hair from a wig, versus hair extensions to natural locks. Tracking the exact source of hair is also critical since the Egyptians were known to have placed locks of hair from different sources among mummy wrappings. (The Search for Nefertiti, By Joann Fletcher, HarperCollins, 2004, p. 93-94, 96; Joann Fletcher, ANCIENT EGYPTIAN HAIR AND WIGS, THE OSTRACON THE JOURNAL OF THE EGYPTIAN STUDY SOCIETY, VOLUME 13, NUMBER 2; SUMMER 2002) -------------------------------------------------------------
Hair for wigs often obtained through trade not mass waves of "Caucasoid" migrants.
The use of wigs made of varying hair also complicates attempts at 'racial' analysis. Fletcher (2002) shows that many Egyptian wigs have been found with what is defined as straighter 'cynotrichous' hair. This however is hardly a marker of massive European or Near Eastern presence or admixture. Fletcher notes that the Egyptians often eschewed their own personal hair, shaving carefully and using wigs widely. The hair for these wigs was often obtained through trade. Indeed, "hair itself being a valuable commodity ranked alongside gold and incense in account lists from the town of Kahun." Egyptian trading links with other regions is well known, and a prized commodity like straighter 'cynotrichous' hair could have been easily obtained via the Sahara, Levant, the Maghreb, Mediterranean contacts, or even the hair of Asiatic war captives or casulaties from Egypt's numerous conflicts. -------------------------------------------------------------
Red-headed Ramses- routine for genetic variability in Africa not "whiteness"
Rameses came along comparatively late in Egyptian history, when outsiders toEgypt like the Hyskos were increasing in the region. Detailed microscopic analysis during the 1980s (Balout 1985) identified some of the hair of Egyptian Pharoah Rameses II as being a yellowish-red. Such a finding should not be surprising given the wide range of physical variability in Africa, the most genetically diverse region on earth, out of which flowed other population groups. Indeed, blondism and various other hair shades are not unknown in East Africa or Nubia, particularly in children, nor are such hair color variants uncommon in dark-haired or dark skinned populations like the Australians. (Hrdy 1978) Given the range of genetic variability in Africa, a red-haired Rameses is hardly unusual. Rameses' reign, in the 19th Dynasty, came over 1,500 years after the Egyptian state had been established, and after the Hyskos interlude. Such latecomers to Egypt, like the Hyskos, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs etc would add their own genetic strands to the nation's mix. Whatever the blend of genes that occurred with Rameses, his hair offers little supposed "proof" of a "white" or "Nordic" Egypt. If anything, X-rays of several royal mummies by mainstream scientists show that the Egyptians pharoahs and other royals had several uncomfortable 'Negroid' leanings. (http://www.geocities.com/nilevalleypeoples/xraymummies1.htm) -------------------------------------------------------------
Red hair can be readily produced by dark-skinned populations- just check out Australia and pheomelanin
The finding of Rameses "red" hair also deserves further scrutiny. The analysis found evidence of dyeing to make the hair yellowish-red, but some elements were untouched by the dye. These elements of yellowish-red hair in Balout's study, were established on the basis of the presence of pheomelanin, a red-brown polymeric pigment in the skin and hair of humans. However, pheomelanin can also be found in persons with dark brown or even black hair as well, which gives it a reddish hue. Most natural melanins contain sulfur, which is typically associated with pheomelanin. In scientific tests of melanin, black hair contained as much as 5% sulfur, 3% lower than the 8.8% found in Irish red hair, but exceeding the 2.3% found in Scandinavian blond hair. (Jolles, et al. 1996) Thus the yellowish-red hair discovered on Rameses is well within the range of human variation for dark haired people, whatever the exact gene combination that led to the condition.
As noted above, such variation began with ancient African populations. Most red hair is found in northern and western Europe, especially in the British Isles, and even then it appears in minor frequencies in Europe- some 4% of the population. It is unlikely such populations had any major contact or influence in the ancient Nile Valley. The analysis on Rameses also did not show classic "European" red hair but hair of a light red to yellowish tinge. Black haired or dark-skinned populations are quite capable of producing such yellowish-red color variants on their own, as can be seen in today's east and northeast Africa (see child's photo above). Nor is such color variation unusual to Africa. Native dark-skinned populations in Australia, routinely produce people witn blond or reddish hair. .
The analysis also found Rameses' hair to be cymotrich or wavy, again a characteristic quite within the range of overall African or Nile valley physical and genetic diversity. A "pure" Nordic type of straight hair was thus not established for Rameses. Hence the notion of white Europeans or red-headed Caucasoids from other areas flowing into ancient Egypt to add hair variation is dubious. Inflows occurred during the Greek and Roman eras but reddish or brown hair is within the range of African variation. Genetic studies (Tishkoff 2009, 2000) show Africans have the highest diversity in the world. Skeletal/cranial studies confirm the pattern. Relethford (2001) shows that ".. methods for estimating regional diversity show sub-Saharan Africa to have the highest levels of phenotypic variation, consistent with many genetic studies." (Relethford, John "Global Analysis of Regional Differences in Craniometric Diversity and Population Substructure". Human Biology - Volume 73, Number 5, October 2001, pp. 629-636) Hanihara 2003 notes that [significant] "..intraregional diversity are present in Subsaharan Africans.." While ancient Egypt had gene flow in various eras, hair variations easily fall under this pattern of built-in, indigenous diversity, as well as the above noted cultural practice of using wigs with hair from different places obtained through trade.
----------------------- Notes: Formation and Structure of Human Hair: Biology and Structure, By Pierre Jollès, Helmut Zahn, H. Höcker, Birkhäuser, 1996, pp. 200-225
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NUBIA AND EGYPT- Nubians and Egyptians were so close in various eras that they were virtually indistinguishable
“The ancient Egyptians referred to a region, located south of the third cataract the Nile River, in which Nubians dwelt as Kush.. Within such context, this phrase is not a racial slur. Throughout the history of ancient Egypt there were numerous, well documented instances that celebrate Nubian-Egyptian marriages. A study of these documents, particularly those dated to both the Egyptian New Kingdom (after 1550 B.C.E.) and to Dynasty XXV and early Dynasty XXVI (about 720-640 BCE), reveals that neither spouse nor any of the children of such unions suffered discrimination at the hands of the ancient Egyptians. Indeed such marriages were never an obstacle to social, economic, or political status, provided the individuals concerned conformed to generally accepted Egyptian social standards. Furthermore, at times, certain Nubian practices, such as tattooing for women, and the unisex fashion of wearing earrings, were wholeheartedly embraced by the ancient Egyptians." (Bianchi, 2004: p. 4)
'It is an extremely difficult task to attempt to describe the Nubians during the course of Egypt's New Kingdom, because their presence appears to have virtually evaporated from the archaeological record.. The result has been described as a wholesale Nubian assimilation into Egyptian society. This assimilation was so complete that it masked all Nubian ethnic identities insofar as archaeological remains are concerned beneath the impenetrable veneer of Egypt's material; culture.. In the Kushite Period, when Nubians ruled as Pharaohs in their own right, the material culture of Dynasty XXV (about 750-655 B.C.E.) was decidedly Egyptian in character.. Nubia's entire landscape up to the region of the Third Cataract was dotted with temples indistinguishable in style and decoration from contemporary temples erected in Egypt. The same observation obtains for the smaller number of typically Egyptian tombs in which these elite Nubian princes were interred. (Bianchi, 2004, p. 99-100)
- Robert Bianchi ( 2004). Daily Life of the Nubians. Greenwood Publishing Group
Yet more mainstream research shows the ancient Egyptians did not practice the racism of today's whites, and that Nubians and Egyptians mingled and intermarried freely despite OFFICIAL state dogma regarding foreign "enemies."
"..the Egyptians did not engage in the kind of racial prejudice seen in modern times. Modern racism largely revolves around differences in skin color. In particular, dark skin color was (and with some groups unfortunately still is) a sign of inferiority, regardless of individual achievement and sophistication. Miscegenation, or racial intermarriage, was considered immoral. At its worst, skin color distinguished between slaves and slaves and free people in the American South. In contrast, the ancient Egyptians, and indeed ancient Mediterranean peoples in general, did not make skin color a definitive criterion for racial discrimination (Snowden 1983). Slavery was not connected to race or even class. Royce (1982) notes that ethnic definitions stressing phenotype can inhibit the ability of individuals to cross ethnic boundaries, but the separation of language and culture (costume, hair style, etc) from biological phenotype (skin color, facial features), in social practice if not ideology, meant that foreigners could cross ethnic boundaries.
For example, Nubians like solider and royal confidant Mahirper achieved high position in Egyptian society as long as they assimilated to Egyptian cultural norms. Mahirper was raised at the Egyptian court with the future Pharaoh, and so may have been son of a Nubian prince. He held the important military title 'Fanbearer to the Right of the King." he was buried in the valley of the Kings, a privilege reserved only for kings and there immediate relatives. the burial itself was quote Lavish, with, among other things, high -quality coffins and expensive jewelry, reflecting Mahirper''s wealth and position.. In his Book of the Dead, he appears in every way Egyptian, except for his skin color and facial features (phenotype), which fit the Nubian stereotype.. In a similar way, Nubian mercenaries who settled in Egypt during the First Intermediate Period (c. 2150-2050 B.C.) were depicted on Egyptian funerary stelae in Egyptian dress with their Egyptian wives, but with Nubian physiognomy... Nubians, Asiatics and other peoples married freely with the Egyptians, and salves were sometimes adopted into Egyptian families, at least among the elite. Asiatic gods and goddesses even found a place in the Egyptian pantheon (Redford 1992). It was the cultural identity of immigrants to Egypt that mattered to their success in Egyptian society, not their skin color or ancestry. Even when foreigners remained culturally foreign, more prosaic sources allowed that foreigners could act in positive ways and be incorporated into the civilized sphere. the ancient Egyptian construction of ethnic identities this reflects cultural chauvinism more than racism."
--Stuart Tyson Smith. (2003) Wretched Kush: ethnic identities and boundaries in Egypt's Nubian empire. Routledge, pp. 22-24
Integration of Nubian and egyptian elites in some eras
"the XIIth Dynasty (1991-1786 B.C.E.) originated from the Aswan region.4 As expected, strong Nubian features and dark coloring are seen in their sculpture and relief work. This dynasty ranks as among the greatest, whose fame far outlived its actual tenure on the throne. Especially interesting, it was a member of this dynasty- that decreed that no Nehsy (riverine Nubian of the principality of Kush), except such as came for trade or diplomatic reasons, should pass by the Egyptian fortress at the southern end of the Second Nile Cataract. Why would this royal family of Nubian ancestry ban other Nubians from coming into Egyptian territory? Because the Egyptian rulers of Nubian ancestry had become Egyptians culturally; as pharaohs, they exhibited typical Egyptian attitudes and adopted typical Egyptian policies." - (F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989)
The pharaohs that forbid the movement of certain Nubian tribes into Egypt were themselves of negroid origin according to conservative mainstream Egyptologist Frank Yurco..
Quote:
"the XIIth Dynasty (1991-1786 B.C.E.) originated from the Aswan region. As expected, strong Nubian features and dark coloring are seen in their sculpture and relief work. This dynasty ranks as among the greatest, whose fame far outlived its actual tenure on the throne. Especially interesting, it was a member of this dynasty- that decreed that no Nehsy (riverine Nubian of the principality of Kush), except such as came for trade or diplomatic reasons, should pass by the Egyptian fortress at the southern end of the Second Nile Cataract. Why would this royal family of Nubian ancestry ban other Nubians from coming into Egyptian territory? Because the Egyptian rulers of Nubian ancestry had become Egyptians culturally; as pharaohs, they exhibited typical Egyptian attitudes and adopted typical Egyptian policies."
- (F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989)
Applying a consistent 'race' model that interprets war between Egyptians and Nubians as 'racial' the Egyptians also pursued 'racial' wars against whites from the Middle East.
RAMESES II. SLAYING THE "whites" BEFORE RA, THE TUTELARY DEITY OF THE GREAT TEMPLE OF ABÛ-SIMBEL..
THE DISCOURSE OF AMEN-RA, LORD OF THRONES on defeating the "whites".
Thou hast struck off the heads of the Asiatics, and their children cannot escape from thee. Every land illuminated by thy diadem is encircled by thy might; and in all the zone of the heavens there is not a rebel to rise up against thee. The enemy bring in their tribute on their backs, prostrating themselves before thee, their limbs trembling and their hearts burned up within them."
Campaign against "white" Mittani in parts of Lebanon:
"He is a king valiant ... Naharin which its lord had deserted out of fear ... I hacked up its towns and villages and I set fire to them ... I carried off their inhabitants ... also their herds of cattle ... I felled all their plantations and their fruit trees ...I had many vessels ... built on the mountains of God's Land in the neighborhood of the Lady of Byblos ... then on that mountain of Naharin, my Majesty erected my stela, carved out of the mountain on the western side of the Euphrates.."
Conquest against and tribute from "white" Palestine:
"Tribute of the princes of Retenu, who came to do obeisance ... to the souls of his majesty... Now every harbor at which his majesty arrived was supplied with loaves and with assorted loaves, with oil, incense, wine, f[ruit] ---- abundant were they beyond everything ...
Tribute from 'white' Lebanon:
The chieftains, lord of Lebanon, construct the royal ships in order that people may sail south in them to bring all the marvels of the "Garden" to the palace. LPH. ... The chieftains of Retjenu (Retenu) who drag the flagpoles by means of oxen to the shore, it is they who come with their dues to the place where his majesty is, to the Residence in ...... bearing all the fine products brought as marvels of the south and being taxed for tribute annually as (with) all bondsmen of his Majesty."
Operations against more 'white' 'Troglodytes':
"Then my Majesty made them take their oaths of allegiance as follows: never again shall we do anything evil against Menkheperre (another name for Thutmose III), may he live forever ... Then my Majesty had them set free on the road to their cities*). They went off on donkeys for I had seized their chariotry. I captured their inhabitants for Egypt and their property likewise." [W. Helck transl. by B. Cummings (1982), `Urkunden der 18. Dynastie', `Egyptian Historical Records of the Later 18th Dynasty']
"His majesty proceeded northward, to overthrow the Asiatics (Mntyw-Stt). His majesty arrived at a district, Sekmem (Skmm) was its name. His majesty led the good way in proceeding to the palace of `Life, Prosperity, and Health (L.P.H.,' when Sekmen had fallen, together with Retenu (Rtnw) the wretched, while I was acting as rearguard." [Breasted, `Records', Vol. I, Sec. 680] Time of Seti the Great - Presentation of Syrian Prisoners and Precious Vessels to Amon
"Smiting the Troglodytes, beating down the Asiatics (Mn·t·yw), making his boundary as far as the `Horns of the Earth', as far as the marshes of Naharin (N-h-r-n)." [Ibid., Vol. III, Sec. 118;]
"Slaying of the Asiatic Troglodytes (Ynw-Mn·t·yw [Menate, Manasseh]), all inaccessible countries, all lands, the Fenkhu of the marshes of Asia, the Great Bend of the sea (w'd-wr)."
Booty seized from "white" Caananites:
".... 340 living prisoners; 83 hands; 2,401 mares; 191 foals; 6 stallions; ... young ...; a chariot, wrought with gold, (its) pole of gold, belonging to the chief of `M-k-ty' (as the land around Jerusalem was called); .... 892 chariots of his wretched army; total, 924 (chariots); a beautiful suit of bronze armor, belonging to the chief of Jerusalem; .... 200 suits of armor, belonging to his wretched army; 502 bows; 7 poles of (mry) wood, wrought with silver, belonging to the tent of that foe. Behold, the army of his majesty took ...., 297 ...., 1,929 large cattle, 2,000 small cattle, 20500 white small cattle." [JBRE, `Records', Vol. II, Sec. 435; See also the following sections.]
Tribute from "white" Assur/Assyria "The tribute of the chief of Assur (Ys-sw-r): genuine lapis lazuli, a large block, making 20 deben, 9 kidet; genuine lapis lazuli, 2 blocks; total, 3; and pieces, [making] 30 deben; total, 50 deben and 9 kidet; fine lapis lazuli from Babylon (Bb-r); vessels of Assur of hrrt- stone in colors, ---- very many." "Tribute of the chief of Assur: horses ---. A ---- of skin of the M-h-w as the [protection] of a chariot, of the finest of --- wood; 190(+x) wagons --- --- wood, nhb wood, 343 pieces, carob wood, 50 pieces; nby and k'nk wood, 206 pieces; olive oil, ------.." [BREASTED, Vol. II, Sec. 446, 449]
"Whites" put to slave labor in Egypt.
from Project Guttenberg full text of: A HISTORY OF EGYPT FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PERSIAN CONQUEST BY JAMES HENRY BREASTED, II, 760-1, 773. 2 II, 761.
Inscription "the Asiatics of all countries came with bowed head, doing obeisance to the fame of his majesty."
book text:
"Thutmose's war-galleys moored in the harbour of the town; but at this time not merely the iceaUh of Asia was unloaded from the ships; the Asiatics themselves, bound one to another in long lines, were led down the gang planks to begin a life of slave- labour for the Pharaoh (Fig. 119). They wore long matted beards, an abomination to the Egyptians ; their hair hung in heavy black masses upon their shoulders, and they were clad in gaily coloured woolen stuffs, such as the Egyptian, spotless in his white linen robe, would never put on his body.
Their arms were pinioned behind them at the elbows or crossed over their heads and lashed together ; or, again, their hands were thrust through odd pointed ovals of wood, which served as hand-cuffs. The women carried their children slung in a fold of the mantle over their shoulders. With their strange speech and uncouth postures the poor wretches were the subject of jibe and merriment on the part of the multitude ; while the artists of the time could never forbear caricaturing them. Many of them found their way into the houses of the Pharaoh's favourites, and his generals were liberally rewarded with gifts of such slaves; but the larger number were immediately employed on the temple estates, the Pharaoh's domains, or in the construction of his great monuments and buildings."
------------ Ancient Egyptians warn against cowardly, treacherous "whites" comparing them to destructive thieves and reptiles.
"The Instruction for King, Merikare takes a similar tone for peoples in the north (Lichtheim 1973: 10404):
Lo the miserable Asiatic (white), He is wretched because of the place he's in: Short of water, bare of wood, Its paths are many and painful because of mountains. He does not dwell in one place, Food propels his legs, He fights since the time of Horus.. He does not announce the day of combat, Like a thief who darts about a group.."
"Asiatics (whites) are both cowardly and pitiful, leading a marginal existence, constantly fighting but with nothing ever settled. They are also sly and ultimately treacherous, attacking without warning. This passage characterizes Asiatics as both primitive and threatening.. In this case, the passage reflects Egypt's combination of colonial domination and outright military conflict.."
Merikare goes on (Lichtheim 1976: 103-104)
"The Asiatic is a crocodile on its shore It snatches from a lonely road, It cannot seize a populous town."
"Along the same lines, the Prophecy of Neferti (c. 1950 BC) portrays Asiatic immigrants as a flock of rapacious birds descending on Egypt, taking advantage of civil wars of the First Intermediate Period (c. 2150 - 2050 BC) to infiltrate parts of the rich Egyptian delta (Lichtheim 1973: 141):
A strange bird will breed in the delta marsh, having made its nest besides the people.. All happiness is vanished, The land is bowed down in distress, Owing to those feeders, Asiatics who roam the land..
--Stuart Tyson Smith. (2003) Wretched Kush: ethnic identities and boundaries in Egypt's Nubian empire. Routledge, pp. 28-31
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Conservative Egyptologist Frank Yurco, shows that the 12th Dynasty was of the negroid type, of Upper Egyptian and Nubian origin. The 12th Dynasty is one of Egypt's greatest, and was in place approximately 1000 years before the 25th dynasty. Yurco also shows that the Nubians were ethnically the closest people to the Egyptians.
Quote: "the XIIth Dynasty (1991-1786 B.C.E.) originated from the Aswan region. As expected, strong Nubian features and dark coloring are seen in their sculpture and relief work. This dynasty ranks as among the greatest, whose fame far outlived its actual tenure on the throne. Especially interesting, it was a member of this dynasty- that decreed that no Nehsy (riverine Nubian of the principality of Kush), except such as came for trade or diplomatic reasons, should pass by the Egyptian fortress at the southern end of the Second Nile Cataract. Why would this royal family of Nubian ancestry ban other Nubians from coming into Egyptian territory? Because the Egyptian rulers of Nubian ancestry had become Egyptians culturally; as pharaohs, they exhibited typical Egyptian attitudes and adopted typical Egyptian policies."
- (F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989)
"Among the foreigners, the Nubians were closest ethnically to the Egyptians. In the late predynastic period (c. 3700-3150 B.C.E.), the Nubians shared the same culture as the Egyptians and even evolved the same pharaonic political structure." - (F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989)
-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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posted
Trolls (the usual intellectually challenged anti-African troop) have stayed away from this thread just like vampires stay away from garlic and sunlight. Intelligence is to these trolls like the cross is to the devil/demon-haunted, or yet like cleanliness is to the common fly. Good 'trollicide'...I mean thread. Keep up the good work.
-------------------- The Complete Picture of the Past tells Us what Not to Repeat Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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posted
I noticed Libyans were never mentioned in this whole piece. Maybe just a coincidence
Posts: 42918 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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quote:Originally posted by The Explorer: Trolls (the usual intellectually challenged anti-African troop) have stayed away from this thread just like vampires stay away from garlic and sunlight. Intelligence is to these trolls like the cross is to the devil/demon-haunted, or yet like cleanliness is to the common fly. Good 'trollicide'...I mean thread. Keep up the good work.
Indeed. Thanks. Below is the data in narrow screen format for easy reading as well.
Recent studies find the ancient Egyptians had a tropical body plan like sub-Saharan 'black' Africans and were not cold-adapted like European type populations. Tropical body plans also indicate darker-skin.
QUOTE: "The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the "super-Negroid" body plan described by Robins (1983).. This pattern is supported by Figure 7 (a plot of population mean femoral and tibial lengths; data from Ruff, 1994), which indicates that the Egyptians generally have tropical body plans. Of the Egyptian samples, only the Badarian and Early Dynastic period populations have shorter tibiae than predicted from femoral length. Despite these differences, all samples lie relatively clustered together as compared to the other populations." (Zakrzewski, S.R. (2003). "Variation in ancient Egyptian stature and body proportions". American Journal of Physical Anthropology 121 (3): 219-229.
a 2008 Study puts the ancient Egyptians closer to US Blacks than whites:
Quotes:
"Intralimb (crural and brachial) indices are significantly higher in ancient Egyptians than in American Whites (except crural index among females), i.e., Egyptians have relatively longer distal segments (Table 4). Intralimb indices are not significantly different between Egyptians and American Blacks... Many of those who have studied ancient Egyptians have commented on their characteristically ''tropical'' or ''African'' body plan (Warren, 1897; Masali, 1972; Robins, 1983; Robins and Shute, 1983, 1984, 1986; Zakrzewski, 2003). Egyptians also fall within the range of modern African populations (Ruff and Walker, 1993), but close to the upper limit of modern Europeans as well, at least for the crural index (brachial indices are definitely more ''African'').. In terms of femoral and tibial length to total skeletal height proportions, we found that ancient Egyptians are significantly different from US Blacks, although still closer to Blacks than to Whites.
Comparisons of linear body proportions of Old Kingdom and non-Old Kingdom period individuals, and workers and high officials in our sample found no statistically significant differences among them. Zakrzewski (2003) also found little evidence for differences in linear body proportions of Egyptians over a wider temporal range. In general, recent studies of skeletal variation among ancient Egyptians support scenarios of biological continuity through time. Irish (2006) analyzed quantitative and qualitative dental traits of 996 Egyptians from Neolithic through Roman periods, reporting the presence of a few outliers but concluding that the dental samples appear to be largely homogeneous and that the affinities observed indicate overall biological uniformity and continuity from Predynastic through Dynastic and Postdynastic periods.
Zakrzewski (2007) provided a comprehensive summary of previous Egyptian craniometric studies and examined Egyptian crania from six time periods. She found that the earlier samples were relatively more homogeneous in comparison to the later groups. However, overall results indicated genetic continuity over the Egyptian Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods, albeit with a high level of genetic diversity within the population, suggesting an indigenous process of state formation. She also concluded that while the biological patterning of the Egyptian population varied across time, no consistent temporal or spatial trends are apparent. Thus, the stature estimation formulae developed here may be broadly applicable to all ancient Egyptian populations.." ("Stature estimation in ancient Egyptians: A new technique based on anatomical reconstruction of stature." Michelle H. Raxter, Christopher B. Ruff, Ayman Azab, Moushira Erfan, Muhammad Soliman, Aly El-Sawaf, (Am J Phys Anthropol. 2008, Jun;136(2):147-55
Older limb studies find the same:
"In this regard it is interesting to note that limb proportions of Predynastic Naqada people in Upper Egypt are reported to be "Super-Negroid," meaning that the distal segments are elongated in the fashion of tropical Africans.....skin color intensification and distal limb elongation are apparent wherever people have been long-term residents of the tropics." (C.L. Brace, 1993. Clines and clusters..")
"An attempt has been made to estimate male and female Egyptian stature from long bone length using Trotter & Gleser negro stature formulae, previous work by the authors having shown that these rather than white formulae give more consistent results with male dynastic material... When consistency has been achieved in this way, predynastic proportions are founded to be such that distal segments of the limbs are even longer in relation to the proximal segments than they are in modern negroes. Such proportions are termed "super-negroid"...
Robins (1983) and Robins & Shute (1983) have shown that more consistent results are obtained from ancient Egyptian male skeletons if Trotter & Gleser formulae for negro are used, rather than those for whites which have always been applied in the past. .. their physical proportions were more like modern negroes than those of modern whites, with limbs that were relatively long compared with the trunk, and distal segments that were long compared with the proximal segments. If ancient Egyptian males had what may be termed negroid proportions, it seems reasonable that females did likewise." (Robins G, Shute CCD. 1986. Predynastic Egyptian stature and physical proportions. Hum Evol 1:313-324. Ruff CB. 1994.)
The ancient Badarians were quite representative of ancient Egyptians as a whole and showed clear links with tropical Africans to the south. They have been sometimes excluded in studies of the ancient Egyptian population, which shows continuity in its history, not mass influxes of foreigners until the late periods.
Quotes: "As a result of their facial prognathism, the Badarian sample has been described as forming a morphological cluster with Nubian, Tigrean, and other southern (or \Negroid") groups (Morant, 1935, 1937; Mukherjee et al., 1955; Nutter, 1958, Strouhal, 1971; Angel, 1972; Keita, 1990). Cranial nonmetric trait studies have found this group to be similar to other Egyptians, including much later material (Berry and Berry, 1967, 1972), but also to be significantly different from LPD material (Berry et al., 1967). Similarly, the study of dental nonmetric traits has suggested that the Badarian population is at the centroid of Egyptian dental samples (Irish, 2006), thereby suggesting similarity and hence continuity across Egyptian time periods. From the central location of the Badarian samples in Figure 2, the current study finds the Badarian to be relatively morphologically close to the centroid of all the Egyptian samples. The Badarian have been shown to exhibit greatest morphological similarity with the temporally successive EPD (Table 5). Finally, the biological distinctiveness of the Badarian from other Egyptian samples has also been demonstrated (Tables 6 and 7).
These results suggest that the EDyn do form a distinct morphological pattern. Their overlap with other Egyptian samples (in PC space, Fig. 2) suggests that although their morphology is distinctive, the pattern does overlap with the other time periods. These results therefore do not support the Petrie concept of a \Dynastic race" (Petrie, 1939; Derry, 1956). Instead, the results suggest that the Egyptian state was not the product of mass movement of populations into the Egyptian Nile region, but rather that it was the result of primarily indigenous development combined with prolonged small-scale migration, potentially from trade, military, or other contacts.
This evidence suggests that the process of state formation itself may have been mainly an indigenous process, but that it may have occurred in association with in-migration to the Abydos region of the Nile Valley. This potential in-migration may have occurred particularly during the EDyn and OK. A possible explanation is that the Egyptian state formed through increasing control of trade and raw materials, or due to military actions, potentially associated with the use of the Nile Valley as a corridor for prolonged small scale movements through the desert environment. (Sonia R. Zakrzewski. (2007). Population Continuity or Population Change: Formation of the Ancient Egyptian State. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 132:501-509)
Ancient Egyptians most related to other Africans and are part of a Nilotic continuity rather than something Mediterranean or Middle Eastern
"Certainly there was some foreign admixture [in Egypt], but basically a homogeneous African population had lived in the Nile Valley from ancient to modern times... [the] Badarian people, who developed the earliest Predynastic Egyptian culture, already exhibited the mix of North African and Sub-Saharan physical traits that have typified Egyptians ever since (Hassan 1985; Yurco 1989; Trigger 1978; Keita 1990.. et al.,)... The peoples of Egypt, the Sudan, and much of East African Ethiopia and Somalia are now generally regarded as a Nilotic continuity, with widely ranging physical features (complexions light to dark, various hair and craniofacial types) but with powerful common cultural traits, including cattle pastoralist traditions.." (Frank Yurco, "An Egyptological Review," 1996 -in Mary R. Lefkowitz and Guy MacLean Rogers, Black Athena Revisited, 1996, The University of North Carolina Press, p. 62-100)
African peoples are the most diverse in the world whether analyzed by DNA or skeletal or cranial methods. Attempts to deny this are rooted in racism and error. African people, particularly SUB-SAHARAN Africans, vary the most in how they look, more so than any other population in the world.
"Estimates of genetic diversity in major geographic regions are frequently made by pooling all individuals into regional aggregates. This method can potentially bias results if there are differences in population substructure within regions, since increased variation among local populations could inflate regional diversity. A preferred method of estimating regional diversity is to compute the mean diversity within local populations. Both methods are applied to a global sample of craniometric data consisting of 57 measurements taken on 1734 crania from 18 local populations in six geographic regions: sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, East Asia, Australasia, Polynesia, and the Americas. Each region is represented by three local populations.
Both methods for estimating regional diversity show sub-Saharan Africa to have the highest levels of phenotypic variation, consistent with many genetic studies." (Relethford, John "Global Analysis of Regional Differences in Craniometric Diversity and Population Substructure". Human Biology - Volume 73, Number 5, October 2001, pp. 629-636)
"The living peoples of the African continent are diverse in facial characteristics, stature, skin color, hair form, genetics, and other characteristics. No one set of characteristics is more African than another. Variability is also found in "sub-Saharan" Africa, to which the word "Africa" is sometimes erroneously restricted. There is a problem with definitions. Sometimes Africa is defined using cultural factors, like language, that exclude developments that clearly arose in Africa. For example, sometimes even the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea) is excluded because of geography and language and the fact that some of its peoples have narrow noses and faces.
However, the Horn is at the same latitude as Nigeria, and its languages are African. The latitude of 15 degree passes through Timbuktu, surely in "sub-Saharan Africa," as well as Khartoum in Sudan; both are north of the Horn. Another false idea is that supra-Saharan and Saharan Africa were peopled after the emergence of "Europeans" or Near Easterners by populations coming from outside Africa. Hence, the ancient Egyptians in some writings have been de-Africanized. These ideas, which limit the definition of Africa and Africans, are rooted in racism and earlier, erroneous "scientific" approaches." (S. Keita, "The Diversity of Indigenous Africans," in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Clenko, Editor (1996), pp. 104-105. [10])
Modern DNA studies find even though some African peoples look different, they are genetically related through the PN2 transition clade of the Y-chromosone. Haplogroup E links numerous peoples together even though they don't look exactly the same.
"But the Y-chromosome clade defined by the PN2 transition (PN2/M35, PN2/M2) shatters the boundaries of phenotypically defined races and true breeding populations across a great geographical expanse. African peoples with a range of skin colors, hair forms and physiognomies have substantial percentages of males whose Y chromosomes form closely related clades with each other, but not with others who are phenotypically similar. The individuals in the morphologically or geographically defined 'races' are not characterized by 'private' distinct lineages restricted to each of them." (S O Y Keita, R A Kittles, et al. "Conceptualizing human variation," Nature Genetics 36, S17 - S20 (2004)
"Recall that the Horn-Nile Valley crania show, as a group, the largest overlap with other regions. A review of the recent literature indicates that there are male lineage ties between African peoples who have been traditionally labeled as being ''racially'' different, with ''racially'' implying an ontologically deep divide. The PN2 transition, a Y chromosome marker, defines a lineage (within the YAPþ derived haplogroup E or III) that emerged in Africa probably before the last glacial maximum, but after the migration of modern humans from Africa (see Semino et al., 2004). This mutation forms a clade that has two daughter subclades (defined by the biallelic markers M35/215 (or 215/M35) and M2) that unites numerous phenotypically variant African populations from the supra-Saharan, Saharan, and sub-Saharan regions.." (S.O.Y Keita. Exploring northeast African metric craniofacial variation at the individual level: A comparative study using principal component analysis. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 16:679-689, 2004.) keita2004neanalysis.htm
"Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages.. Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world." (Tishkoff SA, Williams SM., Genetic analysis of African populations: human evolution and complex disease. Nature Reviews Genetics. 2002 Aug (8):611-21.)
DNA of some modern Egyptians found a genetic ancestral heritage to East Africa: "The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diversity of 58 individuals from Upper Egypt, more than half (34 individuals) from Gurna, whose population has an ancient cultural history, were studied by sequencing the control-region and screening diagnostic RFLP markers. This sedentary population presented similarities to the Ethiopian population by the L1 and L2 macrohaplogroup frequency (20.6%), by the West Eurasian component (defined by haplogroups H to K and T to X) and particularly by a high frequency (17.6%) of haplogroup M1. We statistically and phylogenetically analysed and compared the Gurna population with other Egyptian, Near East and sub-Saharan Africa populations; AMOVA and Minimum Spanning Network analysis showed that the Gurna population was not isolated from neighbouring populations. Our results suggest that the Gurna population has conserved the trace of an ancestral genetic structure from an ancestral East African population, characterized by a high M1 haplogroup frequency. The current structure of the Egyptian population may be the result of further influence of neighbouring populations on this ancestral population." (Stevanovitch A, Gilles A, Bouzaid E, et al. (2004) Mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity in a sedentary population from Egypt.Ann Hum Genet. 68(Pt 1):23-39.)
Tishkoff et al on Africa having the most genetic diversity:
"Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages (see online link to Ethnologue). Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world(TABLE 1).However,most studies report only a few markers in divergent African populations, which makes it difficult to draw general conclusions about the levels and patterns of genetic diversity in these populations (FIG. 1). Because genetic studies have been biased towards more economically developed African countries that have key research or medical centres, populations from more underdeveloped or politically unstable regions of Africa remain undersampled (FIG. 1). Historically, human population genetic studies have relied on one or two African populations as being representative of African diversity, but recent studies show extensive genetic variation among even geographically close African populations, which indicates that there is not a single 'representative' African population." -- Tishkoff NATURE REVIEWS | GENETICS VOLUME 3 | AUGUST 2002
"Genetic studies that attempt to recover the biological history of the species have generally found that there is a split between their restricted African samples and "the rest of the world." These approaches conceptualize human population history as a series of bifurcations with each node being relatively uniform. The "Africans" usually used are either the short statured Aka or Mbuti, Khoisan speakers, or West African stereotype s, in keeping with a socially, not scientifically constructed concept of African. Studies using individuals as the unit of analysis evince a different pattern. A select subset of Africans called the "group of 49" forms a unit versus the rest of humankind. However the latter individuals ("rest of humankind") also includes non-East African sub-Saharans. Hence there is no "racial" split. As has been stated, the idea that human variation can be described as being structured by subspecies(races) that are treated as lineages is fundamentally false. In actuality, also, although averages are used, the gene studies usually give us histories that are not necessarily the same as population histories." Writing African History Chapter 4, Physical Anthropology and African History, Shomarka Keita University of Rochester Press p.134
Continent wide African DNA linkages "The most extensive pan-African haplotype (16189 16192 16223 16278 16294 16309 16390) is in the L2a1 haplogroup. This sequence is observed in West Africa among the Malinke, Wolof, and others; in North Africa among the Maure, Hausa, Fulbe, and others; in Central Africa among the Bamileke, Fali, and others; in South Africa among the Khoisan family including the Khwe and Bantu speakers; and in East Africa among the Kikuyu. Closely related variants are observed among the Tuareg in North and West Africa and among the East African Dinka and Somali." (-- Bert Ely , Jamie Lee Wilson , Fatimah Jackson and Bruce A Jackson. (2006). African-American mitochondrial DNAs often match mtDNAs found in multiple African ethnic groups. BMC Biology 2006, 4:34)
"It is of interest that the M35 and M2 lineages are united by a mutation - the PN2 transition. This PN2 defined clade originated in East Africa, where various populations have a notable frequency of its underived state. This would suggest that an ancient population in East Africa, or more correctly its males, form the basis of the ancestors of all African upper Paleolithic populations - and their subsequent descendants in the present day." (--Bengston, John D. (ed.), In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory: Essays in the four fields of anthropology. 2008. John Benjamins Publishing: pp. 3-16)
Egyptian Y-chromosome haplotypes show preponderance is with African clusters not Europe or the Near East
Recent DNA studies of the Sudan show genetic unity and linkage between the Sudanic, Horn, Egyptian, Nubian and other Nilotic peoples, confirming earlier skeletal/cranial studies and historical data. (Yurco (1989, 1996), Keita (1993,2004, 2005) Lovell (1999), Zakrewski (2003, 2007) et. al). Of note is that DNA data shows that some peoples linked to one of the oldest Egyptian populations, the original Copts, have a significant frequency of the B-M60 marker, indicating early colonization of Egypt by Nilotics in the state formation period.
QUOTES:
"Haplogroup E-M78, however, is more widely distributed and is thought to have an origin in eastern African. More recently, this haplogroup has been carefully dissected and was found to depict several well-established subclades with defined geographical clustering (Cruciani et al., 2006, 2007). Although this haplogroup is common to most Sudanese populations, it has exceptionally high frequency among populations like those of western Sudan (particularly Darfur) and the Beja in eastern Sudan... Although the PC plot places the Beja and Amhara from Ethiopia in one sub-cluster based on shared frequencies of the haplogroup J1, the distribution of M78 subclades (Table 2) indicates that the Beja are perhaps related as well to the Oromo on the basis of the considerable frequencies of E-V32 among Oromo in comparison to Amhara (Cruciani et al., 2007)...
These findings affirm the historical contact between Ethiopia and eastern Sudan (1998), and the fact that these populations speak languages of the Afroasiatic family tree reinforces the strong correlation between linguistic and genetic diversity (Cavalli-Sforza, 1997)."
"Genetic continuum of the Nubians with their kin in southern Egypt is indicated by comparable frequencies of E-V12 the predominant M78 subclade among southern Egyptians." [Hassan et al. Y-chromosome variation.." Am J. Phy Anthro. v137,3. 316-323
"The Copt samples displayed a most interesting Y-profile, enough (as much as that of Gaalien in Sudan) to suggest that they actually represent a living record of the peopling of Egypt. The significant frequency of B-M60 in this group might be a relic of a history of colonization of southern Egypt probably by Nilotics in the early state formation, something that conforms both to recorded history and to Egyptian mythology." Source: (Hisham Y. Hassan 1, Peter A. Underhill 2, Luca L. Cavalli-Sforza 2, Muntaser E. Ibrahim 1. (2008). Y-chromosome variation among Sudanese: Restricted gene flow, concordance with language, geography, and history. Am J Phys Anthropology, 2008. Volume 137 Issue 3, Pages 316 - 323)
Older research notes the physical makeup of the original Copts, now confirmed by recent DNA data above: "In Libya, which is mostly desert and oasis, there is a visible Negroid element in the sedentary populations, and at the same is true of the Fellahin of Egypt, whether Copt or Muslim. Osteological studies have shown that the Negroid element was stronger in predynastic times than at present, reflecting an early movement northward along the banks of the Nile, which were then heavily forested." (Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. "Populations, Human")
Haplogroup E3A and E3B represent more than 70% of the Y-chromosones on the African continent, with varying proportions found in different parts of the continent. In some African populations for example, E3B exceeds 80%. Migrations out of Africa, are responsible for the spread of E3b to Europe. Non-Africans thus acquired a sub-set f African genes through this migration.
"In Europe, the overall frequency pattern of haplogroup E-M78 does not support the hypothesis of a uniform spread of people from a single parental Near Eastern population... The Y chromosome specific biallelic marker DYS271 defines the most common haplogroup (E3a) currently found in sub-Saharan Africa. A sister clade, E3b (E-M215), is rare in sub-Saharan Africa, but very common in northern and eastern Africa. On the whole, these two clades represent more than 70% of the Y chromosomes of the African continent. A third clade belonging to E3 (E3c or E-M329) has been recently reported to be present only in eastern Africa, at low frequencies.. The new topology of the E3 haplogroup is suggestive of a relatively recent eastern African origin for the majority of the chromosomes presently found in sub-Saharan Africa."
"In conclusion, we detected the signatures of several distinct processes of migration and/or recurrent gene flow associated with the dispersal of haplogroup E3b lineages. Early events involved the dispersal of E-M78d chromosomes from eastern Africa into and out of Africa, as well as the introduction of the E-M34 subclade into Africa from the Near East. Later events involved short-range migrations within Africa (E-M78? and E-V6) and from northern Africa into Europe (E-M81 and E-M78ß), as well as an important range expansion from the Balkans to western and southern-central Europe (E-M78a). This latter expansion was the main contributor to the present distribution of E3b chromosomes in Europe."
(Cruciani, F, et. al. (2004) Phylogeographic Analysis of Haplogroup E3b (E-M215) Y Chromosomes Reveals Multiple Migratory Events Within and Out Of Africa, Am J Hum Genet. 74(5): 1014-1022.)
Somalis link much more heavily with African populations such as those in Kenya and Ethiopia than Middle Eastern or European ones according to DNA evidence. Eurasian genes only accounted for about 15% of the mix among Somalis, typically associated with recent Arab influence. On such key common DNA markers as E3b1, Europeans only weighed in at 5%, and Middle Easterners at approximately 6%. The overwhelming link of Somalis- over 85% of the total is with Africans. Kenya and Ethiopia are located in "sub-Saharan" Africa.
"The high frequency (77.6%) of haplogroup E3b1 was characteristic of male Somalis. The frequency of E3b1 was significantly lower in Ethiopian Oromos (35.9%), Ethiopian Amharas (22.9%), Egyptians (20.0%), Sudanese (17.5%), Kenyans (15.1%),10 Iraqis (6.3%), Northern Africans (6.1%), Southern Europeans (0.5-5.1%) and sub-Saharan populations." (Sanchez et al.,(2005) High frequencies of Y chromosome lineages characterized by E3b1, DYS19-11, DYS392-12 in Somali males, Eu J of Hum Genet (2005) 13, 856-866)
Simplistic "race percentage" models are dubious in Africa which has the highest genetic diversity in the world. That diversity proceeded from deeper sub-Saharan Africa, to East and N.E. Africa, then to the rest of the globe. All other populations, including Europeans and "Middle easterners" carry this diversity which was built into Africa to begin with. Africans thus don't need any "race mix" to look different. Their diversity is built-in and supplied the whole globe. Any returnees or "backflow" to Africa looked like Africans. (Brace 2005, Hanihara 1996, Holliday 2003).
"These studies suggest a recent and primary subdivision between African and non-African populations, high levels of divergence among African populations, and a recent shared common ancestry of non-African populations, from a population originating in Africa. The intermediate position, between African and non-African populations, that the Ethiopian Jews and Somalis occupy in the PCA plot also has been observed in other genetic studies (Ritte et al. 1993; Passarino et al. 1998) and could be due either to shared common ancestry or to recent gene flow. The fact that the Ethiopians and Somalis have a subset of the sub-Saharan African haplotype diversity and that the non-African populations have a subset of the diversity present in Ethiopians and Somalis makes simple-admixture models less likely; rather, these observations support the hypothesis proposed by other nuclear-genetic studies (Tishkoff et al. 1996a, 1998a, 1998b; Kidd et al. 1998) that populations in northeastern Africa may have diverged from those in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa early in the history of modern African populations and that a subset of this northeastern-African population migrated out of Africa and populated the rest of the globe. These conclusions are supported by recent mtDNA analysis (Quintana-Murci et al. 1999)." [Tishkoff et al. (2000) Short Tandem-Repeat Polymorphism/Alu Haplotype Variation at the PLAT Locus: Implications for Modern Human Origins. Am J Hum Genet; 67:901-925]
Data on Ethiopian peoples like the Oromo are underreported even though they make up the largest group percentage wise in the Ethiopian population, (50%) and are often pooled with others, hiding and obscuring their overall contribution to the Ethiopian gene pool.
"This difference, not revealed in the study by Passarino et al. (1998), in which the Oromo were underrepresented, might reflect distinct population histories." (--Semino, et al. (2002). Ethiopians and Khoisan Share the Deepest Clades of the Human Y..")
"These data, together with those reported elsewhere (Ritte et al. 1993a, 1993b; Hammer et al. 2000) suggest that the Ethiopian Jews acquired their religion without substantial genetic admixture from Middle Eastern peoples and that they can be considered an ethnic group with essentially a continental African genetic composition." (Cruciani, et. al Am J Hum Genet. 2002 May; 70(5): 1197-1214. "A Back Migration from Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa Is Supported by High-Resolution Analysis of Human Y-Chromosome Haplotypes)
"An earlier generation of anthropologists tried to explain face form in the Horn of Africa as the result of admixture from hypothetical “wandering Caucasoids,”.. but that explanation founders on the paradox of why that supposedly potent “Caucasoid” people contributed a dominant quantity of genes for nose and face form but none for skin color or limb proportions." --CL Brace, 1993
[Afrocentric critic Mary Leftokwitz says Egypt was peopled by persons from sub-Saharan Africa:
"Recent work on skeletons and DNA suggests that the people who settled in the Nile valley, like all of humankind, came from somewhere south of the Sahara; they were not (as some nineteenth-century scholars had supposed) invaders from the North. See Bruce G. Trigger, "The Rise of Civilization in Egypt," Cambridge History of Africa (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), vol I, pp 489-90; S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54. (Mary Lefkotitz (1997). Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History. Basic Books. pg 242) [/QB][/QUOTE]
In Black Athena Revisited, Lefkowitz finds similarity between Egyptians and Sudanics and recommends the work of conservative anthropologist Nancy Lovell for more research on the subject.
Quote: "not surprisingly, the Egyptian skulls were not very distance from the Jebel Moya [a Neolithic site in the southern Sudan] skulls, but were much more distance from all others, including those from West Africa. Such a study suggests a closer genetic affinity between peoples in Egypt and the northern Sudan, which were close geographically and are known to have had considerable cultural contact throughout prehistory and pharaonic history... Clearly more analyses of the physical remains of ancient Egyptians need to be done using current techniques, such as those of Nancy Lovell at the University of Alberta is using in her work.."
Lefkotitz cites Keita 1993 in Not Out of Africa. Here is Keita on the Jebel Moya studies?
"Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Jebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have 'donated' people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)... Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese." [/img] S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54
Hereis the work of the anthropologist so strongly recommended by Lefkowitz, Nancy Lovell:
"There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas." (Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999) pp 328-332)
and
"must be placed in the context of hypotheses informed by archaeological, linguistic, geographic and other data. In such contexts, the physical anthropological evidence indicates that early Nile Valley populations can be identified as part of an African lineage, but exhibiting local variation. This variation represents the short and long term effects of evolutionary forces, such as gene flow, genetic drift, and natural selection, influenced by culture and geography." ("Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999). pp 328-332)
Obviously, this shows that the Egyptians were completely white, and how foolish the Afrocentrists are to reject this notion. After all Afrocentric critic Mary Lefkowitz recommends Lovell's research..
The same Nancy Lovell recommended by Lefkowitz studied dental traits among some high status persons of the key Egyptian Naqada group and found that they resembled the peoples of Nubia.
T. Prowse, and N. Lovell "Concordance of cranial and dental morphological traits and evidence for endogamy in ancient Egypt" American journal of physical anthropology. 1996, vol. 101, no2, pp. 237-246 (2 p.1/4)
A biological affinities study based on frequencies of cranial nonmetric traits in skeletal samples from three cemeteries at Predynastic Naqada, Egypt, confirms the results of a recent nonmetric dental morphological analysis. Both cranial and dental traits analyses indicate that the individuals buried in a cemetery characterized archaeologically as high status are significantly different from individuals buried in two other, apparently non-elite cemeteries and that the non-elite samples are not significantly different from each other. A comparison with neighboring Nile Valley skeletal samples suggests that the high status cemetery represents an endogamous ruling or elite segment of the local population at Naqada, which is more closely related to populations in northern Nubia than to neighboring populations in southern Egypt.
Lefkowitz warns against Eurocentric "racial" analysis as to the Egyptians and Nubians.
Quote: "The Nubian tribute-bearers are painted in two skin tones, black and dark brown. These tones do not necessarily represent actual skin tones in real life but may serve to distinguish each tribute-bearer from the next in a row in which the figures overlap. Alternatively, the brown-skinned people may be of Nubian origin, and the black-skinned ones may be farther south 9Trigger 1978, 33). The shading of skin tones in Egyptian tomb paintings, which varies considerably, may not be a certain criterion for distinguishing race. Specific symbols of ethnic identity can also vary. Identifying race in Egyptian representational art, again, is difficult to do- probably because race (as opposed to ethnic affiliation, that is, Egyptians versus all non-Egyptians) was not a criterion for differentiation used by the ancient Egyptians...
Northern Egypt shows more physical variation than the south, but not necessarily as part of any significant 'race' mix, but local, built-in variation. They were closer to southerners than any other peoples. In comparisons with "Middle Eastern" populations of the same ancient period, the Egyptians link more closely with other Africans than the Middle Easterners. Africans vary in how they look because they have the highest built-in molecular diversity to begin with.
QUOTE(s): "..sample populations available from northern Egypt from before the 1st Dynasty (Merimda, Maadi and Wadi Digla) turn out to be significantly different from sample populations from early Palestine and Byblos, suggesting a lack of common ancestors over a long time. If there was a south-north cline variation along the Nile valley it did not, from this limited evidence, continue smoothly on into southern Palestine. The limb-length proportions of males from the Egyptian sites group them with Africans rather than with Europeans." (Barry Kemp, "Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation. (2005) Routledge. p. 52-60)
"Individuals from different geographical regions frequently plotted near each other, revealing aspects of variation at the level of individuals that is obscured by concentrating on the most distinctive facial traits once used to construct ''types.''The high level of African interindividual variation in craniometric pattern is reminiscent of the great level of molecular diversity found in Africa." (S.O.Y Keita. Exploring northeast African metric craniofacial variation at the individual level: A comparative study using principal component analysis. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 16:679-689, 2004.)
Quote on northern Egypt analysis- the Qarunian (Faiyum) remains (c. 7000 BC) "The body was that of a forty-year old woman with a height of about 1.6 meters, who was of a more modern racial type than the classic 'Mechtoid' of the Fakhurian culture (see pp. 65-6), being generally more gracile, having large teeth and thick jaws bearing some resemblance to the modern 'negroid' type." (Beatrix Midant-Reynes, Ian Shaw (2000). The Prehistory of Egypt. Wiley-Blackwell. pg. 82)
Modern studies show diversity in how people look is heavily based on distance from sub-Saharan Africa, not merely climate. In genetically diverse Africa, broad-nosed people live on the cool or cold mountain slopes of East Africa or the hot, dry Sahara, and narrow-nosed peoples like many Fulani like in the wet tropics of West Africa. Yellowish-skinned San tribes live in the hot zones of Southern Africa.
"The relative importance of ancient demography and climate in determining worldwide patterns of human within-population phenotypic diversity is still open to debate. Several morphometric traits have been argued to be under selection by climatic factors, but it is unclear whether climate affects the global decline in morphological diversity with increasing geographical distance from sub-Saharan Africa. Using a large database of male and female skull measurements, we apply an explicit framework to quantify the relative role of climate and distance from Africa. We show that distance from sub-Saharan Africa is the sole determinant of human within-population phenotypic diversity, while climate plays no role. By selecting the most informative set of traits, it was possible to explain over half of the worldwide variation in phenotypic diversity. These results mirror those previously obtained for genetic markers and show that 'bones and molecules' are in perfect agreement for humans." (Distance from Africa, not climate, explains within-population phenotypic diversity in humans. (2008) by: Lia Betti, François Balloux, William Amos, Tsunehiko Hanihara, Andrea Manica, Proceedings B: Biological Sciences, 2008/12/02)
Analysis of skeletal and cranial remains reveals that the ancient Egyptians of the early Dynastic and pre-Dynastic phases, link closer to nearby Saharan, Sudanic and East African populations than Mediterranean and Middle Eastern peoples. Greeks, Romans, Hyskos, Arabs and others were to appear later in Egyptian history. Craniometric studies generally place ancient Upper Egyptian populations closer to the range of tropical Africans in the Nile Valley and East Africa than to Mediterraneans, or Middle Easterners.
QUOTE(s): S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54
"Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Kebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have 'donated' people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)... Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese." (Keita 1993)
"When the unlikely relationships [Indian matches] and eliminated, the Egyptian series are more similar overall to other African series than to European or Near Eastern (Byzantine or Palestinian) series." (Keita 1993)
"Populations and cultures now found south of the desert roamed far to the north. The culture of Upper Egypt, which became dynastic Egyptian civilization, could fairly be called a Sudanese transplant."(Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa: Their Interaction. Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa, by Joseph O. Vogel, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California (1997), pp. 465-472 )
"Analysis of crania is the traditional approach to assessing ancient population origins, relationships, and diversity. In studies based on anatomical traits and measurements of crania, similarities have been found between Nile Valley crania from 30,000, 20,000 and 12,000 years ago and various African remains from more recent times (see Thoma 1984; Brauer and Rimbach 1990; Angel and Kelley 1986; Keita 1993). Studies of crania from southern predynastic Egypt, from the formative period (4000-3100 B.C.), show them usually to be more similar to the crania of ancient Nubians, Kushites, Saharans, or modern groups from the Horn of Africa than to those of dynastic northern Egyptians or ancient or modern southern Europeans." (S. O. Y and A.J. Boyce, "The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians", in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 20-33)
"There is no archaeological, linguistic, or historical data which indicate a European or Asiatic invasion of, or migration to, the Nile Valley during First Dynasty times. Previous concepts about the origin of the First Dynasty Egyptians as being somehow external to the Nile Valley or less native are not supported by archaeology... In summary, the Abydos First Dynasty royal tomb contents reveal a notable craniometric heterogeneity. Southerners predominate. (Kieta, S. (1992) Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis of Crania From First Dynasty Egyptian Tombs, Using Multiple Discriminant Functions. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 87:245-254)"
"The predominant craniometric pattern in the Abydos royal tombs is 'southern' (tropical African variant), and this is consistent with what would be expected based on the literature and other results (Keita, 1990). This pattern is seen in both group and unknown analyses... Archaeology and history seem to provide the most parsimonious explanation for the variation in the royal tombs at Abydos.. Tomb design suggests the presence of northerners in the south in late Nakada times (Hoffman, 1988) when the unification probably took place. Delta names are attached to some of the tombs at Abydos (Gardiner, 1961; Yurco, 1990, personal communication), thus perhaps supporting Petrie's (1939) and Gardiner's contention that north-south marriages were undertaken to legitimize the hegemony of the south. The courtiers of northern elites would have accompanied them.
Given all of the above, it is probably not possible to view the Abydos royal tomb sample as representative of the general southern Upper Egyptian population of the time. Southern elites and/or their descendants eventually came to be buried in the north (Hoffman, 1988). Hence early Second Dynasty kings and Djoser (Dynasty 111) (Hayes, 1953) and his descendants are not buried in Abydos. Petrie (1939) states that the Third Dynasty, buried in the north, was of Sudanese origin, but southern Egypt is equally likely. This perhaps explains Harris and Weeks' (1973) suggested findings of southern morphologies in some Old Kingdom Giza remains, also verified in portraiture (Drake, 1987). Further study would be required to ascertain trends in the general population of both regions. The strong Sudanese affinity noted in the unknown analyses may reflect the Nubian interactions with upper Egypt in predynastic times prior to Egyptian unification (Williams, 1980,1986)..." (S. Keita (1992) Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis of Crania From First Dynasty Egyptian Tombs, Using Multiple Discriminant Functions. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 87:245-254)
"When the Elephantine results were added to a broader pooling of the physical characteristics drawn from a wide geographic region which includes Africa, the Mediterranean and the Near East quite strong affinities emerge between Elephantine and populations from Nubia, supporting a strong south-north cline. (Barry Kemp. (2006) Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. p. 54)
Gene flow into the Nubian area during the Neolithic was not from reputed "wandering Caucasoids" but from tropical, Sub-Saharan types.
"Prior to the Neolithic, populations of the Nile Valley in Nubia are very robust, and, because of a gap in the fossil record, it is difficult to connect them to later populations. Some have postulated a local evolution, due to diet change, while others postulated migrations, especially from the Sahara area. But between 5000 and 1000 BC, many cemeteries have supplied a large amount of skeletons, and the anatomical characters of Nubian populations are easier to follow-up. Twenty-seven archaeological samples (4 at 5000 BC, 5 at 4000 BC, 10 at 3000 BC, 3 at 2000 BC, 5 at 1000 BC), and 10 craniofacial measurements, have been considered. While cerebral skull is fairly stable, facial skull displays several regular modifications, and specially a reduction of facial and nasal heights, a broadening of the nose, and an increase of prognathism, while bizygomatic breadth is unchanged. These features illustrate a trend towards a growing resemblance with populations of Sub-Saharan Africa living in wet environments. However, paleoclimatological studies show that Nubia experienced an increasing aridification during that period. It is then unlikely that such a morphological change could be related to any local adaptive evolution to environment. Random drift is also unlikely, because the anatomical trend is relatively uniform during these millennia. It then seems more plausible that these changes correspond to the increasing presence of Southern populations migrating northward." -- Froment, A. (2002) Morphological micro-evolution of Nubian Populations from, A-Group to Christian Epochs: gene flow, not local adaptation. Am J Phys Anthropol [Suppl] 34:72.
Afrocentric critic Froment also notes: "Black populations of the Horn of Africa (Tigré and Somalia) fit well into Egyptian variations." (Froment, Alain, Origines du peuplement de l’Égypte ancienne: l’apport de l’anthropobiologie, Archéo-Nil 2 (Octobre 1992), 79-98)
Afrocentric critic C. Loring Brace's 2005 study groups ancient Egyptian populations like the Naqada closer to Nubians and Somalis than European, Mediterranean or Middle Eastern populations. Brace's study shows that the closest European linking with Africans in Egypt or Nubia are Middle Stone Age Portugese and Neolithics, OLDER populations more closely resembling AFRICANS than modern Europeans. Early Neolithic populations, like the Nautifians, in what is now Israel, show sub-Saharan 'negroid' affinities. (Brace, et al. The questionable contribution of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age to European craniofacial form, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2006 January 3; 103(1): p. 242-247.)
"The Niger-Congo speakers, Congo, Dahomey and Haya, cluster closely with each other and a bit less closely with the Nubian sample, both the recent and the Bronze Age Nubians, and more remotely with the Naqada Bronze Age sample of Egypt, the modern Somalis, and the Arabic-speaking Fellaheen (farmers) of Israel. When those samples are separated and run in a single analysis as in Fig. 1, there clearly is a tie between them that is diluted the farther one gets from sub-Saharan Africa" (Brace, 2005)
"The surprise is that the Neolithic peoples of Europe and their Bronze Age successors are not closely related to the modern inhabitants, although the prehistoric/modern ties are somewhat more apparent in southern Europe. It is a further surprise that the Epipalaeolithic Natufian of Israel from whom the Neolithic realm was assumed to arise has a clear link to Sub-Saharan Africa... Interestingly enough, however, the small Natufian sample falls between the Niger-Congo group and the other samples used. Fig. 2 shows the plot produced by the first two canonical variates, but the same thing happens when canonical variates 1 and 3 (not shown here) are used. This placement suggests that there may have been a Sub-Saharan African element in the make-up of the Natufians (the putative ancestors of the subsequent Neolithic), .. When canonical variates are plotted, neither sample ties in with Cro-Magnon as was once suggested. The data treated here support the idea that the Neolithic moved out of the Near East into the circum-Mediterranean areas and Europe by a process of demic diffusion but that subsequently the in situ residents of those areas, derived from the Late Pleistocene inhabitants, absorbed both the agricultural life way and the people who had brought it." (Brace, 2005)
Both skeletal/cranial and DNA studies by other authors confirm that some Neolithics did not derive from the Near East. They most likely resembled African populations. Hence comparisons using older European Neolithics versus Africans are comparisons with older prehistoric Europeans who looked more like Africans, than modern 'white' Europeans, as shown by Brace (2005), and Hanihara (1996) also, who states "Early West Asians looked like Africans."
"The absence of mtDNA haplogroup J in the ancient Portuguese Neolithic sample suggests that this population was not derived directly from Near Eastern farmers. The Mesolithic and Neolithic groups show genetic discontinuity implying colonisation at the Neolithic transition in Portugal." (CHANDLER, H.; SYKES, B.; ZILHÃO, J. (2005) - Using ancient DNA to examine genetic continuity at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Portugal, in ARIAS, P.; ONTAÑÓN, R.; GARCÍA-MONCÓ, C. (eds.) - «Actas del III Congreso del Neolítico en la Península Ibérica», Santander, Monografías del Instituto Internacional de Investigaciones Prehistóricas de Cantabria 1, p. 781-786.)
"Early Europeans still resembled modern tropical peoples - some resemble modern Australian and Africans, more than modern Europeans.. Nor does the picture get any clearer when we move on to the Cro-Magnons, the presumed ancestors of modern Europeans. Some were more like present-day Australians or Africans, judged by objective anatomical observations." (Christopher Stringer, Robin McKie (1998). African Exodus. Macmillan, p. 162)
Early Europeans, as recently as 6,000-9000 years ago, looked somewhat like Africans in terms of retained 'tropical' characteristics. Cold adaptation was to bring about several physical changes over time from the initial Out of Africa migrations to Europe. Retained traces of 'tropical' characteristics, indicate a "large African role in the origins of anatomically modern Europeans." (Holliday and Churchill 2003).
"Body proportions covary with climate, apparently as the result of climatic selection. Ontogenetic research and migrant studies have demonstrated that body proportions are largely genetically controlled and are under low selective rates; thus studies of body form can provide evidence for evolutionarily short-term dispersals and/or gene flow. Replacement predicts that the earliest modern Europeans will possess "tropical" body proportions (assuming Africa is the center of origin), while Regional Continuity permits only minor shifts in body shape, due to climatic change and/or improved cultural buffering. .. results refute the hypothesis of local continuity in Europe, and are consistent with an interpretation of elevated gene flow (and population dispersal?) from Africa, followed by subsequent climatic adaptation to colder conditions." (Holliday, Trenton (1997) Body proportions in Late Pleistocene Europe and modern human origins. Journal of Human Evolution, Volume 32, Issue 5, 1997, Pages 423-447)
".. while the Late Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic humans have significantly higher (i.e., tropically-adapted) brachial and crural indices than do recent Europeans, they also have shorter (i.e., cold-adapted) limbs. The somewhat paradoxical retention of "tropical" indices in the context of more "cold-adapted" limb length is best explained as evidence for Replacement in the European Late Pleistocene, followed by gradual cold adaptation in glacial Europe." (Holliday, Trenton (1999) Brachial and crural indices of European Late Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic humans. Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 36, Issue 5, May 1999, Pages 549-566)
"Stature, body mass, and body proportions are evaluated for the Cheddar Man (Gough's Cave 1) skeleton. Like many of his Mesolithic contemporaries, Gough's Cave 1 evinces relatively short estimated stature (ca. 166.2 cm [5' 5']) and low body mass (ca. 66 kg [146 lbs]). In body shape, he is similar to recent Europeans for most proportional indices. He differs, however, from most recent Europeans in his high crural index and tibial length/trunk height indices. Thus, while Gough's Cave 1 is characterized by a total morphological pattern considered 'cold-adapted', these latter two traits may be interpreted as evidence of a large African role in the origins of anatomically modern Europeans." (TRENTON W. HOLLIDAY a1 and STEVEN E. CHURCHILL. (2003). Gough's Cave 1 (Somerset, England): an assessment of body size and shape, Bulletin of the Natural History Museum: Geology, 58:37-44 Cambridge University Press)
More data showing early Europeans were tropically adapted types like Africans "Body proportions are under strong climatic selection and evince remarkable stability within regional lineages. As such, they offer a viable and robust alternative to cranio-facial data in assessing hypothesised continuity and replacement with the transition to agro-pastoralism in central Europe. Humero-clavicular, brachial and crural indices in a large sample (n=75) of Linienbandkeramik (LBK), Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age specimens from the middle Elbe-Saale-Werra valley (MESV) were compared with Eurasian and African terminal Pleistocene, European Mesolithic and geographically disparate recent human specimens. Mesolithic Europeans display considerable variation in humero-clavicular and brachial indices yet none approach the extreme "hyper-polar" morphology of LBK humans from the MESV. In contrast, Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age peoples display elongated brachial and crural indices reminiscent of terminal Pleistocene and "tropically adapted" recent humans. These marked morphological changes likely reflect exogenous immigration during the terminal Fourth millennium cal BC. Population expansion and diffusion is a function of increased mobility and settlement dispersal concomitant with significant technological and subsistence changes in later Neolithic societies during the late fourth millennium cal BCE." -- Gallagher et al. "Population continuity, demic diffusion and Neolithic origins in central-southern Germany: the evidence from body proportions." Homo. 2009;60(2):95-126. Epub 2009 Mar 4.
Early West Asians looked like Africans. Thus any ancient returnees or "backflow" from West Asia back to Africa is by people who look like Africans to begin with. Brace 2005 shows this as to Europeans. Hanihara 1996, demonstrates this below as to West Asians (i.e. 'Middle easterners'). Also see above.
quote: "Distance analysis and factor analysis, based on Q-mode correlation coefficients, were applied to 23 craniofacial measurements in 1,802 recent and prehistoric crania from major geographical areas of the Old World. The major findings are as follows: 1) Australians show closer similarities to African populations than to Melanesians. 2) Recent Europeans align with East Asians, and early West Asians resemble Africans. 3) The Asian population complex with regional difference between northern and southern members is manifest. 4) Clinal variations of craniofacial features can be detected in the Afro-European region on the one hand, and Australasian and East Asian region on the other hand. 5) The craniofacial variations of major geographical groups are not necessarily consistent with their geographical distribution pattern. This may be a sign that the evolutionary divergence in craniofacial shape among recent populations of different geographical areas is of a highly limited degree. Taking all of these into account, a single origin for anatomically modern humans is the most parsimonious interpretation of the craniofacial variations presented in this study." (Hanihara T. Comparison of craniofacial features of major human groups. Am J Phys Anthropol. 1996 Mar;99(3):389-412.)
Older studies often show misclassification or exclusion of Nile Valley remains deemed 'negroid'. Although clearly of the "African" type, such remains were frequently relabeled "Mediterranean."
"Analyses of Egyptian crania are numerous. Vercoutter (1978) notes that ancient Egyptian crania have frequently all been lumped (implicitly or explicitly) as Mediterranean, although Negroid remains are recorded in substantial numbers by many workers... "Nutter (1958), using the Penrose statistic, demonstrated that Nagada I and Badari crania, both regarded as Negroid, were almost identical and that these were most similar to the Negroid Nubian series from Kerma studied by Collett (1933). [Collett, not accepting variability, excluded "clear negro" crania found in the Kerma series from her analysis, as did Morant (1925), implying that they were foreign..." (S. Keita (1990) Studies of Ancient Crania From Northern Africa. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 83:35-48)
Different features among Africans, particularly EAST AFRICANS, like narrow noses are not due to different "race" mixes but are part of the built-in physical diversity and variation of African peoples. Narrow noses appear in the oldest African populations for example, in Kenya's Gamble Cave complex. East Africans like Somalians or Kenyans do not need any outside race "mix" or migration to make them look the way they do.
QUOTE(s): ".. all their features can be found in several living populations of East Africa, like the Tutsi of Rwanda and Burundi, who are very dark skinned and differ greatly from Europeans in a number of body proportions.. There is every reason to believe that they are ancestral to the living 'Elongated East Africans'. Neither of these populations, fossil and modern, should be considered to be closely related to the populations of Europe and western Asia.. In skin colour, the Tutsi are darker than the Hutu, in the reverse direction to that leading to the caucasoids. Lip thickness provides a similar case: on an average the lips of the Tutsi are thicker than those of the Hutu." [Jean Hiernaux, The People of Africa (1975), pgs 42-43, 62-63)
"In sub-Saharan Africa, many anthropological characters show a wide range of population means or frequencies. In some of them, the whole world range is covered in the sub-continent. Here live the shortest and the tallest human populations, the one with the highest and the one with the lowest nose, the one with the thickest and the one with the thinnest lips in the world. In this area, the range of the average nose widths covers 92 per cent of the world range: only a narrow range of extremely low means are absent from the African record. Means for head diameters cover about 80 per cent of the world range; 60 per cent is the corresponding value for a variable once cherished by physical anthropologists, the cephalic index, or ratio of the head width to head length expressed as a percentage....." - Jean Hiernaux, "The People of Africa" 1975 p.53, 54
"Prehistoric human crania from Bromhead's Site, Willey's Kopje, Makalia Burial Site, Nakuru, and other localities in the Eastern Rift Valley of Kenya are reassessed using measurements and a multivariate statistical approach. Materials available for comparison include series of Bushman and Hottentot crania. South and East African Negroes, and Egyptians. Up to 34 cranial measurements taken on these series are utilized to construct three multiple discriminant frameworks, each of which can assign modern individuals to a correct group with considerable accuracy. When the prehistoric crania are classified with the help of these discriminants, results indicate that several of the skulls are best grouped with modern Negroes. This is especially clear in the case of individuals from Bromhead's Site, Willey's Kopje, and Nakuru, and the evidence hardly suggests post-Pleistocene domination of the Rift and surrounding territory by "Mediterranean" Caucasoids, as has been claimed. Recent linguistic and archaeological findings are also reviewed, and these seem to support application of the term Nilotic Negro to the early Rift populations." (Rightmire GP. New studies of post-Pleistocene human skeletal remains from the Rift Valley, Kenya. Am J Phys Anthropol. 1975 May;42(3):351-69. )
"....inhabitants of East Africa right on the equator have appreciably longer, narrower, and higher noses than people in the Congo at the same latitude. A former generation of anthropologists used to explain this paradox by invoking an invasion by an itinerant "white" population from the Mediterranean area, although this solution raised more problems than it solved since the East Africans in question include some of the blackest people in the world with characteristically wooly hair and a body build unique among the world's populations for its extreme linearity and height.... The relatively long noses of East Africa become explicable then when one realizes that much of the area is extremely dry for parts of the year." (C. Loring Brace, "Nonracial Approach Towards Human Diversity," cited in The Concept of Race, Edited by Ashley Montagu, The Free Press, 1980, pp. 135-136, 138)
"The .... excavations at Gogoshiis Qabe (Somalia) uncovered eleven virtually complete and articulated primary burials...Closest morphological affinities are with early Holocene skeletons from Lake Turkana, Kenya...and Lake Besaka, Ethiopia.." (S. Brandt, (1986) The Upper Pleistocene and early Holocene prehistory of the Horn of Africa. Journal African Archaeological Review. Volume 4, Number 1, Pages 41-82 )
"The role of tall, linearly built populations in eastern Africa's prehistory has always been debated. Traditionally, they are viewed as late migrants into the area. But as there is better palaeoanthropological and linguistic documentation for the earlier presence of these populations than for any other group in eastern Africa, it is far more likely that they are indigenous eastern Africans. ... prehistoric linear populations show resemblances to both Upper Pleistocene eastern African fossils and present-day, non-Bantu-speaking groups in eastern Africa, with minor differences stemming from changes in overall robusticity of the dentition and skeleton. This suggests a longstanding tradition of linear populations in eastern Africa, contributing to the indigenous development of cultural and biological diversity from the Pleistocene up to the present." (L . A . SCHEPARTZ, "Who were the later Pleistocene eastern Africans?" The African Archaeological Review, 6 (1988), pp. 57- 72)
Recent study shows ancient Egyptians physically more like tropically adapted Black Americans than White Americans, confirming older studies that show today's Egyptians in general are closer to US blacks than Northern Europeans, and Southern Europeans as well.
QUOTE(s): "We also compare Egyptian body proportions to those of modern American Blacks and Whites... Long bone stature regression equations were then derived for each sex. Our results confirm that, although ancient Egyptians are closer in body proportion to modern American Blacks than they are to American Whites, proportions in Blacks and Egyptians are not identical... Intralimb indices are not significantly different between Egyptians and American Blacks. ..brachial indices are definitely more 'African'... There is no evidence for significant variation in proportions among temporal or social groupings; thus, the new formulae may be broadly applicable to ancient Egyptian remains." ("Stature estimation in ancient Egyptians: A new technique based on anatomical reconstruction of stature." Michelle H. Raxter, Christopher B. Ruff, Ayman Azab, Moushira Erfan, Muhammad Soliman, Aly El-Sawaf, (Am J Phys Anthropol. 2008, Jun;136(2):147-55
Africa is the most genetically diverse region in the world with the original man being from East Africa according to conservative scholars:
"Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages.. Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world." (Tishkoff SA, Williams SM., Genetic analysis of African populations: human evolution and complex disease. Nature Reviews Genetics. 2002 Aug (8):611-21.)
" In other words, all non-Africans carry M168. Of course, Africans carrying the M168 mutation today are the descendants of the African subpopulation from which the migrants originated.... Thus, the Australian/Eurasian Adam (the ancestor of all non-Africans) was an East African Man." (Linda Stone, Paul F. Lurquin, L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Genes, Culture, and Human Evolution: A Synthesis, Wiley-Blackwell: 2006, pg 108)
The Natufians, early inhabitants of the Sinai - Israel- Palestine area, and reputed pioneers of several Neolithic agricultural and technological developments, appear to have had "Negroid" affinities. Important Natufian sites include Mt. Carmel, Jericho and several others.
"Against this background of disease, movement and pedomorphic reduction of body size one can identify Negroid (Ethiopic or Bushmanoid?) traits of nose and prognathism appearing in Natufian latest hunters (McCown, 1939) and in Anatolian and Macedonian first farmers, probably from Nubia via the unknown predecesors of the Badarians and Tasians....". (Biological Relations of Egyptians and Eastern Mediterranean Populations during pre-Dynastic and Dynastic Times. J. Lawrence Angel. Journal of Human Evolutiom. 1972:1, 1, Pg 307)
"The Mushabians moved into Sinai from the Nile Delta, bringing North African lithic chipping tecniques." ("Pleistocene connections between Africa and Southwest Asia: an archaeological perspective. O. Bar-Yosef. African Archaeological Review. 5 (1987) Pg 29)
"It is a further surprise that the Epipalaeolithic Natufian of Israel from whom the Neolithic realm was assumed to arise has a clear link to Sub-Saharan Africa... Interestingly enough, however, the small Natufian sample falls between the Niger-Congo group and the other samples used... This placement suggests that there may have been a Sub-Saharan African element in the make-up of the Natufians (the putative ancestors of the subsequent Neolithic.." (C.L Brace, et. al. 2005. The Questionable contribution of the Neolithic...)
Early inhabitants of the general Natufian Israel area show limb proportions suited to tropical peoples- similar to sub-Saharan's homeland
"However, the real revelation came when Erik [Trinkhaus] inserted his data on the Cro-Magnons of Europe and the Skhul-Qafzeh skeletons from Israel into the equations. In this case, he got a figure of 85 percent for the shinbone-thighbone ratio. Not only were they unlike the Neanderthals, but these people actually fell at the other extreme in their readings on the limb thermometer. The predicted average temperature of origin for folk with an 85% shin-thigh fraction, indicating much longer extremities relative to trunk length - was about 20 degrees higher than the Neanderthals', suggesting a subtropical- if not tropical- homeland!" (African Exodus By Christopher Stringer, Robin McKie, McMillan: pg 79-83)
The 1993 'Clines and Clusters' study by C.L. Brace, et. al. has been used to minmize or downplay the realtionship between Egypt and its African neighbors. For example it:
--Created an "African" or "sub-Saharan" group, but excluded the Maghreb (including parts of the Sahara and Sahel), the Sudan and the Horn area (Ethiopia and Somalia) even though these latter two are BELOW the Sahara, and thus "sub-Saharan".
--Excluded the Badari, and Naqada I and II, key Egyptian groups, thus obscuring the Sudanic/Saharan character of numerous early samples, noted in several earlier analyses. Ignored the formative range of the Saharans on Egypt, from the megaliths and cattle cults of the Nabta Playa to early mummification practices was ignored.
--Excluded the Nubian population of the Badari and early Naqada period, including the rich remains of the well documented Qustul culture, near the present Sudanese-Egyptian border, again obscuring the close relationship between the two peoples.
--Created a vague "Bronze Age" grouping of Nubians, and a "modern" group of medieval samples, an era long after the dynasties and when Nubia had experienced more gene flow of that and the later Arab incursions, beginning in the 700s. Sampling thus ignored the early Badari/Naqada Nubians, jumped the 25th Dynasty era, and shifted to the medieval era in the age range of the Arab conquests. Used Somalian samples that were modern, and thus within the range of recent gene flow (such as the Arab era), particularly on the coast.
--The result was a "comparison" finding that the ancient Egyptians had no relationship "at all" to other "sub-Saharan" peoples and were relatively distant from the Nubians and Somalians. peoples. This finding has been undermined by the subsequent research of several scholars, including limb proportion studies.
QUOTE(s):
"However, Brace et al. (1993) find that a series of upper Egyptian/Nubian epipalaeolithic crania affiliate by cluster analysis with groups they designate "sub-Saharan African" or just simply "African" (from which they incorrectly exclude the Maghreb, Sudan, and the Horn of Africa), whereas post-Badarian southern predynastic and a late dynastic northern series (called "E" or Gizeh) cluster together, and secondarily with Europeans. In the primary cluster with the Egyptian groups are also remains representing populations from the ancient Sudan and recent Somalia. Brace et al. (1993) seemingly interpret these results as indicating a population relationship from Scandinavia to the Horn of Africa, although the mechanism for this is not clearly stated; they also state that the Egyptians had no relationship with sub-Saharan Africans, a group that they nearly treat (incorrectly) as monolithic, although sometimes seemingly including Somalia, which directly undermines aspects of their claims. Sub-Saharan Africa does not define/delimit authentic Africanity." (S.O.Y. Keita. "Early Nile Valley Farmers from El-Badari: Aboriginals or "European" Agro-Nostratic Immigrants? Craniometric Affinities Considered With Other Data". Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 191-208 (2005)
Brace carefully excluded the Badari- a key native pre-dynastic group that led into the dynasties, and suggested possible European immigration to ancient Egypt. Keita put this to the test and found that the excluded group matched up more closely with Africans than Europeans.
"An examination of the distance hierarchies reveals the Badarian series to be more similar to the Teita in both analyses and always more similar to all of the African series than to the Norse and Berg groups (see Tables 3A & 3B and Figure 2). Essentially equal similarity is found with the Zalavar and Dogon series in the 11-variable analysis and with these and the Bushman in the one using 15 variables. The Badarian series clusters with the tropical African groups no matter which algorithm is employed (see Figures 3 and 4).. In none of them did the Badarian sample affiliate with the European series."(S.O.Y. Keita. Early Nile Valley Farmers from El-Badari: Aboriginals or "European" Agro-Nostratic Immigrants? Craniometric Affinities Considered With Other Data. Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 191-208 (2005)
More on the biased and skewed 'true negro' model
"Another example of the use of a socially constructed typological paradigm is in studies of the Nile Valley populations in which the concept of a biological African is restricted to those with a particular craniometric pattern (called in the past the 'True Negro' though no 'True White' was ever defined). Early Nubians, Egyptians, and even Somalians are viewed essentially as non-Africans, when in fact numerous lines of evidence and an evolutionary model make them a part of African biocultural/biogeographical history. The diversity of 'authentic' Africans is a reality. This diversity prevents biogeographical/biohistorical Africans from clustering into a single unit, no matter the kind of data." (The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence, S. O. Y. Keita, Rick A. Kittles, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 99, No. 3 (Sep., 1997), pp. 534-544)
"..presents all tropical Africans with narrower noses and faces as being related to or descended from external, ultimately non-African peoples. However, narrow-faced, narrow-nosed populations have long been resident in Saharo-tropical Africa... and their origin need not be sought elsewhere. These traits are also indigenous. The variability in tropical Africa is expectedly naturally high. Given their longstanding presence, narrow noses and faces cannot be deemed `non-African."(S.O.Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993), page 134 )
"Another example of the use of a socially constructed typological paradigm is in studies of the Nile Valley populations in which the concept of a biological African is restricted to those with a particular craniometric pattern (called in the past the 'True African' though no 'True White' was ever defined). Early Nubians, Egyptians, and even Somalians are viewed essentially as non-Africans, when in fact numerous lines of evidence and an evolutionary model make them a part of African biocultural/biogeographical history. The diversity of 'authentic' Africans is a reality. This diversity prevents biogeographical/biohistorical Africans from clustering into a single unit, no matter the kind of data." ---Keita and Kittles. "The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence." American Anthropologist 99, no. 3 (September 1997): 534-544
Hair and the 'true negro' "Strouhal (1971) microscopically examined some hair which had been preserved on a Badrarian skull. The analysis was interpreted as suggesting a stereotypical tropical African-European hybrid (mulatto). However this hair is grossly no different from that of Fulani, some Kanuri, or Somali and does not require a gene flow explanation any more than curly hair in Greece necessarily does. Extremely "wooly" hair is not the only kind native to tropical Africa.." (S. O. Y. Keita. (1993). "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54)
Sampling bias and the true negro. In some Nile Valley research sampling bias persists such as drawing samples from the far north of Egypt, boscuring the region's genetic complexity. The stereotypical "true negro" type is still used to artifically separate related peoples and obscure a fuller, more accurate picture of African genetic diversity. Sampling bias appears both in DNA studies (noted by Keita) and in cranial studies (noted by Egyptologist Barry Kemp).
QUOTE(s):
Keita on DNA studies drawing samples from the far north, an area with more foreign settlement and gene flow
"However, in some of the studies, only individuals from northern Egypt are sampled, and this could theoretically give a false impression of Egyptian variability (contrast Lucotte and Mercier 2003a with Manni et al. 2002), because this region has received more foreign settlers (and is nearer the Near East). Possible sample bias should be integrated into the discussion of results." (S.O.Y. Keita, A.J. Boyce, "Interpreting Geographical Patterns of Y Chromosome Variation1," History in Africa 32 (2005) 221-246 )
Egyptologist Barry Kemp on the worldwide CRANID database that used northern samples near the Mediterranean as "representative" of the ancient Egyptians, and classifying them in a "European" direction, while excluding key historic sites further south..
"If, on the other hand, CRANID had used one of the Elephantine populations of the same period, the geographic association would be much more with the African groups to the south. It is dangerous to take one set of skeletons and use them to characterize the population of the whole of Egypt." (Barry Kemp, Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation, Routledge: 2005, p. 55)
Modern anthropology shows that the ancient Egyptians are well within the range of tropical Africa, contradicting older research in the 1990s that sought to deny any relationship. The anthropologist below, Nancy Lovell was recommended by Mary lefkowitz in Black Athena Revisted.
"There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas." (Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999) pp 328-332)
One of the oldest remains from Upper Egypt, shows strong sub-Saharan affinities, and early northern Egypt also shows sub-Saharan affinities through cultural traits- the 'Nubian complex' of technology and production.
"The morphometric affinities of the 33,000 year old skeleton from Nazlet Khater, Upper Egypt are examined using multivariate statistical procedures.. The results indicate a strong association between some of the sub-Saharan Middle Stone Age (MSA) specimens, and the Nazlet Khater mandible. Furthermore, the results suggest that variability between African populations during the Neolithic and Protohistoric periods was more pronounced than the range of variability observed among recent African and Levantine populations." (PINHASI Ron, SEMAL Patrick (2000). The position of the Nazlet Khater specimen among prehistoric and modern African and Levantine populations. Journal of human evolution. 2000, vol. 39, no3, pp. 269-288 )
"..Middle Paleolithic and the transition to the Upper Paleolithic in the Lower Nile Valley are described... the Middle Paleolithic or, more appropriately, Middle Stone Age of this region starts with the arrival of new populations from sub-Saharan Africa, as evidenced by the nature of the Early to Middle Stone Age transition in stratified sites. Throughout the late Middle Pleistocene technological change occurs leading to the establishment of the Nubian Complex by the onset of the Upper Pleistocene." (Van Peer, Philip. Did middle stone age moderns of sub-Saharan African descent trigger an upper paleolithic revolution in the lower nile valley? Anthropologie. vol. 42, no3, pp. 215-225)
Dental studies provide evidence that the ancient Egyptian population maintained a high degree of continuity into the early, mid and late Dynastic periods. A key ancient group, the Badari, found to link to tropical African metrics, was excluded by such studies as Brace (1993) but dental research shows they link well with later pre and Dynastic populations. J. Irish's 2006 dental study examined the ancient Badarian people excluded by Brace and found that they were a "good representative of what the common ancestor to all later predynastic and dynastic Egyptian peoples would be like." His dental results show that:
QUOTE:
"Despite the difference, Gebel Ramlah [the Western Desert- Saharan region] is closest to predynastic and early dynastic samples from Abydos, Hierakonpolis, and Badari.."
the Badarians were a "good representative of what the common ancestor to all later predynastic and dynastic Egyptian peoples would be like"
"A comparison of Badari to the Naqada and Hierakonpolis samples .. contradicts the idea of a foreign origin for the Naqada (Petrie, 1939; Baumgartel, 1970)"
Evidence in favor of continuity is also demonstrated by comparison of individual samples. "Naqada and especially Hierakonpolis share close affinities with First-Second Dynasty Abydos.. These findings do not support the concept of a foreign dynastic ''race''"
"Thus, despite increasing foreign influence after the Second Intermediate Period, not only did Egyptian culture remain intact (Lloyd, 2000a), but the people themselves, as represented by the dental samples, appear biologically constant as well."
(Joel D. Irish (2006). Who Were the Ancient Egyptians? Dental Affinities Among Neolithic Through Postdynastic Peoples. Am J Phys Anthropol. 2006 Apr;129(4):529-43.)
Africans have the highest dental diversity "Previous research by the first author revealed that, relative to other modern peoples, sub-Saharan Africans exhibit the highest frequencies of ancestral (or plesiomorphic) dental traits... The fact that sub-Saharan Africans express these apparently plesiomorphic characters, along with additional information on their affinity to other modern populations, evident intra-population heterogeneity, and a world-wide dental cline emanating from the sub-continent, provides further evidence that is consistent with an African origin model." (Irish JD, Guatelli-Steinberg D.(2003) Ancient teeth and modern human origins: an expanded comparison of African Plio-Pleistocene and recent world dental samples. Hum Evol. 2003 Aug;45(2):113-44. )
Ancient Egyptian civilization was indigenous with continuity among its peoples, not an influx of Middle Easterners, Europeans or other outsiders like Arabs until relatively late in history
QUOTE(s): "Some have argued that various early Egyptians like the Badarians probably migrated northward from Nubia, while others see a wide-ranging movement of peoples across the breadth of the Sahara before the onset of desiccation. Whatever may be the origins of any particular people or civilization, however, it seems reasonably certain that the predynastic communities of the Nile valley were essentially indigenous in culture, drawing little inspiration from sources outside the continent during the several centuries directly preceding the onset of historical times..." (Robert July, Pre-Colonial Africa, 1975, p. 60-61)
"overall population continuity over the Predynastic and early Dynastic, and high levels of genetic heterogeneity, thereby suggesting that state formation occurred as a mainly indigenous process." (Zakrzewski, S.R. (2007). "Population continuity or population change: Formation of the ancient Egyptian state". American Journal of Physical Anthropology 132 (4): 501-509)
"the peoples of the steppes and grasslands to the immediate south of Egypt domesticated cattle, as early as 9000 to 8000 B.C. They included peoples from the Afroasiastic linguistic group and the second major African language family, Nilo-Saharan (Wendorf, Schild, Close 1984; Wendorf, et al. 1982). Thus the earliest domestic cattle may have come to Egypt from these southern neighbors, circa 6000 B.C., and not from the Middle East.[148] Pottery, another significant advance in material cultural may also have followed this pattern, initiatied "as early as 9000 B.C. by the Nilo-Saharans and Afrasians who lived to the south of Egypt. Soon thereafter, pots spread to Egyptian sites, almost 2,000 years before the first pottery was made in the Middle East." (Christopher Ehret, "Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture," in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 25-27)
X-ray Atlas of the Royal Mummies show some to be linked physically to Nubian types, and some documented royal officials are clearly "Negroid' like Pepi-seneb, an eminent scribe c. 2745 BC. Some royal New Kingdom mummies also show melanin frequencies consistent with Negroid origin.
"In terms of head shape, the XVIV and XX dynasties look more like the early Nubian skulls from the mesolithic with low vaults and sloping, curved foreheads.The XVII and XVIII dynasty skulls are shaped more like modern Nubians with globular skulls and high vaults." (An X-ray atlas of the royal mummies. Edited by J.E. Harris and E.F. Wente. (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980.) Review: Michael R. Zimmerman, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Volume 56, Issue 2 , (1981) Pages 207 - 208)
"While the Upper Nile Egyptians show phenotypic features that occur in higher frequencies in the Sudan and southward into East Africa (namely, facial prognathism, chamaerrhiny, and paedomorphic cranial architecture with specific modifications of the nasal aperature), these so-called Negroid features are not universal in the region of Thebes, Karnak, and Luxor." (Kennedy, Kenneth A.R., T. Plummer, J. Chinment, "Identification of the Eminent Dead: Pepi, A Scribe of Egypt," In Katherine J. Reichs (ed.), Forensic Osteology, 1986.)
German Institute for Archaeology -excavation of the tombs of the nobles in Thebes-West, Upper Egypt. In several of the noble specimens: "The basal epithelial cells were packed with melanin as expected for specimens of Negroid origin." (Determination of optimal rehydration, fixation and staining methods for histological and immunohistochemical analysis of mummified soft tissues", Biotechnic & Histochemistry 2005, 80(1): 7_/13) Nubians are no "prequisite" for dark skin in ancient Egypt.
Nubians were ethnically the closest people to the Egyptians. Conflict between the two were typical clashes between kingdoms without the simplistic "racial" models drawn by some 20th century writers.
Quote 1: "The ancient Egyptians referred to a region, located south of the third cataract the Nile River, in which Nubians dwelt as Kush.. Within such context, this phrase is not a racial slur. Throughout the history of ancient Egypt there were numerous, well documented instances that celebrate Nubian-Egyptian marriages. A study of these documents, particularly those dated to both the Egyptian New Kingdom (after 1550 B.C.E.) and to Dynasty XXV and early Dynasty XXVI (about 720-640 BCE), reveals that neither spouse nor any of the children of such unions suffered discrimination at the hands of the ancient Egyptians. Indeed such marriages were never an obstacle to social, economic, or political status, provided the individuals concerned conformed to generally accepted Egyptian social standards. Furthermore, at times, certain Nubian practices, such as tattooing for women, and the unisex fashion of wearing earrings, were wholeheartedly embraced by the ancient Egyptians." (Bianchi, 2004: p. 4)
'It is an extremely difficult task to attempt to describe the Nubians during the course of Egypt's New Kingdom, because their presence appears to have virtually evaporated from the archaeological record.. The result has been described as a wholesale Nubian assimilation into Egyptian society. This assimilation was so complete that it masked all Nubian ethnic identities insofar as archaeological remains are concerned beneath the impenetrable veneer of Egypt's material; culture.. In the Kushite Period, when Nubians ruled as Pharaohs in their own right, the material culture of Dynasty XXV (about 750-655 B.C.E.) was decidedly Egyptian in character.. Nubia's entire landscape up to the region of the Third Cataract was dotted with temples indistinguishable in style and decoration from contemporary temples erected in Egypt. The same observation obtains for the smaller number of typically Egyptian tombs in which these elite Nubian princes were interred. (Bianchi, 2004, p. 99-100)
- Robert Bianchi ( 2004). Daily Life of the Nubians. Greenwood Publishing Group
One of Egypt's greatest dynasties, the 12th, originated from dark-skinned Nubian stock, according to conservative Egyptologist F. Yurco (1989). The 12th Dynasty ruled approximately 1000 years BEFORE the well known "black" 25th Dynasty. Quote 2:
"the XIIth Dynasty (1991-1786 B.C.E.) originated from the Aswan region.4 As expected, strong Nubian features and dark coloring are seen in their sculpture and relief work. This dynasty ranks as among the greatest, whose fame far outlived its actual tenure on the throne. Especially interesting, it was a member of this dynasty- that decreed that no Nehsy (riverine Nubian of the principality of Kush), except such as came for trade or diplomatic reasons, should pass by the Egyptian fortress at the southern end of the Second Nile Cataract. Why would this royal family of Nubian ancestry ban other Nubians from coming into Egyptian territory? Because the Egyptian rulers of Nubian ancestry had become Egyptians culturally; as pharaohs, they exhibited typical Egyptian attitudes and adopted typical Egyptian policies."
- (F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989)
"Among the foreigners, the Nubians were closest ethnically to the Egyptians. In the late predynastic period (c. 3700-3150 B.C.E.), the Nubians shared the same culture as the Egyptians and even evolved the same pharaonic political structure." - (F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989)
Ancient Egyptian religion closer to the religion of African regions than to Mesopotamia, Europe or the Middle East
QUOTE(s): Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508 "A large number of gods go back to prehistoric times. The images of a cow and star goddess (Hathor), the falcon (Horus), and the human-shaped figures of the fertility god (Min) can be traced back to that period. Some rites, such as the "running of the Apil-bull," the "hoeing of the ground," and other fertility and hunting rites (e.g., the hippopotamus hunt) presumably date from early times.. Connections with the religions in southwest Asia cannot be traced with certainty." "It is doubtful whether Osiris can be regarded as equal to Tammuz or Adonis, or whether Hathor is related to the "Great Mother." There are closer relations with northeast African religions. The numerous animal cults (especially bovine cults and panther gods) and details of ritual dresses (animal tails, masks, grass aprons, etc) probably are of African origin. The kinship in particular shows some African elements, such as the king as the head ritualist (i.e., medicine man), the limitations and renewal of the reign (jubilees, regicide), and the position of the king's mother (a matriarchal element). Some of them can be found among the Ethiopians in Napata and Meroe, others among the Prenilotic tribes (Shilluk)." (Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508)
Egyptian dynastic civilization based from the 'darker' south (Upper Egypt) not the north (Lower Egypt)
QUOTE(s): "While not attempting to underestimate the contribution that Deltaic political and religious institutions made to those of a united Egypt, many Egyptologists now discount the idea that a united prehistoric kingdom of Lower Egypt ever existed."
"While communities such as Ma'adi appear to have played an important role in entrepots through which goods and ideas form south-west Asia filtered into the Nile Valley in later prehistoric times, the main cultural and political tradition that gave rise to the cultural pattern of Early Dynastic Egypt is to be found not in the north but in the south.": The Cambridge History of Africa: Volume 1, From the Earliest Times to c. 500 BC, (Cambridge University Press: 1982), Edited by J. Desmond Clark pp. 500-509
"..the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life." (Source: Shaw, Thurston (1976) Changes in African Archaeology in the Last Forty Years in African Studies since 1945. p. 156-68. London.)
Egyptian state founded from the south, and indigenous in character. Egyptians dominated Palestine in some eras.
"What is truly unique about this state is the integration of rule over an extensive geographic region, in contrast to other contemporaneous Near Easter polities in Nubia, Mesopotamia, Palestine and the Levant. Present evidence suggests that the state which emerged by the First Dynasty had its roots in the Nagada culture of Upper Egypt, where grave types, pottery and artifacts demonstrate an evolution of form from the Predynastic to the First Dynasty, This cannot be demonstrated for the material culture of Lower Egypt, which was eventually displaced by that which originated in Upper Egypt. Hierarchical society with much social and economic differentiation, as symbolized in the Nagada II cemeteries of Upper Egypt, does not seem to have been present, then, in Lower Egypt, a fact which supports an Upper Egyptian origin for the unified state. Thus archaeological evidence cannot support earlier theories that the founders of Egyptian civilization were an invading Dynastic race from the east.."
"Egyptian contact in the 4th millennium B.C. with SW Asia is undeniable, but the effect of this contact on state formation is Egypt is less clear... The unified state which emerged in Egypt in the 3rd millenium B.C. however, was unlike the polities in Mesopotamia, the Levant, northern Syria, or Early Bronze Age Palestine- in sociopolitical organization, material culture, and belief system. There was undoubtedly heightened commercial contact with SW Asia in the 4th millennium B.C., but the Early Dynastic state which emerged in Egypt is unique and religious in character." (Bard, Kathryn A. 1994 The Egyptian Predynastic: A Review of the Evidence. Journal of Field Archaeology 21(3):265-288.)
"From Petrie onwards, it was regularly suggested that despite the evidence of Predynastic cultures, Egyptian civilization of the 1st Dynasty appeared suddenly and must therefore have been introduced by an invading foreign 'race'. Since the 1970s however, excavations at Abydos and Hierakonpolis have clearly demonstrated the indigenous, Upper Egyptian roots of early civilization in Egypt.
Contact between northern Egypt and Palestine was overland, as evidence in northern Sinai demonstrates.. Israeli archealogists suggest that this evidence represents a commercial network established and controlled by the Egyptians as early as EBA Ia, and that this network was a major factor in the rise of the urban settlements found later in Palestine EBA II. Naomi Porat's technological study of ceramics from EBA sites in southern Palestine clearly demonstrates that in EBA Ib strata many of the pottery vessels used for food preparation were probably manufactured by Egyptian potters using Egyptian technology but local Palestinian clays. In EBA Ib strata there are also many storage jars made from Nile silt and marl wares, which must have been imported from Egypt. Not only did the Egyptians establish camps and way stations in northern Sinai, but the ceramic evidence also suggests that they established a highly organized network of settlements in southern Palestine where an Egyptian population was in residence." (Ian Shaw ed. (2003) The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt By Ian Shaw. Oxford University Press, page 40-63)
Much older scholarship shows cultural similarities between ancient Egypt and the rest of Africa, contradicting claims of Middle Eastern inspiration.
--Specific central African tool designs found at the well known Naqada, Badari and Fayum archaeological sites in Egypt (de Heinzelin 1962, Arkell and Ucko, 1956 et al). Shaw (1976) states that "the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life." Pottery evidence first seen in the Saharan Highlands then spreading to the Nile Valley (Flight 1973). Art motifs of Saharan rock paintings showing similarities to those in pharaonic art. A number of scholars suggest that these earlier artistic styles influenced later pharaonic art via Saharans leaving drier areas and moving into the Nile Valley taking their art styles with them (Mori 1964, Blanc 1964, et al)
--Earlier pioneering mummification outside Egypt. The oldest mummy in Africa is of a black Saharan child (Donadoni 1964, Blanc 1964) Frankfort (1956) suggests that it is thus possible to understand the pharaonic worldview by reference to the religious beliefs of these earlier African precursors. Attempts to suggest the root of such practices are due to Caucasoid civilizers from elsewhere are thus contradicted by the data on the ground.
--Several cultural practices of Egypt show strong similarities to an African totemic clan base. Childe (1969, 1978), Aldred (1978) and Strouhal (1971) demonstrate linkages with several African practices such as divine kingship and the king as divine rainmaker.
--Physical similarities of the early Nile valley populations with that of tropical Africans. Such connections are demonstrated in the work of numerous scholars such as Thompson and Randall Mclver 1905, Falkenburger 1947, and Strouhal 1971. The distance diagrams of Mukherjee, Rao and Trevor (1955) place the ancient Badarians genetically near 'black' tribes such as the Ashanti and the Taita. See also the "Issues of lumping under Mediterranean clusters" section above for similar older analyses.
--Serological (blood) evidence of genetic linkages. Paoli 1972 for example found a significant resemblance between ABO frequencies of dynastic Egyptians and the black northern Haratin who are held to be the probable descendants of the original Saharans (Hiernaux, 1975).
--Language similarities which include several hundred roots ascribable to African elements (UNESCO 1974)
--Ancient Egyptian origin stories ascribing origins of the gods and their ancestors to African locations to the south and west of Egypt (Davidson 1959)
--Advanced state building and political unity in Nubia, including writing, administrative apparatus and insignia some 300 years before dynastic Egypt, and the long demonstrated interchange between Nubia and Egypt (Williams 1980)
--Newer studies (Wendorf 2001, Wilkinson 1999, et al.) confirm these older analyses. Excavations from Nabta Playa, located about 100km west of Abu Simbel for example, suggest that the Neolithic inhabitants of the region were migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa, based on cultural similarities and social complexity which is thought to be reflective of Egypt's Old Kingdom
--Other scholars (Wilkinson 1999) present similar material and cultural evidence- including similarities between predynastic Egypt and traditional African cattle-culture, typical of Southern Sudanese and East African pastoralists of today, and various cultural and artistic data such as iconography on rock art found in both Egypt and in the Sudan.
Assorted demic diffusion theories holding a mass influx of Europeans or Middle Easterners to Africa bringing cattle and agriculture to the natives is not supported by credible evidence. Indigenous development is most likely.
"Furthermore, the archaeology of northern Africa DOES NOT SUPPORT demic diffusion of farming from the Near East. The evidence presented by Wetterstrom indicates that early African farmers in the Fayum initially INCORPORATED Near Eastern domesticates INTO an INDIGENOUS foraging strategy, and only OVER TIME developed a dependence on horticulture. This is inconsistent with in-migrating farming settlers, who would have brought a more ABRUPT change in subsistence strategy. "The same archaeological pattern occurs west of Egypt, where domestic animals and, later, grains were GRADUALLY adopted after 8000 yr B.P. into the established pre-agricultural Capsian culture, present across the northern Sahara since 10,000 yr B.P. From this continuity, it has been argued that the pre-food-production Capsian peoples spoke languages ancestral to the Berber and/or Chadic branches of Afroasiatic, placing the proto-Afroasiatic period distinctly before 10,000 yr B.P."
Source: The Origins of Afroasiatic Christopher Ehret, S. O. Y. Keita, Paul Newman;, and Peter Bellwood Science 3 December 2004: Vol. 306. no. 5702, p. 1680
When claims of European or 'Mediterranean' migrant influx to ancient Egypt before the Hyskos/Greek/Roman era are analyzed research data conclusively debunks them. Quote from "Early Nile Valley Farmers From El-Badari"
Male Badarian crania were analyzed using the generalized distance of Mahalanobis in a comparative analysis with other African and European series from the Howells?s database. The study was carried out to examine the affinities of the Badarians to evaluate, in preliminary fashion, a demic diffusion hypothesis that postulates that horticulture and the Afroasiatic language family were brought ultimately from southern Europe. (The assumption was made that the southern Europeans would be more similar to the central and northern Europeans than to any indigenous African populations.) The Badarians show a greater affinity to indigenous Africans while not being identical. This suggests that the Badarians were more affiliated with local and an indigenous African population than with Europeans. (S.O.Y. Keita. "Early Nile Valley Farmers from El-Badari: Aboriginals or "European" Agro-Nostratic Immigrants? Craniometric Affinities Considered With Other Data". Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 191-208 (2005)
The Sahara and the Sudan seem to have provided a major source for the genesis of Egyptian civilization contributing many of its unique elements.
QUOTE(s): "a critical factor in the rise of social complexity and the subsequent emergence of the Egyptian state in Upper Egypt (Hoffman 1979; Hassan 1988). If so, Egypt owes a major debt to those early pastoral groups in the Sahara; they may have provided Egypt with many of those features that still distinguish it from its neighbors to the east." Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 17, 97-123 (1998), "Nabta Playa and Its Role in Northeastern African Prehistory," Fred Wendorf and Romuald Schild.
"Over the last two decades, numerous contemporary (Khartoum Neolithic) sites and cemeteries have been excavated in the Central Sudan.. The most striking point to emerge is the overall similarity of early neolithic developments inhabitation, exchange, material culture and mortuary customs in the Khartoum region to those underway at the same time in the Egyptian Nile Valley, far to the north." (Wengrow, David (2003) "Landscapes of Knowledge, Idioms of Power: The African Foundations of Ancient Egyptian Civilization Reconsidered," in Ancient Egypt in Africa, David O'Connor and Andrew Reid, eds. Ancient Egypt in Africa. London: University College London Press, 2003, pp. 119-137)
"Sub-Saharan" genetic elements found as far afield as the Turkish and Greek regions
F. X. Ricaut, M. Waelkens. (2008). Cranial Discrete Traits in a Byzantine Population and Eastern Mediterranean Population Movements Human Biology - Volume 80, Number 5, October 2008, pp. 535-564
"A late Pleistocene-early Holocene northward migration (from Africa to the Levant and to Anatolia) of these populations has been hypothesized from skeletal data (Angel 1972, 1973; Brace 2005) and from archaeological data, as indicated by the probable Nile Valley origin of the "Mesolithic" (epi-Paleolithic) Mushabi culture found in the Levant (Bar Yosef 1987). This migration finds some support in the presence in Mediterranean populations (Sicily, Greece, southern Turkey, etc.; Patrinos et al.; Schiliro et al. 1990) of the Benin sickle cell haplotype. This haplotype originated in West Africa and is probably associated with the spread of malaria to southern Europe through an eastern Mediterranean route (Salares et al. 2004) following the expansion of both human and mosquito populations brought about by the advent of the Neolithic transition (Hume et al 2003; Joy et al. 2003; Rich et al 1998). This northward migration of northeastern African populations carrying sub-Saharan biological elements is concordant with the morphological homogeneity of the Natufian populations (Bocquentin 2003), which present morphological affinity with sub-Saharan populations (Angel 1972; Brace et al. 2005). In addition, the Neolithic revolution was assumed to arise in the late Pleistocene Natufians and subsequently spread into Anatolia and Europe (Bar-Yosef 2002), and the first Anatolian farmers, Neolithic to Bronze Age Mediterraneans and to some degree other Neolithic-Bronze Age Europeans, show morphological affinities with the Natufians (and indirectly with sub-Saharan populations; Angel 1972; Brace et al 2005), in concordance with a process of demic diffusion accompanying the extension of the Neolithic revolution (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994)."
"Following the numerous interactions among eastern Mediterranean and Levantine populations and regions, caused by the introduction of agriculture from the Levant into Anatolia and southeastern Europe, there was, beginning in the Bronze Age, a period of increasing interactions in the eastern Mediterranean, mainly during the Greek, Roman, and Islamic periods. These interactions resulted in the development of trading networks, military campaigns, and settler colonization. Major changes took place during this period, which may have accentuated or diluted the sub-Saharan components of earlier Anatolian populations. The second option seems more likely, because even though the population from Sagalassos territory was interacting with northeastern African and Levantine populations [trade relationships with Egypt (Arndt et al. 2003), involvement of thousands of mercenaries from Pisidia (Sagalassos region) in the war around 300 B.C. between the Ptolemaic kingdom (centered in Egypt) and the Seleucid kingdom (Syria/Mesopotamia/Anatolia), etc.], the major cultural and population interactions involving the Anatolian populations since the Bronze Age occurred with the Mediterranean populations form southeastern Europe, as suggested from historical and genetic data."
""In this context it is likely that Bronze Age events may have facilitated the southward diffusion of populations carrying northern and central European biological elements and may have contributed to some degree of admixture between northern and central Europeans and Anatolians, and on a larger scale, between northeastern Mediterraneans and Anatolians. Even if we do not know which populations were involved, historical and archaeological data suggest, for instance, the 2nd millennium B.C. Minoan and later Mycenaean occupation of Anatolian coast, the arrival in Anatolia in the early 1st millennium B.C. of the Phrygians coming from Thrace, and later the arrival of settlers from Macedonia in Pisidia and in the Sagalassos territory (under Seleucid rule). The coming of the Dorians from Northern Greece and central Europe (the Dorians are claimed to be one of the main groups at the origin of the ancient Greeks) may have also brought northern and central European biological elements into southern populations. Indeed, the Dorians may have migrated southward to the Peloponnese, across the southern Aegean and Create, and later reached Asia Minor."
Ancient Egyptian language is part of the Afrasian or Afroasiatic group which has its origins in Africa, and together with other archaeological evidence firmly makes it an African culture. Acording to mainstream research:
QUOTE(s):
"Ancient Egyptian civilization was, in ways and to an extent usually not recognized, fundamentally African. The evidence of both language and culture reveals these African roots. The origins of Egyptian ethnicity lay in the areas south of Egypt. The ancient Egyptian language belonged to the Afrasian family (also called Afroasiatic or, formerly, Hamito-Semitic). The speakers of the earliest Afrasian languages, according to recent studies, were a set of peoples whose lands between 15,000 and 13,000 B.C. stretched from Nubia in the west to far northern Somalia in the east. They supported themselves by gathering wild grains. The first elements of Egyptian culture were laid down two thousand years later, between 12,000 and 10,000 B.C., when some of these Afrasian communities expanded northward into Egypt, bringing with them a language directly ancestral to ancient Egyptian. They also introduced to Egypt the idea of using wild grains as food." (Christopher Ehret (1996) "Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture." In Egypt in Africa Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press)
"Ancient Egypt belongs to a language group known as 'Afroasiatic' (formerly called Hamito-Semitic) and its closest relatives are other north-east African languages from Somalia to Chad. Egypt's cultural features, both material and ideological and particularly in the earliest phases, show clear connections with that same broad area. In sum, ancient Egypt was an African culture, developed by African peoples, who had wide ranging contacts in north Africa and western Asia." (Morkot, Robert (2005) The Egyptians: An Introduction. Routledge. p. 10)
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ANCIENT EGYPTIANS AND HAIR ----------
Mummification actices and dyeing of hair Hair studies of mummies note that color is often influenced by environmental factors at burial sites. Brothwell and Spearman (ref in Fletcher's works-1963) point out that reddish-brown ancient color hair is usually the result of partial oxidation of the melanin pigment. Other causes of hair color "blonding" involve bleaching, caused by the alkaline in the mummification process. Color also varies due to the Egyptian practice of dyeing hair with henna. Other samples show individuals lightening the hair using vegetable colorants. Thus variations in hair color among mummies do not necessarily suggest the presence of blond or red-haired Europeans or Near Easterners flitting about Egypt before being mummified, but the influence of environmental factors. --------
Egyptian practice of putting locks of hair in mummy wrappings.
Racial analysis is also made problematic by the Egyptian practice of burying hair, in many "votive or funerary deposits buried separately from the body, a practice found from Predynastic to Roman times despite its frequent omission from excavation reports." (Fletcher 2002) In examining hair samples Fletcher (2004) notes that care is needed to determine what is natural scalp hair, versus hair from a wig, versus hair extensions to natural locks. Tracking the exact source of hair is also critical since the Egyptians were known to have placed locks of hair from different sources among mummy wrappings. (The Search for Nefertiti, By Joann Fletcher, HarperCollins, 2004, p. 93-94, 96; Joann Fletcher, ANCIENT EGYPTIAN HAIR AND WIGS, THE OSTRACON THE JOURNAL OF THE EGYPTIAN STUDY SOCIETY, VOLUME 13, NUMBER 2; SUMMER 2002) ------------------------------------------------ -------------
Hair for wigs often obtained through trade not mass waves of "Caucasoid" migrants.
The use of wigs made of varying hair also complicates attempts at 'racial' analysis. Fletcher (2002) shows that many Egyptian wigs have been found with what is defined as straighter 'cynotrichous' hair. This however is hardly a marker of massive European or Near Eastern presence or admixture. Fletcher notes that the Egyptians often eschewed their own personal hair, shaving carefully and using wigs widely. The hair for these wigs was often obtained through trade. Indeed, "hair itself being a valuable commodity ranked alongside gold and incense in account lists from the town of Kahun." Egyptian trading links with other regions is well known, and a prized commodity like straighter 'cynotrichous' hair could have been easily obtained via the Sahara, Levant, the Maghreb, Mediterranean contacts, or even the hair of Asiatic war captives or casulaties from Egypt's numerous conflicts. ------------------------------------------------ -------------
Red-headed Ramses- routine for genetic variability in Africa not "whiteness"
Rameses came along comparatively late in Egyptian history, when outsiders toEgypt like the Hyskos were increasing in the region. Detailed microscopic analysis during the 1980s (Balout 1985) identified some of the hair of Egyptian Pharoah Rameses II as being a yellowish-red. Such a finding should not be surprising given the wide range of physical variability in Africa, the most genetically diverse region on earth, out of which flowed other population groups. Indeed, blondism and various other hair shades are not unknown in East Africa or Nubia, particularly in children, nor are such hair color variants uncommon in dark-haired or dark skinned populations like the Australians. (Hrdy 1978) Given the range of genetic variability in Africa, a red-haired Rameses is hardly unusual. Rameses' reign, in the 19th Dynasty, came over 1,500 years after the Egyptian state had been established, and after the Hyskos interlude. Such latecomers to Egypt, like the Hyskos, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs etc would add their own genetic strands to the nation's mix. Whatever the blend of genes that occurred with Rameses, his hair offers little supposed "proof" of a "white" or "Nordic" Egypt. If anything, X-rays of several royal mummies by mainstream scientists show that the Egyptians pharoahs and other royals had several uncomfortable 'Negroid' leanings. (http://www.geocities.com/nilevalleypeo ples/xraymummies1.htm) ------------------------------------------------ -------------
Red hair can be readily produced by dark-skinned populations- just check out Australia and pheomelanin
The finding of Rameses "red" hair also deserves further scrutiny. The analysis found evidence of dyeing to make the hair yellowish-red, but some elements were untouched by the dye. These elements of yellowish-red hair in Balout's study, were established on the basis of the presence of pheomelanin, a red-brown polymeric pigment in the skin and hair of humans. However, pheomelanin can also be found in persons with dark brown or even black hair as well, which gives it a reddish hue. Most natural melanins contain sulfur, which is typically associated with pheomelanin. In scientific tests of melanin, black hair contained as much as 5% sulfur, 3% lower than the 8.8% found in Irish red hair, but exceeding the 2.3% found in Scandinavian blond hair. (Jolles, et al. 1996) Thus the yellowish-red hair discovered on Rameses is well within the range of human variation for dark haired people, whatever the exact gene combination that led to the condition.
As noted above, such variation began with ancient African populations. Most red hair is found in northern and western Europe, especially in the British Isles, and even then it appears in minor frequencies in Europe- some 4% of the population. It is unlikely such populations had any major contact or influence in the ancient Nile Valley. The analysis on Rameses also did not show classic "European" red hair but hair of a light red to yellowish tinge. Black haired or dark-skinned populations are quite capable of producing such yellowish-red color variants on their own, as can be seen in today's east and northeast Africa (see child's photo above). Nor is such color variation unusual to Africa. Native dark-skinned populations in Australia, routinely produce people witn blond or reddish hair. .
The analysis also found Rameses' hair to be cymotrich or wavy, again a characteristic quite within the range of overall African or Nile valley physical and genetic diversity. A "pure" Nordic type of straight hair was thus not established for Rameses. Hence the notion of white Europeans or red-headed Caucasoids from other areas flowing into ancient Egypt to add hair variation is dubious. Inflows occurred during the Greek and Roman eras but reddish or brown hair is within the range of African variation. Genetic studies (Tishkoff 2009, 2000) show Africans have the highest diversity in the world. Skeletal/cranial studies confirm the pattern. Relethford (2001) shows that ".. methods for estimating regional diversity show sub-Saharan Africa to have the highest levels of phenotypic variation, consistent with many genetic studies." (Relethford, John "Global Analysis of Regional Differences in Craniometric Diversity and Population Substructure". Human Biology - Volume 73, Number 5, October 2001, pp. 629-636) Hanihara 2003 notes that [significant] "..intraregional diversity are present in Subsaharan Africans.." While ancient Egypt had gene flow in various eras, hair variations easily fall under this pattern of built-in, indigenous diversity, as well as the above noted cultural practice of using wigs with hair from different places obtained through trade.
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Joann Fletcher, ANCIENT EGYPTIAN HAIR AND WIGS, THE OSTRACON THE JOURNAL OF THE EGYPTIAN STUDY SOCIETY, VOLUME 13, NUMBER 2; SUMMER 2002
The Search for Nefertiti, By Joann Fletcher, HarperCollins, 2004, p. 93-94, 96
Brothwell. D., and R. Spearman 1963 The hair of earlier peoples. In: Science in Archaeology. D. Brothwell and E. Higgs, eds. Thames and Hudeon, London, p. 427-436
Daniel Hrdy 1978- Analysis of Hair Samples of Mummies from Semna South, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, (1978) 49: 277-262)
Studies of Ancient Crania From Northern Africa," American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 83:35-48 (1990
Hair Styles and History, by Cyril Aldred, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, Vol. 15, No. 6 (Feb., 1957), pp. 141-147)
L. Balout, C. Roubet and C. Desroches-Noblecourt, and was titled La Momie de Ramsès II: Contribution Scientifique à l'Égyptologie (1985).
Formation and Structure of Human Hair: Biology and Structure, By Pierre Jollès, Helmut Zahn, H. Höcker, Birkhäuser, 1996, pp. 200-225
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NUBIA AND EGYPT- Nubians and Egyptians were so close in various eras that they were virtually indistinguishable
“The ancient Egyptians referred to a region, located south of the third cataract the Nile River, in which Nubians dwelt as Kush.. Within such context, this phrase is not a racial slur. Throughout the history of ancient Egypt there were numerous, well documented instances that celebrate Nubian-Egyptian marriages. A study of these documents, particularly those dated to both the Egyptian New Kingdom (after 1550 B.C.E.) and to Dynasty XXV and early Dynasty XXVI (about 720-640 BCE), reveals that neither spouse nor any of the children of such unions suffered discrimination at the hands of the ancient Egyptians. Indeed such marriages were never an obstacle to social, economic, or political status, provided the individuals concerned conformed to generally accepted Egyptian social standards. Furthermore, at times, certain Nubian practices, such as tattooing for women, and the unisex fashion of wearing earrings, were wholeheartedly embraced by the ancient Egyptians." (Bianchi, 2004: p. 4)
'It is an extremely difficult task to attempt to describe the Nubians during the course of Egypt's New Kingdom, because their presence appears to have virtually evaporated from the archaeological record.. The result has been described as a wholesale Nubian assimilation into Egyptian society. This assimilation was so complete that it masked all Nubian ethnic identities insofar as archaeological remains are concerned beneath the impenetrable veneer of Egypt's material; culture.. In the Kushite Period, when Nubians ruled as Pharaohs in their own right, the material culture of Dynasty XXV (about 750-655 B.C.E.) was decidedly Egyptian in character.. Nubia's entire landscape up to the region of the Third Cataract was dotted with temples indistinguishable in style and decoration from contemporary temples erected in Egypt. The same observation obtains for the smaller number of typically Egyptian tombs in which these elite Nubian princes were interred. (Bianchi, 2004, p. 99-100)
- Robert Bianchi ( 2004). Daily Life of the Nubians. Greenwood Publishing Group
Integration of Nubian and egyptian elites in some eras
"the XIIth Dynasty (1991-1786 B.C.E.) originated from the Aswan region.4 As expected, strong Nubian features and dark coloring are seen in their sculpture and relief work. This dynasty ranks as among the greatest, whose fame far outlived its actual tenure on the throne. Especially interesting, it was a member of this dynasty- that decreed that no Nehsy (riverine Nubian of the principality of Kush), except such as came for trade or diplomatic reasons, should pass by the Egyptian fortress at the southern end of the Second Nile Cataract. Why would this royal family of Nubian ancestry ban other Nubians from coming into Egyptian territory? Because the Egyptian rulers of Nubian ancestry had become Egyptians culturally; as pharaohs, they exhibited typical Egyptian attitudes and adopted typical Egyptian policies." - (F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989)
The pharaohs that forbid the movement of certain Nubian tribes into Egypt were themselves of negroid origin according to conservative mainstream Egyptologist Frank Yurco..
Quote:
"the XIIth Dynasty (1991-1786 B.C.E.) originated from the Aswan region. As expected, strong Nubian features and dark coloring are seen in their sculpture and relief work. This dynasty ranks as among the greatest, whose fame far outlived its actual tenure on the throne. Especially interesting, it was a member of this dynasty- that decreed that no Nehsy (riverine Nubian of the principality of Kush), except such as came for trade or diplomatic reasons, should pass by the Egyptian fortress at the southern end of the Second Nile Cataract. Why would this royal family of Nubian ancestry ban other Nubians from coming into Egyptian territory? Because the Egyptian rulers of Nubian ancestry had become Egyptians culturally; as pharaohs, they exhibited typical Egyptian attitudes and adopted typical Egyptian policies."
- (F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989)
Applying a consistent 'race' model that interprets war between Egyptians and Nubians as 'racial' the Egyptians also pursued 'racial' wars against whites from the Middle East.
[IMG]http://digital.library.upenn.edu/wo men/edwards/pharaohs/207.gif[/IMG] RAMESES II. SLAYING THE "whites" BEFORE RA, THE TUTELARY DEITY OF THE GREAT TEMPLE OF ABÛ-SIMBEL..
THE DISCOURSE OF AMEN-RA, LORD OF THRONES.
Thou hast struck off the heads of the Asiatics, and their children cannot escape from thee. Every land illuminated by thy diadem is encircled by thy might; and in all the zone of the heavens there is not a rebel to rise up against thee. The enemy bring in their tribute on their backs, prostrating themselves before thee, their limbs trembling and their hearts burned up within them."
Campaign against "white" Mittani in parts of Lebanon:
"He is a king valiant ... Naharin which its lord had deserted out of fear ... I hacked up its towns and villages and I set fire to them ... I carried off their inhabitants ... also their herds of cattle ... I felled all their plantations and their fruit trees ...I had many vessels ... built on the mountains of God's Land in the neighborhood of the Lady of Byblos ... then on that mountain of Naharin, my Majesty erected my stela, carved out of the mountain on the western side of the Euphrates.."
Conquest against and tribute from "white" Palestine:
"Tribute of the princes of Retenu, who came to do obeisance ... to the souls of his majesty... Now every harbor at which his majesty arrived was supplied with loaves and with assorted loaves, with oil, incense, wine, f[ruit] ---- abundant were they beyond everything ...
Tribute from 'white' Lebanon:
The chieftains, lord of Lebanon, construct the royal ships in order that people may sail south in them to bring all the marvels of the "Garden" to the palace. LPH. ... The chieftains of Retjenu (Retenu) who drag the flagpoles by means of oxen to the shore, it is they who come with their dues to the place where his majesty is, to the Residence in ...... bearing all the fine products brought as marvels of the south and being taxed for tribute annually as (with) all bondsmen of his Majesty."
Operations against more 'white' 'Troglodytes':
"Then my Majesty made them take their oaths of allegiance as follows: never again shall we do anything evil against Menkheperre (another name for Thutmose III), may he live forever ... Then my Majesty had them set free on the road to their cities*). They went off on donkeys for I had seized their chariotry. I captured their inhabitants for Egypt and their property likewise." [W. Helck transl. by B. Cummings (1982), `Urkunden der 18. Dynastie', `Egyptian Historical Records of the Later 18th Dynasty']
"His majesty proceeded northward, to overthrow the Asiatics (Mntyw-Stt). His majesty arrived at a district, Sekmem (Skmm) was its name. His majesty led the good way in proceeding to the palace of `Life, Prosperity, and Health (L.P.H.,' when Sekmen had fallen, together with Retenu (Rtnw) the wretched, while I was acting as rearguard." [Breasted, `Records', Vol. I, Sec. 680] Time of Seti the Great - Presentation of Syrian Prisoners and Precious Vessels to Amon
"Smiting the Troglodytes, beating down the Asiatics (Mn·t·yw), making his boundary as far as the `Horns of the Earth', as far as the marshes of Naharin (N-h-r-n)." [Ibid., Vol. III, Sec. 118;]
"Slaying of the Asiatic Troglodytes (Ynw-Mn·t·yw [Menate, Manasseh]), all inaccessible countries, all lands, the Fenkhu of the marshes of Asia, the Great Bend of the sea (w'd-wr)."
Booty seized from "white" Caananites:
".... 340 living prisoners; 83 hands; 2,401 mares; 191 foals; 6 stallions; ... young ...; a chariot, wrought with gold, (its) pole of gold, belonging to the chief of `M-k-ty' (as the land around Jerusalem was called); .... 892 chariots of his wretched army; total, 924 (chariots); a beautiful suit of bronze armor, belonging to the chief of Jerusalem; .... 200 suits of armor, belonging to his wretched army; 502 bows; 7 poles of (mry) wood, wrought with silver, belonging to the tent of that foe. Behold, the army of his majesty took ...., 297 ...., 1,929 large cattle, 2,000 small cattle, 20500 white small cattle." [JBRE, `Records', Vol. II, Sec. 435; See also the following sections.]
Tribute from "white" Assur/Assyria "The tribute of the chief of Assur (Ys-sw-r): genuine lapis lazuli, a large block, making 20 deben, 9 kidet; genuine lapis lazuli, 2 blocks; total, 3; and pieces, [making] 30 deben; total, 50 deben and 9 kidet; fine lapis lazuli from Babylon (Bb-r); vessels of Assur of hrrt- stone in colors, ---- very many." "Tribute of the chief of Assur: horses ---. A ---- of skin of the M-h-w as the [protection] of a chariot, of the finest of --- wood; 190(+x) wagons --- --- wood, nhb wood, 343 pieces, carob wood, 50 pieces; nby and k'nk wood, 206 pieces; olive oil, ------.." [BREASTED, Vol. II, Sec. 446, 449]
"Whites" put to slave labor in Egypt.
from Project Guttenberg full text of: A HISTORY OF EGYPT FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PERSIAN CONQUEST BY JAMES HENRY BREASTED, II, 760-1, 773. 2 II, 761.
Inscription "the Asiatics of all countries came with bowed head, doing obeisance to the fame of his majesty."
book text:
"Thutmose's war-galleys moored in the harbour of the town; but at this time not merely the iceaUh of Asia was unloaded from the ships; the Asiatics themselves, bound one to another in long lines, were led down the gang planks to begin a life of slave- labour for the Pharaoh (Fig. 119). They wore long matted beards, an abomination to the Egyptians ; their hair hung in heavy black masses upon their shoulders, and they were clad in gaily coloured woolen stuffs, such as the Egyptian, spotless in his white linen robe, would never put on his body.
Their arms were pinioned behind them at the elbows or crossed over their heads and lashed together ; or, again, their hands were thrust through odd pointed ovals of wood, which served as hand-cuffs. The women carried their children slung in a fold of the mantle over their shoulders. With their strange speech and uncouth postures the poor wretches were the subject of jibe and merriment on the part of the multitude ; while the artists of the time could never forbear caricaturing them. Many of them found their way into the houses of the Pharaoh's favourites, and his generals were liberally rewarded with gifts of such slaves; but the larger number were immediately employed on the temple estates, the Pharaoh's domains, or in the construction of his great monuments and buildings."
Conservative Egyptologist Frank Yurco, shows that the 12th Dynasty was of the negroid type, of Upper Egyptian and Nubian origin. The 12th Dynasty is one of Egypt's greatest, and was in place approximately 1000 years before the 25th dynasty. Yurco also shows that the Nubians were ethnically the closest people to the Egyptians.
Quote: "the XIIth Dynasty (1991-1786 B.C.E.) originated from the Aswan region. As expected, strong Nubian features and dark coloring are seen in their sculpture and relief work. This dynasty ranks as among the greatest, whose fame far outlived its actual tenure on the throne. Especially interesting, it was a member of this dynasty- that decreed that no Nehsy (riverine Nubian of the principality of Kush), except such as came for trade or diplomatic reasons, should pass by the Egyptian fortress at the southern end of the Second Nile Cataract. Why would this royal family of Nubian ancestry ban other Nubians from coming into Egyptian territory? Because the Egyptian rulers of Nubian ancestry had become Egyptians culturally; as pharaohs, they exhibited typical Egyptian attitudes and adopted typical Egyptian policies."
- (F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989)
"Among the foreigners, the Nubians were closest ethnically to the Egyptians. In the late predynastic period (c. 3700-3150 B.C.E.), the Nubians shared the same culture as the Egyptians and even evolved the same pharaonic political structure." - (F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989)
quote:Originally posted by The Explorer: Trolls (the usual intellectually challenged anti-African troop) have stayed away from this thread just like vampires stay away from garlic and sunlight. Intelligence is to these trolls like the cross is to the devil/demon-haunted, or yet like cleanliness is to the common fly. Good 'trollicide'...I mean thread. Keep up the good work.
Recent studies find the ancient Egyptians had a tropical body plan like sub-Saharan 'black' Africans and were not cold-adapted like European type populations. Tropical body plans also indicate darker-skin.
QUOTE: "The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the "super-Negroid" body plan described by Robins (1983).. This pattern is supported by Figure 7 (a plot of population mean femoral and tibial lengths; data from Ruff, 1994), which indicates that the Egyptians generally have tropical body plans. Of the Egyptian samples, only the Badarian and Early Dynastic period populations have shorter tibiae than predicted from femoral length. Despite these differences, all samples lie relatively clustered together as compared to the other populations." (Zakrzewski, S.R. (2003). "Variation in ancient Egyptian stature and body proportions". American Journal of Physical Anthropology 121 (3): 219-229.
a 2008 Study puts the ancient Egyptians closer to US Blacks than whites:
Quotes:
"Intralimb (crural and brachial) indices are significantly higher in ancient Egyptians than in American Whites (except crural index among females), i.e., Egyptians have relatively longer distal segments (Table 4). Intralimb indices are not significantly different between Egyptians and American Blacks... Many of those who have studied ancient Egyptians have commented on their characteristically ''tropical'' or ''African'' body plan (Warren, 1897; Masali, 1972; Robins, 1983; Robins and Shute, 1983, 1984, 1986; Zakrzewski, 2003). Egyptians also fall within the range of modern African populations (Ruff and Walker, 1993), but close to the upper limit of modern Europeans as well, at least for the crural index (brachial indices are definitely more ''African'').. In terms of femoral and tibial length to total skeletal height proportions, we found that ancient Egyptians are significantly different from US Blacks, although still closer to Blacks than to Whites.
Comparisons of linear body proportions of Old Kingdom and non-Old Kingdom period individuals, and workers and high officials in our sample found no statistically significant differences among them. Zakrzewski (2003) also found little evidence for differences in linear body proportions of Egyptians over a wider temporal range. In general, recent studies of skeletal variation among ancient Egyptians support scenarios of biological continuity through time. Irish (2006) analyzed quantitative and qualitative dental traits of 996 Egyptians from Neolithic through Roman periods, reporting the presence of a few outliers but concluding that the dental samples appear to be largely homogeneous and that the affinities observed indicate overall biological uniformity and continuity from Predynastic through Dynastic and Postdynastic periods.
Zakrzewski (2007) provided a comprehensive summary of previous Egyptian craniometric studies and examined Egyptian crania from six time periods. She found that the earlier samples were relatively more homogeneous in comparison to the later groups. However, overall results indicated genetic continuity over the Egyptian Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods, albeit with a high level of genetic diversity within the population, suggesting an indigenous process of state formation. She also concluded that while the biological patterning of the Egyptian population varied across time, no consistent temporal or spatial trends are apparent. Thus, the stature estimation formulae developed here may be broadly applicable to all ancient Egyptian populations.." ("Stature estimation in ancient Egyptians: A new technique based on anatomical reconstruction of stature." Michelle H. Raxter, Christopher B. Ruff, Ayman Azab, Moushira Erfan, Muhammad Soliman, Aly El-Sawaf, (Am J Phys Anthropol. 2008, Jun;136(2):147-55
Older limb studies find the same:
"In this regard it is interesting to note that limb proportions of Predynastic Naqada people in Upper Egypt are reported to be "Super-Negroid," meaning that the distal segments are elongated in the fashion of tropical Africans.....skin color intensification and distal limb elongation are apparent wherever people have been long-term residents of the tropics." (C.L. Brace, 1993. Clines and clusters..")
"An attempt has been made to estimate male and female Egyptian stature from long bone length using Trotter & Gleser negro stature formulae, previous work by the authors having shown that these rather than white formulae give more consistent results with male dynastic material... When consistency has been achieved in this way, predynastic proportions are founded to be such that distal segments of the limbs are even longer in relation to the proximal segments than they are in modern negroes. Such proportions are termed "super-negroid"...
Robins (1983) and Robins & Shute (1983) have shown that more consistent results are obtained from ancient Egyptian male skeletons if Trotter & Gleser formulae for negro are used, rather than those for whites which have always been applied in the past. .. their physical proportions were more like modern negroes than those of modern whites, with limbs that were relatively long compared with the trunk, and distal segments that were long compared with the proximal segments. If ancient Egyptian males had what may be termed negroid proportions, it seems reasonable that females did likewise." (Robins G, Shute CCD. 1986. Predynastic Egyptian stature and physical proportions. Hum Evol 1:313-324. Ruff CB. 1994.)
The ancient Badarians were quite representative of ancient Egyptians as a whole and showed clear links with tropical Africans to the south. They have been sometimes excluded in studies of the ancient Egyptian population, which shows continuity in its history, not mass influxes of foreigners until the late periods.
Quotes: "As a result of their facial prognathism, the Badarian sample has been described as forming a morphological cluster with Nubian, Tigrean, and other southern (or \Negroid") groups (Morant, 1935, 1937; Mukherjee et al., 1955; Nutter, 1958, Strouhal, 1971; Angel, 1972; Keita, 1990). Cranial nonmetric trait studies have found this group to be similar to other Egyptians, including much later material (Berry and Berry, 1967, 1972), but also to be significantly different from LPD material (Berry et al., 1967). Similarly, the study of dental nonmetric traits has suggested that the Badarian population is at the centroid of Egyptian dental samples (Irish, 2006), thereby suggesting similarity and hence continuity across Egyptian time periods. From the central location of the Badarian samples in Figure 2, the current study finds the Badarian to be relatively morphologically close to the centroid of all the Egyptian samples. The Badarian have been shown to exhibit greatest morphological similarity with the temporally successive EPD (Table 5). Finally, the biological distinctiveness of the Badarian from other Egyptian samples has also been demonstrated (Tables 6 and 7).
These results suggest that the EDyn do form a distinct morphological pattern. Their overlap with other Egyptian samples (in PC space, Fig. 2) suggests that although their morphology is distinctive, the pattern does overlap with the other time periods. These results therefore do not support the Petrie concept of a \Dynastic race" (Petrie, 1939; Derry, 1956). Instead, the results suggest that the Egyptian state was not the product of mass movement of populations into the Egyptian Nile region, but rather that it was the result of primarily indigenous development combined with prolonged small-scale migration, potentially from trade, military, or other contacts.
This evidence suggests that the process of state formation itself may have been mainly an indigenous process, but that it may have occurred in association with in-migration to the Abydos region of the Nile Valley. This potential in-migration may have occurred particularly during the EDyn and OK. A possible explanation is that the Egyptian state formed through increasing control of trade and raw materials, or due to military actions, potentially associated with the use of the Nile Valley as a corridor for prolonged small scale movements through the desert environment. (Sonia R. Zakrzewski. (2007). Population Continuity or Population Change: Formation of the Ancient Egyptian State. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 132:501-509)
Ancient Egyptians most related to other Africans and are part of a Nilotic continuity rather than something Mediterranean or Middle Eastern
"Certainly there was some foreign admixture [in Egypt], but basically a homogeneous African population had lived in the Nile Valley from ancient to modern times... [the] Badarian people, who developed the earliest Predynastic Egyptian culture, already exhibited the mix of North African and Sub-Saharan physical traits that have typified Egyptians ever since (Hassan 1985; Yurco 1989; Trigger 1978; Keita 1990.. et al.,)... The peoples of Egypt, the Sudan, and much of East African Ethiopia and Somalia are now generally regarded as a Nilotic continuity, with widely ranging physical features (complexions light to dark, various hair and craniofacial types) but with powerful common cultural traits, including cattle pastoralist traditions.." (Frank Yurco, "An Egyptological Review," 1996 -in Mary R. Lefkowitz and Guy MacLean Rogers, Black Athena Revisited, 1996, The University of North Carolina Press, p. 62-100)
African peoples are the most diverse in the world whether analyzed by DNA or skeletal or cranial methods. Attempts to deny this are rooted in racism and error. African people, particularly SUB-SAHARAN Africans, vary the most in how they look, more so than any other population in the world.
"Estimates of genetic diversity in major geographic regions are frequently made by pooling all individuals into regional aggregates. This method can potentially bias results if there are differences in population substructure within regions, since increased variation among local populations could inflate regional diversity. A preferred method of estimating regional diversity is to compute the mean diversity within local populations. Both methods are applied to a global sample of craniometric data consisting of 57 measurements taken on 1734 crania from 18 local populations in six geographic regions: sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, East Asia, Australasia, Polynesia, and the Americas. Each region is represented by three local populations.
Both methods for estimating regional diversity show sub-Saharan Africa to have the highest levels of phenotypic variation, consistent with many genetic studies." (Relethford, John "Global Analysis of Regional Differences in Craniometric Diversity and Population Substructure". Human Biology - Volume 73, Number 5, October 2001, pp. 629-636)
"The living peoples of the African continent are diverse in facial characteristics, stature, skin color, hair form, genetics, and other characteristics. No one set of characteristics is more African than another. Variability is also found in "sub-Saharan" Africa, to which the word "Africa" is sometimes erroneously restricted. There is a problem with definitions. Sometimes Africa is defined using cultural factors, like language, that exclude developments that clearly arose in Africa. For example, sometimes even the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea) is excluded because of geography and language and the fact that some of its peoples have narrow noses and faces.
However, the Horn is at the same latitude as Nigeria, and its languages are African. The latitude of 15 degree passes through Timbuktu, surely in "sub-Saharan Africa," as well as Khartoum in Sudan; both are north of the Horn. Another false idea is that supra-Saharan and Saharan Africa were peopled after the emergence of "Europeans" or Near Easterners by populations coming from outside Africa. Hence, the ancient Egyptians in some writings have been de-Africanized. These ideas, which limit the definition of Africa and Africans, are rooted in racism and earlier, erroneous "scientific" approaches." (S. Keita, "The Diversity of Indigenous Africans," in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Clenko, Editor (1996), pp. 104-105. [10])
Modern DNA studies find even though some African peoples look different, they are genetically related through the PN2 transition clade of the Y-chromosone. Haplogroup E links numerous peoples together even though they don't look exactly the same.
"But the Y-chromosome clade defined by the PN2 transition (PN2/M35, PN2/M2) shatters the boundaries of phenotypically defined races and true breeding populations across a great geographical expanse. African peoples with a range of skin colors, hair forms and physiognomies have substantial percentages of males whose Y chromosomes form closely related clades with each other, but not with others who are phenotypically similar. The individuals in the morphologically or geographically defined 'races' are not characterized by 'private' distinct lineages restricted to each of them." (S O Y Keita, R A Kittles, et al. "Conceptualizing human variation," Nature Genetics 36, S17 - S20 (2004)
"Recall that the Horn-Nile Valley crania show, as a group, the largest overlap with other regions. A review of the recent literature indicates that there are male lineage ties between African peoples who have been traditionally labeled as being ''racially'' different, with ''racially'' implying an ontologically deep divide. The PN2 transition, a Y chromosome marker, defines a lineage (within the YAPþ derived haplogroup E or III) that emerged in Africa probably before the last glacial maximum, but after the migration of modern humans from Africa (see Semino et al., 2004). This mutation forms a clade that has two daughter subclades (defined by the biallelic markers M35/215 (or 215/M35) and M2) that unites numerous phenotypically variant African populations from the supra-Saharan, Saharan, and sub-Saharan regions.." (S.O.Y Keita. Exploring northeast African metric craniofacial variation at the individual level: A comparative study using principal component analysis. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 16:679-689, 2004.) keita2004neanalysis.htm
"Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages.. Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world." (Tishkoff SA, Williams SM., Genetic analysis of African populations: human evolution and complex disease. Nature Reviews Genetics. 2002 Aug (8):611-21.)
DNA of some modern Egyptians found a genetic ancestral heritage to East Africa: "The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diversity of 58 individuals from Upper Egypt, more than half (34 individuals) from Gurna, whose population has an ancient cultural history, were studied by sequencing the control-region and screening diagnostic RFLP markers. This sedentary population presented similarities to the Ethiopian population by the L1 and L2 macrohaplogroup frequency (20.6%), by the West Eurasian component (defined by haplogroups H to K and T to X) and particularly by a high frequency (17.6%) of haplogroup M1. We statistically and phylogenetically analysed and compared the Gurna population with other Egyptian, Near East and sub-Saharan Africa populations; AMOVA and Minimum Spanning Network analysis showed that the Gurna population was not isolated from neighbouring populations. Our results suggest that the Gurna population has conserved the trace of an ancestral genetic structure from an ancestral East African population, characterized by a high M1 haplogroup frequency. The current structure of the Egyptian population may be the result of further influence of neighbouring populations on this ancestral population." (Stevanovitch A, Gilles A, Bouzaid E, et al. (2004) Mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity in a sedentary population from Egypt.Ann Hum Genet. 68(Pt 1):23-39.)
Tishkoff et al on Africa having the most genetic diversity:
"Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages (see online link to Ethnologue). Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world(TABLE 1).However,most studies report only a few markers in divergent African populations, which makes it difficult to draw general conclusions about the levels and patterns of genetic diversity in these populations (FIG. 1). Because genetic studies have been biased towards more economically developed African countries that have key research or medical centres, populations from more underdeveloped or politically unstable regions of Africa remain undersampled (FIG. 1). Historically, human population genetic studies have relied on one or two African populations as being representative of African diversity, but recent studies show extensive genetic variation among even geographically close African populations, which indicates that there is not a single 'representative' African population." -- Tishkoff NATURE REVIEWS | GENETICS VOLUME 3 | AUGUST 2002
"Genetic studies that attempt to recover the biological history of the species have generally found that there is a split between their restricted African samples and "the rest of the world." These approaches conceptualize human population history as a series of bifurcations with each node being relatively uniform. The "Africans" usually used are either the short statured Aka or Mbuti, Khoisan speakers, or West African stereotype s, in keeping with a socially, not scientifically constructed concept of African. Studies using individuals as the unit of analysis evince a different pattern. A select subset of Africans called the "group of 49" forms a unit versus the rest of humankind. However the latter individuals ("rest of humankind") also includes non-East African sub-Saharans. Hence there is no "racial" split. As has been stated, the idea that human variation can be described as being structured by subspecies(races) that are treated as lineages is fundamentally false. In actuality, also, although averages are used, the gene studies usually give us histories that are not necessarily the same as population histories." Writing African History Chapter 4, Physical Anthropology and African History, Shomarka Keita University of Rochester Press p.134
Continent wide African DNA linkages "The most extensive pan-African haplotype (16189 16192 16223 16278 16294 16309 16390) is in the L2a1 haplogroup. This sequence is observed in West Africa among the Malinke, Wolof, and others; in North Africa among the Maure, Hausa, Fulbe, and others; in Central Africa among the Bamileke, Fali, and others; in South Africa among the Khoisan family including the Khwe and Bantu speakers; and in East Africa among the Kikuyu. Closely related variants are observed among the Tuareg in North and West Africa and among the East African Dinka and Somali." (-- Bert Ely , Jamie Lee Wilson , Fatimah Jackson and Bruce A Jackson. (2006). African-American mitochondrial DNAs often match mtDNAs found in multiple African ethnic groups. BMC Biology 2006, 4:34)
"It is of interest that the M35 and M2 lineages are united by a mutation - the PN2 transition. This PN2 defined clade originated in East Africa, where various populations have a notable frequency of its underived state. This would suggest that an ancient population in East Africa, or more correctly its males, form the basis of the ancestors of all African upper Paleolithic populations - and their subsequent descendants in the present day." (--Bengston, John D. (ed.), In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory: Essays in the four fields of anthropology. 2008. John Benjamins Publishing: pp. 3-16)
Egyptian Y-chromosome haplotypes show preponderance is with African clusters not Europe or the Near East
Recent DNA studies of the Sudan show genetic unity and linkage between the Sudanic, Horn, Egyptian, Nubian and other Nilotic peoples, confirming earlier skeletal/cranial studies and historical data. (Yurco (1989, 1996), Keita (1993,2004, 2005) Lovell (1999), Zakrewski (2003, 2007) et. al). Of note is that DNA data shows that some peoples linked to one of the oldest Egyptian populations, the original Copts, have a significant frequency of the B-M60 marker, indicating early colonization of Egypt by Nilotics in the state formation period.
QUOTES:
"Haplogroup E-M78, however, is more widely distributed and is thought to have an origin in eastern African. More recently, this haplogroup has been carefully dissected and was found to depict several well-established subclades with defined geographical clustering (Cruciani et al., 2006, 2007). Although this haplogroup is common to most Sudanese populations, it has exceptionally high frequency among populations like those of western Sudan (particularly Darfur) and the Beja in eastern Sudan... Although the PC plot places the Beja and Amhara from Ethiopia in one sub-cluster based on shared frequencies of the haplogroup J1, the distribution of M78 subclades (Table 2) indicates that the Beja are perhaps related as well to the Oromo on the basis of the considerable frequencies of E-V32 among Oromo in comparison to Amhara (Cruciani et al., 2007)...
These findings affirm the historical contact between Ethiopia and eastern Sudan (1998), and the fact that these populations speak languages of the Afroasiatic family tree reinforces the strong correlation between linguistic and genetic diversity (Cavalli-Sforza, 1997)."
"Genetic continuum of the Nubians with their kin in southern Egypt is indicated by comparable frequencies of E-V12 the predominant M78 subclade among southern Egyptians." [Hassan et al. Y-chromosome variation.." Am J. Phy Anthro. v137,3. 316-323
"The Copt samples displayed a most interesting Y-profile, enough (as much as that of Gaalien in Sudan) to suggest that they actually represent a living record of the peopling of Egypt. The significant frequency of B-M60 in this group might be a relic of a history of colonization of southern Egypt probably by Nilotics in the early state formation, something that conforms both to recorded history and to Egyptian mythology." Source: (Hisham Y. Hassan 1, Peter A. Underhill 2, Luca L. Cavalli-Sforza 2, Muntaser E. Ibrahim 1. (2008). Y-chromosome variation among Sudanese: Restricted gene flow, concordance with language, geography, and history. Am J Phys Anthropology, 2008. Volume 137 Issue 3, Pages 316 - 323)
Older research notes the physical makeup of the original Copts, now confirmed by recent DNA data above: "In Libya, which is mostly desert and oasis, there is a visible Negroid element in the sedentary populations, and at the same is true of the Fellahin of Egypt, whether Copt or Muslim. Osteological studies have shown that the Negroid element was stronger in predynastic times than at present, reflecting an early movement northward along the banks of the Nile, which were then heavily forested." (Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. "Populations, Human")
Haplogroup E3A and E3B represent more than 70% of the Y-chromosones on the African continent, with varying proportions found in different parts of the continent. In some African populations for example, E3B exceeds 80%. Migrations out of Africa, are responsible for the spread of E3b to Europe. Non-Africans thus acquired a sub-set f African genes through this migration.
"In Europe, the overall frequency pattern of haplogroup E-M78 does not support the hypothesis of a uniform spread of people from a single parental Near Eastern population... The Y chromosome specific biallelic marker DYS271 defines the most common haplogroup (E3a) currently found in sub-Saharan Africa. A sister clade, E3b (E-M215), is rare in sub-Saharan Africa, but very common in northern and eastern Africa. On the whole, these two clades represent more than 70% of the Y chromosomes of the African continent. A third clade belonging to E3 (E3c or E-M329) has been recently reported to be present only in eastern Africa, at low frequencies.. The new topology of the E3 haplogroup is suggestive of a relatively recent eastern African origin for the majority of the chromosomes presently found in sub-Saharan Africa."
"In conclusion, we detected the signatures of several distinct processes of migration and/or recurrent gene flow associated with the dispersal of haplogroup E3b lineages. Early events involved the dispersal of E-M78d chromosomes from eastern Africa into and out of Africa, as well as the introduction of the E-M34 subclade into Africa from the Near East. Later events involved short-range migrations within Africa (E-M78? and E-V6) and from northern Africa into Europe (E-M81 and E-M78ß), as well as an important range expansion from the Balkans to western and southern-central Europe (E-M78a). This latter expansion was the main contributor to the present distribution of E3b chromosomes in Europe."
(Cruciani, F, et. al. (2004) Phylogeographic Analysis of Haplogroup E3b (E-M215) Y Chromosomes Reveals Multiple Migratory Events Within and Out Of Africa, Am J Hum Genet. 74(5): 1014-1022.)
Somalis link much more heavily with African populations such as those in Kenya and Ethiopia than Middle Eastern or European ones according to DNA evidence. Eurasian genes only accounted for about 15% of the mix among Somalis, typically associated with recent Arab influence. On such key common DNA markers as E3b1, Europeans only weighed in at 5%, and Middle Easterners at approximately 6%. The overwhelming link of Somalis- over 85% of the total is with Africans. Kenya and Ethiopia are located in "sub-Saharan" Africa.
"The high frequency (77.6%) of haplogroup E3b1 was characteristic of male Somalis. The frequency of E3b1 was significantly lower in Ethiopian Oromos (35.9%), Ethiopian Amharas (22.9%), Egyptians (20.0%), Sudanese (17.5%), Kenyans (15.1%),10 Iraqis (6.3%), Northern Africans (6.1%), Southern Europeans (0.5-5.1%) and sub-Saharan populations." (Sanchez et al.,(2005) High frequencies of Y chromosome lineages characterized by E3b1, DYS19-11, DYS392-12 in Somali males, Eu J of Hum Genet (2005) 13, 856-866)
Simplistic "race percentage" models are dubious in Africa which has the highest genetic diversity in the world. That diversity proceeded from deeper sub-Saharan Africa, to East and N.E. Africa, then to the rest of the globe. All other populations, including Europeans and "Middle easterners" carry this diversity which was built into Africa to begin with. Africans thus don't need any "race mix" to look different. Their diversity is built-in and supplied the whole globe. Any returnees or "backflow" to Africa looked like Africans. (Brace 2005, Hanihara 1996, Holliday 2003).
"These studies suggest a recent and primary subdivision between African and non-African populations, high levels of divergence among African populations, and a recent shared common ancestry of non-African populations, from a population originating in Africa. The intermediate position, between African and non-African populations, that the Ethiopian Jews and Somalis occupy in the PCA plot also has been observed in other genetic studies (Ritte et al. 1993; Passarino et al. 1998) and could be due either to shared common ancestry or to recent gene flow. The fact that the Ethiopians and Somalis have a subset of the sub-Saharan African haplotype diversity and that the non-African populations have a subset of the diversity present in Ethiopians and Somalis makes simple-admixture models less likely; rather, these observations support the hypothesis proposed by other nuclear-genetic studies (Tishkoff et al. 1996a, 1998a, 1998b; Kidd et al. 1998) that populations in northeastern Africa may have diverged from those in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa early in the history of modern African populations and that a subset of this northeastern-African population migrated out of Africa and populated the rest of the globe. These conclusions are supported by recent mtDNA analysis (Quintana-Murci et al. 1999)." [Tishkoff et al. (2000) Short Tandem-Repeat Polymorphism/Alu Haplotype Variation at the PLAT Locus: Implications for Modern Human Origins. Am J Hum Genet; 67:901-925]
Data on Ethiopian peoples like the Oromo are underreported even though they make up the largest group percentage wise in the Ethiopian population, (50%) and are often pooled with others, hiding and obscuring their overall contribution to the Ethiopian gene pool.
"This difference, not revealed in the study by Passarino et al. (1998), in which the Oromo were underrepresented, might reflect distinct population histories." (--Semino, et al. (2002). Ethiopians and Khoisan Share the Deepest Clades of the Human Y..")
"These data, together with those reported elsewhere (Ritte et al. 1993a, 1993b; Hammer et al. 2000) suggest that the Ethiopian Jews acquired their religion without substantial genetic admixture from Middle Eastern peoples and that they can be considered an ethnic group with essentially a continental African genetic composition." (Cruciani, et. al Am J Hum Genet. 2002 May; 70(5): 1197-1214. "A Back Migration from Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa Is Supported by High-Resolution Analysis of Human Y-Chromosome Haplotypes)
"An earlier generation of anthropologists tried to explain face form in the Horn of Africa as the result of admixture from hypothetical “wandering Caucasoids,”.. but that explanation founders on the paradox of why that supposedly potent “Caucasoid” people contributed a dominant quantity of genes for nose and face form but none for skin color or limb proportions." --CL Brace, 1993
[Afrocentric critic Mary Leftokwitz says Egypt was peopled by persons from sub-Saharan Africa:
"Recent work on skeletons and DNA suggests that the people who settled in the Nile valley, like all of humankind, came from somewhere south of the Sahara; they were not (as some nineteenth-century scholars had supposed) invaders from the North. See Bruce G. Trigger, "The Rise of Civilization in Egypt," Cambridge History of Africa (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), vol I, pp 489-90; S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54. (Mary Lefkotitz (1997). Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History. Basic Books. pg 242) [/QB][/QUOTE]
In Black Athena Revisited, Lefkowitz finds similarity between Egyptians and Sudanics and recommends the work of conservative anthropologist Nancy Lovell for more research on the subject.
Quote: "not surprisingly, the Egyptian skulls were not very distance from the Jebel Moya [a Neolithic site in the southern Sudan] skulls, but were much more distance from all others, including those from West Africa. Such a study suggests a closer genetic affinity between peoples in Egypt and the northern Sudan, which were close geographically and are known to have had considerable cultural contact throughout prehistory and pharaonic history... Clearly more analyses of the physical remains of ancient Egyptians need to be done using current techniques, such as those of Nancy Lovell at the University of Alberta is using in her work.."
Lefkotitz cites Keita 1993 in Not Out of Africa. Here is Keita on the Jebel Moya studies?
"Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Jebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have 'donated' people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)... Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese." [/img] S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54
Hereis the work of the anthropologist so strongly recommended by Lefkowitz, Nancy Lovell:
"There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas." (Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999) pp 328-332)
and
"must be placed in the context of hypotheses informed by archaeological, linguistic, geographic and other data. In such contexts, the physical anthropological evidence indicates that early Nile Valley populations can be identified as part of an African lineage, but exhibiting local variation. This variation represents the short and long term effects of evolutionary forces, such as gene flow, genetic drift, and natural selection, influenced by culture and geography." ("Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999). pp 328-332)
Obviously, this shows that the Egyptians were completely white, and how foolish the Afrocentrists are to reject this notion. After all Afrocentric critic Mary Lefkowitz recommends Lovell's research..
The same Nancy Lovell recommended by Lefkowitz studied dental traits among some high status persons of the key Egyptian Naqada group and found that they resembled the peoples of Nubia.
T. Prowse, and N. Lovell "Concordance of cranial and dental morphological traits and evidence for endogamy in ancient Egypt" American journal of physical anthropology. 1996, vol. 101, no2, pp. 237-246 (2 p.1/4)
A biological affinities study based on frequencies of cranial nonmetric traits in skeletal samples from three cemeteries at Predynastic Naqada, Egypt, confirms the results of a recent nonmetric dental morphological analysis. Both cranial and dental traits analyses indicate that the individuals buried in a cemetery characterized archaeologically as high status are significantly different from individuals buried in two other, apparently non-elite cemeteries and that the non-elite samples are not significantly different from each other. A comparison with neighboring Nile Valley skeletal samples suggests that the high status cemetery represents an endogamous ruling or elite segment of the local population at Naqada, which is more closely related to populations in northern Nubia than to neighboring populations in southern Egypt.
Lefkowitz warns against Eurocentric "racial" analysis as to the Egyptians and Nubians.
Quote: "The Nubian tribute-bearers are painted in two skin tones, black and dark brown. These tones do not necessarily represent actual skin tones in real life but may serve to distinguish each tribute-bearer from the next in a row in which the figures overlap. Alternatively, the brown-skinned people may be of Nubian origin, and the black-skinned ones may be farther south 9Trigger 1978, 33). The shading of skin tones in Egyptian tomb paintings, which varies considerably, may not be a certain criterion for distinguishing race. Specific symbols of ethnic identity can also vary. Identifying race in Egyptian representational art, again, is difficult to do- probably because race (as opposed to ethnic affiliation, that is, Egyptians versus all non-Egyptians) was not a criterion for differentiation used by the ancient Egyptians...
Northern Egypt shows more physical variation than the south, but not necessarily as part of any significant 'race' mix, but local, built-in variation. They were closer to southerners than any other peoples. In comparisons with "Middle Eastern" populations of the same ancient period, the Egyptians link more closely with other Africans than the Middle Easterners. Africans vary in how they look because they have the highest built-in molecular diversity to begin with.
QUOTE(s): "..sample populations available from northern Egypt from before the 1st Dynasty (Merimda, Maadi and Wadi Digla) turn out to be significantly different from sample populations from early Palestine and Byblos, suggesting a lack of common ancestors over a long time. If there was a south-north cline variation along the Nile valley it did not, from this limited evidence, continue smoothly on into southern Palestine. The limb-length proportions of males from the Egyptian sites group them with Africans rather than with Europeans." (Barry Kemp, "Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation. (2005) Routledge. p. 52-60)
"Individuals from different geographical regions frequently plotted near each other, revealing aspects of variation at the level of individuals that is obscured by concentrating on the most distinctive facial traits once used to construct ''types.''The high level of African interindividual variation in craniometric pattern is reminiscent of the great level of molecular diversity found in Africa." (S.O.Y Keita. Exploring northeast African metric craniofacial variation at the individual level: A comparative study using principal component analysis. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 16:679-689, 2004.)
Quote on northern Egypt analysis- the Qarunian (Faiyum) remains (c. 7000 BC) "The body was that of a forty-year old woman with a height of about 1.6 meters, who was of a more modern racial type than the classic 'Mechtoid' of the Fakhurian culture (see pp. 65-6), being generally more gracile, having large teeth and thick jaws bearing some resemblance to the modern 'negroid' type." (Beatrix Midant-Reynes, Ian Shaw (2000). The Prehistory of Egypt. Wiley-Blackwell. pg. 82)
Modern studies show diversity in how people look is heavily based on distance from sub-Saharan Africa, not merely climate. In genetically diverse Africa, broad-nosed people live on the cool or cold mountain slopes of East Africa or the hot, dry Sahara, and narrow-nosed peoples like many Fulani like in the wet tropics of West Africa. Yellowish-skinned San tribes live in the hot zones of Southern Africa.
"The relative importance of ancient demography and climate in determining worldwide patterns of human within-population phenotypic diversity is still open to debate. Several morphometric traits have been argued to be under selection by climatic factors, but it is unclear whether climate affects the global decline in morphological diversity with increasing geographical distance from sub-Saharan Africa. Using a large database of male and female skull measurements, we apply an explicit framework to quantify the relative role of climate and distance from Africa. We show that distance from sub-Saharan Africa is the sole determinant of human within-population phenotypic diversity, while climate plays no role. By selecting the most informative set of traits, it was possible to explain over half of the worldwide variation in phenotypic diversity. These results mirror those previously obtained for genetic markers and show that 'bones and molecules' are in perfect agreement for humans." (Distance from Africa, not climate, explains within-population phenotypic diversity in humans. (2008) by: Lia Betti, François Balloux, William Amos, Tsunehiko Hanihara, Andrea Manica, Proceedings B: Biological Sciences, 2008/12/02)
Analysis of skeletal and cranial remains reveals that the ancient Egyptians of the early Dynastic and pre-Dynastic phases, link closer to nearby Saharan, Sudanic and East African populations than Mediterranean and Middle Eastern peoples. Greeks, Romans, Hyskos, Arabs and others were to appear later in Egyptian history. Craniometric studies generally place ancient Upper Egyptian populations closer to the range of tropical Africans in the Nile Valley and East Africa than to Mediterraneans, or Middle Easterners.
QUOTE(s): S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54
"Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Kebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have 'donated' people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)... Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese." (Keita 1993)
"When the unlikely relationships [Indian matches] and eliminated, the Egyptian series are more similar overall to other African series than to European or Near Eastern (Byzantine or Palestinian) series." (Keita 1993)
"Populations and cultures now found south of the desert roamed far to the north. The culture of Upper Egypt, which became dynastic Egyptian civilization, could fairly be called a Sudanese transplant."(Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa: Their Interaction. Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa, by Joseph O. Vogel, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California (1997), pp. 465-472 )
"Analysis of crania is the traditional approach to assessing ancient population origins, relationships, and diversity. In studies based on anatomical traits and measurements of crania, similarities have been found between Nile Valley crania from 30,000, 20,000 and 12,000 years ago and various African remains from more recent times (see Thoma 1984; Brauer and Rimbach 1990; Angel and Kelley 1986; Keita 1993). Studies of crania from southern predynastic Egypt, from the formative period (4000-3100 B.C.), show them usually to be more similar to the crania of ancient Nubians, Kushites, Saharans, or modern groups from the Horn of Africa than to those of dynastic northern Egyptians or ancient or modern southern Europeans." (S. O. Y and A.J. Boyce, "The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians", in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 20-33)
"There is no archaeological, linguistic, or historical data which indicate a European or Asiatic invasion of, or migration to, the Nile Valley during First Dynasty times. Previous concepts about the origin of the First Dynasty Egyptians as being somehow external to the Nile Valley or less native are not supported by archaeology... In summary, the Abydos First Dynasty royal tomb contents reveal a notable craniometric heterogeneity. Southerners predominate. (Kieta, S. (1992) Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis of Crania From First Dynasty Egyptian Tombs, Using Multiple Discriminant Functions. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 87:245-254)"
"The predominant craniometric pattern in the Abydos royal tombs is 'southern' (tropical African variant), and this is consistent with what would be expected based on the literature and other results (Keita, 1990). This pattern is seen in both group and unknown analyses... Archaeology and history seem to provide the most parsimonious explanation for the variation in the royal tombs at Abydos.. Tomb design suggests the presence of northerners in the south in late Nakada times (Hoffman, 1988) when the unification probably took place. Delta names are attached to some of the tombs at Abydos (Gardiner, 1961; Yurco, 1990, personal communication), thus perhaps supporting Petrie's (1939) and Gardiner's contention that north-south marriages were undertaken to legitimize the hegemony of the south. The courtiers of northern elites would have accompanied them.
Given all of the above, it is probably not possible to view the Abydos royal tomb sample as representative of the general southern Upper Egyptian population of the time. Southern elites and/or their descendants eventually came to be buried in the north (Hoffman, 1988). Hence early Second Dynasty kings and Djoser (Dynasty 111) (Hayes, 1953) and his descendants are not buried in Abydos. Petrie (1939) states that the Third Dynasty, buried in the north, was of Sudanese origin, but southern Egypt is equally likely. This perhaps explains Harris and Weeks' (1973) suggested findings of southern morphologies in some Old Kingdom Giza remains, also verified in portraiture (Drake, 1987). Further study would be required to ascertain trends in the general population of both regions. The strong Sudanese affinity noted in the unknown analyses may reflect the Nubian interactions with upper Egypt in predynastic times prior to Egyptian unification (Williams, 1980,1986)..." (S. Keita (1992) Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis of Crania From First Dynasty Egyptian Tombs, Using Multiple Discriminant Functions. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 87:245-254)
"When the Elephantine results were added to a broader pooling of the physical characteristics drawn from a wide geographic region which includes Africa, the Mediterranean and the Near East quite strong affinities emerge between Elephantine and populations from Nubia, supporting a strong south-north cline. (Barry Kemp. (2006) Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. p. 54)
Gene flow into the Nubian area during the Neolithic was not from reputed "wandering Caucasoids" but from tropical, Sub-Saharan types.
"Prior to the Neolithic, populations of the Nile Valley in Nubia are very robust, and, because of a gap in the fossil record, it is difficult to connect them to later populations. Some have postulated a local evolution, due to diet change, while others postulated migrations, especially from the Sahara area. But between 5000 and 1000 BC, many cemeteries have supplied a large amount of skeletons, and the anatomical characters of Nubian populations are easier to follow-up. Twenty-seven archaeological samples (4 at 5000 BC, 5 at 4000 BC, 10 at 3000 BC, 3 at 2000 BC, 5 at 1000 BC), and 10 craniofacial measurements, have been considered. While cerebral skull is fairly stable, facial skull displays several regular modifications, and specially a reduction of facial and nasal heights, a broadening of the nose, and an increase of prognathism, while bizygomatic breadth is unchanged. These features illustrate a trend towards a growing resemblance with populations of Sub-Saharan Africa living in wet environments. However, paleoclimatological studies show that Nubia experienced an increasing aridification during that period. It is then unlikely that such a morphological change could be related to any local adaptive evolution to environment. Random drift is also unlikely, because the anatomical trend is relatively uniform during these millennia. It then seems more plausible that these changes correspond to the increasing presence of Southern populations migrating northward." -- Froment, A. (2002) Morphological micro-evolution of Nubian Populations from, A-Group to Christian Epochs: gene flow, not local adaptation. Am J Phys Anthropol [Suppl] 34:72.
Afrocentric critic Froment also notes: "Black populations of the Horn of Africa (Tigré and Somalia) fit well into Egyptian variations." (Froment, Alain, Origines du peuplement de l’Égypte ancienne: l’apport de l’anthropobiologie, Archéo-Nil 2 (Octobre 1992), 79-98)
Afrocentric critic C. Loring Brace's 2005 study groups ancient Egyptian populations like the Naqada closer to Nubians and Somalis than European, Mediterranean or Middle Eastern populations. Brace's study shows that the closest European linking with Africans in Egypt or Nubia are Middle Stone Age Portugese and Neolithics, OLDER populations more closely resembling AFRICANS than modern Europeans. Early Neolithic populations, like the Nautifians, in what is now Israel, show sub-Saharan 'negroid' affinities. (Brace, et al. The questionable contribution of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age to European craniofacial form, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2006 January 3; 103(1): p. 242-247.)
"The Niger-Congo speakers, Congo, Dahomey and Haya, cluster closely with each other and a bit less closely with the Nubian sample, both the recent and the Bronze Age Nubians, and more remotely with the Naqada Bronze Age sample of Egypt, the modern Somalis, and the Arabic-speaking Fellaheen (farmers) of Israel. When those samples are separated and run in a single analysis as in Fig. 1, there clearly is a tie between them that is diluted the farther one gets from sub-Saharan Africa" (Brace, 2005)
"The surprise is that the Neolithic peoples of Europe and their Bronze Age successors are not closely related to the modern inhabitants, although the prehistoric/modern ties are somewhat more apparent in southern Europe. It is a further surprise that the Epipalaeolithic Natufian of Israel from whom the Neolithic realm was assumed to arise has a clear link to Sub-Saharan Africa... Interestingly enough, however, the small Natufian sample falls between the Niger-Congo group and the other samples used. Fig. 2 shows the plot produced by the first two canonical variates, but the same thing happens when canonical variates 1 and 3 (not shown here) are used. This placement suggests that there may have been a Sub-Saharan African element in the make-up of the Natufians (the putative ancestors of the subsequent Neolithic), .. When canonical variates are plotted, neither sample ties in with Cro-Magnon as was once suggested. The data treated here support the idea that the Neolithic moved out of the Near East into the circum-Mediterranean areas and Europe by a process of demic diffusion but that subsequently the in situ residents of those areas, derived from the Late Pleistocene inhabitants, absorbed both the agricultural life way and the people who had brought it." (Brace, 2005)
Both skeletal/cranial and DNA studies by other authors confirm that some Neolithics did not derive from the Near East. They most likely resembled African populations. Hence comparisons using older European Neolithics versus Africans are comparisons with older prehistoric Europeans who looked more like Africans, than modern 'white' Europeans, as shown by Brace (2005), and Hanihara (1996) also, who states "Early West Asians looked like Africans."
"The absence of mtDNA haplogroup J in the ancient Portuguese Neolithic sample suggests that this population was not derived directly from Near Eastern farmers. The Mesolithic and Neolithic groups show genetic discontinuity implying colonisation at the Neolithic transition in Portugal." (CHANDLER, H.; SYKES, B.; ZILHÃO, J. (2005) - Using ancient DNA to examine genetic continuity at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Portugal, in ARIAS, P.; ONTAÑÓN, R.; GARCÍA-MONCÓ, C. (eds.) - «Actas del III Congreso del Neolítico en la Península Ibérica», Santander, Monografías del Instituto Internacional de Investigaciones Prehistóricas de Cantabria 1, p. 781-786.)
"Early Europeans still resembled modern tropical peoples - some resemble modern Australian and Africans, more than modern Europeans.. Nor does the picture get any clearer when we move on to the Cro-Magnons, the presumed ancestors of modern Europeans. Some were more like present-day Australians or Africans, judged by objective anatomical observations." (Christopher Stringer, Robin McKie (1998). African Exodus. Macmillan, p. 162)
Early Europeans, as recently as 6,000-9000 years ago, looked somewhat like Africans in terms of retained 'tropical' characteristics. Cold adaptation was to bring about several physical changes over time from the initial Out of Africa migrations to Europe. Retained traces of 'tropical' characteristics, indicate a "large African role in the origins of anatomically modern Europeans." (Holliday and Churchill 2003).
"Body proportions covary with climate, apparently as the result of climatic selection. Ontogenetic research and migrant studies have demonstrated that body proportions are largely genetically controlled and are under low selective rates; thus studies of body form can provide evidence for evolutionarily short-term dispersals and/or gene flow. Replacement predicts that the earliest modern Europeans will possess "tropical" body proportions (assuming Africa is the center of origin), while Regional Continuity permits only minor shifts in body shape, due to climatic change and/or improved cultural buffering. .. results refute the hypothesis of local continuity in Europe, and are consistent with an interpretation of elevated gene flow (and population dispersal?) from Africa, followed by subsequent climatic adaptation to colder conditions." (Holliday, Trenton (1997) Body proportions in Late Pleistocene Europe and modern human origins. Journal of Human Evolution, Volume 32, Issue 5, 1997, Pages 423-447)
".. while the Late Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic humans have significantly higher (i.e., tropically-adapted) brachial and crural indices than do recent Europeans, they also have shorter (i.e., cold-adapted) limbs. The somewhat paradoxical retention of "tropical" indices in the context of more "cold-adapted" limb length is best explained as evidence for Replacement in the European Late Pleistocene, followed by gradual cold adaptation in glacial Europe." (Holliday, Trenton (1999) Brachial and crural indices of European Late Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic humans. Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 36, Issue 5, May 1999, Pages 549-566)
"Stature, body mass, and body proportions are evaluated for the Cheddar Man (Gough's Cave 1) skeleton. Like many of his Mesolithic contemporaries, Gough's Cave 1 evinces relatively short estimated stature (ca. 166.2 cm [5' 5']) and low body mass (ca. 66 kg [146 lbs]). In body shape, he is similar to recent Europeans for most proportional indices. He differs, however, from most recent Europeans in his high crural index and tibial length/trunk height indices. Thus, while Gough's Cave 1 is characterized by a total morphological pattern considered 'cold-adapted', these latter two traits may be interpreted as evidence of a large African role in the origins of anatomically modern Europeans." (TRENTON W. HOLLIDAY a1 and STEVEN E. CHURCHILL. (2003). Gough's Cave 1 (Somerset, England): an assessment of body size and shape, Bulletin of the Natural History Museum: Geology, 58:37-44 Cambridge University Press)
More data showing early Europeans were tropically adapted types like Africans "Body proportions are under strong climatic selection and evince remarkable stability within regional lineages. As such, they offer a viable and robust alternative to cranio-facial data in assessing hypothesised continuity and replacement with the transition to agro-pastoralism in central Europe. Humero-clavicular, brachial and crural indices in a large sample (n=75) of Linienbandkeramik (LBK), Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age specimens from the middle Elbe-Saale-Werra valley (MESV) were compared with Eurasian and African terminal Pleistocene, European Mesolithic and geographically disparate recent human specimens. Mesolithic Europeans display considerable variation in humero-clavicular and brachial indices yet none approach the extreme "hyper-polar" morphology of LBK humans from the MESV. In contrast, Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age peoples display elongated brachial and crural indices reminiscent of terminal Pleistocene and "tropically adapted" recent humans. These marked morphological changes likely reflect exogenous immigration during the terminal Fourth millennium cal BC. Population expansion and diffusion is a function of increased mobility and settlement dispersal concomitant with significant technological and subsistence changes in later Neolithic societies during the late fourth millennium cal BCE." -- Gallagher et al. "Population continuity, demic diffusion and Neolithic origins in central-southern Germany: the evidence from body proportions." Homo. 2009;60(2):95-126. Epub 2009 Mar 4.
Early West Asians looked like Africans. Thus any ancient returnees or "backflow" from West Asia back to Africa is by people who look like Africans to begin with. Brace 2005 shows this as to Europeans. Hanihara 1996, demonstrates this below as to West Asians (i.e. 'Middle easterners'). Also see above.
quote: "Distance analysis and factor analysis, based on Q-mode correlation coefficients, were applied to 23 craniofacial measurements in 1,802 recent and prehistoric crania from major geographical areas of the Old World. The major findings are as follows: 1) Australians show closer similarities to African populations than to Melanesians. 2) Recent Europeans align with East Asians, and early West Asians resemble Africans. 3) The Asian population complex with regional difference between northern and southern members is manifest. 4) Clinal variations of craniofacial features can be detected in the Afro-European region on the one hand, and Australasian and East Asian region on the other hand. 5) The craniofacial variations of major geographical groups are not necessarily consistent with their geographical distribution pattern. This may be a sign that the evolutionary divergence in craniofacial shape among recent populations of different geographical areas is of a highly limited degree. Taking all of these into account, a single origin for anatomically modern humans is the most parsimonious interpretation of the craniofacial variations presented in this study." (Hanihara T. Comparison of craniofacial features of major human groups. Am J Phys Anthropol. 1996 Mar;99(3):389-412.)
Older studies often show misclassification or exclusion of Nile Valley remains deemed 'negroid'. Although clearly of the "African" type, such remains were frequently relabeled "Mediterranean."
"Analyses of Egyptian crania are numerous. Vercoutter (1978) notes that ancient Egyptian crania have frequently all been lumped (implicitly or explicitly) as Mediterranean, although Negroid remains are recorded in substantial numbers by many workers... "Nutter (1958), using the Penrose statistic, demonstrated that Nagada I and Badari crania, both regarded as Negroid, were almost identical and that these were most similar to the Negroid Nubian series from Kerma studied by Collett (1933). [Collett, not accepting variability, excluded "clear negro" crania found in the Kerma series from her analysis, as did Morant (1925), implying that they were foreign..." (S. Keita (1990) Studies of Ancient Crania From Northern Africa. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 83:35-48)
Different features among Africans, particularly EAST AFRICANS, like narrow noses are not due to different "race" mixes but are part of the built-in physical diversity and variation of African peoples. Narrow noses appear in the oldest African populations for example, in Kenya's Gamble Cave complex. East Africans like Somalians or Kenyans do not need any outside race "mix" or migration to make them look the way they do.
QUOTE(s): ".. all their features can be found in several living populations of East Africa, like the Tutsi of Rwanda and Burundi, who are very dark skinned and differ greatly from Europeans in a number of body proportions.. There is every reason to believe that they are ancestral to the living 'Elongated East Africans'. Neither of these populations, fossil and modern, should be considered to be closely related to the populations of Europe and western Asia.. In skin colour, the Tutsi are darker than the Hutu, in the reverse direction to that leading to the caucasoids. Lip thickness provides a similar case: on an average the lips of the Tutsi are thicker than those of the Hutu." [Jean Hiernaux, The People of Africa (1975), pgs 42-43, 62-63)
"In sub-Saharan Africa, many anthropological characters show a wide range of population means or frequencies. In some of them, the whole world range is covered in the sub-continent. Here live the shortest and the tallest human populations, the one with the highest and the one with the lowest nose, the one with the thickest and the one with the thinnest lips in the world. In this area, the range of the average nose widths covers 92 per cent of the world range: only a narrow range of extremely low means are absent from the African record. Means for head diameters cover about 80 per cent of the world range; 60 per cent is the corresponding value for a variable once cherished by physical anthropologists, the cephalic index, or ratio of the head width to head length expressed as a percentage....." - Jean Hiernaux, "The People of Africa" 1975 p.53, 54
"Prehistoric human crania from Bromhead's Site, Willey's Kopje, Makalia Burial Site, Nakuru, and other localities in the Eastern Rift Valley of Kenya are reassessed using measurements and a multivariate statistical approach. Materials available for comparison include series of Bushman and Hottentot crania. South and East African Negroes, and Egyptians. Up to 34 cranial measurements taken on these series are utilized to construct three multiple discriminant frameworks, each of which can assign modern individuals to a correct group with considerable accuracy. When the prehistoric crania are classified with the help of these discriminants, results indicate that several of the skulls are best grouped with modern Negroes. This is especially clear in the case of individuals from Bromhead's Site, Willey's Kopje, and Nakuru, and the evidence hardly suggests post-Pleistocene domination of the Rift and surrounding territory by "Mediterranean" Caucasoids, as has been claimed. Recent linguistic and archaeological findings are also reviewed, and these seem to support application of the term Nilotic Negro to the early Rift populations." (Rightmire GP. New studies of post-Pleistocene human skeletal remains from the Rift Valley, Kenya. Am J Phys Anthropol. 1975 May;42(3):351-69. )
"....inhabitants of East Africa right on the equator have appreciably longer, narrower, and higher noses than people in the Congo at the same latitude. A former generation of anthropologists used to explain this paradox by invoking an invasion by an itinerant "white" population from the Mediterranean area, although this solution raised more problems than it solved since the East Africans in question include some of the blackest people in the world with characteristically wooly hair and a body build unique among the world's populations for its extreme linearity and height.... The relatively long noses of East Africa become explicable then when one realizes that much of the area is extremely dry for parts of the year." (C. Loring Brace, "Nonracial Approach Towards Human Diversity," cited in The Concept of Race, Edited by Ashley Montagu, The Free Press, 1980, pp. 135-136, 138)
"The .... excavations at Gogoshiis Qabe (Somalia) uncovered eleven virtually complete and articulated primary burials...Closest morphological affinities are with early Holocene skeletons from Lake Turkana, Kenya...and Lake Besaka, Ethiopia.." (S. Brandt, (1986) The Upper Pleistocene and early Holocene prehistory of the Horn of Africa. Journal African Archaeological Review. Volume 4, Number 1, Pages 41-82 )
"The role of tall, linearly built populations in eastern Africa's prehistory has always been debated. Traditionally, they are viewed as late migrants into the area. But as there is better palaeoanthropological and linguistic documentation for the earlier presence of these populations than for any other group in eastern Africa, it is far more likely that they are indigenous eastern Africans. ... prehistoric linear populations show resemblances to both Upper Pleistocene eastern African fossils and present-day, non-Bantu-speaking groups in eastern Africa, with minor differences stemming from changes in overall robusticity of the dentition and skeleton. This suggests a longstanding tradition of linear populations in eastern Africa, contributing to the indigenous development of cultural and biological diversity from the Pleistocene up to the present." (L . A . SCHEPARTZ, "Who were the later Pleistocene eastern Africans?" The African Archaeological Review, 6 (1988), pp. 57- 72)
Recent study shows ancient Egyptians physically more like tropically adapted Black Americans than White Americans, confirming older studies that show today's Egyptians in general are closer to US blacks than Northern Europeans, and Southern Europeans as well.
QUOTE(s): "We also compare Egyptian body proportions to those of modern American Blacks and Whites... Long bone stature regression equations were then derived for each sex. Our results confirm that, although ancient Egyptians are closer in body proportion to modern American Blacks than they are to American Whites, proportions in Blacks and Egyptians are not identical... Intralimb indices are not significantly different between Egyptians and American Blacks. ..brachial indices are definitely more 'African'... There is no evidence for significant variation in proportions among temporal or social groupings; thus, the new formulae may be broadly applicable to ancient Egyptian remains." ("Stature estimation in ancient Egyptians: A new technique based on anatomical reconstruction of stature." Michelle H. Raxter, Christopher B. Ruff, Ayman Azab, Moushira Erfan, Muhammad Soliman, Aly El-Sawaf, (Am J Phys Anthropol. 2008, Jun;136(2):147-55
Africa is the most genetically diverse region in the world with the original man being from East Africa according to conservative scholars:
"Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages.. Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world." (Tishkoff SA, Williams SM., Genetic analysis of African populations: human evolution and complex disease. Nature Reviews Genetics. 2002 Aug (8):611-21.)
" In other words, all non-Africans carry M168. Of course, Africans carrying the M168 mutation today are the descendants of the African subpopulation from which the migrants originated.... Thus, the Australian/Eurasian Adam (the ancestor of all non-Africans) was an East African Man." (Linda Stone, Paul F. Lurquin, L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Genes, Culture, and Human Evolution: A Synthesis, Wiley-Blackwell: 2006, pg 108)
The Natufians, early inhabitants of the Sinai - Israel- Palestine area, and reputed pioneers of several Neolithic agricultural and technological developments, appear to have had "Negroid" affinities. Important Natufian sites include Mt. Carmel, Jericho and several others.
"Against this background of disease, movement and pedomorphic reduction of body size one can identify Negroid (Ethiopic or Bushmanoid?) traits of nose and prognathism appearing in Natufian latest hunters (McCown, 1939) and in Anatolian and Macedonian first farmers, probably from Nubia via the unknown predecesors of the Badarians and Tasians....". (Biological Relations of Egyptians and Eastern Mediterranean Populations during pre-Dynastic and Dynastic Times. J. Lawrence Angel. Journal of Human Evolutiom. 1972:1, 1, Pg 307)
"The Mushabians moved into Sinai from the Nile Delta, bringing North African lithic chipping tecniques." ("Pleistocene connections between Africa and Southwest Asia: an archaeological perspective. O. Bar-Yosef. African Archaeological Review. 5 (1987) Pg 29)
"It is a further surprise that the Epipalaeolithic Natufian of Israel from whom the Neolithic realm was assumed to arise has a clear link to Sub-Saharan Africa... Interestingly enough, however, the small Natufian sample falls between the Niger-Congo group and the other samples used... This placement suggests that there may have been a Sub-Saharan African element in the make-up of the Natufians (the putative ancestors of the subsequent Neolithic.." (C.L Brace, et. al. 2005. The Questionable contribution of the Neolithic...)
Early inhabitants of the general Natufian Israel area show limb proportions suited to tropical peoples- similar to sub-Saharan's homeland
"However, the real revelation came when Erik [Trinkhaus] inserted his data on the Cro-Magnons of Europe and the Skhul-Qafzeh skeletons from Israel into the equations. In this case, he got a figure of 85 percent for the shinbone-thighbone ratio. Not only were they unlike the Neanderthals, but these people actually fell at the other extreme in their readings on the limb thermometer. The predicted average temperature of origin for folk with an 85% shin-thigh fraction, indicating much longer extremities relative to trunk length - was about 20 degrees higher than the Neanderthals', suggesting a subtropical- if not tropical- homeland!" (African Exodus By Christopher Stringer, Robin McKie, McMillan: pg 79-83)
The 1993 'Clines and Clusters' study by C.L. Brace, et. al. has been used to minmize or downplay the realtionship between Egypt and its African neighbors. For example it:
--Created an "African" or "sub-Saharan" group, but excluded the Maghreb (including parts of the Sahara and Sahel), the Sudan and the Horn area (Ethiopia and Somalia) even though these latter two are BELOW the Sahara, and thus "sub-Saharan".
--Excluded the Badari, and Naqada I and II, key Egyptian groups, thus obscuring the Sudanic/Saharan character of numerous early samples, noted in several earlier analyses. Ignored the formative range of the Saharans on Egypt, from the megaliths and cattle cults of the Nabta Playa to early mummification practices was ignored.
--Excluded the Nubian population of the Badari and early Naqada period, including the rich remains of the well documented Qustul culture, near the present Sudanese-Egyptian border, again obscuring the close relationship between the two peoples.
--Created a vague "Bronze Age" grouping of Nubians, and a "modern" group of medieval samples, an era long after the dynasties and when Nubia had experienced more gene flow of that and the later Arab incursions, beginning in the 700s. Sampling thus ignored the early Badari/Naqada Nubians, jumped the 25th Dynasty era, and shifted to the medieval era in the age range of the Arab conquests. Used Somalian samples that were modern, and thus within the range of recent gene flow (such as the Arab era), particularly on the coast.
--The result was a "comparison" finding that the ancient Egyptians had no relationship "at all" to other "sub-Saharan" peoples and were relatively distant from the Nubians and Somalians. peoples. This finding has been undermined by the subsequent research of several scholars, including limb proportion studies.
QUOTE(s):
"However, Brace et al. (1993) find that a series of upper Egyptian/Nubian epipalaeolithic crania affiliate by cluster analysis with groups they designate "sub-Saharan African" or just simply "African" (from which they incorrectly exclude the Maghreb, Sudan, and the Horn of Africa), whereas post-Badarian southern predynastic and a late dynastic northern series (called "E" or Gizeh) cluster together, and secondarily with Europeans. In the primary cluster with the Egyptian groups are also remains representing populations from the ancient Sudan and recent Somalia. Brace et al. (1993) seemingly interpret these results as indicating a population relationship from Scandinavia to the Horn of Africa, although the mechanism for this is not clearly stated; they also state that the Egyptians had no relationship with sub-Saharan Africans, a group that they nearly treat (incorrectly) as monolithic, although sometimes seemingly including Somalia, which directly undermines aspects of their claims. Sub-Saharan Africa does not define/delimit authentic Africanity." (S.O.Y. Keita. "Early Nile Valley Farmers from El-Badari: Aboriginals or "European" Agro-Nostratic Immigrants? Craniometric Affinities Considered With Other Data". Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 191-208 (2005)
Brace carefully excluded the Badari- a key native pre-dynastic group that led into the dynasties, and suggested possible European immigration to ancient Egypt. Keita put this to the test and found that the excluded group matched up more closely with Africans than Europeans.
"An examination of the distance hierarchies reveals the Badarian series to be more similar to the Teita in both analyses and always more similar to all of the African series than to the Norse and Berg groups (see Tables 3A & 3B and Figure 2). Essentially equal similarity is found with the Zalavar and Dogon series in the 11-variable analysis and with these and the Bushman in the one using 15 variables. The Badarian series clusters with the tropical African groups no matter which algorithm is employed (see Figures 3 and 4).. In none of them did the Badarian sample affiliate with the European series."(S.O.Y. Keita. Early Nile Valley Farmers from El-Badari: Aboriginals or "European" Agro-Nostratic Immigrants? Craniometric Affinities Considered With Other Data. Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 191-208 (2005)
More on the biased and skewed 'true negro' model
"Another example of the use of a socially constructed typological paradigm is in studies of the Nile Valley populations in which the concept of a biological African is restricted to those with a particular craniometric pattern (called in the past the 'True Negro' though no 'True White' was ever defined). Early Nubians, Egyptians, and even Somalians are viewed essentially as non-Africans, when in fact numerous lines of evidence and an evolutionary model make them a part of African biocultural/biogeographical history. The diversity of 'authentic' Africans is a reality. This diversity prevents biogeographical/biohistorical Africans from clustering into a single unit, no matter the kind of data." (The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence, S. O. Y. Keita, Rick A. Kittles, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 99, No. 3 (Sep., 1997), pp. 534-544)
"..presents all tropical Africans with narrower noses and faces as being related to or descended from external, ultimately non-African peoples. However, narrow-faced, narrow-nosed populations have long been resident in Saharo-tropical Africa... and their origin need not be sought elsewhere. These traits are also indigenous. The variability in tropical Africa is expectedly naturally high. Given their longstanding presence, narrow noses and faces cannot be deemed `non-African."(S.O.Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993), page 134 )
"Another example of the use of a socially constructed typological paradigm is in studies of the Nile Valley populations in which the concept of a biological African is restricted to those with a particular craniometric pattern (called in the past the 'True African' though no 'True White' was ever defined). Early Nubians, Egyptians, and even Somalians are viewed essentially as non-Africans, when in fact numerous lines of evidence and an evolutionary model make them a part of African biocultural/biogeographical history. The diversity of 'authentic' Africans is a reality. This diversity prevents biogeographical/biohistorical Africans from clustering into a single unit, no matter the kind of data." ---Keita and Kittles. "The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence." American Anthropologist 99, no. 3 (September 1997): 534-544
Hair and the 'true negro' "Strouhal (1971) microscopically examined some hair which had been preserved on a Badrarian skull. The analysis was interpreted as suggesting a stereotypical tropical African-European hybrid (mulatto). However this hair is grossly no different from that of Fulani, some Kanuri, or Somali and does not require a gene flow explanation any more than curly hair in Greece necessarily does. Extremely "wooly" hair is not the only kind native to tropical Africa.." (S. O. Y. Keita. (1993). "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54)
Sampling bias and the true negro. In some Nile Valley research sampling bias persists such as drawing samples from the far north of Egypt, boscuring the region's genetic complexity. The stereotypical "true negro" type is still used to artifically separate related peoples and obscure a fuller, more accurate picture of African genetic diversity. Sampling bias appears both in DNA studies (noted by Keita) and in cranial studies (noted by Egyptologist Barry Kemp).
QUOTE(s):
Keita on DNA studies drawing samples from the far north, an area with more foreign settlement and gene flow
"However, in some of the studies, only individuals from northern Egypt are sampled, and this could theoretically give a false impression of Egyptian variability (contrast Lucotte and Mercier 2003a with Manni et al. 2002), because this region has received more foreign settlers (and is nearer the Near East). Possible sample bias should be integrated into the discussion of results." (S.O.Y. Keita, A.J. Boyce, "Interpreting Geographical Patterns of Y Chromosome Variation1," History in Africa 32 (2005) 221-246 )
Egyptologist Barry Kemp on the worldwide CRANID database that used northern samples near the Mediterranean as "representative" of the ancient Egyptians, and classifying them in a "European" direction, while excluding key historic sites further south..
"If, on the other hand, CRANID had used one of the Elephantine populations of the same period, the geographic association would be much more with the African groups to the south. It is dangerous to take one set of skeletons and use them to characterize the population of the whole of Egypt." (Barry Kemp, Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation, Routledge: 2005, p. 55)
Modern anthropology shows that the ancient Egyptians are well within the range of tropical Africa, contradicting older research in the 1990s that sought to deny any relationship. The anthropologist below, Nancy Lovell was recommended by Mary lefkowitz in Black Athena Revisted.
"There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas." (Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999) pp 328-332)
One of the oldest remains from Upper Egypt, shows strong sub-Saharan affinities, and early northern Egypt also shows sub-Saharan affinities through cultural traits- the 'Nubian complex' of technology and production.
"The morphometric affinities of the 33,000 year old skeleton from Nazlet Khater, Upper Egypt are examined using multivariate statistical procedures.. The results indicate a strong association between some of the sub-Saharan Middle Stone Age (MSA) specimens, and the Nazlet Khater mandible. Furthermore, the results suggest that variability between African populations during the Neolithic and Protohistoric periods was more pronounced than the range of variability observed among recent African and Levantine populations." (PINHASI Ron, SEMAL Patrick (2000). The position of the Nazlet Khater specimen among prehistoric and modern African and Levantine populations. Journal of human evolution. 2000, vol. 39, no3, pp. 269-288 )
"..Middle Paleolithic and the transition to the Upper Paleolithic in the Lower Nile Valley are described... the Middle Paleolithic or, more appropriately, Middle Stone Age of this region starts with the arrival of new populations from sub-Saharan Africa, as evidenced by the nature of the Early to Middle Stone Age transition in stratified sites. Throughout the late Middle Pleistocene technological change occurs leading to the establishment of the Nubian Complex by the onset of the Upper Pleistocene." (Van Peer, Philip. Did middle stone age moderns of sub-Saharan African descent trigger an upper paleolithic revolution in the lower nile valley? Anthropologie. vol. 42, no3, pp. 215-225)
Dental studies provide evidence that the ancient Egyptian population maintained a high degree of continuity into the early, mid and late Dynastic periods. A key ancient group, the Badari, found to link to tropical African metrics, was excluded by such studies as Brace (1993) but dental research shows they link well with later pre and Dynastic populations. J. Irish's 2006 dental study examined the ancient Badarian people excluded by Brace and found that they were a "good representative of what the common ancestor to all later predynastic and dynastic Egyptian peoples would be like." His dental results show that:
QUOTE:
"Despite the difference, Gebel Ramlah [the Western Desert- Saharan region] is closest to predynastic and early dynastic samples from Abydos, Hierakonpolis, and Badari.."
the Badarians were a "good representative of what the common ancestor to all later predynastic and dynastic Egyptian peoples would be like"
"A comparison of Badari to the Naqada and Hierakonpolis samples .. contradicts the idea of a foreign origin for the Naqada (Petrie, 1939; Baumgartel, 1970)"
Evidence in favor of continuity is also demonstrated by comparison of individual samples. "Naqada and especially Hierakonpolis share close affinities with First-Second Dynasty Abydos.. These findings do not support the concept of a foreign dynastic ''race''"
"Thus, despite increasing foreign influence after the Second Intermediate Period, not only did Egyptian culture remain intact (Lloyd, 2000a), but the people themselves, as represented by the dental samples, appear biologically constant as well."
(Joel D. Irish (2006). Who Were the Ancient Egyptians? Dental Affinities Among Neolithic Through Postdynastic Peoples. Am J Phys Anthropol. 2006 Apr;129(4):529-43.)
Africans have the highest dental diversity "Previous research by the first author revealed that, relative to other modern peoples, sub-Saharan Africans exhibit the highest frequencies of ancestral (or plesiomorphic) dental traits... The fact that sub-Saharan Africans express these apparently plesiomorphic characters, along with additional information on their affinity to other modern populations, evident intra-population heterogeneity, and a world-wide dental cline emanating from the sub-continent, provides further evidence that is consistent with an African origin model." (Irish JD, Guatelli-Steinberg D.(2003) Ancient teeth and modern human origins: an expanded comparison of African Plio-Pleistocene and recent world dental samples. Hum Evol. 2003 Aug;45(2):113-44. )
Ancient Egyptian civilization was indigenous with continuity among its peoples, not an influx of Middle Easterners, Europeans or other outsiders like Arabs until relatively late in history
QUOTE(s): "Some have argued that various early Egyptians like the Badarians probably migrated northward from Nubia, while others see a wide-ranging movement of peoples across the breadth of the Sahara before the onset of desiccation. Whatever may be the origins of any particular people or civilization, however, it seems reasonably certain that the predynastic communities of the Nile valley were essentially indigenous in culture, drawing little inspiration from sources outside the continent during the several centuries directly preceding the onset of historical times..." (Robert July, Pre-Colonial Africa, 1975, p. 60-61)
"overall population continuity over the Predynastic and early Dynastic, and high levels of genetic heterogeneity, thereby suggesting that state formation occurred as a mainly indigenous process." (Zakrzewski, S.R. (2007). "Population continuity or population change: Formation of the ancient Egyptian state". American Journal of Physical Anthropology 132 (4): 501-509)
"the peoples of the steppes and grasslands to the immediate south of Egypt domesticated cattle, as early as 9000 to 8000 B.C. They included peoples from the Afroasiastic linguistic group and the second major African language family, Nilo-Saharan (Wendorf, Schild, Close 1984; Wendorf, et al. 1982). Thus the earliest domestic cattle may have come to Egypt from these southern neighbors, circa 6000 B.C., and not from the Middle East.[148] Pottery, another significant advance in material cultural may also have followed this pattern, initiatied "as early as 9000 B.C. by the Nilo-Saharans and Afrasians who lived to the south of Egypt. Soon thereafter, pots spread to Egyptian sites, almost 2,000 years before the first pottery was made in the Middle East." (Christopher Ehret, "Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture," in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 25-27)
X-ray Atlas of the Royal Mummies show some to be linked physically to Nubian types, and some documented royal officials are clearly "Negroid' like Pepi-seneb, an eminent scribe c. 2745 BC. Some royal New Kingdom mummies also show melanin frequencies consistent with Negroid origin.
"In terms of head shape, the XVIV and XX dynasties look more like the early Nubian skulls from the mesolithic with low vaults and sloping, curved foreheads.The XVII and XVIII dynasty skulls are shaped more like modern Nubians with globular skulls and high vaults." (An X-ray atlas of the royal mummies. Edited by J.E. Harris and E.F. Wente. (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980.) Review: Michael R. Zimmerman, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Volume 56, Issue 2 , (1981) Pages 207 - 208)
"While the Upper Nile Egyptians show phenotypic features that occur in higher frequencies in the Sudan and southward into East Africa (namely, facial prognathism, chamaerrhiny, and paedomorphic cranial architecture with specific modifications of the nasal aperature), these so-called Negroid features are not universal in the region of Thebes, Karnak, and Luxor." (Kennedy, Kenneth A.R., T. Plummer, J. Chinment, "Identification of the Eminent Dead: Pepi, A Scribe of Egypt," In Katherine J. Reichs (ed.), Forensic Osteology, 1986.)
German Institute for Archaeology -excavation of the tombs of the nobles in Thebes-West, Upper Egypt. In several of the noble specimens: "The basal epithelial cells were packed with melanin as expected for specimens of Negroid origin." (Determination of optimal rehydration, fixation and staining methods for histological and immunohistochemical analysis of mummified soft tissues", Biotechnic & Histochemistry 2005, 80(1): 7_/13) Nubians are no "prequisite" for dark skin in ancient Egypt.
Nubians were ethnically the closest people to the Egyptians. Conflict between the two were typical clashes between kingdoms without the simplistic "racial" models drawn by some 20th century writers.
Quote 1: "The ancient Egyptians referred to a region, located south of the third cataract the Nile River, in which Nubians dwelt as Kush.. Within such context, this phrase is not a racial slur. Throughout the history of ancient Egypt there were numerous, well documented instances that celebrate Nubian-Egyptian marriages. A study of these documents, particularly those dated to both the Egyptian New Kingdom (after 1550 B.C.E.) and to Dynasty XXV and early Dynasty XXVI (about 720-640 BCE), reveals that neither spouse nor any of the children of such unions suffered discrimination at the hands of the ancient Egyptians. Indeed such marriages were never an obstacle to social, economic, or political status, provided the individuals concerned conformed to generally accepted Egyptian social standards. Furthermore, at times, certain Nubian practices, such as tattooing for women, and the unisex fashion of wearing earrings, were wholeheartedly embraced by the ancient Egyptians." (Bianchi, 2004: p. 4)
'It is an extremely difficult task to attempt to describe the Nubians during the course of Egypt's New Kingdom, because their presence appears to have virtually evaporated from the archaeological record.. The result has been described as a wholesale Nubian assimilation into Egyptian society. This assimilation was so complete that it masked all Nubian ethnic identities insofar as archaeological remains are concerned beneath the impenetrable veneer of Egypt's material; culture.. In the Kushite Period, when Nubians ruled as Pharaohs in their own right, the material culture of Dynasty XXV (about 750-655 B.C.E.) was decidedly Egyptian in character.. Nubia's entire landscape up to the region of the Third Cataract was dotted with temples indistinguishable in style and decoration from contemporary temples erected in Egypt. The same observation obtains for the smaller number of typically Egyptian tombs in which these elite Nubian princes were interred. (Bianchi, 2004, p. 99-100)
- Robert Bianchi ( 2004). Daily Life of the Nubians. Greenwood Publishing Group
One of Egypt's greatest dynasties, the 12th, originated from dark-skinned Nubian stock, according to conservative Egyptologist F. Yurco (1989). The 12th Dynasty ruled approximately 1000 years BEFORE the well known "black" 25th Dynasty. Quote 2:
"the XIIth Dynasty (1991-1786 B.C.E.) originated from the Aswan region.4 As expected, strong Nubian features and dark coloring are seen in their sculpture and relief work. This dynasty ranks as among the greatest, whose fame far outlived its actual tenure on the throne. Especially interesting, it was a member of this dynasty- that decreed that no Nehsy (riverine Nubian of the principality of Kush), except such as came for trade or diplomatic reasons, should pass by the Egyptian fortress at the southern end of the Second Nile Cataract. Why would this royal family of Nubian ancestry ban other Nubians from coming into Egyptian territory? Because the Egyptian rulers of Nubian ancestry had become Egyptians culturally; as pharaohs, they exhibited typical Egyptian attitudes and adopted typical Egyptian policies."
- (F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989)
"Among the foreigners, the Nubians were closest ethnically to the Egyptians. In the late predynastic period (c. 3700-3150 B.C.E.), the Nubians shared the same culture as the Egyptians and even evolved the same pharaonic political structure." - (F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989)
Ancient Egyptian religion closer to the religion of African regions than to Mesopotamia, Europe or the Middle East
QUOTE(s): Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508 "A large number of gods go back to prehistoric times. The images of a cow and star goddess (Hathor), the falcon (Horus), and the human-shaped figures of the fertility god (Min) can be traced back to that period. Some rites, such as the "running of the Apil-bull," the "hoeing of the ground," and other fertility and hunting rites (e.g., the hippopotamus hunt) presumably date from early times.. Connections with the religions in southwest Asia cannot be traced with certainty." "It is doubtful whether Osiris can be regarded as equal to Tammuz or Adonis, or whether Hathor is related to the "Great Mother." There are closer relations with northeast African religions. The numerous animal cults (especially bovine cults and panther gods) and details of ritual dresses (animal tails, masks, grass aprons, etc) probably are of African origin. The kinship in particular shows some African elements, such as the king as the head ritualist (i.e., medicine man), the limitations and renewal of the reign (jubilees, regicide), and the position of the king's mother (a matriarchal element). Some of them can be found among the Ethiopians in Napata and Meroe, others among the Prenilotic tribes (Shilluk)." (Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508)
Egyptian dynastic civilization based from the 'darker' south (Upper Egypt) not the north (Lower Egypt)
QUOTE(s): "While not attempting to underestimate the contribution that Deltaic political and religious institutions made to those of a united Egypt, many Egyptologists now discount the idea that a united prehistoric kingdom of Lower Egypt ever existed."
"While communities such as Ma'adi appear to have played an important role in entrepots through which goods and ideas form south-west Asia filtered into the Nile Valley in later prehistoric times, the main cultural and political tradition that gave rise to the cultural pattern of Early Dynastic Egypt is to be found not in the north but in the south.": The Cambridge History of Africa: Volume 1, From the Earliest Times to c. 500 BC, (Cambridge University Press: 1982), Edited by J. Desmond Clark pp. 500-509
"..the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life." (Source: Shaw, Thurston (1976) Changes in African Archaeology in the Last Forty Years in African Studies since 1945. p. 156-68. London.)
Egyptian state founded from the south, and indigenous in character. Egyptians dominated Palestine in some eras.
"What is truly unique about this state is the integration of rule over an extensive geographic region, in contrast to other contemporaneous Near Easter polities in Nubia, Mesopotamia, Palestine and the Levant. Present evidence suggests that the state which emerged by the First Dynasty had its roots in the Nagada culture of Upper Egypt, where grave types, pottery and artifacts demonstrate an evolution of form from the Predynastic to the First Dynasty, This cannot be demonstrated for the material culture of Lower Egypt, which was eventually displaced by that which originated in Upper Egypt. Hierarchical society with much social and economic differentiation, as symbolized in the Nagada II cemeteries of Upper Egypt, does not seem to have been present, then, in Lower Egypt, a fact which supports an Upper Egyptian origin for the unified state. Thus archaeological evidence cannot support earlier theories that the founders of Egyptian civilization were an invading Dynastic race from the east.."
"Egyptian contact in the 4th millennium B.C. with SW Asia is undeniable, but the effect of this contact on state formation is Egypt is less clear... The unified state which emerged in Egypt in the 3rd millenium B.C. however, was unlike the polities in Mesopotamia, the Levant, northern Syria, or Early Bronze Age Palestine- in sociopolitical organization, material culture, and belief system. There was undoubtedly heightened commercial contact with SW Asia in the 4th millennium B.C., but the Early Dynastic state which emerged in Egypt is unique and religious in character." (Bard, Kathryn A. 1994 The Egyptian Predynastic: A Review of the Evidence. Journal of Field Archaeology 21(3):265-288.)
"From Petrie onwards, it was regularly suggested that despite the evidence of Predynastic cultures, Egyptian civilization of the 1st Dynasty appeared suddenly and must therefore have been introduced by an invading foreign 'race'. Since the 1970s however, excavations at Abydos and Hierakonpolis have clearly demonstrated the indigenous, Upper Egyptian roots of early civilization in Egypt.
Contact between northern Egypt and Palestine was overland, as evidence in northern Sinai demonstrates.. Israeli archealogists suggest that this evidence represents a commercial network established and controlled by the Egyptians as early as EBA Ia, and that this network was a major factor in the rise of the urban settlements found later in Palestine EBA II. Naomi Porat's technological study of ceramics from EBA sites in southern Palestine clearly demonstrates that in EBA Ib strata many of the pottery vessels used for food preparation were probably manufactured by Egyptian potters using Egyptian technology but local Palestinian clays. In EBA Ib strata there are also many storage jars made from Nile silt and marl wares, which must have been imported from Egypt. Not only did the Egyptians establish camps and way stations in northern Sinai, but the ceramic evidence also suggests that they established a highly organized network of settlements in southern Palestine where an Egyptian population was in residence." (Ian Shaw ed. (2003) The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt By Ian Shaw. Oxford University Press, page 40-63)
Much older scholarship shows cultural similarities between ancient Egypt and the rest of Africa, contradicting claims of Middle Eastern inspiration.
--Specific central African tool designs found at the well known Naqada, Badari and Fayum archaeological sites in Egypt (de Heinzelin 1962, Arkell and Ucko, 1956 et al). Shaw (1976) states that "the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life." Pottery evidence first seen in the Saharan Highlands then spreading to the Nile Valley (Flight 1973). Art motifs of Saharan rock paintings showing similarities to those in pharaonic art. A number of scholars suggest that these earlier artistic styles influenced later pharaonic art via Saharans leaving drier areas and moving into the Nile Valley taking their art styles with them (Mori 1964, Blanc 1964, et al)
--Earlier pioneering mummification outside Egypt. The oldest mummy in Africa is of a black Saharan child (Donadoni 1964, Blanc 1964) Frankfort (1956) suggests that it is thus possible to understand the pharaonic worldview by reference to the religious beliefs of these earlier African precursors. Attempts to suggest the root of such practices are due to Caucasoid civilizers from elsewhere are thus contradicted by the data on the ground.
--Several cultural practices of Egypt show strong similarities to an African totemic clan base. Childe (1969, 1978), Aldred (1978) and Strouhal (1971) demonstrate linkages with several African practices such as divine kingship and the king as divine rainmaker.
--Physical similarities of the early Nile valley populations with that of tropical Africans. Such connections are demonstrated in the work of numerous scholars such as Thompson and Randall Mclver 1905, Falkenburger 1947, and Strouhal 1971. The distance diagrams of Mukherjee, Rao and Trevor (1955) place the ancient Badarians genetically near 'black' tribes such as the Ashanti and the Taita. See also the "Issues of lumping under Mediterranean clusters" section above for similar older analyses.
--Serological (blood) evidence of genetic linkages. Paoli 1972 for example found a significant resemblance between ABO frequencies of dynastic Egyptians and the black northern Haratin who are held to be the probable descendants of the original Saharans (Hiernaux, 1975).
--Language similarities which include several hundred roots ascribable to African elements (UNESCO 1974)
--Ancient Egyptian origin stories ascribing origins of the gods and their ancestors to African locations to the south and west of Egypt (Davidson 1959)
--Advanced state building and political unity in Nubia, including writing, administrative apparatus and insignia some 300 years before dynastic Egypt, and the long demonstrated interchange between Nubia and Egypt (Williams 1980)
--Newer studies (Wendorf 2001, Wilkinson 1999, et al.) confirm these older analyses. Excavations from Nabta Playa, located about 100km west of Abu Simbel for example, suggest that the Neolithic inhabitants of the region were migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa, based on cultural similarities and social complexity which is thought to be reflective of Egypt's Old Kingdom
--Other scholars (Wilkinson 1999) present similar material and cultural evidence- including similarities between predynastic Egypt and traditional African cattle-culture, typical of Southern Sudanese and East African pastoralists of today, and various cultural and artistic data such as iconography on rock art found in both Egypt and in the Sudan.
Assorted demic diffusion theories holding a mass influx of Europeans or Middle Easterners to Africa bringing cattle and agriculture to the natives is not supported by credible evidence. Indigenous development is most likely.
"Furthermore, the archaeology of northern Africa DOES NOT SUPPORT demic diffusion of farming from the Near East. The evidence presented by Wetterstrom indicates that early African farmers in the Fayum initially INCORPORATED Near Eastern domesticates INTO an INDIGENOUS foraging strategy, and only OVER TIME developed a dependence on horticulture. This is inconsistent with in-migrating farming settlers, who would have brought a more ABRUPT change in subsistence strategy. "The same archaeological pattern occurs west of Egypt, where domestic animals and, later, grains were GRADUALLY adopted after 8000 yr B.P. into the established pre-agricultural Capsian culture, present across the northern Sahara since 10,000 yr B.P. From this continuity, it has been argued that the pre-food-production Capsian peoples spoke languages ancestral to the Berber and/or Chadic branches of Afroasiatic, placing the proto-Afroasiatic period distinctly before 10,000 yr B.P."
Source: The Origins of Afroasiatic Christopher Ehret, S. O. Y. Keita, Paul Newman;, and Peter Bellwood Science 3 December 2004: Vol. 306. no. 5702, p. 1680
When claims of European or 'Mediterranean' migrant influx to ancient Egypt before the Hyskos/Greek/Roman era are analyzed research data conclusively debunks them. Quote from "Early Nile Valley Farmers From El-Badari"
Male Badarian crania were analyzed using the generalized distance of Mahalanobis in a comparative analysis with other African and European series from the Howells?s database. The study was carried out to examine the affinities of the Badarians to evaluate, in preliminary fashion, a demic diffusion hypothesis that postulates that horticulture and the Afroasiatic language family were brought ultimately from southern Europe. (The assumption was made that the southern Europeans would be more similar to the central and northern Europeans than to any indigenous African populations.) The Badarians show a greater affinity to indigenous Africans while not being identical. This suggests that the Badarians were more affiliated with local and an indigenous African population than with Europeans. (S.O.Y. Keita. "Early Nile Valley Farmers from El-Badari: Aboriginals or "European" Agro-Nostratic Immigrants? Craniometric Affinities Considered With Other Data". Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 191-208 (2005)
The Sahara and the Sudan seem to have provided a major source for the genesis of Egyptian civilization contributing many of its unique elements.
QUOTE(s): "a critical factor in the rise of social complexity and the subsequent emergence of the Egyptian state in Upper Egypt (Hoffman 1979; Hassan 1988). If so, Egypt owes a major debt to those early pastoral groups in the Sahara; they may have provided Egypt with many of those features that still distinguish it from its neighbors to the east." Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 17, 97-123 (1998), "Nabta Playa and Its Role in Northeastern African Prehistory," Fred Wendorf and Romuald Schild.
"Over the last two decades, numerous contemporary (Khartoum Neolithic) sites and cemeteries have been excavated in the Central Sudan.. The most striking point to emerge is the overall similarity of early neolithic developments inhabitation, exchange, material culture and mortuary customs in the Khartoum region to those underway at the same time in the Egyptian Nile Valley, far to the north." (Wengrow, David (2003) "Landscapes of Knowledge, Idioms of Power: The African Foundations of Ancient Egyptian Civilization Reconsidered," in Ancient Egypt in Africa, David O'Connor and Andrew Reid, eds. Ancient Egypt in Africa. London: University College London Press, 2003, pp. 119-137)
"Sub-Saharan" genetic elements found as far afield as the Turkish and Greek regions
F. X. Ricaut, M. Waelkens. (2008). Cranial Discrete Traits in a Byzantine Population and Eastern Mediterranean Population Movements Human Biology - Volume 80, Number 5, October 2008, pp. 535-564
"A late Pleistocene-early Holocene northward migration (from Africa to the Levant and to Anatolia) of these populations has been hypothesized from skeletal data (Angel 1972, 1973; Brace 2005) and from archaeological data, as indicated by the probable Nile Valley origin of the "Mesolithic" (epi-Paleolithic) Mushabi culture found in the Levant (Bar Yosef 1987). This migration finds some support in the presence in Mediterranean populations (Sicily, Greece, southern Turkey, etc.; Patrinos et al.; Schiliro et al. 1990) of the Benin sickle cell haplotype. This haplotype originated in West Africa and is probably associated with the spread of malaria to southern Europe through an eastern Mediterranean route (Salares et al. 2004) following the expansion of both human and mosquito populations brought about by the advent of the Neolithic transition (Hume et al 2003; Joy et al. 2003; Rich et al 1998). This northward migration of northeastern African populations carrying sub-Saharan biological elements is concordant with the morphological homogeneity of the Natufian populations (Bocquentin 2003), which present morphological affinity with sub-Saharan populations (Angel 1972; Brace et al. 2005). In addition, the Neolithic revolution was assumed to arise in the late Pleistocene Natufians and subsequently spread into Anatolia and Europe (Bar-Yosef 2002), and the first Anatolian farmers, Neolithic to Bronze Age Mediterraneans and to some degree other Neolithic-Bronze Age Europeans, show morphological affinities with the Natufians (and indirectly with sub-Saharan populations; Angel 1972; Brace et al 2005), in concordance with a process of demic diffusion accompanying the extension of the Neolithic revolution (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994)."
"Following the numerous interactions among eastern Mediterranean and Levantine populations and regions, caused by the introduction of agriculture from the Levant into Anatolia and southeastern Europe, there was, beginning in the Bronze Age, a period of increasing interactions in the eastern Mediterranean, mainly during the Greek, Roman, and Islamic periods. These interactions resulted in the development of trading networks, military campaigns, and settler colonization. Major changes took place during this period, which may have accentuated or diluted the sub-Saharan components of earlier Anatolian populations. The second option seems more likely, because even though the population from Sagalassos territory was interacting with northeastern African and Levantine populations [trade relationships with Egypt (Arndt et al. 2003), involvement of thousands of mercenaries from Pisidia (Sagalassos region) in the war around 300 B.C. between the Ptolemaic kingdom (centered in Egypt) and the Seleucid kingdom (Syria/Mesopotamia/Anatolia), etc.], the major cultural and population interactions involving the Anatolian populations since the Bronze Age occurred with the Mediterranean populations form southeastern Europe, as suggested from historical and genetic data."
""In this context it is likely that Bronze Age events may have facilitated the southward diffusion of populations carrying northern and central European biological elements and may have contributed to some degree of admixture between northern and central Europeans and Anatolians, and on a larger scale, between northeastern Mediterraneans and Anatolians. Even if we do not know which populations were involved, historical and archaeological data suggest, for instance, the 2nd millennium B.C. Minoan and later Mycenaean occupation of Anatolian coast, the arrival in Anatolia in the early 1st millennium B.C. of the Phrygians coming from Thrace, and later the arrival of settlers from Macedonia in Pisidia and in the Sagalassos territory (under Seleucid rule). The coming of the Dorians from Northern Greece and central Europe (the Dorians are claimed to be one of the main groups at the origin of the ancient Greeks) may have also brought northern and central European biological elements into southern populations. Indeed, the Dorians may have migrated southward to the Peloponnese, across the southern Aegean and Create, and later reached Asia Minor."
Ancient Egyptian language is part of the Afrasian or Afroasiatic group which has its origins in Africa, and together with other archaeological evidence firmly makes it an African culture. Acording to mainstream research:
QUOTE(s):
"Ancient Egyptian civilization was, in ways and to an extent usually not recognized, fundamentally African. The evidence of both language and culture reveals these African roots. The origins of Egyptian ethnicity lay in the areas south of Egypt. The ancient Egyptian language belonged to the Afrasian family (also called Afroasiatic or, formerly, Hamito-Semitic). The speakers of the earliest Afrasian languages, according to recent studies, were a set of peoples whose lands between 15,000 and 13,000 B.C. stretched from Nubia in the west to far northern Somalia in the east. They supported themselves by gathering wild grains. The first elements of Egyptian culture were laid down two thousand years later, between 12,000 and 10,000 B.C., when some of these Afrasian communities expanded northward into Egypt, bringing with them a language directly ancestral to ancient Egyptian. They also introduced to Egypt the idea of using wild grains as food." (Christopher Ehret (1996) "Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture." In Egypt in Africa Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press)
"Ancient Egypt belongs to a language group known as 'Afroasiatic' (formerly called Hamito-Semitic) and its closest relatives are other north-east African languages from Somalia to Chad. Egypt's cultural features, both material and ideological and particularly in the earliest phases, show clear connections with that same broad area. In sum, ancient Egypt was an African culture, developed by African peoples, who had wide ranging contacts in north Africa and western Asia." (Morkot, Robert (2005) The Egyptians: An Introduction. Routledge. p. 10)
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ANCIENT EGYPTIANS AND HAIR ----------
Mummification actices and dyeing of hair Hair studies of mummies note that color is often influenced by environmental factors at burial sites. Brothwell and Spearman (ref in Fletcher's works-1963) point out that reddish-brown ancient color hair is usually the result of partial oxidation of the melanin pigment. Other causes of hair color "blonding" involve bleaching, caused by the alkaline in the mummification process. Color also varies due to the Egyptian practice of dyeing hair with henna. Other samples show individuals lightening the hair using vegetable colorants. Thus variations in hair color among mummies do not necessarily suggest the presence of blond or red-haired Europeans or Near Easterners flitting about Egypt before being mummified, but the influence of environmental factors. --------
Egyptian practice of putting locks of hair in mummy wrappings.
Racial analysis is also made problematic by the Egyptian practice of burying hair, in many "votive or funerary deposits buried separately from the body, a practice found from Predynastic to Roman times despite its frequent omission from excavation reports." (Fletcher 2002) In examining hair samples Fletcher (2004) notes that care is needed to determine what is natural scalp hair, versus hair from a wig, versus hair extensions to natural locks. Tracking the exact source of hair is also critical since the Egyptians were known to have placed locks of hair from different sources among mummy wrappings. (The Search for Nefertiti, By Joann Fletcher, HarperCollins, 2004, p. 93-94, 96; Joann Fletcher, ANCIENT EGYPTIAN HAIR AND WIGS, THE OSTRACON THE JOURNAL OF THE EGYPTIAN STUDY SOCIETY, VOLUME 13, NUMBER 2; SUMMER 2002) ------------------------------------------------ -------------
Hair for wigs often obtained through trade not mass waves of "Caucasoid" migrants.
The use of wigs made of varying hair also complicates attempts at 'racial' analysis. Fletcher (2002) shows that many Egyptian wigs have been found with what is defined as straighter 'cynotrichous' hair. This however is hardly a marker of massive European or Near Eastern presence or admixture. Fletcher notes that the Egyptians often eschewed their own personal hair, shaving carefully and using wigs widely. The hair for these wigs was often obtained through trade. Indeed, "hair itself being a valuable commodity ranked alongside gold and incense in account lists from the town of Kahun." Egyptian trading links with other regions is well known, and a prized commodity like straighter 'cynotrichous' hair could have been easily obtained via the Sahara, Levant, the Maghreb, Mediterranean contacts, or even the hair of Asiatic war captives or casulaties from Egypt's numerous conflicts. ------------------------------------------------ -------------
Red-headed Ramses- routine for genetic variability in Africa not "whiteness"
Rameses came along comparatively late in Egyptian history, when outsiders toEgypt like the Hyskos were increasing in the region. Detailed microscopic analysis during the 1980s (Balout 1985) identified some of the hair of Egyptian Pharoah Rameses II as being a yellowish-red. Such a finding should not be surprising given the wide range of physical variability in Africa, the most genetically diverse region on earth, out of which flowed other population groups. Indeed, blondism and various other hair shades are not unknown in East Africa or Nubia, particularly in children, nor are such hair color variants uncommon in dark-haired or dark skinned populations like the Australians. (Hrdy 1978) Given the range of genetic variability in Africa, a red-haired Rameses is hardly unusual. Rameses' reign, in the 19th Dynasty, came over 1,500 years after the Egyptian state had been established, and after the Hyskos interlude. Such latecomers to Egypt, like the Hyskos, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs etc would add their own genetic strands to the nation's mix. Whatever the blend of genes that occurred with Rameses, his hair offers little supposed "proof" of a "white" or "Nordic" Egypt. If anything, X-rays of several royal mummies by mainstream scientists show that the Egyptians pharoahs and other royals had several uncomfortable 'Negroid' leanings. (http://www.geocities.com/nilevalleypeo ples/xraymummies1.htm) ------------------------------------------------ -------------
Red hair can be readily produced by dark-skinned populations- just check out Australia and pheomelanin
The finding of Rameses "red" hair also deserves further scrutiny. The analysis found evidence of dyeing to make the hair yellowish-red, but some elements were untouched by the dye. These elements of yellowish-red hair in Balout's study, were established on the basis of the presence of pheomelanin, a red-brown polymeric pigment in the skin and hair of humans. However, pheomelanin can also be found in persons with dark brown or even black hair as well, which gives it a reddish hue. Most natural melanins contain sulfur, which is typically associated with pheomelanin. In scientific tests of melanin, black hair contained as much as 5% sulfur, 3% lower than the 8.8% found in Irish red hair, but exceeding the 2.3% found in Scandinavian blond hair. (Jolles, et al. 1996) Thus the yellowish-red hair discovered on Rameses is well within the range of human variation for dark haired people, whatever the exact gene combination that led to the condition.
As noted above, such variation began with ancient African populations. Most red hair is found in northern and western Europe, especially in the British Isles, and even then it appears in minor frequencies in Europe- some 4% of the population. It is unlikely such populations had any major contact or influence in the ancient Nile Valley. The analysis on Rameses also did not show classic "European" red hair but hair of a light red to yellowish tinge. Black haired or dark-skinned populations are quite capable of producing such yellowish-red color variants on their own, as can be seen in today's east and northeast Africa (see child's photo above). Nor is such color variation unusual to Africa. Native dark-skinned populations in Australia, routinely produce people witn blond or reddish hair. .
The analysis also found Rameses' hair to be cymotrich or wavy, again a characteristic quite within the range of overall African or Nile valley physical and genetic diversity. A "pure" Nordic type of straight hair was thus not established for Rameses. Hence the notion of white Europeans or red-headed Caucasoids from other areas flowing into ancient Egypt to add hair variation is dubious. Inflows occurred during the Greek and Roman eras but reddish or brown hair is within the range of African variation. Genetic studies (Tishkoff 2009, 2000) show Africans have the highest diversity in the world. Skeletal/cranial studies confirm the pattern. Relethford (2001) shows that ".. methods for estimating regional diversity show sub-Saharan Africa to have the highest levels of phenotypic variation, consistent with many genetic studies." (Relethford, John "Global Analysis of Regional Differences in Craniometric Diversity and Population Substructure". Human Biology - Volume 73, Number 5, October 2001, pp. 629-636) Hanihara 2003 notes that [significant] "..intraregional diversity are present in Subsaharan Africans.." While ancient Egypt had gene flow in various eras, hair variations easily fall under this pattern of built-in, indigenous diversity, as well as the above noted cultural practice of using wigs with hair from different places obtained through trade.
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Joann Fletcher, ANCIENT EGYPTIAN HAIR AND WIGS, THE OSTRACON THE JOURNAL OF THE EGYPTIAN STUDY SOCIETY, VOLUME 13, NUMBER 2; SUMMER 2002
The Search for Nefertiti, By Joann Fletcher, HarperCollins, 2004, p. 93-94, 96
Brothwell. D., and R. Spearman 1963 The hair of earlier peoples. In: Science in Archaeology. D. Brothwell and E. Higgs, eds. Thames and Hudeon, London, p. 427-436
Daniel Hrdy 1978- Analysis of Hair Samples of Mummies from Semna South, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, (1978) 49: 277-262)
Studies of Ancient Crania From Northern Africa," American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 83:35-48 (1990
Hair Styles and History, by Cyril Aldred, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, Vol. 15, No. 6 (Feb., 1957), pp. 141-147)
L. Balout, C. Roubet and C. Desroches-Noblecourt, and was titled La Momie de Ramsès II: Contribution Scientifique à l'Égyptologie (1985).
Formation and Structure of Human Hair: Biology and Structure, By Pierre Jollès, Helmut Zahn, H. Höcker, Birkhäuser, 1996, pp. 200-225
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NUBIA AND EGYPT- Nubians and Egyptians were so close in various eras that they were virtually indistinguishable
“The ancient Egyptians referred to a region, located south of the third cataract the Nile River, in which Nubians dwelt as Kush.. Within such context, this phrase is not a racial slur. Throughout the history of ancient Egypt there were numerous, well documented instances that celebrate Nubian-Egyptian marriages. A study of these documents, particularly those dated to both the Egyptian New Kingdom (after 1550 B.C.E.) and to Dynasty XXV and early Dynasty XXVI (about 720-640 BCE), reveals that neither spouse nor any of the children of such unions suffered discrimination at the hands of the ancient Egyptians. Indeed such marriages were never an obstacle to social, economic, or political status, provided the individuals concerned conformed to generally accepted Egyptian social standards. Furthermore, at times, certain Nubian practices, such as tattooing for women, and the unisex fashion of wearing earrings, were wholeheartedly embraced by the ancient Egyptians." (Bianchi, 2004: p. 4)
'It is an extremely difficult task to attempt to describe the Nubians during the course of Egypt's New Kingdom, because their presence appears to have virtually evaporated from the archaeological record.. The result has been described as a wholesale Nubian assimilation into Egyptian society. This assimilation was so complete that it masked all Nubian ethnic identities insofar as archaeological remains are concerned beneath the impenetrable veneer of Egypt's material; culture.. In the Kushite Period, when Nubians ruled as Pharaohs in their own right, the material culture of Dynasty XXV (about 750-655 B.C.E.) was decidedly Egyptian in character.. Nubia's entire landscape up to the region of the Third Cataract was dotted with temples indistinguishable in style and decoration from contemporary temples erected in Egypt. The same observation obtains for the smaller number of typically Egyptian tombs in which these elite Nubian princes were interred. (Bianchi, 2004, p. 99-100)
- Robert Bianchi ( 2004). Daily Life of the Nubians. Greenwood Publishing Group
Integration of Nubian and egyptian elites in some eras
"the XIIth Dynasty (1991-1786 B.C.E.) originated from the Aswan region.4 As expected, strong Nubian features and dark coloring are seen in their sculpture and relief work. This dynasty ranks as among the greatest, whose fame far outlived its actual tenure on the throne. Especially interesting, it was a member of this dynasty- that decreed that no Nehsy (riverine Nubian of the principality of Kush), except such as came for trade or diplomatic reasons, should pass by the Egyptian fortress at the southern end of the Second Nile Cataract. Why would this royal family of Nubian ancestry ban other Nubians from coming into Egyptian territory? Because the Egyptian rulers of Nubian ancestry had become Egyptians culturally; as pharaohs, they exhibited typical Egyptian attitudes and adopted typical Egyptian policies." - (F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989)
The pharaohs that forbid the movement of certain Nubian tribes into Egypt were themselves of negroid origin according to conservative mainstream Egyptologist Frank Yurco..
Quote:
"the XIIth Dynasty (1991-1786 B.C.E.) originated from the Aswan region. As expected, strong Nubian features and dark coloring are seen in their sculpture and relief work. This dynasty ranks as among the greatest, whose fame far outlived its actual tenure on the throne. Especially interesting, it was a member of this dynasty- that decreed that no Nehsy (riverine Nubian of the principality of Kush), except such as came for trade or diplomatic reasons, should pass by the Egyptian fortress at the southern end of the Second Nile Cataract. Why would this royal family of Nubian ancestry ban other Nubians from coming into Egyptian territory? Because the Egyptian rulers of Nubian ancestry had become Egyptians culturally; as pharaohs, they exhibited typical Egyptian attitudes and adopted typical Egyptian policies."
- (F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989)
Applying a consistent 'race' model that interprets war between Egyptians and Nubians as 'racial' the Egyptians also pursued 'racial' wars against whites from the Middle East.
[IMG]http://digital.library.upenn.edu/wo men/edwards/pharaohs/207.gif[/IMG] RAMESES II. SLAYING THE "whites" BEFORE RA, THE TUTELARY DEITY OF THE GREAT TEMPLE OF ABÛ-SIMBEL..
THE DISCOURSE OF AMEN-RA, LORD OF THRONES.
Thou hast struck off the heads of the Asiatics, and their children cannot escape from thee. Every land illuminated by thy diadem is encircled by thy might; and in all the zone of the heavens there is not a rebel to rise up against thee. The enemy bring in their tribute on their backs, prostrating themselves before thee, their limbs trembling and their hearts burned up within them."
Campaign against "white" Mittani in parts of Lebanon:
"He is a king valiant ... Naharin which its lord had deserted out of fear ... I hacked up its towns and villages and I set fire to them ... I carried off their inhabitants ... also their herds of cattle ... I felled all their plantations and their fruit trees ...I had many vessels ... built on the mountains of God's Land in the neighborhood of the Lady of Byblos ... then on that mountain of Naharin, my Majesty erected my stela, carved out of the mountain on the western side of the Euphrates.."
Conquest against and tribute from "white" Palestine:
"Tribute of the princes of Retenu, who came to do obeisance ... to the souls of his majesty... Now every harbor at which his majesty arrived was supplied with loaves and with assorted loaves, with oil, incense, wine, f[ruit] ---- abundant were they beyond everything ...
Tribute from 'white' Lebanon:
The chieftains, lord of Lebanon, construct the royal ships in order that people may sail south in them to bring all the marvels of the "Garden" to the palace. LPH. ... The chieftains of Retjenu (Retenu) who drag the flagpoles by means of oxen to the shore, it is they who come with their dues to the place where his majesty is, to the Residence in ...... bearing all the fine products brought as marvels of the south and being taxed for tribute annually as (with) all bondsmen of his Majesty."
Operations against more 'white' 'Troglodytes':
"Then my Majesty made them take their oaths of allegiance as follows: never again shall we do anything evil against Menkheperre (another name for Thutmose III), may he live forever ... Then my Majesty had them set free on the road to their cities*). They went off on donkeys for I had seized their chariotry. I captured their inhabitants for Egypt and their property likewise." [W. Helck transl. by B. Cummings (1982), `Urkunden der 18. Dynastie', `Egyptian Historical Records of the Later 18th Dynasty']
"His majesty proceeded northward, to overthrow the Asiatics (Mntyw-Stt). His majesty arrived at a district, Sekmem (Skmm) was its name. His majesty led the good way in proceeding to the palace of `Life, Prosperity, and Health (L.P.H.,' when Sekmen had fallen, together with Retenu (Rtnw) the wretched, while I was acting as rearguard." [Breasted, `Records', Vol. I, Sec. 680] Time of Seti the Great - Presentation of Syrian Prisoners and Precious Vessels to Amon
"Smiting the Troglodytes, beating down the Asiatics (Mn·t·yw), making his boundary as far as the `Horns of the Earth', as far as the marshes of Naharin (N-h-r-n)." [Ibid., Vol. III, Sec. 118;]
"Slaying of the Asiatic Troglodytes (Ynw-Mn·t·yw [Menate, Manasseh]), all inaccessible countries, all lands, the Fenkhu of the marshes of Asia, the Great Bend of the sea (w'd-wr)."
Booty seized from "white" Caananites:
".... 340 living prisoners; 83 hands; 2,401 mares; 191 foals; 6 stallions; ... young ...; a chariot, wrought with gold, (its) pole of gold, belonging to the chief of `M-k-ty' (as the land around Jerusalem was called); .... 892 chariots of his wretched army; total, 924 (chariots); a beautiful suit of bronze armor, belonging to the chief of Jerusalem; .... 200 suits of armor, belonging to his wretched army; 502 bows; 7 poles of (mry) wood, wrought with silver, belonging to the tent of that foe. Behold, the army of his majesty took ...., 297 ...., 1,929 large cattle, 2,000 small cattle, 20500 white small cattle." [JBRE, `Records', Vol. II, Sec. 435; See also the following sections.]
Tribute from "white" Assur/Assyria "The tribute of the chief of Assur (Ys-sw-r): genuine lapis lazuli, a large block, making 20 deben, 9 kidet; genuine lapis lazuli, 2 blocks; total, 3; and pieces, [making] 30 deben; total, 50 deben and 9 kidet; fine lapis lazuli from Babylon (Bb-r); vessels of Assur of hrrt- stone in colors, ---- very many." "Tribute of the chief of Assur: horses ---. A ---- of skin of the M-h-w as the [protection] of a chariot, of the finest of --- wood; 190(+x) wagons --- --- wood, nhb wood, 343 pieces, carob wood, 50 pieces; nby and k'nk wood, 206 pieces; olive oil, ------.." [BREASTED, Vol. II, Sec. 446, 449]
"Whites" put to slave labor in Egypt.
from Project Guttenberg full text of: A HISTORY OF EGYPT FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PERSIAN CONQUEST BY JAMES HENRY BREASTED, II, 760-1, 773. 2 II, 761.
Inscription "the Asiatics of all countries came with bowed head, doing obeisance to the fame of his majesty."
book text:
"Thutmose's war-galleys moored in the harbour of the town; but at this time not merely the iceaUh of Asia was unloaded from the ships; the Asiatics themselves, bound one to another in long lines, were led down the gang planks to begin a life of slave- labour for the Pharaoh (Fig. 119). They wore long matted beards, an abomination to the Egyptians ; their hair hung in heavy black masses upon their shoulders, and they were clad in gaily coloured woolen stuffs, such as the Egyptian, spotless in his white linen robe, would never put on his body.
Their arms were pinioned behind them at the elbows or crossed over their heads and lashed together ; or, again, their hands were thrust through odd pointed ovals of wood, which served as hand-cuffs. The women carried their children slung in a fold of the mantle over their shoulders. With their strange speech and uncouth postures the poor wretches were the subject of jibe and merriment on the part of the multitude ; while the artists of the time could never forbear caricaturing them. Many of them found their way into the houses of the Pharaoh's favourites, and his generals were liberally rewarded with gifts of such slaves; but the larger number were immediately employed on the temple estates, the Pharaoh's domains, or in the construction of his great monuments and buildings."
Conservative Egyptologist Frank Yurco, shows that the 12th Dynasty was of the negroid type, of Upper Egyptian and Nubian origin. The 12th Dynasty is one of Egypt's greatest, and was in place approximately 1000 years before the 25th dynasty. Yurco also shows that the Nubians were ethnically the closest people to the Egyptians.
Quote: "the XIIth Dynasty (1991-1786 B.C.E.) originated from the Aswan region. As expected, strong Nubian features and dark coloring are seen in their sculpture and relief work. This dynasty ranks as among the greatest, whose fame far outlived its actual tenure on the throne. Especially interesting, it was a member of this dynasty- that decreed that no Nehsy (riverine Nubian of the principality of Kush), except such as came for trade or diplomatic reasons, should pass by the Egyptian fortress at the southern end of the Second Nile Cataract. Why would this royal family of Nubian ancestry ban other Nubians from coming into Egyptian territory? Because the Egyptian rulers of Nubian ancestry had become Egyptians culturally; as pharaohs, they exhibited typical Egyptian attitudes and adopted typical Egyptian policies."
- (F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989)
"Among the foreigners, the Nubians were closest ethnically to the Egyptians. In the late predynastic period (c. 3700-3150 B.C.E.), the Nubians shared the same culture as the Egyptians and even evolved the same pharaonic political structure." - (F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989)
posted
You lose again dummy... Do you realize that the very study you post debunks your "white Egypt" fantasy.. lol
[quote]
“From a genetic point of view, several recent genetic studies have shown that subSaharan genetic lineages (affiliated with the Y-chromosome PN2 clade; Underhill et al. 2001) have spread through Egypt into the Near East, the Mediterranean area, and, for some lineages, as far north as Turkey (E3b-M35 Y lineage; Cinniogclu et al. 2004; Luis et al. 2004), probably during several dispersal episodes since the Mesolithic (Cinniogelu et al. 2004; King et al. 2008; Lucotte and Mercier 2003; Luis et al. 2004; Quintana-Murci et al. 1999; Semino et al. 2004; Underhill et al. 2001).
This finding is in agreement with morphological data that suggest that populations with sub-Saharan morphological elements were present in northeastern Africa, from the Paleolithic to at least the early Holocene, and diffused northward to the Levant and Anatolia beginning in the Mesolithic.
Indeed, the rare and incomplete Paleolithic to early Neolithic skeletal specimens found in Egypt - such as the 33,000-year-old Nazlet Khater specimen (Pinhasi and Semai 2000), the Wadi Kubbaniya skeleton from the late Paleolithic site in the upper Nile valley (Wendorf et al. 1986), the Qarunian (Faiyum) early Neolithic crania (Henneberg et al. 1989; Midant-Reynes 2000), and the Nabta specimen from the Neolithic Nabta Playa site in the western desert of Egypt (Henneberg et al. 1980) - show, with regard to the great African biological diversity, similarities with some of the sub-Saharan middle Paleolithic and modern sub-Saharan specimens. This affinity pattern between ancient Egyptians and sub-Saharans has also been noticed by several other investigators..”
--Ricaut and Walekens (2008) ‘Cranial Discrete traits)
"Indeed, the rare and incomplete Paleolithic to early Neolithic skeletal specimens found in Egypt - such as the 33,000-year-old Nazlet Khater specimen (Pinhasi and Semai 2000), the Wadi Kubbaniya skeleton from the late Paleolithic site in the upper Nile valley (Wendorf et al. 1986), the Qarunian (Faiyum) early Neolithic crania (Henneberg et al. 1989; Midant-Reynes 2000), and the Nabta specimen from the Neolithic Nabta Playa site in the western desert of Egypt (Henneberg et al. 1980) - show, with regard to the great African biological diversity, similarities with some of the sub-Saharan middle Paleolithic and modern sub-Saharan specimens.
This affinity pattern between ancient Egyptians and sub-Saharans has also been noticed by several other investigators..”
-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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1) What specifically is debunked in your own words without spamming your cartoons?
2) Did you create these images yourself or if not who is the original creator?
3) Why do the MDS plots and Dendrogram(Figs 2-4) clearly show Naqada and Kerma samples clustering closer to Eurasians than SSA? Do you accept that Craniometrics is valid to determine racial categories?
4) The excerpts contained to the right of Fig. 2, starting with "From a genetic point..." and "Strangly, recent..." contain older studies that don't address nor confirm the data in Figs. 2-4. Why?
5) What are the precise qualitative and quantitative craniometric methods described for each population, dating method and age?
Please don't evade the questions and recruit your gang members. Other trolls will be ignored. You have not commented on the Egyptian Autosomal DNA profile similarity with other Afrasians and Eurasians. Why?
Posts: 644 | Registered: May 2010
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Which modern ethnic group or population living today is most closely related to AE?
Name the modern ethnic group's specific location and the peer-reviewed source(s) exact quotations and data to backup your claim?
Posts: 644 | Registered: May 2010
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posted
You already know what is debunked. Why should anyone do your work for you? Don't try to duck and dodge now. Your own reference debunked you. "The "peer reviewed studies" are staring you right in the face on this very same page. What? you can't read all of a sudden?
Let's see you answer your own questions now, rather than try to get others do do your work for you. Go ahead, let's see what you got. What are your answers?
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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He wants to discount the tropical adaptations of Upper Paleolithic remains by subscribing to genotype over phenotype, but when it comes to ancient nile valley Africans clustering amongst Europeans (who derive their phenotype from tropical adapted Africans in the first place), he subscribes to phenotype over genotype. LOL
quote: Originally posted by Non-Prophet: Phenotype is an expression of Genotype and Genes can be switched on or off(dormant), mutate and parts can be inserted or deleted(indels)between and in chromosomes. Convergent evolution which you are also confused about describes the acquisition of the same biological trait in unrelated lineages.
^Genotype over phenotype when he was referring to tropical adaptations in UP remains
quote: Originally posted by Non-Prophet: 3) Why do the MDS plots and Dendrogram(Figs 2-4) clearly show Naqada and Kerma samples clustering closer to Eurasians than SSA?
^Phenotype over genotype when he is referring to ancient Nile Valley Africans.
Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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I'm asking questions so don't assume or project intentions. The scientific method does not always rely on intuition. Maybe you can answer those questions better than zarahan.
Posts: 644 | Registered: May 2010
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^Don't confuse Zaharan's reluctance to answer your questions with inability to do so.
You came in here trying to disprove, when you were wrong. No one spinned anything, so no one is obliged to answer you.
It's on you now to disprove the conclusions of these authors if you feel anything is wrong.
Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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quote:Originally posted by NonProphet: Also, zarahan
Which modern ethnic group or population living today is most closely related to AE?
Name the modern ethnic group's specific location and the peer-reviewed source(s) exact quotations and data to backup your claim?
I haven't looked at this study carefully however if you were to say modern Egyptians are most related to AE, some might dispute it but it is in the realm of a no brainer. Obviously in most cases it's likely for modern people who live in the same area that they might have a good chance for being related to ancient people who lived in the same area. The better question is which modern ethnic group or population living today, apart from modern Egyptians is most closely related to ancient Egyptians?
That would reveal a lot.
Posts: 42918 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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You will have to do better than that. What evidence do you have that suggests AE are most related to "modern Egyptians" predicated on nothing else but the idea that "modern Egyptians" share the same territory as the ancient ones?
In fact, the fact that a later ancient Egyptian cranial series of the Roman era was found to be an outlier amongst those from the preceding era AE specimens calls your claim to question. Modern populations in Egypt have since received more gene flow, and should therefore show trends that would stand out from the pre-Greco-Roman AE specimens, as the later "E" series demonstrated.
And besides, this question had already been answered in Zarahan's notes which went unheard, selectively, and also by this piece, which has been cited many times over the years:
"Badarian (8) occupies a position closest to the Teita, Gaboon, Nubian, and Nagada series by centroid values and territorial maps. The Nagada and the Kerma series are so similar that they are barely INDISTINGUISHABLE in the territorial maps; they subsume the first dynasty series in Abydos… The Badarian crania have a modal metric phenotype that is clearly “southern”; most classify into the Kerma (Nubian), Gaboon, and Kenyan groups…No Badarian cranium in any analysis classified into the European series, and few grouped with the “E” series…Nutter (1958) found that they [the Nagada] are essentially identical to the Badarian series. The classification of crania into specific groups does NOT imply identity with those specific series, only AFFINITIES with broad patterns connoting COMMON ORIGINS..." - Keita, Studies of Ancient Crania From Northern Africa
These are modern non-Egyptian groups that Keita is referring to above. Note that the Nagada series is essentially identical to the Badarian series, from a cranio-metric standpoint, and so, it too must have some affinities with the non-Egyptian groups mentioned, by some measure or another.
Don't be fooled by whatever superficial cranio-metric features the Nagadan and Kerma series might have with some non-African groups. Their body proportions clearly place them closely to "sub-Saharan" African groups. This was also noted somewhere in Zarahan's citations, but went unheard. Stop being lazy, read and head-on address the citations already posted with counter scientific material, instead of asking questions on matter that has already been answered in material that you conveniently skipped in your skimming.
As for lineages, the PN2 clade-derived is still prominent in the populations there. The hg E1b1b being the most notable, and to a lesser degree, hg E1b1a. The AE specimens tested positive for HbS, and the only example in Egypt to this day, is the Benin-haplotype, which would link them to groups in western Africa.
Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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quote:Originally posted by The Explorer: [qb] You will have to do better than that. What evidence do you have that suggests AE are most related to "modern Egyptians"
Do you just think I did not make a case with proper evidence or do you also believe that modern Egyptians are not the people most related to ancient Egyptians? Such a concept would be in disagreement with Keita. Modern Egypt is comprised by various ethnic groups. If one were to look at the group of modern Egyptians who are most directly related to ancient Egyptians by some other modern group that do not currently live in Egypt? If so which modern day tribal group are they and in what modern day country do they live in?
Secondly, the numbers of people who migrated into Egypt after in post and late dynastic periods would have to be accounted for with population data in order to show how significant in number they were and are.
I have not made a sufficient case to prove that some of the modern day Egyptians are more related to ancient Egyptians than people of any other country however that does not mean the statement is false.
Posts: 42918 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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Your questions are null and void. This doesn't even make sense:
If one were to look at the group of modern Egyptians who are most directly related to ancient Egyptians by some other modern group that do not currently live in Egypt? - lioness
Furthermore, all your redundant lines of questioning have been dealt with in the piece you just cited but don't have the faculty to understand. Nor have you addressed the question pressing you to prove your emotional feelings about "modern Egyptians" relationship to the ancient ones, and yet go onto repeat it.
-------------------- The Complete Picture of the Past tells Us what Not to Repeat Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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quote:Originally posted by The Explorer: Your questions are null and void. This doesn't even make sense:
If one were to look at the group of modern Egyptians who are most directly related to ancient Egyptians by some other modern group that do not currently live in Egypt? - lioness
Furthermore, all your redundant lines of questioning have been dealt with in the piece you just cited but don't have the faculty to understand. Nor have you addressed the question pressing you to prove your emotional feelings about "modern Egyptians" relationship to the ancient ones, and yet go onto repeat it.
the following is a reasonable question maybe you could answer it:
quote:Originally posted by NonProphet:
Which modern ethnic group or population living today is most closely related to AE?
Name the modern ethnic group's specific location and the peer-reviewed source(s) exact quotations and data to backup your claim? [/qb]
If you can't answer it just return to your shell and zarahan will handle it.
Explorer you are just arguing for the sake of arguing. I don't even think you even disagree with this statement:
"When the question of race is raised about the Ancient Egyptians or any other African population it has to be understood that the concept of race is not felt to be valid by most modern scientists....
it's very difficult to talk about the diversity of the ancient populations because we don't have a lot of ancient DNA studies. However in terms of physical diversity it can be imagined that the modern diversity to be found in Egypt in terms of craniofacial features, skin color and what have you would likely have been very similar to that found in the past.Posts: 42918 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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I take it you are in full knowledge that your religious propaganda about modern Egyptians' relationship with the ancient counterparts was empty posturing. So, who should not have left its shell in the first place -- you should not have budged in, you had nothing to offer. I believe I also urged you to take up reading 101; that too fell to def ears.
-------------------- The Complete Picture of the Past tells Us what Not to Repeat Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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quote:Originally posted by The Explorer: I take it you are in full knowledge that your religious propaganda about modern Egyptians' relationship with the ancient counterparts was empty posturing. So, who should not have left its shell in the first place -- you should not have budged in, you had nothing to offer. I believe I also urged you to take up reading 101; that too fell to def ears.
A relationship between modern and ancient Egyptians is religious propaganda? You can't be serious
posted
What would a clown like you know about being serious? Your link is non-sequitur posturing, as it does not validate that specific fairy tale you spewed here about modern Egyptians being the closest to AE, merely because they share the same territory. Using your logic, one would think Europeans were the first inhabitants of America. Hot air.
-------------------- The Complete Picture of the Past tells Us what Not to Repeat Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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quote:Originally posted by The Explorer: What would a clown like you know about being serious? Your link is non-sequitur posturing, as it does not validate that specific fairy tale you spewed here about modern Egyptians being the closest to AE, merely because they share the same territory. Using your logic, one would think Europeans were the first inhabitants of America. Hot air.
The fact that modern Egyptians would be likely candidates for having ancestry with ancient Egyptians because they are in the same location does not prove they have common ancestry. But obviously it's a good starting point.
When you look at the genetic, phrenology, biometrics it confirms that this assumption is correct, people living in modern Egypt today are more related to the ancient Egyptians than are people who do not live in Egypt.
To say that they were more related to people other than Egyptians are more related to the ancient Egyptians would be remarkable and counterintuitive since there is no mass migrations of Egyptians out of Egypt, post the dynastic period
in terms of physical diversity it can be imagined that the modern diversity to be found in Egypt in terms of craniofacial features, skin color and what have you would likely have been very similar to that found in the past.
Posts: 42918 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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Despite all your posturing, your initial claim remains as invalid now as it did when you were pressed to back it up. You've tried to later on modify it by claiming that "some" modern Egyptians most be closely related to AE, because they descend from them...which is a far cry from saying "modern Egyptians" as a general entity. Your initial justification was that "modern Egyptians" share the same territory, so they must be most closely related to AE. Nobody is saying that AE's descendants migrated out of Egypt en mass; you drew that conclusion all on your own. The point related to you was that AE remains have been compared with those taken from recent groups, and they cluster and even classify into "sub-Saharan" groups, both craniometrically and post-cranially. You were given examples of these modern groups. You were also informed that physiologically, and even genetically, "modern Egyptians" as a composite generalized group [which is what you invoked in your initial claim], cannot be the same as AE, because they have since received more gene flow from elsewhere. This is reflected in cranio-metric changes, as you were informed...yet you still ask evidence of such a change. Face up to your error, buddy.
Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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To say that they were more related to people other than Egyptians are more related to the ancient Egyptians would be remarkable and counterintuitive since there is no mass migrations of Egyptians out of Egypt, post the dynastic period
Of course, there are people other than "modern Egyptians" who are more related to AE than sections of modern Egyptian populations. Deny it? Dare to demonstrate genetically and cranio-metric examination spanning generations, all the way from AE dynasties to present?
quote: in terms of physical diversity it can be imagined that the modern diversity to be found in Egypt in terms of craniofacial features, skin color and what have you would likely have been very similar to that found in the past.
Prove it. And define what you meant by "found in the past".
Posts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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quote:Originally posted by The Explorer: Despite all your posturing, your initial claim remains as invalid now as it did when you were pressed to back it up. You've tried to later on modify it by claiming that "some" modern Egyptians most be closely related to AE, because they descend from them...which is a far cry from saying "modern Egyptians" as a general entity. Your initial justification was that "modern Egyptians" share the same territory, so they must be most closely related to AE. Nobody is saying that AE's descendants migrated out of Egypt en mass; you drew that conclusion all on your own. The point related to you was that AE remains have been compared with those taken from recent groups, and they cluster and even classify into "sub-Saharan" groups, both craniometrically and post-cranially. You were given examples of these modern groups. You were also informed that physiologically, and even genetically, "modern Egyptians" as a composite generalized group [which is what you invoked in your initial claim], cannot be the same as AE, because they have since received more gene flow from elsewhere. This is reflected in cranio-metric changes, as you were informed...yet you still ask evidence of such a change. Face up to your error, buddy.
You are on target as usual. The Badarians for example are quite representative of what the ancient Egyptians were like prior to the influx of the late period Greeks, Romans, Hyskos, Persians etc. These were the people who established the dynastic civilization.
[quote:] : "Badari (8) occupies a position closest to the Teita, Gaboon, Nubian,and Nagada series by centroid values and territorial maps. The Nagada and Kerma series are so similar that they are barely distinguishable in the territorial maps; they subsume the first dynasty series from Abydos. The Sedment and “E” series are the most distinct of the Nile Valley series. The European series stands in notable isolation by centroid score (Tables 2B, 3B, 4B) from African series... No Badarian cranium in any analysis classified into the European series, and few grouped with the “E” series…Nutter (1958) found that they [the Nagada] are essentially identical to the Badarian series. The classification of crania into specific groups does not imply identity with those specific series, only affinities with broad patterns connoting common origins..." (S. Keita (1990) Studies of Ancient Crania From Northern Africa. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 83:35-48)
and
"An examination of the distance hierarchies reveals the Badarian series to be more similar to the Teita in both analyses and always more similar to all of the African series than to the Norse and Berg groups (see Tables 3A & 3B and Figure 2). Essentially equal similarity is found with the Zalavar and Dogon series in the 11-variable analysis and with these and the Bushman in the one using 15 variables. The Badarian series clusters with the tropical African groups no matter which algorithm is employed (see Figures 3 and 4).. In none of them did the Badarian sample affiliate with the European series."(S.O.Y. Keita. Early Nile Valley Farmers from El-Badari: Aboriginals or "European" Agro-Nostratic Immigrants? Craniometric Affinities Considered With Other Data. Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 191-208 (2005)
[quote]--- DENTAL STUDIES
"The question of the genetic origins of ancient Egyptians, particularly those during the Dynastic period, is relevant to the current study. Modern interpretations of Egyptian state formation propose an indigenous origin of the Dynastic civilization (Hassan, 1988). Early Egyptologists considered Upper and Lower Egyptians to be genetically distinct populations, and viewed the Dynastic period as characterized by a conquest of Upper Egypt by the Lower Egyptians. More recent interpretations contend that Egyptians from the south actually expanded into the northern regions during the Dynastic state unification (Hassan, 1988; Savage, 2001), and that the Predynastic populations of Upper and Lower Egypt are morphologically distinct from one another, but not sufficiently distinct to consider either non-indigenous (Zakrzewski, 2007).
The Predynastic populations studied here, from Naqada and Badari, are both Upper Egyptian samples, while the Dynastic Egyptian sample (Tarkhan) is from Lower Egypt. The Dynastic Nubian sample is from Upper Nubia (Kerma). Previous analyses of cranial variation found the Badari and Early Predynastic Egyptians to be more similar to other African groups than to Mediterranean or European populations (Keita, 1990; Zakrzewski, 2002). In addition, the Badarians have been described as near the centroid of cranial and dental variation among Predynastic and Dynastic populations studied (Irish, 2006; Zakrzewski, 2007). This suggests that, at least through the Early Dynastic period, the inhabitants of the Nile valley were a continuous population of local origin, and no major migration or replacement events occurred during this time.
Studies of cranial morphology also support the use of a Nubian (Kerma) population for a comparison of the Dynastic period, as this group is likely to be more closely genetically related to the early Nile valley inhabitants than would be the Late Dynastic Egyptians, who likely experienced significant mixing with other Mediterranean populations (Zakrzewski, 2002). A craniometric study found the Naqada and Kerma populations to be morphologically similar (Keita, 1990). Given these and other prior studies suggesting continuity (Berry et al., 1967; Berry and Berry, 1972), and the lack of archaeological evidence of major migration or population replacement during the Neolithic transition in the Nile valley, we may cautiously interpret the dental health changes over time as primarily due to ecological, subsistence, and demographic changes experienced throughout the Nile valley region."
-- AP Starling, JT Stock. (2007). Dental Indicators of Health and Stress in Early Egyptian and Nubian Agriculturalists: A Difficult Transition and Gradual Recovery. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 134:520–528
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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Explorer questioned your reading comprehension skills and he asked you to prove your claims. The peer reviewed studies and citations are already on this very same page. What's taking you and "Prophet" so long to answer the questions?
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Kalonji: ^Don't confuse Zaharan's reluctance to answer your questions with inability to do so.
You came in here trying to disprove, when you were wrong. No one spinned anything, so no one is obliged to answer you.
It's on you now to disprove the conclusions of these authors if you feel anything is wrong.
Read the studies with data and cut out the middleman propaganda artist zarahan and you will see they don't agree with her assertions. Nothing to 'disprove' because they don't 'prove' what she claims. She never did confirm the copyright owner or creator of that image spam.
Posts: 644 | Registered: May 2010
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posted
Conservative mainstream Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt shows ancient Egypt derived from an African cultural sub-stratum
[QUOTE:]
"The evidence also points to linkages to other northeast African peoples, not coincidentally approximating the modern range of languages closely related to Egyptian in the Afro-Asiatic group (formerly called Hamito-Semetic). These linguistic similarities place ancient Egyptian in a close relationship with languages spoken today as far west as Chad, and as far south as Somalia. Archaeological evidence also strongly supports an African origin. A widespread northeastern African cultural assemblage, including distinctive multiple barbed harpoons and pottery decorated with dotted wavy line patterns, appears during the early Neolithic (also known as the Aqualithic, a reference to the mild climate of the Sahara at this time). Saharan and Sudanese rock art from this time resembles early Egyptian iconography. Strong connections between Nubian (Sudanese) and Egyptian material culture continue in later Neolithic Badarian culture of Upper Egypt. Similarities include black-topped wares, vessels with characteristic ripple-burnished surfaces, a special tulip-shaped vessel with incised and white-filled decoration, palettes, and harpoons...
Other ancient Egyptian practices show strong similarities to modern African cultures including divine kingship, the use of headrests, body art, circumcision, and male coming-of-age rituals, all suggesting an African substratum or foundation for Egyptian civilization..
Source: Donald Redford (2001) The Oxford encyclopedia of ancient Egypt, Volume 3. Oxford University Press. p. 28
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Originally posted by zarahan: Conservative mainstream Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt shows ancient Egypt derived from an African cultural sub-stratum
[QUOTE:]
"The evidence also points to linkages to other northeast African peoples, not coincidentally approximating the modern range of languages closely related to Egyptian in the Afro-Asiatic group (formerly called Hamito-Semetic). These linguistic similarities place ancient Egyptian in a close relationship with languages spoken today as far west as Chad, and as far south as Somalia. Archaeological evidence also strongly supports an African origin. A widespread northeastern African cultural assemblage, including distinctive multiple barbed harpoons and pottery decorated with dotted wavy line patterns, appears during the early Neolithic (also known as the Aqualithic, a reference to the mild climate of the Sahara at this time). Saharan and Sudanese rock art from this time resembles early Egyptian iconography. Strong connections between Nubian (Sudanese) and Egyptian material culture continue in later Neolithic Badarian culture of Upper Egypt. Similarities include black-topped wares, vessels with characteristic ripple-burnished surfaces, a special tulip-shaped vessel with incised and white-filled decoration, palettes, and harpoons...
Other ancient Egyptian practices show strong similarities to modern African cultures including divine kingship, the use of headrests, body art, circumcision, and male coming-of-age rituals, all suggesting an African substratum or foundation for Egyptian civilization..
Source: Donald Redford (2001) The Oxford encyclopedia of ancient Egypt, Volume 3. Oxford University Press. p. 28
I guess the folks at Oxford must be 'Afrocentrics' as well. LOLPosts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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posted
^ Nah! The good ol' folks at Oxford are still cold-adapted whities. They are just 'Afrocentric' whities because they agree that Egypt and its people are African.
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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For Gérard Quéchon, the French archeologist to whom we owe very early dates for iron metallurgy from the Termit Massif in Niger, “indisputably, in the present state of knowledge, the hypothesis of an autochthonous invention is convincing.” (1)
According to Eric Huysecom, a Belgian-born archeologist, “[o]ur present knowledge allows us . . . to envisage one or several independent centres of metal innovation in sub-Saharan Africa.” (2)
Hamady Bocoum, a Senegalese archeologist, asserts that “more and more numerous datings are pushing back the beginning of iron production in Africa to at least the middle of the second millennium BC, which would make it one of the world’s oldest metallurgies.” He thinks that “in the present state of knowledge, the debate [over diffusion vs. independent invention] is closed for want of conclusive proof accrediting any of the proposedtransmission channels [from the north].” (3)
The American archeologist Peter R. Schmidt tells us “the hypothesis for independent invention is currently the most viable among the multitude of diffusionist hypotheses.” (4)
Africanists other than archeologists are in agreement. For Basil Davidson, the foremost popularizer of African history, “African metallurgical skills [were] locally invented and locally developed.” (5)
The American linguist Christopher Ehret says
quote:Africa south of the Sahara, it now seems, was home to a separate and independent invention of iron metallurgy . . . To sum up the available evidence, iron technology across much of sub-Saharan Africa has an African origin dating to before 1000 BCE. (6)
The eminent British historian Roland Oliver thinks that the discovery of iron smelting “could have occurred many times over” in the world and that African ironworking probably originated in the northern one-third of the continent. (7)
The equally eminent Belgian-American historian Jan Vansina took the rather extreme position that “[i]ron smelting began in several places at about the same time,” naming the - western Great Lakes area, - Gabon, - Termit Massif, - Taruga site in central Nigeria and the - Igbo region in southeastern Nigeria. He maintained that “[a] simple dispersal even from Taruga to the Igbo sites not far away is excluded because different types of furnaces were used.” (8)
In the concluding chapter of UNESCO’s recent book on the subject, the Senegalese-born scholar Louise-Marie Maes-Diop surveys the beginnings of iron metallurgy worldwide and finds “the earliest vestiges of reduced ore” in eastern Niger, followed by Egypt. (9)
Gérard Quéchon, “Les datations de la métallurgie du fer à Termit (Niger): leur fiabilité, leur signification” in Hamady Bocoum, ed., Aux origines de la métallurgie du fer en Afrique: une ancienneté méconnue (Paris, 2002), 114. The same statement is found in an almost identical chapter with the same title by Quéchon in Mediterranean Archaeology 14 (2001) (hereafter Meditarch), 253. That issue is titled “The Origins of Iron Metallurgy: Proceedings of the First International Colloquium on the Archaeology of Africa and the Mediterranean Basin Held at the Museum of Natural History in Geneva, 4-7 June, 1999.” ) .
Eric Huysecom, “The Beginning of Iron Metallurgy: From Sporadic Inventions to Irreversible Generalizations,” Meditarch, 3. .
Hamady Bocoum, “La métallurgie du fer en Afrique: un patrimoine et une ressource au service du développement” in Bocoum, Origines, 94, 97. UNESCO published an English translation of Bocoum’s book in 2004 under the title The Origins of Iron Metallurgy in Africa: New Light on Its Antiquity—West and Central Africa. .
Peter R. Schmidt, “Cultural Representations of African Iron Production” in Schmidt, ed., The Culture and Technology of African Iron Production (Gainesville, 1996), 8. .. See also: Pierre de Maret, “L’Afrique centrale: Le `savoir-fer’” in Bocoum, Origines, 125; . François Paris, Alain Person, Gérard Quéchon, and Jean-François Saliège, “Les débuts de la métallurgie au Niger septentrional: Aïr, Azawagh, Ighazer, Termit,” Journal des Africanistes 72(1992), 58; . Schmidt and D.H. Avery, “More Evidence for an Advanced Prehistoric Iron Technology in Africa,” Journal of Field Archaeology 10(1983), 428, 432-34; . Candice L. Goucher, “Iron Is Iron ’Til It Is Rust: Trade and Ecology in the Decline of West African Iron-Smelting,” JAH 22(1981), 180; . John A. Rustad, “The Emergence of Iron Technology in West Africa, with Special Emphasis on the Nok Culture of Nigeria” in B.K. Swartz and R. Dumett, eds., West African Culture Dynamics: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives (The Hague, 1980), 237. .
Basil Davidson, West Africa Before the Colonial Era: A History to 1850 (London, 1998), 8. .
Christopher Ehret, The Civilizations of Africa: a History to 1800 (Charlottesville, 2002), 161. Curiously, he suggests African iron metallurgy was developed in two places, northern Nigeria/Cameroon and the Great Lakes region, while ignoring Niger, source of the earliest available dates. .
Roland Oliver, The African Experience (New York, 1991), 65. .
Jan Vansina, “Historians, Are Archeologists Your Siblings?” HA 22(1995), 395. .. See also: John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 (2d ed.: Cambridge, 1998), 46; . P.T. Craddock and J. Picton, “Medieval Copper Alloy Production and West African Bronze Analyses–Part II,” Archaeometry 28 (1986), 6; . Ralph A. Austen and Daniel Headrick, “The Role of Technology in the African Past,” African Studies Review 26 (1983), 165-68. .
Louise-Marie Maes-Diop, “Bilan des datations des vestiges anciens de la sidérurgie en Afrique: l’enseignement qui s’en dégage” in Bocoum, Origines, 189. Thirty-four years earlier Maes-Diop had written that “in all probability, iron metallurgy on the African continent is autochthonous and was not introduced through external influences,” but hers was a lonely voice then. L.-M. Diop, “Métallurgie traditionnelle et âge du fer en Afrique,” BIFAN 30B (1968), 36.
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Originally posted by King_Scorpion: While I'm thinking of it...someone should make a thread on ESR of all of the great threads posted on this site just in case something ever happens to Egyptsearch.
A large bloc of data is summarized here as well as on ES Reloaded, Explorer's blog and other sites, and it is being constantly updated. On Wikipedia, racist moles deleting valid scholarly information delude themselves that they are doing something significant to hide or destroy the data. In fact, not only have they utterly failed but their "stealth" work is itself constantly being disrupted as new readers and editors use the alternative data sources herein to challenge them on Wiki. It is much too late in the day for the moles to think they can establish their deceptive "party line" across the web as "fact," even if aided by administrative collaborators. Indeed, such challenges, using good, hard data are widespread on the web in numerous forums and are easy to find via Google. The genie is out of the bottle. And even if ES disappears tomorrow the data will live on, constantly updated, with very good representation in Google.
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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Here is another quote from Harris and Weeks on X-ray analysis of the pharaoh Seqenenre compared to his son Ahmose, showing how the X-Ray data suggested Nubian affinities for several royals:
"His entire facial complex, in fact, is so different from other pharaohs (it is closest to that of his son Ahmose) that he could be fitted more easily into the series of Nubian and Old Kingdom Giza skulls than into that of later Egyptian kings. Various scholars in the past have proposed a Nubian-that is, non-Egyptian-origin for Seqenenre and his family, and his facial features suggest this might indeed be true." -- Harris J, and Weeks K (1973) X-Raying the Pharoahs. pg 127
Seqenenre is one of a number of New Kingdom pharaohs also held to be of Nubian origin by conservative Egyptologists such as Donald B. Redford (History and Chronology of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, pgs 33-36, 69.)
Egyptologist Frank Yurco and others also note Nubian affinities among several 12th Dynasty rulers. All this is before the 25th Dynasty, who are often misleadingly held up as the only Nubian rulers of Egypt. In fact, long BEFORE the 25th Dynasty, such Nubian derived or Nubian background royals were in place. And indeed, said "Nubian" rulers held themselves to be restorationists, returning to Egypt's past glory.
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Zemede: "I believe today's Habasha or Abyssinia is recent immigrants from West Asia or Yemen mixed with ancient Kushitic Civilisation who populated Horn Africa all the way to North Africa."
Iam Nomad I have to disappoint you. The woman you see here is 100 % African and has never been mixed up with Yemenites or Asians. In fact YEMEN comes from YEMAN which is Tigrigna and means RIGHT. An indication that the people who left Africa to the right were Habeshas who mixed up with Asians. This is the biggest mistake western people made. Habeshas exist on the continent for more than 80 000 years!!!!!!!!!!
The statement that Habeshas are mixed between Kushit and Asian people is very rasist.
It's like we Europeans can not imagine how Africans can look like us. They have to be half Asians. Crapy Crap.
Habeshas and other East Africans are the ancestors of Asians in Europeans. They just lost their skin tone. Beautiful Africans can be found throughout the continent without having to be mixed up with Asians and Europeans.
HABESHAS ARE AFRICANS and those AFRICANS FROM EAST AFRICA MIGRATED TO THE NILE VALLEY TO CREATE THIS POPULAR CIVILIZATION.
AKNATEN, MEZEZE; TUT, NEFETI ALL OF THEM ARE HABESHA.
^Exactly right Zemede. Habeshas are their own indigenous tropical African variant. They don't need any European, "Middle Eastern" or "Asiatic" "race mix" to explain how they look. They can be tall or short. They can have narrow noses or broad noses, long straight hair or hair more curly. light skin or dark skin. They don't need little "approved" white European "race" checkboxes, including bogus "mixed" categories to define themselves. And they don't need any "Caucasoid migrants" to explain their ancient cities, technology or civilization.
-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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posted
Ancient Greece's debt to Egypt and the Near East
------------------------------------------------------ Here is one conservative scholar on Greek borrowing from Egypt and the Near east. HEs lists the adoption of writing as of crucial development to Greek civ, and points out that the Greeks did not invent their own alphabet but copied that of the Phonecians, peoples of a Near eastern and North African locale..
Another key influence, the introduction of iron technology was again, not a Greek invention but came from elsewhere.
The conservative also questions the "Greek Miracle.."
Below is another conservative writer. He is a staunch supporter of Greek philosophy, but even he notes that the Greeks STYLE of philosophy was different, not that they invented the subject. He notes that peoples of the Near East and Egypt already had their own philosophy. It is a matter of style, and Greek preferences, and how "philosophy" is defined. The conservative writer openly admits this. quote: "the perspective from which I discussed philosophy- was very much a Greek one."
Incidentally the same author also notes that questioning the degree to which Greek civ is derivative is something longstanding in some of the "classics" literature.
Here's another conservative scholar:
---------------------------------------------- Yet another mainstream scholar says:
"No aspect of this question is more discussed at present than the relation between Greece and the near East, especially Egypt. Some nineteenth-century scholars wished to downplay or deny any significant cultural influence of the Near East on Greece, but that was plainly not the ancient Greek view of the question. Greek intellectuals of the historical period proclaimed that Greeks owed a great deal to the older civilization of Egypt, in particular in religion and art. Recent research agrees with this ancient opinion. Greek sculptors in the Archaic Age chiseled their statutes according to a set of proportions established by Egyptian artists. Greek mythology, the stories that the Greeks told themselves about their deepest origins and their relations to the gods, was infused with stories and motifs of Near Eastern origin. The clearest evidence of the influence of Egyptian culture in Greek is the store if seminal religious ideas that flowed from Egypt to Greece: the geography of the underworld, the weighing of the souls of the dead in scales, the life-giving properties of fire as commemorated in the initiation ceremonies of the international cult of the goddess Semeter of Eleusis (a famous site in Athenian territory), and much more. These influences are not surprising because archaeology reveals that the population inhabiting Greece had diplomatic and commercial contact with the Near East as early as the middle of the second millennium B.C... When the Greeks learned from the peoples of the Near East, they made what they learned their own. This is how cultural identity is forged, not by mindless imitation or passive reception. (pg. 21)
"The civilizations of Mesopotamia and Anatolia particularly overshadowed those of Crete and Greece in the size of their cities and the development of extensive written legal codes. Egypt remained an especially favored destination of Mycenean voyagers throughout the late Bronze Age because they valued the exchange of goods and ideas with the prosperous and complex civilization of that land." (pg 30)
-- (From: Thomas R. Martin (2000) Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times. Yale University Press, pg 21, 30)
SOmething to think about when claims of Greek "rationality" are posited: Medicine:
"Drugs were applied not because of a belief that they had natural healing properties, but following the tenets of primitive medicine, because they had magical powers. The Greek word pharmakon, usually translated as "drug: originally designated a substance with magic powers. These powers, however, did not need to be therapeutic, (a pharmakon could be a poison or could turn humans into animals) but were originally considered to me magic..
Supernaturalistic medicine is characterized by a multiplicity of powers that can heal and kill. Primitive Greek medicine was no exception and many Greek gods had healing functions: Apollo, the first deity invoked in the Hippocratic oath; Vulcan, worshipped in Lemnos, gave his healing powers to terra lemmnia, Juno, Jupiter's wife assisted women in childbirth.. In addition some of the gods could cause sudden death: for example, both Apollo and Diana could shoot lethal darts at humans.." (--A history of medicine by Plinio Priorescho 2004)
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Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- - courtesy of the Explorer
"It is not, of course, to be supposed that these coastmen and islanders of the Ægean were without some rudimentary notions of art of their own. In the time of Thothmes III., there were already Cypriote settlers making Cypriote pottery, and inscribing their pots with Cypriote characters at Tell Gurob. In the time of Meneptah, the Lycians and Carians and Achæans were ship-builders and workers in bronze; and we may take it for granted that they fashioned rude Cyclopean temples, like the primitive temple discovered a few years ago in Delos, with probably an upright stone for a god. But architecture, sculpture, and original decorative art, we may be sure they had none.
And the proof that they had none is found in the fact that the earliest known vestiges of Greek architecture, Greek sculpture, and Greek decorative art are copied from Egyptian sources.
It is not at all strange that the Greeks should have borrowed their first notions of architecture and decoration from Egypt, the parent of the arts; but that they should have borrowed architectural decoration before they borrowed architecture itself, sounds paradoxical enough. Yet such is the fact; and it is a fact for which it is easy to account.
The most ancient remains of buildings in Greece are of Cyclopean, or, as some have it, of Pelasgic origin; and the most famous of these Cyclopean works are two subterraneous structures known as the Treasury of Atreus and the Treas- [Page 168] ury of Minyas–the former at Mycenæ, in Argolis, the latter at Orchomenos, in Boeotia. Both are built after the one plan, being huge dome-shaped constructions formed of horizontal layers of dressed stones, each layer projecting over the one next below, till the top was closed by a single block. The whole was then covered in with earth, and so buried. Such structures scarcely come under the head of architecture, in the accepted sense of the word.
Now, whether the Pelasgi were the rude forefathers of the Aryan Hellenes, or whether they were a distinct race of Turanian origin settled in Greece before Hellas began, is a disputed question which I cannot pretend to decide; but what we do know is, that the prehistoric ruins of Mycenæ and Orchomenos are four hundred, if not five hundred, years older than the oldest remains of the historic school. Of all that happened during the dark interval which separated the prehistoric from the historic, we are absolutely ignorant.
If, however, the builders of Mycenæ and Orchomenos were Pelasgians, and if the builders of the earliest historic temples were Hellenes, it is, at all events, certain that the Pelasgians went to Egypt for their surface decoration, and the Hellenes for their architectural models. Moreover–and this is very curious–they both appear to have gone to school to the same place. That place is on the confines of Middle and Upper Egypt, about one hundred and seventy miles above Cairo, and its modern name is Beni-Hasan.
The rock-cut sepulchres of Beni-Hasan are among the famous sights of the Nile. They are excavated in terraces at a great height above the river, and they were made for the great feudal princes who governed this province under the Pharaohs of the Twelfth Dynasty. Their walls are covered with paintings of the highest interest; their ceilings are rich in polychromatic decoration; and many are adorned with pillared porches cut in the solid rock. (43)
It is to be remembered that the foundation of the Twelfth Egyptian Dynasty–the great dynasty of the Usertesens and Amenemhats–dates from about 3000 to 2500 years before [Page 169] Christ. These Beni-Hasan sepulchres are therefore older by many centuries than the so-called "Treasuries" of Orchomenos and Mycenæ.
Now, at Mycenæ, near the entrance to the Treasury of Atreus, there stands the base and part of the shaft of a column decorated with a spiral ornament, which here makes its first appearance on Greek soil. This spiral (though it never achieved the universal popularity of the meander, or "key pattern," or of the misnamed "honeysuckle pattern" ) became in historic times a stock motive of Hellenic design; and all three patterns–the spiral, the meander, and the honeysuckle–have long been regarded as purely Greek inventions. But they were all painted on the ceilings of the Beni-Hasan tombs full twelve hundred years before a stone of the Treasuries of Mycenæ or Orchomenos was cut from the quarry. The spiral, either in its simplest form, or in combination with the rosette or the lotus, is an Egyptian design. The rosette is Egyptian; and the honeysuckle, which Mr. Petrie has identified as a florid variety of the lotus pattern, (44) is also distinctly Egyptian." - by Amelia Edwards, Pharaohs Fellahs and Explorers; Chapter 5: Egypt the Birthplace of Greek Decorative Art., 1891. Source: Link
"A striking change appears in Greek art of the seventh century B.C., the beginning of the Archaic period. The abstract geometric patterning that was dominant between about 1050 and 700 B.C. is supplanted in the seventh century by a more naturalistic style reflecting significant influence from the Near East and Egypt. Trading stations in the Levant and the Nile Delta, continuing Greek colonization in the east and west, as well as contact with eastern craftsmen, notably on Crete and Cyprus, inspired Greek artists to work in techniques as diverse as gem cutting, ivory carving, jewelry making, and metalworking (1989.281.49-.50). Eastern pictorial motifs were introduced—palmette and lotus compositions, animal hunts, and such composite beasts as griffins (part bird, part lion), sphinxes (part woman, part winged lion), and sirens (part woman, part bird). Greek artists rapidly assimilated foreign styles and motifs into new portrayals of their own myths and customs, thereby forging the foundations of Archaic and Classical Greek art." - Source: Greek Art in the Archaic Period | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
"Design was monumental but not architecturally complex and employed posts and lintels, rather than arches, although Egyptian expertise in stone had a strong influence on later Greek architecture....
The history of art and architecture in Ancient Greece is divided into three basic eras: the Archaic Period (c.600-500 BCE), the Classical Period (c.500-323 BCE) and the Hellenistic Period (c.323-27 BCE). About 600 BCE, inspired by the theory and practice of earlier Egyptian stone masons and builders, the Greeks set about replacing the wooden structures of their public buildings with stone structures - a process known as 'petrification'. Limestone and marble was employed for columns and walls, while terracotta was used for roof tiles and ornaments. Decoration was done in metal, like bronze...
Architectural Methods of Ancient Greece
Like the Egyptians, the Greeks used simple post-and-lintel building techniques." - Source: visual-arts-cork.com
I think the following sums up undeniable 'western' fascination with and romanticization of ancient Egypt:
A SCHOLAR of no less distinction than the late Sir Richard Burton wrote the other day of Egypt as "the inventor of the alphabet, the cradle of letters, the preacher of animism and metempsychosis, and, generally, the source of all human civilization." This is a broad statement; but it is literally true. Hence the irresistible fascination of Egyptology–a fascination which is quite unintelligible to those who are ignorant of the subject. - Amelia Edwards, 1891.
The immigration of Greeks to Egypt for the purpose of their education, began as a result of the Persian invasion (525 B.C.), and continued until the Greeks gained possession of that land and access to the Royal Library, through the conquest of Alexander the Great. Alexandria was converted into a Greek city, a centre of research and the capital of the newly created Greek empire, under the rule of Ptolemies. Egyptian culture survived and flourished, under the name and control of the Greeks, until the edicts of Theodosius in the 4th century A.D., and that of Justinian in the 6th century A.D., which closed the Mystery Temples and Schools, as elsewhere mentioned. (Ancient Egypt by John Kendrick Bk. II p. 55; Sandford's Mediterranean World p. 562; 570).
Concerning the fact that Egypt was the greatest education centre of the ancient world which was also visited by the Greeks, reference must again be made to Plato in the Timaeus who tells us that Greek aspirants to wisdom visited Egypt for initiation, and that the priests of Sais used to refer to them as children in the Mysteries.
As regards the visit of Greek students to Egypt for the purpose of their education, the following are mentioned simply to establish the fact that Egypt was regarded as the educational centre of the ancient world and that like the Jews, the Greeks also visited Egypt and received their education. (1) It is said that during the reign of Amasis, Thales who is said to have been born about 585 B.C., visited Egypt and was initiated by the Egyptian Priests into the Mystery System and science of the Egyptians. We are also told that during his residence
p. 43
in Egypt, he learnt astronomy, land surveying, mensuration, engineering and Egyptian Theology. (See Thales in Blackwell's source book of Philosophy; Zeller's Hist. of Phil.; Diogenes Laertius and Kendrick's Ancient Egypt).
(2) It is said that Pythagoras, a native of Samos, travelled frequently to Egypt for the purpose of his education. Like every aspirant, he had to secure the consent and favour of the Priests, and we are informed by Diogenes that a friendship existed between Polycrates of Samos and Amasis King of Egypt, that Polycrates gave Pythagoras letters of introduction to the King, who secured for him an introduction to the Priests; first to the Priest of Heliopolis, then to the Priest of Memphis, and lastly to the Priests of Thebes, to each of whom Pythagoras gave a silver goblet. (Herodotus Bk. III 124; Diogenes VIII 3; Pliny N. H., 36, 9; Antipho recorded by Porphyry).
We are also further informed through Herodotus, Jablonsk and Pliny, that after severe trials, including circumcision, had been imposed upon him by the Egyptian Priests, he was finally initiated into all their secrets. That he learnt the doctrine of metempsychosis; of which there was no trace before in the Greek religion; that his knowledge of medicine and strict system of dietetic rules, distinguished him as a product of Egypt, where medicine had attained its highest perfection; and that his attainments in geometry corresponded with the ascertained fact that Egypt was the birth place of that Science. In addition we have the statements of Plutarch, Demetrius and Antisthenes that Pythagoras founded the Science of Mathematics among the Greeks, and that he sacrificed to the Muses, when the Priests explained to him the properties of the right angled triangle. (Philarch de Repugn. Stoic 2 p. 1089; Demetrius; Antisthenes; Cicero de Natura Deorum III, 36). Pythagoras was also trained in music by the Egyptian priests. (Kendrick's Hist. of Ancient Egypt vol. I. p. 234).
(3) According to Diogenes Laertius and Herodotus, Democritus is said to have been born about 400 B.C. and to
p. 44
have been a native of Abdera in Miletus. We are also told by Demetrius in his treatise on "People of the Same Name", and by Antisthenes in his treatise on "Succession", that Democritus travelled to Egypt for the purpose of his education and received the instruction of the Priests. We also learn from Diogenes and Herodotus that he spent five years under the instruction of the Egyptian Priests and that after the completion of his education, he wrote a treatise on the sacred characters of Meroe.
In this respect we further learn from Origen, that circumcision was compulsory, and one of the necessary conditions of initiation to a knowledge of the hieroglyphics and sciences of the Egyptians, and it is obvious that Democritus, in order to obtain such knowledge, must have submitted also to that rite. Origen, who was a native of Egypt wrote as follows:—
"Apud Aegyptios nullus aut geometrica studebat, aut astronomiae secreta remabatur, nisi circumcisione suscepta." (No one among the Egyptians, either studied geometry, or investigated the secrets of Astronomy, unless circumcision had been undertaken).
(4) Concerning Plato's travels we are told by Hermodorus that at the age of 28 Plato visited Euclid at Megara in company with other pupils of Socrates; and that for the next ten years he visited Cyrene, Italy and finally Egypt, where he received instruction from the Egyptian Priests.
(5) With regards to Socrates and Aristotle and the majority of pre-Socratic philosophers, history seems to be silent on the question of their travelling to Egypt like the few other students here mentioned, for the purpose of their education. It is enough to say, that in this case the exceptions have proved the rule, that ail students, who had the means, went to Egypt to complete their education. The fact that history fails to supply a fuller account of this type of immigration, might be due to some or all of the following reasons:
(a) The immigration laws against the Greeks up to the time of King Amasis and the Persian Invasion, (b) Prose
p. 45
history was undeveloped among the Greeks during the period of their educational immigration to Egypt. (c) The Greek authorities persecuted and drove students of philosophy into hiding and consequently, (d) Students of the Mystery System concealed their movements.
Let us remember that Anaxagoras was indicted and imprisoned; that he escaped and fled to his home in Ionia, that Socrates was indicted, imprisoned and condemned to death; and that both Plato and Aristotle fled from Athens under great suspicion (William Turner's Hist. of Phil. p. 62; Plato's Phaedo; Zeller's Hist. of Phil. p. 84; 127; Roger's Hist. of Phil. p. 76; William Turner's Hist. of Phil. p. 126). 2. The Effects of the Conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great.
-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:No aspect of this question is more discussed at present than the relation between Greece and the near East, especially Egypt.
Well, of course it's easier to admit that when such western scholars think of it in terms of "Near Eastern" influence. Indeed, they feel the Near East is part of the legacy of western civilization, evident in any college course you take on the subject.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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posted
"Simply put, the Afrasian language family, to which both ancient Egyptian and Semitic languages belong, originated in Africa. The historical linguistic evidence is overwhelming on this point. Within the continent the most probable origin areas of the family lay well to the south, in the Horn of Africa or in the Red Sea Hills immediately north of the Horn. The communities that brought the earliest ancestral forms of ancient Egyptian into Egypt, before the age of agriculture, most probably came from the Red Sea Hills region; and the earliest speakers of Semitic had a northeastern African background as well. These are not new historical conclusions. They have been generally accepted among the linguists of the African language families for more than fifty years. It is long past time for historians or, for that matter, other scholars, such as geneticists, whose work bears on historical scholarship, to begin to take full account of this information."
Ehret, Christopher. (2011) History and the Testimony of Language. University of California Press.
-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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AlTakruri said that Ehret no longer believes that Semetic originated in Africa. How true is that?
Haven't heard the latest on Ehret, but it would be no big deal really. What would be important is that the CORE Afrasan language group emerged in Africa, among tropical peoples. Later on, as the centuries rolled by, Out oF Africa migrations by these tropical peoples, would spread themselves to the Sinai/Palestine/Arabian zone and Semitic would subsequently develop. But it would make little difference because it is tropically derived African peoples who settled that early area.
So you have tropical peoples in Africa speaking 5 out of the 6 AfraSan languages, and tropical peoples speaking Number 6 in Sinai/Palestine /Arabia. Across the board, its tropically derived African peoples in all their diversity. Any "backflow" of these people back to Africa is not the much hoped for "Caucasoid" backflow, but "BLACKflow", the return of tropically derived peoples to broad, general points of origin in Northeastern/Eastern Africa.
The manipulators of language have conditioned us to think of white people, or Middle Eastern types like Jews or Arabs, anytime the word "Semitic" is mentioned, but Semitic is also spoken in Africa and originated with African peoples.
quote: Does anyone believe in Rudolph Windsor's "From Babylon to Timbuktu" regarding migrations?
This would somewhat explain the origins of "Semetic" language.
What are Windsor's claims or theories?
-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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