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.
Posted by zarahan (Member # 15718) on :
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)
Posted by zarahan (Member # 15718) on :
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)
Posted by zarahan (Member # 15718) on :
^
Posted by Neferet (Member # 17109) on :
Excellent reminder!
Posted by zarahan (Member # 15718) on :
^
Posted by The Explorer (Member # 14778) on :
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.
Posted by the lioness (Member # 17353) on :
I noticed Libyans were never mentioned in this whole piece. Maybe just a coincidence
Posted by zarahan (Member # 15718) on :
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)
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..”
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?
Posted by NonProphet (Member # 17745) on :
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?
Posted by zarahan (Member # 15718) on :
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?
Posted by Kalonji (Member # 17303) on :
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.
Posted by NonProphet (Member # 17745) on :
Kalonji,
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.
Posted by Kalonji (Member # 17303) on :
^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.
Posted by the lioness (Member # 17353) on :
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.
Posted by The Explorer (Member # 14778) on :
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.
Posted by the lioness (Member # 17353) on :
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.
Posted by The Explorer (Member # 14778) on :
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.
Posted by the lioness (Member # 17353) on :
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. Posted by The Explorer (Member # 14778) on :
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.
Posted by the lioness (Member # 17353) on :
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
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.
Posted by the lioness (Member # 17353) on :
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.
Posted by The Explorer (Member # 14778) on :
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.
Posted by The Explorer (Member # 14778) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness:
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".
Posted by zarahan (Member # 15718) on :
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
Posted by the lioness (Member # 17353) on :
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?
zarahan won't answer this he prefers to show off his graphics on ancient Badarians
Posted by zarahan (Member # 15718) on :
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?
Posted by NonProphet (Member # 17745) on :
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.
Posted by zarahan (Member # 15718) on :
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
Posted by zarahan (Member # 15718) on :
^
Posted by zarahan (Member # 15718) on :
^
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
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. LOL Posted by zarahan (Member # 15718) on :
^^ maybe tropically-adapted?
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ 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.
Posted by zarahan (Member # 15718) on :
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Data on iron-working - by Takuri
STANLEY B. ALPERN[/b] DID THEY OR DIDN’T THEY INVENT IT? IRON IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA History in Africa, Volume 32, 2005, pp. 41-94
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.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
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.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
X-Ray analysis on the pharaohs"
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.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
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.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
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)
==================
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.
Posted by Sundjata (Member # 13096) on :
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.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
"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.
Posted by KING (Member # 9422) on :
zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova
Great Find.
BUT
AlTakruri said that Ehret no longer believes that Semetic originated in Africa. How true is that?
Peace
Posted by Neferet (Member # 17109) on :
Does anyone believe in Rudolph Windsor's "From Babylon to Timbuktu" regarding migrations?
This would somewhat explain the origins of "Semetic" language.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Originally posted by KING:
quote: zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova
Great Find.
BUT
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?
Posted by L' (Member # 18238) on :
^Did you make those charts and the NileValley database? Great job!
It looks like some sources may need to be updated though.
Posted by Neferet (Member # 17109) on :
In summation, he clearly states that the ancient "black" civilizations came from Sumer, Akkad, and brought their language with them to "Africa" about 6kya.
In his book, "From Babylon to Timbuktu", Chapter 1 - Ancient Black Civilization. A History of the Ancient Black Races Including the Black Hebrews.
I found the book to be an interesting read.
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova: Originally posted by KING:
quote: zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova
Great Find.
BUT
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?
Posted by alTakruri (Member # 10195) on :
But since 2009 Ehret has reversed himself on Semitic's origin and no longer uses Afrasan which he coined but reverted to using Afrasian.
I don't like AfrASIAN because the phylum has nothing to do with Asia. Ancient Semitic is integral to claimants of "western civilization." "Western religion" is indebted to Hebrew and thus follows Nostratic as Semitic's macrophylum. Those not falling for Nostraticisms still would like to see Semitic and its Saharo-Erythraic macrophylum removed from Africa.
Along comes Kitchen 2009 -- Ehret among the et al -- clearly separating all branches of Semitic from originating in continental Africa and emphasizing EthioSemitic as late in time and a migrant from the Arabian peninsula.
OoA has nothing to do with these languages. The latest date for OoA is ~60kya while Semitic's origins date a mere 6kya more than enough time for diverse phenotypes to be present in the far northeast extension of Africa called SW Asia.
Search for flaws in their methodology. Nothing else will do.
I think their methodology is biased for written languages and if so gives a too young date for EthioSemitic. They show no proto-EthioSemitic north or east of the Red Sea from where it is supposed to have migrated. Also they give no explanation for the proliferation of the sub- phylum throughout the Horn or why it has the most lects out of all the Semitic sub-phyla.
Kitchen 2009 cannot be countered with racial arguments. My questioning of the methodology is based on lingusitic factors.
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova: Originally posted by KING:
quote: zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova
Great Find.
BUT
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.
Posted by Sundjata (Member # 13096) on :
quote:But since 2009 Ehret has reversed himself on Semitic's origin
alTakuri, I have to ask, when has he said otherwise (when has he ever championed an African origin of Semitic)?
quote:I think their methodology is biased for written languages and if so gives a too young date for EthioSemitic. They show no proto-EthioSemitic north or east of the Red Sea from where it is supposed to have migrated. Also they give no explanation for the proliferation of the sub- phylum throughout the Horn or why it has the most lects out of all the Semitic sub-phyla.
Kitchen 2009 cannot be countered with racial arguments. My questioning of the methodology is based on lingusitic factors.
Agreed. When I emailed Dr. Kitchen and brought up the epigraphic evidence showing two distinct languages at the time they propose Ethnio-Semitic emerged (one written in characters with phonetic properties thought to be ancestral to Ge'ez, the other in standard South Arabian), he did not address it.
Posted by alTakruri (Member # 10195) on :
He used to posit a continental African origin for Semitic.
quote:Conversation with Christopher Ehret:
Ehret... in southeastern Ethiopia, among people of the Omati group. They descend from the earliest split in the Semitic family.
. . . .
WHC: You seem to be suggesting that the Semitic monotheism Jewish, Christian and Islamic monotheism descends from African models. Is that fair?
Ehret... the early Semites were just a few Africans arriving to find a lot of other people already in the area.
Have I misinterpreted Ehret? As I read him he moved from Mushabians introducing an undifferentiated North Erythraic into Palestine to them actually having spoken proto-Semitic.
quote:Originally posted by Sundjata:
quote:But since 2009 Ehret has reversed himself on Semitic's origin
alTakuri, I have to ask, when has he said otherwise (when has he ever championed an African origin of Semitic)?
Posted by Sundjata (Member # 13096) on :
quote:Apart from their literal meaning, inscriptions can yield information in the two largely independent areas of language and script. All those from Eritrea and northern Ethiopia attributed to the first millennium bc are in South Semitic languages, but they are not linguistically identical. Unfortunately, however, many inscriptions are so short or fragmentary that their linguistic affinities cannot be determined with any confidence. **A few** (designated group I by A. J. Drewes 1962: 97) are in Sabaean, linguistically indistinguishable from southern Arabian inscriptions. True Sabaean inscriptions in the northern Horn are very few, totalling only some 40 words, half of which are personal names. The other inscriptions that are linguistically diagnostic, group II, show signs of specifically African linguistic forms; their language may be designated ‘Old Ethiopic’ or ‘Proto-Ge'ez’ (Schneider 1976b), and several of the personal names that they contain are not attested from southern Arabia (Drewes 1998-9). Palaeographically, it may be shown that the group I inscriptions are not the earliest ones (Schneider 1976a).
---David W. Phillipson (2010) The First Millennium bc in the Highlands of Northern Ethiopia and South–Central Eritrea: A Reassessment of Cultural and Political Development. African Archaeological Review Volume 26, Number 4, 257-274.
Posted by Sundjata (Member # 13096) on :
In the 2009 paper it doesn't seem that they are contradicting that scenario. He doesn't regard Proto-Semitic and this "North Erythraic" as mutually exclusive in the interview.
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: He used to posit a continental African origin for Semitic.
quote:Conversation with Christopher Ehret:
Ehret... in southeastern Ethiopia, among people of the Omati group. They descend from the earliest split in the Semitic family.
. . . .
WHC: You seem to be suggesting that the Semitic monotheism Jewish, Christian and Islamic monotheism descends from African models. Is that fair?
Ehret... the early Semites were just a few Africans arriving to find a lot of other people already in the area.
Have I misinterpreted Ehret? As I read him he moved from Mushabians introducing an undifferentiated North Erythraic into Palestine to them actually having spoken proto-Semitic.
quote:Originally posted by Sundjata:
quote:But since 2009 Ehret has reversed himself on Semitic's origin
alTakuri, I have to ask, when has he said otherwise (when has he ever championed an African origin of Semitic)?
Posted by alTakruri (Member # 10195) on :
Mind you the interview is seven years older than the report and is evidence of Ehret's current about face.
Unless Egyptic and Berber are proto-Semitic then North Erythraic is certainly not proto-Semitic.
quote:Originally posted by Sundjata: In the 2009 paper it doesn't seem that they are contradicting that scenario. He doesn't regard Proto-Semitic and this "North Erythraic" as mutually exclusive in the interview.
Posted by alTakruri (Member # 10195) on :
There's no circumventing the report's conclusion that Semitic originates in the Arabian plate 6kya and that it did not originate in continental Africa. The abstract is very explicit in stating so.
That's what Ehret co-signed two years ago and is why he's reverted from Afrasan to AfrASIAN. It is not his position of seven years ago when he did in fact propose taking Asia out the macrophylum's name.
Anyone who persists in seeing things otherwise than stated point blankly in the report and Ehret's own abandoning Afrasan for AfrASIAN, it's alright with me.
In posting all this I just wanted to verify King's purport in referring to my posting.
Posted by anguishofbeing (Member # 16736) on :
White Joos are very powerful in academia, Ehret if he wants to remain mainstream and "respected" knew he cant talk about any African origins for Semitic, at least not for too long.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
quote:Originally posted by L': ^Did you make those charts and the NileValley database? Great job!
It looks like some sources may need to be updated though.
^Yep, thanks. And those darn sources keep changing, but there are certain settled matters in the field. No doubt future research will refine the data.
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: OoA has nothing to do with these languages. The latest date for OoA is ~60kya while Semitic's origins date a mere 6kya more than enough time for diverse phenotypes to be present in the far northeast extension of Africa called SW Asia.
Agreed. Persons should know though that 6kya the peoples of SW Asia looked like tropical Africans (who themselves have diverse looks). Just some detail to maintain a balanced view that as you say, connects Africa with its SW Asia extension.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ It should be remembered that SW Asia i.e. the Levant and Arabia are right next door to Africa. So why shouldn't they resemble Africans?
Posted by Sundjata (Member # 13096) on :
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: Mind you the interview is seven years older than the report and is evidence of Ehret's current about face.
Unless Egyptic and Berber are proto-Semitic then North Erythraic is certainly not proto-Semitic.
quote:Originally posted by Sundjata: In the 2009 paper it doesn't seem that they are contradicting that scenario. He doesn't regard Proto-Semitic and this "North Erythraic" as mutually exclusive in the interview.
I guess my point was in reference to this:
"Conceivably, with a fuller utilization of grains, they're making bread. We can reconstruct a word for "flatbread," like Ethiopian injira. This is before proto-Semitic divided into Ethiopian and ancient Egyptian languages. So, maybe, the grindstone increases how fully you use the land. This is the kind of thing we need to see more evidence for. We need to get people arguing about this."
^He seems to be using the term interchangably with "pre-proto-Semitic" as referred to in the 2004 article you cited in another thread and in 2009, he calls it "ancestral Semitic". Hence, I honestly don't see where he does an 'about face' if he has never suggested that Semitic proper, differentiated in Africa.
Posted by alTakruri (Member # 10195) on :
A clear statement from Ehret that Semitic was in Africa:
Ehret... the early Semites were just a few Africans arriving to find a lot of other people already in the area.
Ignoring this will not make it go away.
Posted by alTakruri (Member # 10195) on :
This doesn't make any sense. Proto-Semitic, the first Semitic language did not birth Egyptic nor Omotic and Cushitic which are Ethiopian language families.
North Erythraic is certainly not proto-Semitic.
Per Ehret, in his The Civilizations of Africa pg104 North Erythraic subsumes Egyptic, Berber, Chadic, and Semitic. As in this phylogeny by Tishkoff North Erythraic corresponds to proto-BoreAfrasan.
North Erythraic/protoBoreAfrasan is ancestral to Egyptic, Berber, Chadic, and Semitic. It is not ancestral Semitic. ProtoSemitic is ancestral Semitic.
quote:Originally posted by Sundjata:
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: Mind you the interview is seven years older than the report and is evidence of Ehret's current about face.
Unless Egyptic and Berber are proto-Semitic then North Erythraic is certainly not proto-Semitic.
quote:Originally posted by Sundjata: In the 2009 paper it doesn't seem that they are contradicting that scenario. He doesn't regard Proto-Semitic and this "North Erythraic" as mutually exclusive in the interview.
I guess my point was in reference to this:
"Conceivably, with a fuller utilization of grains, they're making bread. We can reconstruct a word for "flatbread," like Ethiopian injira. This is before proto-Semitic divided into Ethiopian and ancient Egyptian languages. So, maybe, the grindstone increases how fully you use the land. This is the kind of thing we need to see more evidence for. We need to get people arguing about this."
^He seems to be using the term interchangably with "pre-proto-Semitic" as referred to in the 2004 article you cited in another thread and in 2009, he calls it "ancestral Semitic". Hence, I honestly don't see where he does an 'about face' if he has never suggested that Semitic proper, differentiated in Africa.
Posted by alTakruri (Member # 10195) on :
I don't think we quite agree. 6kya in 4000 BCE Arabian plate diversity would include types not resembling tropical Africans too. See your top right blurb and below.
Barry Kemp - Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova:
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: OoA has nothing to do with these languages. The latest date for OoA is ~60kya while Semitic's origins date a mere 6kya more than enough time for diverse phenotypes to be present in the far northeast extension of Africa called SW Asia.
Agreed. Persons should know though that 6kya the peoples of SW Asia looked like tropical Africans (who themselves have diverse looks). Just some detail to maintain a balanced view that as you say, connects Africa with its SW Asia extension.
Posted by Neferet (Member # 17109) on :
I'm confused as to how my DNA (L2a1a) haplogroup family was found in the Levant during this period. How does one explain the migration? There must have been the same or similar groups of people between the two geographical areas.
This to me is stating that there were "African" remains found in the Levant but, this is the only haplogroup found with this DNA haplogroup:
Ancient DNA
No ancient DNA has so far been retrieved from African remains, with the exception of Haplogroup L2a1, which was found in two specimens from the Southern Levant Pre-Pottery Neolithic B site at Tell Halula, Syria, dating from the period between ca. 9600 and ca. 8000 BP or 7500 - 6000 BCE.[10]
Source: web page Posted by Sundjata (Member # 13096) on :
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: A clear statement from Ehret that Semitic was in Africa:
Ehret... the early Semites were just a few Africans arriving to find a lot of other people already in the area.
Ignoring this will not make it go away.
I didn't ignore this and in fact addressed it by comparing it to Ehret's recent comment which is generally no different ("and the earliest speakers of Semitic had a northeastern African background as well"), except here, he actually uses the word "Semitic-speaker" as opposed to "Semite". Given that in the interview he associates the spread of "Proto-Semitic" into Asia with the Mushabians (whose culture emerged and died out/integrated with Kebaran culture BEFORE Semitic differentiated from "pre-Proto-Semitic"), he couldn't possibly be using "Semite" here in the context of actual Semitic-speakers. In what way are we referring to the Mushabians as "Semites"? This is an off-the-cuff interview and I wouldn't expect his language to be as prepared as if he were publishing these comments in a journal for peer review.
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: This doesn't make any sense. Proto-Semitic, the first Semitic language did not birth Egyptic nor Omotic and Cushitic which are Ethiopian language families.
North Erythraic is certainly not proto-Semitic.
Per Ehret, in his The Civilizations of Africa pg104 North Erythraic subsumes Egyptic, Berber, Chadic, and Semitic. As in this phylogeny by Tishkoff North Erythraic corresponds to proto-BoreAfrasan.
North Erythraic/protoBoreAfrasan is ancestral to Egyptic, Berber, Chadic, and Semitic. It is not ancestral Semitic. ProtoSemitic is ancestral Semitic.
The above classificatory scheme is not lost on me, I was simply quoting Ehret in the context of his views.
I know it doesn't make sense. Protosemitic is ancestral to Semitic, of course, but I do not believe that I quoted him out of context when he claims (again, off the cuff) that Egyptic divided from Proto-Semitic, especially as having to do with his speculations on bread-making, grindstones, and Mushabian migration. What can be argued is that he should have used another term. Likewise, in the 2009 paper they claim Semitic diverged from ancestral Semetic (i,e. "Proto-Semitic"), but didn't do so until ancestral Semitic happened to reach SW Asia. I am simply at a loss to see any contradiction here. When has he asserted specifically that the earliest Semitic-speakers (not pre-Proto-Semitic-speakers) resided in Africa? In disregarding confusing, seemingly contradicting comments made in interviews, he should have published research articles or book chapters/passages somewhere out there supporting such a position, which in turn would definitively demonstrate his 'reversal'.
There is no benefit in me discussing language families and orders of divergence when my only point of confusion (at least pertaining to your opinion) rests solidly on the above question (where is the published data reflecting this to be his 'older' position?).
Posted by Sundjata (Member # 13096) on :
^In addition to the above, in the interview he calls Semitic an "Asian" off-shoot.
Support of my opinion that his recent use of "Afrasian" was simply due to a force of habit (or maybe a defeatist acknowledgement that no one else is jumping on board) and that it wasn't due to his flipping the script in 2009, is demonstrated here, in this 1996 piece where he uses the term "Afrasian" all through out the essay.
Posted by alTakruri (Member # 10195) on :
This discussion has allowed me to overview several Ehret works from the past two decades. I've presented that which leads to my conclusion and see no reason to modify it in the least or force anyone to see through my eyes what they will not see. It's fine with me whatever position anyone wants to hold for themself. Variety is the spice of life that makes the world go round.
One thing though, when did Ehret start using Afrasan that it should be in a work dated 1996?
Posted by Sundjata (Member # 13096) on :
^No worries. Part of the above was to demonstrate a continuity in terminology and ideas but part of me posting that was indeed based on an unproven assumption that he was already using it. Earliest reference that I could find was 1999 btw.
Posted by L' (Member # 18238) on :
quote:^Yep, thanks. And those darn sources keep changing, but there are certain settled matters in the field. No doubt future research will refine the data.
Nice. For future studies you can check out the "Uploaded Studies" thread in the ancient Egypt section. Uploaded studies are posted there quite often
Posted by alTakruri (Member # 10195) on :
I found out that Ehret has always meant that Mushabaeans carried proto-BoreAfrasian from Egypt across the Sinai and into the Levant where they met and mingled with the Keburan to birth the Natufians. Then, over millenia, pre-proto-Semitic developed in Israel-Palestine.
Whatever pre-proto-Semitic may have consequently flourished throughout the region only one branch became the proto-Semitic from which descend all known Semitic languages spoken today.
He has reverted to Afrasian because people have problems saying Afrasan and too many linguists are unsure of what family Afrasan refers to.
So I retract my incorrect opinion that Ehret ever made claim to Semitic originating in Africa and that he switched from Afrasian to Afrasan then back to Afrasian due to about faces in theories.
Posted by the lioness (Member # 17353) on :
Because of the many indications that non-Semitic languages predominated in Mesopotamia and all around its northern and eastern flanks in the pre-state eras—and that Akkadian therefore was likely intrusive to that region—the second solution seems by far the more probable of the two. The Levant regions, as the part of Asia nearest and more directly connected to Africa, also make much better sense as the proto-Semitic territory, considering the solely African locations of all the rest of the Afrasan family.
However Semitic is distinct from all the other afro-asiatic languages except the languages(berber&egyptian) that make the north-afroasiatic branch with semitic and there are as high as 40% j1 amongst copts and berbers.
The problem is that pre proto semitic migrations are too early pre-historic,in the opposite of late ie migrations,to conclude that they emerged really in ethiopia. For example countries like tchad also contain 2 aa branches(berber and tchadic)so why tchad would not be the aa homeland same as ethiopia which have also 2 aa branches(omotic and kushitic)? or for ie languages why balkan would not be considered ie homeland with as many as native branches as 3-4(ilyrian,greek,paleobalkanic,messapic)branches?
The differences between Chadic, Omotic, Cushitic and Semitic, were wider than those seen between any members of the Indo-European family and as wide as some of the differences seen within and between separate language families, for example, Indo-European and Altaic.
distinct languages in ethiopia that have some pre proto semitic lexical superstratum(kushitic)or grammatical substratum(ethiosemic=south semitic)are not the result of Ethiopia being aa languages homeland the same as Balkan or Anatolia not being ie homeland despite the historical presence in these 2 regions of very distinct ie languages(messapic,ilyrian,greek and paleobalkan branches for the balkan and hittite,armenian and palaic branches in anatolia)
Afrasian speaking groups have a large amount of J1 whereas Nilo-Saharian speaking dont have J1 but have E1b1b.
there is no attested historial semitic language in Sudan or Egypt(except linguisitc vestiges of the various semitic migrants to Egypt:amurites,hyksos,canaanites,assyrians,habiru, khilmu,arameans,hashu,qedar,hebrews...) And there is not a single semitic branch of ethiopia but rather an offspring of south arabian which itself is an offspring of southern group of western semitic branch.
Andrew Kitchen and others using Bayesian techniques in phylogenetic analysis identifies a place of origin for Semitic in the Levant, giving rise to the most basal of Semitic languages in Akkadian:
"Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of Semitic languages identifies an Early Bronze Age origin of Semitic in the Near East"
South Semitic may have been introduced to Ethiopia sometime before the 8th century BC. This is also supported by the presence of nouns in proto Semitic that seemingly make an African origin for the language impossible - ice, oak, horse and camel.[citation needed] The camel[8] and horse[9] did not arrive in Africa until nearly two thousand years after Semitic languages were being written in the Mesopotamia area.
Other more recent work suggests Syria/Mesopotamia as the homeland for proto Semitic, due to the flora and fauna described by it, which include oak, pistachio and almond trees and the horse. The presence of ice and four different words for hill also suggest a colder, more mountainous area than Arabia. Eblaite, one of the oldest Semitic languages, when deciphered turned out to have almost no non-Afroasiatic nouns in its lexicon, suggesting a very long presence in the Syria area. Bitumen and naphtha were also well known and have root words, and these are resources not found in Africa or Arabia, but commonly in the northern parts of the Levant.
E is mostly connected with Africanic languages(Nilo-Saharan+Niger-Kongo),african phenotype,african religions and african culture . J is mostly connected with afro-asiatic languages,mediterranean phenotype and semitic culture and religions. As J peoples historically introduced agriculture,abrahamic religions,mediterranean phenotype and alphabet to Africa it's logical to think that they also introduced aa languages to Africa in prehistorical times. Semitic languages are closer to indo-european languages(both being apophonic,inflective languages witth shared lexical stems and grammatical features as universally very rare dual and feminine pronouns)than to kushitic languages for example as kushitic langauges are agglutinative languages not apophonic inflective ones.
P58 actually imposed the Semitic language on M34, not the opposite as many think.
The idea that Nilo-Saharan was more wide spread some time in ancient time isn't a new one...Ehret puts his supposedly 9000 year old pastorals in the Sahel as (proto-)Nilo-Saharan. According to him they were supposedly marginalised and/or assimilated by incoming Afro-Asiatic speakers (of which the ones in that area would later become proto-Cushitic speakers).
Posted by Sundjata (Member # 13096) on :
^Stop quoting wikipedia. The scholarship standards there are widely known to be sub-par, which is why it can't be used as a source in any college-level discussion paper.
Posted by L' (Member # 18238) on :
^Lioness has been doing that alot lately... it would be nice if she at least used quotation marks instead of pretending they are her words lol. Wikipedia is never a reliable source for controversial issues, Lioness.
Posted by Sundjata (Member # 13096) on :
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: I found out that Ehret has always meant that Mushabaeans carried proto-BoreAfrasian from Egypt across the Sinai and into the Levant where they met and mingled with the Keburan to birth the Natufians. Then, over millenia, pre-proto-Semitic developed in Israel-Palestine.
Whatever pre-proto-Semitic may have consequently flourished throughout the region only one branch became the proto-Semitic from which descend all known Semitic languages spoken today.
He has reverted to Afrasian because people have problems saying Afrasan and too many linguists are unsure of what family Afrasan refers to.
So I retract my incorrect opinion that Ehret ever made claim to Semitic originating in Africa and that he switched from Afrasian to Afrasan then back to Afrasian due to about faces in theories.
Respect, Mon!
Posted by the lioness (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sundjata: ^Stop quoting wikipedia. The scholarship standards there are widely known to be sub-par, which is why it can't be used as a source in any college-level discussion paper.
that's an ad hominem criticism of wikipedia rather than addressing the accuracy of statements made. Many of the statements are supported by published articles which can be cited. Besides a large percentage of the post is not from wikipedia.
-she used some information from wikipedia it must be wrong then.
^^^non-argument + snobbery
you need to review what I posted because many important points were made. Let's let alTakruri handle it
signed, lioness
Posted by Sundjata (Member # 13096) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness:
quote:Originally posted by Sundjata: [qb] ^Stop quoting wikipedia. The scholarship standards there are widely known to be sub-par, which is why it can't be used as a source in any college-level discussion paper.
that's an ad hominem criticism of wikipedia rather than addressing the accuracy of statements made.
No it is not because wikipedia is a platform, not an individual human being that I am personally attacking. That platform is flawed as any dumb azz can edit the page and the standards are loose and the refereeing process is tedious and ineffective. I know from personal experience, it is not ideal for controversial topics and not thought of as a reliable source in any college classroom or scholarly setting. If you are simply advancing ideas and statements, then think for your self, find the sources and make the statements yourself instead of plastering and pasting incoherent thoughts from a random wiki page.
Posted by the lioness (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sundjata:
quote:Originally posted by the lioness: [qb]
quote:Originally posted by Sundjata: [qb] ^Stop quoting wikipedia. The scholarship standards there are widely known to be sub-par, which is why it can't be used as a source in any college-level discussion paper.
that's an ad hominem criticism of wikipedia rather than addressing the accuracy of statements made.
No it is not because wikipedia is a platform, not an individual human being that I am personally attacking. That platform is flawed
but some of it's not flawed. Some of it is a direct quote from Ehret and others. You're just having trouble with dealing determining what is a "flaw" and what is not. In fact I can put up the published studies and you will come in and say some of that is flawed. I'm done with you and L' for the moment. Call up Explorer and alTurkuri. They would be able to correct the "flaws" rather than run in a mouse-like fashion
Posted by Sundjata (Member # 13096) on :
^I doubt they'd even waste time on you.
Posted by alTakruri (Member # 10195) on :
I refuse to be something the Lioness dragged in!
quote:Originally posted by the lioness: you need to review what I posted because many important points were made. Let's let alTakruri handle it
signed, lioness
Posted by alTakruri (Member # 10195) on :
But seriously, what happened to the days when half the board would chime in on discussions? When did this place become a dueling ground between two individuals at a time? Everybody has got some insight they could contribute no matter its relative weight compared to others' input on a topic. Bring back the vox pop!!
Posted by alTakruri (Member # 10195) on :
I mean, are the more astute of the "trolls" the only ones left here with the temerity to express their non group think alternatives, options, and opinions?
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
COurtesy of Sundjata - shedding more light on grouping of Middle Eastern limb lengths with Africans rather than Europeans: [QUOTE]:
"Limb length proportions in males from Maadi and Merimde group them with African rather than European populations. Mean femur length in males from Maadi was similar to that recorded at Byblos and the early Bronze Age male from Kabri, but mean tibia length in Maadi males was 6.9cm longer than that at Byblos. At Merimde both bones were longer than at the other sites shown, but again, the tibia was longer proportionate to femurs than at Byblos (Fig 6.2), reinforcing the impression of an African rather than Levantine affinity."
-- Smith, P. (2002) The palaeo-biological evidence for admixture between populations in the southern Levant and Egypt in the fourth to third millennia BCE
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
E is mostly connected with Africanic languages(Nilo-Saharan+Niger-Kongo),african phenotype,african religions and african culture . J is mostly connected with afro-asiatic languages,mediterranean phenotype and semitic culture and religions.
^^The problem with this nonsense is that numerous 'E" peoples speak Afro-Asiatic languages, and indeed said Afro-Asiatic languages originated in Africa, where 'E" is most frequent.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
^What occupations are they working at above?
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Trades and occupations aside from the fishing?
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Who were Lord Nakht, Antefoger and Prince Amenkhep?
Posted by KING (Member # 9422) on :
zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova
This is what I found out about Lord Nakht enjoy:
The name Nakht means "the strong one." Several men named Nakht are known, one in the Middle Kingdom and others in the New Kingdom. Most held positions of some note within the Egyptian bureaucracy.
So much of the time, attention is given to the treasures and actions of the kings, their armies, and their diplomatic lives. The focus is usually on the burial process and ceremony undergone by the kings. After all, so much of the mystery and exotic ambience of Egypt that we feel today comes from the rich gold, jewelry, great monuments, and "legendary curses" that fuel movies and the modern western mind.
If we take notice of "lesser beings" such as viziers, governors, and other nobles, we want to know of their treasures, and their activities as far as where they fit in with the King of the time.
But sometimes even what we "know" of the upper classes is truly nothing at all. All we have is quantity, not quality. Sometimes, what we know of the common people, the workers, bakers, weavers, stonemasons, gives us a richer picture of ancient Egyptian life, and make us feel more akin to these people from five millennia ago.
Two particular men, both named Nakht, illustrate this point. One was a humble weaver, who told us much of his life even after the passage of millennia. The other Nakht was a temple Scribe, with an honored position. Let us look first at Scribe Nakht.
Our first Nakht was a scribe and "Observer of the Hours of the night" at the Temple of Amun, which meant he was either an actual astronomer, or at least he was responsible for assuring that rituals were carried out at the correct times. He was married to a woman named Tawy, who herself held the position of "Chantress of Amun," meaning she was a temple musician, an honored position in itself.
Nakht’s tomb has been found in Thebes, along with many others, and studied. It contains a number of now fairly familiar scenes of daily life. When the tomb was originally discovered, a number of objects were noted in the burial chamber, and removed for transportation. One object was a kneeling statuette, depicting Nakht holding a stela with a hymn to the sun god Re. Unfortunately, the ship carrying the funerary equipment was torpedoed and sunk during WW I, so nothing is left of the originals.
There is another scene of hunting in the papyrus thickets. The hunt has been a common part of tomb decoration since the Old Kingdom, a thousand years earlier. Nakht is shown launching his throw stick at birds while his wife and two children look on. The caption reads: "Enjoying and beholding beauty, spending leisure with the work of the marsh goddess by the confederate of the Mistress of the Catch, the Observer of Hours of Amun, the Scribe Nakht, justified. His wife, the Chantress of Amun, the Mistress of the House, Tawy, says, "Enjoy the work of the goddess of the marsh. Waterfowl were assigned to him for his time.""
To the right of that scene, Nakht is spearing fish. The caption reads, "Crossing the marshes and wandering through the swamps, amusing himself with spearing fish, the Observer of Hours, Amun, justified."
In another scene, Nakht stands in a boat, watched by his wife and three children. It is not clear if these were representations of real children, who may have died after the paintings were complete and thus could not sustain the funerary cult for Nakht, or if these were a fiction for the afterlife.
Nothing is known of Nakht’s work, how he served his office in the temple, what prayers he may have offered, when he died, if he had illnesses or misfortunes. His name appeared to be effaced in places within the chamber, so possibly he fell out of favor at some time.
More is known of another named Nakht, this one a young boy of the peasant class. What is known of him is possible only because his corpse, unembalmed, was donated as part of a study of ancient bodies to learn more about the physiological conditions known to the ancient Egyptians.
Nakht the weaver had been laying in his humble wooden coffin, stashed in the Royal Ontario Museum museum’s basement storeroom. When studies demanded a body about which at least the provenance was known, and the location where it had been found, the curator of Egyptology offered Nakht for examination
Not much info on Amenkhep what I know is that he was Queen Nefertiti's son. He was the Queens First Born. Thats all I know. Hopefully someone else can post what they know about Amenkhep
Peace
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Thanks KING. Just wondered which one of the Nakht's are in the pic below.. I think Jari or Djehuti originally posted the pics..
The prince per pic posters..
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Scratch that post above- you answered the question. He is Nakht the Scribe. Pic credits also Wally..
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Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Abstract
Using primarily linguistic evidence, and taking into account recent archaeology at sites such as Hierakonpolis/Nekhen, as well as the symbolic meaning of objects such as sceptres and headrests in Ancient Egyptian and contemporary African cultures, this paper traces the geographical location and movements of early peoples in and around the Nile Valley. It is possible from this overview of the data to conclude that the limited conceptual vocabulary shared by the ancestors of contemporary Chadic-speakers (therefore also contemporary Cushitic-speakers), contemporary Nilotic-speakers and Ancient Egyptian-speakers suggests that the earliest speakers of the Egyptian language could be located to the south of Upper Egypt or, earlier, in the Sahara. The marked grammatical and lexicographic affinities of Ancient Egyptian with Chadic are well-known, and consistent Nilotic cultural, religious and political patterns are detectable in the formation of the first Egyptian kingships. The question these data raise is the articulation between the languages and the cultural patterns of this pool of ancient African societies from which emerged Predynastic Egypt.
"It is possible from this overview of the data to conclude that the limited conceptual vocabulary shared by the ancestors of contemporary Chadic-speakers (therefore also contemporary Cushitic-speakers), contemporary Nilotic-speakers and Ancient Egyptian-speakers suggests that the earliest speakers of the Egyptian language could be located to the south of Upper Egypt (Diakonoff 1998) or, earlier, in the Sahara (Wendorf 2004), where Takács (1999, 47) suggests their ‘long co-existence’ can be found. In addition, it is consistent with this view to suggest that the northern border of their homeland was further than the Wadi Howar proposed by Blench (1999, 2001), which is actually its southern border. Neither Chadics nor Cushitics existed at this time, but their ancestors lived in a homeland further north than the peripheral countries that they inhabited thereafter, to the south-west, in a Niger-Congo environment, and to the south-east, in a Nilo-Saharan environment, where they interacted and innovated in terms of language. From this perspective, the Upper Egyptian cultures were an ancient North East African ‘periphery at the crossroads’, as suggested by Dahl and Hjort-af-Ornas of the Beja (Dahl and Hjort-af-Ornas 2006).
The most likely scenario could be this: some of these Saharo-Nubian populations spread southwards to Wadi Howar, Ennedi and Darfur; some stayed in the actual oases where they joined the inhabitants; and others moved towards the Nile, directed by two geographic obstacles, the western Great Sand Sea and the southern Rock Belt. Their slow perambulations led them from the area of Sprinkle Mountain (Gebel Uweinat) to the east – Bir Sahara, Nabta Playa, Gebel Ramlah, and Nekhen/Hierakonpolis (Upper Egypt), and to the north-east by way of Dakhla Oasis to Abydos (Middle Egypt)."--Anselin (2009)
--Dr. Alain Anselin (University of Antilles-Guyane) Some notes about an early African pool of cultures from which emerged Egyptian civilization. In:
Egypt in its African Context. 2009. Proceedings of the conference held at the Manchester Museum, University of Manchester, ENgland. Karen Exell (ed). BAR International Series 2204 2011 Archaeopress Publishers of British Archaeological Reports
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
full citations:
"Limb length proportions in males from Maadi and Merimde group them with African rather than European populations. Mean femur length in males from Maadi was similar to that recorded at Byblos and the early Bronze Age male from Kabri, but mean tibia length in Maadi males was 6.9cm longer than that at Byblos. At Merimde both bones were longer than at the other sites shown, but again, the tibia was longer proportionate to femurs than at Byblos (Fig 6.2), reinforcing the impression of an African rather than Levantine affinity."
-- Smith, P. (2002) The palaeo-biological evidence for admixture between populations in the southern Levant and Egypt in the fourth to third millennia BCE. in E.C.M van den Brink and TE Levy, eds. Egypt and the Levant: interrelations from the 4th through the 3rd millenium, BCE. Leicester Univ Press: 2002, 118-28
"These same log shape variables were subjected to two forms of cluster analysis: neighbor-joining (NJ) and unweighted pair-group method using averages (UPGMA) tree analysis. Figure 8 is the NJ tree. It has two main branches—a long and linear body build branch that includes the Egyptians, Sub-Saharan Africans (except for the Pygmies), and African-Americans and a second, less linear body form branch that includes the Inuit, Europeans, Euro-Americans, Puebloans, Nubians, and Pygmies. Note that the Nubians used in this study are thought by some to represent an immigrant population from Europe or Western Asia [see Holliday (1995)]."
--Holiday, T. (2010) Body proportions of circumpolar peoples as evidenced from skeletal data. AmerJrPhyAntrho, 142: 2. 287-302
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
new data on tropical limb proportions
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
KITTLES AND LONG 2003, 2010, DEBUNK RACE AS BIOLOGICAL CONCEPT
quote: The belief that human genetic diversity on a global scale can be reduced to simple statistical partitions has limited our understanding of diversity and thwarted training in biological anthropology. For example, a current textbook (Boyd and Silk 2000) states, “Geneticists computed the amount of variation in these characters within each local group, among groups within each race, and among the races. They found that there is much more genetic variation within local groups than there is among local groups or among races themselves. Differences within local groups account for about 85% of all the variation in the human species. To put this another way, suppose a malevolent extraterrestrial wiped out the entire human species except for one local group, which it preserved in an extraterrestrial zoo. The alien could pick any local group at random—the Efe, the Inuit, the citizens of Ames, Iowa, or the people of Patagonia—and then wipe out the rest of the humans on the planet. This group would still contain on average 85% of the genetic variation that exists in the entire human species.” However, our analysis indicates that it would make a great difference which group is chosen. For example, no gene diversity would be lost if the Sokoto were chosen while nearly one-third would be lost by choosing the subpopulation from Papua New Guinea. It is important to point out here that the rich genetic diversity within Africans is a robust finding that is not peculiar to the loci or specific samples analyzed here. Recently, Yu et al. (2002) assayed nucleotide substitutions in 50 randomly chosen noncoding DNA segments (~500 base pairs) in 30 individuals: 10 Africans, 10 Europeans, and 10 Asians. The subjects within each continent were chosen widely from dispersed geographic locations. Interestingly, nucleotide diversity was greater within the Africans than within either Asians or Europeans. More importantly, the nucleotide diversity was greater within Africans than between Europeans and Asians.
--Human Genetic Diversity and the Nonexistence of Biological Races. Jeffrey C. Long1 and Rick A. Kittles2 (2003). Human Biology, v75, no.4. pp. 449-471
quote: Now, with more genetic data and more populations sampled, we are able to revisit the race problem with greater accuracy. Recently, my colleagues and I have tested the usefulness of race as a way to describe genetic differences among populations by contrasting the results of racial classification with those from generalized hierarchical models (Long et al. 2009). Race fails! Figure 3 diagrams the contrast for a data set consisting of complete DNA sequences for 64 autosomal loci (38,000 bp total). Four resequenced individuals represent each population. A summary of the major problems with using race are as follows. First, imposing the classically defined race structure on populations causes us to estimate less diversity for the species as a whole than does allowing all populations to link back to a common base population in an unrestricted hierarchy. Second, using the race pattern causes us to estimate excess diversity within non-sub- Saharan African populations, but it estimates a deficit of diversity within sub-Saharan African populations. Third, the supposition of races forces all continental populations to diverge equally from a single ancestral node, whereas an unrestricted hierarchy places the basal split within Africa. Fourth, in the classical race framework European and Asian populations diverge from African populations independently, but the unrestricted hierarchy shows that European and East Asian populations link together before either links to sub-Saharan Africans..
--Update to Long and Kittles’s “Human Genetic Diversity and the Nonexistence of Biological Races” (2003): Fixation on an Index. Jeffrey C. Long1 (2010). Human Biology, v81, no5-6, pp. 799-803
Posted by L' (Member # 18238) on :
I saw reference to a study called Carlson 2008, do you recall the title?
Also, I forgot which image, but I saw Zakrzewski (2004) I just can't remember which chart I saw it on :-/ Could you tell me?
Keep up the database, it's a great resource!!
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
I draw a blank now on those 2. Probably buried somewhere in the master list. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
more for the archives...
Modern Egyptians cluster with Sub-Saharan Africans on several counts QUOTE:
"The biological characteristics of modern Egyptians show a north-south cline, reflecting their geographic location between sub-Saharan Africa and the Levant. This is expressed in DNA, blood groups, serum proteins and genetic disorders (Filon 1996; Hammer et al. 1998; Krings et al. 1999). They can also be expressed in phenotypic characteristics that can be identified in teeth and bones (Crichton 1966; Froment 1992; Keita 1996). These characteristics include head form, facial and nasal characteristics, jaw relationships, tooth size, morphology and upper/lower limb proportions. In all these features, Modern Egyptians resemble Sub-Saharan Africans (Howells 1989, Keita 1995)."
-- Smith, P. (2002) The palaeo-biological evidence for admixture between populations in the southern Levant and Egypt in the fourth to third millennia BCE. in E.C.M van den Brink and TE Levy, eds. Egypt and the Levant: interrelations from the 4th through the 3rd millenium, BCE. Leicester Univ Press: 2002, 118-28
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"Descriptions and photographs of late paleolithic remains from Egypt indicate characteristics which distinguish them clearly from their European counterparts at 30,000 and 20,000 years BP (cf. Thoma, 1984; Stewart, 1985; Angel 1986). These characteristics, commonly called "Negroid", are shared with later Nile Valley and more southerly groups. Epipaleolithic Nile valley remains diverge notably from their Maghreban and European counterparts in key craniofacial characteristics (see comments in Keita, 1990); although late Natufian hunters and early Anatolian farmers (Angel, 1972) shared many of these traits, suggesting late Paleolithic migration out of Africa, as supported by archaeology (Bar Yosef, 1987)." --International Journal of Anthropology, Volume 10. 1995. pg 110
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"Descriptions and photographs of late paleolithic remains from Egypt indicate characteristics which distinguish them clearly from their European counterparts at 30,000 and 20,000 years BP (cf. Thoma, 1984; Stewart, 1985; Angel 1986). These characteristics, commonly called "Negroid", are shared with later Nile Valley and more southerly groups. Epipaleolithic Nile valley remains diverge notably from their Maghreban and European counterparts in key craniofacial characteristics (see comments in Keita, 1990); although late Natufian hunters and early Anatolian farmers (Angel, 1972) shared many of these traits, suggesting late Paleolithic migration out of Africa, as supported by archaeology (Bar Yosef, 1987)." --International Journal of Anthropology, Volume 10. 1995. pg 110
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African M1
"The majority of the resting M lineages found in Arabia has matches or are related to Indian clades. In addition, some M sequences point to rare links with more remote geographic regions as Central Asia, West New Guinea and even Australia (Abu-Amero et al., 2008). Although more ancient connections cannot be discarded, it seems that this rare M component in the Arabian populations could be the result of trade and military links among those regions in Arabia during and after the British role. As all the M lineages found in Arabia belong to haplogroups that have deeper roots and diversities in other geographic regions, its presence in the Arabian peninsula is better explained as external genetic inputs. Therefore, there are no traces of autochthonous M lineages in Arabia that could support the exit of modern humans from Africa across the Bab al Mandab strait."
--Vicente M. Cabrera et al. 2009
Cabrera V. et. al (2009). The Arabian Penisula: Gate for Human Migrations Out of Africa or Cul-de-sac? A Mitochondrial DNA Phylogeographic Perspective. IN: Petraglia, D. and Rose J. (eds) (2009) The Evolution of Human Populations in Arabia: Paleoenvironments, Prehistory and Genetics. Springer: 2010. pp. 79-87 --------------------------------------------------------------------
"Macrohaplogroup M in Arabia
Macrohaplogroup M is particularly abundant and diverse in South and Southeast Asia, reaching frequencies above 60% in some regions (Metspalu et al., 2004). However, it is practically absent in western Asia (Quintana-Murci et al., 2004). In Africa, only one autochthonous basal branch of M, named M1, has been detected (Quintana-Murci et al., 1999). In this continent it has a predominant northern distribution. M1 is particularly abundant in Ethiopia (20%). From there, frequencies significantly diminish forming decreasing gradients westwards and southwards. It has been proposed that the presence of M1 in Africa and surrounding Mediterranean areas can be explained as result of two expansion centers situated in East and Northwest Africa which are marked by the radiation of subhaplogroups M1a and M1b respectively (Olivieri et al., 2006; González et al., 2007). Although the coalescence age of M1 is Paleolithic it seems that the most important expansions occurred in Neolithic times when the Sahara was a more hospitable region. Some authors consider that the presence of M1 in Africa supports the idea that macrohaplogroup M originated in eastern Africa and was carried towards Asia with the out of Africa expansion (Quintana-Murci et al., 1999), others think that the distribution of M1 in Africa traces an early human backflow to this Continent from Asia (Maca-Meyer et al., 2001; Olivieri et al., 2006; González et al., 2007).
In Arabia, M lineages account for 7% of the total and half of them belong to the M1 African clade. M1 frequencies are significantly greater in western Arabian regions than in the East (Abu-Amero et al., 2008). As the majority of the M1 haplotypes in Arabia belong to the East African M1a subclade, it seems that, likewise L lineages, [b]the M1 presence in the Arabian peninsula signals a predominant East African influence since the Neolithic onwards."
--Vicente M. Cabrera et al. 2009 Cabrera V. et. al (2009). The Arabian Penisula: Gate for Human Migrations Out of Africa or Cul-de-sac? A Mitochondrial DNA Phylogeographic Perspective. IN: Petraglia, D. and Rose J. (eds) (2009) The Evolution of Human Populations in Arabia: Paleoenvironments, Prehistory and Genetics. Springer: 2010. pp. 79-87
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Ancient "Middle Easterners" lack the tropical body proportions of ancient Egyptians
QUOTE: "There is long-standing disagreement regarding Upper Pleistocene human evolution in Western Asia, particularly the Levant. Some argue that there were two different populations, perhaps different species, of Upper Pleistocene Levantine hominids. The first, from the Israeli sites of Qafzeh and Skhul, is anatomically modern. The second, from sites such as Amud, Kebara, and Tabun, is archaic, or "Neandertal" in morphology. Others argue that this is a false dichotomy and that all of these hominids belong to a single, highly variable population. In this paper I attempt to resolve this issue by examining postcranial measures reflective of body shape. Results indicate that the Qafzeh-Skhul hominids have African-like, or tropically adapted, proportions, while those from Amud, Kebara, Tabun, and Shanidar (Iraq) have more European-like, or cold-adapted, proportions. This suggests that there were in fact two distinct Western Asian populations and that the Qafzeh-Skhul hominids were likely African in origin - a result consistent with the "Replacement" model of modern human origins.
What we can say, however, is that in the Holocene, humans from southwest Asia do not exhibit tropically adapted body shape (Crognier 1981; Eveleth and Tanner 1976; Schreider 1975).... "
---Trenton Holliday (2000) Evolution at the Crossroads: Modern Human Emergence in Western Asia. American Anthropologist. New Series, Vol. 102, No. 1, 54-68
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
full quote:
Ancient "Middle Easterners" lack the tropical body proportions of ancient Egyptians
QUOTE: "There is long-standing disagreement regarding Upper Pleistocene human evolution in Western Asia, particularly the Levant. Some argue that there were two different populations, perhaps different species, of Upper Pleistocene Levantine hominids. The first, from the Israeli sites of Qafzeh and Skhul, is anatomically modern. The second, from sites such as Amud, Kebara, and Tabun, is archaic, or "Neandertal" in morphology. Others argue that this is a false dichotomy and that all of these hominids belong to a single, highly variable population. In this paper I attempt to resolve this issue by examining postcranial measures reflective of body shape. Results indicate that the Qafzeh-Skhul hominids have African-like, or tropically adapted, proportions, while those from Amud, Kebara, Tabun, and Shanidar (Iraq) have more European-like, or cold-adapted, proportions. This suggests that there were in fact two distinct Western Asian populations and that the Qafzeh-Skhul hominids were likely African in origin - a result consistent with the "Replacement" model of modern human origins.
"What we can say, however, is that in the Holocene, humans from southwest Asia do not exhibit tropically adapted body shape (Crognier 1981; Eveleth and Tanner 1976; Schreider 1975). In addition, while Levantine winters today are generally characterized as mild (Henkin et al. 1998), they are nonetheless quite often cold, with frequent snowfall—for example, the winter of 1992 was particularly cold and snowy in Israel (Vishnevetsky and Steinberger 19%). Given that the Holocene is a warm phase, yet recent Levantine humans do not exhibit a tropically adapted morphology, there is little reason to assume that in the (generally colder) Pleistocene epoch, natural selection alone could result in tropically adapted morphology in the region.
Thus, the discovery of tropically adapted hominids in the region would therefore likely indicate population dispersal from the TROPICS, and the most logical geographic source for such an influx is Africa. In this regard, Trinkaus (1981, 1984, 1995) and Ruff (1994) have argued that the high brachial and crural indices, narrow biiliac breadths, and small relative femoral head sizes of the Qafzeh-Skhul hominids suggest an influx of African genes associated with the emergence of modern humans in the region."
---Trenton Holliday (2000) Evolution at the Crossroads: Modern Human Emergence in Western Asia. American Anthropologist. New Series, Vol. 102, No. 1, 54-68
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Emergence of Haplogroup M occurred among dark-skinned tropical peoples – QUOTE:
"Macaulay's research team analyses the Orang Asli, the aboriginal inhabitants of the Malay Penisula, while Thangaraj and colleagues focused on the Andamese islanders, called 'Negritos' (for the characteristic phenotype of dark skin), both groups performing a large number of complete mitochondrial sequences in order to clarify the origin of these populations. They discovered that both Orang Asli and Andaman islanders harboured ancient mtDNA lineages, belonging to the founder haplogroups M, N, and R, with coalescence ages of ~44,000 to ~63,000 years, which were considered the legacy of an early diffusion of modern humans out of Africa. Thus, there was a single rapid out of Africa dispersal (~70,000 years ago) involving a founding group of individuals harbouring the L3 mtDNA haplogroup and starting from the Horn of Africa towards the Persian Gulf and further along the tropical coast of the Indian Ocean to Southeast Asia and Australasia. During this coastal migration, haplogroups M, N and R evolved and the ancestral L3 was lost. Moreover, this scenario is strongly supported by palaeoenvironmental evidence, confirming that a northern migration would have been impossible during the glacial period extending from ~70,000 to 50,000 years ago."
Haplogroup M not found much in Europe or the Middle East, but in Africa, M1 appears - QUOTE.
"The richest basal variation in the founder haplogroups , N and R is found among the southern stretch of Eurasia, particularly in the Indian subcontinent (Figure 1), suggesting a rapid colonization along the southern coast of Asia.. Western Eurasians, in contrast with Southern Asians, eastern Eurasians, and Australasians, have a high level of haplogroup diversity within the haplogroup N and R, but lack haplogroup M also entirely (Figure 1)... Although Haplogroup M differentiated soon after the out of Africa exit and it is widely distributed in Asia (east Asia and India) and Oceania, there is an interesting exception for one of its more than 40 sub-clades: M1.. Indeed this lineage is mainly limited to the African continent with peaks in the Horn of Africa." --Paola Spinozzi, Alessandro Zironi . (2010). Origins as a Paradigm in the Sciences and in the Humanities. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. pp. 48-50
Misleading "Eurasian" label flagged by some scholars - QUOTE: "The historical linguistic data reported earlier would apply in the case of maternal lineages as well.. it is not likely that the "northern" genetic profile is simply due to "Eurasians" having colonized supra-Saharan regions from external African sources. It might be likely that the greater percentage of haplotypes called "Eurasian" are predominantly, although not solely, of indigenous African origin. As a term "Eurasian" is likely misleading, since it suggests a single locale of geographical origins. This is because it can be postulated that differentiation of the L3* haplogroup began before the emigration out of Africa, and that there would be indigenous supra-Saharan/Saharan or Horn-supra-Saharan haplotypes. More work and careful analysis of mtDNA and the archeological data and likely probabilities is needed. Early hunting and gathering paleolithic populations can be modeled as having roamed between northern Africa and Eurasia, leaving an asymmetrical distribution of various derivative variants over a wide region, giving the appearance of Eurasian incursion." --Keita, A, Boyce, A. (2005) Genetics, Egypt, and History... History in Africa, 32, 221-246
“..the M1 presence in the Arabian peninsula signals a predominant East African influence since the Neolithic onwards.“ -- Petraglia, M and Rose, J (2010). The Evolution of Human Populations in Arabia:
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
More data:
Body proportions are immensely stable, and appear distinctly even in the fetal stage of life. Body shape is also more resistant to nutritional deficiency and disease. Even in migrant populations body proportions are conservative, and not very plastic. Hence ancient Egyptian proportions are long-standing, conservative, stable elements that characterize the ancient populations to a much greater extent than more changeable skin color or face shape.
QUOTE:
"Human body proportions also appear to have a substantial genetic component. Differences in body proportions between Eskimos and non-Eskimos, for example, appear early in ontogeny (Guilbeault & Morazain, 1965; Y’Edynak, 1978). The low sitting height/stature ratio of Australian aborigines is present early in development (Eveleth & Tanner, 1976). Schultz (1923, 1926) found significant differences between African–American and Euroamerican fetuses in brachial and crural indices, length of the legs relative to the trunk, and relative pelvic width. The fact that these ‘‘racial’’ features are manifested early in fetal life indicates strong genetic encoding of body and limb proportions.
In addition, body shape in human appears to be more resistant to nutritional deficiency or disease than is body size (Stini, 1975; Eveleth & Tanner, 1976; Frisancho & Housh, 1988; Martorell et al., 1988). Body proportions of human migrants, for example, are conservative; despite often exhibiting a marked increase in stature, children of migrants tend to retain the body proportions of their ancestral homeland, and do not develop the proportions of their new neighbors (Ito, 1942; Lasker, 1946; Trotter & Gleser, 1952, 1958; Greulich, 1957; Eveleth, 1966; Froehlich, 1970; Benoist, 1971, 1975; Hamill et al., 1973; Martorell et al., 1988; Feldesman et al., 1990). Also, while secular trends in body shape have been documented, they do not negate the value of body proportions as short-term phylogenetic markers. For example, in a long-term study of secular trends in body shape in Japan (Tanner et al., 1982), the authors note that nutritional differences alone cannot explain all of the global variability in body shape. Rather, they note that much of the difference seen today in body shape between broad geographic groups is genetically-driven.
Migration within a larger time framework took place ca. 15,000–18,000 BP, when the first Asian populations crossed the Bering Strait, ultimately founding the modern Amerindian population. Despite having as much as 18,000 years of selection in environments as diverse as those found in the Old World, body mass and proportion clines in the Americas are less steep than those in the Old World (Newman, 1953; Roberts, 1978). In fact, as Hulse (1960) pointed out, Amerindians, even in the tropics, tend to possess some ‘‘arctic’’ adaptations. Thus he concluded that it must take more than 15,000 years for modern humans to fully adapt to a new environment (see also Trinkaus, 1992). This suggests that body proportions tend not to be very plastic under natural conditions, and that selective rates on body shape are such that evolution in these features is long-term." --Holliday T. (1997). Body proportions in Late Pleistocene Europe and modern human origins. Jrnl Hum Evo. 32: 423-447
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
I'll re-post mine tomorrow
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Dental studies quote:
"Still, it appears that the process of state formation involved a large indigenous component. Outside influence and admixture with extraregional groups primarily occurred in Lower Egypt—perhaps during the later dynastic, but especially in Ptolmaic and Roman times (also Irish, 2006). No large-scale population replacement in the form of a foreign dynastic ‘race’ (Petrie, 1939) was indicated. Our results are generally consistent with those of Zakrzewski (2007). Using craniometric data in predynastic and early dynastic Egyptian samples, she also concluded that state formation was largely an indigenous process with some migration into the region evident. The sources of such migrants have not been identified; inclusion of additional regional and extraregional skeletal samples from various periods would be required for this purpose."
--Further analysis of the population history of ancient Egyptians. Schillaci MA, Irish JD, Wood CC. 2009
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Tropical peoples replaced cold-climate types in Europe
[QUOTE]: "The transition in Europe from Neandertals to “early anatomically modern” (Late Paleolithic) humans 40,000 to 25,000 years ago and subsequent changes in morphology within the latter group, are especially interesting in that they may provide evidence of adaptation following migration to a new climatic zone if these populations were derived from farther south, as suggested by the preponderance of current evidence (Klein 1999). The lack of change between European Early and Late Paleolithic samples in distal-to-proximal limb length proportions (crural and brachial indices) was initially puzzling in this regard because a reduction would have been predicted if climatic adaptation were taking place (Trinkaus 1981).
However, more recent work has shown that relative to measures of trunk (vertebral column) height, limb length did decrease significantly within the Upper Paleolithic in Europe, beginning at proportions similar to those of sub-Saharan Africans and ending at proportions similar to those of modern Europeans (Holliday 1997a).
Comparisons of long bone lengths to bi-iliac breadths in available European Upper Paleolithic specimens (nD15–19, about a third from the Early Upper Paleolithic) also indicate significant reductions in limb length to body breadth between the Early and Late Upper Paleolithic (unpublished results based on data given in Ruff et al. 1997, supplementary information). Thus, body shape did change significantly in Upper Paleolithic Europeans after exposure to colder climatic conditions, although the change was mosaic in nature, beginning with a general reduction in limb lengths followed by a reduction in distal-to-proximal limb element proportions." [ENDQUOTE]:
-- Ruff. C. 2002. Variation in Human Body Size and Shape. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2002. 31:211-32.
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Incoming Neolithic to Europe included clear "sub-Saharan" African elements - Brace 2005
QUOTE: "The assessment of prehistoric and recent human craniofacial dimensions supports the picture documented by genetics that the extension of Neolithic agriculture from the Near East westward to Europe and across North Africa was accomplished by a process of demic diffusion (11–15). If the Late Pleistocene Natufian sample from Israel is the source from which that Neolithic spread was derived, then there was clearly a Sub-Saharan African element present of almost equal importance as the Late Prehistoric Eurasian element. At the same time, the failure of the Neolithic and Bronze Age samples in central and northern Europe to tie to the modern inhabitants supports the suggestion that, while a farming mode of subsistence was spread westward and also north to Crimea and east to Mongolia by actual movement of communities of farmers, the indigenous foragers in each of those areas ultimately absorbed both the agricultural subsistence strategy and also the people who had brought it. The interbreeding of the incoming Neolithic people with the in situ foragers diluted the Sub-Saharan traces that may have come with the Neolithic spread so that no discoverable element of that remained. This picture of a mixture between the incoming farmers and the in situ foragers had originally been supported by the archaeological record alone (6, 9, 33, 34, 48, 49), but this view is now reinforced by the analysis of the skeletal morphology of the people of those areas where prehistoric and recent remains can be metrically compared."
-- 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.)
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DIRECT QUOTE: "Thutmose has a much more rounded cranium (than Amenhotep), and prognathism of the maxilla and mandible as well as of the dentition. His skull is most similar to that of Nubians from the ancient cemetaries of Gebel Adda examined by the Michigan expedition. Measurable variables also confirm similarities between Thutmose I and Thutmose II ( Appendix Table A1)"
--Harris and Wente: An X-Ray Atlas of the Royal Mummies
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
QUOTE:
"The period when sub-Saharan Africa was most influential in Egypt was a time when neither Egypt, as we understand it culturally, nor the Sahara, as we understand it geographically, existed. 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 rapidly found a method of disciplining the river, the land, and the people to transform the country into a titanic garden. Egypt rapidly developed detailed cultural forms that dwarfed its forebears in urbanity and elaboration. Thus, when new details arrived, they were rapidly adapted to the vast cultural superstructure already present. On the other hand, pharaonic culture was so bound to its place near the Nile that its huge, interlocked religious, administrative, and formal structures could not be readily transferred to relatively mobile cultures of the desert, savanna, and forest. The influence of the mature pharaonic civilizations of Egypt and Kush was almost confined to their sophisticated trade goods and some significant elements of technology. Nevertheless, the religious substratum of Egypt and Kush was so similar to that of many cultures in southern Sudan today that it remains possible that fundamental elements derived from the two high cultures to the north live on."
-- FROM: "(Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa: Their Interaction. Encyclopedia of Pre-colonial Africa, by Joseph O. Vogel, AltaMira Press, (1997), pp. 465-472)
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ LMAO And how does that mummy above not look African??
Also... "Thutmose has a much more rounded cranium (than Amenhotep), and prognathism of the maxilla and mandible as well as of the dentition. His skull is most similar to that of Nubians from the ancient cemetaries of Gebel Adda examined by the Michigan expedition. Measurable variables also confirm similarities between Thutmose I and Thutmose II ( Appendix Table A1)"
--Harris and Wente: An X-Ray Atlas of the Royal Mummies
Are you saying these WHITE scientists are Afrocentrics too?! LOL Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Another way of looking at the "North African" label..
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
Now I know why you're making all those graphs, its a good way to exorcise ones creativity. I suspect you might like the content of this paper.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
^Good info. Have you compiled any research papers yourself or published? What's the full citation of the paper above? I may check it out. Are they saying that based on enviro circumstances, the nasal variation intensified? For the Kish population, would it mean that they earlier originated in a warmer clime? Thus ancient Iraqis are distinct from the more modern populations?
----------------------------------------------------------------- misc data from tishkoff..
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Ancient Egyptians pioneered numerous technologies and were not "static" and "unchanging", but show a number of innovations. For example, in addition to the wheel for pottery from very early on, there were pulleys to hand the carcasses of animals to be processed and lathes (Ian Shaw 2003, Ancient Egyptian Materials and technology). Wheeled vehicles from Egypt appear in the record as early as the 13th Dynasty, not as fancy Hyskos chariots but as wheeled sleds. QUOTE:
"Interestingly, earliest representation of wheeled vehicle from Egypt (tomb of Sebeknekht at El Kab, Dynasty XIII) shows sledge, mounted on four disk wheels rather than rollers."
-- Wheeled vehicles and ridden animals in the ancient Near East (1997), By M. A. Littauer, J. H. Crouwel
----------------------------------- Egyptians pioneered in the use of stone, a more difficult material to work with, compared to the mud-brick of Mesopotamia. The massive works of polished granite and limestone show a skill and craftsmanship beyond anything from contemporary Mesopotamia. And that is not even getting into the mathematical, engineering and astronomical knowledge that came with the package. Ramps in raising huge monuments and buildings were a sophisticated adaptation with at least 5 different types of ramps in use to supplement log rollers, ropes and sledges. As one historian notes:
"The Egyptians advanced beyond the Mesopotamians in another area: vaulting. They used the tunnel or barrel vault as their Near Eastern counterparts did, but they added a new style called the corbel vault that creates arches using stones that jut out to support other stones. What this indicates is that Egyptians builders were not determined in their architectural structures by other civilisations or influences. another example of this is the innovative cantilevered beams over the King's Chamber in Giza pyramid. The pent roof distributes weight and stress in a new way. In other words, Egypt had skilful engineers who created new types of architectural supporting systems." --Y.C. Chiu, An introduction to the History of Project Management. 2010
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------------------------------------- "Much earlier forerunners are shown in tomb paintings of the late Old Kingdom and the 11th Dynasty showing siege towers with wheels; depictions of movable siege towers exist from the 6th Dynasty onwards.) This indicates that the wheel was used in the transport if heavy loads more frequently than assumed.. The use of wheeled equipment in building is not yet attested to but may have been fairly common. The soft surface of the desert sand and the mid of the cultivation may have been a serious obstacle for heavy carriages but not so much for sledges."
--The encyclopaedia of ancient Egyptian architecture By Dieter Arnold. 2002. p 195 -------------------------- "In all probability wheels would have been of little practical use, for the building blocks used were far too large and too heavy to be carried on a wooden-wheeled cart. The relative scarcity of wood in ancient Egypt would have made the building of such carts difficult and overcoming the practical and technical difficulties of building carts to carry and move great weights would have probably proved impossible.
Wheels would have been, in any event, a far from practical method of transport on either agricultural land or the desert where they would have become quickly bogged down in either mud or sand."
--R. Partridge. (1996) Transport in ancient Egypt. p76
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
Let's not forget these two studies:
The period when sub-Saharan Africa was most influential in Egypt was a time when neither Egypt, as we understand it culturally, nor the Sahara, as we understand it geographically, existed. 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 rapidly found a method of disciplining the river, the land, and the people to transform the country into a titanic garden. Egypt rapidly developed detailed cultural forms that dwarfed its forebears in urbanity and elaboration. Thus, when new details arrived, they were rapidly adapted to the vast cultural superstructure already present. On the other hand, pharaonic culture was so bound to its place near the Nile that its huge, interlocked religious, administrative, and formal structures could not be readily transferred to relatively mobile cultures of the desert, savanna, and forest. The influence of the mature pharaonic civilizations of Egypt and Kush was almost confined to their sophisticated trade goods and some significant elements of technology. Nevertheless, the religious substratum of Egypt and Kush was so similar to that of many cultures in southern Sudan today that it remains possible that fundamental elements derived from the two high cultures to the north live on.--Joseph O. Vogel (1997)
It is possible from this overview of the data to conclude that the limited conceptual vocabulary shared by the ancestors of contemporary Chadic-speakers (therefore also contemporary Cushitic-speakers), contemporary Nilotic-speakers and Ancient Egyptian-speakers suggests that the earliest speakers of the Egyptian language could be located to the south of Upper Egypt (Diakonoff 1998) or, earlier, in the Sahara (Wendorf 2004), where Takács (1999, 47) suggests their ‘long co-existence’ can be found. In addition, it is consistent with this view to suggest that the northern border of their homeland was further than the Wadi Howar proposed by Blench (1999, 2001), which is actually its southern border. Neither Chadics nor Cushitics existed at this time, but their ancestors lived in a homeland further north than the peripheral countries that they inhabited thereafter, to the south-west, in a Niger-Congo environment, and to the south-east, in a Nilo-Saharan environment, where they interacted and innovated in terms of language. From this perspective, the Upper Egyptian cultures were an ancient North East African ‘periphery at the crossroads’, as suggested by Dahl and Hjort-af-Ornas of the Beja (Dahl and Hjort-af-Ornas 2006). The most likely scenario could be this: some of these Saharo-Nubian populations spread southwards to Wadi Howar, Ennedi and Darfur; some stayed in the actual oases where they joined the inhabitants; and others moved towards the Nile, directed by two geographic obstacles, the western Great Sand Sea and the southern Rock Belt. Their slow perambulations led them from the area of Sprinkle Mountain (Gebel Uweinat) to the east – Bir Sahara, Nabta Playa, Gebel Ramlah, and Nekhen/Hierakonpolis (Upper Egypt), and to the north-east by way of Dakhla Oasis to Abydos (Middle Egypt).--Anselin (2009)
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Rigged samples and stacked decks in research on “North Africa”
Fadhlaoui-Zid et’s “North African” study (Mitochondrial DNA Structure in North Africa Reveals a Genetic Discontinuity in the Nile Valley) draws bulk of samples from the Arabized coast near the Mediterranean, excluding most of the Sudan, except for a token sample near the Egyptian border, and excludes Mali, Chad and Niger, even though these areas are classified as “North African” in several physical geography textbooks (Haggett, 2001). Egyptian samples themselves are weighted towards the north. Krings 1999 for example loads northern samples at 63% of the total. The overall weighing of samples is thus biased towards Mediterranean and Arab links.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
More sampling bias in North African research:
QUOTE: "The North African patchy mtDNA landscape has no parallel in other regions of the world and increasing the number of sampled populations has not been accompanied by any substantial increase in our understanding of its phylogeography. Available data up to now rely on sampling small, scattered populations.. It is therefore doubtful that this picture truly represents the complex historical demography of the region rather than being just the result of the type of samplings performed so far." --Cherni (2005) Female gene pools of Berber and Arab neighboring.. Hum Biol. 2005 77(1):61-70.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
African food production and agriculture practices cause polygamy, with corresponding results in Black American family structure, claim assorted biodiversity proponents. "Tropical agriculture" needed all these extra hands, and women provided most of the agricultural labor force, polygamy took hold in African culture, and is thus reflected in Black American culture with its high OOW rates today.
Assorted evidence put forward includes:
A--- The anthropologists Jack Goody and Ester Boserup on how continental differences in raising food affected family structure. Boserup noted in 1970:
"Africa is the region of female farming par excellence. In many African tribes, nearly all the tasks connected with food production continue to be left to women."
B--- and evidence by James Q. Wilson:{quote):
quote:
"In Europe, where animal-drawn plows were used to farm rich land, intensive agriculture made monogamy important… In these places, men did much of the agricultural work …
In much of Africa, by contrast, farming was done by handheld hoes used to work small plots of land that were often rather infertile. Women were widely used to do the hoeing and carry in the produce.
Many husbands found that they could use extra wives to wield even more hoes, and so marrying several women made sense economically… the conditions they describe may have had important consequences for the kinds of families that had to endure the travails of slavery in the Western Hemisphere."
Claims of "important consequences" for black Americans however are weak on several counts, as are claims for the absence of monogamy in Africa:
1- Heavy female participation in African agriculture on tough soils is documented, but is this the PRIMARY cause for polygamy? Many scholars point to other factors such as the high child mortality rate, and whether there was a surplus of females in the populations. Others add more reasons.
Books such as Demography: Analysis and Synthesis, (2005, Caselli et al,) see the chief causes of polygamy as sexual adn reproductive related rather than production/economic oriented. Polygamy they hold allows a man to maximize his offspring, or engage in sexual activity forbidden by certain cultures when a wife is pregnant or nursing a child.
They also note strong political considerations as reasons for polygamy- such as local elites consolidating power and exhibiting prestige over the less powerful. Polygamy also serves to cement alliances between tribes, clans and bloodlines.
In short, while extra female labor to farm may play a part, the main causes of polygamy in Africa may have comparatively little to do with "tropical farming practices." -------------------------------------------------------------------
2-- Furthermore women in both cold-climate Europe and Asia have long had heavy and burdensome involvement in agriculture, contradicting attempts to portray African women as some sort of unique beasts of burden.
European women have long had heavy involvement in European agriculture for centuries, including milking animals, spinning wool, brewing ale, or turning out en masse for the harvests. One study of 1400 England for example found them doing heavy labor, including weeding, mowing, carrying grain, breaking stone for road repair, and driving plough oxen. (M. Mate, Women in medieval English society). Likewise in Asia, Chinese or Korean women were valued and exploited for their ability to engage in the back-breaking work of rice cultivation which required stoop labor to tend crops by hand, even though the plow was in wide use. It all depends what time periods are looked at. In European or Asiatic grain agriculture seasonal cycles such as planting and harvest time saw plenty of female labor deployed. The growth of mechanization in other eras was to also have its effects.
Data from China, even in the modern era AFTER decades of progressive communist rule, still shows women as heavy agricultural beasts of burden, when men monopolizing less demanding agricultural operations.
quote: "where machinery was used it was monopolised by men, and that this frequently made nonsense of the supposed distinction between 'heavy' men's work and 'light' women's work. For example, in one instance, Wolf's assistant came across three people working the fields. One was a man whose task it was to turn the switch to a water pump on and off. As a technician, he earned 10.5 work-points a day. The other two were women in their thirties 'wh were rushing back and forth ditching and damming to keep the water moving evenly through the fields. although the evening was cool, they were sweating with the effort it took to move the heavy waterlogged earth onto the banks of the ditches. They were unskilled workers and earned 6.5 workpoints for their day's labor'. Other reports suggest that through the 1980s and 1990s, in villages in which agricukture continued to be collectively managed, divisions of labour and inequalities in remuneration, such as those cited by Wolf, persisted.. Observing the situation at the chicken farm, however, the researcher felt that the women's work was far from beibg lighter than the men's. Men were responsible for carrying bags of feed on their shoulders, and for using a crushing machine to break up the feed. Meanwhile, it was the women's task to mix the feed and give it to the chickens and collect the eggs. Each day each woman had to collect 1,680 eggs, a task which the researcher estimated woud involve them bending down some 280 times a day."
--Women's work in rural China: change and continuity in an era of reform. Tamara Jacka. 1997
In short, African women have never been the unique continental beasts of burden some make them out to be. -------------------------------------------------------------
3- The claim of "carryover" to Black Americans is dubious. IN fact Black Americans in some eras, have posted BETTER monogamy rates than US Whites, and LOWER rates of illegitimacy than supposed pace-setting Nordic European whites in both the 19th and 20th centuries.
If these "tropical" practices were the cause of US Black family instability, why did black folk for over 50 years after slavery post relatively low out-of-wedlock rates, and post higher marriage rates than whites?
For a period of 50 years, from 1890 to 1940, every US census showed that blacks had higher marriage rates and lower divorce rates than whites. As late as 1960 black illegitimacy stood at only 19%, LOWER than that of today's whites, and LOWER than that of urbanized northern European whites during the 19th century- like the white Irish (posting sometimes a 50% illegitimacy rate in certain US cities, or white Vienna (46%), or white Stockholm (49%). In ultra-white Sweden at the start of the 20th century barely half of Swedish women married and around one-sixth of children were born out of wedlock. (Burns and Scott 1994) --Ailsa Burns, Cath Scott. 1994. Mother-headed families and why they have increased. Routledge. P. 61-84
Fast forwarding to the 20th century, white Northern European patterns are unimpressive. By the year 2000, out of wedlock births had reached 53% of all births- a steep rise from a mere 10% illegitimacy rate in mid century. (A population history of the United States By Herbert S. Klein, Cambridge University Press. 2004. p. 216) Nor are supposedly more virtuous white people of other "Nordic" nations any better. In the early 1980s illegitimacy rates were on the order of 45% in Iceland and Sweden and 40% in Denmark. (Report on Immigrant populations and demographic development in the member states of the Council of Europe. Rinus Penninx, Council of Europe. 1984.) White Australia in the 1980s weighed in at (35%), twice as high as US black rates as late as 1965.
In short, when the historical data is examined, supposedly "more polygamous" blacks posted a better showing than whites on several counts.
4-- Assorted claims re "tropical patterns" fail to explain how non tropical Arabs, Jews and other "Middle Easterners practiced polygamy for millennia and how some still practice it today, and fail to explain how these peoples who strictly subordinated their women from exposure re agricultural work (such as the Muslim "purdah" practices) STILL engaged in widespread polygamy. If the heavy involvement of women in farm work is the cause, why do the Semitic Arabs, who try to keep their women in strict subordination, and who are not out in the fields like the African women, have widespread polygamy, even today in the 21st century? This should not be the case under assorted biodiversity "evolutionary" claims. -------------------------------------------------------------
5- Europe itself has hardly been a shining example of monogamy in action historically. Numerous European peoples practiced polygamy, or its close equivalent, practices suppressed by a religion itself derived from Semitic peoples who practiced polygamy. And ironically, under the new religion, Europeans themselves continued to practice polygamy.
In is known for example that the Emperor Justinian had to legilate against polygamy in his domains in 600AD, an action that should have been hardly necessary in supposed areas of Caucasoid monogamous bliss. And polygamous practices in all but name was for example is well documented in white Europe. Among the Celtic peoples for example: quote:
"In Ireland .. there were various forms of marriage. Ten classes were recognized in the law tract in marriage, of which only nine are explained. The first three are regular marriages.. The others are temporary unions. Comparing a thirteenth-century Welsh list to its eighth-century Irish counterpart, T.M. Charles-Edwards remarks that the "existence of the Welsh list suggests that in many respects the Welsh law of women resembled the Irish until the gradual progress of Christian ideas on marriage caused a fundamental transformation" However, Charles-Edwards continues, "even in the thirteenth century, this transformation was still very incomplete.."
"Marriage and divorce, especially within the several recognized temporary unions, were relatively simple matters, and divorce did not automatically reflect badly on either party.. And this ""ease with which marital union was concluded and the almost equal ease with which it was dissolved," continues RR Davies, goes a long way in explaining the "apparently cavalier attitude toward so-called illegitimate offspring." To complicate matters still further, there is substantial evidence to suggest that concubinage was legally recognized and that there may well have been arrangements which we would now term polygamy and polyandry." --C.W. Sullivan. 1996. The Mabinogi: a book of essays (Garland Medieval Casebooks) .
and
Polygamy was legal among the Celts, with multiple wives recognized. Brehon [Irish law- pre-English conquest 17th Century) law for example -quote- "stipulated that any injury sustained by a second wife in the first day of coming into the household of an established first wife was not a convictable offence."
and
"There were ten classifications of Celtic marriage, each a specific form of contract, including one that was marriage for "a year and a day." --Walking the maze: the enduring presence of Celtic spirit By Loren Cruden. 1998
6-- Africa has always had monogamy, long before the arrival of Europeans, and polygamy has been a clear part of European and Asian culture until very recent times. In the middle East, it is alive and well among Semitic peoples.
Polygamy was more common in Africa than in Europe, but monogamy also has a long history in Africa even before blacks were forcible transported to the US, and before any significant influence from Europe. Of the 31 captives of the famous Amistad slave ship for example, 15 were married, and only 1 was polygamous, and monogamy is common in various parts of Africa. See <i>Slavery in North Carolina, 1748-1775. by Marvin L. Michael Kay, Lorin Lee Cary- pg 160.</i>
Asia has had polygamy for a long time parallel with monogamy, along with things like multiple concubinage, practiced in China. And it was not until 1945 that polygamy was finally abolished in Japan. And people like Jews practiced polygamy for centuries as documented in the Bible and anthropological studies, and for Arabs and those who follow Islam, polygamy is permissible even today.
Indeed while monogamy has been more prevalent in Europe, polygamy has always been a part of European culture until very recent times. Indeed, one of the things Christianity did for Europe was to stamp out and discourage polygamy. Ironically, there is a long tradition of polygamy in white Christianity (see <i>After polygamy was made a sin: the social history of Christian polygamy- By John Cairncross</i>), and polygamy is documented as common in white Russia in various eras. Ironically Christianity itself, based on the religion of a Semitic people from the sub-tropical Middle East, not cold climate areas, was adopted in white Europe, providing the "rules of morality" that helped suppress polygamy (among other things) by Europeans in many regions as Cairncross notes.
7-- Several examples show the continuing influence of polygamy in European culture. One of the most powerful European religions, that of Mormonism, not only practiced polygamy until comparatively recent times, but in its heavenly paradise, polygamy will be practices and recognized. Ironically even Nordic Aryan leader Adolf Hitler at times also had a favorable opinion of polygamy.
Mormon leader Joseph Smith had numerous wives, one only 14 years old, and referred to "spiritual wifery" that would be "sealed" throughout eternity. Polygamyis part and parcel of the Mormon paradise.
quote: : "After death, while their husbands are creating and ruling over planets, the women have the questionable honor of bearing his "spirit children" for eternity. These spirit children descend to their father's planet to inhabit bodies as mortals, who are then ruled over by him. Mormon Doctrine states that these celestially married men and women will live eternally in the family unit and have spirit children, theus becoming Eternal fathers and Eternal Mothers." A man who has multiple wives can beget many more spirit children, making him much more powerful. Mormon men must beget as many children with as many wives as possible, for "their glory (in heaven) is in proportion to the number of their wives and children" (Snowden 11)."
--D. Kirkland. 2008. Mormons and Muslims: A Case of Matching Fingerprints
Other references: Charles W. Penrose, "Mormon" Doctrine Plain and Simple, or Leaves from the Tree of Life, 1897, Salt Lake City, p.66 ("In the case of a man marrying a wife in the everlasting covenant who dies while he continues in the flesh and marries another by the same divine law, each wife will come forth in her order and enter with him into his glory.");
Joseph Fielding Smith, Bruce R. McConkie, ed., Doctrines of Salvation, 1956, vol. 2, p. 67 (Smith, who was sealed to two different women, stated, "[M]y wives will be mine in the eternity.");
Harold B. Lee, Deseret News 1974 Church Almanac, p. 17 ("My lovely Joan was sent to me: So Joan joins Fern/That three might be, more fitted for eternity./'O Heavenly Father, my thanks to thee'.").
And a mere 70 or so years ago, "Aryan" Nazi German itself was encouraging polygamy. QUOTE:
"Although monogamy was the official marriage from of Nazi Germany, the society in effect, turned toward polygamy because Aryan males were encouraged to beget Aryan children with as many racially qualified women as possible- in and out of wedlock."
--Young-Bruehl (2002) The anatomy of prejudices).
According to The Fuherer in his own words"
"Let's remember that after the Thirty Years War polygamy was tolerated, so that it was thanks to the illegitimate child that the nations recovered its strength."
And lamenting those Rhine maidens that have never known man, the Fuherer further argues:
"As long as we have in Germany two and a half million women vowed to celibacy, we shall be forbidden to despise the child born out of wedlock." --L. Pine, 1999, Nazi family Policy
Curiously, according to one book, a number of white Mormons following their practice of prayers for dead and eternal marriage have interceded for Hitler and Eva Braun: --quote--
"Adding insult to injury, zealous Mormons also stood proxy for Adolf Hitler's and Eva Braun's baptisms and eternal marriage. If the prospect of meeting Hitler as a god in eternity rankles the sensitivities of most non-Mormons, imagine the impact of such an idea on a Jew." ( --LaTayne Scott. 2010. The Mormon Mirage: A Former Member Looks at the Mormon Church Today)
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Monogamy quite common in Africa, and among arriving black slaves in the United States
DATA:
QUOTE: "For slaves however, monogamous marriages represented something more than succumbing to the demands of demography, plantation discipline and the values of masters. To understand this requires a closer look at African marriage patterns. Once again, the testimony of the Amistad slaves in valuable. . Sixteen or the thirty-six interviewed Amistad mutineers were married, and of these only one, Fabanna, a middle-aged Mende slave, was polygamous... Testimony concerning martial practices in eighteenth-century Sierra Leone corroborates the Amistad evidence.
An English trader in 1788 reported that "tho polygamy is allowed in ye Country it is practiced only by the rich." Such data stress a point long obvious to anthropologists; wherever polygamy has been or is the "preferred" marital form, monogamy is acceptable and probably common because of limits imposed by demographic and economic factors. Slaves coming from Africa, then, had experiences encompassing both polygamy and monogamy and thus need not have relied on their master' example to institute monogamy, Indeed, most male slave imports, normally young adults who had not had time to accumulate much wealth, had practiced only monogamy in Africa prior to capture. When confronted by the severely limiting demographic and social conditions in America, they tended to replicate their monogamous but not their polygamous tribal experiences. Owners in the southern mainland simply reinforced this tendency.
Albermarle Sound slaveowners, Brickell observed, became involved in the martial arrangements of their slaves only to give permission for such unions or when no children had been born within a year. In the latter case planters might "oblige" slave women "to take a second, third, fourth, fifth, or more Husbands or Bed Fellows; a fruitful Woman amongst them being very much valued by the Planters, and a numerous Issue esteemed the greatest Riches in this Country."
{{ENDQUOTE}} --Marvin L. Michael Kay, Lorin Lee Cary. (1999) Slavery in North Carolina, 1748-1775. 160-161
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
^
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Nazlet Khater man, one of the earliest modern human specimens found in Egypt, clusters with nearby tropical Africans.
QUOTE: Thoma concludes that the Nazlet Khater specimen is:
(a) indisputably anatomically modern with certain archaic characteristics; (b) related to the Nubian Epipaleolithic skeletal series from Wadi Halfa and Jebel Sahaba; and (c) displays Negroid characteristics such as alveolar prognathism and sub-nasal fossa."
"The results obtained from the multivariate analyses performed in this study suggest: .. a sub-Saharan origin for the Nazlet-Khater population type..
The specimen is clearly not associated with any other North African or Levantine finds.. "
--P. Vermeersch 2002. Paleolithic quarrying sites
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
race and DNA data 1-
2
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Tropical climates are extremely diverse – from humid rainforest, to higher altitude cold zones, to arid deserts with sharply dropping night temperatures. Scientists find that nose width is correlated with climate – with narrower noses seen in dry, conditions such as desert areas in eastern parts of Africa.
QUOTE: "Tropical climates range from oppressively hot and humid lowlands to cold, snow-covered mountains, from hot, dry deserts to cold, dry deserts, from extreme seasonal variability of precipitation to nearly constant year-round conditions." --Huston. M. (1994) Biological diversity: the coexistence of species on changing landscapes Cambridge university Press. p 498
QUOTE: "An important function of the nose is to warm and moisten inspired air. When air is exhaled, some heat and moisture are lost to the surroundings. The longer the nasal passage, the more efficient the nose is for warming and moistening incoming air and also the less heat and moisture are lost on exhalation. A narrow, high nose gives a longer nasal passage than a low, broad nose. Therefore, in cold or dry conditions, a high, narrow nose is preferable for warming and moistening air before it reaches the lings, and for reducing loss of heat and moisture in expired air. In hot, humid conditions a low, broad nose serves to dissipate heat (Wolpoff 1968; Franciscis and Long 1991)... The pattern of variation in nasal index corresponds very broadly to that expected if nasal form is indeed an adaptation to regional climate. The highest nasal index values, representing broad, low noses, tend to be those of populations in humid tropical regions of Africa and south-east Asia. Populations with low mean nasal indices (high, narrow noses) tend to be found in the cold, northern latitudes, and also in arid regions, such as the desert areas of east Africa and the Arabian peninsula.
..Davies found the nasal index taken in the living was closely correlated with skeletal nasal index. This suggests that there should likewise be an association between skeletal nasal index and climatic zone, and indeed other workers have found this to be the case.“ -- Mays. S. (2010). The Archaeology of Human Bones. Pg 100-101
2011 study finds significant correlation between nasal shape and climate. Dry areas are common in tropical zone micro-climates such as deserts.
QUOTE: “"The nasal cavity is essential for humidifying and warming the air before it reaches the sensitive lungs. Because humans inhabit environments that can be seen as extreme from the perspective of respiratory function, nasal cavity shape is expected to show climatic adaptation.. We report significant correlations between nasal cavity shape and climatic variables of both temperature and humidity. Variation in nasal cavity shape is correlated with a cline from cold-dry climates to hot-humid climates, with a separate temperature and vapor pressure effect. " -- Noback, M. et al. (2011) Climate-related variation of the human nasal cavity. AJPA, 145: 4. 599-614
Broad noses can be functional in cold areas under certain circumstances as Neanderthals show
QUOTE: "..Neanderthals and and their predecessors survived for tens of thousands of years in the variable climates of Europe, in which fully glacials only took up a small part of the time, and predominantly in southerly latitudes.."
Others maintain that a broad nose could help with not merely cold but ARID conditions as well, so cold is not the only factor. A large protruding nose could warm air entering the lungs, or - quote: "others have suggested that the Neanderthal nose may have been a means of losing heat generated by a very active lifestyle.."
Others "concluded that it must have been adapted to the peripheries of hot, humid regions, perhaps even subtropical to moderate biotopes."
See: (--Neanderthals and modern humans: an ecological and evolutionary perspectiveBy Clive Finlayson, 2004).
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Egyptian writing distinctly African development per conservative Egyptologist Frank Yurco {QUOTE}
"Vestigial traces of the dynastic race theory still linger in the writings of some scholars, who hint at a "Mesopotamian stimulus" to Egyptian culture through writing or other cultural aspects. But it has now been definitely shown that Mesopotamian writing arose from clay tokens used in early invoices for livestock transshipments (Schmandt-Besserat 1992, 1-13, 93-1298, 120-65, 184-99). Later, indeed scribes in Mesopotamia predominated in the temple and palace economies; but kings and royalty were rarely literate. In Egypt, by contrast, writing arose from the deisre of early chieftains and kings to commemorate their deeds and accomplishments (Arnett 1982; Hassan 1983, 1, 7-8; Williams and Logan 1987, 245-85). Its roots lay in the painted buffware of Naqada II, whose totemic emblems for divinities show forms recognizable in later hieroglyphic script (hoffman 1991, 31, fig. 7; Arnett 1982).
Thus Egyptian and Mesopotamian writing systems have totally disparate origins. In later Egyptian Dynastic times literacy extended from the top of society downward. Egyptian kings and royalty had to be literacy- in sharp contrast to those in Mesopotamia - and the bureaucracy that arose around the early Dynastic rulers encouraged in spread of writing, as did the religious needs of lower-ranked Egyptians (Baines 1983; Ray 1986). A scribal class evolved from the Archaic Period to the Old Kingdom, basically as account keepers for the elite and as bureaucrats for the government's taxing and documentary functions. During all periods the means of social advancement to the elite was through literacy (Baines 1983). The ancient Egyptian writing system was therefore a distinctly African development, and the evidence for this does indeed contradict some of the diffusionist reasoning that grew out of the Aryan Model, as well as the prominent position ascribed to Mesopotamian influence." {ENDQUOTE}
-- Yurco, F "An Egyptological Review" IN Mary R. Lefkowitz and Guy MacLean Rogers, Black Athena Revisited, 1996, Univ of North Carolina Press, p. 62-100
Lefkowitz and Maclean 1996. Black Athena Revisited yurco egyptological review
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
^
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova: African food production and agriculture practices cause polygamy, with corresponding results in Black American family structure, claim assorted biodiversity proponents. "Tropical agriculture" needed all these extra hands, and women provided most of the agricultural labor force, polygamy took hold in African culture, and is thus reflected in Black American culture with its high OOW rates today.
Which author made this ridiculous claim and associated study?? It's true that some cultures in Africa that are based on plantation style farming implemented polygamy to have more hands to work these farms, but what the hell does any of this have to do with the trend of out of wedlock births in the African American community today with its negative effects, especially considering that just several generations ago such a trend was extremely low?!
This sounds like more leftist crap that seeks to destroy minority families, especially black families. For example during the 60s many leftist feminists tried to use the African traditions of matriarchy in their distorted view to suggest black women didn't need men to raise families and look what happened!
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: [QUOTE]Which author made this ridiculous claim and associated study?? It's true that some cultures in Africa that are based on plantation style farming implemented polygamy to have more hands to work these farms, but what the hell does any of this have to do with the trend of out of wedlock births in the African American community today with its negative effects, especially considering that just several generations ago such a trend was extremely low?!
This sounds like more leftist crap that seeks to destroy minority families, especially black families. For example during the 60s many leftist feminists tried to use the African traditions of matriarchy in their distorted view to suggest black women didn't need men to raise families and look what happened!
^^Its not only leftists, but "biodiversity" types like Steve Sailer and racists like Jared Taylor. But when their claims are examined, they simply don't hold up, nor is their notion of alleged white European virtue.
And the record of white European "role models" is far from impressive as regards child care. Indeed ruthless abandonment of children was a practice common in white medieval Europe, but it is often not talked about by "Caucasoid" historians.
Scholarly works such as Milner 2000 (Milner, Larry S. (2000). Hardness of Heart / Hardness of Life: The Stain of Human Infanticide') and many others give many of the gory details of the activities of these allegedly virtuous white "role models." Asian societies like China for example historically carried out massive amounts of sex selective infanticide. In "Caucasoid" India, female infanticide of newborn girls was systematic in many areas, including tossing children into the Ganges River as a sacrificial offering. Among supposedly more moral and virtuous Caucasoid Europeans, killing of children was common.
In ancient Sardinia, three thousand bones of young children, with evidence of sacrificial rituals, have been found there. Among supposedly more virtuous Caucasoid stocks in Southwest Asia or the "Middle East", child sacrifices to their goddess Ishtar was routine, and among some Caucasoid tribes of what is now Greece, every 10th child was killed as sacrifice in difficult economic times. In Caucasoid Carthage, child sacrifice according to Milner, "reached its infamous zenith," with infants and young children burned in fire or roasted alive in hot bronze. One archeological excavations yielded 20,000 charred remains of young children (packed in urns). The Bible mentions such sacrifice among the Caucasoid Phoenicians at a site called Topeth. (Brown, Shelby (1991). Late Carthaginian Child Sacrifice and Sacrificial Monuments in their Mediterranean Context.)
In Caucasoid Greece, the exposure of unwanted newborns was not uncommon, especially among the noble Spartans. In Caucasoid Rome, infanticide was common, despite laws on the books. Indeed Philo the Philosopher speaks out against it, noting the casual nature with which it was carried out by the Romans. Offenders were rarely prosecuted under Roman law, and said law allowed killing of Caucasoid newborns if they were visibly deformed. (Naphtali, Lewis, ed (1985). "Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 744". Life in Egypt Under Roman Rule). Indeed Rome was founded by near victims of infanticide- the legendary Romulus and Remus.
Among the ancient Caucasoid Germanic tribes, the practice was not unknown, and unwanted children were liquidated in the forests. Archeological data shows the burnt bones of children, disposed of as child sacrifice in ancient Britain. (Boswell, John (1988). The Kindness of Strangers. NY: Vintage Books).
In Caucasoid Europe of the Middle Ages, one scholar (Langer 2000) notes that infanticide "was practiced on gigantic scale with absolute impunity, noticed by writers with most frigid indifference". At the end of the 12th century, notes Richard Trexler, Roman women threw their newborns into the Tiber river in daylight. (Langer, William L. (1974). "Infanticide: a historical survey". History of Childhood Quarterly 1 (3): 353–366. -- Trexler, Richard (1973). "Infanticide in Florence: new sources and first results". History of Childhood quarterly 1: 99.)
In Caucasoid Russia child sacrifice was offered to the pagan god Perun, who was worshipped as the god of lightning and thunder, and in Kamchatka, children were tossed to dogs to be eaten alive. (Russia in the era of NEP: explorations in Soviet society and culture - Page 201. 1991. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Alexander Rabinowitch, Richard Stites) -------------------------------------------
By contrast with the supposedly more virtuous and moral Caucasoids and Asiatics above, Africa has the lowest incidence of infanticide historically. As scholar Milner notes: QUOTE:
"Africa has been reported to have a lower incidence of infanticide than all of the other continents." --Milner, L.S. (2000). Hardness of Heart / Hardness of Life: the stain of infanticide. University Press. p. 160
----------------------------------
even in ancient Egypt, the indigenous African valued chilren’s lives more than European or Middle Eastern “role models”
Infanticide did occur in Africa but to a much saller, much less extent that allegedly more virtuous cold Caucasoid or Asiatic “role models.” Ancient Egypt, which was fundamentally populated by peoples with tropical limb proportions from south of the Sahara, is no exception (Zakrewski 2007, Keita 1992, 2005, 2008, Raxter and Ruff 2008 et al). In Egyptian households, at all social levels, children of both sexes were valued and there is no evidence of infanticide.[14] The religion of the Ancient Egyptians forbade infanticide and during the Greco-Roman period they rescued abandoned babies from manure heaps, a common method of infanticide by Greeks or Romans, and were allowed to either adopt them as foundlings or raise them as slaves, often giving them names such as "copro -" to memorialise their rescue.[15] Strabo considered it a peculiarity of the Egyptians that every child must be reared.[16] Diodorus indicates infanticide was a punishable offence by the Egyptians.[17]
Yet other scholars note very high mortality rates even when abandoned children were taken in my monastery or church- with dismal conditions quote
"when infants left at the doors of the hospital 'in a poor and piteous state.. in great danger of being devoured by pigs and other beasts.. [and dying] for want of human milk.' Infants shared rooms with the sick and as many a s a dozen children sometimes slept in one bed. The children usually died within eight to fifteen days." --Abandoned children: foundlings and child welfare in nineteenth-century France. By Rachel Ginnis Fuchs
Nor is this pattern of child abuse confined to medieval Europe. It appears among white populations in urban America. In the 1800s there were tens of thousands of abandoned white children sleeping on open streets in places like New York or Boston (sowell 1981).
The same pattern continued down to the present day- with white women leading all others in rates of abortion. Two out of three babies in white Russia for example are aborted by supposedly more caring white "role models." (Loveless and Holman 2006). --------------------
And European fatherhood was hardly the more "caring" or "involved" picture "biodiversity" types would have us believe. In fact they were rather distant from their children: quote- "Medieval fatherhood however, did not mean participating continuously in the upbringing of a child. Mothers and servants commonly took the lead role in childrearing. .. But father/son companionship bonding is not a prominent theme in literary sources. Fathers may be proud of their sons, but they do not play a major role in their formation. It was a fact of patrilineal reproduction, rather than the relationship with a son, that contributed to medieval manhood." -- From boys to men: formations of masculinity in late medieval Europe By Ruth Mazo Karras
^Hardly the picture of sterling white role model fathers "bonding" with their children, or involved in their lives..
In short, when “biodiversity” claims of supposed white virtue are put to the test, said claims reveal whites to be dubious exemplars of moral worth or virtue. In fact, the historical record often indicates the opposite.
WHen they try to apply supposed “African” patterns to explain various socio-economic conditions among US blacks their claims are also dubious. Between 1890 and 1950 for example, every census shows US blacks posting higher marriage rates and lower divorce rates than US whites (Sowell 2005), an “impossible” outcome if alleged “African polygamy patterns” were supposedly so dominant.
If these "African" practices were the cause of US Black family instability, why did black folk for over 50 years after slavery post relatively low out-of-wedlock rates, and post higher marriage rates than whites? In very US census between 1890 and 1940 for example blacks posted higher marriage rates than whites. The black OOW rate as late as 1960 weighed in at 19%, less than that of today ' s US whites, and much less than the OOW rates for supposedly more virtuous Nordics in various areas of the 19th century (white Vienna -46%, or white Stockholm -49% for example), or contemporary Nordics (45% Iceland and Sweden or 40% Dennmark in the 1980s), and much lower than the 50% OOW rates posted in heavily white Irish areas in the 19th century.
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^ LOL Reminds me of how Greek travelers were shocked to see Egyptian parents keep and raise children born with deformities or disabilities. So unlike the eugenic tradition in Greece where such children were left abandoned to die of exposure since the Greeks valued "perfection" among their children than the actual life.
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^ LOL Reminds me of how Greek travelers were shocked to see Egyptian parents keep and raise children born with deformities or disabilities. So unlike the eugenic tradition in Greece where such children were left abandoned to die of exposure since the Greeks valued "perfection" among their children than the actual life.
^^Indeed.
"Although the eldest child was normally raised regardless of its sex, some historians have conjectured that as many as 20 percent of newborn Athenian girls were abandoned in places like the local garbage dump. Slave dealers collected a few of the exposed infants and turned them over to wet nurses to be raised and sold as slaves. Most exposed infants, however, died, and exposure quickly became infanticide." -p234
"The Spartan lifestyle exacerbated the population decline. Sparta was the only Greek state in which male infanticide was institutionalized.." p147
FROM: -- Sarah B. Pomeroy. 1999. Ancient Greece: a political, social, and cultural history.
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^
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^
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Sudanic inheritances of Ancient Egypt - Vogel
QUOTE:
"The period when sub-Saharan Africa was most influential in Egypt was a time when neither Egypt, as we understand it culturally, nor the Sahara, as we understand it geographically, existed. 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 rapidly found a method of disciplining the river, the land, and the people to transform the country into a titanic garden. Egypt rapidly developed detailed cultural forms that dwarfed its forebears in urbanity and elaboration. Thus, when new details arrived, they were rapidly adapted to the vast cultural superstructure already present. On the other hand, pharaonic culture was so bound to its place near the Nile that its huge, interlocked religious, administrative, and formal structures could not be readily transferred to relatively mobile cultures of the desert, savanna, and forest. The influence of the mature pharaonic civilizations of Egypt and Kush was almost confined to their sophisticated trade goods and some significant elements of technology. Nevertheless, the religious substratum of Egypt and Kush was so similar to that of many cultures in southern Sudan today that it remains possible that fundamental elements derived from the two high cultures to the north live on."
-- FROM: "(Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa: Their Interaction. Encyclopedia of Pre-colonial Africa, by Joseph O. Vogel, AltaMira Press, (1997), pp. 465-472)
"Homegrown" Ancient Egyptian technology -far from "unchanging" or "static"
Ancient Egyptians pioneered numerous technologies and were not "static" and "unchanging", but show a number of innovations. For example, in addition to the wheel for pottery from very early on, there were pulleys to hand the carcasses of animals to be processed and lathes (Ian Shaw 2003, Ancient Egyptian Materials and technology). Wheeled vehicles from Egypt appear in the record as early as the 13th Dynasty, not as fancy Hyskos chariots but as wheeled sleds. QUOTE:
"Interestingly, earliest representation of wheeled vehicle from Egypt (tomb of Sebeknekht at El Kab, Dynasty XIII) shows sledge, mounted on four disk wheels rather than rollers."
-- Wheeled vehicles and ridden animals in the ancient Near East (1997), By M. A. Littauer, J. H. Crouwel
-------------------------------------
Use of the wheel in the Nile Valley- more data
"Much earlier forerunners are shown in tomb paintings of the late Old Kingdom and the 11th Dynasty showing siege towers with wheels; depictions of movable siege towers exist from the 6th Dynasty onwards.) This indicates that the wheel was used in the transport if heavy loads more frequently than assumed.. The use of wheeled equipment in building is not yet attested to but may have been fairly common. The soft surface of the desert sand and the mid of the cultivation may have been a serious obstacle for heavy carriages but not so much for sledges."
--The encyclopaedia of ancient Egyptian architecture By Dieter Arnold. 2002. p 195 --------------------------
"In all probability wheels would have been of little practical use, for the building blocks used were far too large and too heavy to be carried on a wooden-wheeled cart. The relative scarcity of wood in ancient Egypt would have made the building of such carts difficult and overcoming the practical and technical difficulties of building carts to carry and move great weights would have probably proved impossible.
Wheels would have been, in any event, a far from practical method of transport on either agricultural land or the desert where they would have become quickly bogged down in either mud or sand."
--R. Partridge. (1996) Transport in ancient Egypt. p76 ---------------------------------------------------------------
CHANGING INNOVATIONS IN BUILDING CK TECHNOLOGY Egyptians pioneered in the use of stone, a more difficult material to work with, compared to the mud-brick of Mesopotamia. The massive works of polished granite and limestone show a skill and craftsmanship beyond anything from contemporary Mesopotamia. And that is not even getting into the mathematical, engineering and astronomical knowledge that came with the package. Ramps in raising huge monuments and buildings were a sophisticated adaptation with at least 5 different types of ramps in use to supplement log rollers, ropes and sledges. As one historian notes:
"The Egyptians advanced beyond the Mesopotamians in another area: vaulting. They used the tunnel or barrel vault as their Near Eastern counterparts did, but they added a new style called the corbel vault that creates arches using stones that jut out to support other stones. What this indicates is that Egyptians builders were not determined in their architectural structures by other civilisations or influences. another example of this is the innovative cantilevered beams over the King's Chamber in Giza pyramid. The pent roof distributes weight and stress in a new way. In other words, Egypt had skilful engineers who created new types of architectural supporting systems."
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EGYPTIAN WRITING SYSTEMS:
DATA FROM THE BOOK: Sticks, stones, and shadows: building the Egyptian pyramids[/b]
QUOTE:
"Discoveries by Gunter Dreyer of the German Archaeological Institute suggest that the origin of Egyptian writing needs to be reexamined, offering the possibility that the idea of writing was developed in Egypt several centuries before it occurred in the Near East. Inscriptions from hundreds of pots and labels found at the royal cemetery at Abydos show some hieroglyphic writing as far back as 3400 BCE, with most occurring about 3200 BCE. Sumerian writing seems to have begun about 3100 BCE. The Egyptians formed and used writing in a different way than the Asians. The linguistic pictographs of Sumer were rudimentary were used primarily used for commerce. Those of Egypt were more representational of real objects and were primarily employed to identify kings, tombs and the like.
A remarkable find involving early experiments with alphabetic writing in Egypt has been recently made by John C. Darnell, an Egyptologist at Yale University, and his wife Deborah. Inscriptions discovered in the limestone cliffs on an ancient road between Thebes and Abydos, a route once heavily traveled by Asian traders and mercenaries in the Egyptian desert, are in a Semitic script with Egyptian influences. Dated between 1900 and 1000 BCE, they are two or three centuries older than previous evidence of an alphabet in the Semitic-speaking territory of the Sinai Peninsula or in the Syria-Palestine region occupied by the Canaanites. While there have always been indications that Semites were inventors of the alphabet, researchers had heretofore assumed that it was developed in their own lands by borrowing and simplifying Egyptian hieroglyphs. Instead Darnell's discovery now suggests that, working with Semitic speakers in Egypt, native scribes simplified formal pictographic Egyptian writing and modified the symbols into an early alphabet using a semi-cursive form commonly used in the Middle Kingdom."
ENDQUOTE- from: --Martin Isler (2001). Sticks, stones, and shadows: building the Egyptian pyramids. Univ of Oklahoma PRess. p. 56
MORE DATA FROM THE BOOK "LANGUAGE VISIBLE" - INSPIRATION FOR MODERN ALPHABET FLOWED FROM EGYPT
"For the rest of the 20th century, at least through the year 1999, books and articles on the early alphabet took their cur from the Canaanite evidence. Your local library has a whole shelf of books containing the theory that the alphabet was invented in the Levant, around 1700B.C. Yes, it was inspired partly by Egyptian hieroglyphics (the theory allows), but the inventors were looking at imported Egyptian scrolls and artwork...
By 1998, Darnell and others had reached a couple of dramatic conclusions. First, the two inscriptions are probably the oldest alphabetic writing yet discovered, certainly the oldest that can be dated confidently: They were carved in about 1800 B.C., give or take a century. More important, the inscriptions can be viewed as signposts that point directly back to the alphabet's invention. On the basis of the Wadi el-Hol evidence, that invention is now assigned to around 2000 B.C. in Egypt - about three centuries earlier (and in a different country) than previously thought. "Finds in Egypt Date Alphabet in Earlier Era.: announced the front-page New York Times headline of a November 1999 piece reporting on the work.
The evidence is in the letter shapes, Darnell explains. Study has confirmed that every letter of the two inscriptions is copied from some preexisting symbol in Egyptian rock-writing and/or hieroglyphics. This is where the inventors and early users of the alphabet found their letter shapes.
Certain Wadi el-Hol letter shapes suggest a particular moment in time when that copying occurred. We know enough about Egyptian rock writing to track the evolution of its symbols, and several Wadi el-Hol letters clearly reflect Egyptian symbol forms of the early, Middle Kingdom, around 2000 B.C. Yet the Wadi el-Hol writing preserves letter shapes bequeathed from the alphabet's invention, around 2000 B.C."
"Who were the inventors? Darnell believes they may have been in the Egyptian army: Semitic mercenaries or similar, whom the Egyptians would have called Amu (Asiatics). These peoples were illiterate originally. But the army that they joined happened to have a vigorous writing method for themselves. Perhaps the inventors were junior officers among the Amu, individuals who had learned some standard Egyptian rock-writing and were able to work from there. Perhaps, Darnell theorizes, they got help from Egyptian army scribes, who sought to improve the foreigner’s organization with the gift of literacy.
As to who might have carved the two Wadi el-Hol inscriptions, same answer as above. Not the inventors themselves, of course, but their great-great-great-grandnephews, serving in Egypt’s camel corps. It was the army that did most of the writing along desert roads."
ENDQUOTE- from:
--David Sacks (2003). Language visible: unraveling the mystery of the alphabet from A to Z. Random House. pp. 34-37
Finds in Egypt Date Alphabet In Earlier Era By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD Published: November 14, 1999
On the track of an ancient road in the desert west of the Nile, where soldiers, couriers and traders once traveled from Thebes to Abydos, Egyptologists have found limestone inscriptions that they say are the earliest known examples of alphabetic writing.
Their discovery is expected to help fix the time and place for the origin of the alphabet, one of the foremost innovations of civilization.
Carved in the cliffs of soft stone, the writing, in a Semitic script with Egyptian influences, has been dated to somewhere between 1900 and 1800 B.C., two or three centuries earlier than previously recognized uses of a nascent alphabet. The first experiments with alphabet thus appeared to be the work of Semitic people living deep in Egypt, not in their homelands in the Syria-Palestine region, as had been thought.
Although the two inscriptions have yet to be translated, other evidence at the discovery site supports the idea of the alphabet as an invention by workaday people that simplified and democratized writing, freeing it from the elite hands of official scribes. As such, alphabetic writing was revolutionary in a sense comparable to the invention of the printing press much later.
Alphabetic writing emerged as a kind of shorthand by which fewer than 30 symbols, each one representing a single sound, could be combined to form words for a wide variety of ideas and things. This eventually replaced writing systems like Egyptian hieroglyphics in which hundreds of pictographs, or idea pictures, had to be mastered.
''These are the earliest alphabetic inscriptions, considerably earlier than anyone had thought likely,'' Dr. John Coleman Darnell, an Egyptologist at Yale University, said last week in an interview about the discovery.
''They seem to provide us with evidence to tell us when the alphabet itself was invented, and just how.''
Dr. Darnell and his wife, Deborah, a Ph.D. student in Egyptology, made the find while conducting a survey of ancient travel routes in the desert of southern Egypt, across from the royal city of Thebes and beyond the pharaohs' tombs in the Valley of the Kings. In the 1993-94 season, they came upon walls of limestone marked with graffiti at the forlorn Wadi el-Hol, roughly translated as Gulch of Terror.
Last summer, the Darnells returned to the wadi with several specialists in early writing. A report on their findings will be given in Boston on Nov. 22 at a meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature.
Working in the baking June heat ''about as far out in the middle of nowhere as I ever want to be,'' Dr. Bruce Zuckerman, director of the West Semitic Research Project at the University of Southern California, assisted the investigation by taking detailed pictures of the inscriptions for analysis using computerized photointerpretation techniques. ''This is fresh meat for the alphabet people,'' he said.
''Because of the early date of the two inscriptions and the place they were found,'' said Dr. P. Kyle McCarter Jr., a professor of Near Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University. ''it forces us to reconsider a lot of questions having to do with the early history of the alphabet. Things I wrote only two years ago I now consider out of date.''
Dr. Frank M. Cross, an emeritus professor of Near Eastern languages and culture at Harvard University, who was not a member of the research team but who has examined the evidence, judged the inscriptions ''clearly the oldest of alphabetic writing and very important.'' He said that enough of the symbols in the inscriptions were identical or similar to later Semitic alphabetic writing to conclude that ''this belongs to a single evolution of the alphabet.''
The previously oldest evidence for an alphabet, dated about 1600 B.C., was found near or in Semitic-speaking territory, in the Sinai Peninsula and farther north in the Syria-Palestine region occupied by the ancient Canaanites. These examples, known as Proto-Sinaitic and Proto-Canaanite alphabetic inscriptions, were the basis for scholars' assuming that Semites developed the alphabet by borrowing and simplifying Egyptian hieroglyphs, but doing this in their own lands and not in Egypt itself.
From other, nonalphabetic writing at the site, the Egyptologists determined that the inscriptions were made during Egypt's Middle Kingdom in the first two centuries of the second millennium B.C. And another discovery in June by the Darnells seemed to establish the presence of Semitic people at the wadi at the time of the inscriptions.
Surveying a few hundred yards from the site, the Darnells found an inscription in nonalphabetic Egyptian that started with the name of a certain Bebi, who called himself ''general of the Asiatics.'' This was a term used for nearly all foreigners, most of whom were Semites, and many of them served as mercenary soldiers for Egyptian rulers at a time of raging civil strife or came as miners and merchants. Another reference to this Bebi has been found in papyrus records.
''This gives us 99.9 percent certainty,'' Dr. Darnell said of the conclusion that early alphabetic writing was developed by Semitic-speaking people in an Egyptian context. He surmised that scribes in the troops of mercenaries probably developed the simplified writing along the lines of a semicursive form of Egyptian commonly used in the Middle Kingdom in graffiti. Working with Semitic speakers, the scribes simplified the pictographs of formal writing and modified the symbols into an early form of alphabet.
''It was the accidental genius of these Semitic people who were at first illiterate, living in a very literate society,'' Dr. McCarter said, interpreting how the alphabet may have arisen. ''Only a scribe trained over a lifetime could handle the many different types of signs in the formal writing. So these people adopted a crude system of writing within the Egyptian system, something they could learn in hours, instead of a lifetime. It was a utilitarian invention for soldiers, traders, merchants.''
The scholars who have examined the short Wadi el-Hol inscriptions are having trouble deciphering the messages, though they think they are close to understanding some letters and words. ''A few of these signs just jump out at you, at anyone familiar with proto-Sinaitic material,'' said Dr. F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, who teaches at the Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey and is a specialist in the languages and history of the Middle East. ''They look just like one would expect.''
The symbol for M in the inscriptions, for example, is a wavy line derived from the hieroglyphic sign for water and almost identical to the symbol for M in later Semitic writing. The meaning of some signs is less certain. The figure of a stick man, with arms raised, appears to have developed into an H in the alphabet, for reasons unknown.
Scholars said they could identify shapes of letters that eventually evolved from the image of an ox head into A and from a house, which looks more like a 9 here, into the Semitic B, or bayt. The origins and transitions of A and B are particularly interesting because the Egyptian-influenced Semitic alphabet as further developed by the Phoenicians, latter-day Canaanites, was passed to the Greeks, probably as early as the 12th century B.C. and certainly by the 9th century B.C. From the Greeks the simplified writing system entered Western culture by the name alphabet, a combination word for the Greek A and B, alpha and beta.
The only words in the inscriptions the researchers think they understand are, reading right to left, the title for a chief in the beginning and a reference to a god at the end.
If the early date for the inscriptions is correct, this puts the origins of alphabetic writing well before the probable time of the biblical story of Joseph being delivered by his brothers into Egyptian bondage, the scholars said. The Semites involved in the alphabet invention would have been part of an earlier population of alien workers in Egypt.
Although it is still possible that the Semites took the alphabet idea with them to Egypt, Dr. McCarter of Johns Hopkins said that the considerable evidence of Egyptian symbols and the absence of any contemporary writing of a similar nature anywhere in the Syria-Palestine lands made this unlikely.
The other earliest primitive writing, the cuneiform developed by Sumerians in the Tigris and Euphrates Valley of present-day Iraq, remained entirely pictographic until about 1400 B.C. The Sumerians are generally credited with the first invention of writing, around 3200 B.C., but some recent findings at Abydos in Egypt suggest a possibly earlier origin there. The issue is still controversial.
For Dr. Darnell, though, it is exciting enough to learn that in a forsaken place like Wadi el-Hol, along an old desert road, people showed they had taken a major step in written communication. He is returning to the site next month for further exploration.
Linguistic writing systems and population movements. The southern area of the Nile Valley not only produced advanced material culture and political organization but also pioneered in the advancement of learning and communication via writing, contradicting claims of an outside Mediterranean or Mesopotamian influx responsible for such developments. In 1998 a German archaeological team under scholar Günter Dreyer, head of the German Archaeological Institute, excavated tombs associated with the Naqada culture and retrieved hundreds of clay artifacts inscribed with proto-hieroglyphs, dating to the 33rd century BC.[151] Of Dreyer's finds, Archaeology Magazine states that they "...challenge the commonly held belief that early logographs, pictographic symbols representing a specific place, object, or quantity, first evolved into more complex phonetic symbols in Mesopotamia."[152]
The early examples appear to have been building blocks for later development into the full complex of hieroglyphs for inscribing the ancient Egyptian language,[153] showing a measure of continuity into the period of the pharaohs. According to Dreyer, these continuities provide evidence that the writing used later by Egyptian kingships developed gradually in the native environment. "Most of them are documents, records of linen and oil delivered to the King Scorpion, taxes, short notes, numbers, lists of kings' names, and names of institutions.. The writing is in the form of line drawings of animals, plants and mountains and is the earliest evidence that hieroglyphics used by later-day Pharaonic dynasties did not rise as phoenix from the ashes but developed gradually.. Although the Egyptian writing is in the form of symbols it can be called true writing because each symbol stands for a consonant and makes up syllables. In principle Ancient Egyptians were able to express themselves clearly.."[154] According to mainstream Egyptologist Kent Weeks, professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, Dreyer's data suggests "one of the greatest discoveries in history of writing and ancient Egyptian culture."[155]
Dreyer has moved beyond his early findings to postulate that the Egyptians were the first in the world to develop systematic writing as opposed to the commonly held view that the Mesopotamians did.[156] Some Egyptian archaeology authorities appear to support Dreyer's hypothesis of Egyptian primacy. According to a 1999 statement by one Gaballa Ali Gaballa, secretary-general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities: "The earliest known Sumerian writings date back to 3000BC while the German team's find shows that Abydos inscriptions date to 3400BC. The first Pharaonic dynasty began in 2920BC with King Menes. The earliest known writing in Dynasty Zero is much earlier than the oldest writing discovered in Mesopotamia." [157]
While scholarly debate and research continues on the topic[158], but the presence of the ancient writings from very early times provides yet more evidence against the notion of a "Dynastic Race" sweeping into the Nile Valley to give the natives advanced culture like writing. Rather the evidence indicates the opposite, and emphasizes the primarily indigenous nature of Egyptian civilization.
Language similarities among the Nilotic peoples. Modern scholarship has moved away from earlier notions of a "Hamitic" race speaking Hamito-Semitic languages, and places the Egyptian language in a more localized context, centered around its general Saharan and Nilotic roots.(F. Yurco "An Egyptological Review", 1996)[159] Linguistic analysis (Diakanoff 1998) places most of the origin of the Afro-Asiatic languages wholly within Africa, primarily in the southeastern Sahara or adjacent Horn of Africa, with Semitic groupings straddling the Nile Delta and Sinai.[160]
Other recent research demonstrates several African languages that share features with Egyptian, such as the Chadic languages of west and central Africa, the Cushitic languages of northeast Africa, and the Semitic languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea.[161] Acceptance of an African origin for the Afro-Asiatic language grouping (of which ancient Egyptian is a part) is widespread among most mainstream scholars.[162]
References
151. ^ Gunter Dreyer, Umm El-Quaab I-Das pradynastische Konigsgrab U-j and seine fruhen Schriftzeugnisse (1998)- translation: Umm El-Quaab I-The Predynastic Royal Tomb U-j and Its Early Writing-Evidence]; see also Allen, James Paul. 2000. Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-20
154. ^ Nevine El-Aref, "Did writing originate in Egypt?" Al-Ahram Weekly: 1 - 7 April 1999, Issue No. 423
155. ^ "Egyptian writing dating to 3300 B.C. discovered," The Japan Times, December 17, 1998 156. ^ Nevine El-Aref, "Did writing originate in Egypt?" op. cit
157. ^ Nevine El-Aref, "Did writing originate in Egypt?" Al-Ahram Weekly: 1 - 7 April 1999, Issue No. 423
158. ^ Larkin, op. cit. Archaelogy..
159. ^ Yurco, op. cit.
160. ^ M.Diakonoff, "THE EARLIEST SEMITIC SOCIETY LINGUISTIC DATA," Journal of Semitic Studies, 43,209 (1998)
161. ^ Russell G. Schuh, "The Use and Misuse of language in the study of African history" (1997), in: Ufahamu 25(1):36-81
162. ^ "The Afroasiatic Language Phylum: African in Origin, or Asian?" Daniel F. Mc Call, Current Anthropology, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Feb., 1998), pp. 139-144
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The "African climate" incorporates diverse temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elements in a wide range of environments -- from deserts, to high altitude snowy zones, to jungle, to savannah, to mixed woodlands, to higher altitude cloud forest, and all that is WITHIN the TROPICAL zone of Africa.
And just as tropical African environments are diverse, so are tropical African peoples as credible scientists note time and time again. QUOTES:
Most phenotypic variation "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)
Most genetic variation "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.)
Most skin color variation "Previous studies of genetic and craniometric traits have found higher levels of within-population diversity in sub-Saharan Africa compared to other geographic regions. This study examines regional differences in within-population diversity of human skin color. Published data on skin reflectance were collected for 98 male samples from eight geographic regions: sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, Europe, West Asia, Southwest Asia, South Asia, Australasia, and the New World. Regional differences in local within-population diversity were examined using two measures of variability: the sample variance and the sample coefficient of variation. For both measures, the average level of within-population diversity is higher in sub-Saharan Africa than in other geographic regions. This difference persists even after adjusting for a correlation between within-population diversity and distance from the equator. Though affected by natural selection, skin color variation shows the same pattern of higher African diversity as found with other traits."
-- Relethford JH.(2000). Human skin color diversity is highest in sub-Saharan African populations. Hum Biol. 2000 Oct;72(5):773-80.)
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Nubians and Egyptians- the close affinities
Nubians ethnically the closest to the ancient Egyptians, and share affinities with other tropical Africans. [Quote:]
"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). .. 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� 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..
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."
-- 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.
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Nubia had close relationships with Egypt in pre-Dynastic and early Dynastic periods via pastoralism and other shared cultural elements. Nubia also a key player in the African pastoral tradition. QUOTE:
"Morphological and genetic research seems to provide further support for the topic. According to Grigson (1991, 2000) Egyptian cattle of the 4th millennium BC were morphologically distinct from Eurasian cattle (Bos taurus) and Zebu (Bos indicus), meaning that African cattle may have been domesticated from the local wild Bos primigenius before the aforementioned date.... The zoological, genetic and linguistic studies thus not only suggest an African origin for cattle domestication, but also provide a precise time frame and geographicallocation which, generally speaking, fits well with that proposed by the CPE (Combined Prehistoric Expedition). A further element which might give support to the matter comes from the archaeological record, namely the pottery."
"To sum up, Nubia is Egypt’s African ancestor. What linked Ancient Egypt to the rest of the North African cultures is this strong tie with the Nubian pastoral nomadic lifestyle, the same pastoral background commonly shared by most of the ancient Saharan and modern sub-Saharan societies. Thus, not only did Nubia have a prominent role in the origin of Ancient Egypt, it was also a key area for the origin of the entire African pastoral tradition." --Gatto M. 2009. The Nubian Pastoral Culture as Link between Egypt and Africa A View from the Archaeological Record. British Archaelogical Reports: Egypt in its African Context: BAR S2204- Archaeopress. 21-29
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Limb proportion studies data - RECAP
Raxter & Ruff, et al. (2008) Stature estimation in ancient Egyptians. Amer J. Phy Anthro 136 (2), 147-55. Most samples drawn from northern Egypt near the Mediterranean, closer to Europe and the Levant, but still link more with Blacks. Earlier studies (Trinkhaus 1981) also link Blacks more closely than Southern or Northern Europeans, or US Whites. Zakrewski (2003) shows similar patterns.
Trinkhaus found Holocene Egyptians plotting nearer to, or resemble more other tropically adapted peoples like Pygmies, US Blacks and Melanesians. The closest match is with fellow Africans. Southern Europeans like Yugoslavs, Northern Europeans like Belgians, and white Americans are more distant from the US blacks and Egyptians. (Trinkhaus, E. (1981) ‘Neanderthal limb proportions and cold adaptation’. p. 211). Trinkhaus’s results confirm studies going back to the 1950s, and recent limb studies by Zakrewski (2003). Raxter, Ruff et. al. (2008) applied limb analysis to ancient Egyptians. The outcome was the same. US Blacks linked closer to the Egyptians, than whites. (Raxter & Ruff, et al. (2008) Stature estimation in ancient Egyptians. Amer J. Phy Anthro 136 (2), 147-55.)
QUOTE: "Body proportions are under strong climatic selection and evince remarkable stability within regional lineages.” (Gallagher 2009, Population continuity "..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. 54)
QUOTE “The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the “super-Negroid” body plan described by Robins (1983).. This pattern .. indicates that the Egyptians generally have tropical body plans. .. all samples lie relatively clustered together as compared to the other populations." (Zakrzewski, S.R. (2003). "Variation in ancient Egyptian stature and body proportions". Amer J. Phy Anth. 121 (3): 219-229. "Intralimb (crural and brachial) indices are significantly higher in ancient Egyptians than in American Whites.. 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 .. (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.” (-- "Stature estimation in ancient Egyptians" Raxter & Ruff, et al. Am J Phys Anthropol. 2008,136(2):147-55)
QUOTE “"It can be seen that all the pharonic values, including those of 'Smakhare', lie much closer to the negro curve than to the white curve. Since stature equations only work satisfactorily in the individuals to whom they have applied have similar proportions to the population group from which they are derived, this provides justification for using negro equations for estimating stature from single bones of the New Kingdom pharoahs, renforcing the previous findings of Robins (1983). Furthermore, the Troller and Gleser white equations for the femur, tibia and humerus yield stature values that have a much wider spread than those from negro equations with mean values that are unacceptably large." --Robins and Schute. The Physical Proportions and Stature
QUOTE "Estimates of living stature, based on X-ray measurements applied to the Trotter & Gleser (1958) negro equations for the femur, tibia and humerus, have been made for ancient Egyptian kings belonging to the 18th and 19th dynasties. The corresponding equations for whites give values for stature that are unsatisfactorily high. The view that Thutmose III was excessively short is proved to be a myth. It is shown that the limbs of the pharaohs, like those of other Ancient Egyptians, had negroid characteristics, in that the distal segments were relatively long in comparison with the proximal segments. An exception was Ramesses II, who appears to have had short legs below the knees."
--Robins and Schute. The Physical Proportions and Stature of New Kingdom Pharaohs," Journal of Human Evolution 12 (1983), 455-465
QUOTE "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 QUOTEthat 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 propor tions. Hum Evol 1:313–324. Ruff CB. 1994.)
QUOTE "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. .. 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.“ --PK Manansala 2006 on James Harris & Edward Wente, X-ray Atlas of the Royal Mummies (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1980)
Pharaonic-Nubian links long before 25th Dynasty confirmed by mainstream Egyptology scholars: -QUOTE“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.”-- (F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989)
Middle Easterners did not have tropical body proportions like ancient Egyptians – QUOTE: “Results indicate that the Qafzeh-Skhul hominids have African-like, or tropically adapted, proportions, while those from Amud, Kebara, Tabun, and Shanidar (Iraq) have more European-like, or cold-adapted, proportions. This suggests that there were in fact two distinct Western Asian populations and that the Qafzeh-Skhul hominids were likely African in origin - a result consistent with the "Replacement" model of modern human origins.. What we can say, however, is that in the Holocene, humans from southwest Asia do not exhibit tropically adapted body shape..” --Holliday, T. 2000. Evolution at the Crossroads. Amr Anthr, 102. 54-68
Egyptians group with tropical Africans and African-Americans QUOTE – Holliday 2010: "These same log shape variables were subjected to two forms of cluster analysis: neighbor-joining (NJ) and unweighted pair-group method using averages (UPGMA) tree analysis. Figure 8 is the NJ tree. It has two main branches—a long and linear body build branch that includes the Egyptians, Sub-Saharan Africans (except for the Pygmies), and African-Americans and a second, less linear body form branch that includes the Inuit, Europeans, Euro-Americans, Puebloans, Nubians, and Pygmies. Note that the Nubians used in this study are thought by some to represent an immigrant population from Europe or Western Asia [see Holliday (1995)." --Holliday, T. (2010) Body proportions of circumpolar peoples as evidenced from skeletal data. AmerJrPhyAntrho, 142: 2. 287-302
Northern Egyptians group with Africans: QUOTE – Smith 2002: "Limb length proportions in males from Maadi and Merimde group them with African rather than European populations. Mean femur length in males from Maadi was similar to that recorded at Byblos and the early Bronze Age male from Kabri, but mean tibia length in Maadi males was 6.9cm longer than that at Byblos. At Merimde both bones were longer than at the other sites shown, but again, the tibia was longer proportionate to femurs than at Byblos (Fig 6.2), reinforcing the impression of an African rather than Levantine affinity." -- Smith, P. (2002) The palaeo-biological evidence for admixture between populations in the southern Levant and Egypt.- In: Egypt and the Levant: interrelations from the 4th through the 3rd millenium, BCE. Leicester Univ. 118-28
Body/limb proportions have strong genetic element - don’t change quickly over millennia- QUOTE: "Human body proportions also appear to have a substantial genetic component. Differences in body proportions between Eskimos and non-Eskimos, for example, appear early in ontogeny.. The low sitting height/stature ratio of Australian aborigines is present early in development.. Schultz (1923, 1926) found significant differences between African–American and Euroamerican fetuses in brachial and crural indices, length of the legs relative to the trunk, and relative pelvic width. The fact that these ‘‘racial’’ features are manifested early in fetal life indicates strong genetic encoding of body and limb proportions. In addition, body shape in human appears to be more resistant to nutritional deficiency or disease than is body size .. Body proportions of human migrants, for example, are conservative; despite often exhibiting a marked increase in stature, children of migrants tend to retain the body proportions of their ancestral homeland, and do not develop the proportions of their new neighbors.. Also, while secular trends in body shape have been documented, they do not negate the value of body proportions as short-term phylogenetic markers... nutritional differences alone cannot explain all of the global variability in body shape. Rather, they note that much of the difference seen today in body shape between broad geographic groups is genetically-driven. Migration within a larger time framework took place ca. 15,000–18,000 BP, .., ultimately founding the modern Amerindian population. Despite having as much as 18,000 years of selection in environments as diverse as those found in the Old World, body mass and proportion clines in the Americas are less steep than those in the Old World.. Amerindians,. This suggests that body proportions tend not to be very plastic under natural conditions, and that selective rates on body shape are such that evolution in these features is long-term." --Holliday T. (1997). Body proportions in Late Pleistocene Europe..human origins. Jrnl Hum Evo. 32: 423-447
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Conservative Egyptologist actually says it is reasonable to view ancient Egyptians as "black" based on social construct race model
"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
^^Of course on a non-social construct-science basis, the data shows Ancient Egyptians clustering or more similar to other Africans, with stronger similarities based on different eras.
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David OConnor - Ancient Egypt in Africa
".. but his [Frankfort's] frequent citations from African ethnography- over 60 are listed in the index- demonstrate that there is a powerful resonance between recent African concepts and practice on one hand, and ancient Egyptian kingship and religion on the other.."
Rowlands (Chapter 4) provides much additional evidence suggesting that 'sub-Saharan Africa and Ancient Egypt share certain commonalities in substantive images and ideas, yet whose cultural forms display differences consistent with perhaps millennia of historical divergence and institutionalization'.
"First, kingship in Egypt was 'the channel through which the powers of nature flowed into the body politic to bring human endeavour to fruition' and thus was closely analogous to the widespread African belief that 'chieftains entertain closer relationship with the powers in nature than other men' (Frankfort 1948: 33, ch. 2). Second, the Egyptian king's metaphorical identification as an all powerful bull who tramples his enemeis and inseminates his cow-mother to achieve regeneration was derived from Egyptian ideas and beliefs abut cattle for which best parallels can be found in some, but not all, recent African societies.."
"Like the chiefs discussed by Rowlands, the king combines 'life giving forces with the power to kill" (Rowlands, Chapter 4:52). Overall, this Egyptian concept of kingship, so akin to African models, seems very different to that held in the ancient Near East (Frankfort 1948; Postgate 1995)"
"In conclusion, there is a relative abundance of ancient materials relevant to contact and influence, as well as striking correlations between ancient Egyptian civilization and the ethnography of recent and current sub-Saharan communities, chiefdoms and states... Perhaps the fact that commonalities do exist suggests that, because of great time depth and different organization, these commonalities may result from inherently African processes."
--David O'Connor, Andrew Reid (2007) ANCIENT EGYPT IN AFRICA. pp 15-22
Other mainstream scholars
[QUOTE:]
[i]"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
MORE MODERN SCHOLARS..
"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. p. 10)
"The ancient Egyptians were not 'white' in any European sense, nor were they 'Caucasian'... we can say that the earliest population of ancient Egypt included African people from the upper Nile, African people from the regions of the Sahara and modern Libya, and smaller numbers of people who had come from south-western Asia and perhaps the Arabian penisula." --Robert Morkot (2005). The Egyptians: An Introduction. pp. 12-13
"Over the long run of northeastern African history, what emerges most strongly is the extent to which ancient Egypt's culture grew from sub-Saharan African roots. The earliest foundations of the culture that was to evolve into that of dynastic Egypt were laid, as we have already discovered, by Afrasan immigrants from the general direction of the southern Red Sea hills, who arrived probably well before 10,000 B.C.E. The new inhabitants brought with them a language directly ancestral to ancient Egyptian. They introduced to Egypt the idea of using wild grasses or grains as food. They also introduced a new religion Its central belief, in the efficacy of clan deities, explains the traceability of the ancient Egyptian gods to different particular Egyptians localities: originally they were the deities of the local communities, whose members in still earlier times had belonged to a clan or a group of related clans." --Christopher Ehret. (2002) The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800. p. 93
".. how is it come about that Neolithic Saharan civilizations, ancient Egypt and modern Black African civilizations share cultural features? .. Today however, essentially autochthonous explanations are preferred based on what we call the substratum theory, whereby all the civilizations in question, even in their differences and peculiarities share a common cultural substratum as occurs in the northern world among Indo-European civilizations." --CERVELLÓ AUTUORI, Joseph, Egypt, Africa and the Ancient World, in: Proceedings 7th Int. Congress of Egyptologists, 261-272.
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The Qustul Incense Burner demonstrates the close relations between the early Nubian and Egyptian regions and Nubian influence in the genesis of Ancient Egypt: namely the formulation of key indices of royal power, such as the White Crown and related iconography later adopted by the Egyptians of the Early Dynastic Period, or as an example of shared cultural symbols and traditions between the two closely related peoples of the Nile Valley. Whatever the exact influence, the monumental Pharaonic culture was entirely at home in Nubia.
"The white crown, associated in historic times with Upper Egypt, is first attested later than the red crown, but is directly associated with the ruler somewhat earlier. The earliest known depiction of the white crown is on a ceremonial incense burner from Cemetery L and Qustul, in Lower Nubia (Williams 1986: pls 35,38). Tomb L24 contained a variety of prestige objects and in all probability belonged to a late Predynastic king of Lower Nubia, contemporary with the ruler buried in Abydos tomb U-j (*Naqada III2, c, 3150 BC). The Qustul incense burner is a remarkable object of supreme importance for the development of Egyptian royal iconography. The incised scenes around the edge of the object include the representation of a seated ruler, wearing the tall white crown. Evidence of close contacts between the rulers and their contemporaries at Heraknopolis may support the theory that the white crown originated at the latter site..
The Narmer Palate indicates that the white crown was the superior of the two crowns, since the figure of the king wearing the white crown is significantly larger than the figure wearing the red crown. The superiority of the white crown may have derived from its intimate association with the royal line of Hierakonpolis, which played a decisive role in the unification of Egypt. The white crown retained this superiority throughout Egyptian history. More than simple items of regalia, the red and white crowns were imbued with magical significance and were worshipped as cult objects in their own right."
"O'Connor has argued that the incense burner was made in Egypt or decorated by Egyptians and presented to a ruler of Qustul as a gift (O'Connor 1993: 21). It has been argued that incense burners are, however, unknown in Egypt and so it would seem unlikely that Egyptian craftsmen would make something so unfamiliar in order to send it to Nubia.. An alternative explanation is that these images of rulership- the seated figure with white crown the high prowed barque, the standards, falcon and serekhs- may have been long shared as such. In other words the region of Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia had a common cultural tradition. Can we see this as a gift from one ruler to another, i.e. among equals? The iconography would presumably only be significant in a gift if it was understood by the recipient. Williams himself has argued that the design elements of the Qustul incense burner are to be found throughout the Egyptian Nile Valley from Naqada II on (Williams 1986:144).. While these motifs may not have had the same precise meanings in their Egyptian contexts (Pittman 1996: 13-14) it can be suggested that at an early date (at least Naqada II) there was a movement of ideas as well as objects in this case and a burgeoning elite, and that certainly the Nile River would have facilitated the fluidity of such exchanges.... Williams is partly justified in stating that "it indicates that monumental Pharaonic culture was entirely at home in Nubia", at least among a certain group, and that it highlights closer ties between Egyptian and its southern neighbours."
--Jane Roy. 2011. The Politics of Trade: Egypt and Lower Nubia in the 4th Millennium BC. 215-217
Scholar Nancy Lovell studied dental traits among some high status persons of the key Egyptian Naqada group and found that they resembled the peoples of Nubia.
"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."
--(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)
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CONDENSED RECAP - narrow screen
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.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Archaeological Evidence Shows some Meriotic Influence may have ranged down into Central Africa. The move of the Sahara southward obscures cultures once farther north- Quote:
"Further south in Roseires area, Chattaway reported a number of sites, which might be of interest to this question after the exploration (Chattaway 1930: 259-264).. The most recent discoveries of datable sites and objects south of Khartoum suggest the presence of Napatans and Meroites along the Blue and White Niles, probably south of Kosti (Eisa 1987: 155-162; 1990). Such presence is also attested by the discoveries of the Wellcome Expeditions to the Sennar area (Gebel Moya, Abu Geili village and recently the objects found near Grisly village), and by the site and objects of El Getina (site of Mahmoud El Araki). The study of those objects as well as pottery sherds and bricks showed the strong probability of their Napatan and Meroitic affinities. Some other sites between El Getaina and El Kawa could be identified (Ni'ma, Wad el Zaki, Hashaba.. etc).
Near the town of El Kawa we have the site of Hilat Said, where golden objects were found which date most probably to the Napatan period (the inscription says: Imn-r df nh mj r - "God Amun Re gives life like Re', which seems to be a life-scarab) (Eisa 1994). Another scarab was found in Kosti town which may be of the same data as that of Kawa (Arkell 1961: 136-7). South of Kosti the investigations of Else Kleppe showed the presence of archaeological material o a different nature (of probably Meroitic date) (in El Rank area, Upper Nile province; Kleppe 1982a; 1982) as well as in the western Sudan.. So it seems that the White Nile was the route of penetration of the Kushites to these southern regions and the interior of Central Africa."
--Steffen Wenig (1992). Studien zum antiken Sudan. Akten der Internationalen Tagung für meroitische Forschungen vom 14. bis 19. 367-368- September 1992 . IN: Meroitica, v15, 1999
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
TO ENHANCE DISTRIBUTION AND RESEARCH, HERE ARE THE LINKS TO EACH ARTICLE MADE CLICKABLE
While the CRANID anthro reference database is skewed towards Northern Egypt and downplays the south (Kemp 2005), some forensic analyses of mummies indicates membership in the "Egyptian" group- with the next closest match being African. --QUOTE:
"A mummy of an Egyptian priestess dating from the 22nd dynasty (c. 770 BC), completely enclosed in an anthropoid (human shaped) coffin, was scanned on a CT scanner. An accurate reconstruction of the cranium was generated from 115 × 2 mm CT images using AVS/Express on a SGI computer. Linear measurements were obtained from six orthogonal cranial views and used in a morphometric analysis software package (CRANID). The analyses carried out were both linear and nearest neighbour discriminant analysis. The results show that there is a 52.9% probability that the mummy is an Egyptian female, with a 24.5% probability that the mummy is an African female."
--Hughes, Wright, and Barry (2005)Virtual reconstruction and morphological analysis of the cranium of an ancient Egyptian mummy. Australas. Phys. Eng. Sci. Med. Vol. 28, No 2, 2005
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)
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
DNA analysis of ancient mummies at Dakleh Oasis shows some affinities with sub-Saharan African populations stretching back in antiquity. QUOTE:
"A compelling story of life at the ancient Roman-Christian town of Kellis (circa AD 300) in the Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt, is developing through mitochondrial analyses of ancient DNA. Through excavations at Kellis 2, the Roman-Christian period necropolis where the ancient inhabitants of Kellis are interred, a fascinating genetic profile of the residents of classical Kellis is beginning to emerge. Interestingly, metric and non-metric trait analyses of 310 burials suggests a local population in residence at Kellis changing slowly over time through antiquity; however, archaeological evidence alludes to frequent trade with the Nile River valley, suggesting population movement into, through, and out of the oasis during this period. Moreover, social and political conditions throughout the Roman Empire, of which Egypt was a possession during this interval, hint at substantial population movements, possibly involving the oasis. Indeed, preliminary sequencing data of HV-1 suggests a genetically diverse population from a maternal perspective. Moreover, specific point mutations, in the small number of individuals analyzed to date (n=13), hint at potential maternal associations with sub-Saharan Africa in antiquity...
This strongly suggests legitimate results as opposed to false substitutions resulting from incorrect copying of ancient DNA template (Paabo et al 1990). The C to T Transition at position 16278 appears exclusively in burials 16 and 76. In addition, burials 2 and 6 appear dentical but are dissimilar at HV1 site outside of the area shown inTable I. Burials 15, 31 and 139 display a solitary C to T alteration at position 16233. This particular substitution is present in many African populations at appreciable frequencies.."
-- Parr, R. L. 2002. Mitochondrial DNA sequence analysis of skeletal remains from the Kellis 2 cemetery. In C. A.Hope and G. E. Bowen (eds.) Dakhleh Oasis Project: Preliminary Reports on the 1994-1995 to 1998-1999 Field Seasons 257-261
Posted by LEDAMA (Member # 21677) on :
quote: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):
This lie has got to stop,the ancient egyptian hieroglyphic was south-nilotic(proto-kalenjin),demotic and meroitic was proto-bantu(meru),Hieratic was volta-congo(yoruba).
somali and oromo are basically mixture of kalenjin and semitic languages. e.g oromo,somali and kalenjin call rain ROP,call palm tree SOSIOT,all have kalenjin ssrnames like KOROS,TALAM,SALAT e.t.c.all have feminine gender prefix t,all these languages use kalenjin upper numerals,BUT somali and oromo are afro-asiatic cushitic because they elements of semitic.NOTE;there is no element of semitic or indo-european in ancient egyptian.
afro-asiatic urheimat is accad and sumeria.these populations esp cushitic and ethiopian semitic entered africa via the horn of africa and yemen route,chadic entered africa by sea via libya and cathage,phoenician mixed with bantu and nilotic produced amazigh.
YES fleeing negroes is a fact,yes negroes fled the north of africa,they fled from constant war(assyrian,babylonian,greek,roman,arab invasions) and famine
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by LEDAMA:
quote: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):
This lie has got to stop,the ancient egyptian hieroglyphic was south-nilotic(proto-kalenjin),demotic and meroitic was proto-bantu(meru),Hieratic was volta-congo(yoruba).
somali and oromo are basically mixture of kalenjin and semitic languages. e.g oromo,somali and kalenjin call rain ROP,call palm tree SOSIOT,all have kalenjin ssrnames like KOROS,TALAM,SALAT e.t.c.all have feminine gender prefix t,all these languages use kalenjin upper numerals,BUT somali and oromo are afro-asiatic cushitic because they elements of semitic.NOTE;there is no element of semitic or indo-european in ancient egyptian.
afro-asiatic urheimat is accad and sumeria.these populations esp cushitic and ethiopian semitic entered africa via the horn of africa and yemen route,chadic entered africa by sea via libya and cathage,phoenician mixed with bantu and nilotic produced amazigh.
YES fleeing negroes is a fact,yes negroes fled the north of africa,they fled from constant war(assyrian,babylonian,greek,roman,arab invasions) and famine
I disagree. There is no such thing as Afro-Asiatic. Egyptian was a lingua franca invenbted to unite the various nationalities that made up ancient Egypt.
The Akkadian and Geez languages are related. The Akkadians migrated from Africa into Mesopotamia where they defeated the Sumerians who were Kushites. The Sumerian language is related to the Dravidian-Niger-Congo group.
The Kalenjin are no more related to the Egyptians, then the Wolof, Mande and Bantu. All of these languages are related to Egyptian because Egyptian was a lingua franca that included many linguistic elements and shared vocabulary items from the diverse Ethnic groups that made up ancient Egypt.
The Semitic languages are African languages as well. At the base of most Semitic languages you find an African root. Hebrew , due to interactions with the People of the Sea, Gutians and other Turkic and Indo-European speakers does have elements of I-E origin.
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Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
LEDAMA , Obenga has made it clear that AfroAsiatic does not exist and you can not reconstruct the Proto-language.
This is true. Ehret (1995) and Orel/Stolbova (1995) were attempts at comparing Proto-AfroAsiatic. The most interesting fact about these works is that they produced different results. If AfroAsiatic existed they should have arrived at similar results. The major failur of these works is that there is too much synononymy. For example, the Proto-AfroAsiatic synonym for bird has 52 synonyms this is far too many for a single term and illustrates how the researchers just correlated a number of languages to produce a proto-form.
This supports Obenga's view that you can not reconstruct Afro-Asiatic. It is assumed that if languages are related you should be able to reconstruct the proto-language of the language family. .
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
LEDAMA the Sumerians were Kushites. They were Black people.
Henry Rawlinson used the Book of Genesis to find the identity of the Mesopotamia. He made it clear that the original inhabitants of Babylonia were represented by the name Nimrod and were represented by the family of Ham: Kushites, Egyptians and etc. This name came from the popularity among these people of hunting the leopard (Nimri). And as noted in earlier post the Egyptian and Nubian rulers always associated leopard spots with royalty, just as Siva is associated with the feline. As a result, Rawlinson used an African language Galla, to decipher the cuneiform writing.
The Sumerians and Elamites came from Africa, like the founders of the Indus Valley civilization. This is why the Elamite and Sumerian languages are closely related to African and Dravidian languages.
The Kushites when they migrated from Middle Africa to Asia continued to call themselves Kushites. This is most evident in place names and the names of gods. The Kassites, chief rulers of Iran occupied the central part of the Zagros. The Kassite god was called Kashshu, which was also the name of the people. The K-S-H, name element is also found in India. For example Kishkinthai, was the name applied to an ancient Dravidian kingdom in South India. Also it should be remembered that the Kings of Sumer, were often referred to as the " Kings of Kush".
The major Kushite tribe in Central Asia was called Kushana. The Kushan of China were styled Ta Yueh-ti or "the Great Lunar Race". Along the Salt Swamp, there was a state called Ku-Shih of Tibet. The city of K-san, was situated in the direction of Kushan, which was located in the Western part of the Gansu Province of China.
The Elamites later conquered Sumer. They called this line of Kings,he "King of Kish'. This term has affinity to the term Kush,that was given to the Kerma dynasty, founded by the C-Group people of Kush. It is interesting to note that the Elamite language, is closely related to the African languages including Egyptian and the Dravidian languages of India.
The most important Kushite colony in Iran was ancient Elam. The Elamites called their country KHATAM or KHALTAM (Ka-taam). The capital of Khaltam which we call Susa, was called KHUZ (Ka-u-uz) by the Aryans, NIME (Ni-may) by the people of Sumer, and KUSHSHI (Cush-she) by the Elamites.In the Akkadian inscriptions the Elamites were called GIZ-BAM (the land of the bow). The ancient Chinese or Bak tribesmen which dominate China today called the Elamites KASHTI. Moreover, in the Bible the Book of Jeremiah (xlxx,35), we read "bow of Elam". It is interesting to note that both Khaltam-ti and Kashti as the name for Elam, agrees with Ta-Seti, the ancient name for Nubia located in the Meroitic Sudan.
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There is textual evidence supporting a relationship between the founders of Sumer, Elam and Dilmun. Col. Henry Rawlinson , used textual evidence to determine that a link existed between the Mesopotamians to their ancestors in Africa . Rawlinson called these people Kushites.
There is a positive relationship between crania from Africa and Eurasia. The archaeologist Marcel-Auguste Dieulafoy (Dieulafoy,2004) and Hanberry (1981) maintains that their was a Sub-Saharan strain in Persia . These researchers maintain that it was evident that an Ethiopian dynasty ruled Elam from a perusal of its statuary of the royal family and members of the army ( Dieulafoy, 2004; Dieulafoy, 2010;Hansberry,1981). Dieulafoy (2010 ) noted that the textual evidence and iconography make it clear that the Elamites were Africans, and part of the Kushite confederation .Dieulafoy (2010) made it clear that the Elamites at Susa were Sub-Saharan Africans.
Marcel Dieulafoy and M. de Quatrefages observed that the craniometrics of the ancient Elamites of Susa indicate that they were Sub-Saharan Africans or Negroes (Dieulafoy,2010). Ancient Sub-Saharan African skeletons have also been found in Mesopotamia (Tomczyk et al, 2010). The craniometric data indicates that continuity existed between ancient and medieval Sub-Saharan Africans in Mesopotamia (Ricault & Waelkens,2008).
Rawlinson,H. “ Letter read at the meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society on February 5, 1853”, The Athenaeum, (No. 1321) ,p.228.
Rawlinson,H. “Note on the early History of Babylonia”, Journal Royal Asiatic Soc., 15, 215-259.
Ricaut,F.X. and Waelkens.2008. Cranial Discrete Traits in a Byzatine Population and Eastern Mediterranean Population Movements, Hum Biol, 80(5):535-564.
Tomczyk,J., Jedrychowska-Danska, K., Ploszaj,T & Witas H.W. (2010). Anthropological analysis of the osteological material from an ancient tomb (Early Bronze Age) from the middle Euphrates valley, Terqa (Syria) , International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, Retrieved 04/04/10 from (www.interscience.wiley.com)DOI:10.1002/oa.1150 .
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
LEDAMA the Meroitic language is not a Bantu language. Meroitic is related to the Niger-Congo group but it was a lingua franca. They invented this language because the Meroitic Empire was a confederation made up of various African Nationalities.
My decipherment of Meroitic is based on the Kushana theory.The Kushana theory is that a group of “East Indian” scholars introduced the Meroitic writing system to the Meroites. The Kushana hypothesis was based on the following evidence:
1) no African language has been found to be a cognate language of Meroitic
2) the Classical literature says that the Kushites lived in Asia and Africa;
3) the Gymnosophists, or "naked sages" of Meroe came from India.
Before I began work on Meroitic, other researchers had already falsified the African theory for Meroitic's cognate language. Meroitic is not related to languages spoken in this area. Griffith and Haycock tried to read Meroitic using Nubian and failed. K.H. Priese tried to read the Meroitic text using Eastern Sudani; he also failed.The fact that not even Nubian, a language spoken by a people who were engaged in constantly conflict with the Meroites , failed to be the cognate language of Meroitic made it clear that we must look elsewhere for the cognate language spoken by the Meroites.
The evidence presented above provides internal and external validity for my theory based upon the sources I have cited previously. The sources I have used are impartial, to disconfirm my hypothesis someone needs to show that my propositions are not fully informed. They must prove that:
1. there were no Indians North Africa and Kush when the Classical writers maintained they were] and present rival explanations based on the evidence.
The fact that the claims made by the Classical writers is supported by the Indians themselves isstrong confirmation of the Kushana hypothesis. This hypothesis based on the classical literature, was enough to support the original Kushana Hypothesis.
The predicting power of the original theory: the Gymnosophist introduced Meroitic to the Kushites due to the influence of Buddhism in Meroe, matches the observed natural phenomena which was confirmed elsewhere by cognate place names, ethononyms, lexical items and grammatical features, indicate that my theory has not be falsified.
The ability to reliably predict a linguistic relationship between Kushana and Meroitic, was further confirmation of the Kushana Hypothesis, because the linguistic connections were deducible from prediction.
I controlled the Kushana Hypothesis by comparing the statements of the classical writers, with historical, linguistic anthropological and toponymic evidence found not only in Africa, but also India and Central Asia [where the people also used Tokharian as a trade language to unify the various people in Central Asia].
I constructed three testable hypotheses in support of the Kushana theory, and it seems only fair that these variables must be disconfirmed, to falsify the Kushana Hypothesis.
Hypothesis 1: If the meroites used a writing system of non-African origin a tradition mentioning this fact will exist. (Hypothesis confirmed. Classical literature mentions Indian scholars in ancient Meroe.)
Hypothesis: 2. If the classical literature mentions Indians who lived in Egypt influencing the Meroites their should be historical evidence relating to this tradition. (Hypothesis confirmed .Classical literature mentions a King who left his country is mentioned in the Jaina text called the Kalakeharya-Kathanaka.)
Hypothesis: 3. If Classical literature is true about the Indian origin of the Gymnosophists Indians will be found living near the Meroites around the time the Meroitic inscriptions appear. (Hypothesis confirmed. Artifacts and coins with Indian inscriptions have been found in Egypt and Ethiopia.) Failure to disconfirm this theorem, implies validity of my prediction.
My confirmation of the above , and
1) the presence of Kushites in Africa and Asia;
2) Asoka sent many Buddhist missionaries to Egypt who wrote their scriptures in Kharosthi and Tocharian;
3) a Blemmya--native to the Meroitic empire, is mentioned in numerous Buddhist Pali text;
4)the presence of Kushana sages in India who may have migrated to Meroe;
5) cognate lexical items;
6)cognate verbs and
7) cognate grammatical features; indicates systematic controlled, critical and empirical investigation of the question of Kushana representing the Meroitic cognate language.
As a result of these facts we can now use Tocharian or Kushana to read the Meroitic text. The historical evidence make it clear that the Meroites were probably not strangers to Kharosthi literacy since the Gymnosophists had been in Upper Egypt and Meroitic Empires hundreds of years.
The evidence is clear Tocharian and Kharosthi was a popular media among Upper Egyptians and Meroites. As a result, it was a nativized Meroitic language spoken by a major group of Meroites.
.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
The Akkadian and Geez languages are related. The Akkadians migrated from Africa into Mesopotamia where they defeated the Sumerians who were Kushites.
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Rawlinson identified these Akkadians as Turanian or Scythic people. But he made it clear that these ancient Scythic or Turanian speaking people were Kushites or Blacks.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,:
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
The Akkadian and Geez languages are related. The Akkadians migrated from Africa into Mesopotamia where they defeated the Sumerians who were Kushites.
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Rawlinson identified these Akkadians as Turanian or Scythic people. But he made it clear that these ancient Scythic or Turanian speaking people were Kushites or Blacks.
So lioness, you are saying this is contradictory?
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
Cldye will resolve the matter
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova:
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,:
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
The Akkadian and Geez languages are related. The Akkadians migrated from Africa into Mesopotamia where they defeated the Sumerians who were Kushites.
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Rawlinson identified these Akkadians as Turanian or Scythic people. But he made it clear that these ancient Scythic or Turanian speaking people were Kushites or Blacks.
So lioness, you are saying this is contradictory?
Rawlinson othen refrred to the Sumerians as Akkadians . The Kushites in Asia were called Scythic and Turanian. The original Scythic people were not Indo-Europeans. See: C.B. Rawlinson, "Notes on the early history of Babylon", Jour. Royal Asiatic Society (First Series) 15, p.230
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
LEDAMA, quoting Beyoku is not helping your case. Do you even know what the Bantu migrration is? You assert:
hyksos were forced out of egypt by Amasis,they didn't assimilate,except ta-meru,ta-seti and ta-netjer.the rest were forced out, triggering first bantu migration to kush and west africa.
Aside from a mass of other ludricrous assertions, you like an assortment of 'Afro-enthusiasts', advance the dubious "Fleeing Negroes" model, in which West Africa gets civilization of "Bantus" migrate cuz Hyksos, or assorted Asiatics invade or conquer Egypt. This "Fleeing Negroes" notion, has been debunked again and again, yet you keep merely asserting it like an article of religious faith. Maybe it is... ANd since when do "Bantu" "flee" to Kush or West Africa cuz Hyskos showed up in Egypt?
I again ask, what's taking you so long in providing credible scholarly proof regarding the negroes who "flee" Egypt, to trigger the first Bantu migration in Africa? Don't quote Beyoku or web links saying "it is so." Anybody can assert anything. Where is credible evidence?
the kalenjin were responsible for unifying egypt for MENES aka NERMER was a kalenjin,the kalenjin ruled mostly the 3rd,18th and 26th dynasty of egypt because most rulers of these dynaties had kalenjin names,also the culture of these dynasties were influenced by the kalenjin.
Where is credible scholarly proof that this is so? How did the 3rd, 18th or 25th (and later you add the 26th) Dynasty become "Kanenjin"? You are still ducking and dodging providing credible data from the other thread. What's taking you so long?
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
The Akkadian and Geez languages are related. The Akkadians migrated from Africa into Mesopotamia where they defeated the Sumerians who were Kushites.
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
Rawlinson identified these Akkadians as Turanian or Scythic people. But he made it clear that these ancient Scythic or Turanian speaking people were Kushites or Blacks.
Rawlinson often referred to the Sumerians as Akkadians . The Kushites in Asia were called Scythic and Turanian. The original Scythic people were not Indo-Europeans. See: C.B. Rawlinson, "Notes on the early history of Babylon", Jour. Royal Asiatic Society (First Series) 15, p.230
Babylon 1894 BC-141 BC
was originally a Semitic Akkadian city dating from the period of the Akkadian Empire c. 2300 BC. Originally a minor administrative center, it only became an independent city-state in 1894 BC in the hands of a migrant Amorite dynasty not native to ancient Mesopotamia. The Babylonians were more often ruled by other foreign migrant dynasties throughout their history, such as by the Kassites, Arameans, Elamites and Chaldeans, as well as by their fellow Mesopotamians, the Assyrians.
Under Nabopolassar, a Chaldean king, Babylon eventually threw off Assyrian rule, and in an alliance with Cyaxares, king of the Medes and Persians together with the Scythians and Cimmerians, the Assyrian Empire was finally destroyed between 612 BC and 605 BC.
___________________________
C.B. Rawlinson
But Clyde wasn't the Royal Asiatic Society a 19th century white colonial British Eurocentic Hamitic theory promoting organization? (still operating today also) How can you use them as sources?
Anyway...
quote:
"[7.70] The eastern Ethiopians - for two nations of this name served in the army - were marshalled with the Indians. They differed in nothing from the other Ethiopians, save in their language, and the character of their hair. For the eastern Ethiopians have straight hair, while they of Libya are more woolly-haired than any other people in the world."
--Herodotus, The Persian Wars 450s - 420s BC
.
quote:
“a numerous colony of people emigrated from the banks of the Indus, and crossing the ocean, fixed their residence in the country now called Ethiopia."
Eusebius 260/265 – 339/340 AD
.
quote:Originally posted by Mike111:
Clyde could the Scythians be straight haired black people?
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
LEDAMA the Semitic speakers are of African origin. The origin of the Semitic speakers is very important. The archaeological and textual evidence make it clear that Mesopotamia was the not homeland of the Semitic speakers. This evidence make it clear that the first settlers of this area spoke Sumerian and Ubadian, not Semitic.
The first Semites to leave textual evidence are the Akkadians. The Akkadians and the Ethio-Semitic languages have shared archaism. This feature indicates the ancient morphology and grammar of a Semitic language. We can infer that if this was the norm for the most ancient form of Semitic, other Semitic languages possessing this character probably are closely related to the original spoken/written Semitic language. We can further infer that since Ethio-Semitic, possesses these linguistic characteristics, and other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and Arabic do not, the later languages must be relatively young in age.
The historical evidence support an old presence of Ethio-Semitic in Africa. For example, the Axumite Empire was founded by the Habashan. the habashan are mentioned in a 3rd or 4th century Himyarite inscription from South Arabia, which refers to an alliance between Gadarat King of the Habashan or Habashat.
Some of the people of Punt were probably Tigrinya speakers, who call their language habesha, i.e., Abyssinian par excellence. The term Habesh, seems to represent an old name for Abyssinia and may be connected with the Amharic word washa 'cave or cavern', and may refer to the" cave dwellers" who once served as the principal traders along the Ethiopian coast. The ability of the Ethiopians as sailors, is supported by the title bahr nagash, "ruler of the maritime province" or Eritrea.
In addition, some of the earliest Sabean/Thamudic inscriptions have been found in Ethiopia, and not South Arabia. For example, Dr. Doresse has found Sabean cursive writing on a sceptre that indicates that the Habashat/Axumite empire had writing.
These Habashan are mentioned in Egyptian inscriptions of the 18th Dynasty (1709-1320) in connection to the land of Punt. Given the Egyptian association of the Habashan with Punt, I call the speakers of the Ethio-Semitic languages: Puntites. We have Egyptian evidence of trade missions to Punt as early as PepiII in 2400 BC and Mentuholep IV and IV. The vizier Amenemhat, of Mentuholep IV is said to have established a port near Safaga. the most famous mission to Punt was sent by Queen Hatshepsut, and is recorded at deir el Bahri. Since the Habashan are mentioned in Egyptian documents they were in existence long before the Arabic speakers. Even the Semitic speakers of Africa did not originate in East or Northeast Africa. Up until the 6th Dynasty of Egypt, the Semitic speakers lived in Nubia as cattle herders.
The Semitic speakers or Puntites did not live originally in Northeast Africa. They were part of the C-Group Confederacy which included during the reigns of Merenre and Pepi II (according to the account of Herkhuf), Irtjet, Zatju and Wawat. In 2300 BC, the Egyptians forced the Puntites out of Nubia into Northeast Africa. Some of these Puntites migrated across Arabia into Mesopotamia . In Mesopotamia they were called Akkadians. The Akkadians defeated the Sumerians and spread the Semitic language into the Middle East.
The C-Group people spoke Niger-congo languages. This ould explain why Diop discovered that at the base of each semetic word we find a Black African, Niger-Congo root. ]
This statement was made by Diop in his book The Cultural Unity of Black Africa. See page 113.
. The evidence of shared archaism for Akkadian and Ethio-Semitic indicate that the speakers of these languages probably shared many linguistic features when they separated. It also suggest that thespeakers of these languages probably separated in Africa, since the Ethio-Semitic speakers have long been established in their present home, as supported by the Egyptian inscriptions. The Ethio-Semitic speakers have maintained these features due to the relative stability of these languages. You can find out more about the stability of African languages in my article "Linguistic Continuity and African and Dravidian languages", International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, 23 (2), (1996) 34-52. We must conclude that the Semitic languages originated in Africa. The Semitic languages are divided into four groups: North-east Semitic, Northwest Semitic, Southeast Semitic and Southwest Semitic. The Ethiopian Semitic languages belong to the Southeast Semitic subgroup. In ancient times modern Ethiopia and Somalia was called Punt. As a result I call the Semitic languages of Ethiopia: Puntite languages. In the Sumerian texts these Puntites may have been called Meluhhaites.
The Puntites lived in the Eastern desert of Egypt and Arabia for many years and on the Horn of Africa. The earliest representatives of this group are depicted on the Ivory label of King Dan (Udimu) of the first Dynasty of Kemit.
During the neolithic subpluvial the Red Sea area recieved more rainfall. This area was blanketed with vegetation and the people grew ensete, barley and dates. They also grazed sheep, goats and cattle. Arabia at this time was a vast savannah with marshes and lakes. What is now known as the Rub al-Khali or Empty Quarter, today, an arid mountainous area, was then well watered.
The Cushitic speaking people of Ethiopia also appear to have had some representatives in Arabia during this period .The people of Punt lived in an area stretching from the Eastern desert of Egypt, eastward to the Red Sea, and Central Africa.These people spoke Puntite/ Semitic languages.
This group of Africoids lived in the Eastern Desert and the Red Sea Hills. Whereas most Africans are clean shaven the Puntites preferred to wear beards. The boats of these Easterners are found engraved at prehistoric sites in Mesopotamia. In the Egyptian records the standard of the Easterners was the Set animal.
The Egyptian traditions tell us that there was a struggle between Set and Horus which took place in Nubia. This story indicates that in ancient times Semitic-speaking people formerly lived in Nubia; this explains the Egyptian identification of Punt or Pwene as "the land of the gods". (Ullendorf 1973) The Egyptians called the people of Punt Kenbetu.
In the ancient literature of Kemit (Egypt) and Mesopotamia, Punt was recognized as a sea power. From ports along the Red Sea, the people of Punt traded with of Kemit, Arabia, West Asia and Mesopotamia. Modern Ethiopia is part of the land known to the Egyptians "the lands of the gods". The inhabitants of Punt, on the other hand called their country Arwe. It was from here that the Semitic speaking nations moved northward into Arabia and Mesopotamia. The Kemites allude to the Arwe Kingdom in a short story which tells how a good natured serpent of great size speaks to a ship wrecked Egyptian whose life he saved:
"I am the Prince of Punt...But it shall happen when[thou] art parted from this place ,that never shalt thou behold this island more, for it will become water...."(Doresse 1971, p.17)
This "good natured serpent" may refer to the King-Serpent that ruled Punt according to Ethiopian traditions.
The ships of Punt were very large, as early as 2500 B.C., they had ships with 60 oars. In the records of Sumer-Akkad there are frequent passages referring to the large boats of Punt, which they called Meluhha . The ships of Meluhha made many voyages to Mesopotamia.
Meluhha, included the area from Nubia eastward to the coast of the Red Sea. This view is supported by the discovery of C-Group pottery usually associated with Nubia, found in excavated sites in Eritrea. (Zayed 1981, p.142)
The Meluhhaites were known as the "black men" to the Sumerians .The Akkadians called them "the Meluhhaites, the men of the Black land". They sold many products including metals and precious stones to the people of Mesopotamia.(Kramer 1978, pp. 76-80) There were many Egyptian contacts with Punt. According to Herodotus, the Kemite Pharoah Sestrotris carried his conquest as far as the Red Sea, where he erected a stele at Deire. We have evidence of Egyptian expeditions to Punt sent by Pepi II in 2400 B.C.,and Mentuholep IV to bring back rare products from ancient Punt. Under Mentuholep V, the vizier Amenemhet established a port near Safaga to insure regular trade with Punt. The most famous voyage to Punt was undertaken by Queen Hatshepsut (c. 1520-1484), details of her mission are depicted on the walls of her temple at Deir el Bahri. (Gardiner 1978, p.78)
Many ports in modern Ethiopia have been used for millennia. The inscriptions of Tuthmosis III refer to such places as Outculit, Hamasu and Tekaru; these names suggest the modern Ethiopian cities of Adulis, Hamasu and Tigre. (Doresse 1971, p.17)
The Egyptians/Kemites made it clear that Punt controlled both sides of the Red Sea. (Budge 1959, p.53, n.1) In the Kemite inscription the Hymn of Ra, we read "The land of Punt is established [to give] the perfumes which thou smellest with thy nostrils" (Budge 1959, p.149). Stuart Munro-Hay noted that: "One extremely interesting Egyptian record from an 18th Dynasty tomb at Thebes actually shows Puntite trading boats or rafts with triangular sails ( Save -Soderbergh 1946, p.24) for transporting the products of Punt, indicating that the commerce was not exclusively Egyptian- carried, and that local Red Sea peoples were already seafaring...."
In modern Ethiopia there were three great empires Punt-Arwe, the Da'mot or Di'amat Kingdom and Axum. The first kingdom of Ethiopia was founded by the Habesha or Habeshat who were first mentioned in the Egyptian inscriptions of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt, in connection with the Land of Punt.
The Punt empire was made up of people speaking diverse languages. The culture bearers may have been the Tigrinya speakers who call their language Habesha, i.e., Abyssinian par excellence. (Doresse 1971) The term Habesha seems to represent an old name for Abyssinia (the ancient name for modern-day Ethiopia) and may be connected with the Amharic word washa "a cave or cavern".
The Puntite languages are characterized by a basic vocabulary, a system of roots and vowel patterns and the formation of derived verbs by prefixes. The South Arabian languages: Sabaean, Minaean and Hadramautic, are slightly different from modern South Arabic, but analogous to the Ethiopian languages. This represents the influence of the Jectanid tribes on South Arabic. It is clear that the Proto-Puntite speakers lived in Africa. Wolf Leslau (1951,1957) has made it clear that Ethiopic and South Arabic form a dialectical unity. Dialectical unity means that two or more languages form a unified dialect.
According to Haupt, in 1878, Akkadian , Minaean and Ethiopic all belong to the same group of Semitic languages, even though they are separated in time and by great geographical distance. This is surprising considering the fact that Ethiopic and Akkadian are separated by many hundreds of years. The best example of this unity is the presence of shared archaicism (Leslau 1951). The linguistic feature of shared archaicism is the appearance of the vowel after the first consonant of the imperfect (Hertzron & Bender 1976, p.23).
For example, one of the most outstanding features of Puntite, is the presence of a vowel following the first consonant in the verb form known as the imperfect, e.g., yi quattul (using the hypothetical verb consonants q-t-l, yi is the person marking prefix) or yi k'ett 'he kills'. In Southwest Semitic the form of the perfect is yu qtul-u . Here we have the same hypothetical q-t-l form, but there is no vowel following the first consonant of the verb root. This results from the fact that in Black African languages we rarely, if at all find words formed with double consonants.
The fact that Southeast Semitic has shared archaicism with Puntite shows that at the time the Akkadians and Ethiopic speakers separated these groups had dialectical unity. The lack of this trait in Arabic and Hebrew shows that they have been influenced by the Indo-European speakers who invaded Palestine and Arabia between 1300 B.C. and 900 B.C. Semitic verb root Akkadian Ethiopic/S. Arabian
Clearly Black African language forms the base of most Semitic words. Diop (1978,p.113) recognized that in relation to Arabic words, once the first consonant was suppressed, there is often an African root. This phenomenon was also recognized by Wiener (1922, v.III) who believed that many African words were of Arabic origin.
The Cushitic substratum has strongly influenced the phonology, morphology, syntax and vocabulary of the Puntite languages.
Cushitic English Semitic Saho la wild cow *la-at Samoli la id. id.
This supports the view of I.M. Diakonoff that the Semitic speakers and A-Group lived in close proximity in ancient times. The evidence discussed above makes it clear that Arabia, which was occupied in Neolithic times by the Anu, was probably not the original homeland of the Semitic speakers. Modern Ethiopians originated in Africa, not Arabia.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,:
[QUOTE]
“a numerous colony of people emigrated from the banks of the Indus, and crossing the ocean, fixed their residence in the country now called Ethiopia."
Eusebius 260/265 – 339/340 AD
.
This is how Buddism came to the Meroitic Empire and Egypt.
Philostratus:The Life of Apollonius of Tyana makes it clear that the Gymnosophist lived in Upper Egypt and the Meroitic Empire. The historical evidence makes it clear that there was probably two migrations of Buddhist Gymnosophists to Egypt and the Meroitic Empire.
Asoka was a supporter of Buddhism. Zacharias P. Thundy, in Buddha and Christ make it clear that the edits of Asoka (c.274-236 BC) indicate that this ruler sent missionaries to Egypt to preach the Buddhist Dharma(pp.242-243).
Thundy maintains that archaeological evidence exist for a community of Indian sages living in Memphis as early as 200 BC (p.243).
We know that decendents of these missionaries were still in Egypt over two hundred years later because they were visited by Apollonius of Tyana.
Asoka used Kharosthi to write his edits. The Buddhist also used this writing system to record their scriptures. This means that the Gymnosophists would have had a long tradition of employing Kharosthi to communicate their ideas. The Gymnosophists were probably well respected by the Meroites and some Meroites probably had knowledge of Buddhist teachings and literacy.
Some Meroites may have played an important role in Buddhist because Blemmyae, a prominent group in the Meroitic Sudan are mentioned in Pali text Tipitaka (see:JDM Derrett, (2002) A Blemmya in India, Numen 49:460-474). Dr.Derrett wrote that in early Pali text " we have a Blemmya (an African) in front rank Buddhist texts of very respectable age (p.465).
The Buddhist text where Blemmya were mentioned are very old. The Vinaya pitaka, is dated to the 4th century B.C.E.
If Blemmya are mentioned in Buddhists text we can be sure that Meroites were not ignorant of Kharosthi. This would explain why many of the Meroitic symbols agree with Kharosthi. They agree because some Meroites were probably already literate in Kharosthi due to the influence of Buddhism in the Meroitic Empire.
.
There seems to have been a second migration of Buddhists to the Meroitic Empire many years after Asoka sent missionaries to Egypt. These migrants came to the Meroitic Empire after their king was murdered.
Flavius Philostratus, the writer of the Vita Apollonii, Vol.1 , claimed that the Gymnosophists of Meroe originally came from India (see F.C. Conybeare, Philostratus:The Life of Apollonius of Tyana(p.45),1950). Given the fact that the Kushana had formerly ruled India around the time that the Meroitic writing was introduced to the Kushite civilization, led to the hypothesis that the ancestors of the Gymnosophist may have been Kushana philosophers.
The historical evidence of the Kushana having ruled India made the Classical references to Indians, the Gymnosophists in Meroe, an important source for the construction of alternative theories about the possible location of the cognate language of Meroitic.
There is external evidence, which supports my theory. A theory explains observed phenomena and has predictive power. I have theorized that due to the claims of the Classical writers that some of the Meroites came from India (F.C Conybeare (Trans.), Philostratus: The life of Apollonius of Tyana Vol.2, (1950) pg.271).
According to the Life of Apollonius, the Indian Meroites were formerly led by a King Ganges, who had "repulsed the Scythians who invaded this land [India from] across the Caucasus" (Conybeare, Vol.1, Pg.273). Pilostratus also made it clear that the Indians of Meroe came to this country after their king was killed.
The presence of this tradition of an Indian King of the Indian-Meroites conquering the Scythians predicts that the Indian literature should record this historical episode. This prediction is supported by a Jaina text called the Kalakeharya-Kathanaka , which reports that when the Scythians invaded Malwa, the King of Malwa, called Vikramaditya defeated the Scythians (H. Kulke & D. Rothermund, History of India(London, Routledge: 1990, pg.73). This king Vikramaditya may be the Ganges mentioned in the Life of Apollonius.Confirmation of the Ganges story,supports the Classical literary evidence that their were Indianized -Meroites that could have introduced the Tocharian trade language to the Meroites.
In addition to the classical mention of the Indians settling Meroë, and Asoka's edit sending missionaries to Egypt, we also have a horde of Kushana coins that were found on the floor of a cave at the present monastery-shine at Debra Demo in modern Ethiopia in 1940. Moreover, there were other Indians in North Africa in addition to Kush/Meroe. For example, at Quseir al-Qadim there was a large Indian speaking community (see: R. Salomon, "Epigraphic remains of Indian traders in Egypt", Journal of the American oriental Society, (1991) pp.731-736; and R. Salomon, Addenda,Journal of the American Oriental Society, (1993) pg.593). These Indians were in Egypt writing messages in their own language, around the time we see a switch from Egyptian hieroglyphics to the Meroitic writing system. All of this supported the traditions of the Meroites that speak of a knowledge of the Kushana/Indians among the Meroites.
The evidence that the Classical references to an Indian-Meroite King who conquered the Scythians is supported by the Indian literature, provides external corroboration of the tradition that some of the Meroites were of Indian origin. The presence of Indian traders and settlers in Meroe (and Egypt), makes it almost impossible to deny the possibility that Indians, familiar with the Tokharian trade languagedid not introduce this writing to the Meroites who needed a neutral language to unify the diverse ethnic groups who made up the Meroite state. In relation to the history of linguistic change and bilingualism, itis a mistake to believe that linguistic transfer had to take place for the Meroites to have used Tokharian, when it did not take place when they wrote in Egyptian hieroglyphics.
In summary the classical literature makes it clear that there was a connection between the Gymnosophists (of Meroe) and the Indians. The fact that historical events mentioned in the classical sources are found in the Indian literature confirm the view that there were Indian-Meroites who could have introduced the Tokharian trade language to the Meroites. The fact that the Nubians who were probably not part of the"Meroitic state", used hieroglyphics and Coptic to write their language without abandoning their native language support the view that the Meroites could have also used Tokharian to write Meroitic. And that eventhough the Kushites wrote Meroitic inscriptions in Tokharian, theywould not have had to abandon their own language. .
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,:
Clyde could the Scythians be straight haired black people?
No . They represent the Scythians of Homer times.
.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: ___________________________
C.B. Rawlinson
But Clyde wasn't the Royal Asiatic Society a 19th century white colonial British Eurocentic Hamitic theory promoting organization? (still operating today also) How can you use them as sources?
Rawlinson appears to have subcribed to the Ancient Model of history which recognized that Blacks had an ancient civilization. You may want to read Black Athena, where a discussion of the ancient model of history is noted. .
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Clyde Winters:
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,:
Clyde could the Scythians be straight haired black people?
No . They represent the Scythians of Homer times.
.
Why can't the Scythians of Homer's time be straight haired black people. perhaps like the relief above with black skin?
Posted by LEDAMA (Member # 21677) on :
quote:I disagree. There is no such thing as Afro-Asiatic. Egyptian was a lingua franca invenbted to unite the various nationalities that made up ancient Egypt.
The Akkadian and Geez languages are related. The Akkadians migrated from Africa into Mesopotamia where they defeated the Sumerians who were Kushites. The Sumerian language is related to the Dravidian-Niger-Congo group.
The Kalenjin are no more related to the Egyptians, then the Wolof, Mande and Bantu. All of these languages are related to Egyptian because Egyptian was a lingua franca that included many linguistic elements and shared vocabulary items from the diverse Ethnic groups that made up ancient Egypt.
The Semitic languages are African languages as well. At the base of most Semitic languages you find an African root. Hebrew , due to interactions with the People of the Sea, Gutians and other Turkic and Indo-European speakers does have elements of I-E origin.
YES,there is a language family called 'Afro-asiatic',reason being,they have both 'african' elements and 'asiatic' element.The african elements is most of the time NILOTIC.The asiatic element is most of the times 'west semitic'. NO;it is the other way round,akkadians migrated from mesopotamia to africa,this proven by linguistics and genetics easily,when i have time i will prove that to you.what ails you clyde,is that you luck proper understanding of human migrations.I believe in the biblical history of human migration because it makes alot of sense.humans are related,we are all children of a black noah.japhet(whites),shem(asiatics&mongoloids),ham(africans).proven by genetics humans are related. genesis 10:30 tells us after noahs arc settled in the himalayas highest point,we migrated west from mt sephar(everest),towards shinar(china)which was afghanistan then,Genesis 11:2,after the babel incidence africans entered africa,europeans antered north towards caucas,asiatics transversed the region. that explains how nilotes and other africans brought zebu cows,spider plant Gynandropsis gynandra,black and brown pottery,mariyuana,millet,sorgham from INDIA TO AFRICA.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by LEDAMA:
quote:I disagree. There is no such thing as Afro-Asiatic. Egyptian was a lingua franca invenbted to unite the various nationalities that made up ancient Egypt.
The Akkadian and Geez languages are related. The Akkadians migrated from Africa into Mesopotamia where they defeated the Sumerians who were Kushites. The Sumerian language is related to the Dravidian-Niger-Congo group.
The Kalenjin are no more related to the Egyptians, then the Wolof, Mande and Bantu. All of these languages are related to Egyptian because Egyptian was a lingua franca that included many linguistic elements and shared vocabulary items from the diverse Ethnic groups that made up ancient Egypt.
The Semitic languages are African languages as well. At the base of most Semitic languages you find an African root. Hebrew , due to interactions with the People of the Sea, Gutians and other Turkic and Indo-European speakers does have elements of I-E origin.
YES,there is a language family called 'Afro-asiatic',reason being,they have both 'african' elements and 'asiatic' element.The african elements is most of the time NILOTIC.The asiatic element is most of the times 'west semitic'. NO;it is the other way round,akkadians migrated from mesopotamia to africa,this proven by linguistics and genetics easily,when i have time i will prove that to you.what ails you clyde,is that you luck proper understanding of human migrations.I believe in the biblical history of human migration because it makes alot of sense.humans are related,we are all children of a black noah.japhet(whites),shem(asiatics&mongoloids),ham(africans).proven by genetics humans are related. genesis 10:30 tells us after noahs arc settled in the himalayas highest point,we migrated west from mt sephar(everest),towards shinar(china)which was afghanistan then,Genesis 11:2,after the babel incidence africans entered africa,europeans antered north towards caucas,asiatics transversed the region. that explains how nilotes and other africans brought zebu cows,spider plant Gynandropsis gynandra,black and brown pottery,mariyuana,millet,sorgham from INDIA TO AFRICA.
Please cite the evidence. How could the Akkadians migrate from Mesopotamia to Africa, when we find them migrating into Mesopotamia. Have you forgotten that the first settlers of Mesopotamia were the Kushite Sumerians--not Akkadians.
The Dravidian people of India belonged to the C-Group. It was these Africans who took millet and other cultigens to India after 3000BC. See: African millets carried to India by Dravidian Speakers
Wawat has nothing to do with India or its people and their languages.
Posted by LEDAMA (Member # 21677) on :
@CLYDE WINTERS-
quote:Please cite the evidence. How could the Akkadians migrate from Mesopotamia to Africa, when we find them migrating into Mesopotamia. Have you forgotten that the first settlers of Mesopotamia were the Kushite Sumerians--not Akkadians.
The Dravidian people of India belonged to the C-Group. It was these Africans who took millet and other cultigens to India after 3000BC. See: African millets carried to India by Dravidian Speakers
The accadians migrated from accad(iran)into sumeria(iraq),Kush of the bible was the father of all nilotes,thats why the region near pakistan where nilotic dravidians used to reside is called 'HINDU-KUSH',characteristic of nilotic civilisations e.g egypt,kush and harrapan are 1)river basin civilisations,2)caste system,3)circumcision,4)zebu cattle,5)BRW black and red earthen ware,5)animist religions and animal totems,6)worship and sacredness of the cow,7)martriachy,8)ear lobe elongation,9)tooth extraction-lower incisors,9)use of red ochre,10)polytheist religions. c group nilotes were either dinka or nuer or karamajong. THE DRAVIDIANS HAVE NEVER BEEN TO AFRICA,yes they are nilotes,because they also have nilotic mtDNA L3(M&N),they have nilotic zebu cattle,but they represent the nilotes who never made it to africa,all nilotes(cush) entered africa via the horn of africa route,but the khoisan(phut),pygmy(mizrahim)and bantu(canaan) respectively all entered africa via the egypt sinai peninsula route at different times of history.Africa(also most continents) was uninhabited immediately after the flood,don't you read the bible.by the way the biblical migration history was written over 3500 years ago,and it makes alot of sense that what modern historians are saying. sorry clyde but DNA shows migration of zebu cow,african donkey,millet,soghurm,mariuana,rice,Spider plant (Cleome gynandra) from INDIA TO AFRICA
CHECK OUT ORIGIN OF ZEBU COW OWNED BY NILOTES
quote:Zebu From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about the bovine species. For the company, see EVE/ZeBu. Zebu Bos taurus indicus.jpg Conservation status Domesticated Scientific classification Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Artiodactyla Family: Bovidae Subfamily: Bovinae Genus: Bos Species: Bos primigenius Subspecies: B. p. indicus Binomial name Bos primigenius indicus Linnaeus, 1758 Synonyms Bos indicus and Bos taurus indicus Speculative life restoration of the enigmatic Indian aurochs (B. p. namadicus)
A zebu (/ˈziːˌbjuː/, /ˈziːbuː/ or /ˈzeɪbuː/; Bos primigenius indicus or Bos indicus or Bos taurus indicus), sometimes known as humped cattle or Brahman, is a type of domestic cattle originating in South Asia. They are characterised by a fatty hump on their shoulders, drooping ears and a large dewlap. Zebu are well adapted to withstanding high temperatures, and are farmed throughout the tropical countries, both as pure zebu and as hybrids with taurine cattle, the other main type of domestic cattle. They are used as draught oxen, as dairy cattle and as beef cattle, as well as for byproducts such as hides and dung for fuel and manure.
Contents
1 Taxonomy and etymology 2 Origin 3 Breeds 4 Characteristics 5 Spread and hybridisation 6 Popular culture 7 References 8 External links
Taxonomy and etymology
The scientific name of zebu cattle was originally Bos indicus, but they are now more commonly classified within the species Bos primigenius, together with taurine cattle (Bos primigenius taurus) and the ancestor of both of them, the extinct aurochs (Bos primigenius). European cattle are descended from the Eurasian subspecies, while zebu are descended from the Indian subspecies. "Zebu" may be either singular or plural, but "zebus" is also an acceptable plural form. The Spanish name, "cebu" or "cebú", is also present in a few English works. Origin
Zebu cattle are thought to be derived from Asian aurochs, sometimes regarded as a subspecies, Bos primigenius namadicus[1] Wild Asian aurochs disappeared during the time of the Indus Valley Civilization from its range in the Indus basin and other parts of the Indian subcontinent possibly due to inter-breeding with domestic zebu and resultant fragmentation of wild populations due to loss of habitat.[2] Breeds
There are some 75 known breeds of zebu, split about evenly between African breeds and South Asian ones. The major zebu cattle breeds of the world include Gir, Guzerat, Kankrej, Indo-Brazilian, Brahman, Nelore, Ongole, Sahiwal, Red Sindhi, Butana, Kenana, Boran, Baggara, Tharparkar, Kangayam, Chinese Southern Yellow, Philippine native, Kedah - Kelantan, and local Indian Dairy (LID). Other breeds of zebu are quite local, like the Hariana of Haryana and eastern Punjab[3] or the Rath of Alwar in eastern Rajasthan.[4]
The Sanga cattle breeds originated from hybridization of zebu with indigenous humpless cattle in Africa; they include the Afrikaner, Red Fulani, Ankole-Watusi, and many other breeds of central and southern Africa. Sanga cattle can be distinguished from pure zebu by having smaller humps located farther forward on the animals. Characteristics Female zebu in Sri Lanka
Zebu have humps on the shoulders, large dewlaps and droopy ears.[5]
Posted by LEDAMA (Member # 21677) on :
THE CATTLE DID NOT MIGRATE BY THEMSELVES FROM ASIA TO AFRICA,IT CAME WITH THE NILOTES DOMISTICATED.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by LEDAMA: THE DRAVIDIANS HAVE NEVER BEEN TO AFRICA,yes they are nilotes,because they also have nilotic mtDNA L3(M&N),they have nilotic zebu cattle,but they represent the nilotes who never made it to africa,all nilotes(cush) entered africa via the horn of africa route,but the khoisan(phut),pygmy(mizrahim)and bantu(canaan) respectively all entered africa via the egypt sinai peninsula route at different times of history.Africa(also most continents) was uninhabited immediately after the flood,don't you read the bible.by the way the biblical migration history was written over 3500 years ago,and it makes alot of sense that what modern historians are saying. sorry clyde but DNA shows migration of zebu cow,african donkey,millet,soghurm,mariuana,rice,Spider plant (Cleome gynandra) from INDIA TO AFRICA
I have read the Bible. Your interpretation of the migration of the Kushites has nothing to do with history and linguistics. In fact your interpretations are based on the researchers you refer to as "pseudo -white historians", who you claim not to support--but form the basis of your model of African history. The only new element you add to your writing is the Kalenjin.
There is no archaeological evidence of millet coming to Africa from India. The millet and other crops cultivated by the Dravidians were cultivated in Africa, before they were taken to India.
Archaeological evidence shows that the Dravidian culture originated in Africa and that the South Indian megalithic culture of the Dravidians was related to the C-Group people of Nubia. I pointed out the archaeological evidence in the article I cite earlier. Now why don't you cite research articles not a Wiki page supporting your claims.
Moreover there is no DNA showing the migration of the donkey,millet,soghurm and rice from India. The origin of the Sanga is disputed, since there are some Saharan rock engravings of cattle with humps.
In the picture below you can see a mixture of Saharan cattle. Note the long horned Sanga type cattle at the top of the picture below:
.
These pictures are 7000 years old. The Dravidians probably took the Zebu cattle to India after they migrated from Nubia.
.
.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Those "humps" look nothing like those of full bred Zebu cattle to me.
we now find strong evidence of exportations from the Indian subcontinent to China and southeast Asia, India to Africa, Africa to the Iberian Peninsula and Mediterranean Europe, India to the Americas, and Europe to the Americas (Figures 4 and and5,5, discussed in detail in the following subsections).
[...]
The second factor that we believe underlies the divergence of African taurine is a high level of wild African auroch [30], [31] introgression. Principal component (Figure 1), phylogenetic trees (Figures 2 and and3),3), and admixture (Figure 6) analyses all reveal the African taurines as being the most diverged of the taurine populations. Because of this divergence, it has been hypothesized that there was a third domestication of cattle in Africa [32]–[36]. If there was a third domestication, African taurine would be sister to the European and Asian clade. When no migration events were fit in the TreeMix analyses, African cattle were the most diverged of the taurine populations (Figures 2 and and3),3), but when admixture was modeled to include 17 migrations, all African cattle, except for East African Shorthorn Zebu and Zebu from Madagascar which have high indicine ancestry, were sister to European cattle and were less diverged than Asian or Anatolian cattle (Figure 4), thus ruling out a separate domestication. Our phylogenetic network (Figure 4) shows that there was not a third domestication process, rather there was a single origin of domesticated taurine (Asian, African, and European all share a recent common ancestor denoted by an asterisk in Figure 4, with Asian cattle sister to the rest of the taurine lineage), followed by admixture with an ancestral population in Africa (migration edge a in Figure 4, which is consistent across 6 separate TreeMix runs, Figure S4). This ancestral population (origin of migration edge a in Figure 4) was approximately halfway between the common ancestor of indicine and the common ancestor of taurine. We conclude that African taurines received as much as 26% (estimated as 0.263 in the network, p-value<2.2e-308) of their ancestry from admixture with wild African auroch, with the rest being Fertile Crescent domesticate in origin. Although three other migration edges originate from the branch between indicine and taurine (such as edge b), all of the receiving populations show indicine ancestry in the ADMIXTURE models. But African auroch are extinct and samples were not available for the ADMIXTURE model, thus the admixed auroch ancestry of African taurines cannot specifically be discovered by this model [27], [37] and African taurine, especially Lagune, are depicted as having a single ancestry without indicine influence (Figures 5 and and6,6, see f3 and f4 statistics reported later). Unlike ADMIXTURE, TreeMix can model admixture from an unsampled population by placing a migration edge more basal along a branch of the phylogeny, in this case African auroch.
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: Please. Those "humps" look nothing like those of Zebu cattle.
we now find strong evidence of exportations from the Indian subcontinent to China and southeast Asia, India to Africa, Africa to the Iberian Peninsula and Mediterranean Europe, India to the Americas, and Europe to the Americas (Figures 4 and and5,5, discussed in detail in the following subsections).
[...]
The second factor that we believe underlies the divergence of African taurine is a high level of wild African auroch [30], [31] introgression. Principal component (Figure 1), phylogenetic trees (Figures 2 and and3),3), and admixture (Figure 6) analyses all reveal the African taurines as being the most diverged of the taurine populations. Because of this divergence, it has been hypothesized that there was a third domestication of cattle in Africa [32]–[36]. If there was a third domestication, African taurine would be sister to the European and Asian clade. When no migration events were fit in the TreeMix analyses, African cattle were the most diverged of the taurine populations (Figures 2 and and3),3), but when admixture was modeled to include 17 migrations, all African cattle, except for East African Shorthorn Zebu and Zebu from Madagascar which have high indicine ancestry, were sister to European cattle and were less diverged than Asian or Anatolian cattle (Figure 4), thus ruling out a separate domestication. Our phylogenetic network (Figure 4) shows that there was not a third domestication process, rather there was a single origin of domesticated taurine (Asian, African, and European all share a recent common ancestor denoted by an asterisk in Figure 4, with Asian cattle sister to the rest of the taurine lineage), followed by admixture with an ancestral population in Africa (migration edge a in Figure 4, which is consistent across 6 separate TreeMix runs, Figure S4). This ancestral population (origin of migration edge a in Figure 4) was approximately halfway between the common ancestor of indicine and the common ancestor of taurine. We conclude that African taurines received as much as 26% (estimated as 0.263 in the network, p-value<2.2e-308) of their ancestry from admixture with wild African auroch, with the rest being Fertile Crescent domesticate in origin. Although three other migration edges originate from the branch between indicine and taurine (such as edge b), all of the receiving populations show indicine ancestry in the ADMIXTURE models. But African auroch are extinct and samples were not available for the ADMIXTURE model, thus the admixed auroch ancestry of African taurines cannot specifically be discovered by this model [27], [37] and African taurine, especially Lagune, are depicted as having a single ancestry without indicine influence (Figures 5 and and6,6, see f3 and f4 statistics reported later). Unlike ADMIXTURE, TreeMix can model admixture from an unsampled population by placing a migration edge more basal along a branch of the phylogeny, in this case African auroch.
So do White Fulani Zebu, remember? So what? Bait and switch? Modern Sanga ^= prehistoric Saharan cattle. What's this? One picture is supposed to overturn a genetic report? Wrong forum. Try Ancient Egypt.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: So do White Fulani Zebu, remember? So what? Bait and switch? Modern Sanga ^= prehistoric Saharan cattle. What's this? One picture is supposed to overturn a genetic report? Wrong forum. Try Ancient Egypt.
The genetic report says that the African cattle were not all mixed. It also makes it clear that Indic cattle are a recent addition to the African region. See:
. It is possible that after the Mande and Dravidians entered Central Asia and India they may have took Zebu cattle back to Africa.
I was lurking your discussion of cattle in another thread. This led me to the Khoisan cattle. This was interesting because the Khoisan had their own terms for cattle unrelated to Bantu cattle terms. They also have Barbary goats.
This makes me wonder if the Khoisan may have domesticated cattle while they were in North Africa and migrated back into South Africa with these cattles. I an still researching this possibility.
.
Posted by LEDAMA (Member # 21677) on :
@Tukuler
quote:Those "humps" look nothing like those of full bred Zebu cattle to me.
I WAS THINKING THE SAME THING,THANKS MAN
Posted by LEDAMA (Member # 21677) on :
quote:It is possible that after the Mande and Dravidians entered Central Asia and India they may have took Zebu cattle back to Africa.
Are the mande people the only african people you have studied,you seem to place them everywhere in history,where they don't belong.Mande people related genetically to pygmies were the CASLUHIM of the bible,being descendants of MIZRAHIM(ancestor of pygmies who died and was buried in egypt).The mande people mixed with bantus,or were bottled necked by bantus,these mixed bantu/mande(casluhim pygmies) were the CARTHEGIANS.,YES BARCA of cathage,Hannibal were all mande people.
Posted by LEDAMA (Member # 21677) on :
@clyde
quote:The Khoisan Sanga cattle have larger humps
That is because the khoisan sanga is mix with ZEBU,taken to south africa by a nilotic people related to SOUTHERN NILOTES,the biggest suspects are DATOOGA people,their name in kalenjin is TA-TOGA meaning 'she-from Tto(egypt).according to kalenjin Tto was a location in MISIRI(egypt),nilotic people related to datooga Y E-M293 and E-V68,took Zebu cattle to south africa,before bantus were ever in south africa.south african bantus at that time were either in libya or canaan at that time.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by LEDAMA:
quote:It is possible that after the Mande and Dravidians entered Central Asia and India they may have took Zebu cattle back to Africa.
Are the mande people the only african people you have studied,you seem to place them everywhere in history,where they don't belong.Mande people related genetically to pygmies were the CASLUHIM of the bible,being descendants of MIZRAHIM(ancestor of pygmies who died and was buried in egypt).The mande people mixed with bantus,or were bottled necked by bantus,these mixed bantu/mande(casluhim pygmies) were the CARTHEGIANS.,YES BARCA of cathage,Hannibal were all mande people.
LOL. This is BS.
I have studied the history of Black people everywhere.
Check out this video: Short History of Black People
So do White Fulani Zebu, remember? So what? Bait and switch? Modern Sanga ^= prehistoric Saharan cattle. What's this? One picture is supposed to overturn a genetic report? Wrong forum. Try Ancient Egypt.
.
The genetic report says that the African cattle were not all mixed. It also makes it clear that Indic cattle are a recent addition to the African region. See:
. It is possible that after the Mande and Dravidians entered Central Asia and India they may have took Zebu cattle back to Africa.
I was lurking your discussion of cattle in another thread. This led me to the Khoisan cattle. This was interesting because the Khoisan had their own terms for cattle unrelated to Bantu cattle terms. They also have Barbary goats.
This makes me wonder if the Khoisan may have domesticated cattle while they were in North Africa and migrated back into South Africa with these cattles. I an still researching this possibility.
.
Deckers' report was clear that Bos Indicus went from India to Africa < 4k. The report supports neither African origin nor out movement of Bos Indicus. Though posted above I will repost here for ease of access
Folk say anything is possible but all possibilities are not probable, as in your case of Dravidian Mande migration and cattle introduction, afaic.
The report date places Zebu introduction to Africa in a time period possibly related to known Indian connections in Kush and Egypt basing myself on appearance of Hindu graves in the Nile Valley. (Is that thread still available?)
I had it on my crashed ext stg but I can't find the thread where that Zebu discussion was held online. You still have access to it?
The idea of Khoe or San like people as primary indigenous N Afrs has fell from grace but I'm not so sure it's totally incorrect because of things like you just brought up keep that possibility in mind as probable.
Keep up your researches. Don't agree with much of them yet there are intriguing parts to it that are undeniably accurate from where I sit.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: The report date places Zebu introduction to Africa in a time period possibly related to known Indian connections in Kush and Egypt basing myself on appearance of Hindu graves in the Nile Valley. (Is that thread still available?)
I would definitely like to see this thread because the Hindus practice cremation .
The only Indian elements in the Nile Valley that I know of were related to Buddhism and they came from Meroitic civilization.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
You should spin off that thread. ANd plug in trade and other links between India and the Nile Valley.
Posted by LEDAMA (Member # 21677) on :
@Tukuler-you seem to be the only sane person here who is interested in knowing the true world history,people like clyde are interested in black supremacy,people like clyde victims of white supremacy,will never tolerate the fact that africa may not have been the cradle of mankind.My thesis as you noticed is always supported by genetics and archeology,clydes pseudo-bullshit history are never supported by genetics,e.g mande in meso america(no genetic evidence),dravidians in africa(no genetic evidence),negritos are east africans(no genetic evidence),no wonder people don't take clyde seriously,he wants us to take his bulshit history as fact,just because he has written volumes of books on them. i am a black man,but i am not into extreme afro-centric black supremacy,which together with white supremacy eurocentrism are responsible for distoting african history.although eurocentrism is the most gulty in this,i consider myself TRUTHCENTRIC,the bible is my primary source,which i support with genetic evidence,i am also interested in biblical archeology but i am not part with them,cause they are blinded by eurocentrism.so i am a lone ranger.
Posted by LEDAMA (Member # 21677) on :
@ clyde winters -
quote:It is possible that after the Mande and Dravidians entered Central Asia and India they may have took Zebu cattle back to Africa.
ARE YOU SERIOUS ,let me laugh hahahahaha...this is the most ignorant thing i have ever heard,no offence brother clyde. Let me get this straight,the mande together with dravidians,migrated out of africa,went to mesopotamia,started sumerian civilisation,then came back to africa with zebu cattle,left them at the hands of nilotes,then dravidians returned to mesopotamia,apparently leaving the mande in africa,who willingly entrusted all the zebu cattle at the hands of nilotes and bantu fulani.makes sense(sarcasm). DEBUNKED; 1)DRAVIDIANS HAVE NEVER BEEN TO AFRICA.NO DNA EVIDENCE. 2)IN AFRICA ONLY THE NILOTES AND BANTU FULANI TRADITIONALLY OWNED ZEBU CATTLE,THE MANDE NEVER OWNED ZEBUS TRADITIONALLY,THE DRAVIDIANS OWNED ZEBUS BECAUSE THEY REPRESENT THE NILOTES THAT NEVER MADE IT TO AFRICA.
Posted by LEDAMA (Member # 21677) on :
I always say,the history of africa,is safely preserved in the bible,for 3500 years. @Tukuler..
quote:The idea of Khoe or San like people as primary indigenous N Afrs has fell from grace but I'm not so sure it's totally incorrect because of things like you just brought up keep that possibility in mind as probable.
clyde somehow thinks,the khoisan and maasai are some primitive africans who are indigenous to africa,and that have never left africa,but he cannot explain how the maasai,khoisan and even yoruba acquired caucasian NIENDERTHAL DNA.but the holy bible documents the presence of maasai(sabaeans) in arabia,where maasai morans(sabaeans)stole the oxen of job,cattle rustling is still practised by maasai today. MAA-PEOPLE IN ARABIA Possibly during sabaean colonisation of yemen,JOB of the the bible could have been either a yemenite jew,or falasha jews who migrated with tigray to eritrea. Job 1:14-15
quote: And there came a messenger unto Job, and said, The oxen were plowing, and the asses feeding beside them:
15 And the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
quote:. Dienekes included Behar’s Ethiopians (non-Jews) for Dodecad. Additionally, he included the Masai population from the HapMap. This turns out to be important because he found that Ethiopian Sub-Saharan ancestry is similar to that of the Masai, not the other African groups.
PHUT(KHOISAN) IN ANATOLIA AND NORTH AFRICA The holy bible also documents the presence of PHUT(khoisan people) in anatolia and north africa, Ezekiel 27:10
quote:They of Persia and of Lud and of Phut were in thine army, thy men of war: they hanged the shield and helmet in thee; they set forth thy comeliness.
Y-DNA A1 is also found anatolia,taken there by khoisan soldiers.khoisan mtDNA LOa and Y-DNA A-M113 is present in all nilotes,especially eastern nilotes.NILOTIC principle DNA is E3b.pygmies are B,khoisan A.Nilotes(cush) with A-M113 mixed with khoisan(phut) as in ezekiel 38:5. in ezekiel 38:5,some versions associate phut(put) with libya north africa
web pageHumanity's forgotten return to Africa revealed in DNA . people like clyde winters claim the khoisan were an isolated group hence were not affected by flood.But the bible says all humanity was affected by that flood which covered the whole world.According to genesis 10:6,phut(khoikhoi and san ancestor)was a son of HAM(father of all africans).according to the bible all humans are related and are children of NOAH after the flood,this is supported by genetics.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by LEDAMA: @ clyde winters -
quote:It is possible that after the Mande and Dravidians entered Central Asia and India they may have took Zebu cattle back to Africa.
ARE YOU SERIOUS ,let me laugh hahahahaha...this is the most ignorant thing i have ever heard,no offence brother clyde. Let me get this straight,the mande together with dravidians,migrated out of africa,went to mesopotamia,started sumerian civilisation,then came back to africa with zebu cattle,left them at the hands of nilotes,then dravidians returned to mesopotamia,apparently leaving the mande in africa,who willingly entrusted all the zebu cattle at the hands of nilotes and bantu fulani.makes sense(sarcasm). DEBUNKED; 1)DRAVIDIANS HAVE NEVER BEEN TO AFRICA.NO DNA EVIDENCE. 2)IN AFRICA ONLY THE NILOTES AND BANTU FULANI TRADITIONALLY OWNED ZEBU CATTLE,THE MANDE NEVER OWNED ZEBUS TRADITIONALLY,THE DRAVIDIANS OWNED ZEBUS BECAUSE THEY REPRESENT THE NILOTES THAT NEVER MADE IT TO AFRICA.
LEDAMA you don't know what you're talking about.
The Dravidians are of African origin. They belonged to the Maa civilization. Archaeological and genetic evidence illustrate that the Dravidians came from Africa.
The Dravidians and Mande began to migrate out of Africa by 2800BC. They were part of the C-Group. They first settled in Iran and from here expanded into Central Asia and the Indus Valley.
B.B. Lal ("The Only Asian expedition in threatened Nubia:Work by an Indian Mission at Afyeh and Tumas", The Illustrated London Times , 20 April 1963) and Indian Egyptologist has shown conclusively that the Dravidians originated in the Saharan area 5000 years ago. He claims they came from Kush, in the Fertile African Crescent and were related to the C-Group people who founded the Kerma dynasty in the 3rd millennium B.C. (Lal 1963) The Dravidians used a common black-and-red pottery, which spread from Nubia, through modern Ethiopia, Arabia, Iran into India as a result of the Proto-Saharan dispersal.
B.B. Lal (1963) a leading Indian archaeologist in India has observed that the black and red ware (BRW) dating to the Kerma dynasty of Nubia, is related to the Dravidian megalithic pottery. Singh (1982) believes that this pottery radiated from Nubia to India. This pottery along with wavy-line pottery is associated with the Saharo-Sudanese pottery tradition of ancient Africa . I call these people the Proto Saharans. I discuss their history here:
Aravaanan (1980) has written extensively on the African and Dravidian relations. He has illustrated that the Africans and Dravidian share many physical similarities including the dolichocephalic indexes (Aravaanan 1980,pp.62-263; Raceand History.com,2006), platyrrhine nasal index (Aravaanan 1980,pp.25-27), stature (31-32) and blood type (Aravaanan 1980,34-35; RaceandHistory.com,2006). Aravaanan (1980,p.40) also presented much evidence for analogous African and Dravidian cultural features including the chipping of incisor teeth and the use of the lost wax process to make bronze works of arts (Aravaanan 1980,p.41).
There are also similarities between the Dravidian and African religions. For example, both groups held a common interest in the cult of the Serpent and believed in a Supreme God, who lived in a place of peace and tranquility ( Thundy, p.87; J.T. Cornelius,"Are Dravidians Dynastic Egyptians", Trans. of the Archaeological Society of South India 1951-1957, pp.90-117; and U.P. Upadhyaya, "Dravidian and Negro-African", International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics 5, no.1) .
There are also affinities between the names of many gods including Amun/Amma and Murugan . Murugan the Dravidian god of the mountains parallels a common god in East Africa worshipped by 25 ethnic groups is called Murungu, the god who resides in the mountains .
Up until the South Indian megalithic period the Dravidians continued to use black-and-red ware and Libyco-Berber/Indus Valley writing. Under the influence of the Axumite writing the script changed into what it is today. The architecture of the Dravidians is an ornamented pyramid with statues and other featured added within the construction of the pyramid.
The architecture makes it clear that they have remained faithful to classical pyramid style.
Dravidians have a unique culture—but it is analogous to many culture presently found in Africa.
The Dravidians were Kushites. The Kushites were predominately Niger-Congo speakers. The hundreds of words associated with this finding support a genetic relationship between Niger-Congo and Dravidian languages.Until you can show there is no evidence of a linguistic relationship you are living in a dream world .
In summary, Dravidian tribal populations and Africans also share several y-chromosome, HLA and mtDNA .
The 9bp transition at 16311 are congruent among Dravidians and West Africans . The analysis revealed that the Nadar and Fulani HLA indicate that the populations share a number of unique alleles including A*101, A*0211,A*03011, A*3303, B*3501, B*3701, B*51011 .
Shared y-chromosomes include H1, K2 or Y-DNA T-M70 (11%). The Highest frequency of T-M70 in the world is found among the Fulani. In relation to y-chromosome H1, 22% of Dravidians carry this haplogroup .
Sickle cell anemia is frequent among Africans and Dravidian Tribal populations. It is interesting that the Arab-Indian and Senegal haplotypes are both associated with a C!T mutation at position -158 .
The Dravidians belong to the M macrohaplogroup. Shared Afro-Indo M haplogroups include M1, M30, and M33. The M1 haplogroup was especially evident among high caste people in Kerela .
References:
Lal BB. 1963. “The Only Asian Expedition in threatened Nubia: Work by an India Mission at Afyeh and Tumas”. The Illustrated Times, London 20 April.
Singh, H.N. 1982. History and archaeology of Blackand Red ware. Vedic Books.net: Manchester. Clyde Winters (2007) Did the Dravidian Speakers Originate in Africa? BioEssays, 27(5): 497-498.
Clyde, the Dravidians are straight haired. Does this mean that if they originated in Africa they had straight hair when they were in Africa? Also, who are their ancestors in Africa? What tribe currently and/or historically are the African version of Dravidians?
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by LEDAMA: clyde somehow thinks,the khoisan and maasai are some primitive africans who are indigenous to africa,and that have never left africa,but he cannot explain how the maasai,khoisan and even yoruba acquired caucasian NIENDERTHAL DNA.
Clyde says the Neanderthals were black and represented in Africa by Homo heidelbergensis sometimes called Homo rhodesiensis.
Question, who are the Neanderthals according to the bible?
Posted by LEDAMA (Member # 21677) on :
@ clyde winters-
quote:4 Icon 1 posted 15 September, 2014 06:35 AM Profile for Clyde Winters Author's Homepage Send New Private Message Edit/Delete Post Reply With Quote
quote:Originally posted by LEDAMA: @ clyde winters -
quote:It is possible that after the Mande and Dravidians entered Central Asia and India they may have took Zebu cattle back to Africa.
ARE YOU SERIOUS [Big Grin] [Big Grin] ,let me laugh hahahahaha...this is the most ignorant thing i have ever heard,no offence brother clyde. Let me get this straight,the mande together with dravidians,migrated out of africa,went to mesopotamia,started sumerian civilisation,then came back to africa with zebu cattle,left them at the hands of nilotes,then dravidians returned to mesopotamia,apparently leaving the mande in africa,who willingly entrusted all the zebu cattle at the hands of nilotes and bantu fulani.makes sense(sarcasm). DEBUNKED; 1)DRAVIDIANS HAVE NEVER BEEN TO AFRICA.NO DNA EVIDENCE. 2)IN AFRICA ONLY THE NILOTES AND BANTU FULANI TRADITIONALLY OWNED ZEBU CATTLE,THE MANDE NEVER OWNED ZEBUS TRADITIONALLY,THE DRAVIDIANS OWNED ZEBUS BECAUSE THEY REPRESENT THE NILOTES THAT NEVER MADE IT TO AFRICA.
LEDAMA you don't know what you're talking about.
The Dravidians are of African origin. They belonged to the Maa civilization. Archaeological and genetic evidence illustrate that the Dravidians came from Africa.
The Dravidians and Mande began to migrate out of Africa by 2800BC. They were part of the C-Group. They first settled in Iran and from here expanded into Central Asia and the Indus Valley.
B.B. Lal ("The Only Asian expedition in threatened Nubia:Work by an Indian Mission at Afyeh and Tumas", The Illustrated London Times , 20 April 1963) and Indian Egyptologist has shown conclusively that the Dravidians originated in the Saharan area 5000 years ago. He claims they came from Kush, in the Fertile African Crescent and were related to the C-Group people who founded the Kerma dynasty in the 3rd millennium B.C. (Lal 1963) The Dravidians used a common black-and-red pottery, which spread from Nubia, through modern Ethiopia, Arabia, Iran into India as a result of the Proto-Saharan dispersal.
B.B. Lal (1963) a leading Indian archaeologist in India has observed that the black and red ware (BRW) dating to the Kerma dynasty of Nubia, is related to the Dravidian megalithic pottery. Singh (1982) believes that this pottery radiated from Nubia to India. This pottery along with wavy-line pottery is associated with the Saharo-Sudanese pottery tradition of ancient Africa . I call these people the Proto Saharans. I discuss their history here:
Aravaanan (1980) has written extensively on the African and Dravidian relations. He has illustrated that the Africans and Dravidian share many physical similarities including the dolichocephalic indexes (Aravaanan 1980,pp.62-263; Raceand History.com,2006), platyrrhine nasal index (Aravaanan 1980,pp.25-27), stature (31-32) and blood type (Aravaanan 1980,34-35; RaceandHistory.com,2006). Aravaanan (1980,p.40) also presented much evidence for analogous African and Dravidian cultural features including the chipping of incisor teeth and the use of the lost wax process to make bronze works of arts (Aravaanan 1980,p.41).
There are also similarities between the Dravidian and African religions. For example, both groups held a common interest in the cult of the Serpent and believed in a Supreme God, who lived in a place of peace and tranquility ( Thundy, p.87; J.T. Cornelius,"Are Dravidians Dynastic Egyptians", Trans. of the Archaeological Society of South India 1951-1957, pp.90-117; and U.P. Upadhyaya, "Dravidian and Negro-African", International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics 5, no.1) .
There are also affinities between the names of many gods including Amun/Amma and Murugan . Murugan the Dravidian god of the mountains parallels a common god in East Africa worshipped by 25 ethnic groups is called Murungu, the god who resides in the mountains .
Up until the South Indian megalithic period the Dravidians continued to use black-and-red ware and Libyco-Berber/Indus Valley writing. Under the influence of the Axumite writing the script changed into what it is today. The architecture of the Dravidians is an ornamented pyramid with statues and other featured added within the construction of the pyramid.
The dravidians are nilotic branch,that is why they were very tall and very black,except the west asian straight hair phenotype.but their culture is basically NILOTIC.BRW(black and red earthen ware is nilotic pottery esp western and eastern nilotes,but BRW with the wavy dotted line known as NDERIT WARE belongs to southern nilotes kalenjin,datooga and omotik).Maa-speakers or speakers of maa language are maasai,samburu,lotuko,njemps(illchamus),rendille(formerly a somali clan assimilated into masai,REER-NDILLE in somali means 'house of ndille).Are you saying dravidians are related to maasai maa-speakers? chipping of incisor teeth is a nilotic trait not bantu. There are no affinities between the names of dravidian deities and african.MURUGAN does not equal MURUNGU,the word murungu is a kikuyu and Ameru corruption of the bantu supreme god MULUNGU.
quote:The Dravidians were Kushites. The Kushites were predominately Niger-Congo speakers. The hundreds of words associated with this finding support a genetic relationship between Niger-Congo and Dravidian languages.
yes,THE DRAVIDIANS WERE KUSHITES(NILOTES). NO:The kushites were and are predomintally NILO-SAHARAN SPEAKERS.There is also a genetic relationship between nilotic and bantu,have you ever made that comparison?oh i forgot the only african language you know is MANDE.
Posted by LEDAMA (Member # 21677) on :
@ LIONESS-
quote: Icon 1 posted 15 September, 2014 07:44 AM Profile for the lioness, Send New Private Message Edit/Delete Post Reply With Quote
quote:Originally posted by LEDAMA: clyde somehow thinks,the khoisan and maasai are some primitive africans who are indigenous to africa,and that have never left africa,but he cannot explain how the maasai,khoisan and even yoruba acquired caucasian NIENDERTHAL DNA.
Clyde says the Neanderthals were black and represented in Africa by Homo heidelbergensis sometimes called Homo rhodesiensis.
Question, who are the Neanderthals according to the bible?
Clyde is confused,if nienderthals were black,then white people would be black,neonderthal DNA is an alien DNA that mixed with human(black african DNA),THAT MEANS from ADAM(AOO)all the way to NOAH(AOO)everybody was black,untill mutation occured,this mutation is recorded in the bible;Genesis 6:1-8
quote: Genesis 6 King James Version (KJV)
6 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
3 And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
6 And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
7 And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
, some people have interpreted " the sons of God" either as ;1)fallen angels,demons 2)aliens, e.t.c,but whoever they are,it is they who injected nienderthal DNA into human DNA,they very wicked,they also introduced homosexuality into humanity.they corrupted the pure human dna,thats why God destroyed them,to preserve messianic human gene.Noah was the only pure person,that means he didn't have nienderthal gene,but his wife may have had little amounts which she transfered to japhet and shem but not Ham. The Divine Preservation of the Messianic Line: The True Meaning of the Holidays Bloodlines of the Nephilim – A Biblical Study Posted by LEDAMA (Member # 21677) on :
adam AOO NOAH AO,MIZRAIM BT,CUSH E3B & D,CANAAN E,PHUT A1
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
pdf links:
--------------------------------------------- UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology ------------------------------------------------
The report date places Zebu introduction to Africa in a time period possibly related to known Indian connections in Kush and Egypt basing myself on appearance of Hindu graves in the Nile Valley. (Is that thread still available?)
I would definitely like to see this thread because the Hindus practice cremation .
The only Indian elements in the Nile Valley that I know of were related to Buddhism and they came from Meroitic civilization.
.
My bad, it must've been Buddhist or a cenotaph or whatever.
I doubt if Indian spirituality skipped ancient Sudan (as most evidenced by Apedemak taking on extra faces and arms) since Gymnosophist were in Sudan and Buddhist were in both Alexandria and Axum -- ancient Sudan being 'mid-point.'
from your Gymnosophist of Meroe and Meroitic Writing thread. Not the thread I remember replying to someone else about Indian immigrants in the ancient Nile Valley.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
...
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by LEDAMA: NO:The kushites were and are predomintally NILO-SAHARAN SPEAKERS.There is also a genetic relationship between nilotic and bantu,have you ever made that comparison?oh i forgot the only african language you know is MANDE.
LOL You're a funny guy. Please show the limguistic evidence uniting the Nilo-Saharan speakers and Dravidians.
In addition to Murugu, the Dravidians also worshipped the god Amma or Amon.
.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by LEDAMA: clyde somehow thinks,the khoisan and maasai are some primitive africans who are indigenous to africa,and that have never left africa,but he cannot explain how the maasai,khoisan and even yoruba acquired caucasian NIENDERTHAL DNA.but the holy bible documents the presence of maasai(sabaeans) in arabia,where maasai morans(sabaeans)stole the oxen of job,cattle rustling is still practised by maasai today.
You have read the Bible wrong. First of all you believe that the only people on earth were the people mentioned in the Bible and their were no others. This is false there were many people on earth. The Bible mainly talks about people who had a covenant with the Creator via the last Creation. The Creation of Adam Let’s look at the Bible it says that God created man from the earth and women from the side (rib) of Adam. In Genesis 4 we read:
quote: “Adam[a] made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, “With the help of the LORD I have brought forth[c] a man.” 2 Later she gave birth to his brother Abel.”
According to these passages we discover that the first man and woman was Adam and Eve. We also discover that they had two sons Cain and Abel.
If you accept these passages literally you would assume that only Adam, Eve and their children were the only humans on earth. If you reached this conclusion you would be wrong. There were other people on earth when Adam and Eve were created by God.
How do we know this you ask. The answer is simple. We know it was more humans on earth besides Adam from the Book of Genesis. This reality was made clear after Cain killed Abel in Genesis 4:13
quote: Genesis 4 :13 Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is more than I can bear. 14 Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” Genesis 4:15 But the LORD said to him, “Not so[e]; anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. 16 So Cain went out from the LORD’s presence and lived in the land of Nod,[f] east of Eden.
The key phrase from this passage is ; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” This passage makes it clear that Cain was afraid that whoever “found him would kill him”. If Cain was afraid to be killed there were other people on the earth besides Adam and Eve, and their sons. To protect Cain , “Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. “ The presence of different groups of people on the earth besides Adam and his family, is supported by the archaeological evidence of different hominids, existing at different times in the history of man. That is why I can write about the Khoisan and Pgymy being a different population from the Sons of Adam and Noah. Sure many of the Khoisan and Pgymy settlements were destroyed during the great flood. Khoisan and Pgymy populations on some of the Islands and in the mountains survived. That is why we found Pgymy populations all over the world at the time Europeans made there way from Europe to other parts of the world.
.
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by LEDAMA: clyde somehow thinks,the khoisan and maasai are some primitive africans who are indigenous to africa,and that have never left africa,but he cannot explain how the maasai,khoisan and even yoruba acquired caucasian NIENDERTHAL DNA.but the holy bible documents the presence of maasai(sabaeans) in arabia,where maasai morans(sabaeans)stole the oxen of job,cattle rustling is still practised by maasai today.people like clyde winters claim the khoisan were an isolated group hence were not affected by flood.But the bible says all humanity was affected by that flood which covered the whole world.According to genesis 10:6,phut(khoikhoi and san ancestor)was a son of HAM(father of all africans).according to the bible all humans are related and are children of NOAH after the flood,this is supported by genetics.
LEDAMA the Neanderthals were Blacks.
Let's look at the evolution of homo sapiens.
The Eves were also African
The Aurignacian people who replaced the Neanderthal looked like this
Below is the ancestor of Neanderthals
,
. Here is a picture of Neanderthal man
.
By 100kya Neanderthal looked like this
As you can see, there is little difference between the African ancestor of Neanderthals, and the Neanderthals themselves.
Here we have Cro-Magnon or Aurignacian man
LEDAMA it is easy to explain the relationship between Neanderthal and Khoisan. They met in North Africa. Other Khoisan met Neanderthal in the Altaic Mountains after the Cro-Magnon (Khoisan) spread the Aurignacian culture across Europe.
The African Neanderthal people used the common Levoiso-Mousterian tool kit originally discovered in Europe. The Nenderthal skeletons have come from Djebel Irhoud and El Guettar in Morocco (Ki-Zerbo,1981). Later Neanderthal people used the Aterian tool kit. It was probably in Morocco that Neanderthal and Khoisan interacted. An exception to this norm are the Khoisan who share a phylogenic relationship with Altai Neanderthals (Prufer, et al, 2013). Many researchers claim that Africans have no relationship to the Neanderthals.But Prufer et al (2013) share more alleles with Altaic Neanderthal than Denisova. In the Supplemental section of Prufer et al (2013) there is considerable discussion of the relationship between Neanderthal and Khoisan. In relation to the Altaic Neanderthal the non-Africans have a lower divergence rate than Africans between 10-20%. Prufer et al (2013) note little statistical difference between non-African and African divergence. Researchers have observered a relationship between the Neanderthals, the Khoisan and Yoruba. Prufer et al (2013) detected a relationship between the Neanderthal and Mandekan. It is interesting to note that Yoruba traditions place them in Mande-speaking areas (Prufer et al,2013).
[/URL]
There is interesting information in Figure S7.1. In Figure S7.1 the maximum likelihood tree of bonobo, Denisova and Neanderthal, the closest present-day hmans are Africans, not Europeans. Reading the Tree Chart Graph, the neighbor joining tree of archaic and present day human individuals has the Khoisan following the Denisova. An interesting finding of Prufer et al (2013) was that Altaic Neanderthal and Denisova are estimated to have similar split times. The divergence estimate for African Khoisan-Mandekan and Altaic is younger than the split between Africans and Denisova archaic individuals and modern African individuals. The split times between the Khoisan and Mandekan may be explained by the presence of AF-24 haplotype in West Africa.
References
Ki-Zerbo,J. (1981). Unesco General History of Africa Vol. 1: Methodology and African Prehistory (1981), pg.572.
Pruler,K, Racimo,F.,Patterson,N et al. (2014). The complete genome sequences of Neanderthal from the Altai, Mountains. Nature , 505/7481: 43-9. doi .10.1038/ Nature 12881.Epub.2013.Dec.18.
Scozzari, R, Massaia,A, Trombatta,B. et al.(2014). An unbiased resource of novel SNP markers provides a new chronology for human Y-chromosome and reveals a deep phylogenetic structure in Africa. Genome Research, January 6,2014, doi: 10.1101/gr./60785.113.
quote: According to these passages we discover that the first man and woman was Adam and Eve. We also discover that they had two sons Cain and Abel.
If you accept these passages literally you would assume that only Adam, Eve and their children were the only humans on earth. If you reached this conclusion you would be wrong. There were other people on earth when Adam and Eve were created by God.
How do we know this you ask. The answer is simple. We know it was more humans on earth besides Adam from the Book of Genesis. This reality was made clear after Cain killed Abel in Genesis 4:13
quote: Genesis 4 :13 Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is more than I can bear. 14 Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” Genesis 4:15 But the LORD said to him, “Not so[e]; anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. 16 So Cain went out from the LORD’s presence and lived in the land of Nod,[f] east of Eden.
The key phrase from this passage is ; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” This passage makes it clear that Cain was afraid that whoever “found him would kill him”. If Cain was afraid to be killed there were other people on the earth besides Adam and Eve, and their sons. To protect Cain , “Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. “
quote:I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”
lol, here cain was talking prophetically or futuristically if you would.He mean't 'if i become a vagabond,meaning if my descendants become vagabonds,every that finds them will kill them'.if you noticed the chronological accounts of the bible,doesn't list women,for example,we know the sons of Adam,but not his daughters,i assume for every son he had two daughters,this is also similar to african oral historians who trace their lineage from fathers side,not mothers side.Here are other people in the bible talking futuristically or prophetically,because curses/blessings usually does not only affect a person directly,but also follows his seed. here is noah speaking futureristically:Genesis 9:25-27" 25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
26 And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
27 God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant."It does not mean that the patriarch Ham will start becoming a house servant of his brethren immediately,but sometime down in history his descendendants will be slaves to Japhet(caucasians)for 400 years i.e the transaharan slave trade,and to shem for 400 years i.e transaharan and arab slave trade.According to the bible no curse e.g slavery of a nation is allowed to last more than 4 generations.1 generation in the bible is 100years,so 4 generations is 400 years.Exodus 34:7 "7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children,unto the third and to the fourth generation." that is why the israelites were slaves for 400years,inorder for the curse of noah to take efeect,all africans had to be gulty first,especially canaan(bantu),that is why the jews were enslaved in egypt during the reign of a BANTU PHARAOH RAMASES (E1b1a). Genesis 15:12-13"
quote:12 And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him.
13 And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years;
"
Posted by LEDAMA (Member # 21677) on :
@clyde winters "
quote: That is why I can write about the Khoisan and Pgymy being a different population from the Sons of Adam and Noah. Sure many of the Khoisan and Pgymy settlements were destroyed during the great flood. Khoisan and Pgymy populations on some of the Islands and in the mountains survived. That is why we found Pgymy populations all over the world at the time Europeans made there way from Europe to other parts of the world.
"
clyde unless you believe the bible was lying,which i don't.you are entitled to your beliefs,personally i believe in the bible.according to the bible,that flood covered the whole earth.(including mountain tops). "
quote:17 And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.
18 And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters.
19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.
20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.
21 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:
22 All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.
23 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.
24 And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.
" Everything in the bible is true,including UNICORNS.UNICORNS=WHITE RHINOCEROUS. When jewish translators were explaining to greek translators how a rhinocerous looks like,they explained that it looked like a white horse with a huge horn on its face.
The khoisan(phut) and pygmies(mizraim) have never been separated from other africans(sons of noah).through genetics we know ham had 5 sons(Y A,B,D,E) and 2 daughters(mtDNA Lo and L1),phut(A) the eldest married Lo and entered africa,mizraim(BT)married L1 and had 5 daughters(L1a,L1b and L1c,L2 and L3),he married his own daughter L1a and had pygmy sons whom he gave L1b and L1c to marry.he gave L2 to canaan(bantu) and L3 to Cush(nilote).L4 and L5 ARE DAUGHTERS OF CUSH,all bantus that have L3 e.g L3e,L3b,L3d is becaus of marrying nilotic women,e.g egypt martriachy laws(kalenjin L3x).L3 is pure nilotic.
Posted by LEDAMA (Member # 21677) on :
@ clyde winters-wow you have pictures of nienderthals i didn't know they had cameras those days(sarcasm).clyde it is the neinderthal gene responsible for low melanin in whites,they couldn't have been blacks.
quote:Originally posted by LEDAMA: @ Clyde winters-
quote: According to these passages we discover that the first man and woman was Adam and Eve. We also discover that they had two sons Cain and Abel.
If you accept these passages literally you would assume that only Adam, Eve and their children were the only humans on earth. If you reached this conclusion you would be wrong. There were other people on earth when Adam and Eve were created by God.
How do we know this you ask. The answer is simple. We know it was more humans on earth besides Adam from the Book of Genesis. This reality was made clear after Cain killed Abel in Genesis 4:13
quote: Genesis 4 :13 Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is more than I can bear. 14 Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” Genesis 4:15 But the LORD said to him, “Not so[e]; anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. 16 So Cain went out from the LORD’s presence and lived in the land of Nod,[f] east of Eden.
The key phrase from this passage is ; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” This passage makes it clear that Cain was afraid that whoever “found him would kill him”. If Cain was afraid to be killed there were other people on the earth besides Adam and Eve, and their sons. To protect Cain , “Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. “
quote:I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”
lol, here cain was talking prophetically or futuristically if you would.He mean't 'if i become a vagabond,meaning if my descendants become vagabonds,every that finds them will kill them'.
LOL. As I said earlier you make up things to suit your purposes. LEDAMA you wrote:
quote: lol, here cain was talking prophetically or futuristically if you would.He mean't 'if i become a vagabond,meaning if my descendants become vagabonds,every that finds them will kill them'
Wrong . He was talking about himself.
I repeat you don't know the Bible and you make up material to support your Eurocentrists claim.
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Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
Clyde, the Dravidians are straight haired. Does this mean that if they originated in Africa they had straight hair when they were in Africa? Or do they have hair like that because they mixed with Aryans? Also, who are their ancestors in Africa? What tribe currently and/or historically are the African version of Dravidians?
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by LEDAMA: @ clyde winters-wow you have pictures of nienderthals i didn't know they had cameras those days(sarcasm).clyde it is the neinderthal gene responsible for low melanin in whites,they couldn't have been blacks.
LOL. Of course they didn't have cameras to make pictures in those days. What scientist who are artists do is look at the skull of a person and use the features of the skull to reconstruct how the deceased person looked. The pictures of Neanderthal and others are based on craniometric measurements from skulls recovered through archaeological excavations or cave finds.
I am not an Evolutionist I am a truth seeker.
I can not deny that archaeologists have found different types of hominids.So, I can assume that these hominids existed.
I, respect God, but you don't.
God makes it clear in the Bible that he Creates, by uttering a single word "BE", and it is.
quote:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
As you can see HE only has to say a word and it is.
I also know that God likes variety.
I look at nature and we see different types of Bears and Birds. Knowing this I can accept the fact that God could have created different types of hominids, since I respect the fact that God is Omnipotent and can do what ever he pleases.
Archaeologists have found different types of hominids. I may question the dating of the hominids, but I can not disagree that the hominid existed. I also look at the various races of mankind, and the different humans that exist today, for example pgymies vs Watusi. If God can diversify human types, build and stature, how can I say he did not make different hominids.
You are a hyp·o·crite. On the one hand you accept some things from the Bible as literal, or the conclusions of Europeans who you claim you don't believe, yet you deny other things you have not been taught. The best example is when you can read Cain, saying he is afraid that he will be killed by someone because, he had become a "wanderer", and alledge that Cain was talking about the future instead of his present condition. Oh Brother, how we lie to ourselves. Cain's words lay in front of your face, but because you have been taught that Adam was the first man by your Preachers, you can not accept what is written in front of you.
You don't know anything about the Bible. You think everything in the Bible is the word of God, when in reality some of the Bible is History, while other parts of the Bible are prophesy, or words from God shared with us by the Prophets.
You are not wise. You can't think for yourself that why you are blind to what is written in the Bible. How dare you say God could not have created other types of hominids, when you see the variety of God's creations for yourself.
I am not an evolutionist and you are not a Creationist. If you believed in the Creativity of God, you would not say what God can and can not Create.
You are sad indeed. Stop talking about the Bible, when you don't even understand what you read. You only interpret it from the perspective of others who may not even know what their talking about.
.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
These Dravidians are Nilotes?
Posted by Clyde Winters (Member # 10129) on :
quote:Originally posted by LEDAMA: The khoisan(phut) and pygmies(mizraim) have never been separated from other africans(sons of noah).through genetics we know ham had 5 sons(Y A,B,D,E) and 2 daughters(mtDNA Lo and L1),phut(A) the eldest married Lo and entered africa,mizraim(BT)married L1 and had 5 daughters(L1a,L1b and L1c,L2 and L3),he married his own daughter L1a and had pygmy sons whom he gave L1b and L1c to marry.he gave L2 to canaan(bantu) and L3 to Cush(nilote).L4 and L5 ARE DAUGHTERS OF CUSH,all bantus that have L3 e.g L3e,L3b,L3d is becaus of marrying nilotic women,e.g egypt martriachy laws(kalenjin L3x).L3 is pure nilotic.
Please cite the passages in the Bible where the Khoisan are named as Puntites.
Tell me where in the Bible or other sources you used that we find the DNA of Ham and his decendants. How could they have possessed hg A and B and etc., which is 30k plus years old, when Noah only existed 6000 years ago?
.
Posted by LEDAMA (Member # 21677) on :
@ clyde winters-
quote:LOL. Of course they didn't have cameras to make pictures in those days. What scientist who are artists do is look at the skull of a person and use the features of the skull to reconstruct how the deceased person looked. The pictures of Neanderthal and others are based on craniometric measurements from skulls recovered through archaeological excavations or cave finds.
They are not always accurate e.g
The real king tut skin colour
@lioness-
quote:These Dravidians are Nilotes?
yes they are,but they mixed with semitic negritos and caucasians.
the genetic timing is highly exxagerated,same as archeological time.Humans are not more 7000 years old,if so we would have overpopulated the whole world to extiction.devide the genetic time by 7 to get the correct haplogroup age-the age gaps between the loci is not that great.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Less complexity in Lower Egypt as regards state formation and societal and material culture say some Egyptologists, in comparison to the south, or Upper Egypt.
"Evidence in Lower Egypt consists mainly of settlements with very simple burials, in contrast to Upper Egypt, where cemeteries with elaborate burials are found. The rich grave goods in several major cemeteries in Upper Egypt represent the acquired wealth of higher social strata, and these cemeteries were probably associated with centers of craft production. Trade and exchange of finished goods and luxury materials from the Eastern and Western Deserts and Nubia would have taken place in such centers. In Lower Egypt however, while excavated settlements permit a broader reconstruction of the prehistoric economy, there is little evidence for any great socioeconomic complexity... Archaeological evidence points to the origins of the state which emerged by the 1st Dynasty in Nagada culture of Upper Egypt, where grave types, pottery and artifacts demonstrate an evolution of from from the Predynastic to the 1st Dynasty. This cannot be demonstrated for the material culture of lower Egypt, which was eventually displaced by that originating in Upper Egypt." --K. Bard (2005). Encyclopaedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. 28
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Tomb reveals Ancient Egypt’s humiliating secret Our correspondent reports on how details of crushing defeat by another Nile superpower were kept hidden
By Dalya Alberge ANCIENT Egyptians “airbrushed” out of history one of their most humiliating defeats in battle, academics believe. In what the British Museum described as the discovery of a lifetime, a 3,500-year-old inscription shows that the Sudanese kingdom of Kush came close to destroying its northern neighbour. The revelation is contained in 22 lines of sophisticated hieroglyphics deciphered by Egyptologists from the British Museum and Egypt after their discovery in February in a richly decorated tomb at El Kab, near Thebes, in Upper Egypt.
Vivian Davies, Keeper of the museum’s Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, said: “In many ways this is the discovery of a lifetime, one that changes the textbooks. We’re absolutely staggered by it.”
The inscription details previously unknown important battles unprecedented “since the time of the god” — the beginning of time. Experts now believe that the humiliation of defeat was one that the Ancient Egyptians preferred to omit from their historical accounts.
Contemporary Egyptian descriptions had led historians to assume that the kingdom of Kush was a weak and barbaric neighbouring state for hundreds of years, although it boasted a complex society with vast resources of gold dominating the principal trade routes into the heart of Africa. It did eventually conquer Egypt, in the 8th century BC.
Mr Davies, who headed the joint British Museum and Egyptian archaeological team, said: “Now it is clear that Kush was a superpower which had the capacity to invade Egypt. It was a huge invasion, one that stirred up the entire region, a momentous event that is previously undocumented.
“They swept over the mountains, over the Nile, without limit. This is the first time we’ve got evidence. Far from Egypt being the supreme power of the Nile Valley, clearly Kush was at that time.
“Had they stayed to occupy Egypt, the Kushites might have eliminated it. That’s how close Egypt came to extinction. But the Egyptians were resilient enough to survive, and shortly afterwards inaugurated the great imperial age known as the New Kingdom. The Kushites weren’t interested in occupation. They went raiding for precious objects, a symbol of domination. They did a lot of damage.”
The inscription was found between two internal chambers in a rock-cut tomb that was covered in soot and dirt. It appeared gradually as the grime was removed.
Mr Davies said: “I thought it would be a religious text, but it turned out to be historical. Gradually, a real narrative emerged, a brand new text inscribed in red paint, reading from right to left.”
The tomb belonged to Sobeknakht, a Governor of El Kab, an important provincial capital during the latter part of the 17th Dynasty (about 1575-1550BC).
The inscription describes a ferocious invasion of Egypt by armies from Kush and its allies from the south, including the land of Punt, on the southern coast of the Red Sea. It says that vast territories were affected and describes Sobeknakht’s heroic role in organising a counter-attack.
The text takes the form of an address to the living by Sobeknakht: “Listen you, who are alive upon earth . . . Kush came . . . aroused along his length, he having stirred up the tribes of Wawat . . . the land of Punt and the Medjaw. . .” It describes the decisive role played by “the might of the great one, Nekhbet”, the vulture-goddess of El Kab, as “strong of heart against the Nubians, who were burnt through fire”, while the “chief of the nomads fell through the blast of her flame”.
The discovery explains why Egyptian treasures, including statues, stelae and an elegant alabaster vessel found in the royal tomb at Kerma, were buried in Kushite tombs: they were war trophies.
Mr Davies said: “That has never been properly explained before. Now it makes sense. It’s the key that unlocks the information. Now we know they were looted trophies, symbols of these kings’ power over the Egyptians. Each of the four main kings of Kush brought back looted treasures.”
The alabaster vessel is contemporary with the latter part of the 17th Dynasty. It bears a funerary text “for the spirit of the Governor, Hereditary Prince of Nekheb, Sobek- nakht”. Now it is clear that it was looted from Sobeknakht’s tomb, or an associated workshop, by the Kushite forces and taken back to Kerma, where it was buried in the precincts of the tomb of the Kushite king who had led or inspired the invasion.
The El Kab tomb was looted long ago, probably in antiquity. There is more to investigate at the enormous site and the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt is now making such work a priority.
Rich pickings from ebony and ivory
Kush was a vast territory spanning modern-day northern Sudan. Ruled by kings who were buried with large quantities of luxury goods, including jewellery and inlaid furniture, it had complex political and religious institutions.
The economy was based on trading in ivory, ebony and incense, as well as slaves. Its skilled craftsmen left behind some of the finest ceramics produced in the ancient world.
The independent kingdom of Kush arose during the 8th century BC. The native kings laid claim to the Egyptian throne, declaring themselves the true heirs of Thutmose III and other great pharaonic ancestors. Under the leadership of King Piye (c747-716BC), they conquered Egypt, ruling as its 25th Dynasty.
The reign of King Taharqo (690-664BC) was a high point of the Kushite empire. He erected imposing temples, shrines and statues throughout the Nile Valley. His pyramid, the largest of the Kushite examples, soared to more than 48m (160ft).
Over 4,000 years interaction between the empires was inevitable. While they had different funerary practices at the time of the El Kab inscription — the Egyptians had tombs and pyramids while the Kushites preferred tumuli (grave mounds) — the Kushites went on to build pyramids and mummify their dead.
In return, the Egyptians were particularly influenced by Kushite jewellery design.
During the 19th century boom in Egyptian archaeology the tomb of Elkab's 17th-dynasty governor Sobeknakht was discovered. Though its whereabouts were published it was subsequently neglected. Until recently it continued to sit undisturbed upon the cliffs overlooking the Nile south of Luxor, accrued grime and soot obscuring many of its internal inscriptions. Only this year have the tomb's soiled walls been cleaned to reveal an inscription relating a hitherto unknown Kushite raid upon Egypt that has been abuzz with superlatives and speculation among Egyptologists.
Earlier this year a number of British and Egyptian conservators under the aegis of the British Museum began work at the tomb in response to concerns about its deteriorating condition. In the process of cleaning the walls between the tomb's inner and outer chambers they stumbled upon an inscription believed to be the first evidence of a huge attack from the south on Elkab and Egypt by the Kingdom of Kush and its allies from the land of Punt, during the 17th dynasty (1575-1525 BC). The newly discovered inscription is a biographical text painted in 22 horizontal red hieroglyphic lines that narrate the Kushite attack on Egypt and Sobeknakht's successful counter- attack that expelled the invaders. "It is a very important military and religious inscription that was previously unknown," Culture Minister Farouk Hosni told Al Ahram Weekly and asserted that it is the most significant piece to emerge about the 17th dynasty since the famous Kamose stella, now on display at the Luxor museum.
Though Egyptologists had known that tension existed between the Kingdom of Kush, which lay along the Nile in present-day southern Sudan, and Egypt during the period in question, they had no evidence of the kind of clash reported by the inscription.
"This is completely unparalleled," affirmed Vivian Davies, who headed the mission, in an interview from London with the Weekly. Davies initially assumed that the inscription was a religious text because it was near the burial shaft where the spirit of the dead rose to begin its spiritual life. However, as conservators continued to clean the inscription it was clear that it was not a routine funerary text but a biographical text chronicling events from the life of the tomb's owner Sobeknakht.
The text recounts his role in the crisis, from his command to strengthen the defences of Elkab to his mustering of a force to combat the Nubians to his successful counter-attack southwards which destroyed an enemy force through the aid of Elkab's vulture-goddess Nekhbet. The inscription ends with an account of celebration in the presence of the Egyptian king, who is not identified by name, and of the temple of Nekhbet's endowment with a sacred boat.
Evidence corroborating the general scheme of these events have also recently been found in Sudan, where archchaeologists discovered a vessel that was once in Sobeknakht's tomb. Davies stated that this vessel proves that during the invasion Sobeknakht's tomb was already prepared for the old governor's death. Relatedly, early studies on the inscription revealed that it was a late addition to the tomb, as it was painted in red on the outer chamber, which, according to the Ancient Egyptian taboo, made it untouchable. Davies added that as the tomb's decorations were completely finished by the time of the Kushite attack the corridor between the two chambers was the only space left to record such an event.
Davies is not alone in his feeling that the inscription forces a reconsideration of Egyptian history. Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the supreme council of antiquities (SCA), stated that it sheds new light on the extent of Egypt's vulnerability during that period, when the native Upper-Egyptian 17th dynasty centred in Thebes was engaged in a war of independence against the Lower-Egyptian Hyksos who were based in Avaris in the Nile Delta.
"It was a pincer movements on Egypt," Hawass told the Weekly. He said that success by either Kush or Hyksos would have changed the face of Egypt, even up to the present day. Mamdouh El-Damadi, the director general of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, also emphasised how important the inscription is for understanding Kushite ambitions in Egypt. Davies chimed in on this point in stating, "We always thought that the Hyksos were the greatest of Egypt's enemy but Kush was as well." The defeat of the Kush-led invasion represented in Sobeknakht's tomb may come to be interpreted a critical event in Egypt's subsequent defeat of the Hyksos and expansion of its nascent empire into Palestine and Sudan.
The dramatic nature of this discovery begs the question of what revived interest in a site that was catalogued over a century ago and then essentially ignored.
Two years ago, as part of the Egypt and Sudan Department of the British Museum's substantial archaeological programme covering Nile Valley sites and monuments threatened by modern development or in dire need of conservation, Sobeknakht's tomb was finally put on a scientific agenda. Its inclusion in this programme is due to its distressing material condition and its status as the only surviving tomb datable to this crucial transitional period in Egypt's history.
"For us the tomb was like a patient in dire need of urgent care," said Lameya El-Hadidi, one of two Egyptian conservators on the British Museum team. After difficulties finding a solution that would clean the walls without damaging the inscriptions, the team finally settled on small pieces of cotton dampened with distilled water as the best option. However, El-Hadidi explained that the tomb was suffering from not only the accumulation of grime and soot but also from bat waste and bee hives. Among the other obstacles to the tomb's conservation were poor lighting and ventilation, with the effect of the latter being that the conservators were forced to breathe foul air peppered with dust and bat excrement. However, the fruits harvested of this labour went beyond the discovery of the inscription discussed above.
El-Hadidi confirmed that, "what made us put behind our fatigue was the beautiful illustrations that appeared piece by piece while cleaning."
Scenes featuring Sobeknakht with his children and wife were among the iconic ornamentation found. A number of monkeys, some in symbolically erotic poses, are also engraved on the tomb's walls.
A particularly striking scene shows monkeys sitting on the offering table eating the deceased's food.
"It is a cheeky scene," Davies told the Weekly, suggesting that the tomb's artist had a unique sense of humour.
Images from Sobeknakht's Tomb
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
While the CRANID anthro reference database is skewed towards Northern Egypt and downplays the tropical south (Kemp 2005), some forensic analyses of mummies on the same skewed data still indicates membership in the "Egyptian" group- with the next closest match being African. --QUOTE:
"A mummy of an Egyptian priestess dating from the 22nd dynasty (c. 770 BC), completely enclosed in an anthropoid (human shaped) coffin, was scanned on a CT scanner. An accurate reconstruction of the cranium was generated from 115 × 2 mm CT images using AVS/Express on a SGI computer. Linear measurements were obtained from six orthogonal cranial views and used in a morphometric analysis software package (CRANID). The analyses carried out were both linear and nearest neighbour discriminant analysis. The results show that there is a 52.9% probability that the mummy is an Egyptian female, with a 24.5% probability that the mummy is an African female."
--Hughes, Wright, and Barry (2005)Virtual reconstruction and morphological analysis of the cranium of an ancient Egyptian mummy. Australas. Phys. Eng. Sci. Med. Vol. 28, No 2, 2005
------------------------------------------------
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." (Barry Kemp, Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation, Routledge: 2005, p. 55)
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
TO ENHANCE DISTRIBUTION AND RESEARCH, HERE ARE THE LINKS TO SOME RESEARCH ARTICLES MADE CLICKABLE
Most of the genetic change in human populations is not from natural selection but genetic drift.
"It may appear counterintuitive, but a large part, if not the majority, of genetic change in human populations is not thought to be due to natural selection but rather due to the play of chance (genetic drift; Harris and Meyer, 2006; Li et al., 2008; see Table 2 for a glossary of terms frequently used in population genetics). Many opportunities for chance can occur in the transmission of alleles from parents to offspring, and evidently did occur as part of the demographic process of dispersal out of Africa. Thus, finding differences in the frequency of alleles at a particular locus between populations is not an evidence of natural selection per se. The default position is that of neutral theory, whereby chance events account for most patterns of genetic diversity (Harris and Meyer, 2006). Of course, deleterious mutations will be selected against (purifying selection) and beneficial mutations may increase in frequency to fixation, but overall these events will contribute little to explaining the presence of most polymorphisms."
--J. Rees and R. harding 2011. Understanding the Evolution of Human Pigmentation: Recent Contributions from Population Genetics. Journal of Investigative Dermatology. 358
NATURAL SELECTION LIMITATIONS
"How do we know for certain whether a trait evolved through natural selection or instead, through a neutral evolutionary mechanism of genetic drift? This question (as well as any answers we may offer) is fundamental to understanding the adaptive significance, if any, of population-based (or race-based) differences in functional traits.
Many experts maintain that although natural selection plays a critical role in the evolutionary origin of many traits, it is not the driving force behind all biological phenomena. In fact, according to some evolutionary biologists who conduct empirical field research, genetic drift is typically assumed by default to account for most traits. Proving that natural selection is involved in the origin of a particular trait is a complicated process. Given the complexity of natural selection, it is not surprising that biologists cannot ascertain if there are long term differences in traits that have evolved through natural selection versus those that emerged through neutral selection. 3
There are other enigmas that must be sorted out as well if we are to identify the features that distinguish natural selection from neutral selection. For instance, genetic drift tends to be more influential in small populations while natural selection is more powerful in large populations. The microevolution of human races that occurred over the past 15,000 to 30,000 years affected smaller human populations. At the same time, however, natural selection had a momentous impact on the evolution of certain anatomical and physiological traits in larger geographical populations. Both genetic drift and selection could have operated in tandem to initiate the emergence of different traits in the same populations, or in clusters of geographical populations.
Positive natural selection increases fitness, which is measured in terms of survival and reproduction. However, natural selection may act on different levels of biological organization, even simultaneously at times. Classic bioevolutionary studies emphasize the influence of natural selection on individual organisms, populations, and even species. Yet, selection can also act at the level of the genome, chromosomes, and genes (DNA sequences). "
The Adaptionist Yardstick: Rethinking the Social Implications of Sarich’s and Miele’s Fast-Track Micro-Evolution A REVIEW BY ALONDRA OUBRÉ, Ph.d. Medical Anthropologist
Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
Here's a nice link to a study about genetic variation in Africa.
Dead says: AE's were subtropical/warm adapted, not tropical/hot. I've also shown this with pigmentation and cephalic index. No, you were debunked on all counts before, on Reloaded where you posted as "Ben" or "Herodotus" (or whatever) and here as well. You haven't shown anything new that changes the verdict.
The discrepancy between those earlier studies and Raxter (2011) regarding crural index is easily explained by the fact the early studies only used "White Americans", while Raxter included specifically "Southern Europeans" in their study.
Most "White Americans" have ancestors that came from the north or more northern-Atlantic regions of Europe, as opposed to the Mediterranean [i.e. the three largest ethnic groups of American Whites are: German Americans (16.5%), Irish Americans (11.9%) and English Americans (9.2%)]. So they are more colder adapted, than say Greeks or south Italians.
While intermediate, once you include "Southern Europeans", ancient Egyptians' crural indices appear closer to Mediterranean populations than Sub-Saharan African populations. The reverse is true for brachial, while the other body plan indices fall roughly in the middle.
Not surprisingly, you have yet to produce any detailed evidence. Where is the chart or study that shows your Mediterraneans closer to ancient Egyptians? Making a claim is one thing, credible data is another. But let me help you out.
On Reloaded you posted a chart showing a Mediterranean zone peoples- the Yugoslavs. On that chart, indeed the Mediterraneans separate somewhat from the northern Europeans, as would be expected for people from warmer climates. However despite this, your Mediterraneans are nowhere near the Egyptians, African-Americans and other tropical peoples, who cluster together. Sorry, your "easy explanation" fails yet again, and with your own "supporting reference."
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
You still have not established your claim of southern Europeans grouping closer with Ancient Egyptians. You earlier claimed that:
Once you include "Southern Europeans", ancient Egyptians' crural indices appear closer to Mediterranean populations than Sub-Saharan African populations.
This is false, and your supporting reference, undermines your assertion. Here’s Raxter- QUOTE:
"Ancient Egyptians and Nubians of both sexes are consistently significantly different in limb length proportions from Northern and Southern Europeans, with their brachial and crural indices grouping with the majority of other Africans. One group Lower Egyptian males, is only significantly different from Northern Europeans in crural index. However, this is expected since they are situated in the northernmost area of Northeast Africa, closest to the Mediterranean Sea, and thus would have had the greatest opportunity for gene flow with Southern Europeans."
Furthermore, Lower Es show cural indices closer to Africans before MEdits(see San below.) OVERALL affinity, as confirmed by several studies, taking into account all Egyptians, is with the Africans. The OVERALL picture is still with Africans- as Raxter notes- and consistently so. This further amplified by Raxter and Ruff 2008, who note as to the overall picture- quote:
"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."
The expanded gene flow from the Medit at the tail end is not at issue. The overall African finding is again confirmed by other studies, such as in Stringer's data above. The Yugoslavs, while somewhat away from Northern Europeans do not match the closer clustering of the African Americans and Egyptians. At best the Lower Egyptians are an intermediate population, almost as much on the warmer side as the colder side. But evenhere studies differ. Raxter 2011 is only one study that must be compared with others. Indeed, Most of Ruff/Raxter's 2008 samples were northern Egypt- (Giza) and the end result was still a primary cluster with tropical populations like Africans or African Americans. And in that paper they looked at yet other studies involving Black Americans. The results were the same- ancient Egyptians clustered primarily with other tropical Africans or tropical African derivatives like US Blacks. Use of say more Italian Americans in the "white" category would make little difference.
Raxter 2011 is not the only game in town. As Kemp 2005 notes in other studies of the north:
"..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)
The weight of scholarly studies and data thus confirms the primacy of the African connection.
" AE's were subtropical/warm adapted, not tropical/hot."
“Warm" includes the tropical zone range, which is variable not merely “hot” (whatever than means)- so trying a fuzzy, shifting definition does not help your claim. Almost 20 percent of Egypt by the way is in the tropical zone.
part 2 once you include "Southern Europeans", ancient Egyptians' crural indices appear closer to Mediterranean populations than Sub-Saharan African populations.
As another example shows-false. When all AEs are combined the closest affinity is with Africans. But even when you separate out the Lower Egyptians the claim is still false. The lower Egyptians are closer to another African SUB-SAHARAN population, the San. The sub-Saharan San, who have little European gene flow, post a male index of 84.2 compared to the Lower Egyptian 84.7 or .5 difference. By contrast the Medits post 83.9 compared to 84.7 for Lower Egyptians, or .8 diff.
In short, while southern Europe has had some gene flow into Egypt such as during Greek or Roman times, the San yet again confirm the case for the primary African connection. The SUB-SAHARAN San have little European gene flow, yet they still post closer to Lower Egyptians. The more temperate zone is the major factor, but its still Africans first. Once again, ancient Egyptians, cluster more with Africans than with northern OR Southern Europeans.
As Bleuze et al., 2014 point out: ancient Egyptian "crural indices [are] more similar to Southern Europeans".
But Bleuze is using Late Period samples from the Roman period, a time of greater gene flow. No one disputes that in such later periods more variable Medit elements (Greeks, ROmans) were introduced to the Egyptian population. Beluze states that the Kellis 2 cemetery referenced at the Dakleh Oasis is dated between AD 100 and 450- quite late in the game. Other scholars put the earlier Kellis 1 at the Late Ptolemaic -Early Roman period (c 60 BCE to 100 BCE.) The earlier period doesn't make any difference. So sure, these tail end samples from the Roman periods may trend more Medit, but its tail end after 100AD or even 50BC, and still doesn't change the overall bottom line.
In fact Beluze confirms my observation when they note that the Oasis individuals were more Medit flavored to begin with, so naturally in various measurements, they would lean that way, at the tail end of ancient dynastic Egypt. With such a sampling, the expected results are nothing special. QUOTE:
"However, given the socioe-conomic conditions at Dakhleh during the Romano-Christian period and the evidence that migrants to the Oasis likely came from regions that experienced geneflow from Southern Europe and/or the Near East, body shape in the Kellis 2 sample may show greater variation than expected."
No matter how you slice it, the ancient Egyptians cluster more with tropical African or tropical African derived groups than Europeans- whether they be north or south.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
None of the above makes any difference. Melanesians need not be 86+. Upper Egyptians or Nubians are not that high. And the san post 84.2 with little gene flow. Tropical populations vary, just like non-tropicals, and that includes "warm." No credible scholar thinks "warm" only refers to a subtropical climate.
None of the data supports your attempt to make out that Southern Europeans are closer to the Egyptian. Before you get to the Europeans, the closest match is with Sub-Saharan people- the San. On the other side of the coin- the warm side- the closest match is Upper Egyptians. On either side of the scale, the primary connection is African. Raxter's own data shows this.
You say anyone can read- sure- and per Raxter- quote:
""Ancient Egyptians and Nubians of both sexes are consistently significantly different in limb length proportions from Northern and Southern Europeans, with their brachial and crural indices grouping with the majority of other Africans. " [/]
She never said anything about all Egyptians clustering with Southern Medits are you are trying to make out.
And Raxter/Ruff 2008 ran a similar study- same overall pattern. [i]""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."
Raxter is not the only relevant study, and when you step outside Raxter- makes no diff- same result. In fact Raxter/Ruff cite another study where American blacks were in the mix- same result. Likewise Kemp 2005 notes as regards yet another study- this one with data on Lower Egyptians:
""..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)
The scholarly conclusions are clearly there for people to read.
Beluze et al do not break out Raxter's detail, but it is misleading for any to represent Raxter as applying to all Egyptians. Rather Raxter calls attention to LOWER EGYPTIANS re the Medit distance, NOT ALL Egyptians. Its LOWER Egyptians at issue, on crural indexes.
And when you take the Lower Egyptians, using Raxter's own data- the primary connection remains with Africans. On the cooler side are the Sub-Saharan San. On the warmer side, the Upper Egyptians. Either way- Africans come first as regards Lower Egyptians.
And Beluze also has this to say: "The significant decrease in humerus length relative to ulna length between earlier and later groups suggested an increasingly African body plan over time (Zakrzewski, 2003). The Egyptian sample as a whole had longer distal limb segments relative to proximal limb segments within each limb compared with many African populations.."
This confirms what I say about the overall picture, and a credible scholar in the field shows this directly.
Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
quote: ""..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)
What people can retain from this discussion is that Ancient Egyptians from various era (beside foreign dynasties) have similar limb and body proportions than African people (Sub-Saharan Africans, African-Americans, etc) and different from modern and ancient Europeans, West Asians, North Africans and Palestinians.
We can see it many studies such as the Barry Kemp quote above, Raxter (2008) and here taken from Holliday 2013:
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
When did the earliest Greeks enter Egypt? Could not various colonists have come to tutor the natives long before Alexander and his troops showed up?
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova:
.
Classic ideology vs data argument. Ideologues fall for the roorag. Rational folk follow the amassed data nor are thrown off by change-the-subject reroute attempts.
Posted by LEDAMA (Member # 21677) on :
Reply With Quote When did the earliest Greeks enter Egypt? Could not various colonists have come to tutor the natives long before Alexander and his troops showed up? That is during the 26th dynasty,during the reign of pharaoh Psamis 1,irony his name PSAMIS in kalenjin(south nilotic)means BAD,So i guess the ancient egyptians considered him bad.
Posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
Source of the above is unknown. Why??? Of which specimen and dynasties does the author speak???
quote:In fact, in terms of body shape, the European and the Inuit samples tend to be cold-adapted and tend to be separated in multivariate space from the more tropically adapted Africans, especially those groups from south of the Sahara.
--Holliday TW, Hilton CE. Body proportions of circumpolar peoples as evidenced from skeletal data: Ipiutak and Tigara (Point Hope) versus Kodiak Island Inuit.
quote:However, the remaining 35% of L mtDNAs form European-specific subclades, revealing that there was gene flow from sub-Saharan Africa toward Europe as early as 11,000 yr ago.
Reconstructing ancient mitochondrial DNA links between Africa and Europe --Mar ́ıa Cerezo, et al.
quote: PC correlates and component loadings (Figure 2) showed a pattern similar to average hg frequencies (Table 2) in both large meta-population sets, with the LBK dataset grouping with Europeans because of a lack of mitochondrial African hgs (L and M1) and preHV, and elevated frequencies of hg V.
--Wolfgang Haak Ancient DNA from European Early Neolithic Farmers Reveals Their Near Eastern Affinities
quote: The most thorough studies on the prehistory of North Africa come from the land included within the present borders of Egypt and northern Sudan. The Nile river and the Sahara desert have alternatively affected each other on both cultural and environmental levels and Eastern Saharan populations have acted as intermediaries between central Saharans and Nilotic peoples in both east–west and west–east directions. The Eastern Sahara is often referred to as the Western Desert, as it is located west of the Nile river. However, the Eastern Sahara proper extends east of the Nile river, as well. This article regards the most relevant events of past human populations in the area. Main topics include: the spread of early anatomically modern humans (e.g., at Kurkur Oasis, Bir Tarfawi, BirSahara); the reoccupation of the Sahara after 10 000 years ago; the earliest herders (e.g., at Bir Kiseiba and Nabta Playa); the earliest production and the spread of pottery (e.g., at Nabta Playa, Bir Kiseiba, Gilf Kebir, Great Sand Sea); caprine herding (e.g., at Sodmein Cave, Dakhleh Oasis, Nabta Playa); the origins of farming (e.g., at Farafra Oasis); and the development of sedentism (e.g., at Dakhleh Oasis, Nabta Playa).
AFRICA, NORTH Sahara, Eastern, --Elena A.A. Garcea et al.
quote: Large-scale climate change forms the backdrop to the beginnings of food production in northeastern Africa (Kröpelin et al. 2008).[ Hunter-gatherer communities deserted most of the northern interior of the continent during the arid glacial maximum and took refuge along the North African coast, the Nile Valley, and the southern fringes of the Sahara (Barich and Garcea 2008; Garcea 2006; Kuper and Kröpelin 2006). During the subsequent Early Holocene African humid phase, from the mid-eleventh to the early ninth millennium cal BP, ceramic-using hunter-gatherers took advantage of more favorable savanna conditions to resettle much of northeastern Africa (Holl 2005; Kuper and Kröpelin 2006). Evidence of domestic animals first appeared in sites in the Western Desert of Egypt, the Khartoum region of the Nile, northern Niger, the Acacus Mountains of Libya, and Wadi Howar (Garcea 2004, 2006; Pöllath and Peters 2007; fig. 1).
--Fiona Marshall
Domestication Processes and Morphological Change Through the Lens of the Donkey and African Pastoralism Fiona Marshall and Lior Weissbrod
quote:Evidence from throughout the Sahara indicates that the region experienced a cool, dry and windy climate during the last glacial period, followed by a wetter climate with the onset of the current interglacial, with humid conditions being fully established by around 10,000 years BP, when we see the first evidence of a reoccupation of parts of the central Sahara by hunter gathers, most likely originating from sub-Saharan Africa (Cremaschi and Di Lernia, 1998; Goudie, 1992; Phillipson, 1993; Ritchie, 1994; Roberts, 1998).
[...]
Conical tumuli, platform burials and a V-type monument represent structures similar to those found in other Saharan regions and associated with human burials, appearing in sixth millennium BP onwards in northeast Niger and southwest Libya (Sivilli, 2002). In the latter area a shift in emphasis from faunal to human burials, complete by the early fifth millennium BP, has been interpreted by Di Lernia and Manzi (2002) as being associated with a changes in social organisation that occurred at a time of increasing aridity. While further research is required in order to place the funerary monuments of Western Sahara in their chronological context, we can postulate a similar process as a hypothesis to be tested, based on the high density of burial sites recorded in the 2002 survey. Fig. 2: Megaliths associated with tumulus burial (to right of frame), north of Tifariti (Fig. 1). A monument consisting of sixty five stelae was also of great interest; precise alignments north and east, a division of the area covered into separate units, and a deliberate scattering of quartzite inside the structure, are suggestive of an astronomical function associated with funerary rituals. Stelae are also associated with a number of burial sites, again suggesting dual funerary and astronomical functions (Figure 2). Further similarities with other Saharan regions are evident in the rock art recorded in the study area, although local stylistic developments are also apparent. Carvings of wild fauna at the site of Sluguilla resemble the Tazina style found in Algeria, Libya and Morocco (Pichler and Rodrigue, 2003), although examples of elephant and rhinoceros in a naturalistic style reminiscent of engravings from the central Sahara believed to date from the early Holocene are also present.
--Nick Brooks et al.
The prehistory of Western Sahara in a regional context: the archaeology of the "free zone"
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, Saharan Studies Programme and School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK Coauthors: Di Lernia, Savino ((Department of Scienze Storiche, Archeologiche, e Antropologiche dell’Antichità, Faculty of Human Sciences, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Via Palestro 63, 00185 – Rome, Italy) and Drake, Nick (Department of Geography, King’s College, Strand, London WC2R 2LS).
Lakeside Cemeteries in the Sahara: 5000 Years of Holocene Population and Environmental Change
Welcome to ES.
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
It's been entertaining watching Cass try to dismantle the importance of limb lengths as proof that the Egyptians were tropical in ancestry...he'd previously dismissed this metric, saying something like, no-one paid attention to it.
Wonder what changed.
Posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
quote: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.
"More recently, it has been shown that ancient Egyptians had brachial indices that were generally similar to ther African populations and crural indices more similar to Southern Europeans (Raxter, 2011). Body breadth and body mass relative to stature in ancient Egyptians were intermediate between high-and low-latitude groups (Raxter, 2011). (Bleuze et al., 2014)
"The mosaic pattern in ecogeographic patterning among ancient Egyptian populations suggests that they cannot readily be characterized as “super-Negroid” as previously suggested (Robins, 1983; Zakrzewski, 2003). (Bleuze et al., 2014)
'Im sorry to re-inform you again, but the pattern is always from South to North. We have been showing you this for years. I advice you to reread LA Brana. It clearly debunks your thesis.
"Climate-Controlled Holocene Occupation in the Sahara: Motor of Africa's Evolution"
quote: "Radiocarbon data from 150 archaeological excavations in the now hyper-arid Eastern Sahara of Egypt, Sudan, Libya, and Chad reveal close links between climatic variations and prehistoric occupation during the past 12,000 years. Synoptic multiple-indicator views for major time slices demonstrate the transition from initial settlement after the sudden onset of humid conditions at 8500 B.C.E. to the exodus resulting from gradual desiccation since 5300 B.C.E. Southward shifting of the desert margin helped trigger the emergence of pharaonic civilization along the Nile, influenced the spread of pastoralism throughout the continent, and affects sub-Saharan Africa to the present day."
quote:"At the end of the last Ice Age, the Sahara Desert was just as dry and uninviting as it is today. But sandwiched between two periods of extreme dryness were a few millennia of plentiful rainfall and lush vegetation.
During these few thousand years, prehistoric humans left the congested Nile Valley and established settlements around rain pools, green valleys, and rivers.”
Welcome to ES.
Posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by tropicals redacted: It's been entertaining watching Cass try to dismantle the importance of limb lengths as proof that the Egyptians were tropical in ancestry...he'd previously dismissed this metric, saying something like, no-one paid attention to it.
Wonder what changed.
quote:"The initial movements westwards across the Sahara and, almost a millennium later, are likely to have been caused by the succession of drought episodes at 7600, 6800-6500, 6100, 5800, and 5500-5400 cal BC (8.6, 7.9-7.7, 7.26, 7, 6.6-6.5 kyr bp) […]”
-- Fekri Hassan, Droughts, Food, and Culture: Ecological Change and Food Security in Africa’s Prehistory
quote:Originally posted by Dead: Theoretically Melanesians should be 86+ like other Old World populations at tropical/equatorial latitude. Instead they are 84.8. This has to do with the recent large-scale mixture of the natives islanders with Austronesians who settled across Melanesia from Taiwan and southern China.
Like Melanesians, African-Americans are not tropically adapted. AA's are 85.1. This is because the average African-American has recent white ancestry. West African and East Africans means are both 86+ [the "South African Black" sample mean in the above table is 86.2-3].
None of the data supports your clustering attempt. You are trying to pool all these populations together, but it doesn't work.
What West & East Sub-Saharan Africans match is the Lower and Upper Nubian series, not Egyptian.
The data is there for anyone to read. The quote from Bleuze et al., 2014 who point out: ancient Egyptian "crural indices [are] more similar to Southern Europeans" is directly citing Raxter (2011). They aren't talking about the late period series.
I'm not claiming they pool with Southern Europeans, but that they are intermediate/warm-adapted/subtropical, but fall closer to Mediterranean's, when compared to populations at hot tropical latitude like Sub-Saharan Africans (the Melanesians though aren't a good example for the reason I pointed to above).
And you can combine Lower and Upper Egyptians to produce an overall mean. It comes out still below 85.
We have reviewed this years ago, all you do here is iterate your old school thesis. The more you resist the more you get your panties in a bunch.
The Khormusan: Evidence for an MSA East African industry in Nubia
quote:"There is clear evidence of lithic technological variability in Middle Paleolithic (MP) assemblages along the Nile valley and in adjacent desert areas. One of the identified variants is the Khormusan, the type-site of which, Site 1017, is located north of the Nile's Second Cataract. The industry has two distinctive characteristics that set it apart from other MP industries within its vicinity. One is the use of a wide variety of raw materials; the second is an apparent correlation between raw material and technology used, suggesting a cultural aspect to raw material management. Stratigraphically, site 1017 is situated within the Dibeira-Jer formation which represents an aggradation stage of the Nile and contains sediments originating from the Ethiopian Highlands. While it has previously been suggested that the site dates to sometime before 42.5 ka, the Dibeira-Jer formation can plausibly be correlated with Nile alluvial sediments in northern Sudan recently dated to 83 ± 24 ka (MIS 5a). This stage coincides with the 81 ka age of sapropel S3, indicating higher Nile flow and stronger monsoon rainfall at these times.
Other sites which reflect similar raw material variability and technological traditions are the BNS and KHS sites in the Omo Kibish Formation (Ethiopia) dated to ∼100 ka and ∼190 ka respectively. Based on a lithic comparative study conducted, it is suggested that site 1017 can be seen as representing behavioral patterns which are indicative of East African Middle Stone Age (MSA) technology, adding support to the hypothesis that the Nile Valley was an important dispersal route used by modern humans prior to the long cooling and dry trend beginning with the onset of MIS 4. Techo-typological comparison of the assemblages from the Khormusan sites with other Middle Paleolithic sites from Nubia and East Africa is used to assess the possibility of tracing the dispersal of technological traits across the landscape and through time.”
--Mae Goder-Goldberger
Quaternary International 25 June 2013, Vol.300:182–194, doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2012.11.031 The Middle Palaeolithic in the Desert
quote:Originally posted by Dead: Ancient Egyptian mean (N + S combined) is 84.8-9.
Low-latitude (i.e. tropical/high temperature adapted) populations are 86, or around there.
So no, AE's do not overlap or pool with populations within the tropics.
The three lines I added, but you can basically see the pattern. High latitude cold adapted populations are under 81, or about there. Relatively high latitude temperate populations are all around 82-83. Intermediate/subtropical or warm adapted are 84-85. Tropical or heat adapted are 86-87. Obviously this doesn't explain everything, since there are some oddities (e.g. Ainu) but its clear AE's are not tropical.
If what you claimed as valid, the authors like Sonia Zakrzewski would have rectified along time ago. It’s really that simple.
Posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead: Theoretically Melanesians should be 86+ like other Old World populations at tropical/equatorial latitude. Instead they are 84.8. This has to do with the recent large-scale mixture of the natives islanders with Austronesians who settled across Melanesia from Taiwan and southern China.
Like Melanesians, African-Americans are not tropically adapted. AA's are 85.1. This is because the average African-American has recent white ancestry. West African and East Africans means are both 86+ [the "South African Black" sample mean in the above table is 86.2-3].
None of the data supports your clustering attempt. You are trying to pool all these populations together, but it doesn't work.
What West & East Sub-Saharan Africans match is the Lower and Upper Nubian series, not Egyptian.
The data is there for anyone to read. The quote from Bleuze et al., 2014 who point out: ancient Egyptian "crural indices [are] more similar to Southern Europeans" is directly citing Raxter (2011). They aren't talking about the late period series.
I'm not claiming they pool with Southern Europeans, but that they are intermediate/warm-adapted/subtropical, but fall closer to Mediterranean's, when compared to populations at hot tropical latitude like Sub-Saharan Africans (the Melanesians though aren't a good example for the reason I pointed to above).
And you can combine Lower and Upper Egyptians to produce an overall mean. It comes out still below 85.
quote:Originally posted by Gor: With that said, I don't think the bronze skin Tut reconstruction is biased at all.
quote: Figure 2 | Ancestral variants around the SLC45A2 (rs16891982, above) and SLC24A5 (rs1426654, below) pigmentation genes in the Mesolithic genome.
The SNPs around the two diagnostic variants (red arrows) in these two genes were analysed. The resulting haplotype comprises neighbouring SNPs that are also absent in modern Europeans (CEU) (n = 112) but present in Yorubans (YRI) (n = 113). This pattern confirms that the La Braña 1 sample is older than the positive-selection event in these regions. Blue, ancestral; red, derived.
--Carles Lalueza-Fox
Nature 507, 225–228 (13 March 2014) doi:10.1038/nature12960
Determination of optimal rehydration, fixation and staining methods for histological and immunohistochemical analysis of mummified soft tissues
A-M Mekota1, M Vermehren Department of Biology I, Biodiversity Research/Anthropology1and Department of Veterinary Anatomy II2, Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich, Germany Submitted January 8, 2002; revised May 4, 2004; accepted August 12, 2004
quote:
Abstract
During an excavation headed by the German Institute for Archaeology, Cairo, at the tombs of the nobles in Thebes-West, Upper Egypt, three types of tissues from different mummies were sampled to compare 13 well known rehydration methods for mummified tissue with three newly developed methods. Furthermore, three fixatives were tested with each of the rehydration fluids. Meniscus (fibrocartilage), skin, and a placenta were used for this study. The rehydration and fixation procedures were uniform for all methods.
Materials and methods In 1997, the German Institute for Archaeology headed an excavation of the tombs of the nobles in Thebes-West, Upper Egypt. At this time, three types of tissues were sampled from different mummies: meniscus (fibrocartilage), skin, and placenta. Archaeological findings suggest that the mummies dated from the New Kingdom (approxi- mately 1550-1080 BC).
Skin Skin sections showed particularly good tissue preservation, although cellular outlines were never distinct. Although much of the epidermis had already separated from the dermis, the remaining epidermis often was preserved well (Fig. 1).
The basal epithelial cells were packed with melanin as expected for specimens of Negroid origin. In the dermis, the hair follicles, hair, and sebaceous and sweat glands were readily apparent (Fig. 2). Blood vessels, but no red blood cells, and small peripheral nerves were identified unambiguously (Fig. 3). The subcutaneous layer showed loose connective tissue fibers attached to the dermis, and fat cell remnants were observed. To evaluate the influence of postmortum tissue decay by micro-organisms, the samples were tested for the presence of fungi using silver staining
.
Biotechnic & Histochemistry 2005, 80(1): 7Á/13
Welcome to ES.
Posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
quote:If what you claimed as valid, the authors like Sonia Zakrzewski would have rectified along time ago. It’s really that simple.
Her study is old.
"The mosaic pattern in ecogeographic patterning among ancient Egyptian populations suggests that they cannot readily be characterized as “super-Negroid” as previously suggested (Robins, 1983; Zakrzewski, 2003). (Bleuze et al., 2014)
As mentioned before. She has newer data, and did not RETIFY her observations. Nor did others.
I have posted a sum on climatology, migration, genetics and melanin dosage. In support of Sonia Zakrzewski and other anthropologists who observed the same. So your argument is literary blue. (a sky high dream").
Let's get to the nitty gritty, Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt, is West Egypt. Reread my posts...LOL
So, whether they were similar or closer..., fact is they range with other Africans on multiple levels and came from the South. As they migrated up North.
Several studies have shown that the human body generally conforms to the ecogeographical expectations of Bergmann's and Allen's rules; however, recent evidence suggests that these expectations may not hold completely for some populations.
Egypt is located at the crossroads of Sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Europe, and the Near East, and gene flow among groups in these regions may confound ecogeographical patterning.
In this study, we test the fit of the adult physique of a large sample (N = 163) of females and males from the Kellis 2 cemetery (Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt) against ecogeographical predictions.
Body shape (i.e., body mass relative to stature) was assessed by the femur head diameter to bicondylar femur length index (FHD/BFL), and brachial and crural indices were calculated to examine intralimb proportions.
Body shape in the Kellis 2 sample is not significantly different from high-latitude groups and a Lower Nubian sample, and intralimb proportions are not significantly different from mid-latitude and other low-latitude groups.
This study demonstrates the potential uniqueness of body shape and intralimb proportions in an ancient Egyptian sample, and further highlights the complex relationship between ecogeographic patterning and adaptation.
Ps, of what dynasty do you speak anyway and what is the sampled matirial???
Posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote: The Dakhleh Oasis Project (DOP) is a long-term regional study of the interaction between environmental changes and human activity in the closed area of the Dakhleh Oasis, Western Desert of Egypt, but including the larger area of the Palaeoasis. The study includes all the time since the first incursion of humans in the Middle Pleistocene, perhaps 400,000 years ago, down to the 21st century oasis farmers, and all the human activity and all the changing environmental conditions for which there is evidence within the time period.
To achieve such an assessment, it is necessary to gather data on the modern environment and all past environmental conditions. The environment is seen as one of the most important influences on all human activity. The evidence for this is sought in the geological, geomorphological, the botanical and the faunal records. These data are collected by various field workers, specialists in their particular fields, who ultimately will provide a consensus of the environmental history of the region. The DOP environmentalists to date are Professor R. F. Giegengack, Jr., Dr. Jennifer Smith, Professor C. S. Churcher, Dr. Ursula Thanheiser and Mag. Johannes Walter. Formerly, there have also been Professor J. C. Ritchie and Professor I. A. Brookes.
The activities of humans within these environmental settings must be investigated by a wide range of expertise. The settling and development of cultural evolution within the oasis area, the expansion into and from other Saharan regions and, of course, connections with the Nile Valley are all of interest. These studies are performed by geoarchaeologists, Old Stone Age African specialists, Holocene-Neolithic archaeologists, historical periods specialists – Pharaonic, Ptolemaic-Roman-Christian archaeologists, Islamic archaeologists; by physical anthropologists, and by linguists.
So far, no social or cultural anthropologists have participated in the DOP. These investigators include Professor M. R. Kleindienst, Dr. M. M. A. McDonald, Dr. C. A. Hope, Professor A. J. Mills, Professor F. Leemhuis, Dr. O. E. Kaper, Professor R. S. Bagnall, Professor J. E. Molto, Professor M. Woidich, Professor K. A. Worp, Professor I. Gardner, and a great number of field assistants and experts brought into the project to study specific specialized aspects of our finds.
To understand both the cultural evolution and the environmental changes and their interdependence properly, the oasis has to be studied in great local detail, as well as in a much wider context of northeastern Africa. The general trends, both cultural and natural, throughout the Sahara, and Nile Valley and the eastern and central Sahara as well as locally in the oasis itself must be understood to place the Dakhleh Oasis in its proper setting. Because the Dakhleh Oasis is both an isolated unit and a microcosm of much wider trends, the study is important.
No such large oasis area of the eastern Sahara has yet been so broadly examined and in such great detail. What occurs in the Dakhleh Oasis, will in all probability also occur in other places, with local variations. For example, because of human interference and natural destruction, early adaptation in the Nile Valley is imperfectly understood. The Dakhleh Oasis is isolated but not too distant from the Nile, is subject to many of the same but a much less complex group of influences, and the DOP will be able to shed light on such a problem area.
Through an understanding of the cultural development in the oasis, and in the variety of ways people have had to adapt and accomodate themselves to their changing world, and also how they have influenced or created change in their world, it should become easier to understand the present-day problems of life in an hyper-arid environment, with fertile soils but with a finite water supply. Past solutions and mistakes and results can often better inform mankind. This in turn will inform development agencies for future planning and programs in such regions.
The Dakhleh Oasis lies some 800 km SSE of Cairo, surrounded by the wastes of the eastern Sahara, centered at 25o 30’N and 29o 07’E. The oasis is some 80 km west to east and 25 km maximum wide. The population (in 2002) is about 75,000. The local economy is based in agriculture, and there are no known mineral or other viable resources.
The capital is at Mut, which has been the main town since at least the Eighteenth Dynasty, about 1,500 BCE. Before then, the site of ‘Ain Asil at Balat in eastern Dakhleh had been the seat of the government, since 2,500 BCE, and before that the less settled Neolithic and earlier populations inhabited the area. The Dakhleh Oasis has had a continuity of settlement for about the last 8,000 years but only since 2,500 BCE has it been politically tied to the Nile region. Climatic trends and events that can be discerned in most of the eastern Sahara are also seen at Dakhleh.
The first European traveller to ‘discover’ the Dakhleh Oasis was Sir Archibald Edmonstone, in 1819. He was followed by several other early travellers, but it was not until 1908 that the first egyptologist, Herbert Winlock visited the oasis and noted its monuments in a systematic manner. Only in the 1950s was any real interest taken, first by Dr. Ahmed Fakhry, and in the late 1970s an expedition of the Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale and the Dakhleh Oasis Project each began detailed studies in the oasis.
The Dakhleh Oasis Project has been conducting this wide study since 1978, supported by a number of universities and organizations. Among these have been Monash University, The University of Durham, the University of Toronto, Columbia University, The Royal Ontario Museum, the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities, the American Research Centre in Egypt, the Egyptology Society of Victoria, The Dakhleh Trust, as well as the many institutions of the various participating scholars which support individuals. Support for the DOP is governmental, institutional, corporate and individual and is invited at all times.
The results of the DOP fieldwork are published as quickly as possible, in order that they enter the public domain without delay. The Bibliography of titles generated by the Project members is complete and is also found in this website. It will give the reader access to all our research and reporting.
The site of ancient Kellis, modern-day Ismant el-Kharab, is located in the Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt. The name Kellis is attested in documentary material from the site, which also reveals that the village once belonged to the Mothite nome. The ancient settlement is denoted by numerous mud-brick structures and a dominant temple complex, and the main phases of occupation at the site are dated from the early Roman to late Roman Period (i.e., 1st-2nd to 4th-5th centuries CE). Kellis covers an area of approximately one square kilometer and is bounded upon its northwest and southeast by dried up wadis(water courses).
Several early travellers and modern Egyptologists visited the site and left brief reports of their observations. They include: B. Drovetti, J. G. Wilkinson, H. E. Winlock, G. Elias and Ahmed Fakhry. The first detailed examination, however, did not commence until 1981-2, during an extensive archaeological survey of the oasis undertaken by the Dakhleh Oasis Project (DOP). In accordance with the DOP’s system of reference, the site was ascribed the number 31/420-D6-1. The primary stages of planning and mapping of the site were conducted at this time in conjunction with small-scale test excavations.
Consequently, the site was divided into areas ( see map ) as part of the initial surveying process. Major excavations at Ismant el-Kharab began in 1986 under the auspices of the DOP. The principal investigators for this site are Dr. Colin Hope and Dr. Gillian Bowen of Monash University.
quote: golden-mummyThe two cemeteries associated with Kellis are located north of the settlement on either side of the northwest wadi which runs from the northeast to the west of its boundary. The West Cemetery (DOP number 31/420-C5-1), also referred to as Kellis 1, consists of a large number of small chamber tombs which are cut into a progression of low-rise mounds west of this wadi.
Studies of the ceramic material and objects found in the tombs indicate that they were in use from the Ptolemaic Period into the early Roman Period. The entrances to most of the tombs were brick-lined or provided with door jambs and a lintel built with roughly-hewn sandstone, and many entrances were blocked with a sandstone slab. All of the tombs contained multiple burials, many of which were secondary and added after the initial tomb interments. A substantial number of bodies were mummified and many were provided with painted and gilded cartonnage. Significant quantities of burial goods were also found in the tombs.
The East Cemetery (DOP number 31/420-C5-2), or Kellis 2, is located on the broad plain east of the same wadi and consists of simple rectangular pit graves that were cut into the red Nubian clay. Some of the graves have low mud-brick superstructures and several of these graves are contained within two larger mud-brick enclosures, both of which are preserved only to a few courses high. The graves that have been examined thus far have contained a single inhumation which was wrapped in linen cloth and in almost all of the graves there have been few burial goods found. In some instances however, the entire grave pit was covered with pottery.
The more I tend to read, the more interesting it gets.
quote: University of Reading Excavations focus on Area 1 in order to capture a holistic view of a single Romano-Egyptian neighborhood. Area 1 is characterized by mixed spatial usage and includes houses, a ceramics production area, and a large open courtyard.
One house (B2), dating to the mid-late third century until the early fourth century, has already been excavated as part of the Amheida Project, and a full publication will go to press later in 2012. Current and future excavations by the Reading team will take place around this structure in order to explore small-scale social relationships, economic exchanges, and domestic life.
lol, good info Patrol. Thule/Anglo/"Dead" doesn't seem to realize that his argument is "dead on arrival." And his touted diagram is his own shaky patchwork, not a screenshot from a cited original, and does not contain a direct, original quote, or specific citation, meaning he can fudge and lie. Graphics should include an actual screen shot and direct quotes, so people can verify where info is from. But even his unsourced, non cited "supporting" chart, undermines his argument. It shows the Europeans clustering AWAY from the tropicals. If anything, it shows the Egyptians cluster more with the tropical Africans that his white Europeans. African Americans, a tropical, "sub-Saharan population, and Pygmies, an African, "sub-Saharan" population cluster closer to the Egyptians. And the Dakleh Oasis samples as you note are weighted towards non- Egyptian, mixed or untypical late period samples, in the Roman era. Says his "supporting" reference:
However, given the socioe-conomic conditions at Dakhleh during the Romano-Christian period and the evidence that migrants to the Oasis likely came from regions that experienced geneflow from Southern Europe and/or the Near East, body shape in the Kellis 2 sample may show greater variation than expected."
and:
""The significant decrease in humerus length relative to ulna length between earlier and later groups suggested an increasingly African body plan over time (Zakrzewski, 2003). The Egyptian sample as a whole had longer distal limb segments relative to proximal limb segments within each limb compared with many African populations.." --Beluze
Again, and again, his own "supporting" information, blows away his own argument.
^Another "supporting" reference..
Posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
It literaly went up in smoke, Dead got burned badly this time. lol
Deadline...
quote: Morphological variation of the skeletal remains of ancient Nubia has been traditionally explained as a product of multiple migrations into the Nile Valley. In contrast, various researchers have noted a continuity in craniofacial variation from Mesolithic through Neolithic times. This apparent continuity could be explained by in situ cultural evolution producing shifts in selective pressures which may act on teeth, the facial complex, and the cranial vault. A series of 13 Mesolithic skulls from Wadi Halfa, Sudan, are compared to Nubian Neolithic remains by means of extended canonical analysis. Results support recent research which suggests consistent trends of facial reduction and cranial vault expansion from Mesolithic through Neolithic times.
--Meredith F. Small* The nubian mesolithic: A consideration of the Wadi Halfa remains
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
^^Even these previous studies show the African character just as how keita could point to old field surveys in the 1800s, 1920s and 1930s that show how "African" samples were excluded in final reports. We still have a lot of work to do, and the issues still have to be pursued but there is a gradual coming around to putting AE in its African context- grudging mayhaps.
What is interesting is that the most vocal opponents are some modern Egyptians. As epitomized by Anwar Sadat- how he was mocked for his African ancestry (upper Egyptian guy with Sudanese wife) and the "horrible" instance of a black American actor portraying Sadat, in an American film. Sheesh, they even banned the film in Egypt. Then of course there is Hawass.
"His father, Anwar Mohammed El Sadat was an Upper Egyptian, and his mother, Sit Al-Berain, was a Sudanese from her father.[8][9] Thus, he faced insults by his opponents in Egypt for not looking "Egyptian enough" and "Nasser's black poodle."[10] --Khalid, Sunni M. (February 7, 2011). "The Root: Race And Racism Divide Egypt". npr.org.
For too many Egyptians, sub-Saharan Africa is a stereotypical exotic land of thick jungles and masses of poor, starving and black-skinned savages. By: Sunni M. Khalid Posted: Feb. 3 2011 2:53 PM
Because of my looks, my religion and my name, I have frequently been mistaken for Arab during my travels throughout the Middle East. It has been a mentally liberating sensation -- to leave the racial politics of the United States (in reality, this is simply the process of exchanging the ethnic politics of one land for those of another) and not to be regarded as simply a nondescript "black."
Over the years, I have, at various times, been mistaken for many different nationalities. But when I am in the Middle East, strangers most often mistake me for Egyptian. Of course, many African Americans look like Egyptians, right across the color spectrum. I would often scan a crowded street in Cairo and pick out the faces of Egyptians whose visages reminded me of family or friends.
Almost every time I arrived at the Cairo airport, the immigration official would examine my passport closely. Inevitably, the official would ask me a series of questions.
"Is this your name, Sunni Khalid?"
"Yes."
"Are you Egyptian?"
"No."
"Is your father Egyptian?"
"No."
"Is your mother Egyptian?"
"No."
"Where were you born?"
"Detroit."
The official would immediately become suspicious. After all, to his eyes, I looked like an ordinary Egyptian. Finally, another immigration official would show up, repeating the same series of questions. I'd have to repeat my answers a third or fourth time before still more disbelieving immigration officials.
As a last resort, I'd often put my hands up in a boxer's stance and start jumping around, throwing punches in the air. Then I'd turn to them and say, "I'm like Muhammad Ali-Clay." That would always bring smiles.
"Oh, you're a boxer! Do you know Muhammad Ali-Clay?"
"No, I'm like Muhammad Ali-Clay," I would say. "I'm an African-American Muslim."
Quickly, those quizzical looks would be replaced with smiles and handshakes. As they stamped my passport, the officials would tell me, "Welcome home."
But other blacks, whether American or not, have fared much worse than I did; they are never mistaken for Arabs.
Slender, beautiful, blue-black-skinned Southern Sudanese women, who walk around Cairo with their thick, kinky hair woven distinctively in intricate braids, are routinely the targets of verbal public abuse. Carloads of Arab men drive by, hanging out of windows, shouting catcalls, or making loud demands for sexual favors.
Over the years, Egypt has had a particularly difficult time coming to grips with its African identity. Many Egyptians do not consider themselves Africans. Some take offense even to being identified with Africa at all. When speaking to Egyptians who have traveled to countries below the Sahara, nearly all of them speak of going to Africa, or going down to Africa, as if Egypt were separate from the rest of the continent.
More than a few Egyptian women, for example, told me that they disliked the dark-skinned former President Anwar Sadat, ridiculed for years as "Nasser's black poodle." Sadat, whose mother was Sudanese, they insisted, "did not look Egyptian enough."
For too many Egyptians, sub-Saharan Africa is a stereotypical exotic land of thick jungles and masses of poor, starving and black-skinned savages. Ironically, a little more than a generation ago, Cairo was the nerve center for the continent's liberation movement. Today the state-controlled media devote scant attention to the affairs of the continent below the Sahara. Even the occasional visit by a head of state from sub-Saharan Africa is greeted with smiles by snickering Egyptian government officials, especially when African visitors choose to wear their national dress.
This was not always the case. In 1966, following the coup in Ghana, Egypt's first president, Gamal Abdel-Nasser, sent for the Egyptian wife and half-Egyptian children of Ghana's deposed leader, Kwame Nkrumah. Nasser died suddenly in 1970, and much has changed since then.
Sub-Saharan Africans, who have fled as refugees to Egypt from Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea, are routinely targeted for periodic security roundups in Cairo. In December 2005, Egyptian riot police brutally attacked a camp of Sudanese refugees in Cairo who were protesting their treatment. In front of TV cameras, at least 28 and as many as 100 refugees were killed, and hundreds of others were injured, arrested, imprisoned or deported. There was little public protest.
My wife, Zeinab, a Kenyan Somali, endured a series of racial indignities during our time in Egypt. She would shop Road Nine, the trendy commercial drag in Maadi that caters mostly to foreigners and wealthy Egyptians. More than once, she would be standing in line at the checkout counter, when an older, fair-skinned Egyptian woman would arrogantly walk from the rear of the line and place her packages on the conveyor belt in front of Zeinab, as if my wife didn't exist. Indignantly, Zeinab would glare at the woman and dump her packages at the back of the line -- or even go so far as to grab the woman by the collar to make her point.
Whenever my wife would come to the airport to pick me up, she'd often have to fend off several Arab men, who assumed that, as a black woman, she was somehow immediately "available" to their desires, whether she was married or not.
One afternoon, as we ate lunch at our favorite restaurant in Cairo's sprawling Khan el-Khalili market, we noticed two scowling Egyptian women staring at us from across the room. I left Zeinab to go to the restroom. As I returned to our table, one of the women who had been glaring at us earlier, an older Egyptian woman, accosted me.
"Don't you know better?" she asked in Arabic. "How dare you bring a woman like that into a place like this?"
As far as this woman was concerned, Zeinab, dressed casually in slacks, her hair in braids, was obviously a "Sudanese prostitute," and I was taken to be her Arab "john." Certainly, in her eyes, no respectable Egyptian man would ever cavort publicly with a black woman.
"Excuse me, ma'am," I replied politely in Arabic, "you've made a mistake. That woman is my wife."
My protests were futile. The woman kept tugging indelicately on my sleeve, castigating me for my "scandalous" public behavior.
Before I left Cairo, I met a group of sub-Saharan African students enrolled at the prestigious al-Azhar University. They told me about the racial harassment they were subjected to on a daily basis on the streets of Cairo by Egyptian Arabs.
"I learned something much different from what I believed," said Bala, a native of northern Nigeria and a graduate student at the American University in Cairo, who lived in Egypt for six years. "I thought [the Arabs] were our brothers in Islam, but they don't bother about that when you're black. ... They pretend that you are a brother in Islam, but this is different from what they hold in their hearts and in their minds."
He told me that for many Muslims from sub-Saharan Africa, the spiritual solidarity with Egyptian Muslims was misplaced. "I was coming out of masjid [mosque] in a place called Dar-el-Malik," Bala said. "So we used to say 'Salaam' to one another when we came out of salat [prayer]. There was one child, called Mohamed, and we were used to shaking hands with him. And one day, I came out to shake his hand and he refused. He told me his father told him never to shake hands with a Sudani -- that is black. So he is telling me his father told him he cannot say, 'Salaam,' to any [Africans]."
Through Bala, I met other African students, including some who were studying at al-Azhar University, with the hope of returning to their native lands as imams and religious scholars. Some of the students told me that they experienced racism within al-Azhar to such an extent that they eventually renounced their vows as Muslims.
Some Egyptians, they told me, called Africans hounga (a nonsense word) or asked, "What time is it?" This was apparently done so that the sub-Saharan Africans would look down and be reminded of their dark-skinned wrists, where their watches might be. The jokesters would immediately laugh, but the Africans wouldn't catch on to the joke until much later.
"Egyptians ask you if you live in trees," Bala said. "Or, 'Why are you black?' 'Is your country hot?' So, this is how we know that there is something called racism here. We are Muslims, not because of the Arabs, but Muslims despite what the Arabs have done to us. Even my worst enemy, I would not ask him to come to Egypt for studies, let alone my son."
As Egypt moves forward in a post-Mubarak era, it will have to look at healing many of the wounds that have been opened and have festered over the years. This includes mending ties among Egyptians across religious lines, between the Muslim majority and the Coptic Christian minority, as well as across racial fault lines, with more acceptance of the non-Arab Nubian minority and the significant number of African refugees living and working in Egypt. How these minorities are treated in the future may speak volumes about how far Egyptians have come, or have to go, in treating one another.
Sunni M. Khalid is the managing news editor at WYPR-FM and has reported extensively throughout Africa and the Middle East. He reported from Cairo for three years.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Post-Pharaonic Nubia in the Light of Archaeology.
"The Meroitic kingdom and culture exhibit a whole series of developments and accomplishments which are by no means prefigured in the late Napatan era, and which are symptomatic of a marked return of cultural vigour.2 The Meroitic achievements in the political and religious fields were nearly as great as the Napatan of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, and in the material and artistic fields surpassed them-especially when we recall that they were to a far greater extent the work of local craftsmen.3 It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Meroitic at its peak, far from being a period of cultural disintegration, actually represents the highest level attained by native Nubian culture up to that time 4... and not merely a veneer of Egyptian culture imperfectly grafted on to a Nubian base.
Foremost among the accomplishments of the Meroitic era must be accounted the tremendous territorial expansion of the kingdom, or at least of its cultural influence. Meroites not only reoccupied Lower Nubia in force,5 but also extended their dominion southward to Sennar and Kosti and westward to Kordofan and perhaps even Darfur.6 The Meroitic kingdom at its height was perhaps as geographically extensive as the Napatan.. The reoccupation of Lower Nubia must however be accounted a major accomplishment in itself, especially as there is some evidence that it was contested by the Ptolemies.7
Further evidence of renewed cultural vigour in the Meroitic period is to be seen in the wave of temple building which took place under various Meroitic rulers in the first century of the Christian era-especially under the famous royal pair Natakamani and Aminatari.8 Their work cannot be regarded simply as a continuation of an established tradition, for there had been nothing on a comparable scale since Taharqa, and no temple building of any significance at all for 200 years. Natakamani and Aminatari were the last Nubian rulers to employ Egyptian craftsmen in the design of their monu- ments, and their temples and mortuary chapels are undoubtedly the finest of the Meroitic era. Nevertheless, the work of the strictly local artisans in the following reigns wvas still of a high artistic order.9
Another noteworthy development of the Meroitic era was the beautiful and far-famed Meroitic decorated pottery. The origins of this industry remain obscure. The designs combine elements of Egyptian and of Graeco-Roman origin, but the combinations and their execution are uniquely Nubian, and the ware is far superior both techno- logically and artistically to anything made in Egypt at the time. It represents, in fact, one of the highest attainments in the history of Nubian material culture.
Meroitic pottery was very widely manufactured, and appears in surprising quantities even in the humblest Meroitic dwellings.' A final cultural achievement which we must credit to the Meroitic era was the development of the Meroitic system of writing, which for the first time in history enabled the Nubians to record the language in which they habitually spoke.. they give evidence of a more widespread literacy than at any other period of Nubian history. "
--William Y. Adams. 1964. Post-Pharaonic Nubia in the Light of Archaeology. I The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 50
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Originally posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor:
Recently discovered bone implements from Middle Stone Age (MSA) deposits at Sibudu Cave, South Africa, confirm the existence of a bone tool industry for the Howiesons Poort (HP) technocomplex. Previously, an isolated bone point from Klasies River provided inconclusive evidence. This paper describes three bone tools: two points and the end of a polished spatula-shaped piece, from unequivocal HP layers at Sibudu Cave (with ages greater than ?61 ka). Comparative microscopic and morphometric analysis of the Sibudu specimens together with bone tools from southern African Middle and Later Stone Age (LSA) deposits, an Iron Age occupation, nineteenth century Bushman hunter-gatherer toolkits, and bone tools used experimentally in a variety of tasks, reveals that the Sibudu polished piece has use-wear reminiscent of that on bones experimentally used to work animal hides. A slender point is consistent with a pin or needle-like implement, while a larger point, reminiscent of the single specimen from Peers Cave, parallels large un-poisoned bone arrow points from LSA, Iron Age and historical Bushman sites. Additional support for the Sibudu point having served as an arrow tip comes from backed lithics in the HP compatible with this use, and the recovery of older, larger bone and lithic points from Blombos Cave, interpreted as spear heads. If the bone point from the HP layers at Sibudu Cave is substantiated by future discoveries, this will push back the origin of bow and bone arrow technology by at least 20,000 years, and corroborate arguments in favour of the hypothesis that crucial technological innovations took place during the MSA in Africa.
--Backwella, d'Erricob, and Wadleyd (2008) Middle Stone Age bone tools from the Howiesons Poort layers, Sibudu Cave, South Africa. Journal of Archaeological Science. Volume 35, Issue 6, June 2008, Pages 1566–1580
^^This ties in with the data on MSA and any so-called "Revo"..
Advanced cognitive, technological and behavioral patterns derive from Africa. Dubbed the "Human Revolution" by some researchers, they lead up to the expansion of humans from Africa to other parts of the world, circa 60-40kya. Other scholars argue for a more gradual continuum of advances deeply rooted in Africa that spread worldwide. In either scenario, whether relatively rapid advance or gradual accumulation, the cognitive, technological and behavioral advances took place within Africa.
QUOTE: "Recent research has provided increasing support for the origins of anatomically and genetically "modern" human populations in Africa between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago, followed by a major dispersal of these populations to both Asia and Europe sometime after ca. 65,000 before present (B.P.). However, the central question of why it took these populations {approx}100,000 years to disperse from Africa to other regions of the world has never been clearly resolved. It is suggested here that the answer may lie partly in the results of recent DNA studies of present-day African populations, combined with a spate of new archaeological discoveries in Africa. Studies of both the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mismatch patterns in modern African populations and related mtDNA lineage-analysis patterns point to a major demographic expansion centered broadly within the time range from 80,000 to 60,000 B.P., probably deriving from a small geographical region of Africa.
Recent archaeological discoveries in southern and eastern Africa suggest that, at approximately the same time, there was a major increase in the complexity of the technological, economic, social, and cognitive behavior of certain African groups, which could have led to a major demographic expansion of these groups in competition with other, adjacent groups. It is suggested that this complex of behavioral changes (possibly triggered by the rapid environmental changes around the transition from oxygen isotope stage 5 to stage 4) could have led not only to the expansion of the L2 and L3 mitochondrial lineages over the whole of Africa but also to the ensuing dispersal of these modern populations over most regions of Asia, Australasia, and Europe, and their replacement (with or without interbreeding) of the preceding "archaic" populations in these regions." ---Mellars, Paul (2006) Why did modern human populations disperse from Africa ca. 60,000 years ago? A new model. PNAS, 2006, 103(25), pp. 9381-9386
Advanced cognitive, artistic and behavioral patterns and technology like more refined tools are found in Africa long before similar patterns arose in Europe. The migration of tropical African types to Europe in the Cro-Magnon era brought these cognitive, cultural and behavioral advances to Neanderthal Europe.
"A more gradual "revolution" position is now held [by Paul Mellars].. a period of accelerated change in Africa between about 60,000 and 80,000 years ago, as shown by the following developments recorded in South African cave sites: new and better- techniques for producing long thin flakes of stone blades; specialized tools called end scrapers and burins, which were probably used for working skins and bones, the [production of tiny stone segments that must have mounted on handles of wood or bone to make composite tools, complexly shaped stone tools such as 'leaf points', relatively complex bone tools; marine shells perforated to make necklaces or bracelets, red ochre (natural iron oxide) engraved with geometric designs suggesting early artwork,; greater permanence and differentiated occupation areas in caves; new subsistence practices such as the exploitation of marine fish as well as shellfish; and perhaps intentional burning of undergrowth to encourage the growth of underground plant resources such as tubers. Mellars suggests that a neurological switch to modernity in the brain alongside rapid Climatic fluctuations, could have been the driving forces behind this period of heightened cultural innovations.."
"The most impressive site for early evidence of symbolism however, is Blombos Cave in South Africa, with a record stretching well beyond 70,000 years ago.. The stone tools in these levels include Still Bay points, beautifully shaped thin lanceolate spear points, flaked on both sides. They also show the earliest application of a refined stone tool-making technique known as pressure flaking, some 55,000 years before its best-known manifestation in the Soultrean industry of EUrope. Slabs of red ochre were excavated from various levels, including the deepest ones, with wavy, fan or mesh-shaped patterns carefully engraved on them.. Hundreds [beads made from seashells] have now been excavated from Blombos, and most show signs of piercing, with many holes also displaying signs of wear.. The shells have a natural shiny luster, but the color seems to have been modified by rubbing with hematite in some cases and by heating to darken the shells in other cases, so they may have been strung in different-colored patterns.. " --Chris Stringer (2012) Lone Survivors: How we came to be the only human on earth 150-155
Some archaeologists criticize notions of a "human revolution" suddenly occurring after humans exited Africa for Asia and Europe. Instead they argue, the supposed "revolutionary" changes in cognition, symbol manipulation, advanced technology, trade etc were ALREADY occurring WITHIN Africa, long before any migration out. There is no need for a 'eureka moment' of 'progress' upon leaving Africa. 'Progress' was already well underway and long in place within Africa, without the need for 'eureka' moments. QUOTE:
"This is because by focusing on changes that occurred at the Middle Paleolithic/Upper Paleolithic or Middle Stone Age/Later Stone Age transitions (in Europe and Africa, respectively), there is a failure to appreciate the depth and breadth of the African Middle Stone Age record that preceded the time of the supposed revolution by at least 100,000 years. In their view, [McBrearty and Brooks 2000] 'modern' features such as advanced technologies, increased geographic range, specialized hunting, fishing and shell-fishing, long distance trade, and the symbolic use of pigments had already developed in a broad range of Middle Stone Age industries right across Africa, between 100,000 and 250,000 years ago. This suggested to them that an early assembly of the package of modern human behaviors occurred in Africa, followed by much later export to the rest of the world. Thus the origin of our species, both behaviorally and morphologically, was linked to early developments in Middle Stone Age technology, and not to changes that occurred much later.. 'this quest for this 'eureka moment' reveals a great deal about the needs, desired and aspirations of archaeologists, but obscures rather than illuminates events in the past.." --Chris Stringer (2012) Lone Survivors: How we came to be the only human on earth 128-29
Qafzeh/Skhul remains cluster more with tropical Africans and show similarities to Cro-Magnons- the latter also showing tropical affinities.
i]"The Qafzeh/Skhul sample is fundamentally modern, and in fact very similar to Cro-Magons.." [/i] --Geoffrey A. Clark, Catherine M. Willermet. 1997. Conceptual Issues in Modern Human Origins Research. p111
"Results indicate that the Qafzeh-Skhul hominids have African-like, or tropically adapted, proportions, while those from Amud, Kebara, Tabun, and Shanidar (Iraq) have more European-like, or cold-adapted, proportions. This suggests that there were in fact two distinct Western Asian populations and that the Qafzeh-Skhul hominids were likely African in origin - a result consistent with the "Replacement" model of modern human origins.
.. Thus, the discovery of tropically adapted hominids in the region would therefore likely indicate population dispersal from the TROPICS, and the most logical geographic source for such an influx is Africa. In this regard, Trinkaus (1981, 1984, 1995) and Ruff (1994) have argued that the high brachial and crural indices, narrow biiliac breadths, and small relative femoral head sizes of the Qafzeh-Skhul hominids suggest an influx of African genes associated with the emergence of modern humans in the region." ---Trenton Holliday (2000) Evolution at the Crossroads: Modern Human Emergence in Western Asia. American Anthropologist. New Series,
KLEIN
Proponents of a "fast track" human "revolution" in cognition, organization and technology locate the "revolution" as beginning in, and being sustained from Africa, not other parts of the globe. Other scholars argue for a more gradual evolution of the traits that brought about advances in Africa where anatomically modern humans first appeared, and their expansion to Europe and Asia circa 50kya. Whatever scenario is followed, it makes little difference. The "revo", gradual or "fast track", began in Africa and was sustained from thence. - QUOTE:
"..distance and small population size probably limited gene flow, and the composite fossil and archeological records indicate that the African lineage spread to replace or swamp the others beginning roughly 50 ky ago. It is thus reasonable to supply the lineages with biological species labels: Homo sapiens in Africa, H. neanderthalensis in Europe, and H. erectus in the Far East. The European lineage is the best documented,73 and it is marked by the progressive accumulation of Neanderthal features, culminating in the classic Neanderthals by 130 ky ago. During the long interval when the Neanderthals were evolving, from at least 500 to 130 ky ago, Europe was generally much cooler than it has been historically, and some conspicuous Neanderthal distinctions, including massive trunks and short limbs, were probably physiological adaptations to cold. Other key distinctions— including, for example, the strong forward projection of the face along the midline, the unique configuration of the mastoid region and the occipital, and some peculiarities of the postcranium— may owe more to gene drift in populations that periodically crashed when climate became especially cold.
The pertinent African fossil record is much less complete, but it contains no specimens that anticipate the Neanderthals, and it shows that anatomically near-modern people were widespread in Africa by 130 ky ago,74 when only Neanderthals inhabited Europe. The Far Eastern record is the most sketchy,75 and it may actually comprise two distinct evolutionary trajectories: one in southeastern Asia that suggests continuity within Indonesian Homo erectus from before 500 ky ago until perhaps 50 ky ago,76 and a second in China that may indicate evolution from classic H. erectus before 500 ky ago to populations that by 100 ky ago, retained few distinctive H. erectus features and that approached H. sapiens in braincase size and form.77 The relevant archeology suggests that even as Europeans and Africans progressively diverged in morphology after 500 ky ago, they remained fundamentally similar in behavior.
Thus, both Europeans and Africans produced Acheulean artifacts before 250 ky ago, and they made very similar kinds of non-Acheulean artifacts afterwards. From a strictly artifactual perspective, a conspicuous difference between Africa and Europe arose only after 40 ky ago, and it then occurred in the absence of a morphological contrast, for the artifact makers on both continents were now H. sapiens of African origin. Archeological divergence was followed on each continent by a significant acceleration in artifactual (cultural) differentiation through time and space. This surely signals the existence of the historically familiar modern human ability to innovate. If as I suggest, the development of this ability depended on a biological (neural) change in Africa 50–40 ky ago, then the name H. sapiens should probably be restricted to fully modern humans after this time, and their preceding near-modern African ancestors should be assigned to another species, for which the name H. helmei is available.78
The more fundamental point, however, is that the sudden origin of the modern capacity for culture in Africa 50–40 ky ago could help explain both how and why fully modern Africans were then able to expand at the expense of their nonmodern Eurasian contemporaries... The issue is complicated by the realization that Middle Paleolithic people in Europe were Neanderthals, whereas MSA people in Africa more closely resembled living people. contexts.
Using this criterion, the most plausible evidence for modern human behavior before 50 ky ago comes from the Katanda sites in the Democratic Republic of the Congo121–124 and from Blombos Cave in South Africa.125–128 At Katanda, electron spin-resonance dates on hippopotamus teeth and luminescence dates on covering sands bracket mammal and fish bones, stone artifacts that could be either MSA or LSA, eight whole or partial barbed bone points, and four additional formal bone artifacts between 150 and 90 ky ago. At Blombos Cave, luminescence dates on enclosing sands suggest that mammal and fish bones, classic MSA stone artifacts, three whole or fragmentary polished bone points, and 17 less formal bone artifacts accumulated around 100 ky ago.129 At both Katanda and Blombos Cave, the most striking discoveries are the formal bone artifacts..
.. credible claims for art or other modern human behavioral markers before 50 ky ago must involve relatively large numbers of highly patterned objects from deeply stratified, sealed contexts would antedate other known examples, from LSA/Upper Paleolithic sites, by 50 to 40 ky. If the stratigraphic associations and age estimates at both sites are accepted, they could imply that modern human behavioral traits and modern morphology arose in Africa together, at or before 100 ky ago..."
--Richard Klein 1999. Archeology and the Evolution of Human Behavior. Evolutionary Anthropology. 9(1) 17-36
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Below is a decent academic roundup of Egyptology research on migratory versus in-situ development and composition of Ancient Egyptian population. Much of the info is already known but the author throws in some fresh references, of fairly recent origin. The author also has a thesis paper comparing the prevalence of dental caries in Nubian and Egyptian populations.
The biological origin and population history of Dynastic Egyptians (3000-343 BCE) have been central issues in the study of complex societies, among which Egypt presents one of the earliest examples. Egypt is particularly important in this respect because Egyptian kings were the first to extend the rule of centralized authority over a vast geographical region. In contrast, Mesopotamian polities were organized as city-states in control of a limited, peripheral agricultural area. And whereas Old Kingdom Egypt (2686-2125 BCE) was characterized by regional stability and social cohesion, much of early Sumerian and Mesopotamian history is punctuated by regional antagonism, endemic warfare between city-states, and resource competition (Yoffee 1995). Mesopotamia is unified for the first time in 2270 BCE under Sargon of Akkad who thus establishes the first empire in recorded history. Egypt, however, had constituted it’s own local ‘empire’, at least based on size, much earlier. By 2500 BCE Egypt is a regional power in its own right with centralized bureaucracy, international trade networks, monumental architecture on a grand scale, surplus economy, standing military, and ideoreligious beliefs promoting conformity and stability (Wenke 1989). Moreover, the significant changes leading to this type of complexity take place rather quickly, within the few hundred years from the beginning of Naqada I (Amratian, 4000-3500 BCE) to the First Dynasty (3000-2890 BCE).
Physical anthropologists and archaeologists with an interest in the biocultural components of change during rapid social transformation have thus taken a keen interest in the biological origins of Dynastic Egyptians. Generally speaking, scholarly opinions differentiate along two main lines as to the origins of the Dynastic: there are those who advocate an external, migratory event that either caused large-scale population replacement along the Nile Valley, or led to domination of the predynastic population by a ruling elite composed of newcomers (Giuffrida-Rugeri 1915, Morant 1925, Petrie 1939, Baumgartel 1955); and those who opt for an in situ development along lines of general continuity with the preceding predynastic cultures (Greene 1972, Hassan 1986a and 1988, Bard 1994 and 2000, Keita 2004, Irish 2006 and 2009).
The purpose of this paper is to provide support for the in situ hypothesis in the evolution of the dynastic cultures in ancient Egypt. The argument in favor of the hypothesis will be formulated in two main directions. I believe that the greatest validation for regional cultural development is offered in the bioarchaeological record. Thus part of the pro- in situ argument is concerned with review and discussion of relevant archaeological, ecological/behavioral, and osteodental studies. These a) establish biocultural continuity between the Neolithic, Predynastic, and Dynastic periods of Egyptian history and b) present no evidence for large-scale population replacement, though do not rule out localized admixture. The other component in the regional hypothesis argument will attempt to deconstruct the concept of race as means of explaining biological affinity and cultural change. ‘Race’ is an important factor in early attempts to explain the considerable, at times, material changes that take place in Egypt. Influenced by ethnocentric notions of cultural superiority some early Egyptologists were inclined to attribute the origin of complex societies to a Caucasian ‘race’, usually of European or Semitic affiliation.
The replacement model for cultural evolution in Egypt is largely hinged upon the premise that ‘races’ can be confidently identified by specific, and exclusive, skeletal and cranial traits. Modern microbiological studies, however reveal, that most of the phenotypic variability in humans is shared within the so-called ‘racial’ groups, instead of between them (Lewontin 1972, Nei and Roychoudhury 1974, Relethford 2002). Thus ‘race’ does not represent a valid taxonomic unit for identifying biological relationships. If one abandons racial explanations in assessment of past human bioaffinity, total population replacement becomes the least likely option. A deconstruction of race is therefore necessary in order for us to interpret phenetic variability in ancient Egyptians from an evolutionary and adaptive perspective. Such discussion takes place in the next two sections, followed by discussion of the bioarchaeological evidence for continuity.
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Crucial human technological innovations first took place during the MSA in Africa. before the Out of Africa expansion into Eurasia
Recently discovered bone implements from Middle Stone Age (MSA) deposits at Sibudu Cave, South Africa, confirm the existence of a bone tool industry for the Howiesons Poort (HP) technocomplex. Previously, an isolated bone point from Klasies River provided inconclusive evidence. This paper describes three bone tools: two points and the end of a polished spatula-shaped piece, from unequivocal HP layers at Sibudu Cave (with ages greater than ?61 ka). Comparative microscopic and morphometric analysis of the Sibudu specimens together with bone tools from southern African Middle and Later Stone Age (LSA) deposits, an Iron Age occupation, nineteenth century Bushman hunter-gatherer toolkits, and bone tools used experimentally in a variety of tasks, reveals that the Sibudu polished piece has use-wear reminiscent of that on bones experimentally used to work animal hides. A slender point is consistent with a pin or needle-like implement, while a larger point, reminiscent of the single specimen from Peers Cave, parallels large un-poisoned bone arrow points from LSA, Iron Age and historical Bushman sites. Additional support for the Sibudu point having served as an arrow tip comes from backed lithics in the HP compatible with this use, and the recovery of older, larger bone and lithic points from Blombos Cave, interpreted as spear heads. If the bone point from the HP layers at Sibudu Cave is substantiated by future discoveries, this will push back the origin of bow and bone arrow technology by at least 20,000 years, and corroborate arguments in favour of the hypothesis that crucial technological innovations took place during the MSA in Africa.
--Backwella, d'Erricob, and Wadleyd (2008) Middle Stone Age bone tools from the Howiesons Poort layers, Sibudu Cave, South Africa. Journal of Archaeological Science. Volume 35, Issue 6, June 2008, Pages 1566–1580 [/b]
Ancient Stone tone assemblages in North Africa suggest closer links with the African Middle Stone Age industries rather than to the Middle Paleolithic of western Eurasia.
quote: North Africa is quickly emerging as one of the more important regions yielding information on the origins of modern Homo sapiens. Associated with significant fossil hominin remains are two stone tool industries, the Aterian and Mousterian, which have been differentiated, respectively, primarily on the basis of the presence and absence of tanged, or stemmed, stone tools. Largely because of historical reasons, these two industries have been attributed to the western Eurasian Middle Paleolithic rather than the African Middle Stone Age. In this paper, drawing on our recent excavation of Contrebandiers Cave and other published data, we show that, aside from the presence or absence of tanged pieces, there are no other distinctions between these two industries in terms of either lithic attributes or chronology. Together, these results demonstrate that these two ‘industries’ are instead variants of the same entity. Moreover, several additional characteristics of these assemblages, such as distinctive stone implements and the manufacture and use of bone tools and possible shell ornaments, suggest a closer affinity to other Late Pleistocene African Middle Stone Age industries rather than to the Middle Paleolithic of western Eurasia.
--On the industrial attributions of the Aterian and Mousterian of the Maghreb, Harold L. Dibble et al. Journal of Human Evolution, 2013 Elsevier.
Some Environmental disasters hindered early African population growth and agriculture
“Dating from more than 15,000 years ago, the evidence from the Nile valley is arguably the earliest comprehensive instance of an organized food-producing system known anywhere on Earth. Given time, this pioneering system might have developed into the stupendous civilization that ruled ancient Egypt for two and a half millennia from about 5,000 years ago. But it could never be. Disaster struck the Nile Valley as its population reached a peak, and by 10,000 years ago occupation density had plunged to a level only slightly above that known for the time of the Wadi Kubbaniya site. The cause of the calamity originated more than 2,000 kilometers to the south, in central Africa at the headwaters of the Nile, where climatic amelioration which followed the last glacial maximum had brought a very marked increase in rainfall.. Around 13,000 years ago, heavy and persistent whih had already flooded even the desiccated Kalahari basin with a number of large lakes moved steadily northward..
The effects downstream were catastrophic. From a sluggish river flowing through shallow braided channels, the Nile was transformed over a period of five hundred years (12,000 to 11,5000 years ago) into what has been called the 'wild' Nile. Extremely high floods were only the beginning of the problem.. With the Nile now flowing through a single deep channel, the extent of the floodplain was severely reduced. The quantities of available plant foods declined.. The levels to which the human population had soared could not be sustained,.. Conservative assessments conclude that regular annual rain began to fall on the region from about 11,000 years ago; additional rain in the valley can hardly be viewed as compensation for the devastating floods its inhabitants had suffered.."
--Africa: A Biography of the Continent, by John Reader, 1999, pp. 155-156
The "revolution" took place in Africa per scholar John Reader, not "Eurasia"
"The Katanda sites are at least 75,000 and possibly as much as 90,000 years old, an age which demands revision of some entrenched Eurocentric views on human cultural development. Hitherto it had been widely believed that although modern humans had evolved in Africa and first migrated from the continent around 100,000 years ago, the manufacture of specialized tools and the development of sophisticated cultural practices such as complex economic strategies, large scale social networks, personal adornment, and an expanded use of symbols in art and daily life arose in Europe, central Asia, Siberia and the Near East between 40,000 and 30,000 years ago. The Katanda evidence contradicts this view, pushing back the invention of specialized tools at least 35,000 years and making Africa the origin not only of anatomically modern humans but also of modern human behaviour."
--John Reader, 1999, Africa: A Biography Of The Continent, p139
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As Bedouin tribes had an important role in the colonization of southeast Jordan, it could be that the haplogroup composition of the Dead Sea reflected genetic affinities to them, but that is not the case. The most striking characteristic of the Dead Sea sample is the high prevalence of R1*-M173 lineages (40%), contrasting with the lack of them and of its derivatives R1b3-N269 in Bedouin from Nebel et al. (2001) and its low frequencies in Amman. It is worth mentioning that until now, similar frequencies for R1*-M173 have only been found in northern Cameroon (Cruciani et al. 2002). The possibility that the Dead Sea and Cameroon are isolated remnants of a past broad human expansion deserves future studies.
Interestingly, when the molecular heterogeneity of the G6PD locus was compared between the Amman and the Dead Sea samples, a lower number of different variants and a higher incidence of the African G6PD-A allele was detected in the latter (Karadsheh, personal communication). Another singularity of the Dead Sea is its high frequency (31%) of E3b3a-M34, a derivative of the E3b3-M123 that is only found in 7% Bedouins (Cruciani et al. 2004). Until now, the highest frequencies for this marker (23.5%) had been found in Ethiopians from Amhara (Cruciani et al. 2004). On the contrary, most Bedouin chromosomes (63%) belong to the haplogroup J1-M267 (Semino et al. 2004) compared with 9% in the Dead Sea. All these evidences point to the Dead Sea as an isolated region perhaps with past ties to sub-Saharan and eastern Africa.
"the first component clearly separates the Middle East eastern regions (Pakistan, Iran and Kurds) from the African samples and Oman.. the negative displacement is mainly driven by African haplogroups. The second component again displaces Oman, Somalia, and Egypt, mainly due to their relative abundance of lineages with sub-Saharan African adscription.."
--Flores, et al. 2005. Isolates in a corridor of migrations: a high-resolution analysis of Y-chromosome variation in Jordan. J Hum Genet. 2005 Sep 2
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CHARIOTRY and cavalry superiority were essential to success in military battles of the first millennium B.C. The Assyrians left numerous records concerning the incor-poration of foreign chariotry and cavalry units into their army. These texts make espe-cially frequent mention of Kushite horses. In this article, the textual, representational, and archaeological evidence for horses in the Kushite realm will be examined. The cu-neiform evidence for the presence of Kushites and Kushite horses in Assyria during the reigns of several Neo-Assyrian kings will also be discussed.1 The evidence for the breed-ing of horses in the Dongola Reach area of the Third Cataract during the medieval period and later will also be reviewed. It will be posited that this region was already an impor-tant horse-breeding center during the Twenty-fifth Dynasty and perhaps earlier.2 I. THE KUSHITES AND THEIR HORSES According to the victory stela from Napata, when the Kushite king Piye (747-716 B.C.) entered the stables of the defeated ruler of Hermopolis around 728 B.C., he became out-raged at the sight of the neglected horses stabled in them. It was distressing to him that these horses had been allowed to starve during his siege of the city of his rebellious vas-sal.3 Piye seems to have had a great admiration for horses. He had them depicted atop this victory stela at Napata4 and on reliefs on the walls of the temple of Amun at Gebel Barkal. He also initiated the custom of burying a team of horses in a cemetery near his tomb at El Kurru, the earliest of the Gebel Barkal royal cemeteries.6
This practice was followed by three of his successors.7 A relief block from the temple of Taharqa at Kawa depicts a rider on a horse wearing a sun-hat.8 Also, the excavator of the Kushite site of Sanam speculated that a series of rooms comprising the so-called "Treasury" could have been stalls for the stabling of horses, although the surviving reliefs on the temple at Sanam depict mules-not horses-either being ridden or pulling chariots and wagons.9 Finally, a Ptolemaic or Roman period relief from Temple 250 at Meroe shows horsemen with lances. 10
II. KUSHITE HORSES AND THEIR HANDLERS IN ASSYRIA
By the late eighth century B.C., the Assyrians had also developed a deep appreciation of horses. Cavalry and chariotry forces were of utmost importance to Assyria's strategy of controlling trade and politics throughout the Near East. The Assyrians obtained their horses as booty and tribute, and by trade. Tiglath-pileser III, who ruled from 744 to 727 B.C.,11 claims to have taken Egyptian horses as booty after his victories over the Mediterranean coastal cities of KalpUina (modern al-MinaD) and Tyre.12 The Egyptians also sent horses to the Assyrian kings. Sargon II (721-705 B.C.) states in an inscription that Silkanni (= Osor-kon IV, 730-715 B.C.) sent him "twelve large horses of Egypt, the like of which did not exist in... [his] country."'3 Other inscriptions of Sargon mention gifts of "large Egyptian horses trained to the yoke" (i.e., trained as chariot horses), which were presented to him upon the inauguration of his new capital, Dir-Sarrukin.14 Sargon's successor, Sennacherib (704-681 B.C.), claims that when he defeated the Judean king, Hezekiah, and his Egyptian and Kushite allies at the Philistine city of Ekron (Eltekeh) in 701 B.C., he captured Egyp-tian and Nubian charioteers.'5 Horses are listed among the booty which Esarhaddon (680-669 B.C.) took from Egypt in the course of his campaigns there and are also counted among the annual tribute payments which he imposed on that land.16 In addition, Esarhad-don carried off to Assyria numerous captives from the palace at Memphis, including the crown prince of the Kushite king Taharqa, his other sons, his daughters, his wives and concubines, and his palace attendants.17 Ashurbanipal (668-627 B.c.) also includes "large horses" among the booty he claims to have taken from Egypt when he reconquered it in ca. 663 B.C.18 While these inscriptions do not specifically mention "Kushite" horses, there are numer-ous references to Kushites and Kushite horses in other Neo-Assyrian documents. Stephanie Dalley assembled much of the relevant data, noting that,... [T]he late eighth century was a time when the Assyrians were increasingly aware of the im-portance of equestrian technology. Suddenly during that period cavalry in particular developed into Iran28 or in Anatolia.29
But Postgate, citing the lack of evidence for another country with this name, noted that this breed of horse was identified by the Assyrians with the African land of Kush. He cautioned, however, that "this would not imply that all the horses of this kind.., were bred in Nubia, any more than today Arabian horses come from Arabia. All that is necessary is that the type of horse was, rightly or wrongly, associated with that country."30 In a letter dated to around 669 B.C., it is reported that an attempt was made to return the statues of the gods Bel and Zarpanitu from Assyria to Babylon-the city from which these images had been plundered in the course of Sennacherib's general sack of the Babylonian capital in 689 B.C.31 For reasons not concerning us here, the journey was aborted. The horse pulling the cart, however, is described in the letter as a "strong horse harnessed in the trap-pings of the land of Kush." Because the animal pulling the sacred load is not identified as Kushite, it has been suggested that the designation "Kushite" in the Nineveh Horse Re-ports was not a breed identifier, but rather the type of trappings the horses wore.32
But the Nineveh Horse Reports specifically mention "horses of Kush," not "Kushite trappings." The references to Egyptian and Kushite horses in Neo-Assyrian texts indicate that the two North African countries actively bred horses, and that the horses of Kush were a breed prized by Assyrian charioteers. Dalley suggested that the markets established by the As-syrians in the territory of Gaza and on the eastern border of Egypt, which are mentioned in the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II, respectively, were involved in the horse trade between Assyria and Egypt. She noted that most Assyrian merchants at this time were either explicitly labeled "horse-traders" or can be shown to have been involved in the horse trade, and she was therefore inclined to believe that Tiglath-pileser and Sargon established these markets to encourage trade with Egypt in order to acquire Nubian horses for their chariotry.33 Several documents mention Kushite horse-experts living in Assyria. Dalley cites a Neo-Assyrian text mentioning a Kushite holding the high military office of "chariot driver of the Prefect of the Land."34 Also, in a loan document dated by its eponym to sometime be-tween 648 and 612 B.C., a man called kisaya, who perhaps worked in the king's stables, was responsible for delivering bales of straw and measures of grain.35
Finally, one of the Nineveh Horse Reports in which a delivery of Kushite horses is mentioned contains an or-der from the king concerning horses in the palace and for the "settlement of Kush."36 This settlement, which was presumably located close to the capital, may have been inhabited by Kushites engaged in the care and handling of horses in the Assyrian army. Unfortunately, the text is broken and the precise information concerning the king's wishes is lost. If we consider only the Neo-Assyrian evidence, then, Kushites were employed in the Assyrian army as horse-experts from at least the reign of Tiglath-pileser III down into the reign of Ashurbanipal-that is, from the mid-eighth century B.C. until almost the end of the third quarter of the seventh.
III. OTHER KUSHITES IN ASSYRIA AND ASSYRIA'S INTEREST IN MELUIJA AND KUSH
Neo-Assyrian texts also mention Kushites working in other jobs in the empire. An eco-nomic document mentions two Kushite eunuchs, with Assyrian names, collecting personal debts.37 And fifteen Kushite women are found on a list of foreign female workers that in-cluded musicians, temple personnel, scribes, smiths, stone-workers, a barber, and a baker.38 Both these texts come from archives in Nineveh and may date from anytime between the beginning of Sargon II's reign in 721 B.C. and the fall of Nineveh in 612. Nubians were also familiar to Assyrian artists, who, beginning in the eighth century B.C., depicted them on art objects and wall reliefs.39 Many of the references to Kushites and Kushite horses in Assyria are from the reign of Esarhaddon. In fact, this king's interest in Kush is attested in a number of texts. Esarhaddon apparently meant not only to conquer Egypt but to extend his control to the southernmost limits of the known world. On one of his later campaigns, he claims to have departed from Egypt towards Melulhba.40 Unfortunately, the account of this expedition is fragmentary and seems to describe an expedition (perhaps in Arabia?) that was unrelated to his southern foray. But in another fragmentary inscription Esarhaddon mentions a "city of Kush which none among [his] fathers [had ever seen],"41 which possibly refers to the Kushite capital or a major city in Kush (although no other inscriptional evidence indicates that Assyrians ever traveled to Kush or Melublha). "City of Kush" in this context might also refer to a major settlement of Kushites within Egypt.
IV. AFRICAN HORSEMEN DURING THE CLASSICAL PERIODS
Evidence for the association of black Africans-perhaps Nubians-with the care and handling of horses extends both back into the late second millennium B.C. and forward into later times.42 During the Greek and Roman periods Africans were frequently represented as grooms, charioteers, or riders.43 A number of royal tombs at Meroe, located between the Fifth and Sixth Cataracts and dat-ing to the late first millennium B.C. through the early first millennium A.D., exhibit horse remains on the stairs leading into the tombs,44 seemingly anticipating the later horse sac-rifices in the X-Group royal tumuli at Qustul (fourth-sixth centuries A.D.) in Lower Nubia.45
V. MEDIEVAL NUBIA AND THE DONGOLAWI HORSE
While the evidence cited above suggests a close association between blacks and the training and handling of horses, early textual evidence for the actual practice of horse-breeding in the Sudan is sparse. Such evidence is, however, substantial from the medieval period to the recent past.46 When John Burckhardt traveled to the region in the early 1880s, he found that the Dongola horse was famous throughout the Sudan, Ethiopia, and the rest of the Near East.47 He stated that the breed was originally from Arabia, and that it was one of the finest he had seen: "the horses possess all the superior beauty of the horses of Arabia, but they are larger."48 Burckhardt also noted that five to ten slaves were paid for one prime stallion, and that the Mamluks in Dongola were all mounted on these horses.49 Other late eighteenth-and nineteenth-century travelers in the Sudan noted that the horses of Dongola were a fast-moving trade item in the markets of Berber, Shendy, and Sennar, along the middle Nile, and in Suakin, on the Red Sea coast.50 The demand for these horses was widespread, and in 1769 James Bruce purchased a horse of Dongola in one of the mar-kets of Tigr6.i51
Bruce was very much impressed by the breed and remarked that, north of Khartoum, begins that noble race of horses justly celebrated all over the world.... What figure the Nubian breed would make in point of fleetness is very doubtful, their make being so entirely different from that of the Arabian; but of beautiful and symmetrical parts, great size and strength, the most agile, nervous, and elastic movements, great endurance of fatigue, docility of temper, and seeming attach-ment to man, beyond any other domestic animal, can promise any thing for a stallion, the Nubian is, above all comparison, the most eligible in the world.52 Bruce also noted that Dongola, and the dry area near it seemed to be "the center of excel-lence for this noble animal."53 The Funj kingdom centered at Sennar was one of the main suppliers of horses for the cavalry of the Ethiopian kingdom.54 Bruce reported that in the 1770s the local ruler in Dongola was nominated by the Funj king and that the tribute imposed on the area included horses, which he called "the great strength of Sennar."55
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White Skin Developed in Europe Only As Recently as 8,000 Years Ago Say Anthropologists in new study
The myriad of skin tones and eye colors that humans express around the world are interesting and wonderful in their variety. Research continues on how humans acquired the traits they now have and when, in order to complete the puzzle that is our ancient human history. Now, a recent analysis by anthropologists suggests that the light skin color and the tallness associated with European genetics are relatively recent traits to the continent.
An international team of researchers as headed by Harvard University’s Dr. Iain Mathieson put forth a study at the 84th annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists recently.
Based on 83 human samples from Holocene Europe as analyzed under the 1000 Genomes Project, it is now found that for the majority of the time that humans have lived in Europe, the people had dark skin, and the genes signifying light skin only appear within the past 8,000 years. This recent and relatively quick process of natural selection suggests to researchers that the traits which spread rapidly were advantageous within that environment, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
This dramatic evidence suggests modern Europeans do not appear as their long ancient ancestors did.
MORE
Ancient European hunter-gatherer was dark-skinned and blue-eyed caveman Did light-skinned, redheaded Neanderthal women hunt with the men? Europeans share more language and genes with Asia than previously thought New studies reveal 20 Percent of Neanderthal genome lives on in modern humans
Spreading Genetics
The samples are derived from a wide range of ancient populations, rather than a few individuals, and they supplied researchers with five specific genes associated with skin color and diet.
AAAS reports that the “modern humans who came out of Africa to originally settle Europe about 40,000 years are presumed to have had dark skin, which is advantageous in sunny latitudes. And the new data confirm that about 8500 years ago, early hunter-gatherers in Spain, Luxembourg, and Hungary also had darker skin: They lacked versions of two genes—SLC24A5 and SLC45A2—that lead to depigmentation and, therefore, pale skin in Europeans today. […]
Then, the first farmers from the Near East arrived in Europe; they carried both genes for light skin. As they interbred with the indigenous hunter-gatherers, one of their light-skin genes swept through Europe, so that central and southern Europeans also began to have lighter skin. The other gene variant, SLC45A2, was at low levels until about 5800 years ago when it swept up to high frequency.”
This differed from the situation farther north. Ancient remains from southern Sweden 7,700 years ago were found to have the gene variants indicating light skin and blonde hair, and another gene, HERC2/OCA2, which causes blue eyes. This indicated to researchers that ancient hunter-gatherers of northern Europe were already pale and blue-eyed. This light skin trait would have been advantageous in the regions of less sunlight. Natural Selection
Mathieson and colleagues do not specify in the study why the genes were favored and spread as quickly as they did, but it is suggested that Vitamin D absorption likely played a role. Ancient hunter-gatherers in Europe also could not digest milk 8,000 years ago. The ability to do so only came about 4,300 years ago.
Paleoanthropologist Nina Jablonski of Pennsylvania State University notes that people in less sunny climates required different skin pigmentations in order to absorb and synthesize Vitamin D. The pale skin was advantageous in the region, as well was the ability to digest milk.
“Natural selection has favored two genetic solutions to that problem—evolving pale skin that absorbs UV more efficiently or favoring lactose tolerance to be able to digest the sugars and vitamin D naturally found in milk,” writes AAAS.
This new research follows related studies on pre-agricultural European genomes and modern humans in Europe before the rise of farming.
Artist’s depiction of Stone Age peoples
Artist’s depiction of Stone Age peoples (Wikimedia Commons)
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Researchers claim Neanderthals were NOT a sub-species of modern humans From farming to sedentary lifestyles - how 6,000 years has transformed the human body Stone Age Britons traded with European farmers 8,000 years ago
DNA taken from the wisdom tooth of a 7,000-year-old human found in Spain in 2006 overturned the popular image of light-skinned European hunter-gatherers. The study revealed that the individual had dark hair and the dark-skinned genes of an African. However, the man had blue eyes, an unexpected find by researchers. The hunter-gatherer is the oldest known individual in Europe found to have blue eyes.
Artist’s impression of a blue-eyed hunter gatherer
Artist’s impression of a blue-eyed hunter gatherer (Credit: PELOPANTON / CSIC)
Previous research published in 2008 found that the earliest mutations in the eye-color genes that led to the evolution of blue eyes probably occurred about 10,000 years ago in individuals living in around the Black Sea.
The surprising aspect of the findings is that while it is fundamental to natural selection that advantageous genetic attributes spread, it is not often a speedy process. The study shows that these genetic pale skin traits swept across Europe speedily, and that phenomenon is of particular interest to researchers.
The preprint study “Eight thousand years of natural selection in Europe” by Mathieson and colleagues has been published in the online journal BioRxiv.
These new findings shed light on humanity’s genetic past, giving us a clearer vision of our ancient origins.
Featured Image: Image of reconstructed faces of three early humans in profile view. Credit: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
The PN2 transition [P2], 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.."
- From (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.)
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
"Human genetic variation particularly in Africa is still poorly understood. This is despite a consensus on the large African effective population size compared to populations from other continents. Based on sequencing of the mitochondrial Cytochrome C Oxidase subunit II (MT-CO2), and genome wide microsatellite data we observe evidence suggesting the effective size (Ne) of humans to be larger than the current estimates, with a foci of increased genetic diversity in east Africa, and a population size of east Africans being at least 2-6 fold larger than other populations. Both phylogenetic and network analysis indicate that east Africans possess more ancestral lineages in comparison to various continental populations placing them at the root of the human evolutionary tree. Our results also affirm east Africa as the likely spot from which migration towards Asia has taken place. The study reflects the spectacular level of sequence variation within east Africans in comparison to the global sample, and appeals for further studies that may contribute towards filling the existing gaps in the database. The implication of these data to current genomic research, as well as the need to carry out defined studies of human genetic variation that includes more African populations; particularly east Africans is paramount."
--Hirbo, Tishkoff et al. 2014. The Episode of Genetic Drift Defining the Migration of Humans out of Africa Is Derived from a Large East African Population Size. PLoS One. 2014; 9(5): e97674.
"It is not only genetic data that lends support to an east African origin of humans but the unparalleled ethnic and linguistic diversity that remains one of the highest worldwide. Interestingly the two most ancestral sequences in the NJ tree figure refer to Nubian individuals. Nubia is currently identified with one of the most ancient human settlements, the Say culture. Recently, a related compound associated with a lithic middle Stone Age ndustry was discovered in Dhofar Oman and taken as an evidence of human migration out of Africa through an Arabian route [46]. Overall, the various genetic markers used in the current analysis support the observation of human effective population size larger than previously estimated, and emphasize the importance of sampling populations of putative deep ancestry." --Hirbo, Tishkoff et al 2014.
Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova: The PN2 transition [P2], 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.."
- From (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.)
To put this into perspective, I calculated the proportion of Y-DNA and MtDNA shared between Yoruba and Somali (using the latest phylotree.org for MtDNA):
For Y-DNA: Yoruba P2(PN2)/e1b1a 93.1% Somali P2(PN2)/e1b1b 81.1% (using numbers from here)
For MtDNA (L2a, L3bf, L3cd, L3eikx, L0a1): Yoruba 75.75% Somali 66.93% (using the numbers from Here)
So even populations within Africa (same as within Europe) who share phenotype differences (and similarities), can also share a common origin for a large part of their genome. The differences having been created (or having drifted in term of proportions in the population) after their common origin and thus after their migrations to their current locations in Africa (including recent back migration of Eurasians into East Africa in the last 3000 years LINK). While the similarities would be related to this common origin.
Keita mentions PN2/P2 as a common lineage which appeared in Africa after the migration of modern humans from Africa. Thus after the OOA migrations.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
"The PN2/M2 biallelic lineage in part maps to the distribution of the family, as does haplotype IV of the TaqI49a,f RFLP system, which in Africa and adjacent regions apparently marks the same clade (see al-Zahery et al. 2003, Underhhill personal communication). The spread of this family is frequently identified with the distribution of these variants in nearly a causal fashion. In other words M2 is said to be a marker of the Bantu expansion, which some earlier writers even thought had gone into West Africa (see e.g. Guthrie 1962).
However, haplotype IV/ M2 is found in very high frequencies in Africa west of the Cameroons from Nigeria to Atlantic, reaching a frequency of ~80% in a sample from Senegal. Just as interesting is its reported frequency in one study of Egypt (27%) and Nubia (39%) (Lucotte and Mercier 2003). There are no Bantu speakers in these regions and no evidence that they were ever there. Hence the “Bantu expansion”, a problematic concept especially as often conceived, in any case cannot be used to explain their presence. Furthermore, the Bantu expansion should not be conceived as having been a mass movement of a single people, analogous to an mfecane, or the migration of the Banu Hilal.
Archaeology and historical linguistics help explore possible credible explanations. The M2/ haplotype IV marker is found at great frequencies in Niger-Congo speakers in general. It is likely that M2 existed in the early ancestral family—proto-Niger Congo—and got distributed into all of its branches as the family differentiated through space and time. This explanation does not work for Egypt and Nubia since languages spoken there belong to other families. However, archaeological data indicate a late pleistocene recolonization of the eastern Sahara after a probable population hiatus between 50,000 to 15,000 years ago (Wendorf and Schild 2001). The peoples involved can be expected to have been highly diverse. This marker may have entered the Nile Valley with mid-Holocene population Saharan migrations into the Nile Valley (Hassan 1988), which contributed to the peopling of the valley.
Another possibility is that Nilo-Saharan—to which Nubian belongs—and Niger Congo form a larger language phylum called Kongo-Saharan (Gregersen 1972) or Niger-Saharan (Blench 1995) whose earliest speakers shared a biohistorical heritage that included the M2/RFLP IV marker. This could also explain the substantial frequencies in Egyptian Nubians and NC speakers as a whole, and not just Bantu speakers.
However there is a caveat: from a strictly biological point of view it is important to note that M2 emerged likely before any of the language families based on standard estimates of the ages. It is wrong to treat them in effect as having a basal or causal relationship. This would also be true of Afro-Asiatic. On a more interesting and even intriguing level it is worthwhile making the observation that the P2 marker, which is ancestral to both the M2 and M35 or 215/M35, and is therefore older than either, is father to the male clades whose bearers are speakers of the three different language macrofamilies in Africa, with one of them- being Afroasiatic. This is intriguing because it is not known what ancestral language the father of these two lineages spoke. Was it a language that went extinct? Was there an early proto-African language family that led to the current language families? Most western linguists would say “no” to this second question at the time of this writing. In any case the simplistic racialized gene language maps that were once drawn as a validation, in my opinion, of a preconception falls apart when the Y chromosome lineages are examined against language families. The majority of the Afroasiatic speaking males in Africa are connected to speakers of other families via their common P2 “father”, and are therefore genealogically connected in a way that they are not related to Indo-European speakers. This will be surprising to those thinking of northern African peoples in terms of those who most resemble Europeans or Near Eastern neighbors. The E haplogroup places their male affiliation in Africa. A critical narrative to explain the mtDNA profiles has not yet been developed.
A multidisciplinary approach clearly can help to avoid over generalizations with regard to Bantu speakers. Misinterpretations can skew interpretations. This in turn could lead to poor study designs in future work. Another issue is the use of Bantu as a euphemism for “Negro” (Robertson and Bradley 2000) from the old unscientific racial schema, which seems to be how some geneticists and morphologists are using the term; while this issue is beyond the scope of this essay it deserves mentioning given the emphasis placed on the sequencing of a “Bantu” genome, which strictly speaking would mean looking at genes that were thought to have arisen at the time the Bantu linguistic branch emerged."
--SOY Keita. (2015) History and Genetics in Africa: The Need for Better Cooperation Between the Teams. The Backbone-Cobb Research Labratory, V1, i1, Spring 2015
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
I want to know if you guys have heard that ever since the findings of Ramses III having E1b1a that now the Euronuts have 'modified' their argument to say that E1b1a and perhaps the entire E clade was Caucasoid in origin (AGAIN)! LOL Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
lo wait a minute, where are they saying this? So now 'E" becomes 'caucasoid'?
Posted by ausar (Member # 1797) on :
It's been that way at least a decade now for some scientists
It started with all the alpha gamma delta clustering stuff when N&E Meds were found to be heavy E carriers.
Might still be in the archive where some ESer predicted the clusters would soon 'evolve' into fullfledged Hgs of their own.
Posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova: lo wait a minute, where are they saying this? So now 'E" becomes 'caucasoid'?
The first thing caveman aka "the loon" did when coming here, was make sure these markers were vanished.
Colins is somewhat in denial. Which is typical euronut behavior.
quote: By removing the three defining markers I get 88.6%. Still not enough to convince ftdna that they are wrong so I’ll just leave it as is for the time being and accept the confirmation of E1b1a7a. In an updated wikipedia article on E1b1a it states “Outside of Africa, E1b1a has been found at low frequencies. In Eurasia, the clade has primarily been found in West Asia. There have also been reported a few isolated incidents of E1b1a in Southern European populations in Malta, Spain and Portugal. There have also been isolated incidences in Austria and Germany”. I have been saying for quite sometime after conversations with Darren Marin of ftdna and the fact that genetic relatives show a “recent ancestral origin” in Germany. Mr. Marin said that our German match was from that country and had an ancient history there. He could not divulge anymore information than that due to privacy issues. One family having ancient origins in Europe is the Gabbenesch family of Tyrol, Austria. Recent immigrants to the US, with a confirmed haplogroup of E1b1a8a. Researchers of this line theorize a Roman ancestor or something more ancient among the Rhaetian, an Alpine Tribe of the Raetia and the Po Valley.
This finding has blown holes into theories of quite a few Afro-centrists.
quote:Y-chromosomal variation: Insights into the history of Niger-Congo groups
Similar to E1b1a8, the highest STR variance for E1b1a7a was found in the C.A.R. Pygmies (0.49); however, the Bantu speakers from West Zambia and the Burkina Faso Gur speakers also had high STR variances (0.47 and 0.43, respectively).
[...]
The tMRCA estimates for haplogroups E1b1a7 and E1b1a8 were calculated by means of the ASD statistic for the major ethno-linguistic groups (Table 3). The highest tMRCA (~4,200 ya) for E1b1a7a was ascertained in the Yoruba from Nigeria, while the lowest (~2,000 ya) was in Nilo-Saharans. With regard to E1b1a8, the highest tMRCA (~ 5,000 ya) was found in Mande speakers from both Burkina Faso and Senegal, while the lowest (~3,400 ya) was in the Bantu.
[...]
These results suggest that this haplogroup was present for a longer time in Western Africa – which is the presumed place of origin of the defining M2 mutation (Rosa et al. 2007) – and that two of the derived mutations considered here (e.g. M191 and U174) did not occur in the ancestors of the Mande; the low frequencies of E1b1a7a found in these groups could be due to later admixture.
[...]
Furthermore, for other studies reporting high frequencies of M191 in Bantu speaking groups, we suggest that those individuals are likely to harbor the derived mutation U174 (see for example Appendix A in Wood et al. 2005). This is confirmed by the results of the LDA for the Ugandan dataset, where all individuals that had been genotyped as E1b1a7 were inferred to belong to E1b1a7a.
quote:first image definitely showing a moor is an illumination from 1316 in the so-called Prädialbuch. So sometime between 1286 and 1316 the crowned head became a crowned moor's head. Since then the crowned moor's head is considered the arms of the bishop of Freising and of his territory, the Hochstift. The Hochstift contained widespread territories in Bavaria (e.g. Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Wörth), but also in Slovenia (Skofja Loka) and South Tyrol (Innichen). Many of the cities and municipalities formerly belonging to the Hochstift contain the moor's head in their coat-of-arms. See for instance my pages about the Wörth arms and its historical sources.
Non-African ancestry in Egyptians traced to Islamic invasions and expansions
"Using ADMIXTURE and principal-component analysis (PCA) (Figure 1A), we estimated the average proportion of non-African ancestry in the Egyptians to be 80% and dated the midpoint of the admixture event by using ALDER20 to around 750 years ago (Table S2), consistent with the Islamic expansion and dates reported previously. " -- Luca Pagani et al. 2015. Tracing the Route of Modern Humans out of Africa by Using 225 Human Genome Sequences from Ethiopians and Egyptians. e American Journal of Human Genetics. American Journal of Human Genetics, Volume 96, Issue 6, p986–991,
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Southerly regions in Dynastic times more populous "Butzer’s (1976) figures demonstrate that throughout the dynastic period the Egyptian population numbers were denser between Aswan and Qift, and between the Faiyum and the head of the Delta. The Delta and the southern wide floodplain were more sparsely populated." -- Mark Lehner, The complete Pyramids
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
[QUOTE]Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova: [QB] Excellent roundup Tukler! And the DNA is backed by cranial data as well showing that late period samples are not typically Egyptian (Zakrewski)
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Tukuler: [qb]
A good capsule of Ennafaa's (2011, Fregel co-author) data for our purposes are Tables S5 & S6 with the Figure 4 pie.
Here are TS5 & TS6 with Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt population frequencies for select mtDNA & nrY Hgs.
Out of Ennafaa's selected African samples * Egypt is not primarily African
NEW DATA 2- Non-African ancestry in Egyptians traced to recent Islamic invasions and expansions per sme DNA studies
"Using ADMIXTURE and principal-component analysis (PCA) (Figure 1A), we estimated the average proportion of non-African ancestry in the Egyptians to be 80% and dated the midpoint of the admixture event by using ALDER20 to around 750 years ago (Table S2), consistent with the Islamic expansion and dates reported previously. " -- Luca Pagani et al. 2015. Tracing the Route of Modern Humans out of Africa by Using 225 Human Genome Sequences from Ethiopians and Egyptians. e American Journal of Human Genetics. American Journal of Human Genetics, Volume 96, Issue 6, p986–991,
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Cranial roundup in detail showing changes in Egyptian population away from older patterns..
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
"It can be noted that none of the Northeast African groups are significantly different from any other African groups (East African (EA), African Pygmy (AP), Khoe-San (KS)) (Table 27). 156 Therefore, West Africans of both sexes appear to possess the longest distal bones relative to the proximal for the upper limb. Ancient Egyptians and Nubians thus possess generally tropically adapted upper limb proportions, with their brachial indices grouping with the majority of other African groups."
"Ancient Egyptians and Nubians of both sexes are consistently significantly different in limb length proportions from Northern and Southern Europeans, with their brachial and crural indices grouping with the majority of other Africans." --Raxter Michele, 2011. Egyptian Body Size: A Regional and Worldwide Comparison
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
QUOTE:
"However, extensive historical and genetic data show that recent gene flow has drastically influenced the genomes of present-day Egyptians and Ethiopians... .. we first identified and then masked the recent non-African ancestry in the Ethiopian and Egyptian genomes. Using ADMIXTURE17 and principal-component analysis (PCA)18 (Figure 1A), we estimated the average proportion of non-African ancestry in the Egyptians to be 80% and dated the midpoint of the admixture event by using ALDER20 to around 750 years ago (Table S2), consistent with the Islamic expansion and dates reported previously. .. The affinity of the Egyptian African component with the modern East and West African populations (green component in Figure 1B, K ¼ 5) could be due to either a continuity of human presence in the area or recent gene flow from neighboring African regions resulting from demographic processes ..” --Pagani et al 2015. Tracing the Route of Modern Humans out of Africa by Using 225 Human Genome Sequences from Ethiopians and Egyptians. American Journal of Human Genetics 96, 986–991
Posted by BlessedbyHorus (Member # 22000) on :
Yo Zaharan can you teach me how to create those charts?
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
quote:[q]Originally posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor: [/QB] Colins is somewhat in denial. Which is typical euronut behavior.
quote: By removing the three defining markers I get 88.6%. Still not enough to convince ftdna that they are wrong so I’ll just leave it as is for the time being and accept the confirmation of E1b1a7a. In an updated wikipedia article on E1b1a it states “Outside of Africa, E1b1a has been found at low frequencies. In Eurasia, the clade has primarily been found in West Asia. There have also been reported a few isolated incidents of E1b1a in Southern European populations in Malta, Spain and Portugal. There have also been isolated incidences in Austria and Germany”. I have been saying for quite sometime after conversations with Darren Marin of ftdna and the fact that genetic relatives show a “recent ancestral origin” in Germany. Mr. Marin said that our German match was from that country and had an ancient history there. He could not divulge anymore information than that due to privacy issues. One family having ancient origins in Europe is the Gabbenesch family of Tyrol, Austria. Recent immigrants to the US, with a confirmed haplogroup of E1b1a8a. Researchers of this line theorize a Roman ancestor or something more ancient among the Rhaetian, an Alpine Tribe of the Raetia and the Po Valley.
This finding has blown holes into theories of quite a few Afro-centrists.
quote:Y-chromosomal variation: Insights into the history of Niger-Congo groups
Similar to E1b1a8, the highest STR variance for E1b1a7a was found in the C.A.R. Pygmies (0.49); however, the Bantu speakers from West Zambia and the Burkina Faso Gur speakers also had high STR variances (0.47 and 0.43, respectively).
[...]
The tMRCA estimates for haplogroups E1b1a7 and E1b1a8 were calculated by means of the ASD statistic for the major ethno-linguistic groups (Table 3). The highest tMRCA (~4,200 ya) for E1b1a7a was ascertained in the Yoruba from Nigeria, while the lowest (~2,000 ya) was in Nilo-Saharans. **With regard to E1b1a8, the highest tMRCA (~ 5,000 ya) was found in Mande speakers from both Burkina Faso and Senegal,** while the lowest (~3,400 ya) was in the Bantu.
[...]
These results suggest that this haplogroup was present for a longer time in Western Africa – which is the presumed place of origin of the defining M2 mutation (Rosa et al. 2007) – and that two of the derived mutations considered here (e.g. M191 and U174) did not occur in the ancestors of the Mande; the low frequencies of E1b1a7a found in these groups could be due to later admixture.
[...]
Furthermore, for other studies reporting high frequencies of M191 in Bantu speaking groups, we suggest that those individuals are likely to harbor the derived mutation U174 (see for example Appendix A in Wood et al. 2005). This is confirmed by the results of the LDA for the Ugandan dataset, where all individuals that had been genotyped as E1b1a7 were inferred to belong to E1b1a7a.
quote:first image definitely showing a moor is an illumination from 1316 in the so-called Prädialbuch. So sometime between 1286 and 1316 the crowned head became a crowned moor's head. Since then the crowned moor's head is considered the arms of the bishop of Freising and of his territory, the Hochstift. The Hochstift contained widespread territories in Bavaria (e.g. Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Wörth), but also in Slovenia (Skofja Loka) and South Tyrol (Innichen). Many of the cities and municipalities formerly belonging to the Hochstift contain the moor's head in their coat-of-arms. See for instance my pages about the Wörth arms and its historical sources.
We know that the first Moorish invasion originated with the Sanhaja of the Senegal River Valley. However, anything prior to the Sanhaja especially with regards to ancient times and the Alpine areas of Europe, I'd have to guess its attribution to Numidians or some other Northwest African group that may historically have been involved with Hannibal and his crossing of the Alps. Do you think this possible as well?
Posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
^ I never thought of that, but that does sound logical.
Perhaps I got distracted by "Celtic Cowboy".
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
"SLC24A5 was shown to play a pivotal role in skin pigmentation lightening in Europeans 10. Interestingly, the haplotype profile of SLC24A5 in CEU revealed a high affinity to aFM ( D aFM, MHG = 2) and a substantial distance to aHG ( D aHG, MHG = 28), as suggests that skin lightening associated with SLC24A5 originated from Near East, and likely was introduced into ancient Europeans via farming transition. This was strongly supported by a recent study based on 83 ancient DNA specimens 53." --Zhou et al 2015 (A Chronological Atlas of Natural Selection in the Human Genome during the Past Half-million Years. BioRxiv (quoted in Cochran).
"We also found evidence of selection at two loci that affect skin pig mentation. The derived alleles 63 of rs1426654 at SLC24A5 and rs16891982 at SLC45A2 are, respectively, fixed and almost fixed in present -64 day Europeans 23,24. As previously reported 7,11,12, both derived alleles are absent or very rare in western 65 hunter -gatherers. suggesting that mainland European hunter -gatherers may have had dark skin 66 pigmentation. SLC45A2 first appears in our data at low frequency in the Early Neolithic, and increases 67 steadily in frequency until the present... In contrast, the derived allele of 69 SLC24A5 increases rapidly in frequency to around 0.9 in the Early Neolithic, suggesting that most of the 70 increase in frequency of this allele is due to its high frequency in the early farmers who migrated from the southeast at this time, although there is still strong evidence of ongoing selection after the arrival 72 of farming .." --Mathieson et al 2015.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Ancient West African Neolithic in Europe
"Due to their geographic locations, Spain and Portugal seem to be ideal places for searching for These lineages... The L3f variant found in Asturias seems to constitute an Iberian-specific haplogroup, distantly related to lineages in Northern Africa and with a deep ancestry in Western Africa. Coalescent algorithms estimate the minimum arrival time as 8,000 years ago, and a possible route through the Gibraltar Strait... Results are concordant with a previously proposed Neolithic connection between Southern Europe and Western Africa, which might be key to the proper understanding of the ancient links between these two continents."
--Pardinas et al 2014. Over the sands and far away: Interpreting an Iberian mitochondrial lineage with ancient Western African origins. Am Jr Hum Bio, v26, i6, 777-783
Long-standing ancient migration from Africa to Europe
"Mitochondrial DNA sequences and restriction fragment polymorphisms were retrieved from three Islamic 12th-13th century samples of 71 bones and teeth (with >85% efficiency) from Madinat Baguh (today called Priego de Cordoba, Spain). Compared with 108 saliva samples from the present population of the same area, the medieval samples show a higher proportion of sub-Saharan African lineages that can only partially be attributed to the historic Muslim occupation. In fact, the unique sharing of transition 16175, in L1b lineages, with Europeans, instead of Africans, suggests a more ancient arrival to Europe from Africa. The present day Priego sample is more similar to the current south Iberian population than to the medieval sample from the same area. The increased gene flow in modern times could be the main cause of this difference."
--Casas et al 2006. Human mitochondrial DNA diversity in an archaeological site in al-Andalus.. Am J Phy Anthro. 2006 131(4):539-51.
African migrations via Gibraltar
“ These early Neolithic populations of Andalusia appear to have consisted of a number of distinct groups (12), one of which is suggested to have African origin due to finds of characteristic red ochre ceramics (13, 14). Similarities have also been noted between the predynastic Badarian Egyptian culture dated to the 5th millennium B.C. and the Late Atlantic Neolithic culture in western Andalusia (14). Previously, the appearance of the Late Atlantic Neolithic culture had been placed at a significantly later date than the Egyptian culture, and this chronology and the cultural similarity were interpreted as implying that Egypt was the original source (14). However, more accurate radiocarbon dates obtained from Late Atlantic Neolithic culture sites subsequently redated the origin of this culture to being approximately the same as that of the predynastic Badarian Egyptian culture (15), leading to the hypothesis that these two cultures might derive from a common area, perhaps through pastoral groups living in the Sahara. The culture linked to the Late Atlantic Neolithic period is known to have been dedicated almost exclusively to cattle breeding, secondarily complemented by sheep and goat breeding (14), suggesting that an investigation of the origin of Iberian cattle may offer further insight into early Iberian–African cultural contacts. "
--C. Anderung, et al. 2005. Prehistoric contacts over the Straits of Gibraltar.. PNAS June 14, 2005 vol. 102 no. 24 8431-8435
Posted by sudaniya (Member # 15779) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova: Non-African ancestry in Egyptians traced to Islamic invasions and expansions
"Using ADMIXTURE and principal-component analysis (PCA) (Figure 1A), we estimated the average proportion of non-African ancestry in the Egyptians to be 80% and dated the midpoint of the admixture event by using ALDER20 to around 750 years ago (Table S2), consistent with the Islamic expansion and dates reported previously. " -- Luca Pagani et al. 2015. Tracing the Route of Modern Humans out of Africa by Using 225 Human Genome Sequences from Ethiopians and Egyptians. e American Journal of Human Genetics. American Journal of Human Genetics, Volume 96, Issue 6, p986–991,
So this is the complete opposite of what mendacious racists like Mathilda have been arguing? They argued that 80% of modern Egyptians DNA has not changed since ancient times.
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
quote: So this is the complete opposite of what mendacious racists like Mathilda have been arguing? They argued that 80% of modern Egyptians DNA has not changed since ancient times.
I'm hoping Professor Bernard Ortiz de Montellano, who posts here on ES under the name Quetzalcoatl, addresses this. He maintained that the population has remained the same and when I quoted him the 80% figure, said that he might have to contact the author of the study, so would have to get back to me:
quote: 2nd September 2015 I'm working on the Pagani paper and may have to ask him a question. I'll get back to you.
In the online academia community the so called war for the origins of the Ancient Egyptians has already been won. Eurocentrics just refuse to wave the white flag.
It can be argued that in mainstream academia that the war has already been won.
The next step should be getting these sources to the mainstream. Especially threads such as this one.
Posted by BlessedbyHorus (Member # 22000) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova:
NEW DATA 2- Non-African ancestry in Egyptians traced to recent Islamic invasions and expansions per sme DNA studies
"Using ADMIXTURE and principal-component analysis (PCA) (Figure 1A), we estimated the average proportion of non-African ancestry in the Egyptians to be 80% and dated the midpoint of the admixture event by using ALDER20 to around 750 years ago (Table S2), consistent with the Islamic expansion and dates reported previously. " -- Luca Pagani et al. 2015. Tracing the Route of Modern Humans out of Africa by Using 225 Human Genome Sequences from Ethiopians and Egyptians. e American Journal of Human Genetics. American Journal of Human Genetics, Volume 96, Issue 6, p986–991, [/QB]
WOW!!! Don't know why I haven't seen this!
There goes the argument of modern Egyptians being exactly the same as the Ancients.
Like I said this so called "battle" has already been won for the "Afrocentrics" in the academia online community.
Posted by xyyman (Member # 13597) on :
Some of you are finally catching on, Europeans are depigmented Africans. A subset. They are NOT Dravidians. In fact, astonishing as it may seem Europeans are more African than non-African. Rosenberg et al(2002) and now Lazaridis et al (2015).
Geography! Geography ! Geography !
And yes, the white skin came from African Neolithics.
This has all been resolved .
BTW - Modern Egyptians although heaviest admixed of all Africans are NOT 80% non-Africans via the Islamic Expansion. The wording in the study is intentionally misleading.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlessedbyHorus:
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova:
NEW DATA 2- Non-African ancestry in Egyptians traced to recent Islamic invasions and expansions per sme DNA studies
"Using ADMIXTURE and principal-component analysis (PCA) (Figure 1A), we estimated the average proportion of non-African ancestry in the Egyptians to be 80% and dated the midpoint of the admixture event by using ALDER20 to around 750 years ago (Table S2), consistent with the Islamic expansion and dates reported previously. " -- Luca Pagani et al. 2015. Tracing the Route of Modern Humans out of Africa by Using 225 Human Genome Sequences from Ethiopians and Egyptians. e American Journal of Human Genetics. American Journal of Human Genetics, Volume 96, Issue 6, p986–991,
WOW!!! Don't know why I haven't seen this!
There goes the argument of modern Egyptians being exactly the same as the Ancients.
Like I said this so called "battle" has already been won for the "Afrocentrics" in the academia online community. [/QB]
Who, on average, has more ancestry from people who lived in dynastic Egypt before the later periods Modern Egyptians or populations now living outside of Egypt?
Posted by sudaniya (Member # 15779) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,:
quote:Originally posted by BlessedbyHorus:
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova:
NEW DATA 2- Non-African ancestry in Egyptians traced to recent Islamic invasions and expansions per sme DNA studies
"Using ADMIXTURE and principal-component analysis (PCA) (Figure 1A), we estimated the average proportion of non-African ancestry in the Egyptians to be 80% and dated the midpoint of the admixture event by using ALDER20 to around 750 years ago (Table S2), consistent with the Islamic expansion and dates reported previously. " -- Luca Pagani et al. 2015. Tracing the Route of Modern Humans out of Africa by Using 225 Human Genome Sequences from Ethiopians and Egyptians. e American Journal of Human Genetics. American Journal of Human Genetics, Volume 96, Issue 6, p986–991,
WOW!!! Don't know why I haven't seen this!
There goes the argument of modern Egyptians being exactly the same as the Ancients.
Like I said this so called "battle" has already been won for the "Afrocentrics" in the academia online community.
Who, on average, has more ancestry from people who lived in dynastic Egypt before the later periods Modern Egyptians or populations now living outside of Egypt? [/QB]
The indigenous people of Egypt in Luxor, Esna, Edfu, Kom Ombo, the red sea coast and even Aswan and the Siwa oasis are going to carry far more ancestry from the pharaohs than anyone else. They are indisputably the legitimate descendants of the ancients. The rest of the people in Egypt are like white Americans - newcomers with no noteworthy links to the ancient past and its heritage.
Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
quote:Originally posted by sudaniya: are going to carry far more ancestry from the pharaohs than anyone else
You say "are going to" but in reality you have no idea. All the genetic analysis thus far contradict what you claim is "indisputable".
There's no ancient population in modern egypt that just happens to be completely isolated from the foreign admixtures (Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, etc and mainly muslim Arabs).
So even the populations you cite, they are heavily admixed with foreign invaders and migrants. Most of them are now muslim or christians and speak the arabic language. We know it by analyzing their DNA and those of Ancient Egyptian mummies.
All modern Egyptian populations are a nice admixture of foreign invaders/migrants and Ancient Egyptians. Something to be proud of because those are all great people like Romans, Greeks, Ancient Egyptians, Kushites, Assyrians, Persians, Bedouins, etc. Maybe the closest to Ancient Egyptians would be the Nubians still living along the Nile in upper egypt. Although those Nubians are not direct descendants of Ancient Egyptians or even Kushites for the most part (various level of admixtures would have occurred). They would still share a larger proportion of common ancestors with Ancient Egyptians(indigenous Africans from the region).
I'm saying this based on our current genetic knowledge of Ancient Egyptians and modern Egyptians populations.
Posted by sudaniya (Member # 15779) on :
quote:Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:
quote:Originally posted by sudaniya: are going to carry far more ancestry from the pharaohs than anyone else
You say "are going to" but in reality you have no idea. All the genetic analysis thus far contradict what you claim is "indisputable".
There's no ancient population in modern egypt that just happens to be completely isolated from the foreign admixtures (Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, etc and mainly muslim Arabs).
So even the populations you cite, they are heavily admixed with foreign invaders and migrants. Most of them are now muslim or christians and speak the arabic language. We know it by analyzing their DNA and those of Ancient Egyptian mummies.
All modern Egyptian populations are a nice admixture of foreign invaders/migrants and Ancient Egyptians. Something to be proud of because those are all great people like Romans, Greeks, Ancient Egyptians, Kushites, Assyrians, Persians, Bedouins, etc. Maybe the closest to Ancient Egyptians would be the Nubians still living along the Nile in upper egypt. Although those Nubians are not direct descendants of Ancient Egyptians or even Kushites for the most part (various level of admixtures would have occurred). They would still share a larger proportion of common ancestors with Ancient Egyptians(indigenous Africans from the region).
I'm saying this based on our current genetic knowledge of Ancient Egyptians and modern Egyptians populations.
I'm not arguing that the indigenous people in Southern Egypt are pristine representations of dynastic Egyptians. Of course the indigenous people of Southern Egypt would have some foreign admixture, but nobody outside Southern Egypt and some parts of North Sudan could be regarded as more genetically intimated with dynastic Egyptians.
I admittedly don't know to what extent the people in Southern Egypt [the areas I mentioned] have mixed with the various foreign conquerors and populations that have streamed into Egypt throughout the millennia, especially after the 7th century AD.
Are there genetic studies specifically dealing with the people in Southern Egypt? I'll have to look for them online.
Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
quote:Originally posted by sudaniya: but nobody outside Southern Egypt and some parts of North Sudan could be regarded as more genetically intimated with dynastic Egyptians.
Maybe, maybe not. Those populations are already admixed to a large degree. Practice christianity or islam and speak arabic...
This is a current map of the Nubians living along the Nile:
It's possible for other indigenous African populations sharing ancestors with Ancient Egyptians to be less admixed with foreign invaders and migrants than people in modern southern Egypt and northern Sudan and thus be genetically and culturally closer. I'm saying this because this is what the current genetic results, (BMJ, JAMA, DNA Tribes, Paabo, etc) seem to indicate.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
I'm not arguing that the indigenous people in Southern Egypt are pristine representations of dynastic Egyptians. Of course the indigenous people of Southern Egypt would have some foreign admixture, but nobody outside Southern Egypt and some parts of North Sudan could be regarded as more genetically intimated with dynastic Egyptians.
I admittedly don't know to what extent the people in Southern Egypt [the areas I mentioned] have mixed with the various foreign conquerors and populations that have streamed into Egypt throughout the millennia, especially after the 7th century AD.
Are there genetic studies specifically dealing with the people in Southern Egypt? I'll have to look for them online.
See this very same thread for said studies or at least authors like Keita whose writings somewhere may reference such.
nobody outside Southern Egypt and some parts of North Sudan could be regarded as more genetically intimated with dynastic Egyptians. ^^Correct. as Egyptologists like Frank Yurco note, as well as other studies such as (Godde 2009 etc) the Nubians are ethnically the closest people to the Egyptians. This info is already in place in this same database. --------------------------------------------------------------------------
Are there genetic studies specifically dealing with the people in Southern Egypt? I'll have to look for them online.
Again see the pages in this database - the Gurna study below and others for example, plus the DNATribes info and similar elsewhere on ES.
Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
^^^The problem is you can't use the mere existance of African lineages in Southern Egypt and Sudan as proof of Ancient Egyptians affiliations. Those African lineages could have made their way to modern Egypt after the Ancient Egyptian and Kushite empires. Kushite people themselves were not Ancient Egyptians. You can only use ancient DNA from Ancient Egyptian mummies to determine ethnic affiliations.
Nubians now living along the Nile are not even direct descendant of the Kushites (they don't speak a Kushite descendant language) although they share very close common ancestors with the Kushites and probably admixted with them. They share a common parent language (Nilo-saharan family). Those modern Nubians are the one who destroyed the Kushite empire collaborating with the Axumites.
Posted by sudaniya (Member # 15779) on :
Thanks, zarahan. The information you presented is very useful and eye opening. It just goes to show that academically the Eurocentrics no longer have a leg to stand on. They've been defeated in this field. I just wish African countries could put their money together to create films [for worldwide screening] in which ancient Egyptians are shown in their true form. I would love to see hand selected Egyptians in Luxor, Edfu, Esna, Aswan, the red sea coast and the Siwa oasis playing the role of dynastic Egyptians.
Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
^^For those who prefer scientific data instead of wishful thinking and eye-balling pictures.
Here's the Ancient DNA of the Kushite people (from Hassan 2009)
M13, M60 and YAP are African lineages. M89 is an Eurasian lineage. Obviously the Eurasian lineages made their way among the Kushites after the fall of the Meroitic empire during the christian era. That's why we can see they start to appear during the Christian era.
This is scientific FACT. Zarahan and sudaniya prefer to live in a fantasy.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
^^^The problem is you can't use the mere existance of African lineages in Southern Egypt and Sudan as proof of Ancient Egyptians affiliations. You can only use ancient DNA from Ancient Egyptian mummies to determine ethnic affiliations.
You don't have to use DNA studies, Skeletal, cranial and archaeological data easily make the case. Why do you erroneously assume that DNA data is the only valid type of data?
And DNA studies of modern people in Egypt also confirm the presence of African lineages in southern Egypt from ancient times. Again, why do you erroneously assume that aDNA is the only valid data? The Gurna study also confirms the case using DNA analysis of modem inhabitants: quote--
"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."
There was such an ancestral population in place, from ancient East Africa which influenced ancient Egyptians. Note- no aDNA is needed to make that case either. Why do you insinuate that aDNA is some sort of "last word" on everything? aDNA is just another line of evidence.
And why do you yourself use modern data elsewhere? This is somewhat of a double standard you are manifesting. When you were replying to Charlie Bass, who, without the slightest bit of evidence you insist is not actually Charlie Bass (another one of your supposed "special revelations") you said:
On the contrary EVERYTHING points to mass settlement of the horn by Eurasians.
^^But you didn't use aDNA to make this claim but regular DNA studies. Why now are you suddenly asserting that nothing but aDNA will work to establish ancient population origins or movements? You are talking out of both sides of your mouth as usual.
and you also say:
E-P2 West African populations probably left East Africa somewhere before 10 000 years ago.
^^But to make this claim for 10,000 years ago you do not use aDNA. How come you make the claim, if aDNA is the only game in town as you now claim above? Here again you are making contradictory statements.
And who here says that "Nubians now living along the Nile are not even direct descendant of the Kushites" to quote you? This is yet another strawman you are "debating" against, as is typical of your Captain Obvious approach. Who doesn't know that "Nubians now living along the Nile are not even direct descendant of the Kushites"? Gee, is this another "revelation" of yours Captain Obvious? No one here is advancing any such argument except you, building a strawman.
Yurco up above refers to ancient Nubians contemporary with the ancient Egyptians not your strawman about Nubians now today on the Nile.
Posted by xyyman (Member # 13597) on :
What are we arguing? The Archeological, Anthropological, Linguistic, Religious and now genetic evidence prove that the AEians are indigenous Africans and has absolutely no connection with modern Europeans. Not even close. Astonishingly not even the modern peoples of the Levant and North Africa really close connection with AEians.
The debate is long over. Only a fanatical Euronut will continue to argue for it....by using the word "Caucasoids". LOL!
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
The internal flow.. from Africa..
DNA study casts doubt on some claimed levels of back-migration from Asia to Africa of R1b. The DNA marker claimed to have "back-flowed" solely from Eurasia is better explained by migration from the South, WITHIN Africa QUOTE:
"Human Y chromosomes belonging to the haplogroup R1b1-P25, although very common in Europe, are usually rare in Africa. However, recently published studies have reported high frequencies of this haplogroup in the central-western region of the African continent and proposed that this represents a 'back-to-Africa' migration during prehistoric times. To obtain a deeper insight into the history of these lineages, we characterised the paternal genetic background of a population in Equatorial Guinea, a Central-West African country located near the region in which the highest frequencies of the R1b1 haplogroup in Africa have been found to date. In our sample, the large majority (78.6%) of the sequences belong to subclades in haplogroup E, which are the most frequent in Bantu groups. However, the frequency of the R1b1 haplogroup in our sample (17.0%) was higher than that previously observed for the majority of the African continent. Of these R1b1 samples, nine are defined by the V88 marker, which was recently discovered in Africa.
As high microsatellite variance was found inside this haplogroup in Central-West Africa and a decrease in this variance was observed towards Northeast Africa, our findings do not support the previously hypothesised movement of Chadic-speaking people from the North across the Sahara as the explanation for these R1b1 lineages in Central-West Africa. The present findings are also compatible with an origin of the V88-derived allele in the Central-West Africa, and its presence in North Africa may be better explained as the result of a migration from the south during the mid-Holocene."
--Gonzalez et al 2013. The genetic landscape of Equatorial Guinea and the origin and migration routes of the Y chromosome haplogroup R-V88. Eur J Hum Genet. 2013 Mar;21(3):324-31.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova:
DNA study casts doubt on some claimed levels of back-migration from Asia to Africa of R1b. The DNA marker claimed to have "back-flowed" solely from Eurasia is better explained by migration from the South, WITHIN Africa QUOTE:
your statement is false
R1b1c (R-V88) originates in Africa
The parent of R1b1c (R-V88) >> is R1b
and R1b does not originate in Africa
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Note: "claimed levels" of R1b, which would cover "biodiversity" claims that all variants of R1b including R-V88 came from outside Africa.
But for clarity- reload:
The internal flow.. from Africa..
DNA study casts doubt on some claimed levels of back-migration from Asia to Africa for all variants of R1b. The V88 DNA marker claimed to have "back-flowed" solely from Eurasia is better explained by migration from the South, WITHIN Africa QUOTE:
"Human Y chromosomes belonging to the haplogroup R1b1-P25, although very common in Europe, are usually rare in Africa. However, recently published studies have reported high frequencies of this haplogroup in the central-western region of the African continent and proposed that this represents a 'back-to-Africa' migration during prehistoric times. To obtain a deeper insight into the history of these lineages, we characterised the paternal genetic background of a population in Equatorial Guinea, a Central-West African country located near the region in which the highest frequencies of the R1b1 haplogroup in Africa have been found to date. In our sample, the large majority (78.6%) of the sequences belong to subclades in haplogroup E, which are the most frequent in Bantu groups. However, the frequency of the R1b1 haplogroup in our sample (17.0%) was higher than that previously observed for the majority of the African continent. Of these R1b1 samples, nine are defined by the V88 marker, which was recently discovered in Africa.
As high microsatellite variance was found inside this haplogroup in Central-West Africa and a decrease in this variance was observed towards Northeast Africa, our findings do not support the previously hypothesised movement of Chadic-speaking people from the North across the Sahara as the explanation for these R1b1 lineages in Central-West Africa. The present findings are also compatible with an origin of the V88-derived allele in the Central-West Africa, and its presence in North Africa may be better explained as the result of a migration from the south during the mid-Holocene."
--Gonzalez et al 2013. The genetic landscape of Equatorial Guinea and the origin and migration routes of the Y chromosome haplogroup R-V88. Eur J Hum Genet. 2013 Mar;21(3):324-31.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
quote:Originally posted by Doug M: A recent study entitled The Role of Recent Admixture in Forming the Contemporary West Eurasian Genomic Landscape has been published pointing out multiple waves of admixture in Western Europe:
quote: We investigated the effect of admixture—the process of mixing of haplotypes between genetically differentiated ancestral groups—in each of these clusters using GLOBETROTTER. First, we painted each recipient individual’s chromosomes such that they were represented as mosaics of chunks of different ancestry from a set of donor groups that included all 18 World Regions together with other clusters from within West Eurasia. We then used summaries of the amount of genome-wide donor ancestry from these mosaics, together with information on the lengths and distributions of specific ancestral chunks, to infer whether admixture is likely to have occurred in a recipient group and to characterize the composition and proportion that each donor group contributed to the sources of the admixture event.
...
The vast majority of clusters (78%; 64 out of 82) showed evidence of admixture, suggesting that admixture-facilitated gene flow is a fundamental property of almost all West Eurasian groups (Tables S4 and S5; Supplemental Information). Here, we discuss the broader patterns of ancestry across West Eurasia, with a more detailed assessment of admixture events provided in the Supplemental Information. Throughout, we refer to the inferred groups characterized by GLOBETROTTER as contributing to an admixture event as 'sources' and the sampled groups contributing ancestry to these sources as “donors.” It is also important to note that in the discussion presented below, we use current-day geographic labels to describe ancestry of historical sources of admixture. When we describe the ancestry of a particular source as, for example, 'Mongolian,' this is a convenient but less precise proxy for 'ancestry in a historical group that is related to the ancestry that we observe in contemporary Mongolian populations today.' This shorthand aids reading, but one must bear in mind that while the inferred sources of admixture are likely to be closely related genetically to the true historical admixing groups, because of subsequent population movements and migration, they may be less closely related geographically to the original source of that ancestry.
ABSTRACT Over the past few years, studies of DNA isolated from human fossils and archaeological remains have generated considerable novel insight into the history of our species. Several landmark papers have described the genomes of ancient human ancestors and have demonstrated that contemporary humans harbour genetic material from ancient close relatives, the Neanderthals and Denisovans, and that ancient human individuals are often genetically distinct from nearby extant populations whilst also showing affinities with populations from further afield. Across West Eurasia, there is growing genetic evidence of large-scale, dynamic population movements over the period between 10,000 to 2,000 years ago, such that the ancestry across present-day populations is likely to be a mixture of several ancient groups. Whilst these efforts are bringing the details of West Eurasian prehistory into increasing focus, studies aimed at understanding the processes behind the generation of the current West Eurasian genetic landscape have been limited by the number of populations sampled, or have been either too regional or global in their outlook. Here, using recently described haplotype-based techniques, we present the results of a systematic survey of recent admixture history across Western Eurasia and show that admixture is a universal property across almost all groups. Admixture in all regions except North Western Europe involved the influx of genetic material from outside of West Eurasia, which we date to specific time periods. Within Northern, Western, and Central Europe, admixture tended to occur between local groups during the period 300 to 1200CE. Comparisons of the genetic profiles of West Eurasians before and after admixture show that population movements within the last 1500 years are likely to have maintained differentiation amongst groups. Our analysis provides a timeline of the gene flow events that have generated the contemporary genetic landscape of West Eurasia.
-- Busby et al 2015. Role of Recent Admixture in Forming the Contemporary West Eurasian Genomic Landscape. Current Bio. 2015
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
R1b comes from outside Africa and is a sub clade of R-M207
A sub clade of R1b is the V88 mutation and it evolved from R1b while inside Africa
The Gonzalez article only regards the spread direction of V88 while in Africa Not the origin of the parent of the V88 allele which is Haplogroup R
The genetic landscape of Equatorial Guinea and the origin and migration routes of the Y chromosome haplogroup R-V88. Eur J Hum Genet. 2013 Mar;21(3):324-31. Gonzalez et al 2013
Apart from the aforementioned haplogroups, some studies have reported unexpectedly high frequencies of haplogroup R1b1-P25 in some African populations.5, 6, 7 This haplogroup is thought to have originated in Europe, and its high frequencies in Central-West African countries have been explained through a migration back to Africa in prehistoric times, mediated in Africa by speakers of the Chadic family of Afro-Asiatic languages.6, 7 The arrival of this ethnic group to Lake Chad from the Proto-Afro-Asiatic homeland in Eastern Africa has been explained by two different hypotheses.
Blench's theory (the ‘inter-Saharan' hypothesis)8 suggests that Chadic speakers arrived at the Chad Basin through an east to west migration through the Sahel,
whereas Ehret's theory (the ‘Trans-Saharan' hypothesis)9 suggests that they arrived from the north through a migration across the Sahara desert. The latter hypothesis has been used as the explanation for the high frequencies of the R1b1-P25 haplogroup in Central-West Africa, mainly due to its presence in speakers of other Afro-Asiatic languages in North Africa.7, 10 Nevertheless, there is still an on-going debate about the most suitable explanation for these observations...
The present findings are also compatible with an origin of the V88-derived allele in the Central-West Africa, and its presence in North Africa may be better explained as the result of a migration from the south during the mid-Holocene....
According to Blench's ‘inter-Saharan' hypothesis, Chadic speakers originated during the eastward migration of a pastoralist Cushitic group, from the Nile towards the Lake Chad, with subsequent dispersion in different directions around the lake.
______________________________
^^ As we can see the paper advocates R. Blench's "inter-Saharan hypothesis" , that is the conclusion and what Gonzalez was doing is trying to correlate Blench's migration theory with analysis of DNA, the allele V88
Blench’s theory (the ‘inter-Saharan’ hypothesis)8 suggests that Chadic speakers arrived at the Chad Basin through an east to west migration through the Sahel,
Ehret’s theory (the ‘Trans-Saharan’ hypothesis)9 suggests that they arrived from the north through a migration across the Sahara desert.
[from] The origin of the V88 lineages [section]
the arrival of Chadic groups in the Lake Chad Basin, coming from the North,
migration mediated by the Proto-Chadic speaking people coming from East to West Africa
.
my recap
Blench's is as likely as Ehret's
Chadics from the north is as likely as Proto-Chadics from the east
Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova: ^^^The problem is you can't use the mere existance of African lineages in Southern Egypt and Sudan as proof of Ancient Egyptians affiliations. You can only use ancient DNA from Ancient Egyptian mummies to determine ethnic affiliations.
you don't have to use DNA studies, Skeletal, cranial and archaeological data easily make the case. Why do you erroneously assume that DNA data is the only valid type of data?
First this is not my quote. The part you cut off answer your question: The problem is you can't use the mere existance of African lineages in Southern Egypt and Sudan as proof of Ancient Egyptians affiliations. Those African lineages could have made their way to modern Egypt after the Ancient Egyptian and Kushite empires.
My reply was about avoiding using modern populations as proxy for ancient populations in DNA studies which (as you well know) is not a right thing to do due to demographic changes in the last 6000 years in modern Egypt. You perfectly know I made many threads about other aspects:
But it is true that ancient DNA do provide the last word. Ancient DNA provides us with the greatest discriminative power to attest ethnic affiliations.
Unrelated people can share the same skin color, facial features or limb proportion but they can't share the same DNA. DNA are passed down from parents to child. That's why DNA are used in paternity test, to identify suspects/victims in criminal investigations, or by DNA ancestry company.
So yes, Ancient DNA taken from actual Ancient Egyptian mummies are the best way to identify the ethnic affiliations of Ancient Egyptians.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
S. Benazzi, et al. 2011. Early dispersal of modern humans in Europe and implications for Neanderthal behaviour. Nature, 479 (2011), pp. 525–528
Abstract
The appearance of anatomically modern humans in Europe and the nature of the transition from the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic are matters of intense debate. Most researchers accept that before the arrival of anatomically modern humans, Neanderthals had adopted several 'transitional' technocomplexes. Two of these, the Uluzzian of southern Europe and the Châtelperronian of western Europe, are key to current interpretations regarding the timing of arrival of anatomically modern humans in the region and their potential interaction with Neanderthal populations. They are also central to current debates regarding the cognitive abilities of Neanderthals and the reasons behind their extinction1-6. However, the actual fossil evidence associated with these assemblages is scant and fragmentary 7-10, and recent work has questioned the attribution of the Châtelperronian to Neanderthals on the basis of taphonomic mixing and lithic analysis 11,12. Here we reanalyse the deciduous molars from the Grotta del Cavallo (southern Italy), associated with the Uluzzian and originally classified as Neanderthal 13,14.
Using two independent morphometric methods based on microtomographic data, we show that the Cavallo specimens can be attributed to anatomically modern humans. The secure context of the teeth provides crucial evidence that the makers of the Uluzzian technocomplex were therefore not Neanderthals. In addition, new chronometric data for the Uluzzian layers of Grotta del Cavallo obtained from associated shell beads and included within a Bayesian age model show that the teeth must date to 45,000-43,000 calendar years before present. The Cavallo human remains are therefore the oldest known European anatomically modern humans, confirming a rapid dispersal of modern humans across the continent before the Aurignacian and the disappearance of Neanderthals.
Grotta del Cavallo- Southern Italy
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
2014 Italian research shows close relations between Nubian and Egyptian cultures
QUOTE: "The distinction between an Egyptian and a Nubian identity is something connected to the rise of the Naqada culture in the first half of the fourth millennium BCE. During the previous millennium such a distinction would have not made sense. As previously stated, the Tarifian, Badarian and Tasian cultures of Middle and Upper Egypt have strong ties with rhe Nubian/Nilotic pastoral tradition,a as can be inferred, for instance, by the very similar pottery, economy and settlement pattern and by the latest findings in the deserts surrounding the Egyptian Nile valley (Gatto 2011b, 2012a, b, 2013). "
FROM: --Maria Gatto 2014. Cultural entanglement at the dawn of the Egyptian history: A View from the Nile First Cataract Region (IN: Origini - XXXVI: 93-123- Preistoria e protostoria delle civiltà antiche).
Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
What interesting thing I like to do about this is comparing the Ancient Egyptians and Kushites soldiers from the Tomb of Mesehti from the 11th Dynasty. Since it's from the same tomb and period. They have been done with the same artistic style and convention (we know AEians are big on artistic convention since they see writing as divine/religious).
The images are too big so you will have to click on them.
You can compare the skin color and facial features (even if they are not meant to be realistic). The Kushite archers seem to be slightly darker with head bands and colored belts. They also carry different weapons.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Good observation. The two are very similar. But the pic titles both reference Nubian fighting men. Which specific set is from Egypt? The first or the second?
Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova: Good observation. The two are very similar. But the pic titles both reference Nubian fighting men. Which specific set is from Egypt? The first or the second?
Sorry, I didn't notice, it's a mistake when I saved the picture I gave it a wrong name. The second picture are not archers or Kushites. Clearly they are Ancient Egyptian soldiers/spearmen from the 11th Dynasty (it can easily be googled using Mesehti).
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Conservative Encyclopedia shows Ancient Egyptian religion derives from African foundation:
"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).“
Conservative scholars show numerous links between Ancient Egyptian and African cultures
".. but his [Frankfort's] frequent citations from African ethnography- over 60 are listed in the index- demonstrate that there is a powerful resonance between recent African concepts and practice on one hand, and ancient Egyptian kingship and religion on the other.."
Rowlands (Chapter 4) provides much additional evidence suggesting that 'sub-Saharan Africa and Ancient Egypt share certain commonalities in substantiative images and ideas, yet whose cultural forms display differences consistent with perhaps millennia of historical divergence and institutionalization'.
"First, kingship in Egypt was 'the channel through which the powers of nature flowed into the body politic to bring human endeavour to fruition' and thus was closely analogous to the widespread African belief that 'chieftains entertain closer relationship with the powers in nature than other men' (Frankfort 1948: 33, ch. 2). Second, the Egyptian king's metaphorical identification as an all powerful bull who tramples his enemies and inseminates his cow-mother to achieve regeneration was derived from Egyptian ideas and beliefs abut cattle for which best parallels can be found in some, but not all, recent African societies.."
"Like the chiefs discussed by Rowlands, the king combines 'life giving forces with the power to kill" (Rowlands, Chapter 4:52). Overall, this Egyptian concept of kingship, so akin to African models, seems very different to that held in the ancient Near East (Frankfort 1948; Postgate 1995)"
"In conclusion, there is a relative abundance of ancient materials relevant to contact and influence, as well as striking correlations between ancient Egyptian civilization and the ethnography of recent and current sub-Saharan communities, chiefdoms and states... Perhaps the fact that commonalities do exist suggests that, because of great time depth and different organization, these commonalities may result from inherently African processes." --David O'Connor, Andrew Reid (2007) ANCIENT EGYPT IN AFRICA. pp 15-22
Conservative Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt shows ancient Egypt derived from an African cultural foundation
“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.." -- Oxford Encyclopedia of ancient Egypt, Vol 3.2001. p.28
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Ancient Europeans show some African variants. Africans not only have dark skin but can have blue eyes as well. Many African populations are lactose (milk) intolerant and some not. Modern studies of some ancient European DNA remains show them similar to Africans, with the dark skin-blue eye combination of some contemporary Africans, & some lactose intolerance.
Many Africans lactose intolerant but pastoral Africans in desert regions show some tolerance - QUOTE: “In some human populations, including humans of Northwest European descent and nomads of the African – Arabian desert region, lactose expression persists into adulthood. The benefits of milk consumption, both as a source of liquid in arid regions and for prevention of rickets and osteomalacia in regions of low solar radiation have been assumed to have driven the fixation of this polymorphism." -- Maurice Edward Shils, Moshe Shike (2006)Modern Nutrition in Health and Disease. p 633
–Scientists on ancient Mesolithic European “LaBrana Man” "The biggest surprise was to discover that this individual [LaBrana European] possessed African versions in the genes that determine the light pigmentation of the current Europeans, which indicates that he had dark skin," Lalueza-Fox said... But the latest findings show that La Brana 1 still had dark skin and had been around the continent for 40,000 years, meaning fair skin probably evolved millennia later.” http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/europeans-had-dark-skin-blue-eyes-7-000-years-ago-1.2512465
STUDY FINDINGS- QUOTE: “Here we sequence an approximately 7,000-year-old Mesolithic skeleton discovered at the La Bran˜a-Arintero site in Leon, Spain, to retrieve a complete pre-agricultural European human genome. Analysis of this genome in the context of other ancient samples suggests the existence of a common ancient genomic signature across western and central Eurasia from the Upper Paleolithic to the Mesolithic. The La Brana individual carries ancestral alleles in several skin pigmentation genes, suggesting that the light skin of modern Europeans was not yet ubiquitous in Mesolithic times. Moreover, we provide evidence that a significant number of derived, putatively adaptive variants associated with pathogen resistance in modern Europeans were already present in this hunter-gatherer...
We found the ancient genome to carry the ancestral allele for lactose intolerance and approximately five copies of the salivary amylase (AMY1) gene (Extended Data Fig. 7 and Supplementary Information), a copy number compatible with a low-starch diet18. These results suggest the La Bran˜a hunter-gatherer was poor at digesting milk and starch, supporting the hypotheses that these abilities were selected for during the later transition to agriculture.
Although the precise phenotypic effects cannot currently be ascertained in a European genetic background, results from functional experiments20 indicate that the allelic combination in this Mesolithic individual is likely to have resulted in dark skin pigmentation and dark or brown hair..
The genotypic combination leading to a predicted phenotype of dark skin and non-brown eyes is unique and no longer present in contemporary European populations. Our results indicate that the adaptive spread of light skin pigmentation alleles was not complete in some European populations by the Mesolithic, and that the spread of alleles associated with light/blue eye colour may have preceded changes in skin pigmentation.” --Olade et al 2014. Derived immune and ancestral pigmentation alleles in a 7,000-year-old Mesolithic European. Nature (2014), doi:10.1038/nature12960
Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
Here's a table with the lactase persistence frequencies of various African and world populations (a very nice compilation of past studies):
From The Evolutionary Role of Human-Specific Genomic Events Yuval Itan (2009)
It's important to remember when reading literature about it that many African populations have lactase persistance (at the frequency stated in the table above) but don't have the European/Eurasian gene for lp, they have a different one (not yet discovered). Hence, the difference in phenotype and genotype frequencies.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Good table
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Below, African populations can have a range of crural indexes that overlap other populations whether they be in southern Europe or ancient Europe's tropically adapted populations. In diverse Africa, crural limb proportion indexes are also diverse but the people still are African.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Many modern Egyptologists now admit clear correlations between ancient Egyptians and African communities, chiefdoms and states.
"The Egyptian concept of kingship, so akin to African models, seems very different to that held in the ancient Near East."
"There is a relative abundance of ancient materials relevant to contact and influence, as well as striking correlations between ancient Egyptian civilization and the ethnography of recent and current sub-Saharan communities, chiefdoms and states."
--David O'Connor, Andrew Reid 2007. Ancient Egypt in Africa
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Myra Wysinger: [QB] Art of the Egyptian Nile flourished much later than that of Saharan and Sudan Africa. The Sahara representations of oxen with discs between their horns is much earlier than those of the cow-goddess Hathor.
Egypt in Africa, 1996, pp. 62-65
Animal Deities and Symbols in Africa Chapurkha M. Kusimba Curator, Department of Anthropology Field Museum of Natural History
Frank J. Yurco Research Associate Field Museum of Natural History
Interaction between humankind and animals in Africa has profoundly affected Africa's cultural and ecological landscape. This interaction has be captured in the archaeological record, in ancient rock art, in more recent wood carving, and in oral traditions. Chroniclers, storytellers, and artists have passed on knowledge and ethnic experiences in the form of proverbs, legends, epics, and myths.
Many mythological and popular stories in African prominently feature animals (e.g. Beier 1966; Bleek and Lloyd 1911; Hambly 1949). Some were hunted for food, clothing, and shelter. Some were respected for the might, wit, and cunning. The belief that spirituality is deeply rooted in most aspects of African life may explain why man animals or composite animals forms were adopted as totems and as deities of particular groups and societies (Mbiti 1970; Hornung 1983). For example, the ancient Egyptians revered Sobek, the crocodile deity, and Sekhmet, the lioness, and some of the snake deities such as Edjo, the cobra, for their dangerous qualities. Seth, whom the Egyptians considered a trickster (Evans-Pritchard 1967; Hambly 1949; Te Velde 1977), was manifested as a hippopotamus, pig, or donkey. As a trickster, Seth was very much in African mold. Characteristic of frogs, lizards and insects were used to express aspects of deities. Composite animals forms in Egypt included Taweret, part female hippopotamus, part crocodile, and part lioness, and Bes, the bandy legged household deity, benign, but with a leonine face. Composite animal forms sometimes constitute the imagery of sub-Saharan masks. Other ancient Egyptians deities, like Hathor and Isis, both having cow aspects, were beneficent (Goedicke 1970). That both Egyptians and Kushites worshipped rams as deities, especially Amon of Karnak, underscores the cultural interaction between Egypt and the Nubian cultures of Kush (Kendall 1982). Rams have also had a spiritual significance among the Yoruba, Edo, and other West African peoples. Moreover, most of the animals of special importance in ancient Egypt have ritual and social significance in sub-Saharan Africa.
Thus, Egyptian religious culture depicted in engravings and in art and sculpture points to the common African substratum of Egypt's culture (Frankfort 1948). What have been interpreted as masked priests portraying animals deities in Egyptian ceremonies depicted in murals are reminiscent of common African rituals. The proliferation of animal representation in rock art in Africa probably illustrates the practical, emotional, and spiritual ties between Africans and animals. For example, depictions of people wearing animals masks and animals with discs, aureoles, and rods on their heads, often found together in southern Oran and Oued Djerat in Algeria, suggest people praying in front of animals (Ki-Zerbo 1981;670).
A myth of the San of Southern Africa, which tells of the sun growing tired of being carried on a zebra's back and taking refuge between the horns of a bull (Bleek and Lloyd 1911), is very similar to depictions showing an oxen bedecked with the solar disc in Egypt, southern Oran, and the Sahara. The origins of the cow-goddess Hathor may be rooted in a pan-Africanist myth (Ki-Zerbo 1981:669). KiZerbo makes a strong case for the cultural unity of Africa based on his analysis of prehistoric art:
Art of the Egyptian Nile flourished much later than that of Saharan and Sudan Africa. The Sahara representations of oxen with discs between their horns is much earlier than those of the cow-goddess Hathor. The hawk delicately carved on the sandstone plaque of Hammada el Guir is much earlier than the ram of Amon [known from the 12th Dynasty onwards]. When Andre Malraux looked at the animal heads at Oued Djera, he considered them to be "forerunners of the Egyptian animal deities." The same no doubt holds for the bird-headed goddess at Jabbaran. Semi-naturalism only appears in Egypt in the Gerzean period and is derived from Saharan ox period carvings . . . Egypt had a tremendous influence on the interior of Africa . . . but what is even more certain is that the prehistoric civilizations of the Sahara is earlier in time . . . It was only from the so-called "historic" period onwards that Egyptian civilization achieved that splendor as a result of which everything is now attributed. But where art and technology is concerned, the focal points were originally in the modern republic of the Sudan, in East Africa, and the Near East. Moreover, the prehistoric Sudan owed much more to southeastern influence that to those from the Near East (1981:676).
Thus, the ancient Egyptian belief that divinity can be manifested in any form has strong pan-Africanist roots. Among cattle-owning societies in Africa, cattle are symbols of wealth and serve to define as well as distinguish status. Old Kingdom tombs depict cattle as large parts of a noble's holdings. Cattle provided the means for forging new relations of cooperation and interdependence. Cattle were valued for milk and cheese, but were occasionally slaughtered for religious offerings (Beidelman 1960; Bloch 1971; Rigby 1969). In common with other African pastoralists, the Egyptians practiced horn deformation on special cattle. Egyptians worshipped cattle as beneficent deities. Deities with bovine aspects echoed the importance of cattl in Egyptian society. Apis, the bull deity of Memphis, was a national deity. A bull with special markings and color was sought and, once located, was enshrined at Memphis with great honor. When the Apis died, he was embalmed with solemn ceremony and buried in the vast catacombs at Saqqara, called the Serapaeum. It should be noted that some ox masks of the Bidjogo peoples of West Africa and Apis bulls have a triangular forehead design. Besides Hathor and Isis, Neith and a lesser-known deity, Bat, occasionally were depicted in bovine form. Cow deities provided milk and nourishment for the pharaoh.
Egyptian myths and stories feature cattle. In the Story of the Two Brothers (Lichtheim 1976:203-210), a pair of brothers are grazing animals, and one brother takes on the appearance of a bull. Cattle formed an important part of the booty in Egyptian and other African military raids on neighboring peoples. The Maasai, for example, believe that God gave them al the cattle in the world. They thus feel that they have strong kinship ties with cattle (Rigby 1992). This culture is well myth of many African societies, in the archaeological record, and in modern African religious and cultural practices. Animal deities and animals, then and now, continue to play a central role in everyday spiritual, cultural, and economic life of African people.
References Cited
Beidelman, T.O, 1960. The Baraguyu. Tanganyika Notes and Records 55:244-278
Beier, Ulli, 1966. The Origin of Life and Death: African Creation Myths. London: Heinemann Educational Books Limitied.
Bleek, W.W.I., and L.C. Lloyd, 1911. Specimens of Bushman Folklore. London : George Allen and Company, Limited.
Block, Mark, 1971. Placing the Dead: Tombs, Ancestral Villages, and Kinship Organizations in Madagascar, London: Seminar Press.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E, 1967. The Zande Trickster. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Frankfort, Henri, 1948. Kingship and the Gods. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Goedicke, Hans, 1970. The Story of the Herdsman, Chronique d'Egypt 45(90):244-256.
Hambly, Wilfred D. 1949. Talking Animals. Washington D.C.: The Associated Publishers, Inc.
Hornugh, Erik, 1983. Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many. Translated by Jogn Baines, Ithiaca, New York: Cornell University Press.
Kendall, Timothy, 1982. Kush: Lost Kingdom of the Nile. Brockton: Brockton Art Museum.
Ki-Zerbo, J. 1981. African Prehistoric Art, In General Prehistory of Africa I: Methodolgy and African Prehistory. J. Ki-Zerbo, ed. pp. 656-686. Paris UNESCO
Lichtheim, Miriam 1976. Ancient Egyptain Literature, vol II. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Mbiti, John S. 1970. African Religions and Philosophy. New York, Doubleday and Company, Inc.
Rigby, Peter, 1969. Cattle and Kinship Among the Gogo. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.
_________, 1992. Cattle, Capitalism, and Class: Ilparakuyo Maasai Transformations, Phaladelphia: Temple University Press.
Te Velde, Hermann, 1977. Seth, God of Confusion. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
"it has been proposed that E3b originated in sub-Saharan Africa and expanded into the Near East and northern Africa at the end of the Pleistocene (Underhill et al. 2001). E3b lineages would have Reports 1015 then been introduced from the Near East into southern Europe by immigrant farmers, during the Neolithic ex-pansion (Hammer et al. 1998; Semino et al. 2000; Underhill et al. 2001). The three main subclades of haplogroup E3b (E-M78, E-M81, and E-M34) and the paragroup E-M35* are not homogeneously distributed on the African continent: E-M78 has been observed in both northern and eastern Africa, E-M81 is restricted to northern Africa, E-M34 is common only in eastern Africa, and E-M35* is shared by eastern and southern Africans (Cruciani et al. 2002).. Several observations point to eastern Africa as the homeland for haplogroup E3b—that is, it had (1) the highest number of different E3b clades (table 1), (2) a high frequency of this haplogroup and a high microsatellite diversity, and, finally, (3) the exclusive presence of the undifferentiated E3b* paragroup.."
--Cruciani et al 2004. Phylogeographic Analysis of Haplogroup E3b (E-M215)Y Chromosomes Reveals Multiple Migratory Events Within and Out Of Africa. Am. Jr. HumGen 74: 1014-1022
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
While the ancient Horn of Africa, like other places near water or land transport routes has always had some smattering of migration, this is nothing special. Archaeological data shows no sweeping mass migration or cultural revolutions from non-Africans into the ancient Horn of Africa. QUOTE:
"However, more recent archaeological research shows that non-African influences in the HOA [Horn of Africa] were limited and transient. Of the early first millennium BCE inscriptions in non-African scripts complete enough to identify a language, only a small proportion are written in a non-African (South Arabian) language - the majority are written in indigenous proto-Ge’ez [24]. In the HOA, architecture with non-African (primarily South Arabian) elements is entirely monumental or ritual [25] and ritual items with exclusively non-African elements are rare [26].
There are few to no indications of non-African material culture in everyday objects: the ceramics and lithics found outside of the ritual context are almost entirely indigenous with clear local precedents [24,25,27]. While earlier scholarship conceived of a South Arabian origin D’MT polity with sovereignty over much of the northern HOA, it is now clear that this polity, if it ever existed at all as an integrated state [24], was geographically restricted to the regions around Yeha and Aksum in what is now the Tigray region of Ethiopia [25]. Artifacts with non-African features are effectively absent in the material culture (ritual or otherwise) of contemporaneous populations in the Eritrean highlands on the Asmara plateau (the ‘‘Ancient Ona’’) [25,28,29]. Prior to the first millennium BC, the archaeology of the HOA is less well studied, but what is available shows no substantial non-African material culture beyond trade relations [25]. Taken all together, the archaeological data could be consistent with limited non-African (primarily South Arabian) migration into the north Ethiopian highlands at the outset of the first millennium BCE, but cannot support large-scale population movements from any foreign population."
--Hodgson, et al 2014. Early Back-to-Africa Migration into the Horn of Africa. PLOS Genetics, Vol 10, Iss 6
Posted by Punos_Rey (Member # 21929) on :
Didn't see this on the first page, its an older study but I just came across it an hour ago.
Presence of Sickle Cell in several Predynastic Mummies:
“We conducted a molecular investigation of the presence of sicklemia in six predynastic Egyptian mummies (about 3200 BC) from the Anthropological and Ethnographic Museum of Turin. Previous studies of these remains showed the presence of severe anemia, while histological preparations of mummified tissues revealed hemolytic disorders. DNA was extracted from dental samples with a silica-gel method specific for ancient DNA. A modification of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), called amplification refractory mutation system (ARMS) was then applied. ARMS is based on specific priming of the PCR and it permits diagnosis of single nucleotide mutations. In this method, amplification can occur only in the presence of the specific mutation being studied. The amplified DNA was analyzed by electrophoresis. In samples of three individuals, there was a band at the level of the HbS mutated fragment, indicating that they were affected by sicklemia."
– Marin et. al. 1999, Use of the Amplification Refractory Mutation System (ARMS) in the Study of HbS in Predynastic Egyptian Remains.”
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
quote:Originally posted by Punos_Rey: Didn't see this on the first page, its an older study but I just came across it an hour ago.
Presence of Sickle Cell in several Predynastic Mummies:
“We conducted a molecular investigation of the presence of sicklemia in six predynastic Egyptian mummies (about 3200 BC) from the Anthropological and Ethnographic Museum of Turin. Previous studies of these remains showed the presence of severe anemia, while histological preparations of mummified tissues revealed hemolytic disorders. DNA was extracted from dental samples with a silica-gel method specific for ancient DNA. A modification of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), called amplification refractory mutation system (ARMS) was then applied. ARMS is based on specific priming of the PCR and it permits diagnosis of single nucleotide mutations. In this method, amplification can occur only in the presence of the specific mutation being studied. The amplified DNA was analyzed by electrophoresis. In samples of three individuals, there was a band at the level of the HbS mutated fragment, indicating that they were affected by sicklemia."
– Marin et. al. 1999, Use of the Amplification Refractory Mutation System (ARMS) in the Study of HbS in Predynastic Egyptian Remains.”
BLAST FROM THE PAST: DIOP ON DOUBLE-STANDARDS AND HYPOCRISY
Diop on hypocritical double standards of Eurocentrism
“But it is only the most gratuitous theory that considers the Dinka, the Nouer and the Masai, among others, to be Caucasoids. What if an African ethnologist were to persist in recognizing as white-only the blond, blue-eyed Scandinavians, and systematically refused membership to the remaining Europeans, and Mediterraneans in particular—the French, Italians, Greek, Spanish, and Portuguese? Just as the inhabitants of Scandinavia and the Mediterranean countries must be considered as two extreme poles of the same anthropological reality, so should the Negroes of East and West Africa be considered as the two extremes in the reality of the Negro world. To say that a Shillouk, a Dinka, or a Nouer is a Caucasoid is for an African as devoid of sense and scientific interest as would be, to a European, an attitude that maintained that a Greek or a Latin were not of the same race.“ -- CA Diop, 'Evolution of the Negro world', Presence Africaine -23, 51. 5-15
DIOP on genotype versus phenotype
"If we speak only of genotype, I can find a black who, at the level of his chromosomes, is closer to a Swede than Peter Botha is. But what counts in reality is the phenotype. It is the physical appearance which counts. This black, even if on the level of his cells he is closer to a Swede than Peter Botha, when he is in South Africa he will still live in Soweto. Throughout history, it has been the phenotype which has been at issue, we mustn't lose sight of this fact. The phenotype is a reality, physical appearance is a reality. And this appearance corresponds to something which makes us say that Europe is peopled by white people, Africa is peopled by black people, and Asia is people by yellow people. It is these relationships which have played a role in history...
Now every time these relationships are not favorable to the western cultures, an effort is made to undermine the cultural consciousness of Africans by telling them. ‘we don’t even know what race is’. What that means is that they do not know what a black man is; [but] they do know what a white man is… It is the phenotype which has given us so much difficulty throughout history, so it is this which must be considered in these relations." --CA Diop. 1985- Interview in Journal of African Civilizations
Africans the most phenotypically diverse - QUOTE:
General- "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 2001. Global Analysis of Regional Differences.. Hum Bio 73:5
Skin color- “This difference persists even after adjusting for a correlation between within-population diversity and distance from the equator. Though affected by natural selection, skin color variation shows the same pattern of higher African diversity as found with other traits." -- Relethford.(2000). Human skin color diversity is highest in sub-Saharan African populations. Hum Biol. 72(5):
Posted by Punos_Rey (Member # 21929) on :
Is there any more studies on Predynastic remains frkm Lower Egypt and how they fit in? I only saw one mention of Lower Egyptian samples on the first page. I almost got slipped up in an argument where someone posted a study saying Lower Egyptians had "less tropically adapted"(but still tropically adapted)bodies and was wanting to learn more if possible. They were still indigenous Africans too weren't they?
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Yes- and if some were living in the cooler Medit zone for a long time, or were under the influence of the Sahara's climatic fluctuation over many millennia, there would be variation. But even Lower Egyptians are more tropically adapted overall than people from EUrope or the "Middle East." The don't have to be identical, just show the primary overall pattern the scholars have found. Raxter and Ruff analyzed mostly northern skeletal samples and came away with the overall conclusion - the Egyptians clustered more with Africans. Kemp 2005 also reported on head to head comparisons. The results were the same. There was variation, but overall, same bottom line. The presence of more variation somewhere does not affect the bottom line.
In the late periods, the tail end of Egyptian civilization, with more foreign incoming Hyskos, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans and Arabs, this would change, as everyone recognizes. Cranial studies and DNA show the change. Today's Egyptians are not the same as the ancients, as credible scholars show.
Finally the diversity of Africans means that they can have many overlapping features, debunking attempts to claim unique "Eurasian" provenance for this or that. Narrow noses for example, are as "African" as broad noses, and don't necessarily need any "wandering Caucasoids" to explain why indigenous people in Africa vary in how they look. All know Africa has had migration in and out, just like every other place but that does not change the bottom line of indigenous variation. Africans are the most phenotypically diverse people on earth.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
DOUBLE STANDARDS: Some race mongers like to use the stereotypical "true negro" to minimize and downplay African diversity. But when types resembling the "true negro" shows up inhabiting Europe, they suddenly change tune and whitewash the offender away as "non African" or "non-black."
BLAST FROM THE PAST: DIOP ON DOUBLE-STANDARDS AND HYPOCRISY
Diop on hypocritical double standards of Eurocentrism
“But it is only the most gratuitous theory that considers the Dinka, the Nouer and the Masai, among others, to be Caucasoids. What if an African ethnologist were to persist in recognizing as white-only the blond, blue-eyed Scandinavians, and systematically refused membership to the remaining Europeans, and Mediterraneans in particular—the French, Italians, Greek, Spanish, and Portuguese? Just as the inhabitants of Scandinavia and the Mediterranean countries must be considered as two extreme poles of the same anthropological reality, so should the Negroes of East and West Africa be considered as the two extremes in the reality of the Negro world. To say that a Shillouk, a Dinka, or a Nouer is a Caucasoid is for an African as devoid of sense and scientific interest as would be, to a European, an attitude that maintained that a Greek or a Latin were not of the same race.“ -- CA Diop, 'Evolution of the Negro world', Presence Africaine -23, 51. 5-15
DIOP on genotype versus phenotype
"If we speak only of genotype, I can find a black who, at the level of his chromosomes, is closer to a Swede than Peter Botha is. But what counts in reality is the phenotype. It is the physical appearance which counts. This black, even if on the level of his cells he is closer to a Swede than Peter Botha, when he is in South Africa he will still live in Soweto. Throughout history, it has been the phenotype which has been at issue, we mustn't lose sight of this fact. The phenotype is a reality, physical appearance is a reality. And this appearance corresponds to something which makes us say that Europe is peopled by white people, Africa is peopled by black people, and Asia is people by yellow people. It is these relationships which have played a role in history...
Now every time these relationships are not favorable to the western cultures, an effort is made to undermine the cultural consciousness of Africans by telling them. ‘we don’t even know what race is’. What that means is that they do not know what a black man is; [but] they do know what a white man is… It is the phenotype which has given us so much difficulty throughout history, so it is this which must be considered in these relations." --CA Diop. 1985- Interview in Journal of African Civilizations
Africans the most phenotypically diverse - QUOTE:
General- "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 2001. Global Analysis of Regional Differences.. Hum Bio 73:5
Skin color- “This difference persists even after adjusting for a correlation between within-population diversity and distance from the equator. Though affected by natural selection, skin color variation shows the same pattern of higher African diversity as found with other traits." -- Relethford.(2000). Human skin color diversity is highest in sub-Saharan African populations. Hum Biol. 72(5):
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Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
DNA studies show some Europeans more related to Asians than other Europeans
"However, in a reanalysis of data from 377 microsatellite loci typed in 1056 individuals, Europeans proved to be more similar to Asians than to other Europeans 38% of the time (Bamshad et al. 2004; population definitions and data from Rosenberg et al. 2002)." --Witherspoon 2007. Genetic Similarities Within and Between Human Populations. Genetics. v.176(1)
NO ONE claims southern Europeans are all or mostly African, but some modern studies show up to 25% African DNA in various European populations. In popular American and European racial models this would make them "mixed race"..
Presence of Sickle Cell in several Predynastic Mummies:
“We conducted a molecular investigation of the presence of sicklemia in six predynastic Egyptian mummies (about 3200 BC) from the Anthropological and Ethnographic Museum of Turin. Previous studies of these remains showed the presence of severe anemia, while histological preparations of mummified tissues revealed hemolytic disorders. DNA was extracted from dental samples with a silica-gel method specific for ancient DNA. A modification of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), called amplification refractory mutation system (ARMS) was then applied. ARMS is based on specific priming of the PCR and it permits diagnosis of single nucleotide mutations. In this method, amplification can occur only in the presence of the specific mutation being studied. The amplified DNA was analyzed by electrophoresis. In samples of three individuals, there was a band at the level of the HbS mutated fragment, indicating that they were affected by sicklemia."
– Marin et. al. 1999, Use of the Amplification Refractory Mutation System (ARMS) in the Study of HbS in Predynastic Egyptian Remains.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Egyptian knowledge and techniques laid basis for some substantial ancient European medicine, modern research shows
QUOTE:
"Although ancient Greek and Roman medicine is generally considered the origin of European medicine, there is evidence in ancient Egyptian texts suggesting a precursor role of ancient Egyptian medicine in this regard. What did Greek and Roman physicians learn from their Egyptian counterparts? Of the medical papyri discovered to date, the largest and most significant - the Ebers papyrus and the Smith papyrus - originate from the beginning of the New Kingdom, however, they were - at least in part - already written during the Old Kingdom. Considering the times, the spectrum of diseases treated as well as the range of conservative and surgical treatment methods was truly astounding. Taking a medical history, performing a thorough manual examination, and assessing clinical findings constituted key components in establishing a diagnosis. Apart from hygienic aspects, skin and hair disorders, the treatment of acute and chronic wounds and injuries as well as cosmetic procedures took on an important role. Even back then, physicians sought to assess inflammatory processes with respect to their cardinal features, implement graded wound therapy, and treat diseases with allopathic drugs. The 'channel theory' prevalent at that time, in which the unimpeded flow of bodily fluids was considered a fundamental prerequisite for health, may likely be regarded as precursor of ancient Greek humoral pathology. The latter became the basis for the subsequently established theory of the four humors, and was thus essential for the entire field of medieval medicine."
-- Hartmann A1. 2016. Back to the roots - dermatology in ancient Egyptian medicine. --J Dtsch Dermatol Ges. 2016 Apr;14(4):389-96.
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
At a November 2014 British Museum lecture, Who were the Ancient Egyptians?, Joel Irish said that, based on the dental record, there was population continuity from the Badarian through to the Roman period, as well as homogeneity encompassing both Upper and Lower Egypt.
EDIT: OK, managed to find quotes:
quote: What you see then is that there is incredible similarity among all populations leading to the dynastic through pre-dynastic times [with a few?] post-dynastic thrown in. None of these are what you'd call significantly different from one another. They're all the same population. Whether they're from early, late, whether they're from Upper or Lower Egypt. There are two outliers though, trying to figure out what the heck are these guys doing and it now turns out the top one is a Greek site, Greek sample, that just happen to be in Egypt, and the bottom one is Roman. So what we've got here are some outside people, these cemeteries were from non-Egyptians, is what it looks like.
quote: Dentally the ancient Egyptians show an incredible amount of internal homogeneity, between predynastic and dynastic times. They are statistically not significantly different from one another, they show tremendous similarity from south to north and through time - these are one very continuous population.
-----------
Punos el rey said:
quote: Is there any more studies on Predynastic remains frkm Lower Egypt and how they fit in? I only saw one mention of Lower Egyptian samples on the first page. I almost got slipped up in an argument where someone posted a study saying Lower Egyptians had "less tropically adapted"(but still tropically adapted)bodies and was wanting to learn more if possible. They were still indigenous Africans too weren't they?
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
quote:Originally posted by tropicals redacted: At a November 2014 British Museum lecture, Who were the Ancient Egyptians?, Joel Irish said that, based on the dental record, there was population continuity from the Badarian through to the Roman period, as well as homogeneity encompassing both Upper and Lower Egypt.
EDIT: OK, managed to find quotes:
quote: What you see then is that there is incredible similarity among all populations leading to the dynastic through pre-dynastic times [with a few?] post-dynastic thrown in. None of these are what you'd call significantly different from one another. They're all the same population. Whether they're from early, late, whether they're from Upper or Lower Egypt. There are two outliers though, trying to figure out what the heck are these guys doing and it now turns out the top one is a Greek site, Greek sample, that just happen to be in Egypt, and the bottom one is Roman. So what we've got here are some outside people, these cemeteries were from non-Egyptians, is what it looks like.
quote: Dentally the ancient Egyptians show an incredible amount of internal homogeneity, between predynastic and dynastic times. They are statistically not significantly different from one another, they show tremendous similarity from south to north and through time - these are one very continuous population.
-----------
^^ Very interesting. There was a guy on Reloaded in "attack" mode trying to use the dental studies of Irish to claim that "continuity" means that today's Arabized Egyptians are the same as the ancients- and behold! An Ancient Egypt "free" of the dreaded "black" or "African" types. Some of today's Egyptians like this- heaven forbid that their allegedly "pure" Egypt should be part of the "African" continent or an "African people." Horrors! Of course they fail miserably, and knowledgeable people educated with the info on ES, Reloaded and elsewhere can see through their bogus propaganda.
Irish is correct and the key model of his "continuity" approach are the Badarians, who are deemed as quite representative of what the ancients looked like. Of course no region in a strategic location like Egypt is static- migrations, conquests etc happen, so eventually the ancient population would change. The Roman and Greek samples Irish mentions shows such changes. But "continuity" begins with the dreaded tropical "African" types, who refuse to go away.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Re assorted racist rants and claims, a few final loose ends wrapped up for the record and new readers..
Racist ranter says: There is no negroid alphabet invented until 1949,Nok Language. Negroids had to rely on Arabic,Greek,Latin and later on French and English,if their fragile brains could grasp to learn to read
LOL. Dummy the Nubians had their own alphabet millennia earlier. Here is a "Missing" negro alphabet developed "only" in 1949.
The Steele of Phiale forbade any negroid from entering Egypt
^^Hapless dolt, your attempt at a "racial" angle fails. The very same pharaohs who forbid Nubians to enter Egypt in that era, were themselves of Nubian background!
"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)
As regards Eurocentric white Egypt claims based on Raxter - DEBUNKED. In fact, Raxter 2011 affirms the clustering of Egyptians with Africans. quote"
"It can be noted that none of the Northeast African groups are significantly different from any other African groups (East African (EA), African Pygmy (AP), Khoe-San (KS)) (Table 27). 156 Therefore, West Africans of both sexes appear to possess the longest distal bones relative to the proximal for the upper limb. Ancient Egyptians and Nubians thus possess generally tropically adapted upper limb proportions, with their brachial indices grouping with the majority of other African groups."
"Ancient Egyptians and Nubians of both sexes are consistently significantly different in limb length proportions from Northern and Southern Europeans, with their brachial and crural indices grouping with the majority of other Africans." --Raxter Michele, 2011. Egyptian Body Size: A Regional and Worldwide Comparison by Raxter. Published Thesis, 2011. University of South Florida 2011.
And body mass in the Nile Valley is linked not only with climate variants but with food production as well, debunking simplistic claims of "wandering Caucasoids."
and Raxter et al 2008-
As regards so-called "updated" 2015 data showing "white" or Caucasoid Egypt, or that moderns are almost the same as the ancients- DEBUNKED. Moderns are heavily admixed and cannot be considered the same as the ancient population- a fact borne out not only by DNA, but skeletal and cranial evidence as well. Here is "updated" data from 2015, showing the recent admixture. In short, much non-African ancestry in Egyptians traced to Islamic invasions and expansions
"Using ADMIXTURE and principal-component analysis (PCA) (Figure 1A), we estimated the average proportion of non-African ancestry in the Egyptians to be 80% and dated the midpoint of the admixture event by using ALDER20 to around 750 years ago (Table S2), consistent with the Islamic expansion and dates reported previously. " -- Luca Pagani et al. 2015. Tracing the Route of Modern Humans out of Africa by Using 225 Human Genome Sequences from Ethiopians and Egyptians. e American Journal of Human Genetics. American Journal of Human Genetics, Volume 96, Issue 6, p986–991,
As regards the alleged white Gurna people- DEBUNKED. If anything they show definite African ancestral elements.
As regards E-M35 markers excluding "negroids" - DEBUNKED
As regards Keita saying Ancient Egyptians are the same genetically speaking as moderns- DEBUNKED. The Raving racist says: Here is a well renowned black professor with an expertise in genetics in ancient Egypt he essentially states that modern Egyptians are the same as their ancient counterparts genetically speaking. * "The basic overall genetic profile of the modern population is consistent with the diversity of ancient populations that would have been indigenous to northeastern Africa and subject to the range of evolutionary influences over time" -----------------------
^^The raving racist pulls a quote from an article Keita wrote for National Geographic but PREDICTABLY AND CONVENIENTLY, it leaves out the rest of what Keita said, which affirms the indigenous African nature of the ancient Egyptians particularly the foundational early populations. It is wholly bogus to say that Keita considers the moderns the same as ancients. The "supporting" Keita quote actually debunks the claim- for it is clear Keita notes that the ancients were diverse and is merely saying that the moderns are also. Who "denies" this? Everyone knows that the coming of Hyskos in the New Kingdom and Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, and finally Arabs added "diversity" to Egypt. That is not and never was at issue. CA Diop never "denied" such elementary matters. But the 'diversity' ALSO includes so-called "negroid" elements- who under Eurocentric doctrine are supposed to be "missing" from Egypt until very late in the game.In reality, they were there from Day 1.
Here is the conveniently missing text from Keita's National Geographic blurb. He notes that the weight of evidence points to a dominant African population profile- as proved by skeletal, dental, cranial and DNA evidence, and that LATER elements to Egypt from the Near East and Europe would join this African foundation. QUOTE:
Overall, these studies can be interpreted as suggesting that the Egyptian Nile Valley's indigenous population had a craniofacial pattern that evolved and emerged in northeastern Africa, whose geography in relationship to climate largely explains the variation. Dental affinity studies generally agree with the craniofacial results, though they differ in the details. The body proportions of ancient Egyptians generally are similar to those of tropical (more southern) Africans.. Very little DNA has been retrieved from ancient Egyptian remains, and there are not many studies on the modern population. However, the results of analyses of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and the Y chromosome in the living Egyptian population show the existence of very old African lineages that are consistent with the fossil remains and of younger lineages of more recent evolution, along with evidence of the assimilation of later migrants from the Near East and Europe.." --SOY Keita. Ancient Egyptian Origins- Human Biology. 2008. National Geographic
-------------------------------------- ^^Curious how the distorter forgets to include the above in the alleged "supporting" Keita reference..
As regards claims that North Africans (with the allegedly "missing negroids" are the "progenitors" of white people- DEBUNKED.
^^Pure non-negroid "progenitors" of white people...
And so it goes...
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
Whoever that guy on Reloaded was, he wasn't lying about Irish.
That is exactly what Irish means. Irish argued for population replacement since the neolithic (at the expense of Mesolithic Nubians and Egyptians) and calls predynastic Egyptians "European-like". (Note that, while Irish used to rave on and on about "population replacement" in the lower Nile Valley, he specifically likes to harp on "displaced" Mesolithic lower Nubians [whom he considers "negroid"] while completely remaining silent on the fact that his "displaced" Epipalaeolithic and Mesolithic Egyptians were similar looking to these Mesolithic Nubians). The troll above who first cited Irish knows very well that Irish's Badarians are ultimately non-African according to Irish. But this is simply a part of a wider pattern of this troll's selective quote-mining of Keita and other bio-anthropologists to advance his agenda. Since he's in the habit of safely quote-mining in his private conversations with unsuspecting academics, he thinks he can try that bs here. But I'm going to call him out every time he tries to suggestively invoke bio-anthropologists who fundamentally disagree with him.
The troll's reasoning here is that, since the Badarians were said to be "negroid", he can quote-mine Irish to sneakily extend this description to dynastic lower Egyptians. But Irish doesn't think that Badarians were unequivocally African, and he definitely doesn't consider their dental pattern to be 'negroid'. The troll is doing all these quote-mining shenanigans and roundabout mentions of lower Egyptians to not have to face his own internal discomfort with the fact that he knows he can't accommodate dynastic lower Egyptians in his clumsy "black phenotype" category.
I also can't recall one time that Irish ever included predynastic Lower Egyptians in his analyses.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
I can't recall Irish on Lower Egypts either, but the Reloaded troll failed to mention the Badarians, and also failed to mention Keita's analysis of them. Then he comes up with the "missing" negroid writing that had to wait until 1949. But now Tropicals did Irish mention Lower Egypt at all in his lecture?
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
Eugene Strouhal has a paper on the cranio-facial specifics of some royal dynastic lower Egyptian family members from the Old Kingdom. I discussed this paper as well as other dynastic lower Egyptian skeletal remains with the troll starting from ~2013 when I was bringing him up to speed. We also went over aspects of Irish' work. So I know exactly what he's doing with his selective quote-mining and his sneaky attempts to bring up dynastic lower Egyptians in relationship to Badarians like that, while remaining mum on their metric cranio-facial relationships in a larger, global, context.
I'm sure Irish mentioned dynastic lower Egyptians in his lecture, but I pretty confident that he has never published anything on the dental traits of the predynastic lower Egyptians. Sometimes in his work you can tell that he's short on certain samples. In one paper he tried to use the Gebel Ramlah as a stand in for early neolithic Egypt (Gebel Ramlah lies, of course, south of the 1st cataract). This isn't automatically a bad thing (given the known affinities between Nubians and Egyptians) but it does show that his sample set is limited at times and that his interpretation of his results relies to some extent on assumptions. Which is why he arrived at the "mid-holocene population replacement" theory to begin with: he doesn't have sufficient samples or he would have known that the ancestors of (pre)dynastic Egypto-Nubians didn't suddenly appear in the Egyptian and lower Nubian record after ~6000BC.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
I think you are right on the limitations of Irish's work.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
^Do you have anything rare/new on pre-dynastic lower Egyptians? Only data that comes to mind is Petrie's Tarkhan cemetery (thought to be the "Anu" in the flesh due to their supposedly peculiar chin morphologies which they're said to share with Tera Netjer) and some other skeletal remains from Maadi and Heliopolis. Also, Junker's predynastic lower Egyptian remains from Tura come to mind. From their descriptions these all seem to be local variants of the predynastic Upper Egyptian model pattern, with some variations tending towards (but still maintaining some distance from) what would later appear in the record as the "lower Egyptian" pattern. This is also what Patricia Smith says about some of these samples. None seem to have been as distinctly "lower Egyptian" as some of the 1st dynasty royal Egyptians from Abydos.
@Zaharan, Irish didn't say anything about Lower Egyptians beyond what's quoted above. If you've not already, read his 2004(?) paper, Who were the Ancient Egyptians?
What internal discomfort on applying blackness to Lower Egyptians? The hurt misrepresentation continues. I think the internal conflict is yours Swenet, not mine...remember the Hollywood question? Where, twenty times, you avoided answering whether online and press reaction would refer to Somalis and Ethiopians as 'black' if they were cast as ancient Egyptians in a Hollywood film? Swenet previously referenced modern Ethiopians as black, but then - after we fell out- accused me of revisionism when I did the same thing. Isn't that right, Swenet? Moreover, specifically on Lower Egyptians,Swenet forgets the Patricia Smith finding cited by Kemp and posted on one of Zaharan's datascreens, which, although a small study, links predynastic Lower Egyptian limb lengths with Africans.
Irish's findings indicate population continuity and homogeneity as quoted above. Email him and ask him yourself. Is Swenet still attempting the 'negroid' ='true black' sleight of hand nonsense, when referring to Badarian 'non-negroid' dental traits? Moreover,I asked a supportive academic to look over Irish's lecture comments. Whilst they raised questions, they were in general agreement with his findings, recommending I use them. Sorry.
Anyway, why am I responding to Swenet, a known liar who deliberately uses smear tactics, sending a private message to a former moderator here saying they were lucky he (Swenet) didn't publically slander them--the moderator's crime being their diminished interest in Swenet's Facebook site... and then, of course, there's Swenet's likening my online behaviour to that of a paedophile? Because I took a screen grab of his using a "fake name" (not my words) on linkedin.
Whenever this liar tries to mischaracterize me, I'm going to remind of his squalid bs.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
All of that shameless deflecting and justifying of his deliberate abuse of the positions of bio-anthropologists is going to come in handy.
Of course, Irish's reference to "homogeneity" says something about 'racial' homogeneity, but, like I said (and the troll knows this, but deliberately omits and obscures this) Irish considers this Egyptian homogeneity to be part of a larger pattern of Eurasian-like homogeneity. This Irish statement of "homogeneity" is not, as the troll is manipulatively suggesting, an acknowledgment of Egyptians being 'racially' distinct from what he considers non-'black' populations, like Maghrebis and others. The quote-mining troll is completely botching what Irish means, sometimes even (comically) to try to undermine people who are more in agreement with Irish than the quote-mining troll himself.
About the predynastic inhabitants of Hierakonpolis, Irish says:
quote:However, based on a qualitative inspection of the dentitions, it appears that: 1) dental phenetic homogeneity was prevalent among the Hierakonpolis inhabitants; and 2) they exhibit dental traits that ally them with other post-Pleistocene populations in greater North Africa. Prior work shows North Africans have morphologically simple, mass-reduced teeth. This dental pattern was shown to be ubiquitous among samples, regardless of distance—from the Canary Islands to Egypt and Nubia— or time—from 8,000 year-old Capsians to recent Berbers in western North Africa.
What Irish thinks about the affinity of this North African dental pattern as well as predynastic Egyptians in general:
quote:This pattern, termed the “North African Dental Trait Complex,” includes high frequencies of several traits such as an interruption groove on UI2, M3 agenesis, and rocker jaw, plus a low occurrence of LM2 Y-5 groove pattern. All of these features are also present in Europeans and West Asians to some degree, but are uncommon in subSaharan peoples. Craniometric indicators appear to support these results, and European-like discrete traits, such as alveolar orthognathism, dolichocephaly, rhomboid orbits, narrow nasal aperture, and nasal sill, are prevalent.
None of these descriptions are a problem in my paradigm of indigenous African variation. It's the laughably incompetent trolls who insist on compartmentalizing human variation with preconceived crappy terms like "black phenotype" who find themselves with their pants down again and again. But, like I said, this isn't so much an issue of me saying anything new: it's an issue of me calling out a known liar who seems to have a fetish for getting exposed (he just keeps inviting these demonstrations of his manipulative use of these bio-anthropologists). The fraud already knows all of this, yet he insists on quote-mining Irish and other bio-anthropologists who fundamentally disagree with his underlying agenda.
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
It's good you didn't try to squirm your way out of the charges I raised about you above. Anyway, next:
quote: None of these descriptions are a problem in my paradigm of indigenous African variation.
Hahaha!!! Oh dear, you keep misrepresenting, you just can't help it, can you? So you're aware of indigenous African variability, but the rest of us aren't? The rest of us who reject 'true black', 'negroid' stereotypes and bang on about variability ad nauseam, don't get it?
Oh yeah, what was that paper Irish wrote where northern Sudanese examples were found to show "sub-Saharan" cranio-facial features, but/and "North African" dental traits? I remember Djehuti commenting something along the lines of the North African/Sub-Saharan African dichotomy being a false one...
And I remember Keita (1996)writing that in terms of cranio-facial traits and limb lengths, ancient Egyptians are closer to other North-East Africans than Greeks:
quote: The descriptions and terms of ancient Greek writers have sometimes been used to comment on Egyptian origins. This is problematic since the ancient writers were not doing population biology. However, we can examine one issue. The Greeks called all groups south of Egypt "Ethiopians." Were the Egyptians more related to any of these "Ethiopians" than to Greeks? As noted, cranial and limb studies have indicated greater similarity to Somalis, Kushites and Nubians, all "Ethiopians" in ancient Greek terms" (p23).
Anyway, again, in his lecture, Irish pointed out pre-dynastic/dynastic/post-dynastic continuity, and spoke of Lower and Upper Egyptian homogeneity.
That's not to say that I'm particularly a fan of Irish,but among his commentary there is useful info.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
quote:I remember Djehuti commenting something along the lines of the North African/Sub-Saharan African dichotomy being a false one...
This one in particular is going to come in handy later on. Note the confused attempt of going out on a limb since his source (Irish) is saying the exact opposite. His source IS, in fact, saying that there is a legitimate dichotomy between SSA and North Africa as far as this dental pattern is concerned. So, in one second he's quote-mining Irish's "homogeneous" part, but the next he's in bald-faced denial about the traits they were homogeneous in and how these traits relate to other Africans?
Given the fact that Irish explicitly states that the troll's so-called "non-black" Maghrebis have the same dental pattern as the AE, it begs the question how the troll knows that the dynastic lower Egyptians were homogeneous in the sense of lacking more common ancestry with these so-called "non-blacks". Given that this sort of exclusion of so-called "non-blacks" is what the troll is really after when he manipulates and lies about Irish's use of "homogeneous", how does the troll know that Egyptians who diverged from the predynastic type in dynastic times didn't have a greater amount of common ancestry (or even admixture) with these so-called "non-blacks"?
He doesn't know anything. He's deliberately lying as usual. He's simply abusing Irish's work to turn these lower Egyptians he's uncomfortable with into something more palatable. As I've already established, this "homogeneity" Irish speaks of doesn't neatly circumscribe 'desirable' North Africans and exclude the 'undesirable' so-called "non-black" Maghrebis as the liar will have you believe.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Swenet says: ^Do you have anything rare/new on pre-dynastic lower Egyptians?
Nothing that we haven't all seen before. Irish does seem at times to reach for stereotypical constructs based on limited samples to reach conclusions such as the mid-holocene population replacement notion above.
^^Good find. These older guys quite happily accept elements of the dynastic race theory, though they do note "infiltration" of "negro strains".
Tropicals says: Zaharan, Irish didn't say anything about Lower Egyptians beyond what's quoted above. If you've not already, read his 2004(?) paper, Who were the Ancient Egyptians? Irish's findings indicate population continuity and homogeneity as quoted above.
I need to pull his paper and re-read it. But in any event the continuity would include the infiltrators of the "negro strains." Exactly why they would be "infiltrating" and not part of the native mix is unknown. But like anything else, Irish would be only one line of evidence among several lines. Irish's sampling bears watching too. In some studies his "north africans" is mostly near the Arabized coast, excluding huge areas of "North Africa" further in.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Keita has had some issues with Irish before:
Recently Irish and Turner (1990) and Turner and Markowitz (1990) have suggested that the populations of Nubia and Egypt of the agricultural periods were not primarily descendants of the geographical populations of mesolithic/epipaleolithic times. Based on dental morphology, they postulate an almost total replacement of the native/African epipaleolithic and neolithic groups by populations or peoples from further north (Europe or the Near East?). A similarity in dental traits is noted between epipaleolithic Nile valley peoples and modern West Africans and also found for craniometrie traits (Strouhal 1984). They argue that the rate of evolutionary change required to achieve the later dentitions would be greater than that for epipaleolithic to ne- olithic dental changes in other parts of the world, and see no reason why this should be true in the lower Nile valley. They take issue with the well-known post-Pleistocene/hunting dental reduction and simplification hypotheses which postulate in situ microevolution driven by dietary change, with minimal gene flow (admixture) (see Carlson and Van Gerven 1979).
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 com- munities 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 requir- ing 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 continu- ity in Upper Egypt-Nubia in a broad sense from the late paleolithic through dynastic periods, although change occurred. - Keita 1993
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
I reference one of the findings from the lecture -population continuity and homogeneity - and it triggers Swenet's tic. The Irish statements appear to have rattled him and I'm trying to think why..something to do with Lower Egypt? And I hope you're not suggesting that we reject studies/authors out of hand if their positions don't fully accord with our approach and understanding?
Anyway, again, I repeat, I forwarded Irish's comments to a supportive academic, who, whilst having questions, recommended use of them. Swenet hasn't yet referred to this. I wonder why?
Ancient Egyptian cranio-facial traits and limb lengths as Keita (1996) states, show similarity with other North-East black Africans/'Ethiopians'. Irish, whatever you might think of his work, concludes that the ancient Egyptian population was,based on the dental records, homogeneous across Upper and Lower Egypt, and biologically constant from pre-dynastic to post- dynastic.Along with the Patricia Smith study on pre-dynastic Lower Egyptian limb lengths,it's another nail in the coffin for the argument that the population was bifurcated between Lower and Upper Egypt. Irish dichotimises North and sub-Saharan Africa, but his own work in northern Sudan, as indicated by Djehuti, means that this is flawed. Meat and bones. We know enough from multiple lines of evidence that the population had inner African ancestry. Irish's work says the population was continuous and homogeneous, at least dentally.
There's nothing nefarious or underhand in my citing Irish here.
But carry on.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
See the dense intransigence I'm talking about? See the lies I'm talking about? See his inclination to deflect? See how incompetent he is? Everything I've accused him of, from his lies to his misrepresentations, is constantly displayed by him when he's confronted over his foul play. People don't even have to take my word for it: just see how he reacts.
Note how he constantly tries to hide variations in ancient Egypt by using deceptive terms like "black African phenotype" and "homogeneous". You can tell this is deceptive because the people he's trying to mislead wouldn't use the terms he's peddling to them if given the choice. This is why I say that his use of 'black' is a trojan horse. It has nothing to with the basic quality of being African. In fact, it distracts from it.
quote:it's another nail in the coffin for the argument that the population was bifurcated between Lower and Upper Egypt.
Another gem that confirms my accusation that he's salty and bitter about the dynastic lower Egyptian type. So salty, that he tries to run to Irish and lie to himself and others about what Irish said, to get relief.
Note how he dangles from author to author even though the thing that makes him panic about Keita is conclusive and can't be nullified by spamming Irish. Keita and others have already demonstrated that dynastic Egyptians of the lower Egyptian type are heterogeneous in ways that dynastic Egyptians of the predynastic type aren't. He's just dangling from author to author based on his confirmation bias. Then he tries to say there is nothing underhanded about what he's doing. Right
quote:Irish dichotimises North and sub-Saharan Africa, but his own work in northern Sudan, as indicated by Djehuti, means that this is flawed.
Another gem. He's obviously saying this because he's in denial about the phenotype of dynastic northern Sudanese, which he's described earlier as uniformly consisting of the "black African phenotype". So far the fraud has failed to substantiate to what extent this is true. Either way, the spurious reasoning is that, since lower Nubians could be of the "black African" phenotype, Irish distinction between North Africas and SSA dental patterns is artificial. His epic incompetence and typological tendencies are showing again.
The fraud says there is nothing underhanded about his denial that the difference between the predynastic and the lower Egyptian type is due to increased heterogeneity. But the fraud knows that the Egyptian dental pattern is found all over North Africa and therefore, can't be used to rule out heterogeneity. Hypothetically speaking, it's conceivable that mass migration from his so-called "non-black" Kabyles to lower Egypt would only introduce modest changes in the non-metric dental record. But, according to the fraud, the mere "homogeneity" of the lower Egyptian dental pattern can magically rule this out.
So, yes, it's very deceptive and underhanded. It was already deceptive and underhanded to try to circumvent Keita and others by trying to run to Irish for relief in the first place. Note the gaping gap between Irish's work (which shows the relative homogeneity of much of North Africa) and the fraud's attempts to stereotype the Egyptian dental pattern in some special category devoid of his so-called "non-black" Maghrebis. Moreover, he's doing it using an author who couldn't disagree more. But I'm grateful for these very quote-worthy gems. I hope he keeps them coming. Very useful.
Posted by Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
quote:I remember Djehuti commenting something along the lines of the North African/Sub-Saharan African dichotomy being a false one...
This one in particular is going to come in handy later on. Note the confused attempt of going out on a limb since his source (Irish) is saying the exact opposite. His source IS, in fact, saying that there is a legitimate dichotomy between SSA and North Africa as far as this dental pattern is concerned. So, in one second he's quote-mining Irish's "homogeneous" part, but the next he's in bald-faced denial about the traits they were homogeneous in and how these traits relate to other Africans?
Given the fact that Irish explicitly states that the troll's so-called "non-black" Maghrebis have the same dental pattern as the AE, it begs the question how the troll knows that the dynastic lower Egyptians were homogeneous in the sense of lacking more common ancestry with these so-called "non-blacks". Given that this sort of exclusion of so-called "non-blacks" is what the troll is really after when he manipulates and lies about Irish's use of "homogeneous", how does the troll know that Egyptians who diverged from the predynastic type in dynastic times didn't have a greater amount of common ancestry (or even admixture) with these so-called "non-blacks"?
He doesn't know anything. He's deliberately lying as usual. He's simply abusing Irish's work to turn these lower Egyptians he's uncomfortable with into something more palatable. As I've already established, this "homogeneity" Irish speaks of doesn't neatly circumscribe 'desirable' North Africans and exclude the 'undesirable' so-called "non-black" Maghrebis as the liar will have you believe.
Swenet, I am not so familiar with Irish his works. But can you explain this one:
quote:"Still, it appears that the process of state formation involved a large indigenous component. Outside influence and admixture with extraregional groups primarily occurred in Lower Egypt—perhaps during the later dynastic, but especially in Ptolmaic and Roman times (also Irish, 2006). No large-scale population replacement in the form of a foreign dynastic ‘race’ (Petrie, 1939) was indicated.
Our results are generally consistent with those of Zakrzewski (2007). Using craniometric data in predynastic and early dynastic Egyptian samples, she also concluded that state formation was largely an indigenous process with some migration into the region evident. The sources of such migrants have not been identified; inclusion of additional regional and extraregional skeletal samples from various periods would be required for this purpose."
-- Schillaci MA, Irish JD, Wood CC.
Further analysis of the population history of ancient Egyptians. 2009
I'm assuming you're pointing out that Irish thinks ancient Egyptians and Nubians were indigenous Africans?
Irish considers the (pre)dynastic Egyptians and Nubians to have been the product of mid-holocene colonists of the lower Nile, not of proto-dynastic colonists (i.e. the "Dynastic Race theory"). His rejection of Petrie's dynastic race theory is not an acknowledgment that there was no replacement at all. So even if he calls them "indigenous", he simply means that his ultimately Eurasian people settled the these parts of North Africa. It's simply the same old U6=autochtonous but ultimately Eurasian talk. When academics call U6 autochtonous, most of them are not saying that it should be classified with African lineages.
See Zaharan's quotes where Keita talks about Irish et al. Also read the actual paper. Did you read it? Irish is not itching to put things in an African context:
quote:Most traits describe crown and root appearance or position in permanent teeth. Rocker jaw is the only nondental (i.e., cranial) attribute. Although a hallmark of Polynesians, where frequencies approach 95% for some groups (Houghton, 1976; Pietrusewsky, 1984; Kean and Houghton, 1990), convexity of the mandible’s horizontal ramus is also found in Europe. This occurrence has not been published, but Turner (personal communication, 2008) reports that the developmental trait occurs in 10– 20% of adult Europeans at ASUDAS grades of 1–2 (i.e., near- and full-rocker), and dates to at least the late Pleistocene. In addition, a mean incidence of 19.3% at these same grades has been reported in 12 trans-North African samples, with a range of 0–41% (Irish, 1993, 1998a,b). Rocker jaw is similarly common, i.e., 19.2%, in the present Egyptian samples, with a range of 10–32% (Irish, 2006); it is this considerable variation, like that of the 21 other traits, that enhances intersample discrimination; its inclusion also allows direct comparisons with the previous study (Irish, 2006).
quote:Expectedly, therefore, several commonalities are apparent. The relative uniqueness of Gebel Ramlah suggests that this particular Neolithic group did not contribute substantially to the ancestry of subsequent predynastic Nile Valley groups. It is important to note that Gebel Ramlah is also geographically distant from the Nile Valley.
quote:That study (Irish, 2006) provided evidence for predynastic/dynastic continuity, especially during the early dynastic in Upper Egypt. Temporal and geographic distributions of biological variation among skeletal samples in the present study also suggest that in situ development was associated with Egyptian state formation, albeit with some indications of migration and/or gene flow. As such, we could reject neither Hypothesis 1, the in situ model, nor Hypothesis 2, the development by-invading-population model. Still, it appears that the process of state formation involved a large indigenous component.
Posted by Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
Swenet,
So, to him they didn't come from the South? Rather from "Eurasia"? If so, I completely misinterpreted that paper. Considering that he mentioned Sonia Zakrzewski.
"I'm assuming you're pointing out that Irish thinks ancient Egyptians and Nubians were indigenous Africans?"
Yes, that is what I suspected by that citation. Thanks for the update.
Posted by Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
I am trying to understand his position better.
quote: By c. 2050 BC a small community of C-Group Nubians was present deep within Egyptian territory at the city of Hierakonpolis. Their descendants stayed for the next 400 years. Today, the site of Hierakonpolis, 113 km north of Aswan, is known for its Egyptian deposits; however, it also contains a C-Group cemetery, which documents the northernmost occurrence of this culture. Sixty skeletons were excavated.
Tombs feature Nubian architecture and goods, including leather garments, although the use of Egyptian mortuary practices and artifacts increased through time. Dates range from the early 11th Dynasty into the Second Intermediate period. During this time the Egyptian empire occupied Lower Nubia, and their state ideology vilified Nubians. Yet, at least in death, the C-Group inhabitants of Hierakonpolis proudly displayed their cultural heritage. Beyond discerning the reason(s) for their presence at the site (e.g., mercenaries, leather-workers, entertainers?), the focus of this report is to estimate their biological affinity. Were they akin to other Nubians, Egyptians, or both?
And, was increasing 'Egyptianization' evident in the mortuary ritual accompanied by concomitant genetic influence? To address these queries, up to 36 dental morphological traits in the recovered individuals were compared to those in 26 regional comparative samples. The most influential traits were identified and phenetic affinities were calculated using the mean measure of divergence and other multivariate analyses. Assuming phenetic similarity provides an estimate of genetic relatedness, these affinities suggest the individuals comprising the C-Group sample were, and remained Nubian during their tenure at Hierakonpolis.
-- Irish JD1, Friedman R.
Dental affinities of the C-group inhabitants of Hierakonpolis, Egypt: Nubian, Egyptian, or both?
Homo. 2010 Apr;61(2):81-101. doi: 10.1016/j.jchb.2010.02.001. Epub 2010 Feb 24.
quote:The origins of one of the most powerful sociopolitical entities of the Nile Valley, the Napatan State (850-650BCE), are debated. Some scholars have suggested local development of this influential Nubian State, while others propose foreign involvement. This study uses a bioarchaeological approach to examine the biological affinity of these Ancient Nubians. The focal site of this research, Tombos, is one of few non-central Napatan Period sites that have been excavated and can, therefore, shed light on the broader Napatan populace. Dental non-metric trait frequencies were examined in the Tombos sample as well as in 12 comparative samples to elucidate the biological affinities of these populations. Analyses indicate that Tombos dental non-metric trait frequencies were not significantly different from the majority of Egyptian and Nubian samples examined here. Therefore, we propose that gene flow, encouraged by long-term coexistence and intermarriage in Nubia, created an Egyptian/Nubian transcultural environment. These findings suggest the Napatan population at Tombos included descendants of Egyptians and Nubians. The Napatan Tombos sample was found to significantly differ from the latter Kushite and Meroitic samples; however, these samples are so temporally removed from the Napatan Period, we suspect subsequent episodes of population movement may have contributed to this variation.
--Schrader S1, Buzon M2, Irish J3.
Illuminating the Nubian 'Dark Age': a bioarchaeological analysis of dental non-metric traits during the Napatan Period.
Homo. 2014 Aug;65(4):267-80. doi: 10.1016/j.jchb.2014.05.001. Epub 2014 May 20.
He acknowledges the Badarians were ancestrally representative, but he has been known to push a "Eurasian" style replacement scenario, that is contradicted by the weight of other evidence in the field- such as limb proportions and crania. Perhaps in his lecture he stressed continuity and downplayed his "incoming Caucasoids" notions, which are contradicted by other scholars. A pattern with some of these academics is to play a double game- they say one thing for public consumption, but in the fine detail of their writings they are manipulating models, sampling, reporting and labels to say something else. Keita criticizes Cavalli Sforza et al for the same type of double game- Sforza publicly disavows race, but in his writings, introduces race in new guises. With many of these academics they have to be closely scrutinized. Some of their work may contain more balanced info, but they may bury this in pursuit of some agenda. Some of these people may have no malicious intent but their training makes them automatically reach for Eurocentric approaches.
Keita on Sforza and others double game:
This gene-language study is further compro- mised by poor representation of the members of some language families and the use of the race constructs, which force boundaries onto a seamless biocultural and historical matrix with extensive geographical parame- ters. Cavalli-Sforza and his colleagues (1988) do not ac- curately represent the Afro-Asiatic family because they exclude Chadic, Omotic, and Cushitic speakers, thereby giving the illusion that Ethiopians are an anomaly, being genetically Africans (but mixed) who also speak the lan- guages of Caucasians (Afro-Asiatic!?) (Armstrong 1990). An evolutionary model explains the geographical range of Afro-Asiatic speakers as one overlaying gradients of genetic differentiation, which a racial model breaks into discrete units that cannot be shown to have ever existed.
Another example of ambiguous branching patterns and clusters within inferred phylogenies is seen in the work of Masatoshi Nei and K. Roychoudhury (1993). Their study, which utilized gene-frequency data from samples derived from the traditional racial constructs, revealed poor support from bootstrap tests for a cluster designated Caucasian and consisting of European and Middle Eastern populations. Although this poor support is more reflective of the inadequacy of typological con- structs and racial thinking, the investigators excluded the non-European samples and subsequently obtained results more satisfying to them. The data in effect were tailored to fit into the traditional racial schema. Other examples of the persistence of racial think- ing may easily be identified. The examples cited above illustrate this problem in otherwise interesting work. The issue is not simply one of terminology. The racial approach clearly does not contribute to an under- standing of biohistorical processes, especially in Africa, which cannot be defined by one trait or cluster of traits, on any level: serogenetic, mtDNA, Y chromosome, nu- clear DNA, odontometric, odontomorphological, cra- niometrie, craniomorphological, hair form, or skin color. --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
----------------------------------------------- ^^Given these games, one can understand Keita's call elsewhere for a balanced arsenal of evidence on several lines: DNA, cranial, skeletal, cultural, artefact. etc etc
In older work, the same pattern of Eurocentric manipulation emerges. Reports from the field exclude or downplay "negroid" samples
"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.].. --Keita, S. O. Y, 1995. "A brief review of studies and comments on ancient Egyptian biological relationships,
Another method of Eurocentric manipulation is to mislabel the negro data as "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... --S.O.Y Keita, "Studies of Ancient Crania From Northern Africa
Another snippet of criticism of Irish from Keita:
"Irish and Turner (1990) suggest almost total replacement of native Nubian and Egyptian populations by Caucasoids from the north, based on dental changes. Keita (1993) notes that this finding is inconsistent with the preponderance of most studies in the field, which show no proof of mass replacement, and that dental changes could be due to routine natural selection."
--Keita, Studies and Comments
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
^Bingo.
This is the timing of the population replacement Irish had in mind before the al Khiday sample forced him to go back to the drawing board:
quote:If the present Nubian dental patterns are indeed indicative of underlying genetic variation (per Scott et al., 1983; Rightmire, 1999), it is unlikely that the Jebel Sahaba people were closely related to subsequent regional inhabitants. As such, this finding contradicts the idea of genetic continuity (see above) between Late Paleolithic and recent populations (i.e., Meroitic, X-Group, and Christian) (e.g., Greene, 1972; Carlson and Van Gerven, 1977; Small, 1981; Smith and Shegev, 1988; Calcagno, 1989), and instead suggests discontinuity (e.g., Irish and Turner, 1990; Turner and Markowitz, 1990; Irish, 1993, 1997, 1998a,b,d). In accordance with the latter model, it is then implied that replacement or genetic swamping of an existing gene pool by an outside group, or groups, occurred after the Pleistocene (Irish and Turner, 1990; Turner and Markowitz, 1990; Irish, 1998d). Prior sample limitations precluded a secure age estimate for this purported discontinuity, other than to state that it probably occurred “by at least the 18th Dynasty of the New Kingdom” (Irish, 1998d, p. 167). The new results indicate that this date may now be pushed back to at least ca. 5,600 BP, during or prior to the Final Neolithic.
Population Continuity vs. Discontinuity Revisited: Dental Affinities Among Late Paleolithic Through Christian Era Nubians—Irish (2005)
^Note that the Final Neolithic sample he's talking about is older than the Badarian, so his BP date above is in error. It should be >4400BC, not 5.6kya. Also, note that Irish's mid-holocene timing for the widespread dissemination of the ancestors of (pre)dynastic Egyptians and lower Nubians isn't completely grabbed out of thin air, as many scholars note a scarcity of skeletal material along the lower Nubian and Egyptian shores in the time period between the Mesolithic and the Badarians and Tasians.
Anyway, then, in 2012, Irish moved away from this extremely late appearance of the ancestors of (pre)dynastic Egyptians and lower Nubians. In his poster he doesn't exactly say that he retracts some of his earlier conclusions. But as Zaharan says, sometimes they talk in code, so you have to read between the lines to pick that up.
quote:Using the Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System to record traits and multivariate statistics to estimate pairwise affinities, it is evident that al Khiday is closely akin to most Holocene samples. It is widely divergent from Jebel Sahaba. As such, there does appear to be long-term biological continuity in the region after all – though with late Pleistocene Upper- instead of Lower Nubians. While it cannot be proven that the al Khiday people were directly related, they are, minimally, indicative of what such an ancestor would be like – assuming that phenetic affinities are indicators of genetic variation.
Teeth are hardly a decisor but do SW Asian crop eaters have similar teeth? How long were these crops introduced and how far south did they spread wwhen?
What were the foods moving north from Sudan and dental morphology of their eaters?
Posted by Nodnarb (Member # 3735) on :
I think Irish, like many other bio-anthropologists, might be working with the popular equation of "North Africans" with Mediterranean Eurasians, as contrasted with a "sub-Saharan" south. As I've said before, most people have a binary view of Africa as split into a "Mediterranean" North and a "Negroid" South, with maybe a few "Hamitics" representing a gradient between them. I don't believe our concept of an indigenous Saharan population substructure, distinct from both Eurasian and sub-Saharan ones, has occurred to most anthropologists even if they should know better. They may not be intellectually racialist, but they are still subject to deeply entrenched cultural conditioning.
Posted by Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
@Swenet and zarahan,
I did read/ glimps some of Irish his older papers where he clearly bolstered the word caucasoids. But those dated from before or early 2000.
I truly thought that he changed his position in the 2009 paper. "Further analysis of the population history of ancient Egyptians." But as you guys explained, this apparently isn't the case at all.
quote:He acknowledges the Badarians were ancestrally representative, but he has been known to push a "Eurasian" style replacement scenario, that is contradicted by the weight of other evidence in the field- such as limb proportions and crania.
Does this mean he presented the Badarians as "Eurasian types", or the result of "Eurasian types"? And how does his position add up with the following:
quote: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 [...]
Any interpretation of the biological affinities of the ancient Egyptians must be placed in the context of hypothesis informed by the archaeological, linguistic, geographic or other data.
In this context the physical anthropological evidence indicates that the 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"
--Kathryn A. Bard (STEPHEN E. THOMPSON Egyptians, physical anthropology of Physical anthropology)
quote:"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)
quote:Originally posted by Nodnarb: I think Irish, like many other bio-anthropologists, might be working with the popular equation of "North Africans" with Mediterranean Eurasians, as contrasted with a "sub-Saharan" south. As I've said before, most people have a binary view of Africa as split into a "Mediterranean" North and a "Negroid" South, with maybe a few "Hamitics" representing a gradient between them. I don't believe our concept of an indigenous Saharan population substructure, distinct from both Eurasian and sub-Saharan ones, has occurred to most anthropologists even if they should know better. They may not be intellectually racialist, but they are still subject to deeply entrenched cultural conditioning.
The stereotype of the true "negro" has been the main problem from the get-go.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Ish says The stereotype of the true "negro" has been the main problem from the get-go.
Without the stereotype of the "true negro" numerous edifices, some of which people have built careers on, come crashing down. Some of it is not malice but just the mentality of decades of ingrained Eurocentric thinking- the binary view- on one side perfect white people- the supposed "norm" and then there's the Other" over yonda. Speaking of stereotypical "true" types..
I did read/ glimps some of Irish his older papers where he clearly bolstered the word caucasoids. But those dated from before or early 2000. I truly thought that he changed his position in the 2009 paper. "Further analysis of the population history of ancient Egyptians." But as you guys explained, this apparently isn't the case at all.
Haven't seen his Further analysis" paper in full but I would not be surprised if he is just playing a "public consumption" game but his detailed studies say something else. Did he really change?
Nodarb says They may not be intellectually racialist, but they are still subject to deeply entrenched cultural conditioning.
Agreed, and allowance has to be made for that, and indeed some of these folks have come around somewhat in recent years. But there is also an agenda at work too in the academy, which Irish and his followers demonstrate. Outside of that are the racialists and racists of "hereditarian" or "HBD" ilk. The edifice of their deceptive propaganda is built on a version of the "true negro"- the "Other" that can be disparaged, distorted and invidiously contrasted against would be "role models" of perfection. Take away the true negro and the corrupt edifice collapses in several areas. It is a central pillar, they cannot let it go.
That;s why it will take not only academics, but lay folk outside to both defend against and attack the edifice continuously. The exact group or venue - doesn't matter- each can work their side of the street. The important thing is a broad "operational" unity or front that can do combat work, as well as develop the knowledge for its own sake. Both tracks can work together concurrently.
Good roundup. Sundiata says Irish admitted he wasted everyone's time for 30 years but doesn't really give details. Is he talking abut the 2009 paper? What's the "smoking gun as you see it?
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
^Sundiata's comments are in response to the complete change in tune between that Irish 2012 APAA abstract Evergreen posted in that same thread and Irish's earlier conclusions about a lack of in-situ continuity for Nubians. I don't know what Sundiata's 30 years are based on, but Irish and Turner have been drawing these premature conclusions for at least since the early 90s, feeding people like Mathilda and others who've heavily cited his work to argue against an African involvement in the region.
The al Khiday sample itself is the smoking gun. Given its age (likely Upper Palaeolithic), the main ancestors of (pre)dynastic Egyptians and lower Nubians have always been there alongside the better known Jebel Sahabans and Wadi Halfa type populations who were probably ancestral to modern day southern Sudanese (e.g. Dinka and Shilluk). There was no population replacement in the sense that Irish envisioned all this time:
As such, there does appear to be long-term biological continuity in the region after all . . . . —Joel Irish 2012
Posted by Punos_Rey (Member # 21929) on :
quote:Originally posted by Nodnarb: I think Irish, like many other bio-anthropologists, might be working with the popular equation of "North Africans" with Mediterranean Eurasians, as contrasted with a "sub-Saharan" south. As I've said before, most people have a binary view of Africa as split into a "Mediterranean" North and a "Negroid" South, with maybe a few "Hamitics" representing a gradient between them. I don't believe our concept of an indigenous Saharan population substructure, distinct from both Eurasian and sub-Saharan ones, has occurred to most anthropologists even if they should know better. They may not be intellectually racialist, but they are still subject to deeply entrenched cultural conditioning.
"I don't believe our concept of an indigenous Saharan population substructure, distinct from both Eurasian and sub-Saharan ones"
I believe this is what Swenet has been getting at when attacking Doug M's insistence to use black in a racial sense. I just still don't get how people can apply black as a racial category to Sub-Saharans and not to dark skinned Saharan populations(except the Nubians apparently). And even if distinct, aren't the Saharan populations and Sub-Saharan populations still tied by the Green Sahara period and interimittent contact thereafter? You guys have been at this a lot longer than I have so forgive any ignorance on my part.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
^I'm going to leave that issue you raised to Nodnarb since you directed it to him. Just a minor observation to be fair to Doug M and clarify:
quote:Originally posted by Punos_Rey: I believe this is what Swenet has been getting at when attacking Doug M's insistence to use black in a racial sense.
^I don't know if Doug is the one that needs reminding of the existence of different types of ancestry in Africa on a fundamental level (so far he keeps repeating it has nothing to do with it so I have no evidence that Doug is in denial about that in and of itself).
The main reason why the topic of Saharan ancestry comes up in my discussion with Doug is because he tries to act like European scholars were completely inventing their racial schemes. It wasn't all made up and that's why I've been confronting Doug with Saharan ancestry and its affinities. I could just as easily have cited early Asian and Pacific populations who have been appropriated by Eurocentric academics (e.g. Kennewick Man), but I chose the African comparison to keep it more on-topic. When you look at these skeletal remains, you'll see that there is broad overlap with the ancestors of Europeans. People can try to act like the tendency of these Eurocentric academics to see 'Caucasian' affinities everywhere was 100% deliberate racism and pseudoscience, but modern statistical analyses produce similar results at times (i.e. overlap between the ancestors of Europeans and generalized populations elsewhere): http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.21425/abstract Posted by Nodnarb (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Punos_Rey: I just still don't get how people can apply black as a racial category to Sub-Saharans and not to dark skinned Saharan populations(except the Nubians apparently). And even if distinct, aren't the Saharan populations and Sub-Saharan populations still tied by the Green Sahara period and interimittent contact thereafter? You guys have been at this a lot longer than I have so forgive any ignorance on my part.
In the beginning as you know, "black" appears to have started out as a pigmentation-based reference. That's why dark brown populations in, say, India could be called "black" but not lighter-skinned Khoisan ones in southernmost Africa. As to why the terminology evolved to refer strictly to West/Central Africans and their offshoots in the Diaspora, I am not sure. My guess is that, since white supremacist racialism developed in the context of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, somewhere along the line "Black" became associated with slaves who were predominantly from West and Central Africa.
I do think early "scientific" racialists had an investment in dissociating AE (and their relatives in northeastern Africa by proxy) from the ancestry of Afro-Diasporan slaves as part of their white supremacist agenda. They might have conceded AE weren't pale like Europeans, but they still must have been looking for any characteristics that would differentiate them from stereotyped "real Negroes". As it happens, they got lucky with the Saharans already having a distinct substructure. On the other hand, some of them also would have classified Melanesians and Aboriginal Australians as "Negroids", and I have seen modern-day white supremacists on the Internet confuse them with Africans on Internet forums like VNN.
That isn't to say nobody would have noticed physical differences across African populations before then. All I'm saying is that the desire to emphasize these differences in order to "wash" AE from the "taint" of "Black" or "sub-Saharan African" influence has been a real thing.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Modern DNA studies show ancient African movement to, and presence in ancient Iberia (Spain) going back to the Mesolithic, long before any Roman Empire, or colonial slave trade era.
Over the sands and far away: Interpreting an Iberian mitochondrial lineage with ancient Western African origins- QUOTE.
OBJECTIVES: There is an ongoing effort to characterize the genetic links between Africa and Europe, mostly using lineages and haplotypes that are specific to one continent but had an ancient origin in the other. Mitochondrial DNA has been proven to be a very useful tool for this purpose since a high number of putatively European-specific variants of the African L* lineages have been defined over the years. Due to their geographic locations, Spain and Portugal seem to be ideal places for searching for these lineages.
METHODS: Five members of a minor branch of haplogroup L3f were found in recent DNA samplings in the region of Asturias (Northern Spain), which is known for its historical isolation. The frequency of L3f in this population (˜1%) is unexpectedly high in comparison with other related lineages in Europe. Complete mitochondrial DNA sequencing of these L3f lineages, as well phylogenetic and phylogeographic comparative analyses have been performed.
RESULTS: The L3f variant found in Asturias seems to constitute an Iberian-specific haplogroup, distantly related to lineages in Northern Africa and with a deep ancestry in Western Africa. Coalescent algorithms estimate the minimum arrival time as 8,000 years ago, and a possible route through the Gibraltar Strait.
CONCLUSIONS: Results are concordant with a previously proposed Neolithic connection between Southern Europe and Western Africa, which might be key to the proper understanding of the ancient links between these two continents.
-- Pardiñas et. al. 2014. Over the sands and far away: Interpreting an Iberian mitochondrial lineage with ancient Western African origins. Am J Hum Biol. 2014 Aug 11
Move Iberian studies..
[Eng] The origins of European populations have been addressed from various disciplines, highlighting the contribution of population genetics studies. Shuffle two moments in prehistory in which it has been possible to model the gene pool of European populations: the spread of Neolithic and Upper Paleolithic expansions. The ability to retrieve genetic information from past populations provides a unique opportunity to spot check the hypotheses from other disciplines. We studied 197 dental and bone samples of 115 individuals from 17 archaeological sites and Sumerian Neolithic Near East, Nubia Meroitic era and paleolithic, neolithic and post-Neolithic in the Iberian Peninsula. We obtained complete mitochondrial DNA sequences of 244 bp from 35 different individuals were compared with sequences from the same region of current individuals 38 European populations, African and Middle East. In phylogenetic reconstructions based on the distance of Reynolds ancient samples groups are grouped together, away from the extant populations. However, phylogenetic reconstructions made from haplotypes old and new samples illustrates that, although most ancient mitochondrial variants are not present in current populations sampled can relate to more or less closely with them. The composition of haplotypes and haplogroups of ancient samples from Middle East and the Iberian Peninsula differs markedly from that found in the current populations of these geographic regions. In the old sample of middle eastern absence of mitochondrial haplogroups J, U3, W and X, related to the expansion of the Neolithic into Europe. This may be due either to the ancient samples analyzed is not representative-chronologically or geographically-populations that expanded Middle East during the Neolithic well that these variants were not introduced to Europe during the Neolithic. In the old sample of the [u]Iberian Peninsula highlights the presence of a 50% sub-Saharan lines[/u]. These lines may have been introduced during the Solutrean, the Mesolithic or Neolithic. This paper also examined several technical aspects of obtaining authentic ancient DNA and the influence of several variables on the preservation of genetic material." --Fernandez et al. 2005. Mitochondrial DNA polymorphisms in ancient populations of the Mediterranean basin
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Before the pyramids- the origin of Egyptian civilization. Univ of Chicago 2011-Emily Teeter ed -------------------------------------------------------------
The phrase “ancient Egypt” almost automatically evokes the Sphinx, the pyramids, and the golden sar -cophagus of Tutankhamun. However, these iconic images represent Egypt when it was already a fully formed, powerful, and highly centralized state in the third and second millennia bc — the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms. We need to remind ourselves that Egyptian civilization was not a static, timeless culture, and it did not spring into being ex nihilo.
For Egyptologists and archaeologists, much of the fascinating complexity of Egypt derives from precisely the fact that it was a rich, vibrant, living culture that was constantly evolving, while at the same time grounding itself in a set of deeply rooted core elements and symbols that make it unique among the civilizations of the ancient world. How did the Egyptian state begin? This is the fundamental question addressed by the Oriental Institute’s special exhibit Before the Pyramids: The Origins of Egyptian Civilization. It is especially challenging for us to understand and reconstruct the Predynastic origins of Egypt because so many of the key developments took place before the invention of writing, about 3300 bc.
Without texts, researchers are forced to rely heavily on purely archaeological evidence and the interpretation of the relatively small number of artistic depictions of key events and processes. Our exhibit presents some of the objects that are uniquely important pieces in this wordless puzzle. Drawing on both the most current research and on excavations done more than a century ago, Before the Pyramids allows us to examine the Egyptian state at the historical moment of its birth. As volume editor and exhibit curator Emily Teeter notes, Egypt existed as a unified kingdom under pharaonic rule for more than 500 years before the construction of the pyramids in the Old Kingdom. The 120 objects in our exhibit eloquently tell the story of the emergence of Egyptian civilization from its earliest beginnings about 4000 bc down to 2600 bc.
Most derive from the pioneering excavations in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century excavations at Hierakonpolis, Abydos, and Naqada — the most important sites for understanding the late Predynastic period. Before the Pyramids highlights the many threads that combined to form the tapestry of an ancient state society or civilization — kingship or centralized political power, social stratification, elite groups, economic specialization, warfare, writing, and trade, to name just a few. The beautifully crafted stone and ceramic vessels show the extraordinary skill and aesthetics of the master artisans in the late Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods. The presence of imported objects shows us the far-flung trading connections of the earliest Egyptian state. We are especially fortunate to have as centerpieces of our exhibit two priceless loan objects from the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford University — the Battlefield Palette and a unique limestone statue of King Khasekhem. These extraordinary objects have never before been on display in the United States. This catalog is a remarkable volume that pulls together the most recent research by the world’s leading scholars on Predynastic Egypt. It outlines the fascinating story of Sir Flinders Petrie’s initial discovery of the Predynastic period and explains the ways that art, political organization, craft production, burial practices, international trade, and the invention of writing served as key elements that defined the emerging Egyptian state in the fourth and early third millennia bc.
By bringing together the actual artifacts and the theoretical frameworks used to interpret them, the chapters presented here will have lasting value for both the museum visitor and the professional researcher. Before the Pyramids does a wonderful job highlighting the ways that earliest Egypt differed from, and gave rise to, the later, better known magnificence of the Old Kingdom. At the same time we can see unmistakable continuities in the symbolism of kingship and in the core values that flourished for millennia at the heart of Egyptian civilization. By showing us the origins of the Egyptian state, this exhibit only enhances our sense of wonder at the later achievements of this civilization when it reached its zenith.
In some eras, Europeans practiced cannibalism, by consuming the dead flesh of Egyptian mummies.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
New mtDNA study shows movement from Africa into Spain in Early Holocene- some 10,000 years ago- long before any Phonecian, Roman, Arab or colonial era
"Determining the timing, identity and direction of migrations in the Mediterranean Basin, the role of “migratory routes” in and among regions of Africa, Europe and Asia, and the effects of sex-specific behaviors of population movements have important implications for our understanding of the present human genetic diversity. A crucial component of the Mediterranean world is its westernmost region. Clear features of transcontinental ancient contacts between North African and Iberian populations surrounding the maritime region of Gibraltar Strait have been identified from archeological data. The attempt to discern origin and dates of migration between close geographically related regions has been a challenge in the field of uniparental-based population genetics..
To this end, in the present work we have screened entire mtDNA sequences belonging to U6, M1 and L haplogroups in Andalusians —from Huelva and Granada provinces—and Moroccan Berbers. We present here pioneer data and interpretations on the role of NW Africa and the Iberian Peninsula regarding the time of origin, number of founders and expansion directions of these specific markers. The estimated entrance of the North African U6 lineages into Iberia at 10 ky correlates well with other L African clades, indicating that U6 and some L lineages moved together from Africa to Iberia in the Early Holocene. Still, founder analysis highlights that the high sharing of lineages between North Africa and Iberia results from a complex process continued through time, impairing simplistic interpretations. In particular, our work supports the existence of an ancient, frequently denied, bridge connecting the Maghreb and Andalusia." --Hernández et al 2015. Early Holocenic and Historic mtDNA African Signatures in the Iberian Peninsula: The Andalusian Region as a Paradigm. PLoS ONE 10(10)
Most visible ancient African influences in Spain seem more to the west in some mtDNA studies. Waterborne migrations across the Mediterranean was quite possible and documented long before any Arab or Moorish appearance
"The attractive prehistory and history of Andalusia, the widest and most populated region of Spain, makes its present-day human population a prominent objective to detect scenarios of population substructure and to examine the expected impact of African and other Mediterranean populations on the Iberian gene pool. Consistently with the geographical proximity between southern Spain and Africa, previous published studies have obtained results that show evidences of African-linked mtDNA lineages among Andalusians as well as high levels of diversity,either analyzing regional general samples [22, 23, 24] or focusing on other inland territories within the region [16]. Our mitochondrial data presented here will give stronger evidences for a more visible African influence in the west than in the east of Andalusia.. Western Andalusians (from Huelva, present study) register the highest frequencies (14.6%) of African lineages reported until now in the Iberian Peninsula and all over the European continent.
"Some researchers (e.g. [53, 54], among others) have proposed a sea route as the most probable way for Neolithic entrance in Iberia. This process was phased, using sea navigation and boats big enough to transport men, women, and the ‘Neolithic package’ in a movement probably originated in the Gulf of Genoa. Similar methods may have been used between Andalusia and Morocco. Altogether, these events suggest that the interactions between Moroccan and Andalusian populations have been old, continuous, in both ways and with different origins... In the sub-Saharan L macrohaplogroup network (Figure 4B), lineage L1b is characterized by the relevant case number contained in the core. According to [50], its estimated coalescence time is 9.7 kya, so its expansion out of Africa should have taken place during or after Neolithic age. The L1b star-like shape indicates a population expansion, and those migrations which contributed to shape it were not so recent, thus Muslim expansion or more recent migrations accounting for this would not be the main causal reason." --Hernández et al 2014. Human maternal heritage in Andalusia (Spain.. BMC Genetics 15:11
Posted by kdolo (Member # 21830) on :
Doxie.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
"The use of nsibidi is that of ordinary writing. I have in my possession a copy of the record of a court case from a town of Enion [Enyong] taken down in it, and every detail, except the evidence, is most graphically described- the parties in the case, the witnesses, the dilemma of the chief who tried it, his sending out messengers to call other chiefs to help him, the finding of the court and the joy of the successful litigants and of their friends.." --J. K., Macgregor (January-June 1909). "Some Notes on Nsibidi.". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 39: 209-219.
“Elphinstone Daryell, however argues that "many of the signs reproduced are connected with one another and form short stories. He gives several examples of how this is done and one folktale in particular is worthy of mention- the story of the miracle child, born from his mother's knee, who is disowned by his father. In this version the child kills his father with a spear and disappears up a long rope into the sky. This is all skilfullly narrated by the clever assembling of four geometrically patterned symbols, each one representing a section of the story.. As has been shown, writing existed- writing that was not unrelated to literature, and that was pictographic. Side by side with this existed highly developed forms of writing which were in some cases applied to literature.“ -- The Black Mind: A History of African Literature. 1974. O.R. Dathorne, Professor of English, University of Kentucky, University of Minnesota Press. Cite- [Dayrell, Elphinstone (July-December 1911). "Further Notes on 'Nsibidi Signs with Their Meanings from the Ikom District, Southern Nigeria". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 41: 521-540]
"Nsidibi was a script found among a number of Cross River peoples which owed nothing to foreign exemplars- each symbol is an ideograph, as in Chinese. Because each symbol represented a concept, it could be used between peopes speaking different anguages; over 500 signs are recorded, and there is reason to believe that they were only a small partof the whole. There are suggestions that it was used by the Ekpe society but there is a record of a school where children were taught signs. A curious aspect of Nsibidi, as recorded by three separate observers in the early twentieth century, was that many of the signs dealth with love affairs! It seems likely that ideographs dealing with religion and war were kept secret- and that the choice of signs to explain to European officials were an elaborate joke, as well as a way of protecting the realm of the secret/sacred from outsiders." --A History of African Societies to 1870. Elizabeth Isichei, 1997. Professor, University of Otago, New Zealand. Cambridge University Press.
“The Nsibidi signs used by secret societies in various language groups in southern Nigeria, e.g. the Igbo, Efik, and Ekoi have been considered by some to be of a similar pictographic nature, but others have maintained it to be true writing, based on a logographic or syllabary system." -- Gregersen, Edgar A. (1977). Language in Africa: An introductory survey. p. 176.
"However, such systems are also found in areas where Muslim influence has been less strong or is unlikely. Thus, among the Ashanti and other Akan-speaking peoples of Ghana and Cote D'Ivorie, where gold was of great political, economic and symbolic significance, many goldweights bore signs that indicated their precise ponderal value; other signs corresponded to proverbs, while others represented concepts (for example, certain aspects of the Supreme Being). The nsibidi system of the Ekoi, Igbo and Ibibio peoples of the Cross River area of present-day Nigeria used over a thousand signs to represent a considerable number of concepts as well as some sounds. Nsibidi was used to record court cases and convey complex messages, including warnings in wartime, and for summarizing folktales and personal narratives; its pictograms thus constituted a true writing system. As with the Malian systems of graphic signs, knowledge of nsibidi was often acquired within the initiation societies, but unlike the Malian ones, nsibidi signs were often tattooed on the body or dramatically enacted through gestures." --Kevin Shllingford (2004) "Literacy and Indigenous Scripts: Pre-colonial West Africa" - Encyclopedia of African History
Nsibidi is linked not with some Arabs that showed up, but with ancient cultural artifacts and traditions in place for millennia.
The Ikom monoliths in Nigeria for example, frequently show several nsibidi designs such as carefully rendered concentric circles, spirals, lozenges, and other discrete figures. These have been dated by some scholars to 120-220 AD. (Source: Alok and Emangabe stone monoliths: Ikom, Cross River State of Nigeria,-Ezio Bassani, Arte in Africa (Modena: Edizioni Panini, 1986), 103. )
Other objects such as terra cotta carvings and pottery yield similarly early date ranges corresponding to the monoliths- stretching from 450AD- showing a long thread of ancient continuity into the modern era- again pointing to their ancient indigenous West African provenance long before any Europeans or Arabs appeared.
"The Calabar terracottas, found at the other end of the Cross River basin, offer additional early evidence of nsibidi... there are now five radiocarbon dates from Calabar and two from the nearby village of Okang Mbang that generally corroborate each other, and which are associated with hundreds of terracottas that display a considerable range of designs. Combined, the dates encompass the period ca. 450 A.D - 1440 A.D (Fig. 1.5)... When considered together, the individual Calabar results overlap significantly. For example, all five urban Calabar dates overlap in the eighth century, while two of them extend into the eleventh century, where the two Okang Mbang dates begin. Both Okang Mbang dates then correspond until the turn of the fourteenth century.
Thus, if what the archaeological evidence strongly suggests-that nsibidi is indeed a modern iteration of the iconography found on the terracottas-then nsibidi is much older, even more complex, and was distributed over a broader area than previously considered. In short, there is now physical evidence that nsibidi was already a sophisticated phenomenon fifteen hundred years ago! This is remarkable in light of what is currently known about indigenous scripts in sub-Saharan Africa and, therefore, these objects further (and strongly) refute the idea that Africans had no writing until the arrival of Europeans. If modern practices are anything to go by, these signs were not just found on ceramics, but also appeared on wood sculptures, calabashes, textiles, earthen architecture, and the human body, to name just a few examples that would not be expected to survive in the archaeological record of a tropical area such as Calabar.. it is telling that Amanda Carlson, [2003- Nsibiri, gender, and literacy] in her doctoral dissertation on the implications of nsibidi usage among the Ejagham, describes fluency with such signs as literacy." --Slogar C. 2005. ICONOGRAPHY AND CONTINUITY IN WEST AFRICA- CALABAR TERRACOTTAS AND THE ARTS OF THE CROSS RIVER REGION OF NIGERIA/CAMEROON. University of Maryland. 2005.
Africa's Nile Valley shares in creation of the historic alphabet
"Discoveries by Gunter Dreyer of the German Archaeological Institute suggest that the origin of Egyptian writing needs to be reexamined, offering the possibility that the idea of writing was developed in Egypt several centuries before it occurred in the Near East. Inscriptions from hundreds of pots and labels found at the royal cemetery at Abydos show some hieroglyphic writing as far back as 3400 BCE, with most occurring about 3200 BCE. Sumerian writing seems to have begun about 3100 BCE. The Egyptians formed and used writing in a different way than the Asians. The linguistic pictographs of Sumer were rudimentary were used primarily used for commerce. Those of Egypt were more representational of real objects and were primarily employed to identify kings, tombs and the like.
A remarkable find involving early experiments with alphabetic writing in Egypt has been recently made by John C. Darnell, an Egyptologist at Yale University, and his wife Deborah. Inscriptions discovered in the limestone cliffs on an ancient road between Thebes and Abydos, a route once heavily traveled by Asian traders and mercenaries in the Egyptian desert, are in a Semitic script with Egyptian influences. Dated between 1900 and 1000 BCE, they are two or three centuries older than previous evidence of an alphabet in the Semitic-speaking territory of the Sinai Peninsula or in the Syria-Palestine region occupied by the Canaanites. While there have always been indications that Semites were inventors of the alphabet, researchers had heretofore assumed that it was developed in their own lands by borrowing and simplifying Egyptian hieroglyphs. Instead Darnell's discovery now suggests that, working with Semitic speakers in Egypt, native scribes simplified formal pictographic Egyptian writing and modified the symbols into an early alphabet using a semi-cursive form commonly used in the Middle Kingdom."
--Martin Isler (2001). Sticks, stones, and shadows: building the Egyptian pyramids. Univ of Oklahoma PRess. p. 56
The Egyptian Western Desert- location of Egyptian military scripts adopted by both Egyptian scribes and Semitic speakers into alphabetic forms http://www.codex99.com/typography/11.html
"However, now with the recovery of alphabetic writing from the Egyptian Western Desert, the fairly high degree of literacy in Egyptian (knowledge of hieratic, and a hybrid of hieratic and hieroglyphic scripts as well) presumed by these texts, and the well known Asiatic pres-ence within Egypt proper from the early Dynastic periods onwards, strongly suggest that it is to Egypt itself that we must look for the geographi-cal home of alphabetic writing. More specifically, the Bebi inscription and its immediate neighbors offer tantalizing clues about the context in which Semitic-speaking Asiatics adopted and adapted certain aspects of the Egyptian writing system for the needs of their own language(s). The Egyptian military, known both to have employed Asiatics (as the Bebi inscription so wonderfully attests) and to have included scribes, would provide one likely context in which Western Asiatic Semitic language speakers could have learned and eventually adapted the Egyptian writing system. Indeed, the prominence of lapidary hieratic, the form of hieratic utilized by army scribes, as models for alphabetic forms at the Wadi el-Hõl (and at Serabit).." --J. Darnell et al. 2005. Two Early Alphabetic Inscriptions from the Wadi el-Hol: New Evidence for the Origin of the Alphabet from the Western Desert of Egypt, Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 2005.
Posted by BlessedbyHorus (Member # 22000) on :
^^^Do you have any info on the Bassa script that was used in Liberia? I heard it goes as far back as antiquity especially during the Carthage period.
Also how do you make those images?
Posted by BlessedbyHorus (Member # 22000) on :
Anyways VERY good source. I didn't know the Nsibidi was that old. There are many non-Arabic writing systems in West Africa, but most I seen seem to be recent.
But yeah debunks the myth of a Africa without a writing system.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Imgur has some good photo tools. DOn't have anything on Bassa script immediately at hand.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
ROUNDUP: KEITA ON EUROCENTRIC DOUBLE STANDARDS IN STUDYING AFRICA
"“Black Africa,” as usually presented, also is a problematic cultural and biological construct, and a product of philosophical idealism, with an associated set of fixed ideas about phenotypes, culture, and geography. “Black African,” biologically speaking, has been frequently restricted to the extreme “Negro” morphotype, as though this were a biological unit, and below a certain latitude; this would be analogous to “White European” being restricted to the “Nordic” or “East Baltic” phenotype above a certain latitude.
Modern biology, ancient Saharan art and remains, classical European writers and artifacts, and ancient Maghrebian and Nile Valley remains and archaeology make problematic the boundaries of a “Black African” entity in terms of geography, culture, or biological characteristics in the ancient period (see reviews in Snowden, 1970; Hiernaux, 1975; Keita, 1990). “Subsaharan” is not a terminological improvement, since “Blacks” were not confined below any particular latitude. For example, there is morphological continuity of Negroid traits from the later Paleolithic through early dynastic periods in southern Egypt & Nubia (see descriptions in Thoma, 1984; Stewart, 1985; Anderson, 1968; Stoessiger, 1927; Strouhal, 1968; Morant, 1925). Moreover, as Snowden (1970) notes, “Blacks” were described in ancient Carthage and on the southern slopes of the Atlas mountains, all at the latitude of northern Egypt." --Keita 1992. Further studies of ancient crania from North Africa. AJPA 87:245-254
"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
"This gene-language study is further compro-mised by poor representation of the members of some language families and the use of the race constructs, which force boundaries onto a seamless biocultural and historical matrix with extensive geographical parame-ters. Cavalli-Sforza and his colleagues (1988) do not ac-curately represent the Afro-Asiatic family because they exclude Chadic, Omotic, and Cushitic speakers, thereby giving the illusion that Ethiopians are an anomaly, being genetically Africans (but mixed) who also speak the lan-guages of Caucasians (Afro-Asiatic!?) (Armstrong 1990). An evolutionary model explains the geographical range of Afro-Asiatic speakers as one overlaying gradients of genetic differentiation, which a racial model breaks into discrete units that cannot be shown to have ever existed.
Another example of ambiguous branching patterns and clusters within inferred phylogenies is seen in the work of Masatoshi Nei and K. Roychoudhury (1993). Their study, which utilized gene-frequency data from samples derived from the traditional racial constructs, revealed poor support from bootstrap tests for a cluster designated Caucasian and consisting of European and Middle Eastern populations. Although this poor support is more reflective of the inadequacy of typological con-structs and racial thinking, the investigators excluded the non-European samples and subsequently obtained results more satisfying to them. The data in effect were tailored to fit into the traditional racial schema. Other examples of the persistence of racial think-ing may easily be identified. The examples cited above illustrate this problem in otherwise interesting work. The issue is not simply one of terminology. The racial approach clearly does not contribute to an under-standing of biohistorical processes, especially in Africa, which cannot be defined by one trait or cluster of traits, on any level: serogenetic, mtDNA, Y chromosome, nu-clear DNA, odontometric, odontomorphological, craniometrie, craniomorphological, hair form, or skin color." --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
In older work, the same pattern of Eurocentric manipulation emerges. Reports from the field exclude or downplay "negroid" samples
"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.].. --Keita, S. O. Y, 1995. "A brief review of studies and comments on ancient Egyptian biological relationships,
Another method of Eurocentric manipulation is to mislabel the negro data as "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... --S.O.Y Keita, "Studies of Ancient Crania From Northern Africa
Posted by BlessedbyHorus (Member # 22000) on :
@Zaharan
Thanks anyway.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
“Archaeological and genetic evidence indicate that anatomically modern humans arrived in Europe from an African source at least 45,000 years ago, following the initial dispersal out of Africa [1], [2]. However, it is known that Southern Europeans and Levantines (people from modern day Palestine, Israel, Syria and Jordan) have also inherited genetic material of African origin due to subsequent migrations. One line of evidence comes from Y-chromosome [3] and mitochondrial DNA analyses [4]–[6]. These have identified haplogroups that are characteristic of sub-Saharan Africans in Southern Europeans and Levantines but not in Northern Europeans [7]. Auton et al. [8] presented nuclear genome-based evidence for sharing of sub-Saharan African ancestry in some West Eurasians, by identifying a North-South gradient of haplotype sharing between Europeans and sub-Saharan Africans, with the highest proportion of haplotype sharing observed in south/southwestern Europe… we use “African mixture” to refer to gene flow into West Eurasians since the divergence of the latter from East Asians; thus, we are not referring to the much older dispersal out of Africa ∼45,000 years ago but instead to migrations that have occurred since that time. The finding of sub-Saharan African ancestry in West Eurasians predicts that there will be a signature of admixture LD in the populations that experienced this mixture. That is, there will be LD between all markers that are highly differentiated between the two ancestral populations and the allele will be strongly correlated to the local ancestry [23]. Hence, there will be chromosomal segments of African ancestry with lengths that reflect the number of recombination events that have occurred since mixture, and thus can be used to estimate an admixture date. Figure 3 shows that this expected pattern is observed empirically in the decay of LD in four example West Eurasian populations, where we enhance the effects of admixture LD by weighting the SNP comparisons by frequency difference between the ancestral Africans (YRI) and ancestral West Eurasians (CEU). In the Southern European, Jewish and Levantine populations, this procedure produces clear evidence of admixture LD (Figure 3).. “We also detect 3%–5% sub-Saharan African ancestry in all eight of the diverse Jewish populations that we analyzed. For the Jewish admixture, we obtain an average estimated date of about 72 generations. This may reflect descent of these groups from a common ancestral population that already had some African ancestry prior to the Jewish Diasporas.” --- Moorjani, et al. 2011. The history of African gene flow into southern Europeans, Levantines, and Jews. PLoS Genet. 7, e1001373
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
"The phenotypic attributes of GD13a are similar to the neighbouring Anatolian early farmers ****and *** Caucasus Hunter)Gatherers. Based on diagnostic SNPs, she had dark, black hair and brown eyes (see Supplementary). She lacked the derived variant (rs16891982) of the SLC45A2 gene associated with light skin pigmentation but had at least one copy of the derived SLC24A5 allele (rs1426654) associated with the same trait. The derived SLC24A5 variant has been found in both Neolithic farmer and Caucasus hunter)gatherer groups (5, 21, 26)suggesting that it was already at appreciable frequency before these populations diverged. Finally, she did not have the most common European variant of the LCT gene (rs4988235) associated with the ability to digest raw milk, consistent with the later emergence of this adaptation (5, 21, 23). "
--Llorente et al 2016. The genetics of an early Neolithic pastoralist from the Zagros. Biorxiv preprint 2016
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Archaeological Evidence Shows some Meriotic Influence may have ranged down into Central Africa. The move of the Sahara southward obscures cultures once farther north- Quote:
"Further south in Roseires area, Chattaway reported a number of sites, which might be of interest to this question after the exploration (Chattaway 1930: 259-264).. The most recent discoveries of datable sites and objects south of Khartoum suggest the presence of Napatans and Meroites along the Blue and White Niles, probably south of Kosti (Eisa 1987: 155-162; 1990). Such presence is also attested by the discoveries of the Wellcome Expeditions to the Sennar area (Gebel Moya, Abu Geili village and recently the objects found near Grisly village), and by the site and objects of El Getina (site of Mahmoud El Araki). The study of those objects as well as pottery sherds and bricks showed the strong probability of their Napatan and Meroitic affinities. Some other sites between El Getaina and El Kawa could be identified (Ni'ma, Wad el Zaki, Hashaba.. etc).
Near the town of El Kawa we have the site of Hilat Said, where golden objects were found which date most probably to the Napatan period (the inscription says: Imn-r df nh mj r - "God Amun Re gives life like Re', which seems to be a life-scarab) (Eisa 1994). Another scarab was found in Kosti town which may be of the same data as that of Kawa (Arkell 1961: 136-7). South of Kosti the investigations of Else Kleppe showed the presence of archaeological material o a different nature (of probably Meroitic date) (in El Rank area, Upper Nile province; Kleppe 1982a; 1982) as well as in the western Sudan.. So it seems that the White Nile was the route of penetration of the Kushites to these southern regions and the interior of Central Africa."
--Steffen Wenig (1992). Studien zum antiken Sudan. Akten der Internationalen Tagung für meroitische Forschungen vom 14. bis 19. 367-368- September 1992 . IN: Meroitica, v15, 1999
Cameroon: named for River of Prawns(shrimp) = Rio Cameroes by Portugese explorer Franciso Poo. I'd thought it was a local name. Possible link to Meroe?
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
More precision needed. If Kemet means black land, HOW PRECISELY is it related to "Djibouti" which seems to link with "cannibal"or "pot" or "jab" or something else according to various sources? https://www.somalinet.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=233866
And if you are picking out various sound matches associations, why is your particular sound match claim more authoritative than a sound match with something from Arabia or India? Try to show the relevant association and link between the two DIRECTLY and PRECISELY. Not a mass of stuff on something peripheral, but the two words or terms- Kemet and Djibouti.
Posted by Punos_Rey (Member # 21929) on :
I've run into trouble twice with using the database where quotations from studies have been paraphrased or some sections omitted. It would ve really helpful if quotes from studies were verbatim as they appeared as anything less makes people using the database look deceptive.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Maybe but I don't see that in many places. Matter of fact, most people using "the base" have been using it correctly and have achieved success. The actual quotations are in quote marks, and the summaries are in bold. Everything is pretty clear. Sometimes heedless copying and pasting fails to differentiate between these things, but most of the data is clearly out front for all to see. People need to be more careful in copying and pasting, and in applying arguments using the data.
Some are simply doing "blind" copy and paste in various debates without understanding the context of or qualifications involved in the data at hand. They don't take the time to qualify their arguments and keep them within the scope of the data. Some for example want to use Keita's cranial studies to make sweeping claims that he never made. This sloppy approach often runs into problems though some have had partial success even with these weaknesses. On Reloaded 2 years ago I urged certain posters to exercise care and not go beyond the data- such as sweeping claims of mass movement from the Nile Valley to populate West Africa circa fall of the Dynasties. I told them such vast claims were untenable and to scale them down to more defensible proportions. Unfortunately there are still a number of "enthusiasts" who mean well, but may go overboard. I would hope they get better as time goes on and they et more exposure to the various dimensions.
But, another factor at play is various bogus troll gambits, that DELIBERATELY mix narrative summary with actual quote, in desperate attempts to divert attention when they are being defeated or debunked. Its a common ploy. Unable to deal with the data that debunks them left and right, they go into deception and distortion mode. For example they will claim' that the database says ALL of Egypt is in the tropical zone- when in fact the data shows that PART of Egypt is in that zone, and no item of data, or narrative summary ever claimed anything different.
Don't be fooled by diversionary and deceptive "use" of the data- like FBI informants and plants in the 1960s who acted as if they were "down with the people." The citations are given in full, with quote marks clearly in place- and the narrative summaries are usually obvious. Exercise proper care in their use, and verify items with original articles and books if their is any doubt and there will be few problems. I have not seen fighters like Morpheus, Slugger, Big Mike, TPatrol, TooTallJones, and other regulars under different monikers have much problem. They know how to apply things. If anything their opponents typically RUN AWAY from the brutal hammering they usually get with the weight of data is applied correctly. Or when losing they deceptively get administrator "help" to quash or exclude the multiple hammer blows coming at them.
I can see what you say happening if proper care is not taken.
Posted by Brada-Anansi (Member # 16371) on :
I love using your stuff Zarahan and successfully put many in check doing just that, but as you are all over the net and folks know your work, sometimes I get requests for linkable/klikable original sources especially from hostile forces who like to stall for time while searching for come back response, I then had to look-up key phases pg number etc to find the study, would be awesome to say kilk the damned link provided...now answer the damn question!!
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
lol, I know what you mean. There is so much stuff out there the problem is not too little info but targeting the right info- which is another reason for the many info-graphics. There is a definite need for quick reference indeed- hence the "summary" heading are provided as well. But as soon as they start getting into details you have to break out the devil in the detail. Sometimes you don;t have time to argue endlessly with assorted a-holes and you need something quick. Its a trade-off that sometimes has no easy answer but enough is on hand to defeat the deceivers and distorters. Folks should look at the "summary" headings carefully. For example up above it says
Archaeological Evidence Shows some Meriotic Influence may have ranged down into Central Africa. The move of the Sahara southward obscures cultures once farther north-
Note use of the word "SOME". ONe guy I saw was using this to imply the Nubians/Meroeites were marching way down into Zaire building pyramids and collecting taxes, but the heading (with supporting quote below) allows no such sweeping claim. The point is that Kush/Meroe was in part "sub-Saharan, something obscured in part by the movement of the desert.
I suspect though the guy was a "plant" - like the bogus "militant Afrocentrics" who set up extreme strawmen that are then conveniently "refuted" by virtuous Eurocentrics.
For a quick "one-stop" link I have been giving the main Reloaded Data Page, or various info-graphics.
This thread can do the same one-stop duty as well. But info should be duplicated where ever possible so if one or two sites go down it is not lost.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
A need exists for all rational supporters of valid research supported authentic Africana & Black Studies students and authors to speak up on the black ego eccentric anti African agenda or be seen as the right arm of that body of fraud perpetrators.
Silence is often deemed approval and there are those who don't have the background to discern between a well reasoned supportable presentation and a full tilt off the wall fantasy production as can those who have paid their dues and can show the receipt to prove it.
How valuable one's word in the right place at the tight time can be to the impressionable mind of a seeker ...
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
-
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
"Limb length proportions in males from Maadi and Merimde group them with African rather than European populations. Mean femur length in males from Maadi was similar to that recorded at Byblos and the early Bronze Age male from Kabri, but mean tibia length in Maadi males was 6.9cm longer than that at Byblos. At Merimde both bones were longer than at the other sites shown, but again, the tibia was longer proportionate to femurs than at Byblos (Fig 6.2), reinforcing the impression of an African rather than Levantine affinity.“
-- Smith, P. (2002) The palaeo-biological evidence for admix.. In: Egypt & the Levant.. Leicester Univ. 118-28
"The biological characteristics of modern Egyptians show a north-south cline, reflecting their geographic location between sub-Saharan Africa and the Levant. This is expressed in DNA, blood groups, serum proteins and genetic disorders (Filon 1996; Hammer et al. 1998; Krings et al. 1999). They can also be expressed in phenotypic characteristics that can be identified in teeth and bones (Crichton 1966; Froment 1992; Keita 1996). These characteristics include head form, facial and nasal characteristics, jaw relationships, tooth size, morphology and upper/lower limb proportions. In all these features, Modern Egyptians resemble Sub-Saharan Africans (Howells 1989, Keita 1995)."
-- Smith, P. (2002) The palaeo-biological evidence for admixture between populations in the southern Levant and Egypt in the fourth to third millennia BCE. in E.C.M van den Brink and TE Levy, eds. Egypt and the Levant: interrelations from the 4th through the 3rd millenium, BCE. 118-28
Posted by BlessedbyHorus (Member # 22000) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova: Archaeological Evidence Shows some Meriotic Influence may have ranged down into Central Africa. The move of the Sahara southward obscures cultures once farther north- Quote:
"Further south in Roseires area, Chattaway reported a number of sites, which might be of interest to this question after the exploration (Chattaway 1930: 259-264).. The most recent discoveries of datable sites and objects south of Khartoum suggest the presence of Napatans and Meroites along the Blue and White Niles, probably south of Kosti (Eisa 1987: 155-162; 1990). Such presence is also attested by the discoveries of the Wellcome Expeditions to the Sennar area (Gebel Moya, Abu Geili village and recently the objects found near Grisly village), and by the site and objects of El Getina (site of Mahmoud El Araki). The study of those objects as well as pottery sherds and bricks showed the strong probability of their Napatan and Meroitic affinities. Some other sites between El Getaina and El Kawa could be identified (Ni'ma, Wad el Zaki, Hashaba.. etc).
Near the town of El Kawa we have the site of Hilat Said, where golden objects were found which date most probably to the Napatan period (the inscription says: Imn-r df nh mj r - "God Amun Re gives life like Re', which seems to be a life-scarab) (Eisa 1994). Another scarab was found in Kosti town which may be of the same data as that of Kawa (Arkell 1961: 136-7). South of Kosti the investigations of Else Kleppe showed the presence of archaeological material o a different nature (of probably Meroitic date) (in El Rank area, Upper Nile province; Kleppe 1982a; 1982) as well as in the western Sudan.. So it seems that the White Nile was the route of penetration of the Kushites to these southern regions and the interior of Central Africa."
--Steffen Wenig (1992). Studien zum antiken Sudan. Akten der Internationalen Tagung für meroitische Forschungen vom 14. bis 19. 367-368- September 1992 . IN: Meroitica, v15, 1999
This is very interesting.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Many of today’s Egyptians are not necessarily representative of Ancients due to outside migration and admixture from European/Arab sources, particularly in Lower Egypt. Some Coptic claims to be pharanoic descendants not supported by DNA studies or cultural history showing heavy Arabization since 900 AD
Modern Copt genetic profile shows substantial Middle Eastern and European elements: [quote:] "Haplogroups A, B, and E occur mainly in Nilo-Saharan speaking groups including Nilotics, Fur, Borgu, and Masalit; whereas haplogroups F, I, J, K, and R are more frequent among Afro-Asiatic speaking groups including Arabs, Beja, Copts, and Hausa, and Niger-Congo speakers from the Fulani ethnic group.. The bulk of genetic diversity appears to be a consequence of recent migrations and demographic events mainly from Asia and Europe, evident in a higher migration rate for speakers of Afro-Asiatic as compared with the Nilo-Saharan family of languages, and a generally higher effective population size for the former...
The relatively high-effective population size of the Copts is unlikely to have been influenced by their recent history in the Sudan. The current communities are known to be largely the product of recent migrations from Egypt over the past two centuries..“ ---Hassan et al. 2008. Y-chromosome variation.." Am J. Phy An. v137,3. 316-323
Sub-Saharan DNA B-M60 in Sudan may indicate a link with ancient Egypt: [quote:] "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,.. --Hassan 2008
Modern Egyptian population not necessarily representative of the ancients [quote]: "Cosmopolitan northern Egypt is less likely to have a population representative of the core indigenous population of the most ancient times“ – Keita 2005. History in Africa, 2005, 32(1).221-246
"Outside influence and admixture with extraregional groups primarily occurred in Lower Egypt—perhaps during the later dynastic, but especially in Ptolmaic and Roman times (also Irish, 2006).” -Irish 2009. Dental_affinities_of_the_C-group_inhabitants.. Ec Hi Rev
Nubians more related to ancient Egyptians- [quote]: "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." -Starling & Stock 2007. Dental indicators of health.. AJPA 134: 520-28-
Modern Egyptians a mixed population with European and Arab strands-not identical to ancients: “Classical genetic studies show a high degree of genetic heterogeneity in the modern Egyptian population, suggesting that this population is descended from a mixture of African, Asian, and Arabian stock (Mahmoud et al. 1987; Hafez et al. 1986). Genetic heterogeneity within the Egyptian gene pool is also supported by more recent studies using autosomal STR markers (Klintschar et al. 1998; 2001)." ---Manni et al 2002. Y-chromosome analysis in Egypt, Hum Bio, 74:5, 645-658
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.
--Sonia R. Zakrzewski (2007)
"It is often assumed that Egyptian writing was invented under a stimulus of the Mesopotamian writing system, developed in the late fourth millennium BC, that might have come at the time of the short-lived Uruk Culture expansion into Syria. A variety of artistic and architectural evidence for contact between Mesopotamia and late Predynastic Egypt has been found, but none of it can be dated precisely in relation to Tomb U-j. Moreover, **the Egyptian writing system is different from the Mesopotamian and must have been developed independently.** The possibility of “stimulus diffusion” from Mesopotamia remains, but the influence **cannot have gone beyond the transmission of an idea.**
A second point *of contrast with Mesopotamia* is in uses of writing. The earliest Egyptian writing consists of inscribed tags, ink notations on pottery, again principally from the royal cemetery at Abydos, and hieroglyphs incorporated into artistic compositions, of which the chief clear examples are such pieces as the *Narmer Palette,* which is probably more than a century later than Tomb U-j. Thus, while administrative uses of writing appear to have come at the beginning—examples from the Abydos tombs include such notations as “produce of Lower Egypt”—the system was integrated fully into pictorial representation. An intermediate, emblematic mode of representation in which symbols, including hieroglyphs, were shown in action also evolved before the 1st Dynasty. These three modes together formed a powerful artistic complex that endured as long as Egyptian civilization."
--Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999)
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
Mummy mask, Egyptian, wood, 25th/Early 26th Dynasty, circa 750-600 B.C., 13 1/8 inches high
The Assyrian king Esarhaddon, who had conquered Egypt in 671 and had expelled the Nubian pharaohs of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty,note appointed native governors, and when Esarhaddon's successor Aššurbanipal recalled his troops in 664, these governors seized control of the country. One of the local dynasties had Sais (in the western Delta) as its capital. The first of these Saite rulers to be recognized as independent ruler was Psammetichus I, an Egyptianized Libyan who probably descended from the rulers of the Twenty-fourth dynasty. Psammetichus unified Egypt, inaugurated an age of great prosperity, and was clever enough to give the Assyrians the impression that he still served them.
Evidence for the prosperity of this age is that many temples were built, and another indication is the increasing number of contracts written on papyrus, often written in demotic. Great care was also taken to copy ancient literary texts and works of art. The Twenty-Sixth dynasty was a Renaissance, and among its most delightful monuments are the tombs of princess Khetbeneit-erboni II (at Saqqara) and Montuemhat (near Thebes). Only a few dedications to the traditional supreme god Amun are known; the goddess Neith of Sais and the gods of the Osiris cycle became increasingly popular.
Portrait of a pharaoh of the Saite dynasty Against foreign enemies, the Saite kings employed Carian and Greek mercenaries (a typical example is Wahibra-Emakhet). Using these troops, Kush (modern Sudan) was invaded in 593, and after the collapse of the Assyrian empire (612), Necho II made some gains in Palestine, adding Judah to the Egyptian zone of influence. A navy was built as well and several admirals (like Wedjahor-Resne) are mentioned in our sources. However, the Babylonians expelled the Egyptians from Asia; among the refugees were Judaeans who preferred life in Egypt to subjection by the Babylonians. Many of them were resettled as garrison of Elephantine. Under Amasis, Cyprus was conquered and a naval alliance was concluded with the tyrant of Samos, Polycrates.
However, in 525, the Persian king Cambyses invaded Egypt and added the ancient kingdom along the Nile to his realms. Many factors must have contributed to the end of the Egyptian independence (social divisions between settlers and Egyptians, an inexpert new king, treason...), but the deepest cause was that Egypt had no source of iron, which put it at a disadvantage: its best weapons were made of bronze.
Psammetichus II Lycia, Arabia, and Cyprus received land in the Delta, and the Aramaic language, spoken by many people in western Asia, gained popularity. Among the consequences of "opening" of Egypt were a tendency to accept religious practices from the Near East (e.g., astrology and the interpretation of omens), and an increase of social tensions between the native population and the newcomers, which the Saite pharaohs were not always able to control.
A tool was the codification of the Egyptian laws. The first evidence for the existence of this code is from the Persian age, but it appears to be older, because king Darius I ordered the laws to remain as they were in Amasis' final year.
Portrait of a pharaoh of the Saite dynasty Date 672 BCE–525 BCE
Posted by Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
26th Dynasty (Saites)
Kings
Mencheperre Necho I 672-664 Wahibra Psamtik I (Psammetichus I) 664-610 Wehemibra Necho II 610-595 Neferibra Psamtik II (Psammetichus II) 595-589 Ha'a'ibra Wahibra (Apries) 589-567 Chenibra Amose-si-Neith (Amasis) 570-526 Anchkaenra Psamtik III (Psammetichus III) 526-525
Necho I: ruler of the Western Delta between 672 and 664 BCE, founder of the Saite dynasty.
673: The first Assyrian invasion of Egypt is repelled
671: Second Assyrian invasion: Esarhaddon captures Memphis and forces pharaoh Taharqo (Twenty-Fifth Dynasty) to flee to the south
Necho is recognized as governor of the western Delta
669: Taharqo returns to the north, Esarhaddon gathers his troops, but dies; Taharqo captures Memphis and forces the local leaders to support him again
667/666: The Assyrian king Aššurbanipal attacks Egypt again, sacks Thebes, and deports the local leaders from Lower Egypt
666: Necho returns, appointed as viceroy of Memphis and Sais; his son Psammetichus is intended successor
664: Death of Taharqo; his successor Tanwetamani proceeds to Memphis, but is defeated by Necho, who is killed in actionnote Psammetichus flees to Assyria, receives Assyrian support, and is put on the throne Succeeded
Recent studies confirm other scholarship that some artifacts of Predynastic Egypt show close links with nearby sister African cultures in the Sudan region, (including religious links) rather than the alleged universal "mother goddess" models of various Indo-Europeans.
QUOTE: "In 1962, Peter Ucko wrote his landmark work, The Interpretation of Prehistoric Anthropomorphic Figurines, challenging and permanently changing the prevailing view of prehistoric figurines as representations of a universal great mother goddess. His work focused on the Predynastic figurines of Egypt, and concluded that there was nothing divine about them. They were probably dolls, ancestor figures, talismanic pregnancy aids, tools for sex instruction and puberty rites, twin substitutes in graves and concubine grave figurines. Since then, this group of figurines has received minimal attention. Using Ucko’s four-stage methodology, this study more closely examines these figurines in the context of Ancient Egyptian culture and religion, with specific attention to the contemporary Sudanese religious beliefs and practices, which may share roots with Predynastic Egyptian culture. This study concludes that some Dynastic religious beliefs and iconography relating to female deities can be recognised in many of these figurines, and can be traced back to prehistoric Nilotic rituals." --Relke 2011. The Predynastic Dancing Egyptian Figurine. Journal of Religion in Africa, Volume 41, Issue 4, pages 396 - 426
OTHER SCHOLARSHIP CONFIRMS THE SAME
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Posted by beyoku (Member # 14524) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova:
Why have an image of a woman in a graph that speaks on Y-Chromosomes? Women dont have Y-Chromosomes.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
But mothers do give birth to men..
EGYPT'S PIONEERING DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING- NON-ALPHABETICAL AND ALPHABETICAL
Egypt a pioneer of writing before Mesopotamia "The earliest known Sumerian writings date back to 3000BC while the German team's find shows that Abydos inscriptions date to 3400BC. The first Pharaonic dynasty began in 2920BC with King Menes. The earliest known writing in Dynasty Zero is much earlier than the oldest writing discovered in Mesopotamia." --Gaballa Ali Gaballa, Secretary-General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities: 1999. IN: Nevine El-Aref, "Did writing originate in Egypt?" Al-Ahram Weekly: 1 - 7 April 1999, Issue No. 423
Certain writing forms in Mesopotamia and only understandable from Egyptian perspective
"[Archaeologist] Dreyer asserted that the obsidian used to make this bowl came from Ethiopia suggesting significant cultural contacts among Nile Valley populations. He concluded his presentation by noting similarities between specific Egyptian and Mesopotamian objects and suggesting that perhaps there is an initial influence of Egyptian writing on Mesopotamia because there are signs on Mesopotamian objects that are only "readable" from the standpoint of the Egyptian language, but not the Mesopotamian language." -- German archaeologist Gunther Dreyer. 2000. "Beginnings of Writing in Ancient Egypt" IN: - "Recent Finds in Predynastic Egypt." ANKH Journal 8/9: 1999-2000.
Africa's Nile Valley shares in creation of the historic alphabet
"Discoveries by Gunter Dreyer of the German Archaeological Institute suggest that the origin of Egyptian writing needs to be reexamined, offering the possibility that the idea of writing was developed in Egypt several centuries before it occurred in the Near East. Inscriptions from hundreds of pots and labels found at the royal cemetery at Abydos show some hieroglyphic writing as far back as 3400 BCE, with most occurring about 3200 BCE. Sumerian writing seems to have begun about 3100 BCE. The Egyptians formed and used writing in a different way than the Asians. The linguistic pictographs of Sumer were rudimentary were used primarily used for commerce. Those of Egypt were more representational of real objects and were primarily employed to identify kings, tombs and the like.
A remarkable find involving early experiments with alphabetic writing in Egypt has been recently made by John C. Darnell, an Egyptologist at Yale University, and his wife Deborah. Inscriptions discovered in the limestone cliffs on an ancient road between Thebes and Abydos, a route once heavily traveled by Asian traders and mercenaries in the Egyptian desert, are in a Semitic script with Egyptian influences. Dated between 1900 and 1000 BCE, they are two or three centuries older than previous evidence of an alphabet in the Semitic-speaking territory of the Sinai Peninsula or in the Syria-Palestine region occupied by the Canaanites. While there have always been indications that Semites were inventors of the alphabet, researchers had heretofore assumed that it was developed in their own lands by borrowing and simplifying Egyptian hieroglyphs. Instead Darnell's discovery now suggests that, working with Semitic speakers in Egypt, native scribes simplified formal pictographic Egyptian writing and modified the symbols into an early alphabet using a semi-cursive form commonly used in the Middle Kingdom."
--Martin Isler (2001). Sticks, stones, and shadows: building the Egyptian pyramids. Univ of Oklahoma PRess. p. 56
The Egyptian Western Desert- location of Egyptian military scripts adopted by both Egyptian scribes and Semitic speakers into alphabetic forms http://www.codex99.com/typography/11.html
"However, now with the recovery of alphabetic writing from the Egyptian Western Desert, the fairly high degree of literacy in Egyptian (knowledge of hieratic, and a hybrid of hieratic and hieroglyphic scripts as well) presumed by these texts, and the well known Asiatic pres-ence within Egypt proper from the early Dynastic periods onwards, strongly suggest that it is to Egypt itself that we must look for the geographi-cal home of alphabetic writing. More specifically, the Bebi inscription and its immediate neighbors offer tantalizing clues about the context in which Semitic-speaking Asiatics adopted and adapted certain aspects of the Egyptian writing system for the needs of their own language(s). The Egyptian military, known both to have employed Asiatics (as the Bebi inscription so wonderfully attests) and to have included scribes, would provide one likely context in which Western Asiatic Semitic language speakers could have learned and eventually adapted the Egyptian writing system. Indeed, the prominence of lapidary hieratic, the form of hieratic utilized by army scribes, as models for alphabetic forms at the Wadi el-Hõl (and at Serabit).." --J. Darnell et al. 2005. Two Early Alphabetic Inscriptions from the Wadi el-Hol: New Evidence for the Origin of the Alphabet from the Western Desert of Egypt, Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 2005.
Posted by DD'eDeN (Member # 21966) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova: More precision needed. If Kemet means black land, HOW PRECISELY is it related to "Djibouti" which seems to link with "cannibal"or "pot" or "jab" or something else according to various sources? https://www.somalinet.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=233866
And if you are picking out various sound matches associations, why is your particular sound match claim more authoritative than a sound match with something from Arabia or India? Try to show the relevant association and link between the two DIRECTLY and PRECISELY. Not a mass of stuff on something peripheral, but the two words or terms- Kemet and Djibouti.
- - - I just saw your response. I may be wrong. aXuMiTe/(e)KMT/(e)GBT/eJeBw'eTe/dJiBouTi/Jyambo.tswe
KMT = black land? not found.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
Bump.
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: ^Do you have anything rare/new on pre-dynastic lower Egyptians? Only data that comes to mind is Petrie's Tarkhan cemetery (thought to be the "Anu" in the flesh due to their supposedly peculiar chin morphologies which they're said to share with Tera Netjer) and some other skeletal remains from Maadi and Heliopolis. Also, Junker's predynastic lower Egyptian remains from Tura come to mind. From their descriptions these all seem to be local variants of the predynastic Upper Egyptian modal pattern, with some variations tending towards (but still maintaining some distance from) what would later appear in the record as the "lower Egyptian" pattern. This is also what Patricia Smith says about some of these samples. None seem to have been as distinctly "lower Egyptian" as some of the 1st dynasty royal Egyptians from Abydos.
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: ^Do you have anything rare/new on pre-dynastic lower Egyptians? Only data that comes to mind is Petrie's Tarkhan cemetery (thought to be the "Anu" in the flesh due to their supposedly peculiar chin morphologies which they're said to share with Tera Netjer) and some other skeletal remains from Maadi and Heliopolis. Also, Junker's predynastic lower Egyptian remains from Tura come to mind. From their descriptions these all seem to be local variants of the predynastic Upper Egyptian modal pattern, with some variations tending towards (but still maintaining some distance from) what would later appear in the record as the "lower Egyptian" pattern. This is also what Patricia Smith says about some of these samples. None seem to have been as distinctly "lower Egyptian" as some of the 1st dynasty royal Egyptians from Abydos.
Might as well add this old stuff from the vault while I'm at it:
Source: The Origin of Civilization: The Case of Egypt and Mesopotamia from Several Disciplines, p134
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
Nvr mind. picture seems to work fine now.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Good info. Some of these older studies can reveal surprising tidbits, as we saw when Keita went back and looked at old excavation reports.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
Yep, and there is more out there. Wink, wink.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Scientific studies show that one of the oldest modern human remains from Egypt, at Nazlet Khater, demonstrates strong sub-Saharan affinities, and parts of early Egypt and Sudan also shows sub-Saharan affinities through the regional 'Nubian complex' of culture and lithic technology. QUOTE:
"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. Jrl Hum Evo. 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, P. Did middle stone age moderns of sub-Saharan African descent trigger an upper paleolithic revolution in the lower nile valley? Anthro. V42,n3, 215-225
"Nazlet Khater man was the earliest modern human skeleton found near Luxor, in 1980. The remains was dated from between 35,000 and 30,000 years ago. The report regarding the racial affinity of this skeleton concludes: "Strong alveolar prognathism combined with fossa praenasalis in an African skull is suggestive of Negroid morphology [form & structure]. The radio-humeral index of Nazlet Khater is practically the same as the mean of Taforalt (76.6). According to Ferembach (1965) this value is near to the Negroid average." --Thoma A., Morphology and affinities of the Nazlet Khater man, Jrnl of Human Evolution, vol 13, 1984.
Posted by sudaniya (Member # 15779) on :
Question:
Did Frank M. Snowden ever at least concede that Upper Egypt was closely related to North Sudan during the predynastic period? Or did he die insisting that the ancient Egyptians were mahogany brown "Caucasians" unrelated to North-east Africans?
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan's homie Mike111: .
In one way it is sad, one has to repeat it this often. On the other hand repetition is king.
quote:
Southeast and south Asian populations are also often thought to be derived from the admixture of various combinations of western Eurasians (‘Caucasoids’), east Asians and Australasians. ...
These findings, coupled with the recently discovered presence of haplogroup U in Ethiopia [11], support a scenario in which a northeast African population dispersed out of Africa into India, presumably through the Arabian peninsula, before 50,000 years ago (Figure 2). Other migrations into India also occurred, but rarely from western Eurasian populations. ...
Thus, the ‘caucasoid’ features of south Asians may best be considered ‘pre-caucasoid’— that is, part of a diverse north or north-east African gene pool that yielded separate origins for western Eurasian and southern Asian populations over 50,000 years ago.
--Todd R. Disotell.
Human evolution: The southern route to Asia
Volume 9, Issue 24, 30 December 1999, Pages R925–R928
Posted by BlessedbyHorus (Member # 22000) on :
@Ish
Is your PM full? Need your urgent opinion on something.
Posted by Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlessedbyHorus: @Ish
Is your PM full? Need your urgent opinion on something.
It's cleaned up a bit.
Posted by BlessedbyHorus (Member # 22000) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ish Gebor:
quote:Originally posted by BlessedbyHorus: @Ish
Is your PM full? Need your urgent opinion on something.
It's cleaned up a bit.
Sent.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
quote:Originally posted by sudaniya: Question:
Did Frank M. Snowden ever at least concede that Upper Egypt was closely related to North Sudan during the predynastic period? Or did he die insisting that the ancient Egyptians were mahogany brown "Caucasians" unrelated to North-east Africans?
Good question. That one I'll have to check out. Far as I remember Snowden pushed a version of the stereotypical "true negro" model, in which everything not meeting the stereotypical construct was dismissed, downplayed, or folded into some sort of "mixed race" model.
But even a "mixed race" model falls under popular EUro and American race constructs since being "partially black" STILL makes you black. SO it has been for well nigh three centuries in America for example.
While quick to criticize so-called "Afrocentrics" for focusing on race Snowden himself uses the same race categories to push his model, and studiously avoids the implications of the "one drop" standard, namely, that using the same categories he is using, the Egyptians would have been recognized as "black." Snowden wants to have it both ways. He uses Eurocentric "true negro" categories, but rather than be consistent and use the accompanying Eurocentric "one drop" construct, he cops out, or changes the subject.
^^At least Mary Lefkowitz, to be consistent, has to acknowledge that in terms of said construct, the ancient Egyptians would/are "black."
The above is not to say that Snowden does that have some valuable data to present, but not only is he dated, he also has an inconsistent double standard. If you are using standard Eurocentric race conceptions, how come you are all too willing to use the "true negro" piece, but then want to skip over the "one drop" side of the coin? A similar inconsistency marks several other writers in the field.
------------------------ Here is what Snowden has to say in one article:
"There was also a mixed black-white element in the Egyptian population as early as the middle of the third millenium BC. In fact, the earliest clearly recognizable Egyptian portrait of a black is preserved in a limestone head of a woman, together with that of her Egyptian husband, a prince from the court of Memphis." --Snowden 1997. Misconceptions about African Blacks in the Ancient Mediterranean World: Specialists and Afrocentrists
Snowden's notion of "earliest clearly recognizable Egyptian portrait of a black" refers to the limestone head circa 2600BC, from the Old Kingdom. But "recognizable" portraiture prior to 2600BC does show "black" features- by contemporary Euro-American race construct standards- so how does Snowden claim that the first "recognizable" black folk don't show up until 2600BC?
He also says that there were "mixed black-white elements" around as early as the 3rd millenium. OK but even going with this, if there were "mixed" elements, clearly somebody "black" or "negroid" had to be in place way back then to do any "mixing." Snowden conveniently skips over such things, just as he skips portraiture prior to his magic 2600BC cut-off date.
In Snowden's defense, to could be argued that his "true negro" approach is rooted in his 1970s book - Before Color Prejudice, and similar work, and was fairly standard for that time. Still this does not fully excuse him- some of his published work occurs after the Keita's exhaustive research on the question, and he must have been well aware of the limb proportion and other studies that preceded that. Lefkowitz references Keita in one of her book and also uses Snowden in the same book so the info on the question was well within the research of a scholar like him.
In his "Misconceptions" piece above Snowden extensively rails against "Afocentrics" who denounce valid criticisms as "Eurocentric racism" or the product of "traitorous" Uncle Toms. But he can produce no such statements by one of the leading "Afrocentriscs" of all time, Cheikh Anta Diop. And his piece conveniently skips over the valid criticism not only Afrocentrics BUT mainstream Eurocentric scholars have made about "race" work in the Nile Valley. Snowden has some good info to offer, but his work itself is marred by distortion and double standards.
Posted by sudaniya (Member # 15779) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova:
quote:Originally posted by sudaniya: Question:
Did Frank M. Snowden ever at least concede that Upper Egypt was closely related to North Sudan during the predynastic period? Or did he die insisting that the ancient Egyptians were mahogany brown "Caucasians" unrelated to North-east Africans?
Good question. That one I'll have to check out. Far as I remember Snowden pushed a version of the stereotypical "true negro" model, in which everything not meeting the stereotypical construct was dismissed, downplayed, or folded into some sort of "mixed race" model.
But even a "mixed race" model falls under popular EUro and American race constructs since being "partially black" STILL makes you black. SO it has been for well nigh three centuries in America for example.
While quick to criticize so-called "Afrocentrics" for focusing on race Snowden himself uses the same race categories to push his model, and studiously avoids the implications of the "one drop" standard, namely, that using the same categories he is using, the Egyptians would have been recognized as "black." Snowden wants to have it both ways. He uses Eurocentric "true negro" categories, but rather than be consistent and use the accompanying Eurocentric "one drop" construct, he cops out, or changes the subject.
^^At least Mary Lefkowitz, to be consistent, has to acknowledge that in terms of said construct, the ancient Egyptians would/are "black."
The above is not to say that Snowden does that have some valuable data to present, but not only is he dated, he also has an inconsistent double standard. If you are using standard Eurocentric race conceptions, how come you are all too willing to use the "true negro" piece, but then want to skip over the "one drop" side of the coin? A similar inconsistency marks several other writers in the field.
------------------------ Here is what Snowden has to say in one article:
"There was also a mixed black-white element in the Egyptian population as early as the middle of the third millenium BC. In fact, the earliest clearly recognizable Egyptian portrait of a black is preserved in a limestone head of a woman, together with that of her Egyptian husband, a prince from the court of Memphis." --Snowden 1997. Misconceptions about African Blacks in the Ancient Mediterranean World: Specialists and Afrocentrists
Snowden's notion of "earliest clearly recognizable Egyptian portrait of a black" refers to the limestone head circa 2600BC, from the Old Kingdom. But "recognizable" portraiture prior to 2600BC does show "black" features- by contemporary Euro-American race construct standards- so how does Snowden claim that the first "recognizable" black folk don't show up until 2600BC?
He also says that there were "mixed black-white elements" around as early as the 3rd millenium. OK but even going with this, if there were "mixed" elements, clearly somebody "black" or "negroid" had to be in place way back then to do any "mixing." Snowden conveniently skips over such things, just as he skips portraiture prior to his magic 2600BC cut-off date.
In Snowden's defense, to could be argued that his "true negro" approach is rooted in his 1970s book - Before Color Prejudice, and similar work, and was fairly standard for that time. Still this does not fully excuse him- some of his published work occurs after the Keita's exhaustive research on the question, and he must have been well aware of the limb proportion and other studies that preceded that. Lefkowitz references Keita in one of her book and also uses Snowden in the same book so the info on the question was well within the research of a scholar like him.
In his "Misconceptions" piece above Snowden extensively rails against "Afocentrics" who denounce valid criticisms as "Eurocentric racism" or the product of "traitorous" Uncle Toms. But he can produce no such statements by one of the leading "Afrocentriscs" of all time, Cheikh Anta Diop. And his piece conveniently skips over the valid criticism not only Afrocentrics BUT mainstream Eurocentric scholars have made about "race" work in the Nile Valley. Snowden has some good info to offer, but his work itself is marred by distortion and double standards.
I never understood Frank M. Snowden and his motivations. It does seem that he so desperately craved the approval of the Eurocentric matrix in Egyptology and the disciplines, and even they thought that his works acceded far too much credit to black Africans. There was no "white" element in ancient Egypt [in the European sense] so I don't understand what on earth he was on about.
He said this this:
quote:The art of ancient Egypt frequently painted Egyptian men as reddish brown, women as yellow, and people to the south as black. Ancient Egyptians, like their modern descendants, varied in complexion from a light Mediterranean type, to a light brown in Middle Egypt, to a darker brown in southern Egypt.
I don't know if Frank M. Snowden realised that most Africans are just varying shades of dark brown and that the ancient Egyptian civilization was started by the "darker brown" southern Egyptians; the bulk of ancient Egypt's population resided in the South that he conceded were of a "darker brown"; most dynasties came from the "darker brown" Egyptians; the powerful religious elite were from the South -- the "darker brown" people that have the same skin colour as most Africans.
Somebody should have relayed to Frank M. Snowden that since the southern Egyptians were a "darker brown" and since they started the civilization and were the majority... he lost -- the debate would have been over.
I'm adamant that AE reliefs showing jet-black people are ancestors of the Dinka, Nuer and the Nuba and not Kushites.
Frank M. Snowden not only used the true Negro model, he seems to have insisted that since the ancient Egyptians did not have the same skin colour as the people that resembled the Dinka and Nuba on those reliefs, then they couldn't have been black even though most Africans are lighter than the Dinka.
Most white people would immediately concede that the San are black even though they're lighter than the indigenous Upper Egyptians in Luxor, Edfu, Esna, Red Sea coast and Kom Ombo but when it comes to AE mental gymnastics come into play.
There is no need to ever invoke the one drop rule because the other side will have to first demonstrate that the AE were mostly Eurasians instead of being predominantly North-east Africans.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
^^for some folk "aliens" are more plausible as a source of the AE population than nearby African cultures..
I think you are on to something. Snowden was a child of the white academic establishment of that time- a classist, so he subscribed to the stereotypical constructs of the day. And he wanted to prove his loyalty no doubt by serving as attack dogs to take on the so-called "Afrocentrics." Nothing wrong with criticizing various areas where SOME so-called Afrocentrics" were shaky, but then Snowden himself in turn has to use some distortions and stereotypical thinking.
Like you say Snowden seems not to realize that Africans can vary in skin color, but then again he probably did realize it, but has to minimize and downplay that diversity to maintain his stereotypical construct against which, all else can be minimized, downplayed or distorted. And like you say with the Upper or southern Egyptians, that is a well known thing, but he had to skip over and downplay certain things. Don't get me wrong. Some of his research is interesting but there are problems as well.
Some try to make out that the "one drop rule" is "old" vanished history. But this is false. It is very much alive as a popular construct and even appears to have been applied in court cases in the US, as recently as the late 1980s. (See Jane Doe vs State oF Lousiana 1984.) We all know the "rule" - if you have "one-drop" you still "black"..
Re the one-drop rule I would say it should not be the FIRST line of argument on the African character and foundation of AE. However it has its uses. It was often one of the only things ordinary folks had to argue with before the widespread dissemination of the hard data we have today on cranial, skeletal, genetic, dental and cultural foundations of AE. Any debates or arguments should lay down the hammer and begin with this hard data. One-drop is the SECONDARY line of advance. It is a valid secondary approach because almost all opponents, distorters and deniers of the African foundations and character of AE invoke popular cultural stereotypes. How could they be "really" African if they don't look like Mike Tyson and other such approaches.
We all know this is the "true negro" dodge. But under the "one-drop" rule, even if the "true negro" "mixed" with someone- his progeny STILL is considered BLACK under popular European and American cultural race constructs. In addition, the hypocritical double standard above can be exposed when taking up the one-drop secondary line. To wit:
how come you are all too willing to use the popular "true negro" race construct but then, hypocritically, you want to skip over the "one drop" side of the coin? Any "mix" with the "true negro" STILL is considered "black" under the same popular race constructs. SO how you only want to use one, but not the other?
It is essential that this hypocrisy be exposed - whether one is dealing with right wing distorters, well-meaning "liberals" or dubious "native" Egyptians who in their haste to "distance" deyselves from "anything African" seem to conceive of the ancient peoples as fantastist aliens who just "happen" to "spontaneously" spring up out of the Nile one day, bearing no relation to any of the surrounding African cultures. Such hypocrisy must be relentlessly exposed time and time again, especially since deniers and distorters try to skip over the hard data. As a secondary approach, one-drop is a valid tool of defense or attack, and locks them in the box, where they can be worked over from every angle- heavy artillery from the hard data, secondary barrages from cultural constructs- doesn't really matter- it's all "hammer time."
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
According to the One Drop Rule an ancient Egyptian could be 15/16ths European and 1/16th African They could be light skinned and have no "true Negro" traits
but they would still be Black.
So if this is classical European anthropology and Mary Lefkowitz believes it and we like this rule, why can't Snowden join us and set aside the true negro concept?
Posted by Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: According to the One Drop Rule an ancient Egyptian could be 15/16ths European and 1/16th African They could be light skinned and have no "true Negro" traits
but they would still be Black.
So if this is classical European anthropology and Mary Lefkowitz believes it and we like this rule, why can't Snowden join us and set aside the true negro concept?
There is a reason why you are known as a dumb piece of ****! And it is nice to see your deplorable ass comes out of the woods. According to science you're terribly wrong, as usually.
Melanin Dosage Tests: Ancient Egyptians
Determination of optimal rehydration, fixation and staining methods for histological and immunohistochemical analysis of mummified soft tissues
-- A-M Mekota1, M Vermehren2 Biotechnic & Histochemistry 2005, 80(1): 7_/13 " Materials and Methods
Great work Zaharan. It's much appreciated!
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Recent Scholars studying Egypt and Nubia show that the two peoples, while varying, shared several cultural and material commonalities, undermining older, simplistic, separationist 'racial' theories
QUOTE: "Any Egyptian evidence in Nubia was seen as an import or as cultural influence, while any Nubian evidence in Upper Egypt was viewed as the sporadic presence of foreign people within Egyptian territory.In the last few years, new research on the subject, particularly from a Nubian point of view, shows that the interaction between the two cultures was much more complex than previously thought, affecting the time, space and nature of the interaction (Gatto & Tiraterra 1996; Gatto 2000, 2003a, 2003b). The Aswan area was probably never a real borderline, at least not until the New Kingdom. Of particular importance in this perspective is the area between Armant and Dehmit, south of the First Cataract, as well as the surrounding deserts, and for the availability of data, more specifically the Western Desert. The data recently collected and a new interpretation of available information are bringing to light a stable and long-term interaction between Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia that has to be seen in a very different perspective. The two regions, and so their cultural entities, are not in antithesis to one another, but in the Predynastic period are still the expression of the same cultural tradition, with strong regional variations, particularly in the last part of the 4th millennium BC. Some of them are clearly connected with the major cultural and political changes of Egypt."
(-- Maria Carmela GATTO (British Museum, London) 2002. "At the Origin of the Egyptian Civilisation: Reconsidering the Relationship between Egypt and Nubia in the Pre- and Protodynastic Periods."
Conférence internationale / International Conference L'Egypte pré- et protodynastique. Les origines de l'Etat Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt. Origin of the State. Toulouse (France) - 5-8 sept. 2005)
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 a s 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)
Many modern Egyptologists now admit clear correlations between ancient Egyptians and African communities, chiefdoms and states.
"The Egyptian concept of kingship, so akin to African models, seems very different to that held in the ancient Near East."
"There is a relative abundance of ancient materials relevant to contact and influence, as well as striking correlations between ancient Egyptian civilization and the ethnography of recent and current sub-Saharan communities, chiefdoms and states."
--David O'Connor, Andrew Reid 2007. Ancient Egypt in Africa
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
"I would like to see above all a greater number of researchers — Afro-Americans — young Americans — even whites. Why not? Because it’s the young who are least prejudiced. As a consequence, they are the most capable of making triumph ideas which frighten the older generation.
Also, I think that it will be necessary to put together polyvalent scientific teams, capable of doing in-depth studies, for sure, and that’s what’s important. It bothers me when someone takes me on my word without developing a means of verifying what I say ... We must form a scientific spirit capable of seeing even the weaknesses of our own proofs, of seeing the unfinished side of our work and committing ourselves to completing it. You understand? Therefore we should then have a work which could honestly stand criticism, because what we’ve done would have been placed on a scientific plane."
—Cheikh Anta Diop, Interview with Harun Kofi Wangara (Harold G. Lawrence), 1974.
Posted by Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
^Zarahan, I agree.
It is very important that a new generation picks up where pioneers left. There is a lot more to be discovered and unraveled. People can't thrive off on studies that are 30 years old, and look at them like oh those great scholars.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Indeed, and the thing is Diop was always big on evidence and data, Unfortunately some folk forget this and focus on the the mystical and rhetorical, with the rhetorical especially being an easy way out because it requires very little work or study. There is a place for rhetoric and mysticism to be sure, but they provide little concrete to confront the many enemies of a balanced African biohistory, in both their "soft" or "hard" manifestations. This is one of the significant divides in the field.
Diop also did not expect that things would be static and unchanging, forever locked in stone. BUt ever so often you run into cats who still have not moved beyond Chancellor Williams, for example, circa 1970- valuable as background to be sure, but the field has moved on. A good grasp of the factual and evidentiary database is necessary for progress, and this is critical in expanding knowledge, as well as critiquing either patronizing liberals, right-wing propagandists, or the plain i'gnant.
Posted by Akachi (Member # 21711) on :
I would say that the narrative in the African Origins of Civilization follows evidence that Western scholars have simply decided to ignore. This migration narrative is the basis of my thread over on Egyptsearch reloaded. Diop's theme book "The African Origins of Civilization" details many ancient events in a context that Western scholars have feared acknowledging in a brave unapologetic way. This book detailed the migrations of Africans from Kemet/Sudan/the Sahara desert going back to the Natufians (Ricaut 2008) of the end of the ice age and into later European migrations of the Pelasgians and even later migration of Thutmose's armies. This book made the brave assertion of Africans migrating into the Americas prior to the notion being thoroughly explored and validated by Ivan Van Sertima. The very title/claim of the book was something that was not "scholastically" concrete until the discovery of the incense burners in Qustul 5 years after it was published, and Diop's narrative was complete without it. Simply put every claim from the book has been verified through contemporary research.
Chancellor Williams book details an ancient race war between the original melaninated Africans of the upper Nile and the Set type mulattoes of northern Kemet that lead to the formation of Dynastic Kemet under Menes when those mulattoes were defeated and expelled. From a historical viewpoint this reigns true the fact that further down the line a Set worshiping group of mulattoes SUDDENLY appears at the door steps of Kemet begging for entrance known as the Hyksos. The Hyksos would have had to have an earlier Kemetic origin of sorts to come back in worshiping a Kemetic deity. Egyptology does not tackle such issues. They wish to take the racial context out of this segment of history, because coming from such humble origins is not flattering to their egos.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Agreed in part- many Western scholars want to minimize, deny or distort. As for Williams, I disagree with his notion of a Race War- light skinnad on one side and dark-skinnad on the other. That's too simplistic given that many so-called 'Asiatics" at the time might have been almost as dark as various Nubians, and some Nubians were just as brown as any "Asiatic." William's "mulatto" format, rigidly applied in the Nile Valley is a strained straitjacket based on the 1960s American race scene.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Wms covered the parallel complexion issue and its use as a pretext -- maybe similar to merchants of today who'll say "Me black, me black."
Wms also commends the 'whites' who went black.
No. There weren't no overt race war. Not even a conscious clash of races. Nonetheless through time the darker filter southward. This is observable across the whole expanse of Northern Africa. Beydane are brown skinned, yet their ethnonym declares 'white' identity. Same social process laid out in Wms. Except Beydane say Abu Bakr flat out expelled blacks from the desert.
The big plus of Destruction is Chancellor Williams' 'plans' section. I choose to build on what was left, not sanctify it. I'll throw out the bathwater but keep the baby and the tub too. Lol
Apartheid ended what 35 years ago? And Jim Crow 50? Political colonialism 50? Before that? 300 years of oppression. Yes, it's a hella burden but I can't act like it didn't happen nor that without the 1960-70s era struggle I wouldn't have the tools/skills to post as I do today.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
True what you say. I have read Williams. His solutions section is candid and his call for unity against a common foe is as relevant then as it is now, based on certain situations prevailing at present. Likewise his blunt exposure of the open or veiled supremacist agendas of that foe, whether it be in the history books, or political battlefields.
There are several points that modern data calls into question. He says for example that Africa's geography made it easier for various invaders to conquer it, but this is not necessarily so. Africa's great rivers are unnavigable for large stretches, with many cliffs, cataracts, sandbars and rapids, unlike the easy transport routes moving technology, material and knowledge on many great rivers of Eurasia. It took the steamships of the 19th century to finally overcome many of these problems. Likewise Africa's relatively smooth coastline means a lack of good natural harbors- unlike the massive number of such harbors in Europe. Such easy transport factors made conquest of parts of Europe much easier as well as enabled Europeans to massively borrow and copy technology and knowledge from outside EUrope. Writing for example was not invented in Europe, nor the key animal and plant domestications, etc etc. Europeans benefited massively by importing knowledge, people and tech from outside.
This is part of why Egypt could never be the hegemon equivalent of Rome or Greece in Africa. Compare the broad transmission belt of the MEditerranean, or the easy navigation of so many of Europe's great rivers, to the chopped up, blocked Nile as just one example. Rome could move tens of thousands of troops, grain, weapons, material etc from Syria to Spain at will, using the Mediterranean, over 2000 miles of easy, straight-shot water transport. Egypt had no such advantages in Africa- and aside from the problems with the Nile it was surrounded by hundreds of miles of inhospitable desert, which by the way served as a protective barrier. Africa's Sahara likewise was a barrier in many ways to easy conquest and slowed down Arab incursions and imperialism somewhat- though not totally stopped them. The list can go on.
Nevertheless that is the nature of knowledge. It doesn't stand still, and those coming after must take up the torch. And of course Williams had to work with the info he had at hand, at the time - heavily 1960s, with some early 70s stuff.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Akachi:
The very title/claim of the book was something that was not "scholastically" concrete until the discovery of the incense burners in Qustul 5 years after it was published,
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: I choose to build on what was left, not sanctify it. I'll throw out the bathwater but keep the baby and the tub too. Lol
This means retain and build on what remains valid and factual while discarding the other stuff.
Who throwd out Copernicus and Newton 'cos we got astrophysics?
We need to get to them or look at them (have them under our belt) to move on and understand science today.
Same with Wms, Diop, Doc Ben, Karenga, Madhubuti, van Sertima, Snowden, Hansberry, Rogers, Osei, Jackson, Ajayi, P Goldman, et al.
This comes natural for other peoples not to start from square one each succeeding generation. They move forward from an accumulated base of knowledge with no shame.
For example they been running the same white man's north and east Africa game since the Napoleonic Expedition and refined it with each new tool/methodology that's come along since. Interpretation is key.
But we lack the womb to tomb institution system to ingrain a weltanschauung. In fact we tear down what was built for us to inherit.
We try to build on anti-this or anti-that never realizing we must define on the positive.
If ones goal is simply countering negatives one becomes dependent on that negative to exist. Remove that negative and ones whole reason for being is swept from under them.
Besides Square Oneing, these generations never experienced a liberation struggle and many imagine the playing field is level. As if somehow a mere 50 years of 'independent' Africa, purported equal rights and a physically half Luo potus, completely erased or even healed the 500 year legacy of the Triangular Trade, colonialism, genocide, apartheid, Jim Crow, etc; and the 1500 year weight of the Hham Mythos.
No. We don't have the luxury to divorce ourselves from reality. Our very quality of life is impacted by the way our history, ethnology, molecular biology, and so on is perceived by those matriculating European and Semitic institutions.
At least give our own a chance as we try our best to objectively develop an authentic Africana of a World Class status without skewing interpretation toward self bias.
quote: Page opening posted by don Cardova : We must form a scientific spirit capable of seeing even the weaknesses of our own proofs, of seeing the unfinished side of our work and committing ourselves to completing it. You understand? Therefore we should then have a work which could honestly stand criticism, because what we’ve done would have been placed on a scientific plane."
—Cheikh Anta Diop, Interview with Harun Kofi Wangara (Harold G. Lawrence), 1974
.
PS just imagine form schools where the tested and best from our past scholars are taught, learned, and launched from. Wow! To enter college with that and the brightest and best of all the ES opinions no matter from who? Already multidisciplinary and multi ethnic minded.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Indeed. I think Keita was kinda hinting at what Diop said about polyvalent teams in his article from the Cobb Research Center.
COurse there is only so much guys like us on the web can do. But if there is cooperation with the cats coming along in universities, together with the old heads, such teams can be built. A loose network structure can work- no need for monolithic agreement on all points. There is plenty of room for disagreements, but a rough "tactical cooperation" can be put in place that expands the field. That cooperation can also also extend to open-minded white specialists/enthusiasts in the field of which we've seen a few such as Gatto and some others. Even Yurco at one point, was talking about a rough accommodation with Asante.
Genuine folk can work their different angles and venues, yet exhibit a generous spirit not automatically geared to tearing one another down. Simple examples- acknowledging points of agreement with someone, giving people credit for a particular piece of work or effort, sharing info, etc etc. None of this requires total agreement. In fact, given the diversity of perspectives, disagreement is to be expected.
COurse there are several obstacles to good cooperation- it may never come to pass- and the same folk in the field for years will not be around forever.
(1) Hostile Eurocentrics, combining deception and stealth with outright opposition- these include various racists or "hereditarian" types, and associated troll and diversionary tactics we have seen so often.
(2) Various "Afro-enthusiasts" who don't do much research, but are quick to jump on "consciousness" or mystic type bandwagons, even as they flood the zone with inaccurate info or untenable claims. A mystic angle is its own creature- the problem is when some folk insist that their mystic claim is the only "true" scholarship or research, an flood the zone accordingly.
(3) Various patronizing, condescending and "establishment" types from academia- who while talking a good game bout science and objectivity have their own set of slippery agendas. They too can run "zone flood" games, that will need teams to deconstruct.
(4) Various factional leaders afflicted with the HNIC syndrome, or who see their particular ideology or approach as the only "true" way.
COurse, these teams could also be built in academia to some extent becoming a mostly college student thing but there is a massive base out there not in college.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Tukler said: No. We don't have the luxury to divorce ourselves from reality. Our very quality of life is impacted by the way our history, ethnology, molecular biology, and so on is perceived by those matriculating European and Semitic institutions.
At least give our own a chance as we try our best to objectively develop an authentic Africana of a World Class status without skewing interpretation toward self bias.
And to realize your vision, there needs to ne more moderation of the forums. Why do assorted racists like "Real tawk" get a free hand, when the brothers, who are way less offensive and are not hurling epithets left and right, are banned from Forum Biodiversity, and other such? We are not even taking steps to at least ensure a minimum standard in our own forums. Your mailbox is usually full. Are you moderating at all? --------------------------------------------------------
Real tawk Member Member # 20324 Ish Gabor posted 28 May, 2017 08:22 AM ASSHOLE, Neanderthal descends from homoeretus of Europe and Asia. Fvck off, n1gger.
Oh he's calling people THAT now? He ain't even tryin to pretend he's black no more LOL.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova: Tukler said: No. We don't have the luxury to divorce ourselves from reality. Our very quality of life is impacted by the way our history, ethnology, molecular biology, and so on is perceived by those matriculating European and Semitic institutions.
At least give our own a chance as we try our best to objectively develop an authentic Africana of a World Class status without skewing interpretation toward self bias.
And to realize your vision, there needs to ne more moderation of the forums. Why do assorted racists like "Real tawk" get a free hand, when the brothers, who are way less offensive and are not hurling epithets left and right, are banned from Forum Biodiversity, and other such? We are not even taking steps to at least ensure a minimum standard in our own forums. Your mailbox is usually full. Are you moderating at all? --------------------------------------------------------
Real tawk Member Member # 20324 Ish Gabor posted 28 May, 2017 08:22 AM ASSHOLE, Neanderthal descends from homoeretus of Europe and Asia. Fvck off, n1gger.
For like 5 yrs I poured my $$$ into TNV. A party I threw for our target demographic. Shee-it. Not even crickets.
ESR's up and running with all you want already in place. Where are the academics collegians hi-schoolers informed amateurs?
Since the end of the Liberation Struggle interest in 'hard' Africana has damned near died.
In this 21st century Information Struggle we don't even need cadres anymore. We each are an Army of 1. No matter wor' 'bout the anti. Just keep pumping the pro.
The intelligent will have their 'ear to the wise' weed whacking words of woo out da damn way. Is it a waste of their time chasing ghosts and lingering fatalities unless it brings new info to light (likes being done via the Tin Man). Outdo the Geno-hamiticists. Challenge each other so as to tighten up that backstroke till weeze all a swimming like Flipper.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
"The early Askumites built in stone. They erected massive carved monoliths over the graves of their leaders (one was 33 meters long and weighed over 700 tonnes, arguably the largest single piece of worked stone ever hewn." --John Reader, 1998. Africa: The Biography of the continent. pg 208).
"Perhaps the best -known symbols of the Aksumites' particular ideas and style are the great carved monoliths, some of which still stand, erected to commemorate their dead rulers; they also record the considerable skill of the Aksumite quarrymen, engineers, and stone-carvers, being in some cases among the largest single stones ever employed in ancient times." --Stuart Munro-Hay 1991. Askum: An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity
“The exquisitely carved monolithic stelae dating from the 3rd and 4th centuries AD are unique masterpieces of human creative genius. “ UNESCO World Heritage citation 1980
"an intricate network of over 16,000 kilometers of banks and ditches (iya) enclosed a 4000 kilometer cluster of community lands- a vast legacy on earth.. The earthworks run four to five times longer than the Great Wall of China, and involve moving more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops." --PJ Darling, A Legacy in Earth- Ancient Benin and Ishan, Southern Nigeria in: Historical Archaeology in Nigeria, 1998. ed k. Weaver. p143
Posted by Punos_Rey (Member # 21929) on :
Picture spam bombs will be removed on sight. Keep it on topic.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
2017 study finds sub-Saharan influence around Roman period. Ancient samples drawn from later period of Dynastic Egypt -taken from the farther north- downplaying the south, and excluding nearby Nubia & Sudan
Ancient samples from Abusir, near Faiyum in the north
Samples from Late period-of Egypt- which have more foreign influence quote:
“According to the radiocarbon dates .. the samples can be grouped into three time periods: Pre-Ptolemaic (New Kingdom, Third Intermediate Period and Late Period), Ptolemaic and Roman Period."
Sampling from the far north- quote: Written sources indicate that by the third century BCE Abusir el-Meleq was at the centre of a wider region that comprised the northern part of the Herakleopolites province, and had close ties with the Fayum.. We aim to study changes and continuities in the genetic makeup of the ancient inhabitants of the Abusir el-Meleq community .. since all sampled remains derive from this community in Middle Egypt and have been radiocarbon dated to the late New Kingdom to the Roman Period..”
Limitations of study candidly admitted by authors - Quote:
“However, we note that all our genetic data were obtained from a single site in Middle Egypt and may not be representative for all of ancient Egypt. It is possible that populations in the south of Egypt were more closely related to those of Nubia and had a higher sub-Saharan genetic component, in which case the argument for an influx of sub-Saharan ancestries after the Roman Period might only be partially valid and have to be nuanced. Throughout Pharaonic history there was intense interaction between Egypt and Nubia, ranging from trade to conquest and colonialism, and there is compelling evidence for ethnic complexity within households with Egyptian men marrying Nubian women and vice versa 51,52,53. Clearly, more genetic studies on ancient human remains from southern Egypt and Sudan are needed before apodictic statements can be made." --Schuenemann 2016 Ancient Egyptian mummy genomes suggest increase of Sub-Saharan African ancestry in post-Roman periods. NatComm, 8:15694
Posted by Andromeda2025 (Member # 22772) on :
The earliest burials known in the Nile Valley are those at Nazlet Khater and Kubbaniya, mentioned above. A group of three slightly younger burials was found at Deir el-Fakhuri, near Esna. All of these skeletons are of fully modern Homo sapiens sapiens, but they were very robust, with short wide faces and pronounced alveolar prognathism. They have been compared with a type known as Mechtoid (from the site of Mechta el-Arbi), which are found in Late Paleolithic sites throughout North Africa, and particularly in the Maghreb.
In the Nile Valley there are three Late Paleolithic graveyards, all associated with Qadan assemblages: Jebel Sahaba, a few kilometers north of Wadi Haifa on the east bank of the Nile, with 59 burials; Site 6-B-36, on the west bank almost opposite Wadi Haifa, with 39 burials; and Wadi Tushka, north of Abu Simbel in southern Egypt, with 19 burials. The radiocarbon dates range between 14,000 and 13,000 BP. All of the skeletons are Mechtoid, indicating a long and unbroken history for this type in the Nile Valley.
North of the el-Badari district, no Predynastic sites are known for over 300km. Archaeological evidence in the Fayum of both Nagada and Ma'adi culture wares now seems to suggest that this region was where peoples of the Predynastic cultures of Upper and Lower Egypt first came into contact. The best known Predynastic site in the Fayum region is the small cemetery at Gerza, from which the term Gerzean (Nagada II) is derived. Excavated by Petrie, this cemetery contained 288 burials with (Upper Egyptian) ceramics which are typically Nagada II. A later Predynastic cemetery with several hundred burials, excavated by Georg Moller, is located at Abusir el-Meleq, about 10km west of the present Nile. Ma'adi culture ceramics are found at the cemetery of es-Saff on the east bank opposite Gerza, and a site near Qasr Qarun in the southwestern region of the Fayum, excavated by Caton Thompson and E.W.Gardner in the 1930s.
Archaeological evidence clearly demonstrates the existence of two different material cultures with different belief systems in Egypt in the fourth millennium BC: the Nagada culture of Upper Egypt and the Ma'adi culture of Lower Egypt. Evidence in Lower Egypt consists mainly of settlements with very simple burials, in contrast to Upper Egypt, where cemeteries with elaborate burials are found. The rich grave goods in several major cemeteries in Upper Egypt represent the acquired wealth of higher social strata, and these cemeteries were probably associated with centers of craft production. Trade and exchange of finished goods and luxury materials from the Eastern and Western Deserts and Nubia would also have taken place in such centers. In Lower Egypt, however, while excavated settlements permit a broader reconstruction of the prehistoric economy, there is little evidence for any great socioeconomic complexity.
State formation
Archaeological evidence points to the origins of the state which emerged by the 1st Dynasty in the Nagada culture of Upper Egypt, where grave types, pottery and artifacts demonstrate an evolution of form from the Predynastic to the 1st Dynasty. This cannot be demonstrated for the material culture of Lower Egypt, which was eventually displaced by that originating in Upper Egypt.
By circa 3050 BC the Early Dynastic state had emerged in Egypt. One result of the expansion of Nagada culture throughout northern Egypt would have been a greatly elaborated (state) administration, and by the beginning of the 1st Dynasty this was managed in part by the invention of writing, used on sealings and tags affixed to state goods. The early Egyptian state was a centrally controlled polity ruled by a (god-)king from the newly founded capital of Memphis in the north, near Saqqara. What is truly unique about the early state in Egypt is the integration of rule over an extensive geographic region. There was undoubtedly heightened commercial contact with southwest Asia in the late fourth millennium BC, but the Early Dynastic state in Egypt was unique and indigenous in character.
^ Yep, the origin is Central Sudan, a tropical African people. And magically white controlled sources claim the people were cold adapted Central Europeans.
Posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate (Member # 20039) on :
We already have ancient DNA results from Kush and the Tasian site of Kadruka (precusor to Badarian/Naqada):
From Genetic Patterns of Y-chromosome and Mitochondrial DNA Variation, with Implications to the Peopling of the Sudan (Hassan 2009) Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ish Gebor: ^ Yep, the origin is Central Sudan, a tropical African people. And magically white controlled sources claim the people were cold adapted Central Europeans.
lol
Posted by Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova:
quote:Originally posted by Ish Gebor: ^ Yep, the origin is Central Sudan, a tropical African people. And magically white controlled sources claim the people were cold adapted Central Europeans.
lol
Eurocentric supporters never explained where all these African populations where to begin with.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Perchance spontaneously when the Celestials landed to... well Marvel fans would know..
"In the 1980s, genetic and fossil evidence began to call attention to Africa’s preeminence in the origins of modern human populations (1), but this evidence could be interpreted in two fundamentally different ways (2). Was Africa’s role greater than other continents because it always harbored a larger human population (size) or because modern humans arose in Africa first and subsequently expanded their range across the world (time)? In the 2000s, improvements in DNA sequencing technology and genetic sampling of more present day human groups made it possible to accurately characterize the genetic diversity of groups from different regions of the world, and it became clear that within- group genetic diversity decreased predictably with increased geographic distance from sub-Saharan Africa (3, 4).
Subsequently, similar, albeit weaker, relationships were found between within-group variation in aspects of skeletal morphology (cranial, dental, and pelvic measurements) and distance from sub-Saharan Africa (5⇓⇓–8)."
--Weaver 2014-Tracing the paths of modern humans from Africa-PNAS v111-n20,7170-7171
Posted by Elite Diasporan (Member # 22000) on :
Welcome back Zaharan.
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Thanks.
Some info from Chris Stringer, on why multiregionalism is still somewhat weak despite recent evidence of Neanderhal/archaic admix.
The big picture is that we are predominantly of recent African origin, and RAO is not just about the sources of our shared modern morphology and most of our genes; it is also about the genesis of our shared patterns of behaviour. Inferred behavioural gaps between Neanderthals and modern humans have certainly narrowed from recent research, but in my view they have not disappeared. I think that the pre-eminence of Africa in the story of modern human origins was primarily a question of its larger geographic and human population size, which gave greater opportunities for morphological and behavioural variations, and for innovations to develop and be conserved, rather than the result of a special evolutionary pathway. By contrast, genomic data suggest that the lineages of the Neanderthals and Denisovans had much greater demographic attrition [25], perhaps related to the challenges posed by the unstable climates of Eurasia, and this might well have inhibited their cultural as well as physical evolution [6].
‘Modernity’ was not a package that had a single African origin in one time, place, and population, but was a composite whose elements appeared, and sometimes disappeared, at different times and places and then coalesced to assume the form we see in extant humans [6]. However, during the past 400 000 years, most of that assembly took place in Africa, which is why a recent African origin still represents the predominant (but not exclusive) mode of evolution for H. sapiens. Rather than saying ‘we are all multiregionalists trying to explain the out-of-Africa pattern’ [1], it would be more appropriate to say ‘we are all out-of-Africanists who accept some multiregional contributions’."
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Egyptian writing distinctly African per conservative Egyptologist Yurco
"Vestigial traces of the dynastic race theory still linger in the writings of some scholars, who hint at a "Mesopotamian stimulus" to Egyptian culture through writing or other cultural aspects. But it has now been definitely shown that Mesopotamian writing arose from clay tokens used in early invoices for livestock transshipments (Schmandt-Besserat 1992, 1-13, 93-1298, 120-65, 184-99). Later, indeed scribes in Mesopotamia predominated in the temple and palace economies; but kings and royalty were rarely literate. In Egypt, by contrast, writing arose from the deisre of early chieftains and kings to commemorate their deeds and accomplishments (Arnett 1982; Hassan 1983, 1, 7-8; Williams and Logan 1987, 245-85). Its roots lay in the painted buffware of Naqada II, whose totemic emblems for divinities show forms recognizable in later hieroglyphic script (hoffman 1991, 31, fig. 7; Arnett 1982).
Thus Egyptian and Mesopotamian writing systems have totally disparate origins. In later Egyptian Dynastic times literacy extended from the top of society downward. Egyptian kings and royalty had to be literacy- in sharp contrast to those in Mesopotamia - and the bureaucracy that arose around the early Dynastic rulers encouraged in spread of writing, as did the religious needs of lower-ranked Egyptians (Baines 1983; Ray 1986). A scribal class evolved from the Archaic Period to the Old Kingdom, basically as account keepers for the elite and as bureaucrats for the government's taxing and documentary functions. During all periods the means of social advancement to the elite was through literacy (Baines 1983).
The ancient Egyptian writing system was therefore a distinctly African development, and the evidence for this does indeed contradict some of the diffusionist reasoning that grew out of the Aryan Model, as well as the prominent position ascribed to Mesopotamian influence."
-- Yurco, F "An Egyptological Review" IN Mary R. Lefkowitz and Guy MacLean Rogers, Black Athena Revisited, 1996, Univ of North Carolina Press, p. 62-100
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
EGYPTOLOGIST BARRY KEMP ON HOW ANCIENT EGYPTIANS ARE MISREPRESENTED BY SKEWED STUDIES
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Recent 2016 book by Zakrewski et al, offers primer on scientific techniques that might be profitably applied in "Egyptology broadly, and in Egyptian archaeology in particular."
PUB DESCRIPTION: There is a notable lack of archaeological science used in Egyptology and Egyptian archaeology today. The reasons behind this are twofold: one, the discipline started with the early translation of Hieroglyphs which, combined with the large amount of written and pictorial material available, has long overshadowed the study of the material culture, including archaeology. Second are the practical and bureaucratic challenges to be found in obtaining access to material. In the light of these challenges, the lack of application of archaeological science in Egypt is hardly surprising.
Science in the Study of Ancient Egypt demonstrates how to integrate scientific methodologies into Egyptology broadly, and in Egyptian archaeology in particular, in order to maximise the amount of information that might be obtained within a study of ancient Egypt, be it field, museum, or laboratory-based. The authors illustrate the inclusive but varied nature of the scientific archaeology being undertaken, revealing that it all falls under the aegis of Egyptology, and demonstrating its potential for the elucidation of problems within traditional Egyptology. Posted by EgyWolf (Member # 22765) on :
Posted by Ase (Member # 19740) on :
^^^^ please delete spam/trolling. The irony is that I was going to post more on Abusir el Meleq. The tombs there were reported to have Hebrew names.
But to expand on Zarahan's original post:
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova: 2017 study finds sub-Saharan influence around Roman period. Ancient samples drawn from later period of Dynastic Egypt -taken from the farther north- downplaying the south, and excluding nearby Nubia & Sudan
Ancient samples from Abusir, near Faiyum in the north
Samples from Late period-of Egypt- which have more foreign influence quote:
“According to the radiocarbon dates .. the samples can be grouped into three time periods: Pre-Ptolemaic (New Kingdom, Third Intermediate Period and Late Period), Ptolemaic and Roman Period."
Sampling from the far north- quote: Written sources indicate that by the third century BCE Abusir el-Meleq was at the centre of a wider region that comprised the northern part of the Herakleopolites province, and had close ties with the Fayum.. We aim to study changes and continuities in the genetic makeup of the ancient inhabitants of the Abusir el-Meleq community .. since all sampled remains derive from this community in Middle Egypt and have been radiocarbon dated to the late New Kingdom to the Roman Period..”
Limitations of study candidly admitted by authors - Quote:
“However, we note that all our genetic data were obtained from a single site in Middle Egypt and may not be representative for all of ancient Egypt. It is possible that populations in the south of Egypt were more closely related to those of Nubia and had a higher sub-Saharan genetic component, in which case the argument for an influx of sub-Saharan ancestries after the Roman Period might only be partially valid and have to be nuanced. Throughout Pharaonic history there was intense interaction between Egypt and Nubia, ranging from trade to conquest and colonialism, and there is compelling evidence for ethnic complexity within households with Egyptian men marrying Nubian women and vice versa 51,52,53. Clearly, more genetic studies on ancient human remains from southern Egypt and Sudan are needed before apodictic statements can be made." --Schuenemann 2016 Ancient Egyptian mummy genomes suggest increase of Sub-Saharan African ancestry in post-Roman periods. NatComm, 8:15694
-To offer a bit more context, the authors of Schuenemann 2016 admit to large scale migration before any of their mummies existed:
quote:Especially from the second millennium BCE onwards, there were intense, historically- and archaeologically documented contacts, including the large-scale immigration of Canaanite populations, known as the Hyksos, into Lower Egypt, whose origins lie in the Middle Bronze Age Levant
-Most of the foreign inflow and Second Intermediate period conquest of Egypt took place in the north.
The Egyptians themselves admit to large scale migration and rule of northern Egypt by foreigners centuries before the first mummies of Abusir el Meleq:
Egyptian Propaganda from the Prophecy of Neferti describes Asiatic immigration.
quote: "All good things have passed away, the land being cast away through trouble by means of that food of the Asiatics who pervade the land. Enemies have come into being in the east; Asiatics have come down into Egypt, for a fortress lacks another beside it, and no guard will hear."
Some who are more unfamiliar with Asiatic rule of Egypt believe it only extended to the Delta. Kamose's inscription describes Asiatic control having extended much further south of Abusir el-Meleq and into Cusae. Specifically the Egyptian nobility say:
quote:"Behold, it is Asiatic water as far as Cusae...we are a ease in our (part of) Egypt. Elephantine is strong, and the middle (of the land) is with us as far as Cusae...He holds the land of the Asiatics; we hold Egypt. Should someone come and act against us, then we shall act against him." (CT-5-7)
Tl;dr: Southern Egyptians saw the north of Cusae as "land of the Asiatics" centuries before the first of these mummies to enter Abusir el Meleq. This site does not provide data during such a critical period of Egyptian history to understand the degree to which demographic change took place due to these migration patterns.
-Another problem: the authors admit upon peer review that they have no comparable data from the Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom and that the site was not really populated until the Late period:
quote: Q5. Lines 75-77. “In particular, the site holds much promise for studying changes in its population structure from the late Dynastic Period to the present day.” Why is this the case? Is it due to the better DNA preservation in the later mummies?? Please explain!
Answer:Unfortunately, mummies from the Old till early New Kingdom are not present at the site or and not included in our data set, which focusses on the three consecutive periods. The site is mainly occupied during the Late Period till Roman times according to written sources, and thus would allow the study of an extended temporal transect. We furthermore find in more than 50% of all remains authentic ancient DNA preserved, suggesting this to be an ideal site for further studies.
The authors concede there's no way of knowing where these mummies came from or how much mixing had happened during the intermediate periods if they descended in part from natives. They don't have data from the site that precedes documented evidence of Asiatic migration into northern Egypt. And even if they did have it, they concede the site was before the Late Period wasn't very populated, leaving it questionable if the site would've ever (even in Old Kingdom times) been a worthy location to search for a representational model of Egyptian diversity.
The authors also describe foreign names being in the site they selected:
quote:Importantly, there is evidence for foreign influence at Abusir el-Meleq. Individuals with Greek, Latin and Hebrew names are known to have lived at the site and several coffins found at the cemetery used Greek portrait image and adapted Greek statue types to suit ‘Egyptian’ burial practices. The site’s first excavator, Otto Rubensohn, also found a Greek grave inscription in stone as well as a writing board inscribed in Greek46. Taken together with the multitude of Greek papyri that were written at the site, this evidence strongly suggests that at least some inhabitants of Abusir el-Meleq were literate in, and able to speak, Greek.
Egyptologist SOY Keita in his response to the research study (more highlights from his rebuttal later) notes that in spite of what data is available or absent for comparison (some of which noted above), the research team make great assumptions to arrive to their conclusions:
quote:The socio-cultural dynamics are not fully considered: the information on the origin and social status is incomplete, or unknowable in fact. The mummies are clearly assumed to be representative of the local population based on an incomplete archaeological report, in spite of the historical information provided about northern Egypt’s interaction with the Near East since the Predynastic, and the known settlements of Greeks, and others, in northern Egypt in later periods.
In peer review, the authors downplay existing data from southern sites that show southern African ancestry:
quote:Q13. Conclusions. I agree that in other sites, especially in the south of Egypt, there could be a much higher influence of Sub-Saharan populations. It is well known that there were close trading connections to Nubia and other Sub-Saharan areas during the Middle and New Kingdom. What does this mean for the interpretation of your findings?
Answer: We have addressed this point in our revised discussion (see lines 395-405). As an alternative explanation this would only mean that modern-day Egyptians might resemble more closely ancient Egyptians from the south. However, in the absence of data from southern sites, this also remains speculative.
Egyptologist SOY Keita review of Schuenemann et al. has so many points to cover that I highly suggest it is read. I'll cover some highlights:
Egyptologist SOY Keita responds to sample size and contributors to the field like Schuenemann et al. whose focus on using northern samples and publicly overstating their representation of a "true Egyptian," ignores a reality of the north being assimilated and integrated to Egyptian culture by the south during the predynastic:
quote:All of the samples are from the northern half of Egypt, from one nome which is 2.4% (1/42) of AE nomes. Ancient Egyptian culture originated southern Upper Egypt.
Egyptologist SOY Keita responds to Schuenemann et al.'s dismissal of data suggesting southern African (or Sub Saharan Afrian) genetic connections to southern Egypt.
quote:Schuenemann et al. seemingly suggest, based largely on the results of an ancient DNA study of later period remains from northern Egypt, that the ‘ancient Egyptians’ (AE) as an entity came from Asia (the Near East, NE), and that modern Egyptians “received additional sub-Saharan African (SSA) admixtures in recent times” after the latest period of the pharaonic era due to the “trans-Saharan slave trade and Islamic expansion.” In spite of the implied generalization about ‘origins’ the authors do offer the caveat that their findings may have been different if samples had been used from southern Egypt, and this is a significant admission. Their conclusions deserve further discussion from multiple perspectives which cannot be fully developed due to space limitations.
quote: The authors completely dismiss the results of PCR methods used on AE remains. As a Habicht et al. 4 states, PCR based methods were used successfully on mummified Egyptian cats and crocodiles without creating extensive debate..."
"... Our analysis of STRs from Amarna and Ramesside royal mummies with popAffiliator⁸ based on the same published data 5,6 indicates a 41.7% to 93.9% probability of SSA affinities (see Table 1); most of the individuals had a greater probability of affiliation with “SSA" which is not the only way to be "African" a point worth repeating."
Keita criticizes Schuenemann et al.'s implication of "SSA" ancestry in modern Egyptians as the result of the slave trade:
quote: Furthermore, SSA groups indicated to have contributed to modern Egypt do not match the Muslim trade routes that have been well documented as SSA groups from the great lakes and southern African regions were largely absent in the internal trading routes that went north to Egypt.
-Adding to Keita's points, evidence of the site's associations to the north include data that suggests Abusir el-Meleq during this Late Period of the samples was referred to by the Egyptians as a northern or Lower Egyptian site. It was frequently compared to Abydos due to the site's Osiris worship. Abydos was considered a southern epicenter of Osiris worship, while Abusir el Meleq was considered a site of worship associated with the north or Lower Egypt. Specifically, the research finds that it was translated and described as "Ꜣbḏw mḥt/mht(y)t" or "Northern Abydos/Abydos of the Lower Egypt, while Ꜣbḏw was the Abydos of Upper Egypt (s wr Ꜣbḏw sm) was the Osiris worship center of the south. You can read more about it here:
Will be adding the sources so just chill as I edit. Carrying on:
The Dakhleh Oasis being used as a proxy for southern Egypt (despite the Oasis' Egyptian contacts being mostly northern) and described as supporting the Abusir study.
Genes 2017, 8(10), 262; doi:10.3390/genes8100262 Complete Mitochondrial Genome Sequencing of a Burial from a Romano–Christian Cemetery in the Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt: Preliminary Indications
J. Eldon Molto 1,* , Odile Loreille 2,†, Elizabeth K. Mallott 3, Ripan S. Malhi 4, Spence Fast 2, Jennifer Daniels-Higginbotham 2, Charla Marshall 2 and Ryan Parr 5
quote:Abstract: The curse of ancient Egyptian DNA was lifted by a recent study which sequenced the mitochondrial genomes (mtGenome) of 90 ancient Egyptians from the archaeological site of Abusir el-Meleq. Surprisingly, these ancient inhabitants were more closely related to those from the Near East than to contemporary Egyptians. It has been accepted that the timeless highway of the Nile River seeded Egypt with African genetic influence, well before pre-Dynastic times. Here we report on the successful recovery and analysis of the complete mtGenome from a burial recovered from a remote Romano–Christian cemetery, Kellis 2 (K2). K2 serviced the ancient municipality of Kellis, a village located in the Dakhleh Oasis in the southwest desert in Egypt. The data were obtained by high throughput sequencing (HTS) performed independently at two ancient DNA facilities (Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory, Dover, DE, USA and Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA). These efforts produced concordant haplotypes representing a U1a1a haplogroup lineage. This result indicates that Near Eastern maternal influence previously identified at Abusir el-Meleq was also present further south, in ancient Kellis during the Romano–Christian period.
Immediately we can notice the time period is very late. Also, the Oasis has an interesting history. Plenty of inbreeding, close contacts with northern Egypt, Libyan influences:
1. The Oasis dwellers were heavily inbred, and genetically drifted from standard Egyptians, creating a distinct phenotype.
quote:Since then, the oasis population, as characterized by the Kellis assemblage, appears to have diverged from Nile Valley groups as a result of genetic drift. The results of the present and previous intracemetery analyses suggesting a high level of homogeneity and inbreeding within the Dakhleh Oasis may also explain the phenetic distinctiveness of the Kellis assemblage in relation to Nile Valley groups.
2. The people of ancient Dakhleh did NOT consider themselves Egyptians but when they did interact with Egypt, they were known to primarily make contacts with Middle (northern) Egyptians.
quote:While texts from Kellis indicate that the inhabitants of the oasis considered themselves as separate from Egypt, personal correspondence and receipts for economic transactions recovered from several houses indicate that male residents of Kellis often travelled to the Nile Valley for work and trade (Gardner et al. 1999:13). Close links between the oasis and Middle Egyptian centres such as Aphrodite, Antinopolis, Hermopolis and Siaout (modern Assyut) are evident in the papyri, with some Kellis males apparently residing permanently in the Nile Valley (Gardner et al. 1999; Worp 1995). Such links would have provided ample opportunity for the exchange of genes as well as goods. This perspective is supported by a preliminary analysis of mitochondrial DNA sequences derived from a subset (N=13) of the Kellis 2 skeletal sample, which appears to demonstrate a high level of maternal genetic diversity (Parr 2002). Two isotopic studies also indicate that at least eight individuals from the Kellis 2 cemetery came from outside of the oasis (Dupras 1999; Dupras and Schwarcz 2001). In light of these previous studies, the primary aim of the present study is to explore the biological relationships of the Kellis skeletal assemblage to other ancient groups in Egypt and beyond, as well as to provide new data for the analysis of kingroup areas and sex-based differences within the Kellis skeletal assemblage.
Dental Morphological Analysis of Roman Era Burials from the Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt
quote:The presence of Libyans in the oasis is first alluded to by depictions in 18th Dynasty Nile Valley tombs of the inhabitants of the southern oases as foreigners paying tribute (Winnicki 2009:30). Later, during the 25th Dynasty, inscriptions on the smaller Dakhleh stela in the possession of the Ashmolean Museum make specific reference to Libyan tribes residing in the oasis (Janssen 1968). In addition, the authors of a compilation of personal names found in Greco-Roman texts from Kharga and Dakhleh suggest that some names may derive from Berber or other non-Egyptian/Greek languages (Salomons and Worp 2009).
quote:Recently, however, archaeological evidence for the existence of a Roman castrum (fort) has been discovered beneath Qasr, a town in the Dakhleh Oasis; this fort is also alluded to on an ostrakon recovered from the nearby site of Amheida (ancient “Trimithis”) (Bagnall and Ruffini 2012).
-To offer a bit more context, the authors of Schuenemann 2016 admit to large scale migration before any of their mummies existed:
quote:Especially from the second millennium BCE onwards, there were intense, historically- and archaeologically documented contacts, including the large-scale immigration of Canaanite populations, known as the Hyksos, into Lower Egypt, whose origins lie in the Middle Bronze Age Levant
-Most of the foreign inflow and Second Intermediate period conquest of Egypt took place in the [b]north.
The Egyptians themselves admit to large scale migration and rule of northern Egypt by foreigners centuries before the first mummies of Abusir el Meleq:
Egyptian Propaganda from the Prophecy of Neferti describes Asiatic immigration.
quote: "All good things have passed away, the land being cast away through trouble by means of that food of the Asiatics who pervade the land. Enemies have come into being in the east; Asiatics have come down into Egypt, for a fortress lacks another beside it, and no guard will hear."
Some who are more unfamiliar with Asiatic rule of Egypt believe it only extended to the Delta. Kamose's inscription describes Asiatic control having extended much further south of Abusir el-Meleq and into Cusae. Specifically the Egyptian nobility say:
quote:"Behold, it is Asiatic water as far as Cusae...we are a ease in our (part of) Egypt. Elephantine is strong, and the middle (of the land) is with us as far as Cusae...He holds the land of the Asiatics; we hold Egypt. Should someone come and act against us, then we shall act against him." (CT-5-7)
Tl;dr: Southern Egyptians saw the north of Cusae as "land of the Asiatics" centuries before the first of these mummies to enter Abusir el Meleq. This site does not provide data during such a critical period of Egyptian history to understand the degree to which demographic change took place due to these migration patterns.
-Another problem: the authors admit upon peer review that they have no comparable data from the Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom and that the site was not really populated until the Late period:
quote: Q5. Lines 75-77. “In particular, the site holds much promise for studying changes in its population structure from the late Dynastic Period to the present day.” Why is this the case? Is it due to the better DNA preservation in the later mummies?? Please explain!
Answer:Unfortunately, mummies from the Old till early New Kingdom are not present at the site or and not included in our data set, which focusses on the three consecutive periods. The site is mainly occupied during the Late Period till Roman times according to written sources, and thus would allow the study of an extended temporal transect. We furthermore find in more than 50% of all remains authentic ancient DNA preserved, suggesting this to be an ideal site for further studies.
The authors concede there's no way of knowing where these mummies came from or how much mixing had happened during the intermediate periods if they descended in part from natives. They don't have data from the site that precedes documented evidence of Asiatic migration into northern Egypt. And even if they did have it, they concede the site was before the Late Period wasn't very populated, leaving it questionable if the site would've ever (even in Old Kingdom times) been a worthy location to search for a representational model of Egyptian diversity.
The authors also describe foreign names being in the site they selected:
quote:Importantly, there is evidence for foreign influence at Abusir el-Meleq. Individuals with Greek, Latin and Hebrew names are known to have lived at the site and several coffins found at the cemetery used Greek portrait image and adapted Greek statue types to suit ‘Egyptian’ burial practices. The site’s first excavator, Otto Rubensohn, also found a Greek grave inscription in stone as well as a writing board inscribed in Greek46. Taken together with the multitude of Greek papyri that were written at the site, this evidence strongly suggests that at least some inhabitants of Abusir el-Meleq were literate in, and able to speak, Greek.
Egyptologist SOY Keita in his response to the research study (more highlights from his rebuttal later) notes that in spite of what data is available or absent for comparison (some of which noted above), the research team make great assumptions to arrive to their conclusions:
quote:The socio-cultural dynamics are not fully considered: the information on the origin and social status is incomplete, or unknowable in fact. The mummies are clearly assumed to be representative of the local population based on an incomplete archaeological report, in spite of the historical information provided about northern Egypt’s interaction with the Near East since the Predynastic, and the known settlements of Greeks, and others, in northern Egypt in later periods.
In peer review, the authors downplay existing data from southern sites that show southern African ancestry:
quote:Q13. Conclusions. I agree that in other sites, especially in the south of Egypt, there could be a much higher influence of Sub-Saharan populations. It is well known that there were close trading connections to Nubia and other Sub-Saharan areas during the Middle and New Kingdom. What does this mean for the interpretation of your findings?
Answer: We have addressed this point in our revised discussion (see lines 395-405). As an alternative explanation this would only mean that modern-day Egyptians might resemble more closely ancient Egyptians from the south. However, in the absence of data from southern sites, this also remains speculative.
Egyptologist SOY Keita review of Schuenemann et al. has so many points to cover that I highly suggest it is read. I'll cover some highlights:
Egyptologist SOY Keita responds to sample size and contributors to the field like Schuenemann et al. whose focus on using northern samples and publicly overstating their representation of a "true Egyptian," ignores a reality of the north being assimilated and integrated to Egyptian culture by the south during the predynastic:
quote:All of the samples are from the northern half of Egypt, from one nome which is 2.4% (1/42) of AE nomes. Ancient Egyptian culture originated southern Upper Egypt.
Egyptologist SOY Keita responds to Schuenemann et al.'s dismissal of data suggesting southern African (or Sub Saharan Afrian) genetic connections to southern Egypt.
quote:Schuenemann et al. seemingly suggest, based largely on the results of an ancient DNA study of later period remains from northern Egypt, that the ‘ancient Egyptians’ (AE) as an entity came from Asia (the Near East, NE), and that modern Egyptians “received additional sub-Saharan African (SSA) admixtures in recent times” after the latest period of the pharaonic era due to the “trans-Saharan slave trade and Islamic expansion.” In spite of the implied generalization about ‘origins’ the authors do offer the caveat that their findings may have been different if samples had been used from southern Egypt, and this is a significant admission. Their conclusions deserve further discussion from multiple perspectives which cannot be fully developed due to space limitations.
quote: The authors completely dismiss the results of PCR methods used on AE remains. As a Habicht et al. 4 states, PCR based methods were used successfully on mummified Egyptian cats and crocodiles without creating extensive debate..."
"... Our analysis of STRs from Amarna and Ramesside royal mummies with popAffiliator⁸ based on the same published data 5,6 indicates a 41.7% to 93.9% probability of SSA affinities (see Table 1); most of the individuals had a greater probability of affiliation with “SSA" which is not the only way to be "African" a point worth repeating."
Keita criticizes Schuenemann et al.'s implication of "SSA" ancestry in modern Egyptians as the result of the slave trade:
quote: Furthermore, SSA groups indicated to have contributed to modern Egypt do not match the Muslim trade routes that have been well documented as SSA groups from the great lakes and southern African regions were largely absent in the internal trading routes that went north to Egypt.
-Adding to Keita's points, evidence of the site's associations to the north include data that suggests Abusir el-Meleq during this Late Period of the samples was referred to by the Egyptians as a northern or Lower Egyptian site. It was frequently compared to Abydos due to the site's Osiris worship. Abydos was considered a southern epicenter of Osiris worship, while Abusir el Meleq was considered a site of worship associated with the north or Lower Egypt. Specifically, the research finds that it was translated and described as "Ꜣbḏw mḥt/mht(y)t" or "Northern Abydos/Abydos of the Lower Egypt, while Ꜣbḏw was the Abydos of Upper Egypt (s wr Ꜣbḏw sm) was the Osiris worship center of the south. You can read more about it here:
The irony is that I was going to post more on Abusir el Meleq. The tombs there were reported to have Hebrew names.
DO you have any info on the Hebrew graves in the area? Does dating match up with various Israel in Egypt narratives?
Posted by Ase (Member # 19740) on :
quote:Importantly, there is evidence for foreign influence at Abusir el-Meleq. Individuals with Greek, Latin and Hebrew names are known to have lived at the site and several coffins found at the cemetery used Greek portrait image and adapted Greek statue types to suit ‘Egyptian’ burial practices
It says Hebrew names were found and Abusir el-Meleq was not occupied in large amount until the later periods according to them so it's likely there may have been some historical overlap in time period. They cite two sources (although I think only one deals with that answer specifically). I wasn't able to get very far from the previews of Broux online but this is what they sourced.
sources cited:
Broux, Y. & Depauw, M. in Social Informatics (eds Aiello, L. M., McFarland, D.) 304–313 (Springer, 2015).
Riggs, C. The Beautiful Burial in Roman Egypt: Art, Identity, and Funerary Religion Oxford University Press (2005).
Posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Distinctive "Bushman canine" dental feature, found most frequently in sub-Saharan Africa, also appears among Ancient Egyptians. Dental data confirmed by DNA analysis showing Haplogroup L0f, a southern African marker, also appearing in Egyptians. Quote:
"It is important to note that “SSA” influence may not be due to a slave trade, an overdone explanation; the green Sahara is to be considered as Egypt is actually in the eastern Sahara. SSA affinities of modern Egyptians from Abusir El-Meleq might be attributed to ancient early settlers as there is a notable frequency of the “Bushmen canine”- deemed a SSA trait in Predynastic samples dating to 4,000 BC9 from Adaima, Upper Egypt. Haplogroup L0f, usually associated with southern Africans, is present in living Egyptians in Adaima and could represent the product of an ancient “ghost population” from the Green Sahara that contributed widely. " [Crubézy, E. Le peuplement de la vallée du Nil. Archéo-Nil 20, 25-42 (2010).] --FROM: Ancient Egyptian Genomes from northern Egypt: Further discussion Gourdine1, Keita, Gourdine and Anselin. 2017
'Bushman canine' feature primarily African, and oft falsely reported in other populations. Quote:
The mesial lingual ridge is an almost invariant feature of the upper canines while tuberculum dentale is polymorphic. In some cases, a large tuberculum dentate coalesces with the mesial lingual ridge to form what Morris (1975) calls the Bushman canine. This fact is most evident when one antimere exhibits the ‘Bushmen canine’ while the other exhibits a large free-standing tuberculum projection. This trait is most common in African populations, especially the Bushmen, but it has been observed in populations from other geographic areas, in some cases falsely so (Irish and Morris, 1996).
-- Scott and Turner. 2000. The Anthropology of Modern Human Teeth: Dental Morphology and Its Variation.. p31-33
Africans have the highest ancestral dental diversity. Distinctive traits by SOME Africans are part of an INDIGENOUS range not stereotypical "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. )
African populations have a broad range of characteristics- the most diverse in the world. Distinctive dental traits in one place do not mean ALL Africans are "supposed" to have the same thing, at all times, in all places. Nor does the absence of a unique trait in one area make the people "non-African". Some Africans have the feature, others do not, but all categories are still Africans. With these caveats noted against stereotypical claims that "only" Africans with said feature are true" Africans, the Bushman Canine feature registers notable frequencies in Africa and appears in Egypt, which too, is in Africa.
"Because over one-third of Blacks manifest this condition, while it is rare in Whites and Asians, the presence of this feature supports an attribution of a skull to this ancestral group. The Bushman canine also is useful for attributing a skull to Black. In this trait, an additional cusp appears on the lingual side of the crown of the maxillary canine, making this tooth similar in configuration to a lower first premolar (Figure 7.1 lb). Because its frequency in Blacks is three times higher than other ancestral groups, the presence of this trait in the dentition of forensic remains generally implies Black ancestry." --By Steven N. Byers. Introduction to Forensic Anthropology. p. 141
"This range of variation is compatible with those obtained by genetic, craniometric, and odontometric data. Subsaharan Africans show the largest intra-regional diversity among the groups compared.. Regardless of different population structures in each geographic region, the gradients of the diversity presented herein indicate that geographic distance from subsaharan Africa is a significant and primary determinant of nonmetric dental variation observed on the vast Eurasian, Australian, and New World regions .. the geographic distance from subsaharan Africa along likely colonization routes is one of the strongly supported predictors for not only genetic but also phenotypic diversity of modern human populations. The pattern of decrease in dental variation with distance from East Africa is more or less smooth and provides no suggestion for major discontinuities that could be interpreted as evidence for a second or multiple origin(s) of modern human populations. Therefore, the globally distributed populations can be explained by an expansion from subSaharan Africa." --Tsunehiko Hanihara*. 2008. Morphological variation of major human populations based on nonmetric dental traits. AJPA 136:169–182
Posted by One Third African (Member # 3735) on :
See if there's anything of interest in this paper.
Agree on some ดูหนังออนไลน์ Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova:
EGYPT'S PIONEERING DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING- NON-ALPHABETICAL AND ALPHABETICAL
Egypt a pioneer of writing before Mesopotamia "The earliest known Sumerian writings date back to 3000BC while the German team's find shows that Abydos inscriptions date to 3400BC. The first Pharaonic dynasty began in 2920BC with King Menes. The earliest known writing in Dynasty Zero is much earlier than the oldest writing discovered in Mesopotamia." --Gaballa Ali Gaballa, Secretary-General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities: 1999. IN: Nevine El-Aref, "Did writing originate in Egypt?" Al-Ahram Weekly: 1 - 7 April 1999, Issue No. 423
Certain writing forms in Mesopotamia and only understandable from Egyptian perspective
"[Archaeologist] Dreyer asserted that the obsidian used to make this bowl came from Ethiopia suggesting significant cultural contacts among Nile Valley populations. He concluded his presentation by noting similarities between specific Egyptian and Mesopotamian objects and suggesting that perhaps there is an initial influence of Egyptian writing on Mesopotamia because there are signs on Mesopotamian objects that are only "readable" from the standpoint of the Egyptian language, but not the Mesopotamian language." -- German archaeologist Gunther Dreyer. 2000. "Beginnings of Writing in Ancient Egypt" IN: - "Recent Finds in Predynastic Egypt." ANKH Journal 8/9: 1999-2000.
Africa's Nile Valley shares in creation of the historic alphabet
"Discoveries by Gunter Dreyer of the German Archaeological Institute suggest that the origin of Egyptian writing needs to be reexamined, offering the possibility that the idea of writing was developed in Egypt several centuries before it occurred in the Near East. Inscriptions from hundreds of pots and labels found at the royal cemetery at Abydos show some hieroglyphic writing as far back as 3400 BCE, with most occurring about 3200 BCE. Sumerian writing seems to have begun about 3100 BCE. The Egyptians formed and used writing in a different way than the Asians. The linguistic pictographs of Sumer were rudimentary were used primarily used for commerce. Those of Egypt were more representational of real objects and were primarily employed to identify kings, tombs and the like.
A remarkable find involving early experiments with alphabetic writing in Egypt has been recently made by John C. Darnell, an Egyptologist at Yale University, and his wife Deborah. Inscriptions discovered in the limestone cliffs on an ancient road between Thebes and Abydos, a route once heavily traveled by Asian traders and mercenaries in the Egyptian desert, are in a Semitic script with Egyptian influences. Dated between 1900 and 1000 BCE, they are two or three centuries older than previous evidence of an alphabet in the Semitic-speaking territory of the Sinai Peninsula or in the Syria-Palestine region occupied by the Canaanites. While there have always been indications that Semites were inventors of the alphabet, researchers had heretofore assumed that it was developed in their own lands by borrowing and simplifying Egyptian hieroglyphs. Instead Darnell's discovery now suggests that, working with Semitic speakers in Egypt, native scribes simplified formal pictographic Egyptian writing and modified the symbols into an early alphabet using a semi-cursive form commonly used in the Middle Kingdom."
--Martin Isler (2001). Sticks, stones, and shadows: building the Egyptian pyramids. Univ of Oklahoma PRess. p. 56
The Egyptian Western Desert- location of Egyptian military scripts adopted by both Egyptian scribes and Semitic speakers into alphabetic forms http://www.codex99.com/typography/11.html
"However, now with the recovery of alphabetic writing from the Egyptian Western Desert, the fairly high degree of literacy in Egyptian (knowledge of hieratic, and a hybrid of hieratic and hieroglyphic scripts as well) presumed by these texts, and the well known Asiatic pres-ence within Egypt proper from the early Dynastic periods onwards, strongly suggest that it is to Egypt itself that we must look for the geographi-cal home of alphabetic writing. More specifically, the Bebi inscription and its immediate neighbors offer tantalizing clues about the context in which Semitic-speaking Asiatics adopted and adapted certain aspects of the Egyptian writing system for the needs of their own language(s). The Egyptian military, known both to have employed Asiatics (as the Bebi inscription so wonderfully attests) and to have included scribes, would provide one likely context in which Western Asiatic Semitic language speakers could have learned and eventually adapted the Egyptian writing system. Indeed, the prominence of lapidary hieratic, the form of hieratic utilized by army scribes, as models for alphabetic forms at the Wadi el-Hõl (and at Serabit).." --J. Darnell et al. 2005. Two Early Alphabetic Inscriptions from the Wadi el-Hol: New Evidence for the Origin of the Alphabet from the Western Desert of Egypt, Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 2005.
Posted by zarahan aka Enrique Cardova (Member # 15718) on :
Shakes up some commonly accepted assumptions, and explores key themes on Egypt seen in books, articles and even online forums.
FROM THE INTRODUCTION:
"At the mention of ancient Egyptian society, our minds most often conjure images of pyramids, golden funerary masks, and militant kings. Yet this socio-historical narrative is rooted in Egyptology’s colonial origins and is replete with ingrained and oft-repeated adages:
Egypt is the gift of the Nile. Egypt is Kemet, the Black Land: a land without cities, a land of gold, whose king was a god and smote his foreign enemies to defeat chaos. The ancient Egyptians were obsessed with death and religion, feasted on bread and beer, treated women relatively well (by ancient standards), and despite the wealth of preserved material culture, had no true art. Ancient Egyptian society featured a pyramid-like hierarchy with the king at the top, followed by the elites, administrators, craftsmen, and peasants. They were an inward-looking society, rejecting outside people and practices.
Most people who have read an introductory book, taken a class, or watched a documentary about Ancient Egyptian society will fnd all of this familiar—yet to difering extents, all of these adages stem from assumptions, some true, some questionable, some changing according to time and circumstance, but all ingrained into the study of ancient Egypt. Indeed, the very discipline of Egyptology has only just begun to grapple with its colonial foundations, and its scholarship has long prioritized the state’s grand royal artistic and textual production over all else. Indeed, the agenda of political elites is often so convincing that it is easy to accept the narrative provided by these select communities, making it difficult to fnd or “read” evidence to the contrary. It is therefore important to recognize that ancient Egypt had many societies at any given time, all of them overlapping, mixed and interacting."
ref: Danielle Candelora, Nadia Ben-Marzouk, Kathlyn M. Cooney. (2022) Ancient Egyptian Society_ Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches-Routledge. pg 3
CONTENTS
Introduction 1 1 Investigating Ancient Egypt’s Societies: Past Approaches and New Directions 3 Danielle Candelora, Nadia Ben-Marzouk, and Kathlyn M. Cooney
SECTION I Power 9 2 Power and the Study of Ancient Egyptian Society 11 Nadia Ben-Marzouk 3 Hidden Violence: Reassessing Violence and Human Sacrifce in Ancient Egypt 17 Roselyn A. Campbell vi Contents 4 Making the Past Present: The Use of Archaism and Festivals in the Transmission of Egyptian Royal Ideology 29 Jefrey Newman 5 Divine Kingship and the Royal Ka 40 Jonathan Winnerman 6 Trade, Statehood, and Confgurations of Power in Ancient Egypt (Early-Middle Bronze Age) 49 Juan Carlos Moreno García 7 The Social Pyramid and the Status of Craftspeople in Ancient Egypt 62 Caroline Arbuckle MacLeod 8 Ancient Egyptian Decorum: Demarcating and Presenting Social Action 74 John Baines 9 Co-regency in the 25th Dynasty: A Case Study of the Chapel of Osiris-Ptah Neb-ankh at Karnak 90 Essam Nagy
SECTION II People 101 10 The Egyptianization of Egypt and Egyptology: Exploring Identity in Ancient Egypt 103 Danielle Candelora
11 Ancient Egyptian “Origins” and “Identity” 111 S. O. Y. Keita
12 Eight Medjay Walk into a Palace: Bureaucratic Categorization and Cultural Mistranslation of Peoples in Contact 122 Kate Liszka Contents vii 13 The Value of Children in Ancient Egypt 140 Caroline Arbuckle MacLeod 14 Orientalizing the Ancient Egyptian Woman 152 Jordan Galczynski 15 The Ancient Egyptian Artist: A Non-Existing Category? 163 Dimitri Laboury and Alisée Devillers 16 Hellenistic Warfare and Egyptian Society 182 Christelle Fischer-Bovet 17 Revealing the Invisible Majority: “Hegemonic” Group Artefacts as Biography Containers of “Underprivileged” Groups 195 Gianluca Miniaci 18 Reevaluating Social Histories: The Use of Ancient Egypt in Contemporary Art 210 Nicholas R. Brown
SECTION III Place 223 19 People of Nile and Sun, Wheat and Barley: Ancient Egyptian Society and the Agency of Place 225 Kathlyn M. Cooney 20 Shifting Boundaries, Conficting Perspectives: (Re)establishing the Borders of Kemet Through Variable Social Identities 235 Danielle Candelora 21 Urban versus Village Society in Ancient Egypt: A New Perspective 248 Nadine Moeller viii Contents 22 Reassessing the Value of Autobiographical Inscriptions from the First Intermediate Period and “Pessimistic Literature” for Understanding Egypt’s Social History 265 Ellen Morris 23 Othering the Alphabet: Rewriting the Social Context of a New Writing System in the Egyptian Expedition Community 279 Nadia Ben-Marzouk 24 Language Policy and the Administrative Framework of Early Islamic Egypt 299 Jennifer Cromwell 25 New Methods to Reconstruct the Social History of Food in Ancient Egypt: Case Studies from Nag ed Deir and Deir el Ballas 313 Amr Khalaf Shahat 26 Stop and Smell the Flowers: A Re-Assessment of the Ancient Egyptian “Blue Lotus” 325 Robyn Price 27 The Body of Egypt: How Harem Women Connected a King with his Elites 336 Kathlyn M. Cooney, Chloe Landis and Turandot Shayegan