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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
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. Thus light-skinned African Libyans and
dark-skinned Zulus are all genetically related Africans ,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 HornNile
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.
16:679689, 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:
"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."
(--Bengtson, 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
Other DNA quotes from S.O.Y. Keita
See: http://www.geocities.com/keitadnaquotes.htm
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 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."
"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.)
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):
10141022.)
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 (0.55.1%) 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,
856866)
More on Haplogroups here: http://www.tutorgig.com/ed/Haplogroup
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, including Europeans. (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)
Afrocentric critic Mary Lefkowitz says the Egypt was peopled by people from sub-Saharan Africa, not Europeans or Middle Easterners.
"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)
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. 16:679689, 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)
Early Dynastic Periods. 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)
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 the ancients 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:
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 'true negro'
"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.
"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 FirstSecond
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 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
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)
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.
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. 1680Early Nile Valley Farmers From El-Badari
"National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution
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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