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What's interesting to me is that "some" Eurocentric historians have no issues claiming the greatness of Greece and Rome though their ancestors had little to do with the founding of these nations. (see Johann Heinrich Zedler, Brohman, John. “Universalism, Eurocentrism, and Ideological Bias in Development Studies: From Modernization to Neoliberalism.” Third World Quarterly 16.1 (1995): 121-140. etc. for a better understanding of this mentality)
What's interesting to me is that "some" Eurocentric historians have no issues claiming the greatness of Greece and Rome though their ancestors had little to do with the founding of these nations. (see Johann Heinrich Zedler, Brohman, John. “Universalism, Eurocentrism, and Ideological Bias in Development Studies: From Modernization to Neoliberalism.” Third World Quarterly 16.1 (1995): 121-140. etc. for a better understanding of this mentality)
Well I think the point is that there's nothing wrong with viewing Egypt as an African civilization because it was. It's just not every African on the continent is related to it.
What's interesting to me is that "some" Eurocentric historians have no issues claiming the greatness of Greece and Rome though their ancestors had little to do with the founding of these nations. (see Johann Heinrich Zedler, Brohman, John. “Universalism, Eurocentrism, and Ideological Bias in Development Studies: From Modernization to Neoliberalism.” Third World Quarterly 16.1 (1995): 121-140. etc. for a better understanding of this mentality)
We have been over this at least half a dozen times in the thread. Please, please, PLEASE don't jump in at the end and repeat some nonsense, thinking that you are saying something profound that is going to change the entire context of the argument.
Read through the thread instead of taking it back to pages 1-5.
Well I think the point is that there's nothing wrong with viewing Egypt as an African civilization because it was. It's just not every African on the continent is related to it.
The greater point, which I will repeat yet again for our pal who can't be bothered to read, is that Greece and Rome actually did influence the rest of Western civilization. Western civilization is indeed highly united today under values that go back to Greece and Rome. This is not a platitude: the founding fathers of the United States, for example, debated as to whether to have an Athenian or a Roman model. European bloodlines are intertwined by centuries of Greek colonization and roman conquest. When I left the gym tonight, I was reading Thucydides. Many of the words that we are using are derived from Greek and Latin.
Other than Sudan, Egypt had almost no effect what-so-ever on the rest of Africa, Africa is not united under Egyptian or any other principles, and there is no country today in which ancient Egyptian values survive.
It would astonish me that I have to point out these simple truths except that it is so typical.
Now, lets prepare for the next 5-10 pages of invective and straw man taken directly from earlier in the thread and repeated almost verbatim.
After reading some of the op's responses to this thread, it stands to reason that the op has some sort of hidden agenda while trying to push his Eurocentric viewpoint that Ancient Egypt was not a Black nation. Using terms like "usefully black" whatever that means. All one has to do is read most any Ancient Greek historians account on what the Ancient Egyptians looked like.
It seems when ever Africans, regardless of which region in Africa they come from relates to Ancient Egypt then "Eurocentric's"(which I believe the op is one) tend to take issues with it as if they themselves have some stake to claim.
As I have established with dozens of studies, they are the same people that they always were.
As you have established in two posts...you never really read through the thread. You are only pretending. I doubt you even tried.
If you want to make a contribution to this thread, start with post 529, read through a few of these studies, and learn. We have posted some very specific science here, and merely launching yet another ad hominem makes you look childish.
I've read all that I needed to read cachibatches. What dozens of studies are you referring to? Who said I was trying to say something profound? My response was merely an observation of your rhetoric. Calling me childish for merely pointing out those observations would be considered "childish" on your part in my opinion.
Well I think the point is that there's nothing wrong with viewing Egypt as an African civilization because it was. It's just not every African on the continent is related to it.
Not every continent was related to it? Africa is a continent. Egypt is as much a part of Africa as Greece and Italy are to Europe. Not sure what you're trying to say here.
I've read all that I needed to read cachibatches. What dozens of studies are you referring to? Who said I was trying to say something profound? My response was merely an observation of your rhetoric. Calling me childish for merely pointing out those observations would be considered "childish" on your part in my opinion.
So no, you didn't read anything.
Post 529. Please carefully read through all of them. The Egyptians are the same people that they have always been. It is settled science.
Since all you are going to do is more ad hominem, I will be back again tomorrow, and again, and again, to remind you and anyone else reading along that post 529 really settles everything until you actually read it.
The greater point, which I will repeat yet again for our pal who can't be bothered to read, is that Greece and Rome actually did influence the rest of Western civilization. Western civilization is indeed highly united today under values that go back to Greece and Rome. This is not a platitude: the founding fathers of the United States, for example, debated as to whether to have an Athenian or a Roman model. European bloodlines are intertwined by centuries of Greek colonization and roman conquest. When I left the gym tonight, I was reading Thucydides. Many of the words that we are using are derived from Greek and Latin.
Other than Sudan, Egypt had almost no effect what-so-ever on the rest of Africa, Africa is not united under Egyptian or any other principles, and there is no country today in which ancient Egyptian values survive.
It would astonish me that I have to point out these simple truths except that it is so typical.
Now, lets prepare for the next 5-10 pages of invective and straw man taken directly from earlier in the thread and repeated almost verbatim.
Who ever questioned the influence of Greece and Rome on "European civilization"? I'm fully aware of the Roman conquests of Europe. What does that have to do with the statement I made? So I guess I can claim Greek and Roman culture as well since my ancestors were conquered by Europeans and I have some European DNA lol. Egypt had no effect of the rest of Africa? Egypt was the apex of many cultures in Africa.
Arkell, A. J. The Prehistory of the Nile Valley. Vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 1975.
Arkell, A. J., and Peter J. Ucko. "A Review of Predynastic Development in the Nile Valley." Current Anthropology 6, no. 2 (1965): 145-66.
Bard, Kathryn A. "The Egyptian Predynastic: A Review of the Evidence." Journal of Field Archaeology 21, no. 3 (1994): 265-88.
Barnard, M. M. "The secular variations of skull characters in four series of Egyptian skulls." Annals of Human Genetics 6, no. 4 (December 1935): 352–71.
Bell, Lanny. "Ancestor Worship and Divine Kingship in the Ancient Nile Valley." In Egypt in Africa, compiled by Theodore Celenko, 56-8. Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art and Indiana University Press, 1996.
Berry, A. C., and R. J. Berry. "Genetical change in ancient Egypt." Man 2 (1967): 551-68.
Brace, C. Loring. "Clines and Clusters Versus "Race: A Test in Ancient Egypt and the Case of a Death on the Nile." Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 36 (1993): 1-31.
"Perhaps the oldest evidence for a settled culture along the Nile Valley was uncovered in the 1940s by Anthony J. Arkell not in Egypt itself but in central Sudan near modern Khartoum. This culture, dubbed the Khartoum Mesolithic, is regarded as sedentary or at least semi-sedentary because it left behind the oldest pottery found anywhere in Africa, dated to approximately 7300 BC (archaeologists consider pottery a trademark of sedentary and semi-sedentary cultures because it is too fragile to be carried around by constantly moving nomads). The Khartoum Mesolithic culture has also left behind bone harpoons, grain-grinding stones, and burials of the dead (Byrnes 2009), but most significant of all is a piece of rock art depicting a boat. As Usai and Salvatori (2007) show, the boat's design shows close architectural parallels with later Egyptian ships well into the Pharaonic period, indicating that the Khartoum Mesolithic culture evolved into or at least influenced Egyptian culture."
"Around 6000 BC the earliest sign of a settlement appear in Egypt proper, specifically in the area of Nabta Playa in the country's far southeast (Wendorf and Schild 1998). The ruins of stone houses built in straight rows, wells, a circle of small megaliths, and stone tumuli (burial mounds) containing cattle bones have all been found here, in an area that is now desert but was savanna then; the Nabta Playan people appear to have had an economy based on herding cattle which were probably domesticated from a North African subspecies of aurochs different from cattle used in the Near East and Europe (Wendorf 1994, Hanotte et al 2002). J´ordeczka et al (2011) report similarities between the Nabta Playan pottery and older Sudanese pottery, again showing a southern origin or influence for the proto-Egyptians."
"The next significant culture to appear in Egypt is the Fayum Neolithic culture further north, which goes back to 5200 BC and provides the oldest evidence for agriculture in the country. Some of the crops and animals used by the Neolithic Fayumians do appear to have come from the Near East instead of being indigenous to Africa, but even here it is unlikely that the people themselves were of Near Eastern origin. Ehret et all (1996) note that the development of agriculture in the Fayum area appears to have been gradual, which is more consistent with native Africans slowly incorporating Near Eastern domesticates into an indigenous foraging strategy rather than a mass colonization of Near Eastern farmers, who would have brought about a more abrupt change in subsistence strategy. Furthermore, Arkell (1975) notes similarities in artifacts from the Fayum Neolithic to those produced by contemporary Sudanese cultures, and as will be shown later, the skeletal remains left behind by the people of ancient northern Egypt are more similar to those of Africans."
"Between 5200 and 4000 BC, knowledge of agriculture spread from the Fayum into Upper (southern) Egypt, but this did not completely replace the earlier cattle-herding Upper Egyptian culture. On the contrary, Egyptians continued to be semi-sedentary cattle herders who annually moved between Nile Valley villages and the grasslands beyond, with agriculture being only a supplement to this pastoral lifestyle (Wilkinson 2003). Egyptian tools and pottery also continued to resemble those from more southerly Africa (de Heinzelin 1962, Arkell and Ucko 1965, and Arkell 1975) and prehistoric rock art from the Sahara shows Egyptian connections (Donadoni 1964)."
"The Sahara began to turn from savanna into desert between 4000 and 3000 BC, forcing the Egyptians to abandon their pastoral ways, cling to the Nile Valley, and develop an urbanized and socially stratified culture that would evolve into classical Egyptian civilization. Most of these developments would occur in Upper Egypt, with Lower (northern) Egypt remaining a relative backwater as indicated by unimpressive burials relative to the large elite tombs of the south (Wilkinson 2003). Eventually the Upper Egyptian culture would completely replace the Lower Egyptian culture and dominate the entire length of the Egyptian Nile Valley (Bard 1994). Around the same time, a wealthy monarchic culture very similar to Upper Egypt's was developing in Sudan (Williams 1986), again showing a cultural link between Egypt and this part of Africa."
Taken as a whole, the archaeological data shows both strong cultural affinities between early Egypt and more inland regions of Africa, particularly Sudan, and a predominantly southern origin for Egyptian civilization. If Egyptian culture was heavily derivative of Near Eastern traditions, Lower Egyptian culture would have dominated the south, yet instead the reverse is observed. Whatever influence the Near East had during Egypt's formative period was not enough to replace an indigenous---and therefore African---foundation.
Last edited by jkc2j; 03-03-2014 at 11:23 PM..
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