Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
This one will cause a serious blow to the Afrocentrics and Panafricanists that make a big deal out of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Egyptians. It turns out, if we are to believe the newest DNA study, that they are related more to the Middle East and Europe and not so much with black Africans.
You forgot to include this:
"The mummies come from the archaeological site of Abusir el-Meleq, situated on the Nile River in what was ancient Middle Egypt. Since all the mummies were from this area, the scientists note that their results cannot be generalized to the south or north of Egypt (Upper or Lower Egypt), which may have been more or less affected by foreign conquest. "
Nonetheless, the results, to date, are mildly interesting. Now, is anyone suggesting that lighter skin pigmentation was adaptive in Ancient Africa; specifically, in Ancient Egypt, and that the indigenous people had light skin?
If so, why wasn't light skin also adaptive and common throughout Africa? Or, could it be that those who were mummified, in the region examined, simply had lighter skin as a result of being related to people from the Middle East?
This one will cause a serious blow to the Afrocentrics and Panafricanists that make a big deal out of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Egyptians. It turns out, if we are to believe the newest DNA study, that they are related more to the Middle East and Europe and not so much with black Africans.
Riddle me this, where did Europeans and Middle Easterners come from?
An international team of researchers say the findings entirely change the beginning of human history and place the last common ancestor of both chimpanzees and humans - the so-called Missing Link - in the Mediterranean region.
Quote:
The species was also found to be several hundred thousand years older than the oldest African hominid, Sahelanthropus tchadensis which was found in Chad.
"We were surprised by our results, as pre-humans were previously known only from sub-Saharan Africa," said doctoral student Jochen Fuss, a Tübingen PhD student who conducted this part of the study.
Professor David Begun, a University of Toronto paleoanthropologist and co-author of this study, added: "This dating allows us to move the human-chimpanzee split into the Mediterranean area."
Quote:
Professor Böhme added: "Our findings may eventually change our ideas about the origin of humanity. I personally don't think that the descendants of Graecopithecus die out, they may have spread to Africa later. The split of chimps and humans was a single event. Our data support the view that this split was happening in the eastern Mediterranean - not in Africa.
Don't worry if you are late to this. I myself wasn't aware of this until 23andme posted a link to an article about this in their Facebook page and that was mid-last week.
Don't worry if you are late to this. I myself wasn't aware of this until 23andme posted a link to an article about this in their Facebook page and that was earlier this week.
No, actually I did read it. I'll just edit this to add that I'm not prone to believing things based upon scant scientific evidence.
Did you not wonder how the author could make such a broad and sweeping statement like this, based upon one study???:
"The history of human evolution has been rewritten after scientists discovered that Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa."
Ok, WHY are people 5,000 miles away and 5,000 years later worried about the race of the ancient Egyptians?? like Who cares? I am assuming these are some race-obsessed Americans. I think the bottom-line is this: Egypt was one of the first
recorded civilizations on the planet, with monuments that are still standing to this day and no one really knows how they were
built.
People are only worried about the ancient Egyptians because what the are REALLY concerned about is how much a "black" element may have contributed to the Egyptian Civilization since Egypt is in Africa and Egyptian civilization has been on the
minds of Westerners since Napoleon.
Due to race-based slavery, some Westerners are concerned about "black". Egypt is in Africa, thus it was an African
civilization, the 25th Dynasty was "black" for sure. I am sure that it was a multi-racial civilization, I don't think they
looked like blue-eyed blond Norwegians either. If they did so what?
OP, the DNA of the elite, those powerful enough to merit tombs, wouldn't necessarily correlate with the common masses. We can't make that assumption. So what the study seems to show is that the elite came from the Near East and parts of Europe. That was already known, to some extent. History shows that Egypt was invaded by a tribe from the Caucasus, the Hyksos, and we know that Jews and other Near-Easterners lived there during various historical periods, and it was a trade center, bringing people from all over the Mediterranean and beyond, to it. That doesn't mean there weren't mid- and sub-Saharan Africans and Ethiopians, etc. also living there.
First, by the New Kingdom mummification had changed from an elite practice to a widespread method of burial in Egypt, so the papers authors are reasonably secure in the belief this was a fairly accurate slice of local ancestry in at least this part of Egypt.
Second, it's not really true to say that the elite came from "parts of Europe" Ancient DNA has basically made it clear how Europe was peopled over the last 10,000 years ago, and what we today call "white people" basically didn't exist 10,000 years ago, and didn't even exist in their modern form by the time of the Old Kingdom.
To grossly simplify, the most recent studies suggest that at the foundation of agriculture, there were two different "races" in the Near East who were about as distant from one another as modern day Europeans are from Chinese people. One of these groups was in the Levant and modern Turkey (Western Farmers), and the other in Iran and Mesopotamia (Eastern Farmers). Both of these groups were a mixture of local hunter-gatherers with something else, a mysterious population called "basal Eurasian" which was the first group of people to split off after humans left Africa. The basal Eurasians may have been from Arabia, or may have been hiding somewhere in North Africa during the ice age. No one is sure.
Anyway, the Western Farmers spread in two directions. One went into Africa, becoming to a large part the ancestors of modern-day Egyptians, Berbers, and even in part Horners from East Africa. The other group - the ones in Turkey, moved into Europe and mixed with the indigenous hunter gatherers (who, as I said, had dark skin and light eyes). The early farmers seem to have been lighter than the hunter gatherers, but they wouldn't be considered "white" by present day standards, and they had dark hair and eyes. They mostly moved up the coastlines and left much of the interior of Europe to hunter gatherers for thousands of years.
In the Bronze Age, this all went out of whack with the invasion of Europe by a different group of people from the steppe, who seem to have been the original speakers of Proto-Indo European. These people were a mixture of two different earlier "races" - hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus and hunter-gatherers from Russia. The seem to have committed genocide and/or wiped out much of the original population of Northern Europe (a recent paper found that 93% of the original population of Britain was wiped out by them) but in southern Europe they seem to have conquered the local populations and mixed with them. The most "pure" remaining population which doesn't show genetic influence from them is on the Italian island of Sardinia, which is why this study says that the ancient Egyptians show some links to Europeans.
At the same time, there was some sort of still not completely understood population turnover in the Near East in the late neolithic/early bronze age. The "Eastern Farmers" I mentioned earlier migrated into the Levant and elsewhere, thoroughly mixing with the local populations until there were no "pure" Western Farmers left. A branch of the Eastern Farmers also spread into India, mixing with the local population there. In the Bronze Age, Indo-European speakers from the steppe also invaded India, resulting in the modern mixed South Asian population.
Note that while it is true that by the New Kingdom there were plenty of people in Europe who would have passed for white, genetic studies have suggested that common European features like blond hair were still very rare up until the last few thousand years, so there really wasn't anyone looking like the "Aryan" stereotype until quite recently.
At the same time, during the time that Egypt was going strong, a lot of people in Africa wouldn't have been recognizably "black" in the modern sense. Modern day East Africans were for the most part created by a great, multi-layered mixing of African and Near Eastern peoples. Khoisan-like people seem to have originally lived as far north as Tanzania. There are hints that there may have even been deeper "back to Africa" migrations during or before the Ice Ages. None of us are pure, we're all the result of thousands of years of "race mixing."
"EGYPTIAN MUMMY" "In a study published May 30 in the journal Nature Communications, scientists looked at DNA from 151 mummified Egyptians, which were entombed from about 1400 B.C. to just after 400 A.D., in the Roman period."
The study was of mummies not the general population. So thread Tittle itself is misleading but I just ignored that.End QUOTE]
The data indicates that the closest genetic populations to the mummies were the Neolithic populations of the Levant, Anatolia and Europe but of those the closest was the Levant. In my opinion it also indicates all three branched off from a common source population which is different than Ruth was saying. Although Neolithic European farmers primarily branch off from Anatolia and the mummies primarily from the Levant.
There is no data to support that the mummies were from a different genetic population than the general population.
The data indicates that the closest genetic populations to the mummies were the Neolithic populations of the Levant, Anatolia and Europe but of those the closest was the Levant. In my opinion it also indicates all three branched off from a common source population which is different than Ruth was saying. Although Neolithic European farmers primarily branch off from Anatolia and the mummies primarily from the Levant.
There is no data to support that the mummies were from a different genetic population than the general population.
There is no data supporting that they was either,... on the other hand There Egyptians art and writing indicating a diverse background, a mild region with people coming in going, in time frame of thousands of years.
You clearly don't understand what scientific racism is,
Race is man made social construct all humans share 99.9 per cent the same DNA. After Darwin racist became to miss use natural section theory and mix with their concept of race.
They literally thought humans had separate origins, that others groups where superior to others. And there great genetics difference divide it up in these broad suppose few great race groups.
Who is white and Black is already a social construct that change region to region. For a long time white Ameicans didn't even consider italians and Spanish people as white. The context of is white or not change other time because it was social construction lossely base on ancestry.
So a lot scientists unless there talking culturally stayed away from racial divisional terms.
Basically any one going back like 2,000 years and trying to point race is racist
The whole motive is racist you got white racist trying state Egyptians race like they have evidence and they don't, they using a sample data and jumping broad on conclusion. Trying state the Egyptians were white in a racist pissy fit with Black racist. Trying claim Egyptians to be white or black like race is fuking team or something.
There is no data supporting that they was either,... on the other hand There Egyptians art and writing indicating a diverse background, a mild region with people coming in going, in time frame of thousands of years.
You clearly don't understand what scientific racism is,
Race is man made social construct all humans share 99.9 per cent the same DNA. After Darwin racist became to miss use natural section theory and mix with their concept of race.
They literally thought humans had separate origins, that others groups where superior to others. And there great genetics difference divide it up in these broad suppose few great race groups.
Who is white and Black is already a social construct that change region to region. For a long time white Ameicans didn't even consider italians and Spanish people as white. The context of is white or not change other time because it was social construction lossely base on ancestry.
So a lot scientists unless there talking culturally stayed away from racial divisional terms.
Basically any one going back like 2,000 years and trying to point race is racist
The whole motive is racist you got white racist trying state Egyptians race like they have evidence and they don't, they using a sample data and jumping broad on conclusion. Trying state the Egyptians were white in a racist pissy fit with Black racist. Trying claim Egyptians to be white or black like race is fuking team or something.
1. I know that race is a social construct.
2. Yep that's true
3. I disagree some people as just genuinely curious.
4. They were clearly a mixed population of diverse origins and progressively so, I don't view them as black or white.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.