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Surprising ancestry of ancient Egyptians


seeder

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The surprising ancestry of ancient Egyptians: First ever genome study of mummies reveals they were more Turkish and European than African

    Researchers performed a detailed analysis of the DNA of ancient mummies
    They found that ancient Egyptians were closely related to European populations
    Traditional communities in the Levant and Neolithic Europe were close relatives
    Study found that modern Egyptians share more ancestry with Sub-Saharan Africans than ancient Egyptians did


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4555292/Study-mummies-reveals-Turkish-European.html#ixzz4ibML3j3R


 

 

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Hefty article in the Mail, worth the effort of making your way through the whole thing, very clever the way they managed to analyse the ancient DNA.

Also worth having a chuckle at the comments at the end of the Mail article, Mail readers living up to the sterotype LOL!

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Hard to argue with science but it will be argued against none the less.

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Wasn't this already known or at least assumed? I thought it was, but i could be wrong. 

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Shock horror... how will academia cope with this...

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On 31/05/2017 at 7:47 AM, Captain Risky said:

Shock horror... how will academia cope with this...

About as well as it will cope with the results of research from university of Toronto that suggests humans first appeared in Europe/mediterranian and not africa

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170523083548.htm

 

Edited by EBE Hybrid
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On 5/31/2017 at 4:47 PM, Captain Risky said:

Shock horror... how will academia cope with this...

easier than you do with your 'shock horror' ,,, its nearly like you are unaware of 'academia' position on ancient Egyptians  before that  study ? 

Modern scholars who have studied Ancient Egyptian culture and population history have responded to the controversy over the race of the Ancient Egyptians in different ways. "

" At the UNESCO "Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script" in Cairo in 1974, the Black Hypothesis met with "profound" disagreement.[12] Most participants concluded that the Ancient Egyptian population was indigenous to the Nile Valley, and was made up of people from north and south of the Sahara who were differentiated by their color ." 

" . In addition, peoples from the Middle East entered the Nile Valley, bringing with them wheat, barley, sheep, goats, and possibly cattle.[20] Dynastic Egyptians referred to their country as "The Two Lands". During the Predynastic period (about 4800 to 4300BC), the Merimde culture flourished in the northern part of Egypt (Lower Egypt).[21] This culture, among others, has links to the Levant in the Middle East. "

and here is the link ( that you insist on )  ;     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy

I also cite the conversations here in 'alt history ' section between some experts and myself in an 'origins of ancient Egyptians'  thread that I started . 

So ...   which particular theory of 'academia' on this issue do you think will  have trouble coping with it  ? 

Edited by back to earth
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7 hours ago, EBE Hybrid said:

About as well as it will cope with the results of research from university of Toronto that suggests humans first appeared in Europe/mediterranian and not africa

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170523083548.htm

 

First , they would examine the evidence 

https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/in-their-own-words/2017/2017-05/not-enough-evidence-to-back-europeans-claim.html

 

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9 minutes ago, back to earth said:

So ...   which particular theory of 'academia' on this issue do you think will  have trouble coping with it  ? 

These results demonstrate that the tested remains are most strongly related to Levantine people. While the results are far from conclusive given the age range and being from only one site, they do support the old Dynastic Race Theory which modern Egyptologists aren't too fond of.

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I think not .   The dynastic race theory is somewhat different  and relates to ingres in from the eastern dessert ( from the old biblical lands )  based on old rock art there .  For a newer explanation of this art see Toby Wilkenson's book on  beginings of pharaonic culture .

I would say more but I have an appointment in 7 minutes that I am not ready for 

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.....     there is also a 'new dynastic race theory' that has already been adopted by some  'scholars'   . 

The other issue is the dating of the mummies , it is well known that Egypt was 'melting pot'  and this dynamic is what I suppose lead to the sudden boost in developing their culture around the 1st dynasty. And ever since , its population has been a mix and a flow in and out . 

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Academics, the ones who wrote the paper, are worried that Fayoum may not be representative of the entire Egypt, the city is rather North, the mummies rather recent and they would expect a stronger Levant influence. They are also wandering if it's Levant DNA in Egypt or Egyptian DNA in the Levant. Although the Anatolian farmer DNA is undoubtedly from Anatolia.

The paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15694

Plus the graphs which doesn't appear in the daily mail article. The first one is about mt-DNA, mitochondrial DNA which isn't human DNA properly, but the DNA of unicellular organisms which live in each of our cells. They turn sugar into energy. Since they are all over the place and they are very short, they are easier to get than human DNA. Mitochondria are passed down by the mother to each of her children, only daughters will then pass it on. With this, we can guess where the mother line came from. On the graphic (a), the haplogroups beginning with L are African, the rest can be both Eurasian and African, but they are more common in Eurasia. As you see, there's very little L in the mummies comming from the three eras, compared to today's Egyptians which has about 20%, even more so compared to today's Ethiopians who has over 60%.
 

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Figure 3

(a) Mitochondrial DNA haplogroup frequencies of three ancient and two modern-day populations, (b) Principal Component Analysis based on haplogroup frequencies: (sub-Saharan Africa (green), North Africa (light green), Near East (orange), Europe (yellow), ancient (blue), (c) MDS of HVR-I sequence data: colour scheme as above; note that ancient groups were pooled, (d) Skygrid plot depicting effective population size estimates over the last 5,000 years in Egypt. Vertical bars indicate the ages of the analysed 90 mitochondrial genomes (three samples with genome-wide data highlighted in red). Note that the values on y axis are given in female effective population size times generation time and were rescaled by 1:14.5 for the estimation of the studied population size (assuming 29-year generation time and equal male and female effective population sizes) (images by Kerttu Majander).


Here's the comparison of the three mummies which they manage to extract core DNA, against modern populations.Although they score close to the modern Palestinians, Bedouins and Saudi, they don't share the same composition with any population today. Egyptians today have more DNA from the Zagros mountains and Sub-Saharian Africa.
 

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Figure 4

(a) Principal Component Analysis-based genome-wide SNP data of three ancient Egyptians, 2,367 modern individuals and 294 previously published ancient genomes, (b) subset of the full ADMIXTURE analysis (Supplementary Fig. 4).


On this one, the compare the three core DNA mummies with ancient and modern genomes. They match ancient ones better, particularly Levant Neolithic and Anatolia Neolithic. Among modern samples, Lebanese and Sardinians and Basques seem the closest (although it's rather hard to read). Graph (c) is looking for a population which share the DNA modern Egyptians have which aren't present in Antic Egyptians. The likely source of the difference is in sub-Saharian Africa.

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Figure 5

(a) Outgroup f3-statistics measuring shared drift of the three ancient Egyptian samples and other modern and ancient populations, (b) The data shown in a, compared with the same estimates for modern Egyptians, ordered by shared drift with modern Egyptians, (c) Admixture f3-statistics, testing whether modern Egyptians are mixed from ancient Egyptians and some other source. The most negative Z-scores indicate the most likely source populations.

The very good news here is we manage to get working DNA from a few of these mummies. Maybe we will manage to get more as ancient DNA reader technology will improve.

On our understanding of the old world's peopling, this hint North Africa was people by a Mediterranean type of people. Maybe coming from Egypt, maybe from the Levant or maybe moving back and forth between the two. Also it may be that African populations were most different than today's or that there was a population replacement in Lower Egypt at some point, probably coming from the Levant.

I hope they will manage to extract some DNA from the early days of the Egyptian civilization and see what's in there.

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On 5/31/2017 at 8:47 AM, Captain Risky said:

Shock horror... how will academia cope with this...

Seeing how it is backed up with REAL science and not wild speculation and guess work, Im very sure they will cope with it very well.

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On 5/31/2017 at 4:47 PM, Captain Risky said:

Shock horror... how will academia cope with this...

I doubt that academia will have the least problem with it.  But the Afrocentrists on the net "Egypts were black" (sic)  will be screaming that it's fake.  Since they are conspiracy theorists who carefully ignore tomb painting evidence because they show the "wrong colours"  they can be ignored.  

If the north was predominantly populated by Eurasians and the south predominantly by people with a more recent African ancestry that would not surprise me at all.  Peasant populations are not very mobile. 

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1 hour ago, Codenwarra said:

I doubt that academia will have the least problem with it.  But the Afrocentrists on the net "Egypts were black" (sic)  will be screaming that it's fake.  Since they are conspiracy theorists who carefully ignore tomb painting evidence because they show the "wrong colours"  they can be ignored.  

If the north was predominantly populated by Eurasians and the south predominantly by people with a more recent African ancestry that would not surprise me at all.  Peasant populations are not very mobile. 

Interesting comment. We do know that despite this new evidence, ancient Egypt around 5600 BC was primarily African. Over its lifetime, the country was invaded by the Hyksos, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and the Romans, but as this new evidence indicates, this didn't change the ethnic make-up of the locals as much. However, the Greek father of history, Herodotus, states that the Egyptians during his time, i.e. 400 BC, had wooly hair, thick lips and burnt skin. I don’t know about you, but that sounds African to me. I do know that in 332 BC after Alexander the Great invaded Egypt and died soon after, his General Soter I, claimed himself Pharaoh of Egypt and maintained much of the Egyptian culture to include marrying an African woman.  So, was Egypt mostly black African at one point in time, yes; was it also Mediterranean/European at one point in time, yes. More interestingly, however, is that the culture we associate with Egypt actually comes from south Africa. The ankh symbol that we see in a lot of the sculptures and paintings in ancient Egypt originated from the Twa people (pygmies), the same people that science states modern man derives from.  Anyway, here’s another interesting topic on the ethnicity of the Egyptians if you are so inclined: https://www.quora.com/Is-the-claim-that-the-ancient-Egyptians-were-black-had-dark-skin-supported-by-history-If-not-what-race-were-they-and-how-do-we-know#!n=12

Edited by Stealth_Goat
grammar
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No civilisation anywhere was made up of one ' race ' .     That seems to be a key feature of developing  civilisations  . 

Peeps still confusing 'race'   ,  ' ethnicity '  and   'nationality '    .     Anyone could be an Egyptian regarding the first 2 but not the third, 

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17 hours ago, Gingitsune said:

On our understanding of the old world's peopling, this hint North Africa was people by a Mediterranean type of people. Maybe coming from Egypt, maybe from the Levant or maybe moving back and forth between the two. Also it may be that African populations were most different than today's or that there was a population replacement in Lower Egypt at some point, probably coming from the Levant.

I hope they will manage to extract some DNA from the early days of the Egyptian civilization and see what's in there.

It's always been known that North Africa was populated by a migration from Asia, given that native North Africans are Caucasian. What is very clear now, however, is that farmers migrated to North Africa, including Egypt, in very substantial numbers (rather than agriculture spreading via cultural diffusion). If you look at the ADMXITURE analysis, you'll note a solid brown bar in the Natufian section. This is because that brown component originates among the Levantine peoples, who were early agriculturalists. This brown Natufian component, as you can see, is the principal component in the three Ancient Egyptians. The other two components are Anatolian farmer (blue) and Caucasus Hunter Gather (cyan). The real question is, where is the native Egyptian/Saharan component? Did the agriculturalists from the Levant totally displace natives of the region, or are they so similar to the Natufians that they're not distinguished on the ADMIXTURE analysis?

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Oh no, the Afrocentrics wont be happy...they spent so much time talking about how they built the pyramids lol

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On ‎5‎/‎30‎/‎2017 at 5:55 PM, seeder said:

The surprising ancestry of ancient Egyptians: First ever genome study of mummies reveals they were more Turkish and European than African.

It does seems to show the black skinned people were the first in the areas of  Egypt.  Homo sapiens of the black skinned migrated into the coldest caves of the north that made the melon in the skin turned lighter,it  didn't  happen over night,  and must have came  back.   

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On 6/6/2017 at 7:50 AM, Stealth_Goat said:

Interesting comment. We do know that despite this new evidence, ancient Egypt around 5600 BC was primarily African. Over its lifetime, the country was invaded by the Hyksos, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and the Romans, but as this new evidence indicates, this didn't change the ethnic make-up of the locals as much. However, the Greek father of history, Herodotus, states that the Egyptians during his time, i.e. 400 BC, had wooly hair, thick lips and burnt skin. I don’t know about you, but that sounds African to me. I do know that in 332 BC after Alexander the Great invaded Egypt and died soon after, his General Soter I, claimed himself Pharaoh of Egypt and maintained much of the Egyptian culture to include marrying an African woman.  So, was Egypt mostly black African at one point in time, yes; was it also Mediterranean/European at one point in time, yes. More interestingly, however, is that the culture we associate with Egypt actually comes from south Africa. The ankh symbol that we see in a lot of the sculptures and paintings in ancient Egypt originated from the Twa people (pygmies), the same people that science states modern man derives from.  Anyway, here’s another interesting topic on the ethnicity of the Egyptians if you are so inclined: https://www.quora.com/Is-the-claim-that-the-ancient-Egyptians-were-black-had-dark-skin-supported-by-history-If-not-what-race-were-they-and-how-do-we-know#!n=12

Yes, I have read the first book of Herodotus and am currently chewing through the rest. When was it that he visited?  About 2430 years ago I think.  The Afrocentrists claim that ALL the ancient Egyptians were as Herodotus says.  Tomb paintings show a variety of skin tones, even in the same tomb so not ALL ancient Egyptians were black over a long and complex history.  This DNA evidence also indicates that not ALL were black.  

I was not aware that academics were committed to the idea that ALL ancient Egyptians were black or not black.  If you see some of the comments on YouTube videos you find that some people accuse academics of racism because the accusers claim that academics say that no ancient Egyptians were black.  It would be decades since any academics claimed that no ancient Egyptians were black, even if some did claim that way back when.

Just as an aside, a former colleague of mine and at one time my supervisor hails from Ethiopia.  He's cafe-au-lait coloured, but his sister whom I've met twice is very dark.  Another man I knew well, since I shared a flat with him for two years came from Mwanza on the shores of Lake Victoria in Tanzania, his pal came from Ghana.  The man from Ghana was darker and had a different shaped head, both were electrical engineering students.  There are more ethnic groups in Africa than in the rest of the world combined.  

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