Hmmm....by the graph, it seems that the ancient Egyptians were closest to modern north (east) Africans. Makes sense. I always figured that far northeast africans (by far I mean way up north near the Mediterranean and east as in near the Levant) were Levantines with a dash of Sub Saharan.
From the graphic posted I don't see that at all, unless you're coining your own definitions for population groups. Northeast Africans are Horners.
The only "Africans" the ancient Egyptians from this period plot close to are North Africans, who are mostly Levantines with SSA, more than half of it coming in the last 2000 years, presumably through the Arab slave trade, plus whatever traces of the prior population(s) are left. None of that is a surprise.
Anyone who has been paying attention to the papers knows that two major population flows moved out of the Near East, the western farmers, and then a few thousand years later a population related to the Iranian farmers. Both spread over vast distances and mixed with earlier populations where ever they went. The first group spread all along the southern coast of the Mediterranean, among many other places, and even deep into Africa. We can see the traces of the second major Near East group in northern Africa too, but in much smaller percentages.
Basically, as LeBrok pointed out, the Bronze Age may be the last really major population upheaval in western Eurasia. As I stated in another thread, the second gene flow out of the Near East, which was less consequential for most of Europe was like a pincer movement into Europe, I believe, with part of it going over the Caucasus and onto the steppe, and part of it going into southeastern and southern Europe, as well as all over the Near East, and some of it even reaching North Africa.
It looks like a modified version of the old Dienekes theory of the Womb of Nations to me, but as you have to consider also the western farmers, it's not just the Caucasus area, but the Anatolia/Levant region as well.