First Genomes from Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egyptians are absolutely nothing like Europeans. EEF isn't even European really but my ancestors absorbed them thousands of years ago.

Europeans didn't exist until the three major ancestral components admixed after 2500 BC. I can't even say nice try, but definitely no cigar.
 
Ancient Egyptians are absolutely nothing like Europeans. EEF isn't even European really but my ancestors absorbed them thousands of years ago.

But the EEF weren't anything like Ancient Egyptians either. Not even close. The samples used in this article were very close to Bronze Age Levantines and the closest modern populations are North Africans and modern Levantines.
 
But the EEF weren't anything like Ancient Egyptians either. Not even close. The samples used in this article were very close to Bronze Age Levantines and the closest modern populations are North Africans and modern Levantines.

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15694/figures/5

The article has this graphic that demonstrates which population is closest.

According to the map in figure A. Sardinians and the Basque have the highest frequency of similarity with Ancient Egyptians in modern populations.

In ancient times, the Linearbandkeramik and Neolithic Anatolians also shared a strong similarity. Thus, they were a lot like the EEF too.

NOTE: I could be wrong, so if someone can point out how I'm misinterpreting this graphic; it would be much appreciated.
 
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15694/figures/5

The article has this graphic that demonstrates which population is closest.

According to the map in figure A. Sardinians and the Basque have the highest frequency of similarity with Ancient Egyptians in modern populations.

In ancient times, the Linearbandkeramik and Neolithic Anatolians also shared a strong similarity. Thus, they were a lot like the EEF too.

NOTE: I could be wrong, so if someone can point out how I'm misinterpreting this graphic; it would be much appreciated.
No offense, but by that logic, Lithuanians are closer to ancient Egypt than Modern Egyptians. It's likely you're misinterpreting the chart (then again, I don't know how to interpret it myself...but since those groups are at the top, it's likely you misinterpreted it as higher on the chart=more related. It can't be since Scots are higher on that chart than modern populations of the Mideast and Jews).

If you take a look at some of the charts posted a few pages back in this thread, you'll see that Ancient Egyptians were Bronze Age Levantine like , and nowhere near Anatolian farmers.
 
No offense, but by that logic, Lithuanians are closer to ancient Egypt than Modern Egyptians. It's likely you're misinterpreting the chart (then again, I don't know how to interpret it myself...but since those groups are at the top, it's likely you misinterpreted it as higher on the chart=more related. It can't be since Scots are higher on that chart than modern populations of the Mideast and Jews).

If you take a look at some of the charts posted a few pages back in this thread, you'll see that Ancient Egyptians were Bronze Age Levantine like , and nowhere near Anatolian farmers.

Yes, figure B is kind of weird. I'm not sure how to read it. But I was actually referring to figure A:



(a) Outgroup f3-statistics measuring shared drift of the three ancient Egyptian samples and other modern and ancient populations,


The circles are representative of the modern populations. The brightest orange is over Sardinia.
 
Yes, figure B is kind of weird. I'm not sure how to read it. But I was actually referring to figure A:



(a) Outgroup f3-statistics measuring shared drift of the three ancient Egyptian samples and other modern and ancient populations,


The circles are representative of the modern populations. The brightest orange is over Sardinia.

I see...I don't know how to explain that either since it conflicts with the charts posted a page ago. Maybe someone can chime in and help explain this.
 
But the EEF weren't anything like Ancient Egyptians either. Not even close. The samples used in this article were very close to Bronze Age Levantines and the closest modern populations are North Africans and modern Levantines.

What the paper is trying to say (and what is not incorrect) is that technically ancient Egyptians are closer to modern Europeans than modern Egyptians are because they have less SSA and little more farmer DNA. And the closest component in Europeans to the ancestry of Egyptians is EEF. EEF or Anatolian_Neo is quite similar to Levant-Neolithic even if little less UHG/WHG like and more Basal.

The problem I have with the articles however is, that they make of small side effects headlines. Looking at the ancient Egyptian DNA one of the LEAST things you would think of is that they are closer to Europeans than modern Egyptians are. This wouldn't be so bad if many people weren't so stupid and use this to misinterpret things.

People generally with strong agendas (most humans have an agenda but some are more open minded to accept facts than other) will use these articles.

I see Afro_Centrics who claim now Basal Eurasian as Black African because they were extremely owned by the Egyptian paper. These guys are ridiculous. Both sites don't or can't accept the facts.
 
According to the chart posted by Angela and Hauteville in this thread, the Modern Egyptians have more SSA than the Ancient Egyptian samples of this study, so these samples might be closer to Europeans in the same way Palestinians are (lack of SSA). It's meaningless, really.

Palestinians don't lack SSA (far from it) they just have less. There was a increase of SSA ancestry in all of the regions where the ancient Levantines expanded (Arabian Peninsula and the Levant). Palestinians have like 8% SSA while modern Egyptians 14%. Ancient Egyptians most likely had some variation like all ancient groups. Some where close to zero SSA other up to 20%. Thats my prediction. But one thing from these ancient samples if for sure. the Proto Egyptians most likely had non to very little SSA. And the SSA admixture came with the time via Nubians and later Slave trade.
And if by "closer to european" they mean "Europeans are closer to ancient Egyptians than modern Levantines and North Africans" they're probably just disappointed with the outcome of this study and want to delude themselves. Anyone with half a brain and minute knowledge of ancient genetics can tell from the chart that a Tunisian minus a dash of SSA does not make a Swede... on the flip side, a Swede with a dash of SSA does not make a Tunisian.

Correct, it's not so much the scientists it is the news outlets that are writing their articles in a way where they leave too much room for misinterpretations, be it on purpose or not.
 
Yes, figure B is kind of weird. I'm not sure how to read it. But I was actually referring to figure A:



(a) Outgroup f3-statistics measuring shared drift of the three ancient Egyptian samples and other modern and ancient populations,


The circles are representative of the modern populations. The brightest orange is over Sardinia.

This is only measuring shared drift not shared ancestry. on the PCAs and the other graphs you can clearly see with whom they share most ancestry.
 
This is only measuring shared drift not shared ancestry. on the PCAs and the other graphs you can clearly see with whom they share most ancestry.

I see, yes, Ancient Egyptians are closer to the modern populations round Palestine, and the Levant.

But what exactly is meant by shared drift, in regards to the chart I pointed out?
 
Last edited:
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15694/figures/5

The article has this graphic that demonstrates which population is closest.

According to the map in figure A. Sardinians and the Basque have the highest frequency of similarity with Ancient Egyptians in modern populations.

In ancient times, the Linearbandkeramik and Neolithic Anatolians also shared a strong similarity. Thus, they were a lot like the EEF too.

You have to be careful with terminology. This is a shared drift diagram. The shared drift is largest, obviously, with EEF, Anatolia Neolithic, and Levant Neolithic. After that, with Bronze Age Levant. Then and only then with Sardinia and Basques as far as modern populations, because they are the modern populations with the largest amount of what we could call ancient "western" Neolithic ancestry ancestry, i.e. Anatolia/Levant.

First, as to genetic drift in general, it's the evolutionary mechanism which produces random changes in a population over time. It's different from natural selection, whereby only beneficial changes become fixed. In genetic drift the changes occur by chance, and so both beneficial and disadvantageous mutations can become fixed. It occurs more often in small populations. Bottlenecks and founder effects are examples of when it's most operative. (Sorry if I'm telling you what you already know.)

When geneticists are talking about shared genetic drift or shared drift patterns, they're saying that the populations in question share a long genetic history. Shared drift means shared evolutionary history. In terms of Sardinians/Basques and Egyptians, they both have lots of that ancient Neolithic ancestry.

What happened with the Egyptians is that they got a bigger dose of "eastern" Neolithic ancestry, plus the SSA.

I hope I explained that properly. If someone else wants to have a go, be my guest.
 
You have to be careful with terminology. This is a shared drift diagram. The shared drift is largest, obviously, with EEF, Anatolia Neolithic, and Levant Neolithic. After that, with Bronze Age Levant. Then and only then with Sardinia and Basques as far as modern populations, because they are the modern populations with the largest amount of what we could call ancient "western" Neolithic ancestry ancestry, i.e. Anatolia/Levant.

First, as to genetic drift in general, it's the evolutionary mechanism which produces random changes in a population over time. It's different from natural selection, whereby only beneficial changes become fixed. In genetic drift the changes occur by chance, and so both beneficial and disadvantageous mutations can become fixed. It occurs more often in small populations. Bottlenecks and founder effects are examples of when it's most operative. (Sorry if I'm telling you what you already know.)

When geneticists are talking about shared genetic drift or shared drift patterns, they're saying that the populations in question share a long genetic history. Shared drift means shared evolutionary history. In terms of Sardinians/Basques and Egyptians, they both have lots of that ancient Neolithic ancestry.

What happened with the Egyptians is that they got a bigger dose of "eastern" Neolithic ancestry, plus the SSA.

I hope I explained that properly. If someone else wants to have a go, be my guest.

Thank you for the explanation! I'm not familiar with the terms. I was a history and poli-sci major; the little I know about genetics is self-taught from reading articles online.
 
You have to be careful with terminology. This is a shared drift diagram. The shared drift is largest, obviously, with EEF, Anatolia Neolithic, and Levant Neolithic. After that, with Bronze Age Levant. Then and only then with Sardinia and Basques as far as modern populations, because they are the modern populations with the largest amount of what we could call ancient "western" Neolithic ancestry ancestry, i.e. Anatolia/Levant.

First, as to genetic drift in general, it's the evolutionary mechanism which produces random changes in a population over time. It's different from natural selection, whereby only beneficial changes become fixed. In genetic drift the changes occur by chance, and so both beneficial and disadvantageous mutations can become fixed. It occurs more often in small populations. Bottlenecks and founder effects are examples of when it's most operative. (Sorry if I'm telling you what you already know.)

When geneticists are talking about shared genetic drift or shared drift patterns, they're saying that the populations in question share a long genetic history. Shared drift means shared evolutionary history. In terms of Sardinians/Basques and Egyptians, they both have lots of that ancient Neolithic ancestry.

What happened with the Egyptians is that they got a bigger dose of "eastern" Neolithic ancestry, plus the SSA.

I hope I explained that properly. If someone else wants to have a go, be my guest.
Wait, if the Egyptians were like Neolithic farmers then how can we explain those charts and pca in the last page?
 
Wait, if the Egyptians were like Neolithic farmers then how can we explain those charts and pca in the last page?

I didn't say they're like Neolithic farmers. I said they have shared genetic drift with Neolithic farmers, as do Sardinians.
 
I didn't say they're like Neolithic farmers. I said they have shared genetic drift with Neolithic farmers, as do Sardinians.

Got it. I guess I'll need to read up on what shared genetic drift is.
 
Levant Bronze Age is very similar to the ancient Egyptian sample, which I think will turn out to be close to the Egyptian Copts. They don't at all look Cypriot to me.
copt.jpg

afp_j0350.jpg

_63782333_63782332.jpg

Greek Cypriots:
STK_1563.jpg

Obviously, there are a few non-Cypriots in the following. :)
adsiz_1.jpg

Plus, didn't the paper on the Canaanites tell us that these Bronze Age Canaanite samples have no derived SLC45A2, so not only different than people in the Levant today, but also quite a bit darker than the people of the Anatolia Neolithic and the EEF of Europe, who did have reasonably high percentages of derived SLC45A2. In fact, I think a recent paper revised those estimates upwards from where they were a while ago.. This might suggest that most of the Iran Chl, like the CHG themselves, only had the derived SLC25A2 allele, and thus were rather darker than not only Anatolia Neolithic, but also Levant Neolithic, since some of them also had derived SLC45A2, although the Natufians did not.
The admixture run isn't optimal, but going by that the Bronze Age Levant doesn't look all that different from the Saudis. So, maybe tribal Saudis or Yeminis without obvious SSA?
sanaa-yemen-10th-dec-2015-yemeni-tribal-men-attend-a-rally-against-F8N8NW.jpg

Bedouin_family-Wahiba_Sands.jpg

Who knows, though?
The second picture that you used was taken after a bomb killed several victims.
 
I hoped this paper would have focused more on the ethnogenesis of modern and Ancient Egyptians beyond the question of them having SSA ancestry or not?

Like how, when, and by whom the Iran_N ancestry in Ancient Egyptians appeared? what was the structure of the population before them?

SSA is interesting, but why focus on that alone?

Well, given the extreme interest in SSA in Near Easterners, someone up thread wondered why Saudis wouldn't have it? the admixture run was wrong in not detecting that in Saudis, who do have East African ancestry. similar to Dinka.

from Lazaridis et al(2016), a negative f3 statistic of the form f3(Saudi, Anatolia_N, Dinka) = -0.00326, Z_score = -5.1

That means it must exist, the allele frequency in the Saudi population is intermediate between Dinka and Anatolia_N or any population ancestral to them. it exists from 1% to 5% in various Saudi tribal groups, the origin of that I would assume is ancient, because the British Roman outlier also had it.
 
I hoped this paper would have focused more on the ethnogenesis of modern and Ancient Egyptians beyond the question of them having SSA ancestry or not?

Like how, when, and by whom the Iran_N ancestry in Ancient Egyptians appeared? what was the structure of the population before them?

SSA is interesting, but why focus on that alone?

Well, given the extreme interest in SSA in Near Easterners, someone up thread wondered why Saudis wouldn't have it? the admixture run was wrong in not detecting that in Saudis, who do have East African ancestry. similar to Dinka.

from Lazaridis et al(2016), a negative f3 statistic of the form f3(Saudi, Anatolia_N, Dinka) = -0.00326, Z_score = -5.1

That means it must exist, the allele frequency in the Saudi population is intermediate between Dinka and Anatolia_N or any population ancestral to them. it exists from 1% to 5% in various Saudi tribal groups, the origin of that I would assume is ancient, because the British Roman outlier also had it.

Well, it's not exactly easy to get ancient samples from Egypt. The researchers are sort of reduced to using old samples in museums. Let's hope for more in the future.
 
I hoped this paper would have focused more on the ethnogenesis of modern and Ancient Egyptians beyond the question of them having SSA ancestry or not?

Like how, when, and by whom the Iran_N ancestry in Ancient Egyptians appeared? what was the structure of the population before them?

SSA is interesting, but why focus on that alone?

Well, given the extreme interest in SSA in Near Easterners, someone up thread wondered why Saudis wouldn't have it? the admixture run was wrong in not detecting that in Saudis, who do have East African ancestry. similar to Dinka.

from Lazaridis et al(2016), a negative f3 statistic of the form f3(Saudi, Anatolia_N, Dinka) = -0.00326, Z_score = -5.1

That means it must exist, the allele frequency in the Saudi population is intermediate between Dinka and Anatolia_N or any population ancestral to them. it exists from 1% to 5% in various Saudi tribal groups, the origin of that I would assume is ancient, because the British Roman outlier also had it.

I'm also interested in this. If it isn't too far off-topic, have you taken a look at the Taforalt paper? The ADMIXTURE analysis suggests that the African admixture in Natufian, Iran_Hotu/Iran_Neo and so forth is related to a component that is modal in the Hadza. A very unlikely source, but it looks quite solid. It's even more pronounced in the Taforalt samples and still very significant in modern Berbers, while in the Levant/Europe it seems to be reduced relative to ancient samples. The 'Hadza Component' is also what differentiates Dinka from West Africans.

yeCh09G.png
 

This thread has been viewed 93742 times.

Back
Top