So what that E-M35 originated in Eastern Africa? All haplogroups have ancestry in Eastern Africa, as this is the region from which humans dispersed to different areas of the world.
That is a red herring to distract from the main contention that the original population source for the Nile Valley is Haplogroup E which originated in Sub Saharan East Africa. Irregardless of where all non African haplogroups can ultimately trace their origins, the signature marker for the Nile Valley is one which most closely ties it to Sub Saharan African populations (the Horn).
The very study you post from Keita even says "show them usually to be more similar to the crania of ancient Nubians, Kushites, Saharans, or modern groups from the Horn of Africa."
Again what's your point? You are completely ignoring the fact that Keita list the
ancient populations from
the same Northeast African region, as also being closely related to the ancient Egyptians. Sub Saharan East Africa was a major population source for the Nile Valley, as displayed perfectly clearly by everything from linguistics, genetics, archaeology and culture. This would logically only mean that modern groups in the Horn of Africa are a representative of what proto-Egyptians generally looked like. The most mind boggling contradiction of your theory that the early ancient Egyptians were "
anything but black African", is that
you are even acknowleding the proven fact that they shared primary biological affinities with ancient and modern black Africans and not with their modern
descendants in Egypt who are highly admixed with non Africans. Your entire premise is self defeating. :embarassed:
The ancient similarities being with those people in the upper Northeast African region--Nubians/Kushites and Saharans...who have common ancestry with the Nile Valley people in parent Afro-Asiatic stocks.
The ancient Saharans were Nilotic Africans as attested by Ehret's article above. These Nilotic cattle herders tribes from the ancient Sahara were the second wave of people who intermixed with the Afrasian communities who initially settled on the Nile:
"a critical factor in the rise of social complexity and the subsequent emergence of the Egyptian state in Upper Egypt (Hoffman 1979; Hassan 1988). If so, Egypt owes a major debt to those early pastoral groups in the Sahara; they may have provided Egypt with many of those features that still distinguish it from its neighbors to the east." Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 17, 97-123 (1998), "Nabta Playa and Its Role in Northeastern African Prehistory," Fred Wendorf and Romuald Schild.
This is what Keita means when he states that the
heterogenous ancestry of Egypt was already in place during Pre-Dynastic times and he follows by stating there is no evidence to suggest that Egypt's origins were anything but of local Northeast African ancestry.
Go figure, except those in the Nubian region became admixed with Nilotic peoples...who were very different from Egyptians phenotypically...as represented in their art.
The fact that the ancient Nubians spoke a Nilo Saharan language I would tend to agree that they were likely more influenced by the second wave of settlement on the Nile than those in parts of Egypt. Then again Keita and other scholars have noted that the cultural and biological affinties of the early Lower Egyptian populations tied them more towards the Nilotic populations of the ancient Sahara than to anywhere else:
"Over the last two decades, numerous contemporary (Khartoum Neolithic) sites and cemeteries have been excavated in the Central Sudan.. The most striking point to emerge is the overall similarity of early neolithic developments inhabitation, exchange, material culture and mortuary customs in the Khartoum region to those underway at the same time in the Egyptian Nile Valley, far to the north." (Wengrow, David (2003) "Landscapes of Knowledge, Idioms of Power: The African Foundations of Ancient Egyptian Civilization Reconsidered," in Ancient Egypt in Africa, David O'Connor and Andrew Reid, eds. Ancient Egypt in Africa. London: University College London Press, 2003, pp. 119-137)
Just food for thought.
Which would make one wonder about the level of phenotypical influence these Nubians exhibited from their Egyptian/North African and Nilotic ancestries, or if they were simply Egyptians, or Nubians that didn't mix with Nilotes yet...which is also relative to this part you highlighted:
You are running a little too far ahead of yourself from that interpretation by morett. The ancient Egyptians have also been postulated to have been the results of migrants from Nubia:
"Some have argued that various early Egyptians like the Badarians probably migrated northward from Nubia, while others see a wide-ranging movement of peoples across the breadth of the Sahara before the onset of desiccation. Whatever may be the origins of any particular people or civilization, however, it seems reasonably certain that the predynastic communities of the Nile valley were essentially indigenous in culture, drawing little inspiration from sources outside the continent during the several centuries directly preceding the onset of historical times..." (Robert July, Pre-Colonial Africa, 1975, p. 60-61)
and
"Populations and cultures now found south of the desert roamed far to the north. The culture of Upper Egypt, which became dynastic Egyptian civilization, could fairly be called a Sudanese transplant."(Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa: Their Interaction. Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa, by Joseph O. Vogel, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California (1997), pp. 465-472 )
As I've stated irregardless of bi-directional geneflow on the Nile Valley, the facts remains that Kerma is the oldest civilization on the Nile and both Egyptians and Nubians were of the same mixture of tropical African ancestry.
And the time periods in which these admixed or Nilotic Nubians migrated to Egypt were when? How big were these Nubian movements and how much did they contribute in terms of genetics to the Egyptian population in each movement?
The Nilotic ancestry came into the Nile Valley between 10,000-6,000 BC. They mixed with the already in place Afrasian communities. The Nilotic ancestry was substantial enough to be major genetic characteristic of modern Coptic descedants:
"The Copt samples displayed a most interesting Y-profile, enough (as much as that of Gaalien in Sudan) to suggest that they actually represent a living record of the peopling of Egypt.
The significant frequency of B-M60 in this group might be a relic of a history of colonization of southern Egypt probably by Nilotics in the early state formation, something that conforms both to recorded history and to Egyptian mythology."Source Hisham Y. Hassan 1, Peter A. Underhill 2, Luca L. Cavalli-Sforza 2, Muntaser E. Ibrahim 1. (2008). Y-chromosome variation among Sudanese: Restricted gene flow, concordance with language, geography, and history. Am J Phys Anthropology, 2008.)
This finding runs parralel with lingustic, archaeolgocial, and skeletal data which confirms that a substantial migration of Nilotes from the ancient Sahara took place during Pre-Dynastic times.
Sure, there was an artistic relation, and even if the artistic culture came from that region, it could, without proof stating otherwise, mean that there was a cultural continuity in the Nile Valley region with the Afro-Asiatic peoples of that region before the division into Egyptians and mixed/Nilotic Nubians.
This was based primarily on archaeological evidence, rather than a biological. None the less this postulation has been backed by a 2012 genetic analysis of the Amarna period pharaohs (the same markers extracted from study publicized by Zahi Hawass in 2010), which found their primary genetic affinity to be with African populations from the Great Lakes region, southern Africa and Western Africa.
Results indicated the autosomal STR profiles of the Amarna period mummies were most frequent in modern populations in several parts of Africa. These results are based on the 8 STR markers for which these pharaonic mummies have been tested, which allow a preliminary geographical analysis for these individuals who lived in Egypt during the Amarna period of the 14th century BCE.
Although results do not necessarily suggest exclusively African ancestry, geographical analysis suggests ancestral links with neighboring populations in Africa for the studied pharaonic mummies. If new data become available in the future, it might become possible to further clarify results and shed new light on the relationships of ancient individuals to modern populations.
The Great Lakes region is interestingly enough was the same region which the Egyptians stated that the came from in the Hunefer papyrus. As far as the West Africa's affinty is concerned, one fact that facts it is that King Tut was actually confirmed to have died from
sickle cell anemia which ultimately has it's origins in West Africa:
Just food for thought
Also, the affiliation with these “southerly Africans” has already been covered. As for the Bantu-speaking Teita…do you have a complete genetic profile on them?
Nope, it would be interesting though.
And what exactly are these “Negroid” traits? Is this term being used to refer to black people in general including East Africans with their different craniofacial type?.....Is prognathism one of those traits? I mean, I wouldn’t doubt that was present in ancestral East African peoples.
That's the problem with racial classification in biology, the definition varries from scholar to scholar. In this case the "Negroid traits" noted by this early 20th century anthropologist was also noted in 2007 by
"As a result of their facial prognathism, the Badarian sample has been described as forming a morphological cluster with Nubian, Tigrean, and other southern (or \Negroid") groups (Morant, 1935, 1937; Mukherjee et al., 1955; Nutter, 1958, Strouhal, 1971; Angel, 1972; Keita, 1990). (Sonia R. Zakrzewski. (2007). Population Continuity or Population Change: Formation of the Ancient Egyptian State. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 132:501-509)
With that being said it makes no sense on your part to assert that a migration from Egypt into the south, made these populations the way that they are now. The populations of Northeast Africa have always had their own set of indingenous traits which characterizes them. Rather or not those traits are lumped in as "Caucasoid" of "Negroid" does not change who those people are, where they originate and what they look like. That being said the ancient Egyptians generally most closely resembled both ancient and modern populations from within that same region.
Or Negroid as in black people with a craniofacial type typical of, say, a Bantu person?
The indigenous craniofacial types of African populations is the most diverse in the world. The narrow featured Africans across the sub continent (central, west or east) are just as African as the broad featured populations. Also what is with the fascination of bringing "Bantu" African populations into this conversation when they need not apply? This discussion is centered around Nilotic and Afrasian speaking African communities. Please stop trying to polarize what is considered "black" as it is dishonest on your part and you that. Not to mention the fundamental fact that Bantu is a
LANGUAGE family,
NOT a set of physical traits.
As for later Egyptian skulls being different… might this not be simple regional variation within Egypt? After all, they (Lower Egyptians) were different from Upper Egyptians from formative times
Nope. The modern populations of
both Upper and Lower Egypt are much more distant from the early populations, than are ancient Nubian and recent/modern Horn African populations. Geneflow from the Mediterranean has been listed as the primary culprit for this biological distinction over time:
….the 26-30th dynasty Egyptians do not exhibit biological differentiation according to Joel Irish’s 2006 dental study:
That is based on dental traits, in an attempt to determine
continuity between ancient and modern populations, which is not the same as determining the biological affinities of the ancient Egyptians. That is why in Zakreski's 2007 study she noted the findings of continuity in Irish's 2006 study but that did not negate the fact that their was an alteration of biological affinities, due to an influx of foreign populations:
Previous analyses of cranial variation found the Badari and Early Predynastic Egyptians to be more similar to other African groups than to Mediterranean or European populations (Keita, 1990; Zakrzewski, 2002). In addition, the Badarians have been described as near the centroid of cranial and dental variation among Predynastic and Dynastic populations studied (Irish, 2006; Zakrzewski, 2007). This suggests that, at least through the Early Dynastic period, the inhabitants of the Nile valley were a continuous population of local origin, and no major migration or replacement events occurred during this time.
Studies of cranial morphology also support the use of a Nubian (Kerma) population for a comparison of the Dynastic period, as this group is likely to be more closely genetically related to the early Nile valley inhabitants than would be the Late Dynastic Egyptians, who likely experienced significant mixing with other Mediterranean populations (Zakrzewski, 2002). A craniometric study found the Naqada and Kerma populations to be morphologically similar (Keita, 1990).
-- AP Starling, JT Stock. (2007). Dental Indicators of Health and Stress in Early Egyptian and Nubian Agriculturalists: A Difficult Transition and Gradual Recovery. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 134:520–528
Also Zakrzewski criticized Howell's database for it's reliance of those same late period Northern Egyptian samples, because they were not "typical" of the Egyptian series:
Dr. Sonia Zakrzewski. Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton, UK.
Previous studies have compared biological relationships between Egyptians and other populations, mostly using the Howells global cranial data set. In the current study, by contrast, the biological relationships within a series of temporally-successive cranial samples are assessed.
The data consist of 55 cranio-facial variables from 418 adult Egyptian individuals, from six periods, ranging in date from c. 5000 to 1200 BC. These were compared with the 111 Late Period crania (c. 600-350 BC) from the Howells sample. Principal Component and Canonical Discriminant Function Analysis were undertaken, on both pooled and single sex samples.
The results suggest a level of local population continuity exists within the earlier Egyptian populations, but that this was in association with some change in population structure, reflecting small-scale immigration and admixture with new groups. Most dramatically, the results also indicate that the Egyptian series from Howells global data set are morphologically distinct from the Predynastic and Early Dynastic Nile Valley samples (especially in cranial vault shape and height), and thus show that this sample cannot be considered to be a typical Egyptian series. –Zakrewski (2004) “Intra-population and temporal variation in ancient Egyptian crania.”
Sure, there were “cultures” that existed in the historic Nubian regions long before predynastic Egypt, and there was a biologically and culturally continuous Afro-Asiatic population extending in Northeast Africa, extending from Egypt and into Sudan. But how this is supposed to negate the genetic imprint on and coincidental affinity to modern Horn Africans by upper Northeast Africans, I’m not sure.
You are essentially suggesting that those pre-existing (and modern) populations in more southerly regions of Northeast Africa got their biological affinities from the backmigration from Egypt. While it's obvious that this did occur, you have yet to even give a date for this back migration into the Horn. I've read a passage on one website in which a Greek historian notes that during Egyptian antiquity a quarter million rebellious Egyptian men migrated south to settle with the Cushites. Could this possibly be the back migration that we know occurred?
So what? I’ve always maintained they were Northeast Africans too.
From what I'm getting from your post you are maintaining that Egypt was it's own population source and ultimately that of more southerly northeast African populations, which is false.
So in a desert climate on the upper fringe of the tropics, who are you to say that they were the same skin tone as black Africans
First of all it is ecological principal that tropically adapted populations have dark skin color in relation to non tropically adapted populations. The ancient Egyptians were tropically adapted in the same fashion as populations whom in Africa are regarded as "black" and Southeast Asian populations whom have been previously regarded as "Negro" transplants because of their physical appearance. Why would the ancient Egyptians somehow
magically defy ecological principal and not have dark skin within the range of all the other populations whom they group with?
especially when African Americans are significantly different
So in other words you are going to completely ignore the plotting graph from the recent study in my last post which groups African Americans within that same tropically adapted cluster as Egyptians, Pygmies and Melenasians? The explanation for why some African American samples might varry in this respect was explained in that same post.
…as well as Nilotic peoples. Zakrzewski (2003) noted an increase in Nilotic body plan in the Middle Kingdom Gebelin sample, contrasted with earlier Egyptians:
What is your point? The ancient Egyptians were more tropically adapted than modern West African populations, as noted as the reasoning for them being referred to as "
Super Negroid" in limb proportions. Nilotes are more tropically adapted (perhaps the most tropically adapted people on Earth) than West Africans, and the reason for the ancient Egyptians having a more tropically adapted ratio than West Africans is likely do to their signifigant Nilotic ancestry on top of that which came from the Horn. Are we now suspose to consider West African non black for that fact?
On top of that, as I’ve shown in an earlier post… DH Temple supports the idea that long limbs can occur in low-latitude temperate environments, along with tropical environments.
Just I've shown you that tropical limb proportions and dark skin color are paired with one another based on ecological principal. I've also shown you recent melanin analysis in Egyptians mummies which
CONFIRMS that these ancient tropically adapated Africans had dark skin like black African populations.
Again, what do they mean by Negroid origin? Based on what?
It means that they were black Africans! They had a craniometric shape that most similar to various black African populations. They had limb proportions like populations across the world who have been or are still deemed black. They share their signature genetic markers and origins with black Africans. Their culture and language came from black Africans. They themselves stated that they came from the south (black Africa). The ancient Greeks attested to the fact that the came from the "Ethiopians" (black Africans to the south). Is this really a reality pill that is too hard to swallow?
Just about all mainstream evidence indicates that the ancient Egyptians were a mixture of these two types of Africans (Nilote/Ethiopic).
Besides, these are New Kingdom mummies the study is talking about, so it wouldn’t surprise me if there were some such people in Thebes.
Early Egyptian mummies were also tropical Africans:
"The predominant craniometric pattern in the Abydos royal tombs is 'southern' (tropical African variant), and this is consistent with what would be expected based on the literature and other results (Keita, 1990). This pattern is seen in both group and unknown analyses. (S. Keita (1992) Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis of Crania From First Dynasty Egyptian Tombs, Using Multiple Discriminant Functions. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 87:245-254)