[HN Gopher] Whole-genome ancestry of an Old Kingdom Egyptian
___________________________________________________________________
Whole-genome ancestry of an Old Kingdom Egyptian
Author : A_D_E_P_T
Score : 143 points
Date : 2025-07-03 00:24 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| I'll have to bookmark it for later to spend more time than just
| skimming, but I find 2 things interesting. The lack of any
| Egyptian archeologists on most interesting and significant
| findings about Ancient Egypt is one. The other is the seemingly
| strong conclusion that Ancient Egyptians did in fact move to
| Egypt from Mesopotamian which is pretty cool.
|
| Egyptians don't like the notion that "they moved there from
| somewhere". They claim their own unique, uninterrupted, history
| and connection to the land as well as their civilizational
| independence from Mesopotamian, Asia Minor, Europe, and Africa.
|
| It's also the same you rarely find Egyptian
| archeologists/scholars on scientific papers. While this might be
| a matter of ancient history and science to everyone, it's a
| matter of current day politics for Egyptians and especially the
| Egyptian government. The "findings" of the paper has to agree
| with the narrative built and proposed by the ministry of
| antiquities or they will literally charge whoever publishes it
| with a national crime.
| babuloseo wrote:
| source?
| prmph wrote:
| And where did the Mesopotamians move from? If you don't see the
| political context of the science then too bad.
|
| Like, you know people till now take pride in the exploits and
| culture of their supposed ancient ancestors, never mind that
| for the the vast majority of people, there is no simple and
| direct line from some ancient illustrious people to them.
|
| The latent political context is the assumption driving the
| research, that Egyptian culture had to have come from somewhere
| else, so let's go look for it. You see the same thing when
| evidence of cultural achievements elsewhere in Africa is
| unearthed.
|
| Of course you will find a somewhere else, no matter how tenuous
| the connection, in which case my first sentence above comes
| into play: let's keep finding the somewhere else until we all
| get back to Africa, supposedly the birthplace of it all.
|
| EDIT: Since this is being misunderstood, this what I actually
| mean: For some reason, this finding somewhere else is not
| applied consistently. Either we should keep finding the
| somewhere else for all cultures for as far back as we can, or
| else stop with this nonsensical subtext that just because a
| culture has some roots from elsewhere, so therefore it cannot
| have made innovations by itself beyond its supposed origins.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| That's exactly the brand of nonesense that is sold to people
| there as "progressive" and "anti-colonialism" while infact
| it's just pure nonesense.
|
| Of course every culture/society had to have come from some
| previous place/culture/society that changed over time due to
| an incredibly long and complex set of circumstances. The
| story one must believe to accept your view is that at a flick
| of the wrist, humans turned from Cave Men to some vague list
| of "root societies/civilizations" people moved around.
| Understanding how that movement happened 15 thousands years
| ago won't make the jews take over Egypt I promise.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| i think you accidentally worded this in a way you might not
| have meant.
|
| you said a culture (singular) had to have come from another
| culture (singular), missing the possibility of blending, as
| worded.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| Yeah definitely meant to it plural
| prmph wrote:
| I think you misunderstand my point. You are kind of
| confirming my point.
|
| What I am saying is that for some reason, this finding
| somewhere else is not applied consistently. Either we
| should keep finding the somewhere else for all cultures for
| as far back as we can, or else stop with this nonsense that
| just because a culture has some roots from elsewhere, so
| therefore it cannot have made innovations by itself beyond
| its supposed origins.
| wredcoll wrote:
| > Either we should keep finding the somewhere else for
| all cultures for as far back as we can,
|
| I'm not a scientist, but as far as I can tell... do that?
|
| Half the interest in archeological type studies seems to
| be "ok, this the earliest history we know of, what came
| before _that_? "
|
| I agree that humans tend to get way too entitled about
| (maybe) sharing genes with someone who did something cool
| in past history, but learning about which populations
| migrated to egypt and from where and when, seems
| unrelated.
| pastage wrote:
| Of course nationalism and rasism infects science,
| especially what findings are considered canon in a
| culture. That only means you might have such findings not
| that it is the only thing created.
| geuis wrote:
| Stop downvoting this comment please.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| One of the problems with modern discourse is everyone has a
| platform, myself included, and grievance and pride tend to
| make compelling narratives. There's alot of quacking and
| noise.
|
| There's no dishonor in learning more and figuring it out.
| People babbling about stealing "dibs" from Africa are
| intellectually not really understanding what they are reading
| and applying their 2025 perspectives and problems to people
| hundreds of generations ago who had no conception of Africa,
| Europe and Asia as artifacts as we see them today.
|
| Think about the situation on the ground. Egypt was the
| closest thing to Eden on earth. Mesopotamia was the
| birthplace, in the region if not the world, of the next level
| of urbanization and state power and economics. So yeah, no
| doubt through intermarriage, trade, teaching and migration
| the knowledge of Mesopotamia spread and influenced the
| Nile... and to great effect... the Egyptian civilization
| thrived for many centuries.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Humanity routinely has a similar kind of ego that requires
| relevance. But fortunately we still have a distributed
| knowledge system that excises and corrects local folklore.
|
| I don't think it is interesting that there aren't Egyptian
| scholars on the topic, whether this national/cultural identity
| existed or not.
|
| I obviously don't care if it bruises an ego, I would care if
| the lack of representation overlooks something though.
| NL807 wrote:
| >The lack of any Egyptian archeologists on most interesting and
| significant findings about Ancient Egypt is one.
|
| It seems like Egyptian archaeologists is a clique of academics
| that do not like to rock the apple cart and go against
| established ideas about Egyptian history. There is a lot of
| gate keeping going on, mostly in part of Zahi Hawass, a
| narcissist that likes to self insert into every research into
| the subject, and control publication of results, etc. Even
| worse, claim attribution for work he's not even part of. So, if
| you don't kiss the ring, or dare to challenge ideas without his
| blessing, you'll be pretty much become a pariah that will never
| access archaeological sites again. Because of this, research in
| the field seems to be stagnant.
| timschmidt wrote:
| I think, as much or more than Hawass's ego, the fact that
| tourism to Egypt and specifically Giza amounts to nearly a
| tenth of Egypt's GDP:
| https://egyptianstreets.com/2024/12/09/tourism-
| contribution-... accounts for a lot of his behavior.
|
| It's big business, has been for almost 5,000 years, and
| keeping the mysteries alive keeps the money flowing to the
| cult of Kufu or the modern equivalent.
|
| History for Granite (
| https://www.youtube.com/@HistoryforGRANITE ) touches on this
| powerful explanation for several observable aspects of these
| ancient sites that otherwise defy explanation. The top of The
| Great Pyramid was likely flattened so that rich visitors
| could pay to have an unforgettable picnic at the top. Many
| passages were filled up with sand and rubble because guides
| didn't enjoy the extra time and effort in hot dark bat
| infested areas that tourists demanded. And so on. Zahi is
| carrying on a long tradition.
| NL807 wrote:
| Here's the thing, one can promote tourism while also being
| academically honest. Hawass just wants to be the top dog in
| the field and does not want to be wrong about some of the
| things he claimed in his publications.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > It's big business, has been for almost 5,000 years
|
| I think you're confusing "Egyptian economic activity
| related to tourism" with "the existence of civilization in
| Egypt".
| 9dev wrote:
| Nope. There are literally voyage reports by Herodotus,
| who describes guides to the pyramids, street food
| vendors, and translators. That was about 2500 years ago,
| for example.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| You might notice that 2500 years ago is a lot less than
| 5000 years ago. 5000 years ago, there were no guides to
| the pyramids. There was no tourism. There wasn't really
| writing, either.
|
| Today tourism makes up a little more than 10% of the
| economy of Egypt. 2500 years ago, it would have been
| around 0%, for the simple reason that almost nobody could
| afford to be a tourist. The big businesses were grain and
| gold. 5000 years ago, it was actually 0%. That's when the
| desertification of the Sahara began and the people who
| had lived there came to Egypt and inserted themselves at
| the top of society.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| > _That 's when the desertification of the Sahara began
| and the people who had lived there came to Egypt and
| inserted themselves at the top of society._
|
| It's very interesting to imagine the "green Sahara"
| cultures, with all of their cities and temples now under
| tons of sand, that we otherwise have no knowledge of.
| JetSpiegel wrote:
| Just because they were called pilgrims, they did the same
| thing as modeen tourists, with the corresponding economic
| activities: visiting landmarks, sleeping, eating,
| shopping.
|
| Praying wasn't even free, if they had to sacrifice some
| animal.
| timschmidt wrote:
| No, I'm not. The Great Pyramid was built circa 2500 -
| 2600 BC, or about 4600 years ago. I think it's fair to
| say that civilization was humming before that, and that
| even the construction likely attracted tourists. Seems to
| be part of the point of monuments.
|
| Djoser's pyramid seems to have been completed around a
| hundred years prior to that, and would have drawn crowds
| sufficient to warrant the large temple, grand entrance,
| and colonnades which are part of the complex.
|
| There is a great deal of evidence that offerings provided
| by people traveling to these complexes sustained the
| religious orders on site who provided guardianship,
| maintenance, and worship. And that this was planned as
| part of the construction.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| The tomb and temple complexes aren't built _to
| accommodate demand_. They 're built at the size the king
| wants them to be, and used for official ceremonies.
| hoseja wrote:
| Try imagining what those official ceremonies are for
| actually.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| They're for building the legitimacy of the king. What do
| you want me to imagine?
| timschmidt wrote:
| A different perspective which has a lot more explanatory
| power: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItAQSrlG9WQ
| metalman wrote:
| Djosers pyramid has an inner chamber that is suported by
| massive cedar timbers hauled from Lebenon.....and we have
| the Epic of Gilgamesh which details the triumph of
| Gilgamesh over humbiwaba the forest guardian, and
| harvesting and transport of cedars from Lebenon, we also
| have the commercial records of the mesopotamians trading
| activities over vast distances and time periods, and so
| it is zero surprise to find that "the black haired
| people" also left there genetic's with the rest of the
| cultural, linguistic, and mythical baggage that we are
| consiously or un consiously hauling around, still.
| sho_hn wrote:
| I quite enjoy that YouTube channel. I watch any history
| content on YouTube with enormous fear and worry of
| crackpottery and "alternative history"-type charlatanry,
| and I feel like this one hasn't let me down yet, though
| I'll probably never feel at ease watching it given the
| subject matter.
| timschmidt wrote:
| I really appreciate his nuanced stance that even cranks
| and kooks are capable of observation and recording what
| they see. And his obsession with correlating details
| through original historical accounts. And the work he's
| doing mapping the individual blocks of the casings and
| throughout the passages. It's one of the channels that
| convinced me that Youtube was a legitimate path for
| getting your scientific research funded.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| Yes, Zahi Hawass is a comical example at this point. But I'm
| afraid he is merely the manifestation of general desire from
| the political regime as well as the majority of the
| uneducated masses there. Zahi Hawass is just the current
| sociopath to happen to benifiet from the situation to call
| himself a "scholar".
|
| I spent a significant part of my teen years in Egypt and
| Saudi Arabia. There isn't really 1 unified feelings towards
| the "Ancient Egypt" history among Egyptians. First time I
| heard about the "Ancient Aliens" conspiracy WAS from an
| Egyptian. I never really paid the theory much attention until
| all the articles about how "it's a racist theory" "basically
| indigenous people can't do things without aliens" narrative
| was surprising.
|
| There was pride in the telling of the conspiracy theory of
| Ancient Egyptians contacting aliens. "Of course when the
| Aliens visited Earth, they had to come to Egypt, you konw. We
| were in touch with aliens and had far more advanced
| technologies than all other societies. sadly it's been lost"
| type thinking.
|
| The general opinion was split between people who don't give a
| shit about all this pharo shit, people who think it's a cool
| marketing story in the 21st century, people who think it's
| their history and identity. It was allover the place
| wileydragonfly wrote:
| I'm amazed he's still at it but the last time I checked in
| on him he was fighting against all that "ancient aliens"
| crap so he's not all bad.
| prmph wrote:
| They are ambivalent about "all this pharo" stuff because it
| is not really their heritage.
| theultdev wrote:
| > because it is not really their heritage
|
| Could you expand on this?
| ggm wrote:
| Not OP but.. The ptolemaic Pharaohs (Cleopatra..) and
| after are not related to the dynastic cultures which made
| the pyramids. They were greeks. Subsequent occupation by
| post Roman cultures including the Byzantine, and Islamic
| Arabic tribes, and the Ottomans, means the culture and
| genetics of modern Egypt have little to do with pyramids
| and pre-roman era mummies and culture/religion/beliefs.
|
| Waves of occupation over 2000 years eroded any cultural
| link.
|
| What I read suggests the Berbers have some historical
| relationship and the Bedouin less. Nasser was an arabist,
| as were the young egypt political movement of the 19th
| century.
|
| It's like asking why modern British people aren't
| strongly identifying with pictish culture or beaker
| people.
|
| The Egyptian archaeologists assert nationalism and
| cultural goals and have to deal with Islamic
| fundamentalists who push back on pre Islamic religious
| artefacts. Saudi archaeologists have similar pressures.
| prmph wrote:
| Thanks, you explained it better than I might have.
|
| > What I read suggests the Berbers have some historical
| relationship and the Bedouin less.
|
| I understand the Copts in Egypt also have a stronger
| relationship to the ancient culture than the the
| population as a whole.
| dismalaf wrote:
| Egypt is an Arab country. They're literally called the
| Arab Republic of Egypt. Before that the United Arab
| Republic. Official language Arabic.
|
| Arabs came from Arabia, not Egypt.
|
| Copts are a bit closer to ancient Egypt (their language
| especially) but their religion is Orthodox Christianity
| which influences their culture, which came out of the
| Greek/Roman culture of Ptolemaic-Roman Egypt.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| Oh boy, the subject of Egyptian identity is a complicated
| subject. Are they Arabs? Egyptians? Muslims?
| Mediterraneans? Pharaohs? Coptic? Bedouin? Berbers?
|
| An "Arab" is not a race nor is it exclusionary with
| Ancient Egypt. If someone had an uninterrupted ancestory
| line from today to Ramasis II, those ancestors learned
| Arabic at some point and became Arabs or Muslims
| themselves.
|
| Ok, most Egyptians I have known would immediately strike
| out Berbers/Amazeghs identity. They actively dislike
| "amazeghs" and consider them foreigners even though they
| look the same, speak the same language, and plenty are
| legally Egyptians with families that have lived there
| since the 17th century. Egyptians consider them imposters
| and maybe thats why they are hated more than the
| "obviously a foreigner". At least the latter isn't
| pretending.
|
| But at the "Bedouin" the lines start getting blurred.
| They identify as independent tribes that partially moved
| from Arabia in the 7th or 8th century and they are very
| very adamant about their independence from the Egyptian
| state and their right to self determination and how they
| live. They are the libertarians of Egypt, except they
| actually practice a fully bedouin/nomad/libertarian
| lifestyle. The state is always fighting with them. Most
| regular Egyptians I knew consider them Egyptians despite
| their disapproval. Egyptians public like the bedouins in
| general. It's a romanticized existence.
|
| The Arabic/Egyptian/Muslim/Christian/Coptic/Pharaonic/Rom
| an/Greek/Ottomon identity of Egyptians (and arabs in
| general) is a subject of many books.
| dismalaf wrote:
| > those ancestors learned Arabic at some point and became
| Arabs or Muslims themselves.
|
| Did they? Seems like this is erasure of the Copts, a
| people who, to this day, both still exist, mostly aren't
| Muslim and speak a language directly descended from
| ancient Egyptian.
| prmph wrote:
| > Are they Arabs? Egyptians? Muslims? Mediterraneans?
| Pharaohs? Coptic? Bedouin? Berbers?
|
| You forgot to add the Nubians/Cushites and other groups
| south of Egypt. Is it possible that the Egyptians lived
| next to them for thousands of years without any
| admixtures of genes and culture with them?
| tmp10423288442 wrote:
| Modern Egyptians are primarily Arab. If anyone is a
| descendant of the Ancient Egyptians, it's the Coptic
| Christians, who still use a descendant of the Ancient
| Egyptian language as a liturgical language and mostly
| don't have any Arabic ancestry (since the child of an
| Arab Muslim and a Copt would almost always be considered
| an Arab Muslim).
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| > But I'm afraid he is merely the manifestation of general
| desire from the political regime as well as the majority of
| the uneducated masses there.
|
| Hawass may be more a manifestation of what foreigners
| believe an Egyptologist should look like: Indiana Jones
| hat, cigar, etc. He is influential in large parts because
| of his popularity in the media outside Egypt.
| jasonfarnon wrote:
| The other is the seemingly strong conclusion that Ancient
| Egyptians did in fact move to Egypt from Mesopotamian which is
| pretty cool. Egyptians don't like the notion that "they moved
| there from somewhere".
|
| How do you conclude that from the fact that 1 man of the era
| had 20% of his genetic material from Mesopotamia?
| cma wrote:
| Kind of like checking one British royalty corpse for Danish
| ancestry.
| bee_rider wrote:
| They actually studied the skeleton as well.
|
| > The body was placed in a large pottery vessel inside a
| rock-cut tomb (Fig. 1b and Extended Data Fig. 1). This
| treatment would have ordinarily been reserved for
| individuals of a higher social class relative to others at
| the site
|
| But,
|
| > This and various activity-induced musculoskeletal
| indicators of stress revealed that he experienced an
| extended period of physical labour, seemingly in contrast
| to his high-status tomb burial.
|
| > In this case, although circumstantial, they are not
| inconsistent with those of a potter, as depicted in ancient
| Egyptian imagery.
|
| Checking the corpses of nobility would be a bad idea
| because they are shipped around for diplomatic reasons. I
| guess a potter moves around less (though, as a skilled
| worker, probably moved around a bit?).
| bee_rider wrote:
| Actually, I think it's wrong to say that this paper proves
| Egyptians moved from somewhere else. As with any research
| paper, it is part of a conversation and moving consensus. It
| is a journey.
|
| > Our knowledge of ancient Egyptians has increased through
| decades of bioarchaeological analyses including dental
| morphological studies on their relatedness to other
| populations in North Africa and West Asia
|
| There are other footsteps. The DNA is just a notable rock
| they've clambered over.
| clw8 wrote:
| I believe they are basing that on the spread of genes from
| the Natufian culture that built the earliest settlements
| corresponding to the spread of Afroasiatic languages. Similar
| to how Turkish people have low levels of Turkic ancestry.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > The other is the seemingly strong conclusion that Ancient
| Egyptians did in fact move to Egypt from Mesopotamian which is
| pretty cool.
|
| there was no such conclusion that i saw having read this.
|
| they are talking of genetic admixture...so the person shared
| ancestors with someone else sequenced from the mesopotamian
| area...maybe they both were kids with a parent elsewhere, for
| example.
| dilawar wrote:
| > Egyptians don't like the notion that "they moved there from
| somewhere". They claim their own unique, uninterrupted, history
| and connection to the land as well as their civilizational
| independence from Mesopotamian, Asia Minor, Europe, and Africa.
|
| Same here in India.
|
| These ideas about civilization and racial purity/superiority
| are a scientific nonsense but very useful for getting people to
| hate each other.
| beloch wrote:
| Human populations almost never sat still in one place and
| avoided mixing with others. Go back far enough, and Europeans
| and Indians are related. Go back further, and they're both
| related to Native North Americans. Go back far enough and
| we're _all_ related. Anyone making claims that their ethnic
| group is somehow "pure" is ignoring linguistics, genetics,
| archaeology, and basic human nature.
|
| We move around. We meet people. We make new people.
| like_any_other wrote:
| Go back further still, and we're related to cyanobacteria.
| genghisjahn wrote:
| "LET'S SET THE EXISTENCE-OF-GOD ISSUE ASIDE FOR A later
| volume, and just stipulate that in some way, self-
| replicating organisms came into existence on this planet
| and immediately began trying to get rid of each other,
| either by spamming their environments with rough copies
| of themselves, or by more direct means which hardly need
| to be belabored." Cryptonomicon. Page 24.
| simonh wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/2608/
| czl wrote:
| "Pure" usually means having genes from a narrow, selected
| group, so the offspring show predictable traits--like size,
| intelligence, or appearance. That's why dogs and farm
| animals are called "purebred." But making pure breeds often
| requires inbreeding, which, unless done carefully, can
| cause serious problems.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Reminds me of that scene from Community
| (#sixseasonsandamovie) with Pierce's dad:
|
| "Swedish dogs! Your blood is tainted by generations of race
| mixing with Laplanders. You're basically Finns!"
| xlinux wrote:
| I never know anyone claiming that in India
| bandrami wrote:
| Look up the Harrapan Continuity Hypothesis. Very few
| scholars in India take it seriously but somehow it still
| finds its way into high school textbooks.
| n1b0m wrote:
| https://www.voanews.com/a/petition-in-india-s-supreme-
| court-...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/30/hardline-
| hindu...
| sho_hn wrote:
| The same ideas exist in China, which claims a whole (and
| scientifically since disproven) distinct origin of humanity:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peking_Man
| sivm wrote:
| Chinese mythology says they came from Kun Lun (Kunlun
| Mountain). The description of which sounds like Egypt
| coincidentally.
|
| Translated something like: "To the south of the Western
| Sea, along the banks of the Flowing Sands, beyond the Red
| Water and before the Black Water, there lies a great
| mountain called the Kunlun Hill."
| labster wrote:
| The idea must have had some currency in the middle of last
| century, since Tolkien decided to place Hildorien, the
| birthplace of the Edain, in the Far East.
|
| https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Hild%C3%B3rien
| myth_drannon wrote:
| It's interesting that in Judaism, it's the opposite. Always
| moving in and then forcibly moved out. Abraham came from Ur
| (Mesopotamia), then Exodus from Egypt into Canaan, then
| Babylonian exile and back to Judea.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| In myth-making, you've got to work with the established
| facts on the ground. It makes sense for China, India and
| Egypt to perpetuate the "always been here" mythology, but
| obviously for Jews being forcibly moved around and
| discriminated against is a given, so you build around that.
| detourdog wrote:
| I have heard that the story of Moses was developed as way
| to unite the northern people Judah with the southern
| Israelites.
|
| They needed a central story to unite the ideas.
|
| I'm no expert but I think I have the theory straight.
| vasco wrote:
| Happens everywhere. Nationalism is hidden in every country's
| history curriculum. I learned my country was the first in the
| world to abolish slavery (actually had them til 1950s,
| documented) among a bunch of other lies I only discovered
| later. Most of them are embellishments of real things but
| others are just flat out wrong.
|
| If you want to see examples you don't even need my school
| books. Compare these chronological lists in both languages, in
| English wikipedia or Portuguese wikipedia:
|
| -
| https://pt.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronologia_da_aboli%C3%A7%C3...
|
| -
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_sla...
|
| Very different!
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| "...the Nuwayrat individual is predicted to have had brown
| eyes, brown hair and skin pigmentation ranging from dark to
| black skin, with a lower probability of intermediate skin
| colour"
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| The SI has much more information along these lines, including
| a facial reconstruction. Our Ancient Egyptian looks basically
| Arabian -- the closest match is a modern Bedouin.
|
| https://static-
| content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs415...
|
| > _Next, according to the CRANID nearest neighbour
| discriminant analysis, the individual cranium most like
| Nuwayrat is from a West Asian Bedouin male (Individual 2546
| in CRANID database), with the following rounding out the top
| five: Egyptian 26th-30th Dynasty male (Ind 1034), Indian male
| (2576), Lachish male (2668), and another 26th-30th Dynasty
| Egyptian male (1031)._
|
| > _Thus, in line with the genetic results the Nuwayrat
| individual, subject to limitations imposed by the comparative
| samples available in the two program datasets (as above),
| appears most akin phenetically to: Western Eurasians rather
| than subSaharan Africans dentally and, more specifically,
| premodern West Asians, i.e., Lachish, based on craniometrics.
| It is secondarily most similar in craniometric dimensions to
| ancient Egyptians of a more recent time._
| KurSix wrote:
| When your research has to align with a state-approved version
| of history, real collaboration becomes tricky
| n4r9 wrote:
| There are lots of replies to this already but I think it's
| worth simply copying out the relevant parts of the conclusion:
|
| > Although our analyses are limited to a single Egyptian
| individual who ... may not be representative of the general
| population, our results revealed ancestry links to earlier
| North African groups and populations of the eastern Fertile
| Crescent. ... The genetic links with the eastern Fertile
| Crescent also mirror previously documented cultural diffusion
| ... opening up the possibility of some settlement of people in
| Egypt during one or more of these periods.
| DemocracyFTW2 wrote:
| This wording is definitely more circumspect than its headline
| version, "Breakthrough discovery REVEALS Egyptians are in
| fact MESOPOTAMIANS"
| vuxie wrote:
| I think conclusion is a bit of a strong term to use here, as
| far as i can read its a possibility, but the only real
| conclusion is that there has been human movement between the
| regions, which might indicate mixing (that is, they didn't move
| there, at least, not all of them).
| DemocracyFTW2 wrote:
| > the seemingly strong conclusion that Ancient Egyptians did in
| fact move to Egypt from Mesopotamian
|
| Touch some grass, seriously. They looked at the DNA of 1 (in
| words: one) guy and now it's "hey in fact Egyptians all came
| from Mesopotamia"? You'd have to take many more samples to
| support such a broad claim, and it's not because of the
| Ministry of Antiquities suppressing ideas.
|
| Mankind likely did not originate in the Nile valley, hence the
| fact we find people there from some point in history means they
| migrated from somewhere else. If you subscribe to the single-
| origin story (which I think is plausible but not the only
| possible one, the alternative being various human populations
| that got separated and re-united in different parts of the
| world) and think, just for the sake of argument, of Lucy as
| 'the first human' then humans are immigrants almost everywhere
| (this will be hard to swallow for lots of people and we know
| from the historical record
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIJF2RomfGE) that the Voth had
| problems with that, too, so it's very human).
|
| The narrower Nile valley must have been a relatively
| inhospitable place for a human during the African Wet Period.
| When that came to an end around ~7ky ago or so that change made
| the Nile valley rather suddenly more attractive to many
| thousands of people who used to roam the lands to the right and
| left of it. As desertification progressed, communities were
| forced to go someplace else with some ending up in the Nile
| valley. In a way, you can to this day see the echoes of that
| time in the ethnic and cultural diversity of Egyptian society
| which I think is more of a hallmark of this civilization than
| an imagined homogenized one-mold-fits-all view.
|
| And it's totally not out of place that some people with roots
| in Ancient Egypt should have an ancestry that came from the
| Levant or further from Anatolia or Mesopotamia. Egypt was a big
| place, rich in people, culture, food, arts and opportunity
| (and, not to forget, regular festivals with beer, wine and
| music at the cultural centers; today people cross continents
| for taking part in festivals with beer, wine and music). Egypt
| had trade, diplomatic relations and 'military exchanges' (war)
| with those far-flung places and captives were either maimed or
| indentured, so as a matter of course we find Egyptians with
| Mesopotamian admixtures, what did you think?
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| Additionally presence of certain genetic markers in two
| locations does not define the direction of travel.
| pcrh wrote:
| >"hey in fact Egyptians all came from Mesopotamia"
|
| Quite. Especially considering that the article states that
| this man was 80% North African with dark to black skin....
| rayiner wrote:
| The same is true for many people, e.g. the Japanese. You're
| prohibited from digging up the bones of ancient empties and
| doing DNA testing to see if they're korean.
| pqtyw wrote:
| > . The other is the seemingly strong conclusion that Ancient
| Egyptians did in fact move to Egypt from Mesopotamian which is
| pretty cool.
|
| Finding some individuals to whom this applies "20% of his
| genetic ancestry can be traced to genomes representing the
| eastern Fertile Crescent" doesn't really prove that at all,
| though?
| hearsathought wrote:
| > The other is the seemingly strong conclusion that Ancient
| Egyptians did in fact move to Egypt from Mesopotamian which is
| pretty cool.
|
| What strong conclusion? You "skim" the article and feel
| justified making outlandish politicized statements?
|
| > They claim their own unique, uninterrupted, history and
| connection to the land as well as their civilizational
| independence from Mesopotamian, Asia Minor, Europe, and Africa.
|
| As does everyone else and which is true for the most part. Does
| anyone dispute ancient egypt's civilizational status?
|
| > While this might be a matter of ancient history and science
| to everyone
|
| It isn't a matter of ancient history and science to everyone.
| Ancient history, science and archaelogy are political for
| everyone. Egyptology as a field was created by europeans partly
| to justify taking over egypt. It literally was part of european
| colonialism.
|
| > It's also the same you rarely find Egyptian
| archeologists/scholars on scientific papers.
|
| You find it odd that egyptians aren't too keen on egyptology?
|
| > The "findings" of the paper has to agree with the narrative
| built and proposed by the ministry of antiquities or they will
| literally charge whoever publishes it with a national crime.
|
| I highly doubt that. Maybe if the "study" undermines egypt's
| attempt to get their stolen antiquities back. But even then
| your claim seems outlandish.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> lack of any Egyptian archeologists on most interesting and
| significant findings about Ancient Egypt is one.
|
| Politics. The egyption government is very sensitive about
| egyptology. They can make normal life difficult for people who
| rock the boat. Novel research or theories are activley
| discouraged. So it is hard for locals, and safer for outsiders,
| to make news.
|
| https://youtube.com/@historyforgranite
|
| (No, this isnt an ancient aliens crackpot channel. This guy is
| doing solid work and does discuss how egyptology is so locked
| down.)
| hbarka wrote:
| Can't we think of it as just one large land mass? Maybe 5000
| years ago the Sinai peninsula was more land, less sea--the Red
| Sea not as big, and the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba as we
| know it now was land mass. Then it wouldn't be hard to imagine
| freedom of travel in all kinds of directions.
| KurSix wrote:
| The key isn't shifting land masses, but the fact that even with
| the existing terrain, people were moving, trading, and mixing
| across these regions
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The authors actually hypothesize that the Sinai desert was not
| the main migration path to Egypt here, that's speculative.
|
| That said, it's essentially how most people think of the
| Mediterranean basin by the middle bronze age, not too much
| later than this.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| > 5000 years ago the Sinai peninsula was more land, less sea--
| the Red Sea not as big, and the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of
| Aqaba as we know it now was land mass.
|
| 5,000 is a split second in geological terms. We KNOW how Sinai
| and the Red Sea looks like 5000 or 20,000 years ago.
| PKop wrote:
| How do we even know this person was upper class or some itinerant
| migrant worker that came from somewhere else?
|
| Even the citation claiming the burial method was associated with
| upper class raises doubts: following the link mentions "pot
| burial" which has commonly been associated with the poor. The
| problem with identifying bones with "population" is it often says
| what the common man was like but not the minority elite that
| ruled and had power if one isn't careful about who they think
| they're identifying or the demographic structure of society in
| these ancient cultures.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Well, I assume the lowest-budget way to deal with a corpse in
| ancient Egypt is to toss it into the Nile.
|
| More generally, if what you're looking at is a cemetery for the
| poor, there should be a lot of remains, and there shouldn't be
| much in the way of decoration. If someone carved a tomb for the
| remains to be in ("The body was interred in a ceramic pot
| within a rock-cut tomb"), that already disqualifies them from
| being poor.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > I assume the lowest-budget way to deal with a corpse in
| ancient Egypt is to toss it into the Nile.
|
| You are wrong to think that the majority of Egyptians'
| corpses were disposed of in the Nile.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Is that something I said?
| mrangle wrote:
| You implied that lower class burials were likely in the
| Nile.
|
| To advance the argument that a pot burial likely didn't
| indicate a poor burial.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| Culture matters a lot, the lowest budget is not necessarily
| the one that will be used. The cheapest way to dispose of a
| body is to eat it, but almost no cultures do that, I don't
| know the burial rituals of ancient Egyptian laborers, but
| tossing them in the Nile seems incredibly unlikely.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Ancient Egyptian society flourished for millennia, reaching its
| peak during the Dynastic Period (approximately 3150-30 BCE)
|
| Note, Ancient Egypt emerged from prehistoric times in 3150 BCE
| (it hadn't existed for millennia then), with the unification of
| Upper and Lower Egypt.
| KurSix wrote:
| How many other early genomes we've missed just due to
| preservation bias
| rietta wrote:
| The article states that 'his genetic affinity is similar to the
| ancestry appearing in Anatolia and the Levant during the
| Neolithic and Bronze Age.' As a layperson, I don't think we would
| find this particularly shocking. It's well known from written
| sources that there was significant communication and movement
| between Egypt and those areas during the broader Bronze Age, even
| extending back into the Neolithic for some cultural exchanges.
| This even aligns with biblical narratives that describe
| individuals and families traveling to and from Egypt for periods
| of time.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Worth noting for context that "Anatolia and the Levant" (better
| known perhaps as the Ancient Near East) also included plenty of
| darker-skinned folks in that time period, with an appearance
| that we might nowadays associate with Sub-Saharan Africa - and
| they were highly integrated in their societies, not just a
| servile underclass. This is also true of the ancient
| Mediterranean region as a whole. We're especially sure about
| this because of surviving pictorial/visual (e.g. from the
| Minoan civilization in Crete) and textual sources. So our Old-
| Kingdom Ancient Egyptian could well have looked quite "Sub-
| Saharan" in appearance, despite not originating anywhere south
| of present-day Sahara.
| sivm wrote:
| It didn't. They clearly distinguished Nubians and Libyians
| from themselves in their art.
| dismalaf wrote:
| Gonna need a source for your assertion since the Egyptians
| and Minoans always differentiated between themselves and
| Nubians/Libyans in art and literature...
|
| People from the ancient near East nearly always depicted
| themselves as somewhere between white and reddish/light brown
| and their modern populations fall within the same spectrum.
|
| There's no evidence for near Eastern populations having ever
| looked "Sub Saharan".
| sivm wrote:
| Bob Brier's "The Great Courses" lecture series on ancient
| Egypt. Nubians were painted dark and Libyans were always
| shown with a feather in their headgear and blue eyes.
| dismalaf wrote:
| So your source literally corroborates what I'm saying,
| not that Near East populations appeared Sub Saharan in
| complexion. Gotcha.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| I never said that _everyone_ in the Ancient Near East or
| the Mediterranean basin had a Sub-Saharan look, only that
| there were enough such people to be notable and that they
| were genuinely an integral part of those ancient
| societies, with quite high-status or even elite roles at
| times.
| rietta wrote:
| I suppose we do not know what she looked like, but Moses
| had a Kushite wife and was criticized for it. "Miriam and
| Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom
| he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman."
| (Numbers 12:1 ESV)
|
| It seems that _no evidence_ is a bit of hyperbole.
| dismalaf wrote:
| There's evidence that Nubians/Kushites had plenty of
| contact with Egypt and some lived there, but again,
| they're referred to as distinct from Egyptians,
| Mesopotamians, etc...
| rietta wrote:
| Indeed. Regular interaction in the region at minimum went
| from well from modern day Lebanon and down through Ethiopia
| (Kush). In the biblical timeline Moses had a Kushite wife. I
| have read a compelling account that links biblical Moses with
| a possible identification as Senenmut during the New Kingdom
| Period and connected with Hatshepsut (possibly Pharoh's
| Daughter). Following this period we know there was regular
| political and military correspondence from all over the
| region, such as the Amarna letters which are on display at
| the British Museum. The point I make, as a lay person who has
| read the biblical narratives and other sources, is Egypt was
| extremely well connected for an extremely long period of time
| and significant DNA mixing the entire time is to be expected
| and I doubt tells us too much about origin migrations.
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