Were Egyptians black or white?

[Birdjaguar]

In reading through this thread, it seems to have several intertwined issues:

1. What was the skin color of the people who built the pyramids?
2. What was ethnic and genetic heritage of the pre-dynastic Egyptians?
3. Were the Egyptians of Upper Egypt different from the Egyptians of Lower Egypt in 3000 BCE?
4. Who gets to claim the Old Kingdom (3200 BCE and forward) as part of its heritage: Africa, the Middle East or Europe?

For the first question I think the best answer comes from the Old Kingdom artists. I would suspect that they painted/sculpted things in a more rather than less realistic way.

Two seems to have been answered pretty thoroughly: African

Three, not clear to me especially since there are trade ties between the early Old Kingdom and the Middle East and we don't know what happened as far as migration and war between 4000 BCE and the rise of King Narmer. The information presented so far seems weighted towards the Egyptians of Upper Egypt and not the Delta where other influences would be quite likely.

Four is not really an important question and answers tend to be self serving.

 

[Mentuhotep23]

Were egyptians black or white? To me they don't look black or African, but they don't look white either.

I see that this debate has been brought up on Civilization fanatics again.


I made my position clear on this in a long winded debate. The question is difficult to answer when people have different viewpoints on the definitions of the different labels. What does it mean to look black, African or white? Are these the only possible labels they can be classified under? Does it have to be either or, could they be both? Which periods in Egyptian history are we talking about? What evidence is suitable for answering this question?

I think if you truly want to know who the Ancient Egyptians were that these are better questions:

1. What did they look like?

2. What were their bio-cultural origins?

These questions can and have been answered by taking a Multidisciplinary approach to investigating the issue.

I have found this article to be most reliable in answering the above questions from an anthropological perspective:

The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians


Professor S.O.Y. Keita
Department of Biological Anthropology
Oxford University

Professor A. J. Boyce
University Reader in Human Population
Oxford University

What was the primary geographical source for the peopling of the Egyptian Nile Valley? Were the creators of the fundamental culture of southern predynastic Egypt—which led to the dynastic culture—migrants and colonists from Europe or the Near East? Or were they predominantly African variant populations?

These questions can be addressed using data from studies of biology and culture, and evolutionary interpretive models. Archaeological and linguistic data indicate an origin in Africa. Biological data from living Egyptians and from skeletons of ancient Egyptians may also shed light on these questions. It is important to keep in mind the long presence of humans in Africa, and that there should be a great range of biological variation in indigenous "authentic" Africans.

Scientists have been studying remains from the Egyptian Nile Valley for years. Analysis of crania is the traditional approach to assessing ancient population origins, relationships, and diversity. In studies based on anatomical traits and measurements of crania, similarities have been found between Nile Valley crania from 30,000, 20,000 and 12,000 years ago and various African remains from more recent times (see Thoma 1984; Brauer and Rimbach 1990; Angel and Kelley 1986; Keita 1993). Studies of crania from southern predynastic Egypt, from the formative period (4000-3100 B.C.), show them usually to be more similar to the crania of ancient Nubians, Kuhorsehockeyes, Saharans, or modern groups from the Horn of Africa than to those of dynastic northern Egyptians or ancient or modern southern Europeans.

Another source of skeletal data is limb proportions, which generally vary with different climatic belts. In general, the early Nile Valley remains have the proportions of more tropical populations, which is noteworthy since Egypt is not in the tropics. This suggests that the Egyptian Nile Valley was not primarily settled by cold-adapted peoples, such as Europeans.

Art objects are not generally used by biological anthropologists. They are suspect as data and their interpretation highly dependent on stereotyped thinking. However, because art has often been used to comment on the physiognomies of ancient Egyptians, a few remarks are in order. A review of literature and the sculpture indicates characteristics that also can be found in the Horn of (East) Africa (see, e.g., Petrie 1939; Drake 1987; Keita 1993). Old and Middle Kingdom statuary shows a range of characteristics; many, if not most, individuals depicted in the art have variations on the narrow-nosed, narrow-faced morphology also seen in various East Africans. This East African anatomy, once seen as being the result of a mixture of different "races," is better understood as being part of the range of indigenous African variation.

The descriptions and terms of ancient Greek writers have sometimes been used to comment on Egyptian origins. This is problematic since the ancient writers were not doing population biology. However, we can examine one issue. The Greeks called all groups south of Egypt "Ethiopians." Were the Egyptians more related to any of these "Ethiopians" than to the Greeks? As noted, cranial and limb studies have indicated greater similarity to Somalis, Kuhorsehockeyes and Nubians, all "Ethiopians" in ancient Greek terms.

There are few studies of ancient DNA from Egyptian remains and none so far of southern predynastic skeletons. A study of 12th Dynasty DNA shows that the remains evaluated had multiple lines of descent, including not surprisingly some from "sub-Saharan" Africa (Paabo and Di Rienzo 1993). The other lineages were not identified, but may be African in origin. More work is needed. In the future, early remains from the Nile Valley and the rest of Africa will have to be studied in this manner in order to establish the early baseline range of genetic variation of all Africa. The data are important to avoid stereotyped ideas about the DNA of African peoples.

The information from the living Egyptian population may not be as useful because historical records indicate substantial immigration into Egypt over the last several millennia, and it seems to have been far greater from the Near East and Europe than from areas far south of Egypt. "Substantial immigration" can actually mean a relatively small number of people in terms of population genetics theory. It has been determined that an average migration rate of one percent per generation into a region could result in a great change of the original gene frequencies in only several thousand years. (This assumes that all migrants marry natives and that all native-migrant offspring remain in the region.) It is obvious then that an ethnic group or nationality can change in average gene frequencies or physiognomy by intermarriage, unless social rules exclude the products of "mixed" unions from membership in the receiving group. More abstractly this means that geographically defined populations can undergo significant genetic change with a small percentage of steady assimilation of "foreign" genes. This is true even if natural selection does not favor the genes (and does not eliminate them).

Examples of regions that have biologically absorbed genetically different immigrants are Sicily, Portugal, and Greece, where the frequencies of various genetic markers (and historical records) indicate sub-Saharan and supra-Saharan African migrants.

This scenario is different from one in which a different population replaces another via colonization. Native Egyptians were variable. Foreigners added to this variability.

The genetic data on the recent Egyptian population is fairly sparse. There has not been systematic research on large samples from the numerous regions of Egypt. Taken collectively, the results of various analyses suggest that modern Egyptians have ties with various African regions, as well as with Near Easterners and Europeans. Egyptian gene frequencies are between those of Europeans and some sub-Saharan Africans. This is not surprising. The studies have used various kinds of data: standard blood groups and proteins, mitochondrial DNA, and the Y chromosome. The gene frequencies and variants of the "original" population, or of one of early high density, cannot be deduced without a theoretical model based on archaeological and "historical" data, including the aforementioned DNA from ancient skeletons. (It must be noted that it is not yet clear how useful ancient DNA will be in most historical genetic research.) It is not clear to what degree certain genetic systems usually interpreted as non-African may in fact be native to Africa. Much depends on how "African" is defined and the model of interpretation.

The various genetic studies usually suffer from what is called categorical thinking, specifically, racial thinking. Many investigators still think of "African" in a stereotyped, nonscientific (nonevolutionary) fashion, not acknowledging a range of genetic variants or traits as equally African. The definition of "African" that would be most appropriate should encompass variants that arose in Africa. Given that this is not the orientation of many scholars, who work from outmoded racial perspectives, the presence of "stereotypical" African genes so far from the "African heartland" is noteworthy. These genes have always been in the valley in any reasonable interpretation of the data. As a team of Egyptian geneticists stated recently, "During this long history and besides these Asiatic influences, Egypt maintained its African identity . . ." (Mahmoud et al. 1987). This statement is even more true in a wider evolutionary interpretation, since some of the "Asian" genes may be African in origin. Modern data and improved theoretical approaches extend and validate this conclusion.

In summary, various kinds of data and the evolutionary approach indicate that the Nile Valley populations had greater ties with other African populations in the early ancient period. Early Nile Valley populations were primarily coextensive with indigenous African populations. Linguistic and archaeological data provide key supporting evidence for a primarily African origin.


References Cited:

Angel, J. L., and J. O. Kelley, Description and comparison of the skeleton. In The Wadi Kubbaniya Skeleton: A Late Paleolithic
Burial from Southern Egypt. E Wendorf and R. Schild. pp. 53-70. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press. 1986

Brauer, G., and K. Rimbach, Late archaic and modern Homo sapiens from Europe, Africa, and Southwest Asia: Craniometric comparisons and phylogenetic implications, Journal of Human Evolution 19:789-807. 1990

Drake, St. C., Black Folk Here and There, vol 1. Los Angeles: University of California. 1987

Keita, S.O.Y., Studies and comments on ancient Egyptian biological relationships. History in Africa 20:129-154. 1993

Mahmoud, L. et. al, Human blood groups in Dakhlaya. Egypt. Annuals of Human Biology. 14(6):487-493. 1987

Paabo, S., and A. Di Rienzo, A molecular approach to the study of Egyptian history. In Biological Anthropology and the Study
of Ancient Egypt. V. Davies and R. Walker, eds. pp. 86-90. London: British Museum Press. 1993

Petrie, W.M., F. The Making of Egypt. London: Sheldon Press. 1984

Thoma, A., Morphology and affinities of the Nazlet Khaterman. Journal of Human Evolution 13:287-296. 1984

Some people might not understand some of the terminology and concepts in this article but having communicated with one of the authors personally I am able to interpret the research well enough to answer the two questions above.....


Ancient Egypt was created by indigenous African people descended from Saharan, Nilotic and Horn African populations who settled in the Nile Valley, therefore they looked like these populations who had a variety of phenotypes but in terms of complexion generally ranged from medium to dark brown like many modern Upper Egyptians, Nubians, Eritreans and Somali.

So they were dark-skinned, biologically indigenous Africans.


The author of a book that I got who consulted the author of this article to answer the very question posed by the OP tries to simplify it for laymen:

Were the Ancient Egyptians black? That is entirely up to you. But were they biologically African? It would seem that they were. After considering the full range of anatomical, linguistic, cultural, archeological and genetic evidence, Shomarka Keita feels confident in concluding that the original Egyptians by which he means the pre-dynastic people of Southern Egypt, who founded Egyptian civilization evolved entirely in Africa. Both culturally and biologically, he says, they were more related to other Africans than they were to non-Africans from Europe or Asia.

Through the years, Keita believes, the Egyptians appear to have blended with many immigrants and invaders, many of whom were lighter-skinned and more Caucasoid in appearance than the original Egyptians. Libyans, Persians, Syro-Palestinians, Assyrians, Greeks, and Romans all left their imprint on the faces of Egypt. But Egyptian civilization remained profoundly African to the very end.

Keita himself rarely resorts to such crudely racial expressions as black and white. But if we might be forgiven a momentary lapse into everyday speech, it would probably not hurt to conceive of Keita's theory as the polar opposite of the Hamitic Hypothesis. Whereas the Hamitic theorists saw Egypt as a nation of white people that was gradually infiltrated by blacks, the biological evidence seems to suggest that it was more like a black nation that was gradually infiltrated by whites.

Black Spark White Fire: Did African Explorers Civilize Ancient Europe? - Chapter 77. Black, White or Biologically African? Pg. 471

 

[Berzerker]

I believe both the Egyptians and Greeks said the gods came from Mesopotamia, or Asia Minor. Which is kinda weird...

 

[Mentuhotep23]

I believe both the Egyptians and Greeks said the gods came from Mesopotamia, or Asia Minor. Which is kinda weird...

I've never heard of Ancient Egyptian or Ancient Greek text suggesting this.

 

[MKGLouisville]

Yes it bothers me that some people insist that ancient egyptians were black

I mean that's just the reality of it (in the social sense). A more scientific statement would be that they were indigenous Northeast Africans.

It bothers me that black friend and his family would talk about ancient egypt the way modern greeks talk about ancient greece,

As a black person surrounded by black people everyday, I've yet to hear anyone sugguest that the ancient Egyptians were 'our' ancestors. If anything is even spoken of them (which is almost never) it's to express their discontent with the fact that Eurocentric fallacies seem to prevail over empiracle scientific evidence.

I think that the reason why some White Americans (who are primarily of Western European descent) are so hestitant to call the ancient Egyptians Black is because they think that it will enable black Americans (who are primarily of West African descent) to attach themselves to the civilization through that social label the same way that white Americans attach the label white to Greece and Rome to insinuate a common European heritage;

"The standard talking point of people who attack Afrocentrism is, “I’m Scottish, I don’t claim a Greek civilization.” That’s a lie. Speaking as a European American myself, the European Americans who say they don’t think of themselves as European, as not considering Europe as their heritage, are lying through their teeth. Every white European American has a claim to every European civilization." Black Spark White Fire: Did African Explorers Civilize Ancient Europe? - Chapter 77. Black, White or Biologically African?

Which is obviously a double standard.

There was a movement started some time in the 80s that propelled that idea, and the video with Eddie Murphy and Iman is one result of it.

Yeah you're right there was a movement! To stop the psuedoscientific racially charged Eurocentrist lie dead in it's tracks and turn on head. As a result just about every study within the past quarter century has supported Egypt's Northeast African origin, and rejected the Dynastic race theory.

Sorry, but while there are certain features common to both ancient egyptians and negroids, there's enough distinct features to know that they were still their own people.

The Dinka, Zulu, Beja, Fulani, Tutsi, Hutu, Khoisan, Pygmie, Ect ect ect.... are their own unique people, but have still all been regarded as "black", just like the ancient Egyptians.

You cannot call the ancient scandinavians the same as the gauls, but they were both caucasian. The romans and greeks were similar in many ways too, but were distinct peoples.

Well the Nubians (who have even been regarded by older scholars as black) and Upper Egyptians are essentially the same people biologically and very similar culturally.

You can't say any blacks alive today, in Africa or anywhere else, look like ancient egyptians.

You appear to prefer to be dillusional as what the ancient Egyptians would look like. Numerous studies have concluded that modern Horn Africans overlap with the ancient Egyptians biologically.

"Studies of crania from southern predynastic Egypt, from the formative period (4000-3100 B.C.), show them usually to be more similar to the crania of ancient Nubians, Kuhorsehockeyes, Saharans, or modern groups from the Horn of Africa than to those of dynastic northern Egyptians or ancient or modern southern Europeans."
(S. O. Y and A.J. Boyce, "The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians", in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 20-33)

And none can make the false claim that they have a glorious civilization as their heritage.

Just more of the double standard reinforcing your mindset.

 

[Birdjaguar]

If you want to know what color the Egyptians of the old Kingdom were, here are tomb paintings from ~2482 BCE.

From this site: http://www.osirisnet.net/mastabas/ty/e_ty_01.htm

The mastaba-tomb of Ty , in Saqqara, is one of the most famous of the Old Kingdom, remarkable for the diversity and relevance of topics, as well as for the quality of execution of its reliefs and their state of conservation.

the Old Kingdom lasted 500 years, from 2690 to 2190.
• The 5th Dynasty spreads from 2514 to 2374 (or 140 years), with, for the period under consideration, the successive reigns of Sahure (2506 - 2492), Neferirkare-Kakai (2492 - 2482), Shepseskare (2482 - 2475), Raneferef (2475 - 2474), Niuserre-Any (2474 - 2444).

Pictures of the wall paintings follow. I would guess that the are good representations of what Old Kingdom Egyptians looked like. Make of it what you will.

 

[Mentuhotep23]

As anyone can see from that Old Kingdom art the Ancient Egyptians depicted themselves in life-like settings as brown-skinned. Much has been made of Ancient Egyptian art. The Ancient Egyptians sometimes used symbolic colors and conventions to portray themselves in art. During the Old Kingdom Egyptian artists depicted men as brown and women as yellow (a convention that ended during the Amarna period) leading some scholars to speculate that one or both colors was symbolic. I have seen opponents of the Egyptians being Black select statues that are unpainted, have faded paint or are of women depicted as light-skinned and pass that off as evidence that Egyptians were not Black. In ethnographic murals Egyptians depicted themselves in different skin colors from their neighbors, selecting brown for themselves, jet black for Nubians, tan for Asiatics and white for Libyans. There has been speculation about this as well some interpreting it to mean they were not Black or White but somewhere in the middle.

As Keita and Boyce noted in their article art objects are not used by Biological Anthropologists because they are suspect as data and interpretations are dependent on stereotyped thinking.

I emailed Dr. Keita recently to ask him what the range of diversity of the skin color was in Ancient Egypt during the Dynastic period. He said that his work could not indicate skin color in an empirical sense and without analysis of histology of the skin or accurate portraits we can only imagine what they would have looked like based on skeletal analysis and the physical diversity of modern Upper Egypt.

I did mention a study to him which he found to be interesting which did actually perform an examination of the melanin levels in the skin of noble mummies from Upper Egypt. Here is a relevant quote from the study:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15804821

 

[Berzerker]

I've never heard of Ancient Egyptian or Ancient Greek text suggesting this.

The Egyptian word for god was Neter and meant "the watchers", thats what Shumer means too - the land of the watchers. The Egyptian name for the Red Sea was Ta Ur, the Sea of Ur - and they had hieroglyphs showing that these watchers came by boat from the east via the Red Sea. But Ptah came from the south to reclaim Egypt from the damage caused by the Deluge. The Greek gods came from other lands to the east too, albeit Zeus was from Crete, Poseidon brought the horse from Asia Minor and the steppes beyond the Black Sea, Aphrodite was from Cyprus and Phoenician Tyre - she was Astarte or Ishtar, Sumerian Inanna. Ares was also Indo European via Thrace and I think Athena was Libyan/Egyptian and associated with Hathor (or was that Hera?).

 

[Dachs]

The finding by Ehret was referenced in this study, thus confirming that he was right on the money with this illustration and his conclusions;

Wrong;

Yes; clearly because it has been published, it must be Right.

Please, just think about this from a common-sense point of view. What inherent connection does any given language have to the genetics of the person speaking it? Honestly. Can you seriously claim that no black dude speaks English? No Siberians speak Russian? No Syrians spoke Latin in the Roman Empire, or Greek in the Seleukid Empire? No Manjus spoke Chinese? Why the hell are you supporting the identification of this sub-Saharan language purportedly of a proto-Egyptian nature with a presumably distinct genetic subset of people...as though, because they were "Negroid" or whatever, they Had To speak a sub-Saharan language, and because they spoke a sub-Saharan language, they were "Negroid"?

 

[onedreamer]

Egyptians were orange, silly question... and that's because at the time the color beige didn't exist. In fact, modern egyptians are beige.

 

[tedros91]

From all the evidence and images that were given in this thread, the Ancient Egyptians (in appearance) are clearly NOT white/European (in any sense of the word). They are dark-skinned. The Ancient Egyptians also clearly have no kin whatsoever with the West African Negro/African American neither do they have any kin with the white/European/"Caucasian" (legal definition of Caucasian varies in Europe, Canada and America. Don't confuse it with "Caucasoid"). Truthfully the Ancient Egyptians look far more like modern day North-East Africans (i.e. Habashats/Northern Ethiopian/Eritrean, Somalis, and Southern Egyptians) and there is some kin between these groups.

So please for the love of god, accept the fact that Ancient Egyptians are non-white, they may have Caucasoid features but so do all modern day North-East African ethnic groups (i.e. Habashats/Northern Ethiopian/Eritrean, Somalis, Copts, Egypto-Arabs, Doma, modern-day Nubians, Jeberti, and Southern Egyptians)! The proof is there, go see their (the Ancient Egyptians) images, their statues and read their scriptures (or at least the translations). They clearly distinguished themselves from "black" Nubian and "Fair-Skinned" Libyans (not implying anything about modern day Libyans).

Remember I'm talking only about PHENOTYPE/APPEARANCE, I am not going to give anything about genetic studies. Genetic studies do not tell us anything about what a person would've looked like. I shall take myself as an example; I am a Northern Ethiopian, in the eyes of the blacks I'm not black, in the eyes of the whites I am definitely not white. I see myself as Habashat or in a broader term Northern African.

In a genetic survey I was told I had 50% Middle Eastern markers, 15% Mediterranean markers and 35% North East African markers (I gave some hair follicles and blood samples to a lab a couple years ago). These numbers have no value since I am of dark skin with curly hair and dark eyes, my sister, however has fair skin with straight, brownish-red hair. It doesn't tell me what I should look like and neither does it tell me what superficial western standard of "race/ethnicity" I am. So remember when you parrot out genetic sampling information, you're only telling us the biochemistry behind the person not their phenotype and "race".

I am aware that the last 2 paragraphs are little off-topic but I want to state how easy it is to interpret genetic survey information.

So please someone end the discussion with what I said or just end this cyclic discussion for the rest of us.

 

[Dachs]

Where's the damn rep button?

 

[Birdjaguar]

From all the evidence and images that were given in this thread, the Ancient Egyptians (in appearance) are clearly NOT white/European (in any sense of the word). They are dark-skinned. The Ancient Egyptians also clearly have no kin whatsoever with the West African Negro/African American neither do they have any kin with the white/European/"Caucasian" (legal definition of Caucasian varies in Europe, Canada and America. Don't confuse it with "Caucasoid"). Truthfully the Ancient Egyptians look far more like modern day North-East Africans (i.e. Habashats/Northern Ethiopian/Eritrean, Somalis, and Southern Egyptians) and there is some kin between these groups.

So please for the love of god, accept the fact that Ancient Egyptians are non-white, they may have Caucasoid features but so do all modern day North-East African ethnic groups (i.e. Habashats/Northern Ethiopian/Eritrean, Somalis, Copts, Egypto-Arabs, Doma, modern-day Nubians, Jeberti, and Southern Egyptians)! The proof is there, go see their (the Ancient Egyptians) images, their statues and read their scriptures (or at least the translations). They clearly distinguished themselves from "black" Nubian and "Fair-Skinned" Libyans (not implying anything about modern day Libyans).

Remember I'm talking only about PHENOTYPE/APPEARANCE, I am not going to give anything about genetic studies. Genetic studies do not tell us anything about what a person would've looked like. I shall take myself as an example; I am a Northern Ethiopian, in the eyes of the blacks I'm not black, in the eyes of the whites I am definitely not white. I see myself as Habashat or in a broader term Northern African.

In a genetic survey I was told I had 50% Middle Eastern markers, 15% Mediterranean markers and 35% North East African markers (I gave some hair follicles and blood samples to a lab a couple years ago). These numbers have no value since I am of dark skin with curly hair and dark eyes, my sister, however has fair skin with straight, brownish-red hair. It doesn't tell me what I should look like and neither does it tell me what superficial western standard of "race/ethnicity" I am. So remember when you parrot out genetic sampling information, you're only telling us the biochemistry behind the person not their phenotype and "race".

I am aware that the last 2 paragraphs are little off-topic but I want to state how easy it is to interpret genetic survey information.

So please someone end the discussion with what I said or just end this cyclic discussion for the rest of us.

Very nicely put. Thanks.

 

[MKGLouisville]

Yes; clearly because it has been published, it must be Right.

No the fact that the origins and spreading of Afro-Asiatic also correlates with the movement of the genetic marker M35 pretty much confirms Ehrets theory.

Do you not see a sort of errie correlation between the two?

Why the hell are you supporting the identification of this sub-Saharan language purportedly of a proto-Egyptian nature with a presumably distinct genetic subset of people...as though, because they were "Negroid" or whatever they Had To speak a sub-Saharan language, and because they spoke a sub-Saharan language, they were "Negroid"?

Smh if you (or any other misinformed individual) wouldn't mind taking an hour out of your day and watching this lecture on this subject (and a direct answer to your question) by SOY Keita it would surely give you insight as to what this information has proven.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

 

[MKGLouisville]

Where's the damn rep button?

Funny that's what we've been saying the entire time.

 

[MKGLouisville]

The Ancient Egyptians also clearly have no kin whatsoever with the West African Negro/African American

That's false!

A sad truth is that through this entire debate the main focus of some seems to be to deny any sort of linkage between Egypt and the rest of Africa. This simply is not the case!

"But the Y-chromosome clade defined by the PN2 transition (PN2/M35, PN2/M2) shatters the boundaries of phenotypically defined races and true breeding populations across a great geographical expanse. African peoples with a range of skin colors, hair forms and physiognomies have substantial percentages of males whose Y chromosomes form closely related clades with each other, but not with others who are phenotypically similar. The individuals in the morphologically or geographically defined 'races' are not characterized by 'private' distinct lineages restricted to each of them." (S O Y Keita, R A Kittles, et al. "Conceptualizing human variation," Nature Genetics 36, S17 - S20 (2004)

"It is of interest that the M35 and M2 lineages are united by a mutation – the PN2 transition. This PN2 defined clade originated in East Africa, where various populations have a notable frequency of its underived state. This would suggest that an ancient population in East Africa, or more correctly its males, form the basis of the ancestors of all African upper Paleolithic populations – and their subsequent descendants in the present day."(--Bengtson, John D. (ed.), In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory: Essays in the four fields of anthropology. 2008. John Benjamins Publishing: pp. 3–16)

"The most extensive pan-African haplotype (16189 16192 16223 16278 16294 16309 16390) is in the L2a1 haplogroup. This sequence is observed in West Africa among the Malinke, Wolof, and others; in North Africa among the Maure, Hausa, Fulbe, and others; in Central Africa among the Bamileke, Fali, and others; in South Africa among the Khoisan family including the Khwe and Bantu speakers; and in East Africa among the Kikuyu. Closely related variants are observed among the Tuareg in North and West Africa and among the East African Dinka and Somali."
(-- Bert Ely , Jamie Lee Wilson , Fatimah Jackson and Bruce A Jackson. (2006). African-American mitochondrial DNAs often match mtDNAs found in multiple African ethnic groups. BMC Biology 2006, 4:34)

 

[onedreamer]

So please for the love of god [...]

Not a wise choice of words I'm afraid. Gods are colored as much as the human beings that conceived them (despite their claim of the contrary).

 

[tedros91]

Not a wise choice of words I'm afraid. Gods are colored as much as the human beings that conceived them (despite their claim of the contrary).

I used the line "for the love of God" as an exclamatory statement that emphasizes what I wanted to say and please be convinced of what I'm trying to say. I never referred to God as a physical being or his appearance, please don't pick out phrases out of context since it causes misunderstandings.

As a Muslim, I don't believe at all that God/Allah has any form conceivable by man and thus our notions of appearance/race/qualities do not apply to Allah the merciful, the compassionate, and the sultan of hearts.

 

[tedros91]

That's false!

A sad truth is that through this entire debate the main focus of some seems to be to deny any sort of linkage between Egypt and the rest of Africa. This simply is not the case!

I am not referring to genetic relations, I was referring to ethnic-social relations. Almost every human is genetically related somehow,but not every ethnic/society are related. As an African (a North African) I believe and am convince after many readings and much debate, Ancient Egyptians as a culture and perhaps as a ethnic group are only related to or have ties with people in modern day Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Libya, and to a lesser degree the middle east. However Ancient Egyptian culture has absolutely nothing in common with those of Southern or Western Africa since there was no way to actually have physical contacts between these peoples. Yes, Ancient Egyptians are Africans but Africans are not one homogeneous entity (looking at genetic studies could tell you that much).

 

[tedros91]

No the fact that the origins and spreading of Afro-Asiatic also correlates with the movement of the genetic marker M35 pretty much confirms Ehrets theory.

Do you not see a sort of errie correlation between the two?



Smh if you (or any other misinformed individual) wouldn't mind taking an hour out of your day and watching this lecture on this subject (and a direct answer to your question) by SOY Keita it would surely give you insight as to what this information has proven.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Very well, we see a genetic similarity but genetic markers do not tell us what a person might have looked like. Also, although Keita is a very respected Egyptologist he isn't without flaw. He is right that Ancient Egyptians by today's standards are "black" or "coloured" but he is incorrect when he said that "Rome is to European culture as Ancient Egypt is to African culture". Ancient Egyptian culture is a North-East African culture which, as a culture and not referring to genetics but as a CULTURE, had no contact with Western Africa and not only that Ancient Egyptian culture was only applicable to peoples living in the Nile region (since the Nile was a main focus of the Ancient Egyptians and the main route of the spread of it's culture north and south).