Ancient Egyptians - Cultural Origin, genetics, etc.

[grahamguitarman]

You raise valid points there. Honestly, I'm probably too used to the confrontational and uncivil tone of other message boards where I've debated this particular subject in the past. I apologize for my attitude.

No problem

 

[Jabrosky]

@ Shockley

I reread your original post in the other thread and realized that you weren't claiming all Egyptians were non-Black (you had a "most" qualifier that I had missed). I apologize for the misunderstanding.

Debates are usually about convincing a third party, Jabrosky. They are actually counter-productive towards convincing the person you are addressing.

I see.

I know this is going to sound like an admittance of defeat, and perhaps it is, but I am honestly losing my temper here and so don't feel fit to continue this exchange. Perhaps this thread should be locked.

 

[Shockley]

Apology accepted, and I apologize for getting a little testy there.

 

[Mindfire]

Debates are supposed to be arguments, aren't they?

Sorry for the confrontational language, but as I understand it, the goal of a debate is to convince the opposition.

Let's not call it a debate then. Let's call it a "discussion" or "dialogue," because this isn't a competition, and clearly, even if it were, we'd be gridlocked for eternity and wouldn't find a "winner" anyway.

 

[Devor]

Normally, at this point I'd try and dissect the thread and make a post showing how much everyone actually seemed to agreed, but the whole thing was over my head. I think it looked like everyone said that Egypt was a pretty mixed bag, with a plurality of red-brown skin and a unique African heritage, and were fighting about the proportions of the mix. Is that about right?

 

[grahamguitarman]

Let's not call it a debate then. Let's call it a "discussion" or "dialogue," because this isn't a competition, and clearly, even if it were, we'd be gridlocked for eternity and wouldn't find a "winner" anyway.

Yeah Debate was the wrong term to use - My bad!

 

[Steerpike]

I know this is going to sound like an admittance of defeat, and perhaps it is, but I am honestly losing my temper here and so don't feel fit to continue this exchange. Perhaps this thread should be locked.

Why should it be locked just because you can't discourse civilly? Others are still discussing it.

 

[Steerpike]

Let's not call it a debate then. Let's call it a "discussion" or "dialogue," because this isn't a competition, and clearly, even if it were, we'd be gridlocked for eternity and wouldn't find a "winner" anyway.

Yes, with issues like this there is no "proof" that can be produced at this point, and maybe there never will be. The best that can be done is that individuals can express their own opinion on the subject, as well as whatever reasoning led them to that opinion. As I noted above, I don't care what the truth of the matter is in and of itself (i.e. it makes no difference to me personally whether they were African, semitic, or something else entirely). From the standpoint of intellectual curiosity I'd like to know which it was, and so I find these discussions interesting. As can be seen from this thread, people can bring a lot to bear on the issue.

 

[Mindfire]

Normally, at this point I'd try and dissect the thread and make a post showing how much everyone actually seemed to agreed, but the whole thing was over my head. I think it looked like everyone said that Egypt was a pretty mixed bag, with a plurality of red-brown skin and a unique African heritage, and were fighting about the proportions of the mix. Is that about right?

That sounds accurate.

 

[Steerpike]

Debates are usually about convincing a third party, Jabrosky. They are actually counter-productive towards convincing the person you are addressing.

I agree to a degree. At least, they're not solely for that purpose. They're actually a very good tool for learning, as well as following the logic of one's own view. A goal might be to convince another person, but of course to be effective in that regard you have to maintain your composure.

 

[Shockley]

Normally, at this point I'd try and dissect the thread and make a post showing how much everyone actually seemed to agreed, but the whole thing was over my head. I think it looked like everyone said that Egypt was a pretty mixed bag, with a plurality of red-brown skin and a unique African heritage, and were fighting about the proportions of the mix. Is that about right?

That cuts to the heart of it exactly.

 

[Steerpike]

That sounds accurate.

Yeah. I'm just not clear on why people are fighting over it (in other words, why people are personally invested in the answer). The answer is what it is. Becoming overwrought about the subject doesn't change what is true and what is not true. Likewise, whether someone else agrees with you or with me doesn't change what is true or what is not true. And so the topic should be susceptible to discussion without rancor, and if an opposing party fails to be convinced....well, c'est la vie.

 

[Jabrosky]

Normally, at this point I'd try and dissect the thread and make a post showing how much everyone actually seemed to agreed, but the whole thing was over my head. I think it looked like everyone said that Egypt was a pretty mixed bag, with a plurality of red-brown skin and a unique African heritage, and were fighting about the proportions of the mix. Is that about right?

Essentially yes. I think what Shockley's asserting is that Black Egyptians, while definitely present, were in the minority relative to the "Semites". For my part, I don't think we know yet which percentage of Egyptians could be called Black vs which couldn't over the general course of Pharaonic history. I do think a larger plurality of people in Upper Egypt during the Predynastic were closer to Africans, but whether predynastic Upper Egypt was representative of the entire country for most of ancient Egyptian history is another matter entirely.

 

[Shockley]

I'd agree that upper Egypt would trend more towards African peoples than lower Egypt - it was extremely close to those regions of the world. That makes sense to me on a lot of levels, since my own state has a huge Mexican influence and population because of its proximity to Mexico. This probably would have become more pronounced during even later time periods, such as the 25th dynasty.

 

[Devor]

I agree to a degree. At least, they're not solely for that purpose. They're actually a very good tool for learning, as well as following the logic of one's own view. A goal might be to convince another person, but of course to be effective in that regard you have to maintain your composure.

I was referring to a stricter, more confrontational sense of the word, where those involved are focused openly on refuting the other side, with the result that it presses the other person into reinforcing their own position. I would never mean to make a sweeping generalization about disagreements and conversations generally.

 

[Sir Shawn]

The ancient Egyptians were originally a mixture of Afrasian speaking communities from the Horn of Africa and the Nilotic communities of the ancient Sahara, which means that they were black:

Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture

Christopher Ehret
Professor of History, African Studies Chair
University of California at Los Angeles

Ancient Egyptian civilization was, in ways and to an extent usually not recognized, fundamentally African. The evidence of both language and culture reveals these African roots.

The origins of Egyptian ethnicity lay in the areas south of Egypt. The ancient Egyptian language belonged to the Afrasian family (also called Afroasiatic or, formerly, Hamito-Semitic). The speakers of the earliest Afrasian languages, according to recent studies, were a set of peoples whose lands between 15,000 and 13,000 B.C. stretched from Nubia in the west to far northern Somalia in the east.....

Note from Black Dragon:

Sir Shawn originally posted the entire article in the quote box above. Please don't do that. Instead, only offer a brief excerpt and then link to the original article. See our instructions on avoiding duplicate content here:

Forum Guidlines

Thank you

Here is the snippet about ancient Egypt in the famous documentary by renown African historian the late Basil Davidson:

 

[Steerpike]

The above hardly seems dispositive, given all of the controversy in the area even in the scientific literature. Another piece of the puzzle perhaps.

 

[Sir Shawn]

The above hardly seems dispositive, given all of the controversy in the area even in the scientific literature. Another piece of the puzzle perhaps.

There is no "puzzle" as to who the original ancient Egyptians looked like. Some people may try to obfuscate the issue simply because they are "uncomfortable" with what consistent mainstream biological and cultural evidence indicates about these ancient Africans. Here is a passage from a peer reviewed 2007 study which perfectly sums up the findings of numerous scholars from multiple scientific disciplines about the population history of ancient Egypt:

"The question of the genetic origins of ancient Egyptians, particularly those during the Dynastic period, is relevant to the current study. Modern interpretations of Egyptian state formation propose an indigenous origin of the Dynastic civilization (Hassan, 1988). Early Egyptologists considered Upper and Lower Egyptians to be genetically distinct populations, and viewed the Dynastic period as characterized by a conquest of Upper Egypt by the Lower Egyptians. More recent interpretations contend that Egyptians from the south actually expanded into the northern regions during the Dynastic state unification (Hassan, 1988; Savage, 2001), and that the Predynastic populations of Upper and Lower Egypt are morphologically distinct from one another, but not sufficiently distinct to consider either non-indigenous (Zakrzewski, 2007). The Predynastic populations studied here, from Naqada and Badari, are both Upper Egyptian samples, while the Dynastic Egyptian sample (Tarkhan) is from Lower Egypt. The Dynastic Nubian sample is from Upper Nubia (Kerma). 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). Given these and other prior studies suggesting continuity (Berry et al., 1967; Berry and Berry, 1972), and the lack of archaeological evidence of major migration or population replacement during the Neolithic transition in the Nile valley, we may cautiously interpret the dental health changes over time as primarily due to ecological, subsistence, and demographic changes experienced throughout the Nile valley region."

-- 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

Here is a snippet from the summarization presented on the first page about ancient Egypt's origins, which shows exactly which Africans the ancient Egyptians most closely resembled:

"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, Kushites, 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)

In summary the original ancient Egyptians were black Africans from the south with closest biological affinities towards Nubians and other more southerly African populations. They were a mixture of different tropical African (black) ethnic groups ranging from broad featured Nilotics to elongated East Africans. This affinity with other black Africans was heavily forested (though never completely wiped out) by later migrations from the Levant, Europe and the Arabian peninsula.

Anyone who claims that the ancient Egyptians were "Semitic" in any way shape or form knows absolutely nothing about ancient Egyptians. Hell even the bible distinguishes the ancient Egyptians (Hamites) from the Semites.

 

[Sir Shawn]

Another interesting fact to note, is that all the way up until the Late Dynasties the vast majority of Egyptians resided and originated in Upper Egypt (the south). Prior to this period Lower Egypt was sparsely populated. The assertion that early Lower Egyptians were essentially Levantine transplants is equally false:

"Limb length proportions in males from Maadi and Merimde group them with African rather than European populations. Mean femur length in males from Maadi was similar to that recorded at Byblos and the early Bronze Age male from Kabri, but mean tibia length in Maadi males was 6.9cm longer than that at Byblos. At Merimde both bones were longer than at the other sites shown, but again, the tibia was longer proportionate to femurs than at Byblos (Fig 6.2), reinforcing the impression of an African rather than Levantine affinity."
-- Smith, P. (2002) The palaeo-biological evidence for admixture between populations in the southern Levant and Egypt in the fourth to third millennia BCE. in E.C.M van den Brink and TE Levy, eds. Egypt and the Levant: interrelations from the 4th through the 3rd millenium, BCE. Leicester Univ Press: 2002, 118-28

They were a tropically adapted population, residing in a non tropical environment. This could mean that early Lower Egyptians (just like those in the south) were recent migrants from the more southerly regions of Africa (the tropics).

Here is what the encyclopedia of archaeology of ancient Egypt has concluded on the matter of whether the ancient Egyptians were "black" or something else:

"There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas." ("Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999). pp 328-332)

and

"must be placed in the context of hypotheses informed by archaeological, linguistic, geographic and other data. In such contexts, the physical anthropological evidence indicates that early Nile Valley populations can be identified as part of an African lineage, but exhibiting local variation. This variation represents the short and long term effects of evolutionary forces, such as gene flow, genetic drift, and natural selection, influenced by culture and geography."(Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999) pp 328-332)

In other words they were black Africans just like the populations further south.

 

[Jabrosky]

Another interesting fact to note, is that all the way up until the Late Dynasties the vast majority of Egyptians resided and originated in Upper Egypt (the south). Prior to this period Lower Egypt was sparsely populated. The assertion that early Lower Egyptians were essentially Levantine transplants is equally false...

They were a tropically adapted population, residing in a non tropical environment. This could mean that early Lower Egyptians (just like those in the south) were recent migrants from the more southerly regions of Africa (the tropics).

The data you've shared with us is intriguing and would suggest that ancient Lower Egyptians had a stronger tropical African affinity than Palestinians living on the other side of the Sinai Desert did...which isn't surprising since Upper Egypt and by extension Nubia were just upriver. However, I don't think any Upper Egyptians were used in the study you cite. Lower Egyptians being more tropically adapted than Palestinians doesn't necessarily mean they were as tropically adapted or as purely Black as Upper Egyptians and Nubians.

At any rate, since you don't seem particularly interested in writing fantasy fiction, exactly how did you find this forum?