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A team consisting of people from the University of Tübingen, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, the University of Cambridge, the Museum and Institute of Zoology (Polish Academy of Sciences), the Berlin Society of Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory and the University of Adelaide has recently published a very interesting genetic study of ancient Egyptian mummies in Nature.
According to the authors, previous studies suffered from possible contamination due to the type of method used: direct PCR and it was generally believed that the climate and mode of mummification destroyed any chance of finding good human DNA.
The authors studied 150 mummified individuals using a high-throughput DNA sequencing method and selecting 90 individuals for further study. The samples obtained span around 1,300 years of Ancient Egypt, namely the Pre-Ptolemaic (New Kingdom, Third Intermediate Period and Late Period), Ptolemaic and Roman periods.
The authors’ conclusion was:
We find that all three ancient Egyptian groups cluster together, supporting genetic continuity across our 1,300-year transect. Both analyses reveal higher affinities with modern populations from the Near East and the Levant compared to modern Egyptians.
One interesting note is: While this result by itself does not exclude the possibility of much older and continuous gene flow from African sources, the substantially lower African component in our ∼2,000-year-old ancient samples suggests that African gene flow in modern Egyptians occurred indeed predominantly within the last 2,000 years.
Basically, if the population studied is representative of the all of the people in Ancient Egypt, the conclusion is that they were not Africans and that modern Egyptians share more genes with African populations than their ancestors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 01 2017, @11:16AM (5 children)
So Egyptians were in essence early Arabs. Once their society collapsed due to corruption over mainly farm land that were regularly flooded by the Nile, Africans entered the country. Seems structured societies doesn't build not on Africans. Now which of the Arab subgroup that made up the ancient Egyptians is interesting, if it were Arabs, could it be Persians? (Iran) they seem able to build ordered societies. At least until religion hit them. Maybe we will see a counter 1979 revolution and the Persians reclaiming their own country and self rule.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 01 2017, @12:12PM (1 child)
The haplogroups match clusters in the Western Iberian peninsula.
The likely scenario to make that happen is that this group of people, which included ancient Egyptians, lived around the Mediterranean and was gradually eradicated by migration of modern Arabs and Africans. That pocket on Western Europe is all that remains.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Spamalope on Saturday July 01 2017, @01:54PM
They may have been hybridized into a new haplogroup. There was plenty of time for that level of mixing.
This is more interesting for adding more support and understanding about the continuity of culture from Mesopotamia/UR to Egypt. We've already got enough information about things like religious symbology to know it happened. (and those ideas and symbols are foundational in western/mid-eastern culture, underlie Muslim, Jewish and Christian stories for explaining morality)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 01 2017, @04:45PM
What about Ethiopia? I understand that was once a happening place.
My knowledge of African history is very lacking.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Saturday July 01 2017, @09:05PM (1 child)
Complete and utter racist nonsense:
1. There are all kinds of counterexamples, from the Mali Empire to Ethiopia to Zululand to Madagascar.
2. Just because you don't recognize the structure of many African societies doesn't mean they don't have structure. For instance, in West Africa, there is still in most towns a village chief, who has significant decision-making authority, in a pattern of organization that's been going on for centuries. That guy is likely to have inherited the job from his father or brother. That's a structure, even if you don't call that guy "earl" or "duke" or "sheriff" like they did in Europe.
The idea that Africans were barbaric and uncivilized was put out there by European powers to justify barging in and taking over by force in the 17th through 19th centuries, because those poor ignorant savages couldn't possibly manage their own gold mines. It was also used to justify slavery, with ridiculous claims that the slaves were better off in slavery in the Americas than they had been in Africa.
Africans have had religion since approximately forever. African traditional religion is still practiced today. This came up during the Ebola crisis, when one of the reactions to it by the locals was to sacrifice chickens and the like. Which, I have to say, if I were dying of Ebola, I'd consider trying something like that too.
And of course North Africa became Muslim around 700 CE.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 02 2017, @08:56AM
Did they build pyramids with precision? managed to move big stones over waterways? have land surveying? advanced shipbuilding? mathematics? literature?
I'm sure there structure in a lot of places. The difference is when it can accomplish serious technological projects that can improve the overall standard of a region.