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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: 2) by HiThere on Saturday July 01 2017, @06:56PM (3 children)
It's worth noting that those mummified were primarily aristocrats, especially during the early period. This may imply that some aristocrats were of a religious group that believed in mummification. Alternatively the study could be read to show that Egypt was conquered at an early period by invaders from the (nearby) Middle East.
It's therefore not even clear that this was a random sample of the aristocrats, much less a random sample of the populace.
That said, it's certainly interesting, and reasonable explanations are a bit difficult to come by. Certainly Ethiopia had easy access to Egypt (and conversely) so one would expect a continual gene-flow. But the gene flow would predominately be among the sailors and merchant classes. Which again leads toward the explanation of an aristocracy composed of invaders. When the invasion happened is an interesting question as, IIRC, the Old Kingdom of the upper Nile unified Egypt by conquering the lower kingdom, and the Hittite invasion happened at too late a date to resolve this, so it was probably before the creation of the Old Kingdom.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday July 01 2017, @09:07PM (2 children)
Another weakness in the study is that, since Egypt is in Africa, Egyptians are by definition Africans.
Sure, they might be genetically similar to Italians or Arabs or Persians or something, but that doesn't make them not African any more than a majority of USAians' European or African genetic lineage makes them not American.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday July 01 2017, @10:38PM
Egypt is in Africa now. But in ancient times, maybe it wasn't. Maybe it drifted there, like India drifted into Asia. Indians aren't Asian. Not Oriental. President Modi (great hugger) told me that ancient Indians made test tube babies. They made the first test tube babies, thousands of years ago. Very smart!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 02 2017, @03:15AM
Blonde haired, blue eyed people are Africans too. (South Africa)
They have been for as long as white people have been "North American."
For some reason, a lot of people can't accept that.
Where you live is not the same as your race.