Denial of the African origins of Ancient Egypt?

[Big Triece]

Also just came across this recent 2011 NYtimes article on the issue of social aspects of the Egyptian race:

This narrative is, of course, a biased one. To Egypt, Nubia, at its most powerful, was “vile Kush.” When Nubians appear in Egyptian murals and statues, it’s often as primitives or prisoners.

More recently, our own Western prejudices — namely the idea that geographic Egypt was not a part of “black” Africa — have contributed to the dearth of knowledge about Nubia. The early-20th-century archaeologist George Reisner, for instance, identified large burial mounds at the site of Kerma as the remains of high Egyptian officials instead of those of Nubian kings. (Several of Reisner’s finds are in the show, reattributed to the Nubians.)

In one of his catalog essays the archaeologist Geoff Emberling, who conceived the show along with Jennifer Chi of the institute, examines some of these historical errors.

“We now recognize that populations of Nubia and Egypt form a continuum rather than clearly distinct groups,” Mr. Emberling writes, “and that it is impossible to draw a line between Egypt and Nubia that would indicate where ‘black’ begins.”

[Lord Zentei]

Compare that to what he says right here:

goddamned tool, no one here is disputing that the Egyptians originated in Northeast Africa. This has been pointed out to you countless times, yet you keep harping on like a broken record. That is not the issue here. The issue is whether the overall population of Egypt could be characterized as "black" in the sub-Saharan sense, as opposed to being heterogenous, and with resemblances with Near East and Maghreb populations as well as other populations, seeing as Egypt was the fucking corridor for the original settlement of those populations into their native lands.

or

2) I am not claiming that the Egyptians are northern invaders, though they probably were highly mixed with non-sub-Saharan Africans.
3) WRT the above, the issue is only whether the Egyptians were "black", whether due to gene flow from the near east and north Africa, or due to local evolution and subsequent dispersal from Egypt and the Horn region to the rest of the world.

Once again this is one of his MANY statements in which he is CLEARLY trying to refute the fact that they would socially be considered black Africans based on their physical appearance and rather be a "mixed race" or "heterogeneous" (two terms which he clearly uses interchangeably) population. If he did not care about the social categories as he states above, then he should not have even acknowledged the terms "black" or "mixed"/"heterogeneous" in a way to describe the civilization and instead focused strictly on biological evidence. You've stated that you don't agree with everything that Zentei, Thanas, and Ziggy have stated, so why do you feel so obligated to defend Zentei's CLEAR contradictions in his stance, and conversely and falsely make me out to be deliberately misinterpreting what he has been implying? This is doing nothing more than discrediting your own objectivity.

I ask again: do you not understand that it is possible to reject the social "black" label while using the "heterogenous" or "mixed" label in a non-social sense? The social "black" label is to be rejected WRT Egypt, partially because it is misleading and partially because it is inappropriate. By contrast, your entire focus here has been to prove that the Egyptians were "black African".

Incidentally, what the fuck does it matter whether I use the terms "heterogenous" and "mixed" interchangeably that you keep whining about that? And you are a goddamned liar yet again in that you assert that I have not relied on biological evidence.

[Lord Zentei]

Demic Diffusion into Africa from Levant would also mean that Afro-Asiatic originated in the Middle East, which simply will not work based the possible dates that have been given for this proposal.

The fact that Lower Egypt was under the cultural shadow of Upper Egypt implies that migrations in Lower Egypt are not precluded by the origins of Afroasiatic.

Yes when you take all of these factors into account:

This is old.

Also just came across this recent 2011 NYtimes article on the issue of social aspects of the Egyptian race:

<SNIP>

And how the fuck does that prove that the Ancient Egyptians were "black" as opposed to heterogenous, with a north-south cline?

[Big Triece]

Incidentally, what the fuck does it matter whether I use the terms "heterogenous" and "mixed" interchangeably that you keep whining about that?

Because you are being deceptive! You have clearly been using the terms "heterogeneous" and "mixed" in a social sense to imply "mixed race". You were not rejecting labeling the ancient Egyptians under the social category "black" because you are somehow 'above' using social-political terminology, but simply because you don't believe that they would fit under the "black" African social label but rather "mixed race".

And you are a goddamned liar yet again in that you assert that I have not relied on biological evidence.

I stated that your argument does not center around biological evidence the way that you are NOW trying to misrepresent it as being, but rather what the implications of consistent biological evidence indicates about the phenotype and subsequently the social grouping of the ancient Egyptians. You responded to evidence showing that their phenotype was consistent with that of black African populations with:

What does it take for you to understand that no one here is denying that Egyptians came from Africa, the issue is whether they're properly described as black Africans.

link

So clearly the only issue that you had with the usage of the social term "black African" is when it was used to describe the ancient Egyptians, whom you consider as having a"mixed race" phenotype, rather than that consistent with populations deemed "black Africans".

[Lord Zentei]

Incidentally, what the fuck does it matter whether I use the terms "heterogenous" and "mixed" interchangeably that you keep whining about that?

Because you are being deceptive! You have clearly been using the terms "heterogeneous" and "mixed" in a social sense to imply "mixed race". You were not rejecting labeling the ancient Egyptians under the social category "black" because you are somehow 'above' using social-political terminology, but simply because you don't believe that they would fit under the "black" African social label but rather "mixed race".

I have commented before now on your failures as a telepath, not to mention your persistent paranoia. It would be redundant to do so again.

And you are a goddamned liar yet again in that you assert that I have not relied on biological evidence.

I stated that your argument does not center around biological evidence the way that you are NOW trying to misrepresent it as being, but rather what the implications of consistent biological evidence indicates about the phenotype and subsequently the social grouping of the ancient Egyptians. You responded to evidence showing that their phenotype was consistent with that of black African populations with:

What does it take for you to understand that no one here is denying that Egyptians came from Africa, the issue is whether they're properly described as black Africans.

link

So clearly the only issue that you had with the usage of the social term "black African" is when it was used to describe the ancient Egyptians, whom you consider as having a"mixed race" phenotype, rather than that consistent with populations deemed "black Africans".

Facepalm. Good lord, but you're a fucking moron.

As I said, my position is that the Ancient Egyptians should not be described as "black Africans" because it is misleading and inappropriate. My position that they should not be described as "black Africans" is in no way at odds with my rejection of social labels, because in so doing I AM REJECTING THE USE OF A SOCIAL LABEL.

[Big Triece]

The fact that Lower Egypt was under the cultural shadow of Upper Egypt implies that migrations in Lower Egypt are not precluded by the origins of Afroasiatic.

If you've followed my stance then you'd know that I like everyone else agrees that it was likely that were likely some isolated migration from the Levant into Pre-Dynastic Lower Egypt, but that it was simply not significant enough (based on biological evidence) to characterize the entire Lower Egyptian population as one which was intermediate between tropical Africans and Middle Easterners (mixed).

And how the fuck does that prove that the Ancient Egyptians were "black" as opposed to heterogenous, with a north-south cline?

The article is saying that saying like almost every study presented in this thread, which is that there has always been a continuum of biological affinities with the creators of ancient Egypt (Upper Egyptians) and those populations to the south in the Sudan. In clear language it is saying that the ancient Egyptians represented a continuum of black Africans with no discreet lines. You deceptively try to imply that a North-South cline means a Mediterranean North and a Black African south when that was not the case either. The same continuum cannot be said about Lower Egyptians and the adjacent Levant:

"..sample populations available from northern Egypt from before the 1st Dynasty (Merimda, Maadi and Wadi Digla) turn out to be significantly different from sample populations from early Palestine and Byblos, suggesting a lack of common ancestors over a long time. If there was a south-north cline variation along the Nile valley it did not, from this limited evidence, continue smoothly on into southern Palestine. The limb-length proportions of males from the Egyptian sites group them with Africans rather than with Europeans." (Barry Kemp, "Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation. (2005) Routledge. p. 52-60)

Early Lower Egyptians were tropically adapted, due to the fact that they were recent descendants of Nilotic populations of the ancient Sahara. What further explains this is the fact that they had a Nilotic agricultural system in place:

This evidence indicates that northern Nile valley peoples apparently incorporated the Near Eastern domesticates into a Nilotic foraging subsistence tradition on their own terms (Wetterstrom 1993). There was apparently no “Neolithic revolution” brought by settler colonization, but a gradual process of neolithicization (Midant-Reynes 2000). (Also some of those emigrating may have been carrying Haplotype V, descendents of earlier migrants from the Nile valley, given the postulated “Mesolithic” time of the M35 lineage emigration). Keita and Boyce, Genetics, Egypt, And History: Interpreting Geographical Patterns Of Y Chromosome Variation, History in Africa 32 (2005) 221-246

You have also proved my point with this statement. You have been using the term "heterogeneous" from a social perspective (meaning mixed race), to oppose the stance the that the ancient Egyptians would be considered "black Africans". It was not from a non social perceptive as you have RECENTLY lead some willing follower to believe.

[Big Triece]

I have commented before now on your failures as a telepath, not to mention your persistent paranoia. It would be redundant to do so again.

Make whatever cynical gestures you'd like but you've been dishonest about what your stance on the issue has been prior to the emergence of the new faces in the thread. Now I'm pointing out to some of your blind supporters that there is no "fathom foe" in this discussion, I'm providing proof (which they already knew) that your position is not in compliance with that of the "consensus" which many have noted that most of us share.

As I said, my position is that the Ancient Egyptians should not be described as "black Africans" because it is misleading and inappropriate.

It's not misleading (especially) in the context that it's being used in (a Western social perspective) and I have provided sufficient support for my position that they were black based on common research is not a distortion of data, but common sense. Does this ring any bells?

Two opposing theories for the origin of Dynastic Egyptians dominated scholarly debate over the last century: whether the ancient Egyptians were black Africans (historically referred to as Negroid) originating biologically and culturally in Saharo-Tropical Africa, or whether they originated as a Dynastic Race in the Mediterranean or western Asian regions (people historically categorized as White, or Caucasoid). Contemporary physical anthropologists recognize, however that race is not a useful biological concept when applied to humans......."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)

Link

There's no getting around it. Consistent biological evidence finds the phenotype of the ancient Egyptians to fit with people who have historically been defined as "black Africans" and or "Negroid" people.

My position that they should not be described as "black Africans" is in no way at odds with my rejection of social labels, because in so doing I AM REJECTING THE USE OF A SOCIAL LABEL.

Zentei you're not fooling anyone! You're not rejecting "social labels", you're only rejecting calling the ancient Egyptians black because you'd rather refer to them as "mixed" or "Heterogeneous" (meaning mixed race).

[Lord Zentei]

Make whatever cynical gestures you'd like but the you've been dishonest about what your stance on the issue has been prior to the emergence of the new faces in the thread. Now I'm pointing out to some of your blind supporters that there is no "fathom foe" in this discussion, I'm providing proof (which they already knew) that your position is not in compliance with that of the "consensus" which many have noted that most of us share.

You are hypocritical trash, Big Triece, and it is your bullshit which is a cynical attempt to draw attention away from your own dishonesty. You have not only misrepresented me, but several other posters in this thread.

It's not misleading in the context that it's being used in (a Western social perspective) and I have provided sufficient support for my position that they were black based on common research is not a distortion of data, but common sense. Does this ring any bells?

Yeah:

Contemporary physical anthropologists recognize, however that race is not a useful biological concept when applied to humans.......

Stupid fucker.

Notwithstanding the fact that even granting the southerly affinities of Upper Egypt does not negate the multi-ethnic nature of Egypt overall, especially Lower Egypt. So yes, this is familiar. All too familiar.

Zentei you're not fooling anyone! You're not rejecting "social labels", you're only rejecting calling the ancient Egyptians black because you'd rather refer to them as "mixed" or "Heterogeneous" (meaning mixed race).

Except for the fact that the rest of the participants in this thread have called you on your bullshit for multiple pages now.

[Big Triece]

"Contemporary physical anthropologists recognize, however that race is not a useful biological concept when applied to humans.......Stupid fucker.

That's a red herring! The biological evidence is clear and consistent and from those result the focus is as you so have so clearly stated time and time again on society (Western society) and whether or not the ancient Egyptians would fit into our categorization of "black African". The definition given of what defines a black African (which is still existent in society but no longer valid in science) is that in which "a sufficient body of evidence" finds the ancient Egyptians to fall into. Pretending that you do not to see the significance of that passage to this thread only further exhibits your dishonesty and denial in this thread.

Notwithstanding the fact that even granting the southerly affinities of Upper Egypt does not negate the multi-ethnic nature of Egypt overall, especially Lower Egypt. So yes, this is familiar. All too familiar.

Egypt has from it's beginning been a "multi ethnic" society (a mixture of various communities from the Nilotes from the Sahara to the Afrasians from the Horn), those ethnicities at it's beginning however were exclusively of Northeast African origin. Over time foreigners who were not from Northeast Africa began to migrate to and add physical and genetic variability from their respective geographic origins into the Nile Valley. This prolonged migration of people who were different biologically from the original ancient Egyptians lead to a clear distinction in affinities by the time of the Late Dynasties which persisted into modern times.

Also keep in mind that those Lower Egyptians also had primarily "southern affinities". There's just represented a divergence of that from Upper Egypt. Except for the fact that the rest of the participants in this thread have called you on your bullshit for multiple pages now.

Just as I and others have entered into this debate to call some of them out of their political "bullshit", and state that most of us agree on the principal issues.

[Lord Zentei]

"Contemporary physical anthropologists recognize, however that race is not a useful biological concept when applied to humans.......Stupid fucker.

That's a red herring! The focus is as you so clearly stated time and time again is on society (Western society) and whether or not the ancient Egyptians would fit into their categorization of "black African". The definition given of what defines a black African (which is still existent in society but no longer in science) is that in which "a sufficient body of evidence" finds the ancient Egyptians to fall into. Pretending that you do not to see the significance of that passage to this thread only further exhibits your dishonesty and denial in this thread.

I did address that passage, you idiot: YOU EVEN RESPONDED TO MY RESPONSE, so quit pretending that I pretended anything.

Notwithstanding the fact that even granting the southerly affinities of Upper Egypt does not negate the multi-ethnic nature of Egypt overall, especially Lower Egypt. So yes, this is familiar. All too familiar.

Egypt has from it's beginning been a "multi ethnic" society (a mixture of various communities from the Nilotes from the Sahara to the Afrasians from the Horn), those ethnicities at it's beginning however were exclusively of Northeast African origin. Over time foreigners who were not from Northeast Africa began to move in and add physical variability from their respective geographic origins into the Nile Valley.

And people with Nothwest African and Levantine affinities also (Merimde and Maadi cultures, for example).

Also keep in mind that those Lower Egyptians also had primarily "southern affinities". There's just represented a divergence of that from Upper Egypt. Except for the fact that the rest of the participants in this thread have called you on your bullshit for multiple pages now.

Just as I and others have entered into this debate to call some of them out of their political "bullshit", and state that most of us agree on the principal issues.

Who the fuck are you talking about, exactly, since most people other than yourself who have entered this thread have had quite cordial discussions with people around here, and their agreement with posters on this board have served to paint you as the isolated actor. Which you're desperately trying to avoid by throwing out accusations against me.

[Big Triece]

I did address that passage, you idiot: YOU EVEN RESPONDED TO MY RESPONSE, so quit pretending that I pretended anything.

I did not say that you did not address the source, but that you deliberately undermine what it CLEARLY implies about the ancient Egyptians in relation to this discussion (which is that they fall into the physical criteria of people who are considered "black Africans")

And people with Nothwest African and Levantine affinities also (Merimde and Maadi cultures, for example).

Zentei what Northwest African people could you possibly be referring to? What were their affinities? What evidence to you have to assert that what ever population you are referencing was apart of the peopling of ancient Egypt?

Also according to the biological evidence presented the Pre-Dynastic Lower Egyptians did not have a cline of biological affinities with "Levantine" people, because both people had a "lack of common ancestry". That's not to say that it's impossible for there to be isolated cases of Levantine people migrating into Lower Egypt, but the biological evidence disproves that a mixture of the two characterized the population of early Lower Egypt:

"uthern LevaLimb 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 sont 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

[matter]

In response to Ziggy complaint here:
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 3#p3652633, about my not posting links with references of my summary, I have decided to repost it with the links. This is meant not only for the forum members but especially for the many guest viewing this thread. This may allow people to get to understand this debate better, and help them come to their own views themselves.


Let me just try to do a summary of my understanding of the peopling of the Nile Valley as I have deduced from reading many scholars on this subject: The Badarian and Early Naqada predynastic cultures were the northermost,relatively younger variants of a wider spread culture mainly in the 5th and early 4th millennium BC(called variously-Nubian Neolithic Culture Group by Gatto2006,2011;or Middle Nile Culture by Ehret 1993; Pastoral Neolithic of the Nile by Wengrow 2006; Saharo-Nubian Neolithic by Anselin 2009)- other variants of this same culture included the tasians,Abkans,Rayaynas,Kiddanians,Early A-Group,Final Western Desert Neolithic,Kadruka,Kerma Neolithic, Khartoum Neolithics(Kadero,El kadada,Sheinahab,Geili etc). This culture of course descended from the so called Khartoum Variant, a cousin of the Early Khartoum-all part of the wide spread Saharo-Sudanese technocomplex. The Early Badarians and Naqadans migrated to a very sparsely populated Upper Egyptian(southern) Valley as the Eastern Sahara was rapidly drying up, carrying this 'Nubian Neolithic Culture Group' during the mid-5th Millenium BC, with elements that would them be synthesized and processed into the Naqadan culture, especially during the mid to late phases of the culture-this developed Naqadan culture is the famous Egyptian Culture that one sees in dynastic times.

The expanding Naqadan culture would then replace the Lower(northern)Neolithics(especially so-called Buto-Maadi culture) during the late 4th millenium BC, thereby forming cultural unity. The Early Lower Egyptians were likely mainly an indigenious but divergent population that likely had some gene flow with the Levant, and also cultural links that was sometimes intense (see The Nubian Pastoral Culture as Link between Egypt and Africa:A view from the archaeological record,2011 by Maria Gatto http://yale.academia.edu/MariaCGatto/Pa ... cal_Record; Ancient Egyptian as an African Language,Egypt as an African Culture,1993 by Christopher Ehret http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 650562;The Archaeology of Early Egypt:social transformation in North-East Africa,2006 by D.Wengrow pg 50-59 http://books.google.com.ng/books?id=W9O ... se(wengrow 2006);Ancient Egypt in Africa,2003 edited by D. O'Connor and A. Reid pg 18-21 http://books.google.com.ng/books/about/ ... esc=y;Some Notes about an Early frican Pool of Cultures from which Emergered Egyptian Civilization,2011 by Alain Anselin http://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&rct=j ... =rja;Egypt and Sub-Saharan African: their interaction,1997 in Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa edited by Joseph Vogel http://wysinger.homestead.com/sub-saharan.html).

These early Badarians and Naqadans were, in the main, tropically/supertropically adapted indigenious northeast Africans that had greatest biological affinities with other northeast Africans and other southernly Africans,especially those in the horn and the sahel-sahara(see Egyptians,physical anthropology by Nancy Lovell in Encyclopedia of Archaeology of Ancient Egypt (ed) by Kathryn Bard and Steven Blacke http://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&rct=j ... _w;Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships byS. O. Y. Keita,1993 http://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&rct=j ... ja;Studies of Ancient Crania from North Africa,1990 by S O Y Keita http://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&rct=j ... kg&cad=rja; Population Continuity or Population Change:
Formation of the Ancient Egyptian State,2007 by Sonia R. Zakrzewski http://soton.academia.edu/SoniaZakrzews ... tian_state;
A Bioarchaeological Perspective on State Formation In the Nile Valey,PhD Dissertation by Barbara SAnta,2004;Examination of Nubian and Egyptian Biological Distances:Suport for Biological Diffussion or in situ Development by Godde K,2009 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 2X09001176;
I would a frank discuss on the above summary but implore other forum members to read the references given above-most of whom can be gotten from a simple google search-as most of my arguments would be based on said refernces. The discussion shold be primarily based on archaeological evidence.

[matter]

(Zentei said)The Ancient Egyptians were indeed in the main a mixture of various Northeast African populations. That does not negate the fact that they were not "pure" African. It
seems it must be either black or white for you: you still don't understand what
"heterogenous" means, do you? The references to back-migration and demic diffusion were not
made to deny the Northeast African origin of the culture of the Ancient Egyptians, nor to
deny that most Egyptians were various sorts of native northeast African.
The back migration from the Levant I commented on earlier would have taken place ca. 40000
BC, and the demic diffusion model for the spread of Neolithic agriculture into lower Egypt
would have taken place ca. 10000 BC. Of course, both of these predate the formation of the
Kingdom of Egypt by a wide margin

Zentei you are still asserting this supposed demic diffusion. You know that you and I have not finished debating it, or rather you have not provided sources that demonstrated demic diffusion(both of us could not access the full source that you initially provided so I am still waiting). I hope you know that there is a difference between demic diffusion(which suggests a marked movement of whole peoples from one location to the other, usually leading to a significant change in the culture of their new location) and 'normal' smaller scale, probably isolated migrations(which I think likely happened in Lower Egypt as apart from the affinities of Early Fayum and Merimde Neolithic to Egyptian Saharan Oases Culture group, there still were some other significant cultural elements not only in both aforementioned cultures but in others in the Delta that am now finding out-but the pattern strongly suggest an absorption of ideas and likely migrants rather than whole migrations). See these references:

Despite the apparent introduction into Egypt of Southwest Asia domesticates, scholars disagree about from where the Fayum Neolithic peoples and their cultures came. Some argue for origins in the Near East, amd more specifically in the Jordan Valley. Othjers have argued for an a Northwest African origin, a Sudanese origin or a Saharan origin. The stone tools use by Neolithic peoples of the Fayum show very distinctive styles, such as a form of projectile points or 'arrowheads', and similar projectile points are found in various Saharan and Upper Egyptian sites, but not in Sinai or Syro-Palestine; so perhaps the people of the Fayum originally came from from that area and simply incorporated in their economies the cereals and cereal cultivating techniques introduced from southwest Asia.
Fayum Neolithic by Robert Wenke in Encyclopedia of the archaeology of Ancient Egypt, Kathryn A. Bard, Steven Blacke(eds) 1999

also

It has been pointed out that lithic artefacts of the
Fayum Neolithic culture were very similar to
those of the Bashendi A and B cultures in
Dakhleh Oasis and those of the Djara B culture
in Djara, and thus one of the origins of the Fayum
Neolithic culture must have been located far to
the south of the Fayum (Kindermann 2003; 2004;
McDonald 1991a; 1996; Warfe 2003). The
coincidence of the reoccupation of the Fayum
with the temporary abandonment and subsequent
reoccupation of Dakhleh Oasis and with the final
abandonment of Djara around the middle of the
6th millennium cal.BC suggests that a certain
number of people moved from this region to the Fayum.
Shirai 2010 chapter 2 pg22

and,

As mentioned earlier, some types of
Levantine PPNB and Pottery Neolithic projectile
points actually appeared in Lower Egypt, though
they were small in number and their raw
materials are not certain. Thus the reasons for
and the context of the appearance of these
projectile points must be explained. Since large
scale migration of Levantine people in these
periods has not been attested archaeologically
and linguistically (Barker 2003; Bar-Yosef 2003;
Bellwood 2005: 207-210; Hassan 2003), it is
more probable that the Levantine projectile
points were accepted and thereafter imitated as
novel and prestigious items in Egypt through
socioeconomic networks. This manner of
acceptance may also be the case with Levantine
wheat/barley and sheep/goats.
Shirai 2010 Chapter 2 pg23
http://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&rct=j ... fQ&cad=rja

Examples of demic diffusions include the Bantu migration, Indo-European migration, Neolothic migration to Cyprus, Saharo-Sudanese Early Holocene movements etc. For each of these movements one can easily demonstrate them using sometimes linguist, genetic and biological elements but especially archaeological evidence. Do the same in the case of the supposed demic diffusion to Egypt from the desert; present sources that demonstrate such demic diffusions. The evidences so afar presented(Ehret al 2004-as presented by BigT on this page) is that mainly indigenous lower Egyptians with contacts and some origins from the Egyptian Eastern Sahara oases,interacted with groups from the Levant culturally and adopted some of their products(such as sheep/goat,barley and wheat, some projective points including the so-called Helwan points) to an already existing subsistence pattern; there likely were of course isolated migrations to and fro; how significant these migrations were is really not known- more confusing is the limited biological evidence(Barry Kemp 2006; Smith 2002)as presented by BigT on this page,showing not only that early groups in the Delta have links with the south but that there is no continuing Cline into the Levant(though granted this is for a limited sample so maybe there were some isolated places in the Delta where Levantine biological influence will have be more marked). During the Maadi-Buto period there was more marked interactions with the Levant especially through trade, such that some scholars actually think some levantines may have settled among Egyptians at this time. As I have also previously suggested the Early Egyptian 'colonies' in the Levant may also have increased this interaction and perhaps absorption. Yet the Delta was still relatively sparsely populated such that Snefru,the 1st Pharaoh of the 4th Dynasty, settled some Nubians in the Delta(meaning even Nubians contributed to the Early peopling of the Delta):

The Old Kingdom attest most probably to the resettlement of C-Group Nubians(and perhaps Libyans) to the newly colonized Nile Delta under Snofru(for Nubians before the New Kingdom, cf Meurer 1996). Major shifts in the population of Nubia occur towards the end of the 5th Dynasty, when the C-Group settles in Lower Nubia and the civilization of Middle Kerma is attested in Upper Nubia.
Foreigners in Egypt: Archaeological Evidence and Cultural Context in Egyptian Archaeology(ed)Willeke Wendrich, 2009 pg149

It is important to conclude by reiterating that Lower Egypt, especially the Delta was the less populated region and that it was the Upper Egyptian(Naqada)culture, that replaced Maadi-Buto, and lead to Dynastic Egypt.

On supposed 40,000 yrs old, please react to this post: http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 9#p3652259

[matter]

@ Zentei I note where you said 'The Ancient Egyptians were indeed in the main a mixture of various Northeast African populations. That does not negate the fact that they were not "pure" African'.
I forget to comment on this before. Just to say I generally agree with this statement;however, I have realized that is in the details that we have some disagreements- but that is okay since we are actually debating.

[matter]

(Thanas said)doubt any migration - after the big migrations (the out of africa and back migration from asia to africa of 40.000 BC and 10.000 BC) happened - had any large impact on the local development of Egypt. Earliest evidence of agriculture is apparently in the north, though the south might have also developed cattle independently. The Badari culture might have also had strong trade links with the western Saharah and gotten the most significant impuleses from there but then again, nothing of that requires an invasion or mass immigration.

Thanas there was very significant migrations apart from the Out of Africa migration(that may also have passed through Yemen and Arabian peninsula). There is no question. The most significant Y-Chromosome of Egypt is E-M78(a 'son' of E-M35, a 'brother' to the west African E-M2, that migrated from eastern part of Africa within the last 20,000 yrs).see: http://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&rct=j ... RA&cad=rja

Populations using wavy and dotted wavy pottery and bone harpoons came into Southern Egypt from the south- when they occupied large part of the newly wet Sahara.Some of these groups that populated the Sahara came from the southern Nile Valley See: http://wysinger.homestead.com/sub-saharan.html and http://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&rct=j ... NQ&cad=rja

The Afroasiatic and NiloSaharan populations that were the main linguistic sources for the Nile Valley also migrated from the south just before or during the Early Holocene. See: http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 2#p3650562

Infact, the ultimate and main sources of the Nubian and Upper Egyptian cultures originated from this period.
The Egyptian Nile was usually mostly sparsely populated until the 5th millennium BC(though during the Khormusan ,Sesilia,Sebilian etc cultures in the Late Paleolithic when there was the so-called early 'proto-agriculture' or more correctly 'attempts at agriculture', some areas in southern Upper Egypt and Nubia were relatively better populated). From then to the 5th millennium BC Egypt was very sparsely populated. The Tarifian, Elkabian and Fayumain were small ephemeral nomadic groups, in fact during this time it was the Sudanese Nile that was more populated relatively. Most of the populations was in the Eastern Sahara, though some were moving seasonally to the Nile, mostly Sudanese Nile. See: http://yale.academia.edu/MariaCGatto/Pa ... cal_Record

The Badarian did not just have close links with the south, it (as well as Early Naqada) was a relatively younger variant of the 'Nubian Neolithic Culture Group':

The relationship between the Early A-Group,the Final Neolithic of the Western Desert, an the Badarian already came to light in the recent past(Gatto 2002). All of them are the northermost regional variants of the Nubian Group, which of course include also cultures from the south, such as the Abkan, the Neolithic of the Kadruka, and the Middle and Terminal A-Group. It is interesting to note that the aforementioned cultures are dated to two different millenia( V and IV millenium BC).Following this, and because of the strong regional variations brought to light, the necessity to change the term A-Group is here suggested again, as it already was years ago( Gatto and Tireterra 1996). In fact we are dealing with different units of the same culture group(as described by Clarke 1968), which most certainly was present in the Kerma region, as the affinities with the later Pre-Kerma Culture seem to confirm(Honneer 2004).
The Early A-Group of Upper Lower Nubia, Upper Egypt and the Surrounding Dearts by Maria Gatto, 2006 by Maria Gatto{Archaeology of Early Northeast Africa Studies in African Archaeology 9, Poznan Archaelogical Museum}pg. 23 http://yale.academia.edu/MariaCGatto/Pa ... ng_deserts

Biologically these peoples were very similar:

the Badarian crania have a modal metric phenotype that is clearly 'southern';most classify into the Kerma(Nubian),Gabon and Kenyan groups. When labile variables and the Nubian and Naqada series are eliminated from the analysis in the 11-variable design, >50% of the Badarian crania classify into the Equatorial Africa groups....No Badarian cranium in any of the analysis classify into the European series, and few grouped into the 'E' series[Giza 26th-30th Late Dynasty Lower Egyptians].
Keita 1990, pg 41-42.

and

The Naqada and Kerma series are so similar that they are barely distinguishable in the territorial maps; they subsume 1st Dynasty series from Abydos.The sedment[9th Dynasty Lower Egyptians] and 'E' series[Giza 26th-30th Late Dynasty Lower Egyptians] are the most distinct of the Nile Valley series. The European series stands in notable isolation by centroid score from African series.
Keita 1990 pg 40-41
http://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&rct=j ... 0_northern

_africa_1_.pdf&ei=b1BlT4vnGOWa0QWH0uWKCA&usg=AFQjCNGnPHVrzzIrGZq8YWs0UwvgAejStg&cad=rja

This is apart from the fact that these pre-Holocene Nile Valley populations have been described as having 'sub-Sahara affinities'(Hendricx and Vermeesch 2000). Some of these info have been presented by BigT.

Thanas just woo!. When I came to this board I said that the most debaters agreed, and I counted Thanas as part of them. The above post clearly showed I was mistaken.

On the supposed Demic migration 10,000Bc, please see the above post: http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 5#p3654005

(Thanas said)Again, none of that is in any way surprising considering tropical adapatation and the local development of Egypt

This was in response to this post: http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 7#p3653617
Thanas if you read the article you will would know that Dr. Lovell did not say 'Ancient Egyptian, especially Upper Egypt and Nubia Variation' was been WITHIN the range of 'Variation of indigenous ancient and modern peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa' just based on tropical adaption,but mainly on metric and non-metric cranial studies. Tropical adaption does not affect these variables, it only affects limb proportions, body shape and intensification of skin colour. In fact that the Ancient Egyptians were tropically adapted(even if most of Egypt is not in the tropics) is one of the evidences that strongly suggest migrations of groups from the tropical south:

Robins and Shute(1986) describes the Naqada long bone ratios as 'supernegroid'(denoting 'tropical' in an ecological adaptative model).This is further evidence, coupled with cranial and cultural analysis, for tropical/saharan peoples migration to proto-southern predynastic Egypt.However, the biological similarities are most likely of long-standing order, and connote realted groups, since 'mesolithic' saharan and epipaleolithic Nile Valley remains show affinities(Hiernaux 1975). Multivariant analysis shows overlap of some predynastic and Saharan remains(Petit-Maire and Dutour, 1987) .Keita 1990 pg 45

[matter]

(Ziggy said)Neither did Matter, for that matter. All he has done so far is retread your
arguments from 10 pages ago, ignoring at the fact that they have all been shown to be
inaccurate.

This statement is in response to this post: http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 9#p3652779

Ziggy so this is all you can say as regards that post. Since I began posting on this thread, I have hardly seen you make any detailed arguments yourself. You have a knack to appear and make certain statements, and when others ask you to substantiate, you refer them to a previous posts(mostly written by other posters by the way). That was what you did when I asked you to substantiate a statement, where you talked about Ancient Egyptian-Mediterranean continuum, and you linked me to Zentei's post; I responded in the above post, and your counter-response is what you just wrote.

When you are ready to really debate and not just come, say sometime and refuse to substantiate, other people will start taken you seriously. Any time you so decide, please respond to that my post first- instead of what you imagined you just did. Since my post(response) is detailed enough it should not take much to show its inconsistencies. Good luck with that.

[matter]

Here are more linked studies on the movements of nomadic herders from desiccating Eastern Sahara as the main population source of the Nile Valley in the late 6th-5th millennium BC and a major reason for the complexity and subsequent state formation in the 4th millennium BC:

http://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&rct=j ... BQjgujDRLg (This is a Yletyenin 2009 study that just gives a very good summary in relation to Egypt)


http://independent.academia.edu/NickBro ... resent_day
(This is a Brooks et al 2005 study that focuses on the whole on the Sahara, including the Eastern Sahara; see especially pages 258-264)


http://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&rct=j ... lA&cad=rja (Of course the classic Kuper and Kropelin 2006 study)


I am provided these studies so that people can read themselves and form their own views of Ancient Egyptian origins.
It is also to contest Thanas statement that I reviewed two post ago and those still having such views especially as it relates to Upper Egypt
I will give more quotations from various studies soon

[matter]

The marked congruous between climatic induced migrations should also give some CONTEXT to the biological similarities of some of these groups in the Eastern Sahara and Northeastern Africa to early Egyptians(especially Upper Egyptians) and the great similarities in some of their cultures, such that some of them are said to be variants of each other:

Contrary to what has previously be thought, pastoral societies were able to develop social complexity to attain, in some instances, a state-level society, and the Kingdom of Kerma represents the ultimate results of the social stratification achieved by the Nubian Pastoral society. In Nubia the process started as early as the Early Holocene delayed-returned hunter-gatherer cattle-keepers, and developing during the Early and Middle Holocene. At this period, evidence for social inequality is primarily detected in the funerary sphere. A rapid increase in social stratification occurred during the 5th and 4th miillennium BC as a result of new cultural relations between the Nubian world, through the Badari, and the Mediterranean world, via the Delta. Be part of this process made the Badarian culture to reach a high level of complexity, which in few centuires developed into the regional polities of Hierakonpolis, Naqada and Abydos and thereafter to a unified Egypt(c. 3100BC). If the Egyptian Predynastic took advantage of the Nubian social development process, Nubia did in return. In Lower Nubia at least two polities evolved during the 2nd half of the 4th millenium BC, namely at Sayala/Naqa Wadi and at Qustul(H. S. Smith 1993;
Williams 1986). These Nubian kings (or, more precisely,chiefs) adopted the same royal iconography as that of the Egyptian kings. There is no archaeological information for Upper Nubia at this time but it is likely that chiefdoms were present there as well (as many historical Egyptian texts report;Roccati 1982). From the end of the 4th millennium BC a large settlement with huts, storage pits, enclosures for animals and defensive walls was located at Kerma (Honegger 2006). This was the first step towards the urbanisation process from which the Kerma state emerged.
Gatto 2009 pg25 http://yale.academia.edu/MariaCGatto/Pa ... cal_Record

After recalling that the formation of Egyptian civilization originated in the Naqada cultures and its expansion to the original ones of the Delta which traded with their Asiatic neighbors, the author considers links of the Naqada cultures to its African hinterland. In deed, since the 1980s,archaeologists have excavated in the Saharo-Nubian area a web of African cultures that could provide patterns and features to the first kingships of Upper Egypt(Friedman et al 2002). These archaeological data outline a new map of the formation of ancient Egypt: Tasians and Badarian Valley sites were not the centers of a predynastic culture,but peripheral provinces of a network of earlier African cultures where Badarians,Saharans, Nubian and Nilotic peoples regularly circulated along(Darnell 2008) and Nabta playa could be one of the ceremonial high centers. From the 4th millennium BC, these polytropic populations were pushed out of the Eastern Sahara by the desertification. Some spread southwards,some stayed in the actual oases, others moved towards the Nile, directed by the Western Great Sand Sea and the Southern Rock Belt to the East and the sites of Upper Egypt.
Abstract: Some Notes about an Early African Pool of Cultures from which Emerged Egyptian Civilzation by Dr Alain Anselin{Egypt in its African Context,3-4 Oct 2009, Manchester Museum, University of Manchester} http://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&rct=j ... dA&cad=rja

Moreover, the Afro-asiatic ancestors of the ancient Egyptians were not deeply involved in developments in the Sahara, but rather, entered and colonized the Lower Nile(Egyptian and northern/central Nubia) from the Southwest Sudan during the period 5000-4000BC. McDonalds note that ancient Egyptian indicates 'minimal interaction of Early Egyptian with speakers of 'inner Africa' language phyla', speakers of which may have been displaced or acculturated along the lower Nile. The last observations dovetailed with Wengrow's views(Chapter 9), in which he demonstrates that the neolithic pastoral cultures(5th millenium BC) of the Middle Egypt(Badarian) and of the Central Sudan(Khartoum Neolithic) are so similar in fundamental ways that one can envisage such communities extending from Middle Egypt to modern Khartoum. Not only was there ' a coherent and widely disseminated body of beliefs and practices ' , at least in the funerary realm, over this vast area, but recent analogy shows that this pastoral society had the potential for political developments that led ultimately to the Pharaonic state, and its distinctive characteristics. This 'African' model of social evolution fits the circumstances better than others based primarily on the archaeological record of Southwest Asia.
Ancient Egypt in Africa (eds) D. Wengrow and A. Reid 2003 pg18 http://books.google.com.ng/books/about/ ... edir_esc=y

Sudan's rich and often well-preserved Neolithic archaeology increasingly suggest the possibility for interesting comparative studies with contemporary developments in the Egyptian Lower Nile , especially with regard to mortuary archaeology(Wengrow 2006 pg69-70). In deed considerable cultural similarities existed among the riverine neolithic populations from the Central Sudan to as far north as (Badarian)Middle Egypt during the 5th millennium BC. This cultural uniformity markedly disappeared during the early 4th millennium BC when increasingly cereal cultivation, sedentarism, and water transport during the early Naqada period began to transform life in the Egyptian Nile valley.
The Archaeology of the Sahara and Nubia {Annual Review of Anthropolgy, Vol 36:221-228, Oct.2007} by David N. Edwards(: Introduction) http://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&rct=j ... GU5CWVu1UQ

During the long era between about 10,000 and 6000 B.C., new kinds of southern influences diffused into Egypt. During these millennia, the Sahara had a wetter climate than it has today, with grassland or steppes in many areas that are now almost absolute desert. New wild animals, most notably the cow, spread widely in the eastern Sahara in this period....Between about 5000 and 3000 B.C. a new era of southern cultural influences took shape. Increasing aridity pushed more of the human population of the eastern Sahara into areas with good access to the waters of the Nile, and along the Nile the bottomlands were for the first time cleared and farmed. The Egyptian stretches of the river came to form the northern edge of a newly emergent Middle Nile Culture Area, which extended far south up the river, well into the middle of modern-day Sudan. Peoples speaking languages of the Eastern Sahelian branch of the Nilo-Saharan family inhabited the heartland of this region....After about 3500 B.C., however, Egypt would have started to take on a new role vis-a-vis the Middle Nile region, simply because of its greater concentration of population. Growing pressures on land and resources soon enhanced and transformed the political powers of sacral chiefs. Unification followed, and the local deities of predynastic times became gods in a new polytheism, while sacral chiefs gave way to a divine king. At the same time, Egypt passed from the wings[peripheral] to center stage in the unfolding human drama of northeastern Africa.
Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture by Christopher Ehret 1993 http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 2#p3650562

Any Egyptian evidence in Nubian was seen as an import or as cultural influence, while any Nubian evidence in Upper Egypt was viewed as the sporadic presence of foreign people within Egyptian territory. In the last few years, new research on the subject,particularly from a Nubian point of view, shows that interaction between the two cultures was more complex than previously thought,affecting the time, space and nature of the interaction(Gatto and Tiraterra 1996; Gatto 2000,2003a,2003b). The Aswan area was probably never a real borderline, at least not until the New Kingdom....The data recently collected and a new interpretation of the available information are beginning to bring to life a stable and long-term interaction between between Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia that has to be seen in a very different perspective. The two regions, and so their cultural entities, are not in antithesis to one another, but in the predynastic period are the expressions of the same cultural tradition, with strong regional variations,particularly in the last part of the 4th millennium BC. Some of them are clearly connected with the major cultural and political and political changes of Egypt.
At the Origin of the Egyptian: Reconsidering the Relationship between Egypt and Nubia in the Pre- and ProtoPredynastic Period by Maria Gatto{Origin of the State Conference, Toulouse, France, Sept 5-8,2005

On a summary of biological evidence is given below:

...while some of the earliest metrical studies of Egyptian biological data are significantly flawed, recent investigations have employed published standards for obtaining precise and accurate measurements and have utilized historically and geographically relevant population comparisons. Alternatively,nonmetric characteristics,particularly of the teeth and the bones of the skull, are use to examine biological affinities. 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 characteristic that are within the range of variations 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.
Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt 1999(ed) Kathryn Bard and Steven Blacke(: Egyptians, physical anthropology of, by Nancy Lovell) pg 330-331 http://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&rct=j ... Bhq3rW35_w

[Big Triece]

Here is an interesting 2011 study about ancient watercourses in the Sahara:

Ancient watercourses and biogeography
of the Sahara explain the peopling of the desert



Drakea et. al.

PNAS 2011

The Peopling of the Sahara During the Holocene

We hypothesize that the differences in animal resources between the northern and southern Sahara during the early Holocene influenced the way it was peopled by humans. The north–south contrast in Saharan species ranges are remarkably similar to some key lithic, bone tool, and linguistic spatial distributions, suggesting that the peopling of the region during the early Holocene humid phase was driven by cultural adaptations that allowed exploitation of specific fauna. The early Holocene archaeology of the Sahara is characterized by a regional distribution of specific archaeological cultures, such as those defined by barbed bone points, fishhooks, Ounanian arrow-points, and, more controversially, pottery. The Sahara today is largely populated by speakers of Afroasiatic languages, Berber and Arabic, with some Nilo Saharan languages (Teda-Daza and Zaghawa) in the region of Northern Chad, and Songhay cluster languages scattered across Mali and Niger. However, it is clear that this situation is recent; Berberspeaking Tuareg moved into the Central Sahara ∼1500 y ago and the spread of the Hassaniya Moors into Mauritania probably dates from the 15th Century. Before this time, the central and southern Sahara are thought to have been populated by Nilo-Saharan speakers. The Nilo-Saharan language phylum is both widespread and strongly internally divided, suggesting considerable antiquity. Its greatest diversity is in the east, where a large number of small branches are found suggesting the original locus of expansion. Although fragmented into enclave populations today, the presence and pattern of relic populations in the northern desert points strongly to a much wider distribution in the past, covering the region from the Ethio-Sudan borderland to Mauritania and southwest Morocco.

It has long been suggested that Nilo-Saharan languages might correlate with barbed bone points, the so-called “Aqualithic” superimposes the sites of known barbed bone points on a map of current Nilo-Saharan languages, showing a remarkable similarity in spatial distribution, and also a notable correspondence with Holocene distribution of large aquatic species. It appears that the expansion of aquatic resources in the Holocene made the Sahara attractive to populations with existing fishing and riverine hunting skills. Their ability to hunt hippopotamus and crocodiles and to catch a wide variety of deepwater fish species would have propelled a rapid dispersal from east to west and into the central Sahara, to judge by the numerous branches of Nilo-Saharan in the east. Their movement further north would have been restricted by the absence of many of these species. However, the presence of an isolated Nilo-Saharan population (the Koranje, a branch of Songhay) and a barbed bone point in Northwest Africa near the headwaters of the catchment of the Soura River, the river that links the Atlas mountains to the lakes in the Ahnet-Mouydir basin, forming a corridor from the central Sahara to Northwest Africa, indicates that a few groups may have traversed the green Sahara using the most promising routes. There is direct linguistic evidence that Nilo-Saharan populations exploited these aquatic resources in the form of a widespread cognate for “hippo” from Gumuz in Ethiopia, to Songhay in Mali. SI Appendix, Table S2 shows similar forms for “crocodile,” although in this case the cognates are split between eastern and western languages. We hypothesize that the other economic revolution that occurred in the Sahara at approximately the same time was the southward spread of the bow and arrow. North African hunters would have observed the new abundance of large and unfamiliar land mammals to the south, notably elephant and giraffe. In a dispersal inverse to that of the Nilo-Saharans, they would have been attracted southward to hunt these animals with the bow and arrow. The “Ounanian” of Northern Mali, Southern Algeria, Niger, and central Egypt at ca. 10 ka is partly defined by a distinctive type of arrow point. These arrowheads are found in much of the northern Sahara (Fig. 3) and are generally considered to have spread from Northwest Africa. This view is supported by the affinity of this industry with the Epipalaeolithic that also appears to have colonized the Sahara from the north. No Ounanian points occur in West Africa before 10 ka, suggesting the movement of a technology across the desert from north to south around this time. Our model envisages the initial Holocene repopulation of the Sahara being carried out by two separate populations practicing two quite different resource exploitation strategies: (i) aquatic foraging using bone point and fish hook technology, and (ii) savanna hunting using the bow and arrow. By linking the distribution of the Nilo-Saharan language phyla to the archaeological distribution of aquatic- and terrestrial-adapted technologies, we explain the pattern of human repopulation of the desert in terms of the changing faunal distribution, which is in turn dictated by the nature of trans- Saharan hydrological linkages.

[Spoonist]

No time to respond properly right now but this stuck out.

but mainly on metric and non-metric cranial studies. Tropical adaption does not affect these variables, it only affects limb proportions, body shape and intensification of skin colour.

Uhm Keita, Van Sertima and most biologists would disagree.
Did you mean something else because crania is regularly used to try to determine tropical adaptation?

[Ziggy Stardust]

Ziggy so this is all you can say as regards that post. Since I began posting on this thread, I have hardly seen you make any detailed arguments yourself. You have a knack to appear and make certain statements, and when others ask you to substantiate, you refer them to a previous posts(mostly written by other posters by the way).

Congratulations, you haven't read the entire thread. Go fuck yourself.

That was what you did when I asked you to substantiate a statement, where you talked about Ancient Egyptian-Mediterranean continuum, and you linked me to Zentei's post; I responded in the above post, and your counter-response is what you just wrote.

I referred you to earlier posts because the issue had already been addressed ad nauseum, and I was sick of repeating the same god damned points again and again. Hell, the past 20 pages of this thread have been an endless repeat of the same talking points, due do BigT's continued dishonesty. You coming in and rehashing his already refuted arguments did nothing to encourage me that debating you was worthwhile.

When you are ready to really debate and not just come, say sometime and refuse to substantiate, other people will start taken you seriously.

Any time you so decide, please respond to that my post first- instead of what you imagined you just did. Since my post(response) is detailed enough it should not take much to show its inconsistencies.

Stick it up your ass, kid.

The Badarian and Early Naqada predynastic cultures were the northermost,relatively younger variants of a wider spread culture mainly in the 5th and early 4th millennium BC(called variously-Nubian Neolithic Culture Group by Gatto2006,2011;or Middle Nile Culture by Ehret 1993; Pastoral Neolithic of the Nile by Wengrow 2006; Saharo-Nubian Neolithic by Anselin 2009)- other variants of this same culture included the tasians,Abkans,Rayaynas,Kiddanians,Early A-Group,Final Western Desert Neolithic,Kadruka,Kerma Neolithic, Khartoum Neolithics(Kadero,El kadada,Sheinahab,Geili etc).

It is worth noting that before the Badarians, the Nile Valley was not empty. Certainly, the sedentary Badarians and the subsequent Naqada cultures were the progenitors of dynastic Egypt. The Halfan culture would be the most prominent of these mesolithic inhabitants, but of course there were others (the Qadan, Sebilian, Natufian, Harifian, etc.). The point is, even in this early time, the Nile Valley was a meeting point for various seminomadic and pastorialist peoples. The Halfan, for example, although they largely disappeared form the Nile Valley by around 15,000 B.C., were one of the parent cultures for the iberomarusian peoples, which spread through the Maghreb. Anyway, I could go on about the pre-Badarian Nilotic populations for a while, but I won't, because the point is simply that, even then, there was great heterogeneity across northern Africa, due to the intermingling of a variety of populations. Note that study does not focus on Egyptians, but does examine the Nubians.

These early Badarians and Naqadans were, in the main, tropically/supertropically adapted indigenious northeast Africans that had greatest biological affinities with other northeast Africans and other southernly Africans,especially those in the horn and the sahel-sahara

First, Sahel-Sahara is not "southernly," but that's just semantics.

Anyway, most of these have already been posted in this thread, but here's some food for thought:

Ordinarily, in a debate, I would explain the significance of these quotes, and how they support my argument. However, since you don't return that courtesy I see no reason to spent more time doing so.

From here.

The Gurna area could be the meeting point of two independent waves of migration from the Near East and from sub-Saharan Africa, as suggested by the central position of the Gurna population in the unrooted NJ tree and the genetic and the nucleotidic diversity of the analysed populations. The presence in the Gurna gene pool of haplogroups found in Near Eastern populations but absent in sub-Saharan ones (like U4), and haplogroups found in sub-Saharan populations but only sporadically present in Near Eastern ones (like L1), reinforces this observation.

However, the Gurnawi gene pool does not consist of a simple combination of Near Eastern and sub-Saharan gene pools, but also includes an East African specific component. This situation has already been observed for the Ethiopian gene pool (Passarino et al. 1998). Thus, the report of a second population in this geographic area showing a similar distribution of mtDNA haplotypes, including the same high frequency of a specific haplogroup (M1), raises the question of a hypothetical presence of an ancestral East African population. Such a population, as evoked by Passarino et al. (1998) for Ethiopia, could have settled on a wider area from Egypt to Ethiopia (including Sudan), the differences observed in current populations being due to further influences from neighbours (South Arabian peninsula for Ethiopia (Maca-Meyer et al. 2001), sub-Saharan input for Sudan as demonstrated in this study by a high exchange rate between Sudanese and Kenyan populations). A similar hypothesis of the existence of an ancestral population characterized by a specific haplogroup could also be evoked in the Maghreb with the U6 haplogroup (Brakez et al. 2001; Rando et al. 1998).

From Keita, 1993 (a source you linked to in another post):

Northern modern Berber-speakers are frequently notably "European" in phenotype but even they have tropical African "marker" gene frequencies greater than those found in southern Europeans.

The phenotypic situation can also be interpreted as representing two differentiated African populations, with northerns having diverged early and notably from the southerners, or an earlier ancestral group, by drift and by gene exchange with the Near East. (This, however, would not negate their lineage relationship with southerners.) Later, depending on "starting" orientation, the dynastic Lower Egyptians by convergence, secondary to gene flow or microadaptation, either became more African "Negroid" (Howells 1973) or became more Mediterranean "White" (Angel 1972). Making a neat north/south "racial" division in the dynastic Egyptian epoch would be difficult (and theoretically unsound to most current workers), although trends can be recognized. These racial terms are unnecessary. The variability in the population in Upper Egypt increased, as its isolation decreased, with the increasing social complexity of southern Egypt from the predynastic through dynastic periods (Keita 1992). The Upper Egyptian population apparently began to converge skeletally on Lower Egyptian patterns through the dynastic epoch; whether this is primarily due to gene flow or other factors has yet to be finally determined. The Lower Egyptian pattern is intermediate to that of various northern Europeans and West African and Khoisan series.

From here

Oman and Egypt’s NRY frequency distributions appear to be much more similar to those of the Middle East than to any sub-Saharan African population, suggesting a much larger Eurasian genetic component. Finally, the overall phylogeographic profile reveals several clinal patterns and genetic partitions that may indicate source, direction, and relative timing of different waves of dispersals and expansions involving these nine populations

Check out some of these, studies, well.

[matter]

The Badarian and Early Naqada predynastic cultures were the northermost,relatively younger variants of a wider spread culture mainly in the 5th and early 4th millennium BC(called variously-Nubian Neolithic Culture Group by Gatto2006,2011;or Middle Nile Culture by Ehret 1993; Pastoral Neolithic of the Nile by Wengrow 2006; Saharo-Nubian Neolithic by Anselin 2009)- other variants of this same culture included the tasians,Abkans,Rayaynas,Kiddanians,Early A-Group,Final Western Desert Neolithic,Kadruka,Kerma Neolithic, Khartoum Neolithics(Kadero,El kadada,Sheinahab,Geili etc).

(Ziggy)It is worth noting that before the Badarians, the Nile Valley was not empty. Certainly, the sedentary Badarians and the subsequent Naqada cultures were the progenitors of dynastic Egypt. The Halfan culture would be the most prominent of these mesolithic inhabitants, but of course there were others (the Qadan, Sebilian, Natufian, Harifian, etc.). The point is, even in this early time, the Nile Valley was a meeting point for various seminomadic and pastorialist peoples. The Halfan, for example, although they largely disappeared form the Nile Valley by around 15,000 B.C., were one of the parent cultures for the iberomarusian peoples, which spread through the Maghreb. Anyway, I could go on about the pre-Badarian Nilotic populations for a while, but I won't, because the point is simply that, even then, there was great heterogeneity across northern Africa, due to the intermingling of a variety of populations.

First off, the Natufians are actually inhabitants of the Near East, not the Nile Valley; even if they actually have a significant subsaharan affinities and are said to partly descend from groups that left the Nile Valley to the Near East-meaning there were groups with these subsaharan affinities in the Nile valley(Bar-Yosef 1987, Brace 2006, F. X. Ricaut, M. Waelkens. (2008). ).

If the Late Pleistocene
Natufian sample from Israel is the source from which that
Neolithic spread was derived, then there was clearly a Sub-
Saharan African element present of almost equal importance as
the Late Prehistoric Eurasian element....The interbreeding of the incoming Neolithic people
with the in situ foragers diluted the Sub-Saharan traces that may
have come with the Neolithic spread so that no discoverable
element of that remained
Brace 2006

Most of the other small ephemeral groups(Wadi Halfa, Jebel Sahaba, Esna, Fayumian-though just one sample,Nazlet Khater) in the Nile Valley have also been said to have some sub-saharan affinities(Keita, 1990,1993;Vermeersh and Hendrinx 2002;Irish 2000). Though relative robusicity of the samples and general small samples make the work difficult(Vermeersh 2002 )
It must be re-iterated that these groups are small ephemeral nomadic/semi-nomadic groups, and that through the Early and Middle Holocene, the Egyptian Nile Valley was very sparsely inhabited( by Elkabians, Tarifians, Fayumians), and crucially the main population sources for the NIle Valley, including to some extent the Lower Nile, from the 5th millennium BC further are migration of groups from the desiccating Eastern Sahara.THERE IS NO QUESTION.Read the three references(Yletynin 2009, Brooks et al 2005, Kuper and Kropelin 2006) http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 8#p3654308

Archaeological evidence suggests that the
ancient Egyptian Nile Valley was peopled in
large part by immigrants from the Sahara
and more southern areas, who brought neolithic
traits there (Hassan, 1988). Some
movement from the Levant is also postulated.
Possibly the earliest indigenous African
full neolithic tradition (called Saharo-
Sudanese or Saharan) is found in the
Western (Nubian) Desert of Egypt, near the
Sudanese border (Wendorf and Schild, 1980;
Hassan, 1988) and is dated to the seventh
millinneum BC. Common core cultural traits
are noted in the Saharan neolithic and Nile
Valley predynastic sites, with some Near
Eastern influence in the north (Arkell and
Ucko, 1965; Hassan, 1988). Predynastic
Egyptian culture is most parsimoniously explained
by a fusion of Saharan and Nilotic
peoples (Hassan, 1988>. The predynastic cultural
sequence of southern Egypt is accepted
as leading directly to the dynastic culture.
Keita 1990 pg36

I dont understand what you are inferring by referring to Northwest coastal Africa eg Iberomaurasians, as I am not aware of any study showing close affinities between them and Early Egyptians, in fact most studies emphasizes their distinction(Irish 2000). That the Harifians might be partly ancestral, at least in material culture, to Iberomaurasians says more of the heterogeneity of the populations of the maghreb.

Multivariate analyses
of crania demonstrate wide variation but also suggest an indigenous craniometric
pattern common to both late dynastic northern Egypt and the coastal
Maghreb region. Both tropical African and European metric phenotypes, as
well intermediate patterns, are found in mid-Holocene Maghreb sites. Early
southern predynastic Egyptian crania show tropical African affinities, displaying
craniometric trends that differ notably from the coastal northern
African pattern. The various craniofacial patterns discernible in northern
Africa are attributable to the agents of microevolution and migration
Keita 1990 abstract

And this Early Egyptian ('southern')pattern from the desiccating Eastern Sahara that shows greatest biological affinities to Saharo-tropical Africans, is what is really relevant for Ancient Egypt. And as you have said it was the Badarians and Naqadans that are the Upper Egyptian populations that originated the Egyptian culture, from a greater Saharo-Nubian background.

Note that study does not focus on Egyptians, but does examine the Nubians.

*laughing*. Gatto is an expect of both predynastic Egypt and Nubia, that Gatto 2006 study was also based on her extensive predynastic knowledge(Aswan Region for eg)-okay see her Gatto 2009 study. See Ziggy that Badarian and Early Naqada were essentially variants of a wider spread 'Nubian Neolithic Culture' is well founded; look at all the various scholars supporting this in this post http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 5#p3654315
Did you notice the similar dates and the congruous between the dates and the desiccating Eastern Sahara?

On the 1st part of your post, there was really nothing for me to respond to. When you quit playing around and actually respond to this post http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 9#p3652779, I will then respond

[matter]

(Ziggy)Ordinarily, in a debate, I would explain the significance of these quotes, and how they support my argument. However, since you don't return that courtesy I see no reason to spent more time doing so.

Ziggy the reason for pasting those studies and links without explaining is cos I just wanted to provide the study to people, allow them read in the hope it will help them to form their own opinion on the origins of the Ancient Egyptian civilization rightly. Moreover, I have given a summary of what I think on these studies here:http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 5#p3653965
Let me try to give some treatment to these quotes of yours till you explain what you deduce from them.

The Gurna area could be the meeting point of two independent waves of migration from the Near East and from sub-Saharan Africa, as suggested by the central position of the Gurna population in the unrooted NJ tree and the genetic and the nucleotidic diversity of the analysed populations. The presence in the Gurna gene pool of haplogroups found in Near Eastern populations but absent in sub-Saharan ones (like U4), and haplogroups found in sub-Saharan populations but only sporadically present in Near Eastern ones (like L1), reinforces this observation.

However, the Gurnawi gene pool does not consist of a simple combination of Near Eastern and sub-Saharan gene pools, but also includes an East African specific component. This situation has already been observed for the Ethiopian gene pool (Passarino et al. 1998). Thus, the report of a second population in this geographic area showing a similar distribution of mtDNA haplotypes, including the same high frequency of a specific haplogroup (M1), raises the question of a hypothetical presence of an ancestral East African population. Such a population, as evoked by Passarino et al. (1998) for Ethiopia, could have settled on a wider area from Egypt to Ethiopia (including Sudan), the differences observed in current populations being due to further influences from neighbours (South Arabian peninsula for Ethiopia (Maca-Meyer et al. 2001), sub-Saharan input for Sudan as demonstrated in this study by a high exchange rate between Sudanese and Kenyan populations). A similar hypothesis of the existence of an ancestral population characterized by a specific haplogroup could also be evoked in the Maghreb with the U6 haplogroup (Brakez et al. 2001; Rando et al. 1998).

Northern modern Berber-speakers are frequently notably "European" in phenotype but even they have tropical African "marker" gene frequencies greater than those found in southern Europeans.

The phenotypic situation can also be interpreted as representing two differentiated African populations, with northerns having diverged early and notably from the southerners, or an earlier ancestral group, by drift and by gene exchange with the Near East. (This, however, would not negate their lineage relationship with southerners.) Later, depending on "starting" orientation, the dynastic Lower Egyptians by convergence, secondary to gene flow or microadaptation, either became more African "Negroid" (Howells 1973) or became more Mediterranean "White" (Angel 1972). Making a neat north/south "racial" division in the dynastic Egyptian epoch would be difficult (and theoretically unsound to most current workers), although trends can be recognized. These racial terms are unnecessary. The variability in the population in Upper Egypt increased, as its isolation decreased, with the increasing social complexity of southern Egypt from the predynastic through dynastic periods (Keita 1992). The Upper Egyptian population apparently began to converge skeletally on Lower Egyptian patterns through the dynastic epoch; whether this is primarily due to gene flow or other factors has yet to be finally determined. The Lower Egyptian pattern is intermediate to that of various northern Europeans and West African and Khoisan series.

Oman and Egypt’s NRY frequency distributions appear to be much more similar to those of the Middle East than to any sub-Saharan African population, suggesting a much larger Eurasian genetic component. Finally, the overall phylogeographic profile reveals several clinal patterns and genetic partitions that may indicate source, direction, and relative timing of different waves of dispersals and expansions involving these nine populations

Your 1st quote was on MODERN Gurwani Upper Egyptian population that have a post-Out-of-Africa ANCESTRAL East African genetic profile and then subsequent further other African and
Near Eastern influences(without specifying time scales)-so what are you saying? Is this diff from what we have been arguing once the time-scale of the subsequent influences on the ancestral population is stated.

Your 2nd quote is on the 'mixed' coastal 'Berbers'. Again, I ask you what is their significance to peopling of Early Egypt. I have treated this in my last post above, and in this post: http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 9#p3652259

Your 3rd quote is about Keita distinguishing between two indigenous but divergent patterns in Egypt(Upper and Lower Egyptian), and saying that it seems the Upper Egyptian pattern began to converge on the Lower Egyptian Egyptian pattern over time through the dynastic period,probably through migrations.So what is wrong here? Do you think that the Lower Egyptian pattern(which Keita most probably used Dynastic Lower Egyptians since he did have access to predynastic samples as baseline) are equivalent to European/Near Eastern/nonAfrican? Cos it is not. Keita and Zakrzweski 2007 and Starling and Stock 2007 said they were mainly an indigenous(with possibility of small gene flow from near east) but divergent series from the Upper Egyptians, who have a centroid close too intermediate bw some Europeans and west Africans.

Your 4th quote is on MODERN Egyptians again .You are aware that you are talking of modern Egyptians right? Who ever denies that modern Egyptians are 'mixed'- this debate is on Early Egyptians. We know that over time Egypt became more diverse with groups coming from the Near East and the Mediterranean over a long period of time(both during Dynastic and post Dynastic times). In fact all biological analysis show that even the late dynastic Lower Egyptian 'E' series were already distinct and intermediate between Early Egyptians and Europeans/Near Easterners(Keita 1990,1993;Starling and Stock 2007; Godde 2009; BarryKemp2006; Zakrzewski 2002)-such that Zakezweski 2004 said that they are not typical of ancient Egyptians, talk less of modern Egyptians. Even Brace 2006 clearly differentiated modern Egyptians from their ancient ancestors, putting the later in a northeast African twig with modern and Ancient Nubians, Somalis etc, while putting the former in a modern Mediterranean/North Africa twig.
Also, see:

Dendrogram[in pg 57] which shows the relative closeness to or distance from one another of
males in 53 human populations from Africa and the Mediterranean region. The program has no
geographical or chronological intuity. It is thus reassuring to find expected groups
actually coming together, sometimes with a degree of chronological ordering, which suggest
evolutionary changes. The extent to which Late Period Giza cemetery is not representative
of Egypt as a whole but only one stage in population change is clear.
Berry Kemp 2006 pg 41

This is the dendrogram.Notice that modern Delta Egyptians are not in the primary block- who
are in the block? Why do you think we are seeing this pattern over and over again in all
these studies:









PS: Modern Egyptian as I have started before are the only descendants of the ancients that
we know, only that they have been mixed(especailly in the more populate Delta) by various
groups coming from the Near East and southern Europe over time, while ironically the
ancients are more closely related biologically to northeast Africans and some other
Africans.

Maybe there are things you are seeing in the quotes that made you think it undermines my main arguments, then you can point it out so I can respond better. For your information I have never talked about 'purity' or exclusivity. The word I used most is 'in the main'. Maybe this info will help when we want to respond to my views subsequently

[EgalitarianJay]

Here is Martin Bernals take on Keita's research:

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

This is a quote from Richard Poe's book not Martin Bernal. I've been using it for awhile in debates. Poe was very good at explaining scholarly research simplistically. I highly recommend the book. I haven't read Martin Bernal's Black Athena but he endorses the book and admits that Poe's writing is far superior to his. Poe is a journalist with a degree in creative writing. Most of his books are political and favor a conservative point of view.

During the exchange with Keita where he discussed the skin color of the Ancient Egyptians we talked about several things. I provided that exact quote to Keita directly and this was his reply:

I don't use the term race. The ancient Egyptian population was foundationally African, and absorbed outsiders. The phenotypes varied.

Sent from my iPhone. Shomarka

Additionally this is what he said about skin color prior to me providing the Mekota study:

Without an analysis of histology of the skin and accurate portraits one cannot say exactly how they looked. We can only extrapolate by looking at the variability of the modern Egyptian with a focus on Upper Egypt, considering a predictive approach based on latitude, and imagining what they would have been like without the gene flow from the Near East ad Europe over thousands of years. This will help you conceptualise the variability of the Nile indigenous population.

My research cannot indicate skin color in any empirical sense. Body build has been known for some time, see the work of Sonia Zakrezewski's and others--it is tropical in the eariest formative times. In fact you should write everyone who has written on the biology of the Egyptians recently and pose your questions.

My advice is to think in evolutionary terms--but also accept that like the Roman empire that foreigners were absorbed into Egypt.

My exchanges with Keita have led me to a conclusion about his work that many people don't seem to understand.

Keita's research on Ancient Egypt is NOT about proving that the Ancient Egyptians looked a certain way.

The work is about understanding the population history of the civilization from a scientific perspective, especially a Bio-Anthropological perspective. That's why Keita doesn't attempt to make any sociological proclamations about his work.
The reason that many of his papers are filled with commentary on race is because scholars from the past tried to look at history and cultures through a racial lens which Keita himself considers to be inappropriate and unscientific.

Keita is not in favor of a "Black Egypt", "White Egypt," "Multiracial Egypt" or any model of Egyptian people that is racial.

His position is that there was a variation in phenotypes. His basis for this is craniofacial form. He notes that Egyptians had tropical limb proportions and acknowledges the historical evidence of immigration into Egypt which he believes was significant given the time span that Egypt was occupied by foreign powers but also makes note that the Egyptian populace was never at any time replaced by foreigners. They intermarried with foreigners.

When you consider all of these statements it becomes clear that what Keita is advocating is that the Ancient Egyptians were indigenous to Northeast Africa and they shared the phenotypes of neighboring Africans with a close affinity to more Southerly Africans during the early formative period. Foreigners did move in to Egypt at various time from European and the Near East and as a consequence modern Upper Egypt is more representative of early Dynastic Egypt than Cosmopolitan Lower Egypt.

What this means for this debate is that in Keita's view you are more likely to find similar faces to the Pharaohs and the people of the Dynastic period in cities like Aswan and Luxor today than in Cairo.

His research can't tell you skin color empirically but it can be imagined that most Egyptians looked like your typical Upper Egyptian or Nubian. We do have scientific evidence that some Ancient Egyptians were dark-skinned based on Mekota's paper. Keita seems to accept this research but cautions that you need a decent representative sample of Ancient Egyptian remains to make a definitive scientific statement on that issue.

Keita's clarification of his own work is enough for me to conclude that the Ancient Egyptians were at their foundation in the main tropically adapted, dark-skinned Africans and absorbed immigrants over the centuries many of whom were much lighter skinned than the original population.

This position seems to fall a lot closer in line with the Afrocentric position (Ancient Egyptians were "Black"/Dark-skinned Indigenous Africans) vs. the Eurocentric (Ancient Egyptians were Caucasians or Ancestral To Europe) or Egyptocentric (Ancient Egyptians are the direct ancestors of Modern Egyptians whose population has barely changed) positions.

At the very least I think it would be historically accurate for Ancient Egyptians to be portrayed in movies by dark-skinned Upper Egyptians, Nubians and Horn Africans with some variability in appearance and a minority of lighter-skinned folk particularly those of Middle Eastern and Southern European descent with the ratio in appearance of the general population depending on the time period in Egyptian history that is being portrayed.

That's what I believe is most objective if you accept Keita's research and some of the other sources that corroborate it.

[Thanas]

^None of your interpretation follows without an analysis of what foreigners were absorbed in what quantity and at what time.