User talk:Wdford - Misplaced Pages

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Welcome!

Hello, Wdford, and welcome to Misplaced Pages! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Misplaced Pages:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! William M. Connolley (talk) 12:17, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Three-revert rule

You are a new editor and might not be aware of it, therefore I am informing you NOW about the Misplaced Pages:Three-revert rule:

"Contributors must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period, whether or not the edits involve the same material."

If you revert another time at Great Sphinx of Giza‎, this will constitute your 4th revert within 24 hours. Zara1709 (talk) 20:28, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Water Erosion Debate

Hi Wdford.

I agree that it is a good idea to have the scientific evidence separated, but the fundamental point is that there is too much room given to Schoch, Reader and Coxill on the page. This is supposed to be a brief section on the debate, giving a rough outline of the theorists' position, and the balancing arguments given by 'mainstream' Egyptologists.

The structure at the top of the section is just about right. It sets out Schoch and Reader's main points and then gives the 'mainstream' counter-view. By putting detailed scientific evidence and the researchers' opinions, the section becomes completely imbalanced.

I am not trying to undermine the position of the Theory, but only to give it a fair footing. Long quotations and alphabetised summaries should be avoided. I have also made efforts to fully reference the points you have added.

I undid your edits because it meant putting them far below the most redundant material. This section should only be a few paragraphs long. Otherwise, start a new page for a fuller discussion and then link it in.

Please see the Talk page to discuss the matter further and with other editors. gergis (talk) 14:56, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Ancient Egyptian race controversy‎

So you made an attempt to contribute to the Ancient Egyptian race controversy‎ (as it is currently called), too. I have to be honest: I think that this topic is the greatest challenge among the Misplaced Pages articles I know. Several editors - and some administrators probably too - are acting against the spirit of Misplaced Pages by making a battle about almost every sentence in that article. Misplaced Pages is not a battleground. I am sorry that we couldn't sort out the issue at Great Sphinx of Giza more civil, but I've already lost a lot of patience due to my previous 'battles' at Misplaced Pages. If you want to contribute to the article on the topic, you need to be willing to spent a lot of time with comments on discussion pages. Zara1709 (talk) 13:28, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Little context in Afrocentric historiography

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Afrocentric historiography

A tag has been placed on Afrocentric historiography, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Misplaced Pages. This has been done under the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a very short article providing no content to the reader. Please note that external links, "See also" section, book reference, category tag, template tag, interwiki link, rephrasing of the title, or an attempt to contact the subject of the article don't count as content. Please see Misplaced Pages:Stub for our minimum information standards for short articles. Also please note that articles must be on notable subjects and should provide references to reliable sources that verify their content.

Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself. If you plan to expand the article, you can request that administrators wait a while for you to add contextual material. To do this, affix the template {{hangon}} to the page and state your intention on the article's talk page. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. -SilverOrion

(Radical) Afrocentric historiography

OMG, you actually started an article Afrocentric historiography. That is a great idea, but actually, I, too, have half an article on Radical Afrocentric historiography finished. With all the discussions going on about this, though, I didn't want to create the article before there was an agreement (at least between Moreschi, Paul Barlow and me) on central points, e.g. whether we should term the article Afrocentric historiography or Radical Afrocentric historiography (apparently none of them has read the preface of History in Black). However, since you have started the article already, I would have to merge my material into it, which would mean, though, that you would have to agree on a different article structure. The material that you currently have in the article does the same thing the old Ancient Egyptian race controversy article did (before it was replaced by a new revision from Moreschi, I think). I discusses these controversies about Tutankhamun, Cleopatra VII, the Great Sphinx of Giza and Kemet, that would probably give undue weight to Afrocentrism if they are discussed in the separate articles. I say 'probably', because I personally don't see this problem. But since Moreschi wants to a separate article for the Afrocentric views concerning ancient Egypt anyway (the current: Ancient Egyptian race controversy), I can suggest a three-way compromise. We have one article about (Radical) Afrocentric historiography in general and one article specifically about Afrocentric views concerning ancient Egypt the current: Ancient Egyptian race controversy). We limit the weight given to the Afrocentric viewpoints in articles like Tutankhamun, Cleopatra VII and Great Sphinx of Giza, but article devoted to these viewpoints will not be Afrocentric historiography, but Ancient Egyptian race controversy. If you can agree on that, I should get Moreschi to agree to that, too, and I will help you push this through at Talk:Ancient Egyptian race controversy. Zara1709 (talk) 19:15, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the response - I answered on the Article talk page. 41.245.44.251 (talk) 06:55, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your insights and your tough, articulate way of reasonning. With Wapondaponda and of cause Deeceevoice, you are doing a great work to spread truth about the African historiography. There is too much ignorance about it around.--Lusala lu ne Nkuka Luka (talk) 13:57, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Name change

I believe for name change you use the "move" tab at the top of a page, which is right by "History" and you can then re-name the page. --Pstanton (talk) 22:35, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Ancient Egyptian race controversy

Hopefully you are not too disappointed that I undid most of your contributions to the Ancient Egyptian race controversy. I took the liberty of suggesting an article structure that would allow us to bring the material on the specific controversies into the article. If you want, you could merge most of the material from the Great Sphinx of Giza article now, which I think was you original intention. Zara1709 (talk) 05:35, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

In appreciation

This is for you, Wdford, and all the folks who worked on the (now defunct) Arguments/Evidence for a "Black Ancient Egypt"?.

:( deeceevoice (talk) 17:45, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

In case you didn't know

Just making sure you're aware. It won't last, but at least we have the opportunity to actually write an article now without the constant obstruction and disruption. deeceevoice (talk) 14:05, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Redacted

I've editted an edit of yours to remove a little bit of angst. Please, please, don't use language like "hissy fit." It's not productive. If you have concerns about another editor's behaviour, right now this article's talk page isn't the place for them. I know that's a bit counter-intuitive, but that's the way that dispute resolution works best: On the article we only talk about the article.

I'm happy to guide you through the steps if you'd like, if you have that strong a concern about Z's behaviour. I'll do that without taking a stand on that behaviour, I must add, but I can help you to frame your concerns in a way that has a chance of getting a positive outcome. Because there is zero chance if you use language like you used in the edit I redacted.

Also please note that this is not a formal warning. You'll know when you get one of those. - brenneman 13:48, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Academic references from muse.jhu.edu/journals/human_biology/

QUOTE: "The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the “super-Negroid” body plan described by Robins (1983).. This pattern is supported by Figure 7 (a plot of population mean femoral and tibial lengths; data from Ruff, 1994), which indicates that the Egyptians generally have tropical body plans. Of the Egyptian samples, only the Badarian and Early Dynastic period populations have shorter tibiae than predicted from femoral length. Despite these differences, all samples lie relatively clustered together as compared to the other populations." (Zakrzewski, S.R. (2003). "Variation in ancient Egyptian stature and body proportions". American Journal of Physical Anthropology 121 (3): 219-229.

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

"Recall that the Horn–Nile Valley crania show, as a group, the largest overlap with other regions. A review of the recent literature indicates that there are male lineage ties between African peoples who have been traditionally labeled as being ‘‘racially’’ different, with ‘‘racially’’ implying an ontologically deep divide. The PN2 transition, a Y chromosome marker, defines a lineage (within the YAPþ derived haplogroup E or III) that emerged in Africa probably before the last glacial maximum, but after the migration of modern humans from Africa (see Semino et al., 2004). This mutation forms a clade that has two daughter subclades (defined by the biallelic markers M35/215 (or 215/M35) and M2) that unites numerous phenotypically variant African populations from the supra-Saharan, Saharan, and sub-Saharan regions.." (S.O.Y Keita. Exploring northeast African metric craniofacial variation at the individual level: A comparative study using principal component analysis. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 16:679–689, 2004.) http://www.geocities.com/nilevalleypeoples/keita2004neanalysis.htm

"Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages.. Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world." (Tishkoff SA, Williams SM., Genetic analysis of African populations: human evolution and complex disease. Nature Reviews Genetics. 2002 Aug (8):611-21.)

"The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diversity of 58 individuals from Upper Egypt, more than half (34 individuals) from Gurna, whose population has an ancient cultural history, were studied by sequencing the control-region and screening diagnostic RFLP markers. This sedentary population presented similarities to the Ethiopian population by the L1 and L2 macrohaplogroup frequency (20.6%), by the West Eurasian component (defined by haplogroups H to K and T to X) and particularly by a high frequency (17.6%) of haplogroup M1. We statistically and phylogenetically analysed and compared the Gurna population with other Egyptian, Near East and sub-Saharan Africa populations; AMOVA and Minimum Spanning Network analysis showed that the Gurna population was not isolated from neighbouring populations. Our results suggest that the Gurna population has conserved the trace of an ancestral genetic structure from an ancestral East African population, characterized by a high M1 haplogroup frequency. The current structure of the Egyptian population may be the result of further influence of neighbouring populations on this ancestral population." (Stevanovitch A, Gilles A, Bouzaid E, et al. (2004) Mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity in a sedentary population from Egypt.Ann Hum Genet. 68(Pt 1):23-39.)

QUOTE(s): "..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)

"Individuals from different geographical regions frequently plotted near each other, revealing aspects of variation at the level of individuals that is obscured by concentrating on the most distinctive facial traits once used to construct ‘‘types.’’The high level of African interindividual variation in craniometric pattern is reminiscent of the great level of molecular diversity found in Africa." (S.O.Y Keita. Exploring northeast African metric craniofacial variation at the individual level: A comparative study using principal component analysis. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 16:679–689, 2004.)

"The relative importance of ancient demography and climate in determining worldwide patterns of human within-population phenotypic diversity is still open to debate. Several morphometric traits have been argued to be under selection by climatic factors, but it is unclear whether climate affects the global decline in morphological diversity with increasing geographical distance from sub-Saharan Africa. Using a large database of male and female skull measurements, we apply an explicit framework to quantify the relative role of climate and distance from Africa. We show that distance from sub-Saharan Africa is the sole determinant of human within-population phenotypic diversity, while climate plays no role. By selecting the most informative set of traits, it was possible to explain over half of the worldwide variation in phenotypic diversity. These results mirror those previously obtained for genetic markers and show that ‘bones and molecules’ are in perfect agreement for humans." (Distance from Africa, not climate, explains within-population phenotypic diversity in humans. (2008) by: Lia Betti, François Balloux, William Amos, Tsunehiko Hanihara, Andrea Manica, Proceedings B: Biological Sciences, 2008/12/02)

QUOTE(s): S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54

"Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Kebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have 'donated' people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)... Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese." (Keita 1993)

"When the unlikely relationships and eliminated, the Egyptian series are more similar 'overall' to other African series than to European or Near Eastern (Byzantine or Palestinian) series." (Keita 1993)

"Populations and cultures now found south of the desert roamed far to the north. The culture of Upper Egypt, which became dynastic Egyptian civilization, could fairly be called a Sudanese transplant."(Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa: Their Interaction. Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa, by Joseph O. Vogel, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California (1997), pp. 465-472 )

"Analysis of crania is the traditional approach to assessing ancient population origins, relationships, and diversity. In studies based on anatomical traits and measurements of crania, similarities have been found between Nile Valley crania from 30,000, 20,000 and 12,000 years ago and various African remains from more recent times (see Thoma 1984; Brauer and Rimbach 1990; Angel and Kelley 1986; Keita 1993). Studies of crania from southern predynastic Egypt, from the formative period (4000-3100 B.C.), show them usually to be more similar to the crania of ancient Nubians, Kushites, Saharans, or modern groups from the Horn of Africa than to those of dynastic northern Egyptians or ancient or modern southern Europeans." (S. O. Y and A.J. Boyce, "The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians", in in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 20-33)

"The Badarian series clusters with the tropical African groups no matter which algorithm is employed (see Figures 3 and 4). The clustering with the Bushman can be understood as an artifact of grouping algorithms; it is well known that a series may group into a cluster that does not contain the series to which it is most similar (has the lowest distance value). An additional 20 dendrograms were generated using the minimum evolution algorithm provided by MEGA (not shown). In none of them did the Badarian sample affiliate with the European series. In additional analysis, the Bushman series was left out; the results were the same." (S.O.Y. Keita, A. J. Boyce, "Genetics, Egypt, and History: Interpreting Geographical Patterns of Y Chromosome Variation1," History in Africa 32 (2005) 221-246)

"Studies of crania from southern predynastic Egypt, from the formative period (4000-3100 B.C.), show them usually to be more similar to the crania of ancient Nubians, Kushites, Saharans, or modern groups from the Horn of Africa than to those of dynastic northern Egyptians or ancient or modern southern Europeans... There is no archaeological, linguistic, or historical data which indicate a European or Asiatic invasion of, or migration to, the Nile Valley during First Dynasty times.Previous concepts about the origin of the First Dynasty Egyptians as being somehow external to the Nile Valley or less native are not supported by archaeology... In summary, the Abydos First Dynasty royal tomb contents reveal a notable craniometric heterogeneity. Southerners predominate. (Kieta, S. (1992) Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis of Crania From First Dynasty Egyptian Tombs, Using Multiple Discriminant Functions. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 87:245-254)"

QUOTE(s): ".. all their features can be found in several living populations of East Africa, like the Tutsi of Rwanda and Burundi, who are very dark skinned and differ greatly from Europeans in a number of body proportions.. There is every reason to believe that they are ancestral to the living 'Elongated East Africans'. Neither of these populations, fossil and modern, should be considered to be closely related to the populations of Europe and western Asia..." [Jean Hiernaux, The People of Africa (1975), pgs 42-43, 62-63)

"....inhabitants of East Africa right on the equator have appreciably longer, narrower, and higher noses than people in the Congo at the same latitude. A former generation of anthropologists used to explain this paradox by invoking an invasion by an itinerant "white" population from the Mediterranean area, although this solution raised more problems than it solved since the East Africans in question include some of the blackest people in the world with characteristically wooly hair and a body build unique among the world's populations for its extreme linearity and height.... The relatively long noses of East Africa become explicable then when one realizes that much of the area is extremely dry for parts of the year." (C. Loring Brace, "Nonracial Approach Towards Human Diversity," cited in The Concept of Race, Edited by Ashley Montagu, The Free Press, 1980, pp. 135-136, 138)

"The role of tall, linearly built populations in eastern Africa's prehistory has always been debated. Traditionally, they are viewed as late migrants into the area. But as there is better palaeoanthropological and linguistic documentation for the earlier presence of these populations than for any other group in eastern Africa, it is far more likely that they are indigenous eastern Africans. ... prehistoric linear populations show resemblances to both Upper Pleistocene eastern African fossils and present-day, non-Bantu-speaking groups in eastern Africa, with minor differences stemming from changes in overall robusticity of the dentition and skeleton. This suggests a longstanding tradition of linear populations in eastern Africa, contributing to the indigenous development of cultural and biological diversity from the Pleistocene up to the present." (L . A . SCHEPARTZ, "Who were the later Pleistocene eastern Africans?" The African Archaeological Review, 6 (1988), pp. 57- 72)

QUOTE(s): "We also compare Egyptian body proportions to those of modern American Blacks and Whites... Long bone stature regression equations were then derived for each sex. Our results confirm that, although ancient Egyptians are closer in body proportion to modern American Blacks than they are to American Whites, proportions in Blacks and Egyptians are not identical... Intralimb indices are not significantly different between Egyptians and American Blacks." ("Stature estimation in ancient Egyptians: A new technique based on anatomical reconstruction of stature." Michelle H. Raxter, Christopher B. Ruff, Ayman Azab, Moushira Erfan, Muhammad Soliman, Aly El-Sawaf, (Am J Phys Anthropol. 2008, Jun;136(2):147-55

" In other words, all non-Africans carry M168. Of course, Africans carrying the M168 mutation today are the descendants of the African subpopulation from which the migrants originated.... Thus, the Australian/Eurasian Adam (the ancestor of all non-Africans) was an East African Man." (Linda Stone, Paul F. Lurquin, L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Genes, Culture, and Human Evolution: A Synthesis, Wiley-Blackwell: 2006, pg 108)

QUOTE(s): "However, in some of the studies, only individuals from northern Egypt are sampled, and this could theoretically give a false impression of Egyptian variability (contrast Lucotte and Mercier 2003a with Manni et al. 2002), because this region has received more foreign settlers (and is nearer the Near East). Possible sample bias should be integrated into the discussion of results." (S.O.Y. Keita, A.J. Boyce, "Interpreting Geographical Patterns of Y Chromosome Variation1," History in Africa 32 (2005) 221-246 )

QUOTE(s): "Some have argued that various early Egyptians like the Badarians probably migrated northward from Nubia, while others see a wide-ranging movement of peoples across the breadth of the Sahara before the onset of desiccation. Whatever may be the origins of any particular people or civilization, however, it seems reasonably certain that the predynastic communities of the Nile valley were essentially indigenous in culture, drawing little inspiration from sources outside the continent during the several centuries directly preceding the onset of historical times..." (Robert July, Pre-Colonial Africa, 1975, p. 60-61)

"overall population continuity over the Predynastic and early Dynastic, and high levels of genetic heterogeneity, thereby suggesting that state formation occurred as a mainly indigenous process." (Zakrzewski, S.R. (2007). "Population continuity or population change: Formation of the ancient Egyptian state". American Journal of Physical Anthropology 132 (4): 501-509)

"the peoples of the steppes and grasslands to the immediate south of Egypt domesticated cattle, as early as 9000 to 8000 B.C. They included peoples from the Afro-Asiastic linguistic group and the second major African language family, Nilo-Saharan (Wendorf, Schild, Close 1984; Wendorf, et al. 1982). Thus the earliest domestic cattle may have come to Egypt from these southern neighbors, circa 6000 B.C., and not from the Middle East. Pottery, another significant advance in material cultural may also have followed this pattern, initiatied "as early as 9000 B.C. by the Nilo-Saharans and Afrasians who lived to the south of Egypt. Soon thereafter, pots spread to Egyptian sites, almost 2,000 years before the first pottery was made in the Middle East." (Christopher Ehret, "Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture," in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 25-27)

QUOTE(s): Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508 "A large number of gods go back to prehistoric times. The images of a cow and star goddess (Hathor), the falcon (Horus), and the human-shaped figures of the fertility god (Min) can be traced back to that period. Some rites, such as the "running of the Apil-bull," the "hoeing of the ground," and other fertility and hunting rites (e.g., the hippopotamus hunt) presumably date from early times.. Connections with the religions in southwest Asia cannot be traced with certainty." "It is doubtful whether Osiris can be regarded as equal to Tammuz or Adonis, or whether Hathor is related to the "Great Mother." There are closer relations with northeast African religions. The numerous animal cults (especially bovine cults and panther gods) and details of ritual dresses (animal tails, masks, grass aprons, etc) probably are of African origin. The kinship in particular shows some African elements, such as the king as the head ritualist (i.e., medicine man), the limitations and renewal of the reign (jubilees, regicide), and the position of the king's mother (a matriarchal element). Some of them can be found among the Ethiopians in Napata and Meroe, others among the Prenilotic tribes (Shilluk)." (Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508)

QUOTE(s): "While not attempting to underestimate the contribution that Deltaic political and religious institutions made to those of a united Egypt, many Egyptologists now discount the idea that a united prehistoric kingdom of Lower Egypt ever existed."

"While communities such as Ma'adi appear to have played an important role in entrepots through which goods and ideas form south-west Asia filtered into the Nile Valley in later prehistoric times, the main cultural and political tradition that gave rise to the cultural pattern of Early Dynastic Egypt is to be found not in the north but in the south.": The Cambridge History of Africa: Volume 1, From the Earliest Times to c. 500 BC, (Cambridge University Press: 1982), Edited by J. Desmond Clark pp. 500-509

"..the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life." (Source: Shaw, Thurston (1976) Changes in AfricanArchaeology in the Last Forty Years in African Studies since 1945. p. 156-68. London.)

Specific central African tool designs found at the well known Naqada, Badari and Fayum archaeological sites in Egypt (de Heinzelin 1962, Arkell and Ucko, 1956 et al). Shaw (1976) states that "the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life."

Pottery evidence first seen in the Saharan Highlands then spreading to the Nile Valley (Flight 1973). Art motifs of Saharan rock paintings showing similarities to those in pharaonic art. A number of scholars suggest that these earlier artistic styles influenced later pharaonic art via Saharans leaving drier areas and moving into the Nile Valley taking their art styles with them (Mori 1964, Blanc 1964, et al)

Earlier pioneering mummification outside Egypt. The oldest mummy in Africa is of a black Saharan child (Donadoni 1964, Blanc 1964) Frankfort (1956) suggests that it is thus possible to understand the pharaonic worldview by reference to the religious beliefs of these earlier African precursors. Attempts to suggest the root of such practices are due to Caucasoid civilizers from elsewhere are thus contradicted by the data on the ground.

Several cultural practices of Egypt show strong similarities to an African totemic clan base. Childe (1969, 1978), Aldred (1978) and Strouhal (1971) demonstrate linkages with several African practices such as divine kingship and the king as divine rainmaker.

Physical similarities of the early Nile valley populations with that of tropical Africans. Such connections are demonstrated in the work of numerous scholars such as Thompson and Randall Mclver 1905, Falkenburger 1947, and Strouhal 1971. The distance diagrams of Mukherjee, Rao and Trevor (1955) place the ancient Badarians genetically near 'black' tribes such as the Ashanti and the Taita. See also the "Issues of lumping under Mediterranean clusters" section above for similar older analyses.

Serological (blood) evidence of genetic linkages. Paoli 1972 for example found a significant resemblance between ABO frequencies of dynastic Egyptians and the black northern Haratin who are held to be the probable descendants of the original Saharans (Hiernaux, 1975).

Language similarities which include several hundred roots ascribable to African elements (UNESCO 1974)

Ancient Egyptian origin stories ascribing origins of the gods and their ancestors to African locations to the south and west of Egypt (Davidson 1959)

Advanced state building and political unity in Nubia, including writing, administrative apparatus and insignia some 300 years before dynastic Egypt, and the long demonstrated interchange between Nubia and Egypt (Williams 1980)

Newer studies (Wendorf 2001, Wilkinson 1999, et al.) confirm these older analyses. Excavations from Nabta Playa, located about 100km west of Abu Simbel for example, suggest that the Neolithic inhabitants of the region were migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa, based on cultural similarities and social complexity which is thought to be reflective of Egypt's Old Kingdom

Other scholars (Wilkinson 1999) present similar material and cultural evidence- including similarities between predynastic Egypt and traditional African cattle-culture, typical of Southern Sudanese and East African pastoralists of today, and various cultural and artistic data such as iconography on rock art found in both Egypt and in the Sudan.

"Furthermore, the archaeology of northern Africa DOES NOT SUPPORT demic diffusion of farming from the Near East. The evidence presented by Wetterstrom indicates that early African farmers in the Fayum initially INCORPORATED Near Eastern domesticates INTO an INDIGENOUS foraging strategy, and only OVER TIME developed a dependence on horticulture. This is inconsistent with in-migrating farming settlers, who would have brought a more ABRUPT change in subsistence strategy. "The same archaeological pattern occurs west of Egypt, where domestic animals and, later, grains were GRADUALLY adopted after 8000 yr B.P. into the established pre-agricultural Capsian culture, present across the northern Sahara since 10,000 yr B.P. From this continuity, it has been argued that the pre-food-production Capsian peoples spoke languages ancestral to the Berber and/or Chadic branches of Afroasiatic, placing the proto-Afroasiatic period distinctly before 10,000 yr B.P."

Source: The Origins of Afroasiatic Christopher Ehret, S. O. Y. Keita, Paul Newman;, and Peter Bellwood Science 3 December 2004: Vol. 306. no. 5702, p. 1680

"Male Badarian crania were analyzed using the generalized distance of Mahalanobis in a comparative analysis with other African and European series from the Howells?s database. The study was carried out to examine the affinities of the Badarians to evaluate, in preliminary fashion, a demic diffusion hypothesis that postulates that horticulture and the Afro-Asiatic language family were brought ultimately from southern Europe. (The assumption was made that the southern Europeans would be more similar to the central and northern Europeans than to any indigenous African populations.) The Badarians show a greater affinity to indigenous Africans while not being identical. This suggests that the Badarians were more affiliated with local and an indigenous African population than with Europeans." (S.O.Y. Keita. "Early Nile Valley Farmers from El-Badari: Aboriginals or "European" Agro-Nostratic Immigrants? Craniometric Affinities Considered With Other Data". Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 191-208 (2005)

QUOTE(s): "a critical factor in the rise of social complexity and the subsequent emergence of the Egyptian state in Upper Egypt (Hoffman 1979; Hassan 1988). If so, Egypt owes a major debt to those early pastoral groups in the Sahara; they may have provided Egypt with many of those features that still distinguish it from its neighbors to the east." Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 17, 97-123 (1998), "Nabta Playa and Its Role in Northeastern African Prehistory," Fred Wendorf and Romuald Schild.

"Over the last two decades, numerous contemporary (Khartoum Neolithic) sites and cemeteries have been excavated in the Central Sudan.. The most striking point to emerge is the overall similarity of early neolithic developments inhabitation, exchange, material culture and mortuary customs in the Khartoum region to those underway at the same time in the Egyptian Nile Valley, far to the north." (Wengrow, David (2003) "Landscapes of Knowledge, Idioms of Power: The African Foundations of Ancient Egyptian Civilization Reconsidered," in Ancient Egypt in Africa, David O'Connor and Andrew Reid, eds. Ancient Egypt in Africa. London: University College London Press, 2003, pp. 119-137)

QUOTE(s):

"Ancient Egyptian civilization was, in ways and to an extent usually not recognized, fundamentally African. The evidence of both language and culture reveals these African roots. The origins of Egyptian ethnicity lay in the areas south of Egypt. The ancient Egyptian language belonged to the Afrasian family (also called Afroasiatic or, formerly, Hamito-Semitic). The speakers of the earliest Afrasian languages, according to recent studies, were a set of peoples whose lands between 15,000 and 13,000 B.C. stretched from Nubia in the west to far northern Somalia in the east. (Christopher Ehret (1996) "Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture." In Egypt in Africa Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press)

"Ancient Egypt belongs to a language group known as 'Afro-Asiatic' (formerly called Hamito-Semitic) and its closest relatives are other north-east African languages from Somalia to Chad. Egypt's cultural features, both material and ideological and particularly in the earliest phases, show clear connections with that same broad area. In sum, ancient Egypt was an African culture, developed by African peoples, who had wide ranging contacts in north Africa and western Asia." (Morkot, Robert (2005) The Egyptians: An Introduction. Routledge. p. 10)

Calvadosbrandy (talk) 09:59, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Ion Antonescu

Hi, I suggest posting your last comment on Fringe theories Noticeboard here as well, as well as on the talk page of the article. You are making a very good point. --Eurocopter (talk) 13:44, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

egyptian dna

stop reverting content added by other users you're provoking an edit war and you're pov pushing please stop we are not beating to the sound of you're drum wdford it not up to you by yourself to decide how it procedes it up to all editors on the talk page the decsion will not be made on the article itself--Wikiscribe (talk) 18:46, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Please do not undo other people's edits repeatedly, as you are doing in Ancient Egyptian race controversy, or you may be blocked from editing Misplaced Pages. The three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions in a content dispute within a 24-hour period. Additionally, users who perform a large number of reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring, even if they do not technically violate the 3RR. Thank you. --Enric Naval (talk) 06:23, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

User Enric_Naval has been involved in several disruptive edits and removal of content on Talk \pages. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/User_talk:Enric_Naval#Warning:_Disruptive_removal_of_Talk_page_discussion.

removing vandalism

These are the cynical tactics being used against you. Be aware. Don't be played.

talk page notes - originally removed by vandals wanting to hide racist tactics heing used

You insert your content, but they remove it. You remove -ist dogma, they put it back. You have no choice but to perform on them what is called a revert. When other editors continue to remove your content, and you stand tall against them, you are in a revert war.

There will certainly be many users of the opposite ideology. Worse still are the "neutrals" (crypto--ists in fact, even if they don't know it!). These users have an ideology even more extreme and yet more sinister than your ideological opposites: adherence to that nonsense, WP:NPOV. Those spoil-sports can be a real nuisance, as they can be harder to bait and harder to discredit. On the plus side, they are unlikely to care as much, so doggedness may be all you need here.

But don't worry, if you follow a few simple rules, you can prevail in most revert wars and in most editorial conflict, and thus spread the faith to your heart's content.

Basic strategy

Know the editorial background and don't pick a fight you can never win. Sometimes you won't know which other users will have these pages on their watchlist. If too many users will object strongly, you can never win. In this case it's probably better not to fight in the first place. All you will gain is some unwanted fame and maybe a block or two.
Do not violate WP:3RR, otherwise your opponent can have you blocked, and will thus be free to have his or her version of the particular page or pages for at least the length of your block. Being blocked also increases the chances of future admin intervention coming down against you.
Be dogged. Persist as far as you can and never give up. If you persist longer than your opponent, you will win. Revert-war stamina will bring victory.

Intermediate tactics and gambits

Know that the initiator has the advantage! Insertion of new content is not a revert. If your opponent inserts something first, this doesn't count as a revert. It goes like this: OPPONENTEDIT -> YOURREVERT1 -> OPPPONENTREVERT1 -> YOURREVERT2 -> OPPONENTREVERT2 -> YOURREVERT3 -> OPPONENTREVERT3 -> YOUR3RRVIOLATION. OPPONENT thus wins because OPPONENT moved first. SO then, if revert and counter-revert follow, your opponent will be emerge with an advantage. Your opponent will always win within any 24-hour cycle. If the reverting happens quickly, your daily allowance of reverts could be over in minutes. You must therefore pick your revert timing carefully. And know that the above rule can actually be used to your advantage. As WP:3RR concerns the reversion of any content, you can bleed your opponent's allowance away by insertion of different content. You can never violate WP:3RR by adding new content. Make an edit you know your opponent won't like. If he reverts it, you can add different content your opponent also won't like. If you do this three times and are reverted three times, your opponent is out of reverts for the day, and you can safely restore your preferred version.
Buffer your reverts and make boring edits also count! After you've performed a major revert to your opponent, make a number of small basic edits improving the language or formatting of the article. Do as many of these as you can, preferably in separate edits. Then if your opponent reverts you, they will either have the added work of adding your small edits back or mass reverting you. I.e. you can either waste their time (more than you'll waste performing them) or make them look bad to any admin or commentator.
Know your opponent's schedule. Most human beings sleep for around 8 hours each day. If you know when that will occur for your opponent, revert them just after their sleep probably begins, and you will have the whole sleep with the right version. Additionally, the opponent may have other regular hours he or she spends away from wikipedia. If you know those too, you'll be in an even better position.

Protecting yourself against forces of nature

Beware of RanSAI, random sanctimonious admininstrative intervention. This force of nature is unpredictable, and could come along at any time. As a result, you have to ensure you are as prepared as possible.

Make an appearance of using the talk page now and then. This will ameliorate the bad appearance of "edit warring" in any random admin's eyes.
Try to appear to follow wikipedia guidelines on editorial interaction, such as WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF. Serious violations of these are considered by many trigger-happy admins to be blockable offenses in their own right, and they also increase the chances of being blocked for edit warring by reducing the admin's sympathy for you.
Be as subtley discourteous towards your opponent as possible. This may require detailed knowledge of the opponent's character, but if pulled off can be very rewarding. Causing your opponent offense and frustration without obviously doing so can make them violate WP:CIVIL with no loss to yourself. Your opponent will be discredited, and if blocked, you will be allowed to edit unopposed and retain your own preferred versions of pages for at least the length of the block.
If a RanSAI does occur, try to get in the admin's good-books as quickly as you can. Appeal to the admin's self-righteousness. This may mean apologizing immediately for any offence you "may have caused". Try at least to seize the initiative, and if you see it coming, get to the admin before your opponent does. You can even, if your opponent has violated WP:CIVIL (or even if he hasn't), collect some diffs and bring it to the admin's attention. If new to the situation, the admin will probably take the view that things have just got heated, so you should say this before the admin does and suggest that you "probably need to cool down".
Once RanSAI has occurred, it is likely that the intensity of your opponent's opposition will die down for a while. You should be very careful about how you take advantage of this, as the admin may still be watching. One approach in many cases is to bombard the admin with more info than he or she will be interested in reading or be able to process. This will at least discourage some other admins from fresh interference, and it may even cause the de facto end to the entire RanSAI, leaving you once again one-on-one.

Wikiculture and dealing with neutral "experts"

David hoists the severed head of Goliath.

The good news is that on wikipedia, despite being an encyclopedia, knowledge is egalitarian, discipline is not. This is one of your biggest advantages. The enforcers of wikipedia policy, its administrative class, are unlikely to be a big deal to you, as long as you aren't too clumsy. Admins enforce disciplinary policies, not encyclopedic policies. Yes WP:NPOV is in theory a policy, but they won't have any knowledge of your pet-topics or much interest in them, being primarily a collection of seasoned vandal-fighters and talk-loving, action-shy mandarins. The only policies taken seriously in general and in practice are policies concerning behaviour and discipline. With encyclopedic information, all you need to prevail are numbers! Thus, even if some "neutral" has more knowledge than you, you can still make him your bitch.

When engaged in a revert-war with this "expert", bombard him with endless posts on the talk page. If he makes any arguments which are hard to refute, well, just skip over them in your response and they are as good as nullified (who else is reading, after all!). He then may do one of the following. 1) Get tired and go away ... good! 2) Ignore you and continue reverting ... in which case you can try to have him blocked for revert-warring without discussion. 3) Get frustrated and become "uncivil" ... again, have some champagne, you can get him blocked.
Bog him down. The "expert" doesn't have a lot of time, and probably wants to do something else. With all the time you have, with any luck you can drive him into the ground and away from your issues and perhaps from wikipedia.
Tag sentences elsewhere. Staying with the theme of time-wasting, check out some of this "expert"'s other articles and see if they have many sentences in "need" of citations. Stick some tags on them, especially if the article in question was written long ago. Either your "expert" will need to find and write out a bunch of citations, killing loads of his time, or your "expert" will, knowing he can never prove you've only done this in bad faith, get frustrated, lose his restraint and perhaps get himself closer to that block or warning you're after.
Find brothers-of-the-faith. With proper use of email, instant messenger, talk pages and "project pages", you can overwhelm with numbers. After all, it's all a numbers game, and three brothers alone will can nullify one "expert" in a revert war without performing more than one revert. With the recent advent of blind anti-"edit-warring" ideology in the admin community, he has no chance. If he continues to try to enforce WP:NPOV (even if he is an admin!), you can bust his sorry ass into blockville. You can revert, he must edit-war. He can spend all his wiki-time pouring his little heart and brain into the talk pages, and, as long as you or one of your friends "responds" occassionally, you can watch and laugh knowing your article is safe!
If the above doesn't work, you can always create brothers-of-the-faith. This means creating sockpuppets, new usernames which you control. You can create, in theory, as many as you like. If you think this is wrong, then just remember it's merely a small wrong which you are using to overcome a greater wrong! Whenever you need a friend to add extra weight to a discussion, or just that one more revert, your new friend or friends will definitely be there for you. You can even close votes and create your own WP:Consensus from time to time, when the issue is important enough. The downside is that if you do this too often, you'll create suspicion which may lead to a checkuser discovering your holy misdemeanors. The upside on that is that if you are careful and use your new friends conservatively, it will take months, maybe even years, and a lot of work, to find you out. If you are careful enough, perhaps even never. And even if they do, you can start again from scratch!

http://en.wikipedia.org/User:Deacon_of_Pndapetzim/How_to_win_a_revert_war Thatmanbolt (talk) 14:14, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Be cool

http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Three-revert_rule

Be aware that there is a 3 revert rule that you have violated. I will cut you slack and not report you, but don't revert me again arbitrarily. You seem to rearrange and tamper with EVERY new edit I or others make. And please don't personally attack me to justify why.Taharqa (talk) 17:03, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Any time you change someone's edit to a previous or newer condition that they object to, it is a revert my friend. What you call "poor wording" isn't the issue, your actions to control wording is. I actually feel the same way (the the wording in the article is VERY VERY VERY poor and incoherent, but I'm not as aggressive as you in reverting people, even though I have been in my edits. Follow the rules. I gave you the link, you have no excuse.Taharqa (talk) 17:22, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

NPOV concern

Wford, I think you are contributing in a fairly decent way, but I can see you have a predestined purpose as to refute the black Egypt side. Do you understand the difference between Afrocentricism and the acknowledgement that the Egyptians are black? For example, The Ashanti of Ghana are black. It would not be afrocentric to claim that. The issue with Egypt is it's proximity to people accepted as non black and the fact that over the past 200 or so years of Egyptian research, even Eurocentric and racist archaeologists have changed their position. This is one indication that the blackness of the Egyptians is not fringe. The other is that black people are by definition an ethnically exogamous group. I can find little historical evidence outside of the recent issue in Darfur and a couple of examples otherwise. Semitics (not Asiatics as a whole) are in the middle. Western-Europeans for the past 500 years have been ethnically endogamous, but socially exogamous in that they took people from all over the world to do the hard work in the armies, fields, and so forth. So that's why you have African-Americans distinct but a part of America. --Panehesy (talk) 20:19, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

then let us look at your definition of Black and see if I can apply it sensibly elsewhere. In South Africa, the "Colored" group is based on an understanding that people are, well not white, and yet have white or asian ancestors. Ancient Egypt was not part of a white or Asian culture. Lets take a look at the "black people" article itself. As you can see, there is an inconsistency. There is a Colored picture used as an example in the article. That doesn't make sense. Also, the "Colored" group in South Africa is a miscellaneous group. Various entirely unrelated people are considered colored. It's a purely social invention. An eskimo and a San person, being futhest geographically, historically, and genetically, are both considered Colored. The name has no meaning other than "not-black, not-white" (the other two groups). Now, with the Ancient Egyptians, who are the dominant group, their heritage is diametrically linked to the Nubians and Kushites, that's the debate here. Chinese are classified as black in South Africa now. SO I can't base the South African definition of black as a reasonable way to look at ancient cultures. In fact, what other country follows this interpretation of blackness besides Haiti? I also agree the one drop rule doesn't work either where the people in question are indisitinguishable, culturall, socially, familywise, and ancestry from non-blacks (save for the one ancestor waaaay back). --Panehesy (talk) 20:57, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

The Black heritage of a group of people is not based on a social label. The classification of black people as a specific race is problematic but only when specific racial "boundaries" are set which not all black people fall into. The debate is not really about whether or not the Egyptians were black, but whether or not Egyptians that looked like people we see as black today predominated society in those days. For me honestly, I see that as true, and thus I call them black. I also think that between you, me, and most, if those Egyptians were transplanted here, they would be considered black, their Kemetic heritage being unknown to the observer. I'm trying to get that message across. But the issue also is around the fact that Eurocentrics are bound by something I cannot understand to minimalize the black contributions by inserting weasel words, misrepresenting historical data, and pre-emptively altering the context of the article in order to change the appearance of it. Let the reader judge what is and what is not black. But let us show pictures of negroid Egyptians, example of Nubian-Egyptian relationships, and similarities to other African groups south of the Saharan desert. There is no reason to exclude these things. The article makes insufficient mention of them. --Panehesy (talk) 21:08, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Draft page

We should use the draft page to store specific edits that any of the editors have in mind. I wouldn't be too concerned about the main page at this time, because new edits that have not been discussed are likely to be reverted out. Wapondaponda (talk) 13:04, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

April 2009

Welcome to Misplaced Pages. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, we would like to remind you not to attack other editors, as you did on Land of Punt. Please comment on the contributions and not the contributors. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. I am referring to your edit summary where you wrote "restored blatant POV vandalism committed by Taharqa". This was not vandalism, please read WP:Vandalism -- and WP:SYN as some of your edits are original research Dougweller (talk) 09:55, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

^Why are you warning me for something that you are doing and have been warned for?. Please read the rules as laid out above or you're going to get in trouble. I don't think you realize how patient people are being with you. Chill out and stop attacking people and vandalizing the pages. You are clearly violating wiki's original research policy no matter if you realize or not.Taharqa (talk) 19:48, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

collaterol damage

please note that lots of south africans work through the same service providers

Your request to be unblocked has been granted for the following reason(s):

Autoblock #1406145 lifted or expired.

Request handled by: Mango juice 13:30, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Unblocking administrator: Please check for active autoblocks on this user after accepting the unblock request.

Classical African Civilization

Hi. I like your edits to that page and now agree with them. Thanks. AnwarSadatFan (talk) 07:51, 5 May 2009 (UTC)