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Revision as of 07:22, 15 June 2009 by Dbachmann (talk | contribs) (import from Ancient Egyptian race controversy)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Egypt being at the crossroads of several major cultural areals, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, the Sahara and East Africa, has a long and involved population history.
Egypt has experienced several mass migrations and invasions during its history, including by the Canaanites, the Libyans, the Nubians, the Assyrians, the Kushites, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans nd the Arabs. The various conquests have made the relationship between Modern Egyptians and Ancient Egyptians unclear
Prehistory
During the Paleolithic the Nile Valley was inhabited by various hunter gatherer populations. About 10,000 years ago the Sahara Desert had a wet phase. People from the surrounding areas moved into the Sahara, and evidence suggests that the populations of the Nile Valley reduced in size. Rock paintings from Algeria at Tassili n'Ajjer reveal that some of the Saharan population were black Africans. It is unclear when Caucasoid populations, such as the ancestors of Berbers, first arrived in North Africa from Eurasia. There are two theories, one is that the ancestors of the Berbers have been present in North Africa since paleolithic times, the other theory is that the Caucasoid populations only reached North Africa during the Neolithic, when they brought domesticated cereals and animals from the Near East. About 5,000 years ago the wet phase of the Sahara came to end. Saharan population retreated to the south towards the Sahel, and East towards the Nile Valley. It is these populations that played a major role in the formation of the Egyptian state as they brought their food crops, sheep, goats and cattle to the Nile Valley.
Predynastic Egypt
The predynastic period dates to the end of the fourth millenium BC. From about 5000 to 4200BC the Merimde Culture flourished in Lower Egypt. This culture has links to Palestine. The pottery of the Buto Maadi Culture, best known from the site at Maadi near Cairo, also shows strong connections to South Palestine.
In Upper Egypt the predynastic Badarian culture was followed by the Naqada culture. The origins of these people is still not fully understood, but their crops came originally from the Near East. There was also significant contact between the peoples of the Naqada culture and the Nubian A-Group people. The origins of the Egyptian dynastic state can be traced to the Naqada culture.
Some have suggested that the Nubian A-Group conquered the Naqada and then went on to conquer Lower Egypt to begin the dynastic era. However this view is disputed by many scholars. Some studies have however described human remains from both the Naqada and Badarian cultures as clustering with Nubians or Negroids than with Northern Egyptian remains.
Biogeographic origin based on cultural data
Located in the extreme north-east corner of Africa, ancient Egyptian society was at a crossroads between the African and Near Eastern regions. Early proponents of the Dynastic Race Theory based their hypothesis on the increased novelty and seemingly rapid change in pre-dynastic pottery and noted trade contacts between ancient Egypt and the Middle East. This is no longer the dominant view in Egyptology, however the evidence on which it was based still suggests influence from these regions. Fekri Hassan and Edwin et al point to mutual influence from both inner Africa as well as the Levant. However according to one author this influence seems to have had minimal impact on the indigenous populations already present.
One author has stated that the Naqada phase of predynastic Egyptians in Upper Egypt shared an almost identical culture with A-group peoples of the Lower Sudan. Based in part on the similarities at the royal tombs at Qustul, some scholars have even proposed an Egyptian origin in Nubia among the A-group. In 1996 Lovell and Prowse reported the presence of individual rulers buried at Naqada in what they interpreted to be elite, high status tombs, showing them to be more closely related morphologically to populations in Northern Nubia than those in Southern Egypt. Most scholars however, have rejected this hypothesis and cite the presence of royal tombs that are contemporaneous with that of Qustul and just as elaborate, together with problems with the dating techniques.
The language of the Nubian people is one of the Nilo-Saharan languages, whereas the language of the Egyptian people was one of the Afro-Asiatic languages.
Toby Wilkonson, in his book "Genesis of the Pharaohs", proposes an origin for the Egyptians somewhere in the Eastern Desert. He presents evidence that much of predynastic Egypt duplicated the traditional African cattle-culture typical of Southern Sudanese and East African pastoralists of today. Kendall agrees with Wilkinson's interpretation that ancient rock art in the region may depict the first examples of the royal crowns, while also pointing to Qustul in Nubia as a likely candidate for the origins of the white crown, being that the earliest known example of it was discovered in this area.
Excavations from Nabta Playa, located about 100 km west of Abu Simbel, suggest that the Neolithic inhabitants of the region were migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa. However there is also evidence that sheep and goats were introduced into Nabta from Southwest Asia about 8000 years ago. There is some speculation that this culture is likely to be the predecessor of the Egyptians, based on cultural similarities and social complexity which is thought to be reflective of Egypt's Old Kingdom.
DNA studies
Further information: Archaeogenetics of the Near EastAttempts to extract ancient DNA or aDNA from Ancient Egyptian remains have yielded little or no success. Climatic conditions and the mummification process could hasten the deterioration of DNA. Contamination from handling and intrusion from microbes have also created obstacles to recovery of Ancient DNA. Consequently most DNA studies have been carried out on modern Egyptian populations with the intent of learning about the influences of historical migrations on the population of Egypt. However, there was one notable study of ancient mummies of the 12th Dynasty, performed by Paabo and Di Rienzo, which identified multiple lines of descent, including some from sub-Saharan Africa. The other lineages were not identified but Keita (1996) speculates that they may also have been Negro in origin.
DNA studies on modern Egyptians
Egypt has experienced several mass migrations and invasions during its history, including by the Canaanites, the Libyans, the Nubians, the Assyrians, the Kushites, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans and the Muslim Arabs. The various conquests have made the relationship between Modern Egyptians and Ancient Egyptians unclear. While Afrocentrists such as Ivan van Sertima argue that the Egyptians were primarily Africoid before the many conquests of Egypt diluted the Africanity of the Egyptian people, other scholars such as Frank Yurco believe that Modern Egyptians are the direct descendants of the Ancient Egyptians.
In general, various DNA studies have found that the gene frequencies of modern North African populations are intermediate between those of Sub-Saharan Africa and Eurasia, though possessing a greater genetic affinity with the populations of Eurasia than they do with Sub-Saharan Africans.
Luis, Rowold et al found that the diverse NRY haplotypes observed in a population of mixed Arabs and Berbers found that the majority of haplogroups, about 59% were of Eurasian origin. They found that markers signaling the Neolithic expansion from the Middle East constitute the predominant component. The remaining 39.5% were clades that belonged to Haplogroup E, the predominant Haplogroup in Sub-Saharan Africa. E3b was the predominant African clade of Haplogroup E found in the Egyptian population. E3b is the haplogroup characteristic of Afro-Asiatic speakers and evidence suggests that E3b originated in East Africa. About 9% of were clades associated with Sub-Saharan Africans who are not Afro-Asiatic speakers.
A study by Krings et al. from 1999 on mitochondrial DNA clines along the Nile Valley found that a Eurasian cline runs from Northern Egypt to Southern Sudan, and a Sub-Saharan cline extends from Southern Sudan to Northern Egypt. Another study based on maternal lineages links modern Egyptians with people from modern Eritrea/Ethiopia such as the Afro-Asiatic-speaking Tigre. Similarly, an mtDNA study of modern Egyptians from the Gurna region near Thebes in Southern Egypt revealed that Eurasian haplogroups represented 61% of the population, with the remainder 39% being of Sub-Saharan origin. The oral tradition of the Gurna people indicates that they descend from the ancient Egyptians
A study using the Y-chromosome of modern Egyptian males found similar results, namely that African haplogroups are predominant in the South but the predominant haplogroups in the North are characteristic of other North African populations..
A study of Coptic ethnic group in Sudan found relatively high frequencies of Sub-Saharan Haplogroup B (Y-DNA). The Copts are descendants of Egyptians who have recently migrated from Egypt. According to the study, the presence of Sub-Saharan haplogroups is consistent with the historical record in which southern Egypt was colonized by Nilotic populations during the early state formation.
The results of these genetic studies is consistent with the historical record, which records significant bidirectional contact between Egypt and Nubia within the last few thousand years.
Anthropometric indicators
Craniofacial criteria
In 1912 Franz Boas demonstrated that cranial shape is heavily influenced by environmental factors, and therefore cranial measurements cannot be a reliable indicator of inherited influences such as race. This conclusion was supported in 2003 in a paper by Gravlee, Bernard and Leonard.
A survey cited by Kemp (2005) of ancient Egyptian crania spanning all time periods found that the Egyptian population as a whole clusters more closely to the Nubian and Ethiopic groups of the Nile valley than to Asian and Mediterranean groups, but that they also cluster more closely to the Asian and Mediterranean groups than they did to the Negroid and Archaic African groups. Kemp also noted that Egypt conquored and settled Nubia beginning in the 1st Dynasty.
Anthropologist Nancy Lovell states the following:
"must be placed in the context of hypotheses informed by archaeological, linguistic, geographic and other data. In such contexts, the physical anthropological evidence indicates that early Nile Valley populations can be identified as part of an African lineage, but exhibiting local variation. This variation represents the short and long term effects of evolutionary forces, such as gene flow, genetic drift, and natural selection, influenced by culture and geography."
This view was also shared by the late Egyptologist, Frank Yurco.
A 2005 study by Keita of predynastic Badarian (Southern Egyptian) crania found that the Badarian samples cluster more closely with the tropical African samples than with European samples, although no Asian samples were included.
Sonia Zakrzewski in 2007 noted that genetic continuity occurs over the Egyptian Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods, but that a relatively high level of genetic differentiation was sustained over this time period. She concluded therefore that the process of state formation itself may have been mainly an indigenous process, but that it may have occurred in association with in-migration, particularly during the Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom periods.
However a craniofacial study by C. Loring Brace et. al. (1993) concluded that: "The Predynastic of Upper Egypt and the Late Dynastic of Lower Egypt are more closely related to each other than to any other population. As a whole, they show ties with the European Neolithic, North Africa, modern Europe, and, more remotely, India, Somalia, eastern Asia, Oceania, or the New World."
Anthropologist Shomarka Keita and others have pointed out the apparent contradictions of these conclusions, and have also pointed out that such relationships need not necessarily suggest gene-flow.
In 2008 Keita again found that the early predynastic/dynastic groups in Southern Egypt were similar craniometrically to African Nilotic groups, but concluded that more material is needed to make a firm conclusion about the relationship between the early Holocene Nile valley populations and later ancient Egyptians.
Limb ratios
Anthropologist C. Loring Brace points out that limb elongation is "clearly related to the dissipation of metabolically generated heat" in areas of higher ambient temperature. He also stated that "skin color intensification and distal limb elongation is apparent wherever people have been long-term residents of the tropics". These features have been observed among Egyptian samples. According to Robins and Shute the average limb elongation ratios among ancient Egyptians is higher than that of modern West Africans who reside much closer to the equator. Robins and Shute therefore term the ancient Egyptians to be "super-negroid" but state that although the body plans of the ancient Egyptians were closer to those of modern negroes than for modern whites, “this does not mean that the ancient Egyptians were negroes". Anthropologist S.O.Y. Keita criticized Robins and Shute, stating they do not interpret their results within an adaptive context, and stating that they imply “misleadingly” that early southern Egyptians were not a "part of the Saharo-tropical group, which included Negroes". Gallagher et al also points out that "body proportions are under strong climatic selection and evidence remarkable stability within regional lineages". Zakrzewski (2003) studied skeletal samples from the Badarian period to the Middle Kingdom. She confirmed the results of Robins and Shute that Ancient Egyptians in general had "tropical body plans” but that their proportions were actually "super-negroid".
Trikhanus (1981) found Egyptians to plot closest to tropical Africans and not Mediterranean Europeans residing in a roughly similar climatic area. A more recent study compared ancient Egyptian osteology to that of African-Americans and White Americans, and found that the stature of the Ancient Egyptians was more similar to the stature of African-Americans, although it was not identical.
Dental morphology
A 2006 bioarchaeological study on the dental morphology of ancient Egyptians by Prof. Joel Irish shows dental traits characteristic of indigenous North Africans and to a lesser extent Southwest Asian and southern European populations. Among the samples included in the study is skeletal material from the Hawara tombs of Fayum, (from the Roman period) which clustered very closely with the Badarian series of the predynastic period. All the samples, particularly those of the Dynastic period, were significantly divergent from a neolithic West Saharan sample from Lower Nubia. Biological continuity was also found intact from the dynastic to the post-pharaonic periods. According to Irish:
samples exhibit morphologically simple, mass-reduced dentitions that are similar to those in populations from greater North Africa (Irish, 1993, 1998a–c, 2000) and, to a lesser extent, western Asia and Europe (Turner, 1985a; Turner and Markowitz, 1990; Roler, 1992; Lipschultz, 1996; Irish, 1998a).
Anthropologist Shomarka Keita takes issue with the suggestion of Irish et al that Egyptians and Nubians were not primary descendants of the African epipaleolithic and Neolithic populations. Keita also criticizes them for ignoring the possibility that the dentition of the ancient Egyptians could have been caused by "in situ microevolution" driven by dietary change, rather than by racial admixture.
Racial aspects
{{main|Ancient Egyptian race controversy]] In Afrocentrism, the "race of the Ancient Egyptians" is a notable topic of controversy.
For example, Afrocentrists such as Ivan van Sertima argue that the Egyptians were primarily Africoid before the many conquests of Egypt diluted the Africanity of the Egyptian people.. Others believe that Modern Egyptians are the direct descendants of the Ancient Egyptians, with the various foreign migrations having had little impact on the Egyptian population.
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