Ancient Egyptians and Nubians Were Caucasoid

Ancient DNA has confirmed that Ancient Egyptians were Middle Eastern and not Sub-Saharan African. This was already suggested by earlier genetic studies that found North Africans were the result of a back-migration from West Asia. But even before that, older craniofacial analyses of skeletal samples from all over Egypt (and Nubia) spanning all of ancient history also showed the same thing.

Here are five lines of anthropological evidence that group Ancient Egyptians and Nubians with North Africans, West/South Asians and Europeans (Caucasoids), and separate them from Sub-Saharan Africans (Negroids). Note that Horn Africans (Somalis) cluster with Caucasoids in some cases and Negroids in others, which indicates they're a racially mixed population that's not representative of either Sub-Saharan Africans or Egyptians and Nubians.

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1. Craniometric

Combined samples of Pre-Dynastic (Naqada) and Late Dynastic (Giza) Egyptians, and Bronze Age, Early Christian and Medieval Nubians, cluster with combined samples of Ancient and Modern North Africans, East Indians and Europeans.


Brace et al. "Clines and clusters versus 'Race:' a test in ancient Egypt and the case of a death on the Nile". Am J Phys Anthro, 1993.

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2. Cranial Non-metric

Pre-Dynastic Egyptians from Naqada (#59), 26th-30th Dynasty Egyptians from Gizeh (#60), 12th-13th Dynasty Nubians from Kerma (#61), and Early Christian or Christian Nubians (#62) cluster with South Asians (#44) and several European groups: Greeks (#48), Scandinavians (#51 and #52) and Germans (#53). [NOTE that Somalis are up with Sub-Saharan Africans (#63)]


Hanihara et al. "Characterization of biological diversity through analysis of discrete cranial traits". Am J Phys Anthro, 2003.

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3. Dental Metric

Pre-Dynastic and 12th-29th Dynasty Egyptians cluster with Afghans and North Indians on the edge of a larger cluster of Europeans and West Asians. [NOTE that here again, Somalis show Sub-Saharan affinities and don't cluster with Ancient Egyptians.]


Hanihara and Ishida. "Metric dental variation of major human populations". Am J Phys Anthro, 2005.

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4. Dental Non-metric

12th Dynasty (Lisht), Roman/Byzantine (El Hesa), and Byzantine (Kharga) Egyptians, and Pharonic, Meroitic, X-group and Christian Nubians, cluster with other North Africans and Europeans (Poundbury, England).


Joel D. Irish. "Diachronic and synchronic dental trait affinities of late and post-pleistocene peoples from North Africa". Homo, 1998b.

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5. Prognathism

Ancient Egyptians from Badari, Pre-Dynastic Egyptians from Naqada, and 26th-30th Dynasty Egyptians from Gizeh, as well as 12th-13th Dynasty Nubians from Kerma and Early Christian or Christian Nubians, all cluster with Europeans and West/South Asians on the negative end of the prognathism scale.


Tsunehiko Hanihara. "Frontal and Facial Flatness of Major Human Populations". Am J Phys Anthro, 2000.

Reconstruction of an Ancient Egyptian

A 3,500-year-old noble Egyptian called Nebiri has been brought back to life through modern forensics.

Scientists have reconstructed the face of the ancient mummy, and discovered he had a prominent nose, wide jaw, straight eyebrows and moderately thick lips.

[...]

Nebiri is thought to have been a member of the Egyptian elite who served as the Chief of the Stables, looking after royal horses, during the reign of Thutmoses III, a pharaoh from the 18th Dynasty of ancient Egypt.

His remains were discovered in the Valley of the Queens in Luxor in 1904, but as the tomb has been plundered, just his head and jars containing his organs remained.

Researchers from the University of Turin have now used a range of facial reconstruction techniques to produce an impressive facial approximation.

To reconstruct his face, the researchers used a mixture of computer modelling and anthropological research.

The team then used a computer programme to start to build up a picture of the Egyptian's face.

[...]

Speaking to Live Science, Raffaella Bianucci, who led the study, said: 'He was between 45 [and] 60 years old when he died.

Shivali Best. "The face of Nebiri revealed: Scientists reconstruct the head of the ancient Egyptian 'Chief of Stables', 3,500 years after he died of heart failure". MailOnline – Science & Tech, 11:01 BST, 20 June 2017.

First Ancient Egyptian Genomes

This is a talk that will be given at the 82nd annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Vancouver, BC, Canada from March 29–April 2, 2017. New genome-wide data show that Ancient Egyptians had less Sub-Saharan African ancestry than Modern Egyptians and were closely related to Middle Easterners, which will surely upset Afrocentrists. More ancient genomes from earlier periods should follow soon.

[203] Ancient Egyptian Mummy Genomes Suggest an Increase of Sub-Saharan African Ancestry in Post-Roman Periods

Krause, Johannes (Max Planck Institute—SHH), Verena Schuenemann (Institute for Archaeological Sciences, University of Tübingen), Alexander Peltzer (Department for Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Inst), Wolfgang Haak (Department for Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Inst) and Stephan Schiffels (Department for Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Inst)

Egypt, located on the isthmus of Africa, is an ideal region to study historical population dynamics due to its geographic location and documented interactions with ancient civilizations in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Particularly, in the first millennium BCE Egypt endured foreign domination leading to growing numbers of foreigners living within its borders possibly contributing genetically to the local population. Here we mtDNA and nuclear DNA from mummified humans recovered from Middle Egypt that span around 1,300 years of ancient Egyptian history from the Third Intermediate to the Roman Period. Our analyses reveal that ancient Egyptians shared more Near Eastern ancestry than present-day Egyptians, who received additional Sub-Saharan admixture in more recent times. This analysis establishes ancient Egyptian mummies as a genetic source to study ancient human history and offers the perspective of deciphering Egypt’s past at a genome-wide level.

Hopefully a deeper transect, into the Old Kingdom, Early Dynastic, and Predynastic, is to follow. My prediction (I would be happy to be wrong) is that this DNA came from tooth or bone — I think mummified soft tissue has mostly been a source of disappointment. Differential relatedness of modern Copts and non-Copts to the ancient samples would be something to look out for.

If any of these talks is going to really upset some people, it’ll be this one.

LINK

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UPDATE 06/01/17: The study that goes with this talk is out now, and the Ancient Egyptian samples cluster with ancient Neolithic Levantines, and modern Bedouin, Palestinian and Lebanese Arabs.

ABSTRACT: Egypt, located on the isthmus of Africa, is an ideal region to study historical population dynamics due to its geographic location and documented interactions with ancient civilizations in Africa, Asia and Europe. Particularly, in the first millennium BCE Egypt endured foreign domination leading to growing numbers of foreigners living within its borders possibly contributing genetically to the local population. Here we present 90 mitochondrial genomes as well as genome-wide data sets from three individuals obtained from Egyptian mummies. The samples recovered from Middle Egypt span around 1,300 years of ancient Egyptian history from the New Kingdom to the Roman Period. Our analyses reveal that ancient Egyptians shared more ancestry with Near Easterners than present-day Egyptians, who received additional sub-Saharan admixture in more recent times. This analysis establishes ancient Egyptian mummies as a genetic source to study ancient human history and offers the perspective of deciphering Egypt’s past at a genome-wide level.

Figure 4 | Principal component analysis and genetic clustering of genome-wide DNA from three ancient Egyptians. (a) Principal Component Analysis-based genome-wide SNP data of three ancient Egyptians, 2,367 modern individuals and 294 previously published ancient genomes, (b) subset of the full ADMIXTURE analysis (Supplementary Fig. 4).

Schuenemann et al. "Ancient Egyptian mummy genomes suggest an increase of Sub-Saharan African ancestry in post-Roman periods". Nature Communications, 2017.

Study Clarification V

This study claims Sub-Saharan African affinities in a Byzantine population from southwest Turkey, excavated at the archeological site of Sagalassos, and ridiculously extrapolates from that similar affinities in Mesolithic and Neolithic populations throughout North Africa, West Asia and Europe. The problem is, none of it is supported either by the present data or the other sources cited.

[NB: The study is much more noteworthy for demonstrating once again the Caucasoid affinities of Ancient Egyptians and Nubians, which the Afrocentrists who quote it selectively always fail to notice.]

Study:

Cranial Discrete Traits in a Byzantine Population and Eastern
Mediterranean Population Movements

Ricaut and Waelkens (2008)
Human Biology

Link to Abstract

Misused Quotes:

Finally, as noted previously, intriguing affinity patterns of the Sagalassos population have been detected without obvious explanations: on the one hand, with two populations from northern and central Europe (Scandinavia and Germany); and on the other hand, with two sub-Saharan populations (Somalia and Gabon).

[...]

From the Mesolithic to the early Neolithic period different lines of evidence support an out-of-Africa Mesolithic migration to the Levant by northeastern African groups that had biological affinities with sub-Saharan populations.

Clarification:

Affinities with Somalis are easy enough to explain, owing to that population's Caucasoid ancestry. Affinities with Gabon not so much. But it turns out that these are tenuous at best and not manifested in all of the data:

Finally, a detailed review of the different statistical tests (MMD_st; MDS and Ward clustering) shows that the unexpected biological proximity of some northern and central European and sub-Saharan populations to the Sagalassos population is not supported to the same significance. Indeed, as seen by the MMD_st values displayed in Table 3, Scandinavians and Germans (MMD_st of 0.72 and 1.02, respectively) present stronger affinity to Sagalassos than populations from Somalia and Gabon, which have nearly significant MMD_st values (1.68 and 1.93, respectively). In addition, only the biological affinity between the Sagalassos and Scandinavian populations suggested by the MMD_st values is preserved when all the comparative populations are considered (see Figures 2 and 3).

Indeed, Figures 2 and 3 demonstrate that the true affinities of the Sagalassos population (and also the Ancient Egyptians and Nubians) are with Western Eurasians/Caucasoids:

The MDS representation of the global data set of 28 populations (Figure 2) shows roughly three main population clusters: (1) Central, Northeast, and East Eurasian populations, which are found in the top left; (2) West Eurasian and ancient Egyptian and Sudanese populations in the lower part; and (3) recent sub-Saharan populations in the top right. The Sagalassos population clusters with the second group and is most closely related to Greek, Cypriot/Turkish, and Scandinavian populations.

The dendrogram produced by Ward's clustering procedure for the global data set is shown in Figure 3 and provides a relatively similar representation of the MMD_st distance matrix than that provide by the MDS analysis. The populations clearly fall into two groups. The first main group can be broken down into two subgroups: (1) all the recent sub-Saharan populations and (2) mainly Central, East, and Northeast Eurasians. West Eurasians form the second main group, which is also subdivided into two subgroups. One of these subgroups includes all the eastern Mediterranean populations (three ancient Egyptian/Sudanese populations from Naqada, Gizeh, and Kerma as well as the Cypriot/Turkish, Greek, and Sagalassian populations) and the Scandinavian sample; the second subgroup includes the other West Eurasian populations.

Yet even with this admitted lack of support for their main claim, the authors go on to speculate at length about how these non-existent "Sub-Saharan morphological elements" could have entered the Sagalassos population, which leads them to cite all sorts of dubious conclusions about Nazlet Khater Man, Mesolithic Nubians, Natufians and Neolithic Farmers, all tied together with the genetic "evidence" of adaptive sickle cell and North African haplogroup E-M78.

Another perfectly good study marred by poor analysis that unfortunately plays right into the hands of people with an Afrocentric racial agenda.

Black History Professor Rejects Afrocentrism

Clarence E. Walker. We Can't Go Home Again: an Argument about Afrocentrism

By Fred R. van Hartesveldt
Teaching History: A Journal of Methods
Fall, 2003

The factual flaws in much of the writing about Afrocentrism have been exposed in the past. Clarence Walker does so again in We Can't Go Home Again, and does so effectively. In this regard he focuses particularly on the Afrocentric assertion that Egyptians were black and the wellspring of Western civilization. He makes very clear that the modern concept of race as identity simply does not apply to the variegated population of Egypt and would not have been understood there. The importance of his book, however, does not lie in renewing and expanding the critique of the factual and analytical content of Afrocentric literature.

Walker refers to Afrocentrism as "therapeutic mythology" asserted as a way to promote the self-esteem of African Americans (a term he does not like) "by creating a past that never was." He understands it as black nationalism; in fact he argues that the origins of Afrocentrism lay in black nationalism of the Romantic era, but rejects it as history. Were Afrocentrism a means of creating African American community and thus empowering a minority, it would be comparable to such mythologies used by other minorities. Such mythologies, however, have been grounded in historical thought, while Afrocentrism is factually errant and theoretically flawed.

By urging black Americans to seek empowerment in a misconstructed Egyptian history, Afrocentrists not only mislead, opening their students to ridicule, but they also assert that culture is "transhistoric" — that is, it can be transferred through time and space intact. Culture, Walker asserts, is always changing and will be different as a result of any transfer, willing or unwilling, on the part of those living it. African Americans have created a culture of their own — a culture of which to be proud, but not an Egyptian or African culture. To Walker's way of thinking, Afrocentrism turns African Americans into helpless victims whose ancestors created a glorious culture and then for thousands of years accomplished little. They became the dupes and victims of Europeans, enslaved and exploited, and now their descendants must look to a mythical African past for purpose and meaning. Such a denigration of the African-American struggle, which Walker regards as a triumph, clearly angers him.

Given the popularity of Afrocentrism and its spread through the academic community and popular culture, anyone teaching history or otherwise interested in the nature of historical methodology should read Walker. The manipulation of history to create a particular attitude or support a political point of view is, as Walker acknowledges, sometimes a way of creating unity and gaining power. To deny a people the heritage they and their forefathers built is not acceptable. Walker shows that historians should help African-American students to appreciate their own real history and not pursue distortions of the past in the name of identity, especially since their actual past offers them an identity worthy of enormous pride.

Walker's prose conveys his ideas and passions effectively, despite a painful tendency to fall into the jargon of social science. His arguments are clear, thoughtful, and easy to read. His concern for the discipline and its practitioners comes through forcefully. Even those who disagree with his conclusions will be engaged and will find much to think about if they are sincerely interested in historical scholarship and how it influences those who study it.

The value of this book for courses in historiography and methodology is obvious. It offers useful examples of how historians analyze material, and historical knowledge can shape our understanding of contemporary culture. Its applications go beyond metahistory, however. Students of modern American society and education will find much to explore in its pages, and anyone investigating African-American history should examine Walker's conclusions. Walker will help such students understand not only one way African Americans have come to view themselves but also an element in their contemporary efforts at gaining a sense of identity within American culture. Thus, although the title might not suggest it, this book can be a valuable part of a variety of courses.

Link

More on the King Tut Reconstructions

We've seen the recent French reconstruction of King Tut. Now let's compare it to the Egyptian and American ones done at the same time, the latter with no prior knowledge of the race or identity of the individual being reconstructed. They're the first ever Tut reconstructions based on CT scans of his mummy, and therefore considered to be the most accurate to date.

Egyptologist Dr. Zahi Hawass notes that "The results of the three teams were identical or very similar in the basic shape of the face, the size, shape and setting of the eyes, and the proportion of the skull." All three teams identify Tut as a Caucasoid North African, and Hawass remarks on the striking resemblance their models bear to ancient portraits of the boy pharaoh.

[ click images to enlarge ]


French Reconstruction


Egyptian Reconstruction


American "Blind" Reconstruction

RECONSTRUCTION TEAMS

French:
- Jean-Noël Vignal, forensic expert, Institut de Recherche Criminelle de la Gendarmerie Nationale, Paris
- Elisabeth Daynes, anthropological sculptor, Atelier Daynes, Paris

Egyptian:
- Khaled Elsaid, biomedical engineer and team leader

American:
- Susan Antón, physical anthropologist, New York University, New York City
- Michael Anderson, forensic sculptor, Yale Peabody Museum, New Haven, Connecticut

The True Face of King Tut

King Tut's Face Reconstructed

National Geographic News
May 10, 2005

Is this the true face of Tut? This silicone-skinned bust is billed as the most accurate forensic reconstruction ever of ancient Egypt's Pharaoh Tutankhamun. It was based on recent 3-D CT scans of the mummy of the "boy king," who is believed to have been about 19 when he died some 3,300 years ago.

Led by Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, a National Geographic Society team commissioned French experts to create the lifelike bust. Using the CT scans, French forensic anthropologist Jean-Noël Vignal determined the basic measurements and features of Tutankhamun's face. Vignal deduced that Tutankhamun had a narrow nose, buck teeth, a receding chin, and Caucasian features. Such features are typical of European, North African, Middle Eastern, and Indian peoples.

Paris-based forensic sculptor Elisabeth Daynès then created the bust shown above. She used Vignal's estimates of skin thickness and other data, plus wooden sculptures of Tut made in his youth. Soft-tissue features, such as the nose and ears, had to be guessed at, though within a scientifically determined range. Daynès based the skin tone on an average shade of Egyptians today and added the eyeliner that the king would have worn in life.

Finally, National Geographic gave the CT data to a U.S. forensic team, who were to work "blind" — not knowing who the subject was. Their findings validated the French team's conclusions. And their plaster cast, a photo of which will be published on the National Geographic magazine Web site later this month, turned out remarkably similar to the silicon bust.

The reconstruction will be featured in the June issue of National Geographic, in the touring exhibit "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," and on the National Geographic Channel's King Tut's Final Secrets, airing Sunday night.

— Ted Chamberlain

Link (with full story and more photos)