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)

Howells and FORDISC Vindicated

Afrocentrists who don't like the work of W.W. Howells on the non-African racial character of pre-historic East Africans often cite research attempting to discredit his methods of classifying crania. But a new paper demonstrates that inaccurate results yielded by computer programs used for this purpose are the result of human error, vindicating Howells and silencing his critics.

The truth is out there: how NOT to use FORDISC

Freid et al. (2005)

FORDISC is an interactive computer program designed to classify an unknown adult cranium based on the reference samples in its database. FORDISC uses discriminant functions to construct a classification matrix and assign group membership of the unknown cranium into one of the selected reference groups. The researcher guides the analysis by choosing the populations against which to classify the unknown, choosing from eleven population samples from the Forensic Anthropology Data Bank or twenty-eight population samples from Howells' (1989) worldwide database. The utility and efficacy of FORDISC has been criticized for providing 'incorrect' classifications, however these disputed results are often due to inappropriate reference samples and failure to properly evaluate the typicality and posterior probabilities provided by the program. In this paper, unknown crania from populations known not to belong to any of the reference samples will be analyzed, demonstrating the interpretation of posterior and typicality probabilities provided in the FORDISC output and the importance of the use of an appropriate reference sample.

Link

Study Clarification III

Here's an old paper from the 80s that "estimates" between 10% and 34% Negroid gene flow into Sicily based on what essentially amounts to 4 African L mtDNA markers found in a single sample of 90 people.

Study:

Mitochondrial DNA polymorphisms in Italy. III. Population data from Sicily: a possible quantitation of maternal African ancestry

Semino et al. (1989)
Ann Hum Genet

Link to Abstract

Misused Quotes:

Of particular interest is that the HpaI-3/AvaII-3 complex, which is unique to groups of African ancestry, was found in Sicily at a frequency of 4.4%. For the first time an estimate of the amount of gene flow from Blacks to the Sicilian gene pool could be obtained. [...] Using the weighted mean of the frequencies of the HpaI-3/AvaII-3 marker in Senegalese and in Bantu as representative of the parental African population, the total amount of gene migration (M) from Blacks into the Sicilians was estimated according to the method of Bernstein (1931) and a value of 0.108 ± 0.053 was obtained.

[...]

The Negroid component could have been transmitted directly through the introduction of groups of Negro slaves into the island by Phoenicians and Romans and/or indirectly through Arabic migrations. [...] The only Arabs for which data on mtDNA polymorphisms are available, are from Israel (Bonnk-Tamir et al. 1986). These show an incidence of the combination of interest of 12.8%, a frequency which is compatible with a Negro contribution in the Arabic gene pool of about 30%. [...] If one assumes that Negro genes arrived in Sicily only through Arabs, a 0.344 ± 0.049 value would be obtained for the amount of Arab gene migration (M).

Although the actual genetic contribution from African populations could only be estimated as lying in between the two M values we calculated, this work shows that, whichever way these genes arrived, a substantial Negro component is present in the Sicilian gene pool.

Clarification:

This is an old study and the marker being used is not an actual haplogroup but a restriction enzyme. And the way that admixture is being "estimated" isn't very common practice in population genetics. Not only is it imprecise and unreliable, as the authors freely admit, but in this case it's based on an unusually high frequency (4.4%) of African mtDNA in Sicily, as we'll see below.

But even disregarding all that, the lower limit estimated has a margin of error of ± 5.3, so it could be as little as 5.5% (i.e. 2.75% total admixture), and the upper limit assumes huge levels of Arab admixture that are not born out by any research. Moreover, the Arab reference sample is composed of Palestinians, whom the authors "estimate" have received 30% African gene flow. Yet when Palestinians were tested with the STRUCTURE admixture program using 377 autosomal microsatellite loci, they only had 2% total African admixture (Rosenberg et al. 2002; Table 2 in the Supplementary Information), and when the same sample was typed at 642,690 SNPs, they showed no African admixture at all (Li et al. 2008; Table S1). That's a powerful example of the limitations of this study's outdated estimates.

Another study from more than a decade later, Vona et al. (2001), addressed some of these issues and the old Semino paper directly, showing that with a different sample and method, different results are obtained:

In work carried out with restriction enzymes on mtDNA in a sample of Sicilians, Semino et al. (1989) indicated the presence (4.4%) of the African complex HpaI-3/AvaII-3 (40% in Senegal and in the Bantu of South Africa). The authors hypothesized a migration of genes from Africa to Sicily, estimated at about 10%, which was introduced into the Sicilian gene pool by Black slaves brought by the Phoenicians and the Romans and/or by Arab migrations. Results at the mtDNA sequencing level, however, show no Black African influence in the Sicilian population.

Two years after that, a definitive analysis of Sicilian mtDNA was conducted by Romano et al. (2003), using a much larger sample and seven different locations. Unlike Vona et al., this study did find some Negroid maternal DNA in Sicily, but at a rate of only 0.65% (3 sequences in the sample of 465).

If we pool all of the above data — which is always a good idea — we get 7 sequences in a sample of 604, which is 1.16% maternal admixture (or 0.58% total admixture), a figure that's extremely low and comparable to admixture levels elsewhere in Europe.

This result, together with the absence of Negroid Y-chromosomes in Sicily, discredits claims that Sicilians have a Black African racial component.

Updated 11/13/2009

North African Y-chromosomes

A Predominantly Neolithic Origin for Y-Chromosomal DNA Variation in North Africa

Arredi et al. (2004)
Am J Hum Genet

ABSTRACT: We have typed 275 men from five populations in Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt with a set of 119 binary markers and 15 microsatellites from the Y chromosome, and we have analyzed the results together with published data from Moroccan populations. North African Y-chromosomal diversity is geographically structured and fits the pattern expected under an isolation-by-distance model. Autocorrelation analyses reveal an east-west cline of genetic variation that extends into the Middle East and is compatible with a hypothesis of demic expansion. This expansion must have involved relatively small numbers of Y chromosomes to account for the reduction in gene diversity towards the West that accompanied the frequency increase of Y haplogroup E3b2, but gene flow must have been maintained to explain the observed pattern of isolation-by-distance. Since the estimates of the times to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCAs) of the most common haplogroups are quite recent, we suggest that the North African pattern of Y-chromosomal variation is largely of Neolithic origin. Thus, we propose that the Neolithic transition in this part of the world was accompanied by demic diffusion of Afro-Asiatic-speaking pastoralists from the Middle East.

[...]

Y-chromosomal studies are potentially highly informative about the origin of male-specific lineages, because of the detailed haplotypes that can be obtained and their high geographical specificity (Jobling and Tyler-Smith 2003), but previous studies have been restricted to limited regions of North Africa (Bosch et al. 1999, 2001; Flores et al. 2001; Manni et al. 2002; Luis et al. 2004). Together, these genetic analyses highlighted the similarity between northeastern Africa and the Middle East and the clear genetic differentiation between northwestern Africa and both sub-Saharan Africa and Europe, including Iberia. The Sahara and Mediterranean, despite the narrow width of the Strait of Gibraltar, seem to have acted as effective long-term barriers to Y-chromosomal gene flow.

[...]

First, as shown in fig. 1B, the lineages that are most prevalent in North Africa are distinct from those in the regions to the immediate north and south: Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. [...] Such a finding is not surprising, in the light of the earlier genetic studies, but has an important implication: despite haplogroups shared at low frequency, suggesting limited gene flow, North African populations have a genetic history largely distinct from both Europe and sub-Saharan Africa over the timescales needed for the Y-chromosomal differentiation to develop.



[...]

Indeed, the positions of the samples in the MDS plot describe a latitudinal axis, from North Africa and the Middle East in the upper part to Central and southern Africa in the lower part. Furthermore, the pattern of genetic affinities among the North African samples parallels the west-east orientation quite precisely, from Morocco on the left-hand side to Egypt and the Middle East on the right.



[...]

In conclusion, we propose that the Y-chromosomal genetic structure observed in North Africa is mainly the result of an expansion of early food-producing societies. [...] Since most of the languages spoken in North Africa and in nearby parts of Asia belong to the Afro-Asiatic family (Ruhlen 1991), this expansion could have involved people speaking a proto-Afro-Asiatic language. These people could have carried, among others, the E3b and J lineages, after which the M81 mutation arose within North Africa and expanded along with the Neolithic population into an environment containing few humans.

Link

There's No Arguing with a True Believer

This insightful passage from a review of Mary Lefkowitz' Not Out of Africa details the futility of trying to debate an Afrocentrist or other true believer. The writer could easily have included Nordicism among the many other "-isms" cited as examples.

It is not an accident that the students of Afrocentrism and catastrophism act more like disciples of a guru than students of a scientific teacher. They are on a mission, not a quest. And, as with many before them with noble goals, they believe the end justifies the means. Hence, it is nearly futile to engage them in debate. Scholars have difficulty debating opponents such as Afrocentrists, catastrophists, creationists or even anti-abortionists, because they expect their opponents to be civil and play by the rules of scholarly evidence. They mistakenly believe they have entered an arena where all sides are in quest of the same truth. What they are actually getting into is a street fight, where the goal is to defeat and humiliate your enemy. Their opponents don't follow traditional standards of evidence in their printed arguments and diatribes, so why expect them to be any different in a public debate? If you challenge their accuracy, they will question your integrity. If you ask for evidence, they will insult you. If you challenge their sources, you will be asked to prove the absolute certainty of your sources. You think the arena is an intellectual one where the combatants use wit and intelligence to score points, but while you are looking above your opponent's shoulders, he will kick you in the groin. You may have the evidence and the arguments on your side but your opponent doesn't care about the evidence and is not interested in your arguments. He already knows the truth.

Link

"Best of Sicily" Fraud

On the surface, Best of Sicily (BoS) looks like a harmless travel and tourism site. But dig a little deeper and you'll find references to Sicily as "African" and Sicilians as "descended from Arabs". Move on to the site's History section and the editors' multi-cultural and multi-racial agenda becomes overtly clear. They've turned Sicily into a diverse island whose inhabitants are an even mix of all of its different settlers and conquerors over the centuries, ignoring cultural factors that may have acted as barriers to intermarriage with certain groups, and projecting their own modern obsession with "cultural harmony" onto ancient and medieval populations.

Upon being confronted with contemporary scientific data on Sicilian Origins that shatters their unsupported fantasies, the site's editors, instead of welcoming the new information, responded with a long-winded exercise in denial called Genetics & Anthropology in Sicily. Not surprisingly, it applies all of the old tricks Nordicists and Afrocentrists use to prove what isn't true, like referencing outdated material on sickle cell and other blood groups (they call a 1978 study "the best kind of research currently available"), giving precedence to speculations based on historical records, and rationalizing it all with vague half-truths and tirades against people with dissenting opinions. Whatever it takes to avoid the facts I've collected, of which they've been well aware for some time now.

You see, they have found my site useful for some things, like obtaining photos of Sicilian models to pretty up their Genetics page. But they don't dare divulge the source, and they absolutely will not post any of the relevant genetic data—though they're quick to dismiss it indirectly, going so far as to warn their readers against "[t]he existence of other, seemingly conflicting, studies, seeking to identify other gene markers possibly irrelevant to migration history, or incompletely documented, or cited out of context". Can you smell the desperation?

The reason they do all this is obvious: They know the available evidence categorically disproves their propaganda, and they can't risk their visitors being exposed to the truth, or even to any interpretation that threatens to undo the elaborate myth they've created. To put it plainly, they're liars and cowards, no different from the Neo-Nazi and Black Power revisionists targeted by my website (who, incidentally, often quote from BoS to further their agendas). But they get away with it by wrapping their politics in a deceptively neutral package. The average visitor to the site inevitably falls for it, but there's no reason you should.

So if you happen to come across a website that endorses BoS, I would urge you to send the webmaster a link to this blog entry, with a carbon copy to the BoS editors. Or you could just e-mail the link directly to the editors with an expression of disapproval (but don't expect a reply). Also, if you see their site referenced in a forum as support for some outrageous claim, you might want to direct the offender(s) to this page as well. The BoS crew has done such a thorough job of maintaining its deception that this is the only way to get the truth out.

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Here are some keywords to make sure that when this blog item gets indexed, it'll appear with Best of Sicily in search results: Palermo, Catania, Messina, Siracusa, Agrigento, Cefalù, Monreale, Taormina film festival, Mount Etna, cities, towns, culture, society, trip, vacation, car rentals, hotels, restaurants, cuisine, food, wine, arts, books, heritage, genealogy, ethnology, Saracens, Moors, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Normans, online magazine, Italy, Italians.

Asselar Man

A tall, clearly Negroid skeleton (Asselar Man) has been dated to 6500 B.P. (Camp 1974:241; Coon 1962:649-650).

Link

Extinct human known from a skeleton found in 1927 near the French military post of Asselar, French Sudan (now Mali), by M.V. Besnard and Théodore Monod. Asselar man is believed to belong to the Holocene or Recent Epoch; some scholars consider it the oldest known skeleton of an African black.

Link

Africa Wasn't Negroid Until Historic Times

Here's some important information about the racial history of Africa stated clearly and succinctly:

"True" Black Africans appear as a recent adaptive radiation in the above dendrograms, apparently branching off from an ancestral Pygmy population — a line of ancestry also indicated by osteological data (Coon 1962:651-656; Watson et al. 1996). This radiation seems to have occurred somewhere in West Africa. Before the Bantu expansion about 3,000 years ago, true Black Africans were absent from the continent's central, eastern, and southern regions (Cavalli-Sforza 1986:361-362; Oliver 1966). They were also absent from the middle Nile until about 4,000 years ago, at which time they begin to appear in paintings from Pharaonic Egypt and in skeletal remains from Nubia (Junker 1921).

Link

For more detailed information about the racial differences between pre-historic and modern sub-Saharan Africans, see the work of anthropologist W.W. Howells.

Genghis Khan & the Making of the Modern World

Embrace the inner Genghis

A new biography argues that the maligned ruler of the Mongols was a great entrepreneur and social reformer

By Gregory M. Lamb
The Christian Science Monitor
March 23, 2004

He was a sadistic hedonist hiding beneath a fur-rimmed hat. A prairie bandit sporting a Fu Manchu moustache and a nasty disposition who set loose a horde of barbarians to loot the civilized world.

No, no, all wrong. That's what happens when you let your enemies define you, as modern-day political candidates know. The Mongols were always secretive about their revered leader, the man called Genghis Khan. To this day, his burial site has not been found. Over the years, as the Mongols' political influence subsided, anti-Genghis, anti-Mongol propaganda worsened. It became so bad that by the early 20th century the followers of the dubious science of eugenics coined "Mongoloid" as a term to describe retarded children, who, they surmised, must have inherited defective Mongol traits.

[...]

In "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" [scholar Jack Weatherford] aims to set the record straight. Take the Renaissance, for example. You probably think it was Europe rediscovering the lost knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome? Well, yes, a little. But it was really the paper, printing, gunpowder, and compass brought from the east by Mongols that set Europeans' thinking caps atwirl. Mongols even changed fashion, convincing European men to abandon their silly robes and put on practical pants.

[...]

"On every level and from any perspective, the scale and scope of Genghis Khan's accomplishments challenge the limits of imagination and tax the resources of scholarly explanation," Weatherford enthuses.

He has plenty to say to back up that statement. In 25 years under Khan, the Mongol army, never bigger than 100,000, conquered more lands and people than the Romans did in 400 years. All other military geniuses — Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon — pale before the great Mongol leader, who developed innovative fighting techniques and elicited total loyalty from his troops.

[...]

Beyond the battlefield, Genghis established religious freedom throughout his realm (many Christians were family members or held high positions, along with Buddhists, Muslims, and others). He created a free-trade zone between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. He ran a meritocracy: He held the wealthy and high-born to the same standard of justice as peasants, not hesitating to promote shepherds and camel tenders to generals. He judged people on their individual merits and loyalty, not by family, ethnic, or religious ties — a revolutionary act in the family-centric Mongol society, Weatherford says.

True, Mongols didn't create much of anything themselves. But they were oh-so-modern as disciples of the Knowledge Economy. They treated people who had learning and skills as important commodities to be acquired and utilized. They had no interest in turning conquered peoples into Mongols. Instead, they made sure that goods, ideas, and people traveled safely across most of the known world, unleashing an era of unprecedented innovation and prosperity.

Link

How African is North Africa?

BBC News
January, 2004

Countries like Mali straddle both Africas

The African Cup of Nations kicks off in Tunisia, with 16 nations taking part — and all eyes on the continent are looking north.

Seen from space, Africa is one huge and undivided landmass.

But for some on the continent, however, the widely-held perception is of two very different regions; Africa south of the Sahara desert, or sub-Saharan Africa, and north Africa.

For some, the dividing line is more than the Sahara — it is culture, language and even skin tone.

North Africa is predominantly Arab and relatively more developed. Many residents identify more with the Middle East than they do with the larger part of the continent.

Hundreds of people from the south migrate to the north in search of greener pastures — but they are often met with hostility.

But when it comes to an African identity, some sub-Saharan Africans believe they have more claim to the continent than their northern counterparts.

On the other hand, the formation of the African Union in 2002 was a great leap forward in the effort to drive forward common action throughout the continent.

And issues that are crippling the continent are just as relevant in the north as the south — Egypt and Libya are suffering from greatly increased rates of HIV and Aids, just as Southern Africa is.

On the BBC's Africa Live Programme on Wednesday, we ask just how African is north Africa?

Does culture and language link the region more to the Arab world, or should geography be the deciding factor?

Some interesting comments:

Imazighen (Berbers and Tuaregs) of Africa have maintained a distinct African culture from prehistoric times to the present-day. The presence of our people in Africa since prehistory is often denied by some sub-Saharan Africans. Yet, we are over thirty million today. We still speak our language and preserve our millennia-old alphabet, the Tifinagh. We have maintained our non-Arabic traditions. Imazighen means "Free Human Beings." We live in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, the Sahara, Niger, Mali and Burkina-Faso. The name Africa comes from our language.
— Helene Hagan, USA

I think many of you are mixing up two things about North Africa. The Arabs are not African in the sense that the Berbers are. Man people from Kabyle region (Berber region) have been killed in Algeria because of their "African" identity.
— Lila, Algeria

The word "Africa" in Roman times referred only to Tunisia and western Algeria; only later was it extended to encompass the whole continent. Even the word is said to originally come from Berber. So if you want to be pedantic, you can claim a Namibian or an Ethiopian isn't African — but don't try to tell me that an Algerian isn't!
— Lameen, USA/Algeria

Who cares if North Africans identify more with the Middle East than sub-Saharan Africa? They are certainly closer to the Middle East in terms of culture than to black Africa. Besides identifying with us does not solve any of our myriad of problems. It is time for sub-Saharan countries to abandon this pan-African nonsense and face the task of building their respective countries.
— Julius Monkam, USA/Cameroon

As someone who is ethnically Egyptian, I do not consider myself "African". To me, that term has too many racial connotations. Egyptians, as well as other North Africans, are racially Caucasian, and that needs to be acknowledged. I personally favour making the Middle East its own geographic entity. A continent stretching from Morocco to Pakistan would have very similar racial or ethnic populations. However, I believe Africa is important to Egypt, if not only for the precious River Nile. Egyptians, however, are first and foremost Mediterranean or Arabs, depending on which you prefer. I'd go with the former.
— Patrick Elyas, Los Angeles, USA/Egypt

Link