I'll have to bookmark it for later to spend more time than just skimming, but I find 2 things interesting. The lack of any Egyptian archeologists on most interesting and significant findings about Ancient Egypt is one. The other is the seemingly strong conclusion that Ancient Egyptians did in fact move to Egypt from Mesopotamian which is pretty cool.
Egyptians don't like the notion that "they moved there from somewhere". They claim their own unique, uninterrupted, history and connection to the land as well as their civilizational independence from Mesopotamian, Asia Minor, Europe, and Africa.
It's also the same you rarely find Egyptian archeologists/scholars on scientific papers. While this might be a matter of ancient history and science to everyone, it's a matter of current day politics for Egyptians and especially the Egyptian government. The "findings" of the paper has to agree with the narrative built and proposed by the ministry of antiquities or they will literally charge whoever publishes it with a national crime.
> Egyptians don't like the notion that "they moved there from somewhere". They claim their own unique, uninterrupted, history and connection to the land as well as their civilizational independence from Mesopotamian, Asia Minor, Europe, and Africa.
Same here in India.
These ideas about civilization and racial purity/superiority are a scientific nonsense but very useful for getting people to hate each other.
The other is the seemingly strong conclusion that Ancient Egyptians did in fact move to Egypt from Mesopotamian which is pretty cool. Egyptians don't like the notion that "they moved there from somewhere".
How do you conclude that from the fact that 1 man of the era had 20% of his genetic material from Mesopotamia?
> The other is the seemingly strong conclusion that Ancient Egyptians did in fact move to Egypt from Mesopotamian which is pretty cool.
there was no such conclusion that i saw having read this.
they are talking of genetic admixture...so the person shared ancestors with someone else sequenced from the mesopotamian area...maybe they both were kids with a parent elsewhere, for example.
The same is true for many people, e.g. the Japanese. You’re prohibited from digging up the bones of ancient empties and doing DNA testing to see if they’re korean.
> . The other is the seemingly strong conclusion that Ancient Egyptians did in fact move to Egypt from Mesopotamian which is pretty cool.
Finding some individuals to whom this applies "20% of his genetic ancestry can be traced to genomes representing the eastern Fertile Crescent" doesn't really prove that at all, though?
I think conclusion is a bit of a strong term to use here, as far as i can read its a possibility, but the only real conclusion is that there has been human movement between the regions, which might indicate mixing (that is, they didn't move there, at least, not all of them).
Happens everywhere. Nationalism is hidden in every country's history curriculum. I learned my country was the first in the world to abolish slavery (actually had them til 1950s, documented) among a bunch of other lies I only discovered later. Most of them are embellishments of real things but others are just flat out wrong.
If you want to see examples you don't even need my school books. Compare these chronological lists in both languages, in English wikipedia or Portuguese wikipedia:
>> lack of any Egyptian archeologists on most interesting and significant findings about Ancient Egypt is one.
Politics. The egyption government is very sensitive about egyptology. They can make normal life difficult for people who rock the boat. Novel research or theories are activley discouraged. So it is hard for locals, and safer for outsiders, to make news.
There are lots of replies to this already but I think it's worth simply copying out the relevant parts of the conclusion:
> Although our analyses are limited to a single Egyptian individual who ... may not be representative of the general population, our results revealed ancestry links to earlier North African groups and populations of the eastern Fertile Crescent. ... The genetic links with the eastern Fertile Crescent also mirror previously documented cultural diffusion ... opening up the possibility of some settlement of people in Egypt during one or more of these periods.
This is interesting. I wrote that trait about cultural censorship in a science fiction story (you can find it in a link in my profile), but I had filed it under the ‘fiction’ part. Now I need to go back and make some edits.
However, it has to be said that many third-world nations are extremely jealous of their identity (and of the narrative around it), due to the perceived threat (or rather, historic record) of foreign interference.
Humanity routinely has a similar kind of ego that requires relevance. But fortunately we still have a distributed knowledge system that excises and corrects local folklore.
I don’t think it is interesting that there aren’t Egyptian scholars on the topic, whether this national/cultural identity existed or not.
I obviously don’t care if it bruises an ego, I would care if the lack of representation overlooks something though.
And where did the Mesopotamians move from? If you don't see the political context of the science then too bad.
Like, you know people till now take pride in the exploits and culture of their supposed ancient ancestors, never mind that for the the vast majority of people, there is no simple and direct line from some ancient illustrious people to them.
The latent political context is the assumption driving the research, that Egyptian culture had to have come from somewhere else, so let's go look for it. You see the same thing when evidence of cultural achievements elsewhere in Africa is unearthed.
Of course you will find a somewhere else, no matter how tenuous the connection, in which case my first sentence above comes into play: let's keep finding the somewhere else until we all get back to Africa, supposedly the birthplace of it all.
EDIT: Since this is being misunderstood, this what I actually mean: For some reason, this finding somewhere else is not applied consistently. Either we should keep finding the somewhere else for all cultures for as far back as we can, or else stop with this nonsensical subtext that just because a culture has some roots from elsewhere, so therefore it cannot have made innovations by itself beyond its supposed origins.
> the seemingly strong conclusion that Ancient Egyptians did in fact move to Egypt from Mesopotamian
Touch some grass, seriously. They looked at the DNA of 1 (in words: one) guy and now it's "hey in fact Egyptians all came from Mesopotamia"? You'd have to take many more samples to support such a broad claim, and it's not because of the Ministry of Antiquities suppressing ideas.
Mankind likely did not originate in the Nile valley, hence the fact we find people there from some point in history means they migrated from somewhere else. If you subscribe to the single-origin story (which I think is plausible but not the only possible one, the alternative being various human populations that got separated and re-united in different parts of the world) and think, just for the sake of argument, of Lucy as 'the first human' then humans are immigrants almost everywhere (this will be hard to swallow for lots of people and we know from the historical record (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIJF2RomfGE) that the Voth had problems with that, too, so it's very human).
The narrower Nile valley must have been a relatively inhospitable place for a human during the African Wet Period. When that came to an end around ~7ky ago or so that change made the Nile valley rather suddenly more attractive to many thousands of people who used to roam the lands to the right and left of it. As desertification progressed, communities were forced to go someplace else with some ending up in the Nile valley. In a way, you can to this day see the echoes of that time in the ethnic and cultural diversity of Egyptian society which I think is more of a hallmark of this civilization than an imagined homogenized one-mold-fits-all view.
And it's totally not out of place that some people with roots in Ancient Egypt should have an ancestry that came from the Levant or further from Anatolia or Mesopotamia. Egypt was a big place, rich in people, culture, food, arts and opportunity (and, not to forget, regular festivals with beer, wine and music at the cultural centers; today people cross continents for taking part in festivals with beer, wine and music). Egypt had trade, diplomatic relations and 'military exchanges' (war) with those far-flung places and captives were either maimed or indentured, so as a matter of course we find Egyptians with Mesopotamian admixtures, what did you think?
>The lack of any Egyptian archeologists on most interesting and significant findings about Ancient Egypt is one.
It seems like Egyptian archaeologists is a clique of academics that do not like to rock the apple cart and go against established ideas about Egyptian history. There is a lot of gate keeping going on, mostly in part of Zahi Hawass, a narcissist that likes to self insert into every research into the subject, and control publication of results, etc. Even worse, claim attribution for work he's not even part of. So, if you don't kiss the ring, or dare to challenge ideas without his blessing, you'll be pretty much become a pariah that will never access archaeological sites again. Because of this, research in the field seems to be stagnant.
“…the Nuwayrat individual is predicted to have had brown eyes, brown hair and skin pigmentation ranging from dark to black skin, with a lower probability of intermediate skin colour”
> The other is the seemingly strong conclusion that Ancient Egyptians did in fact move to Egypt from Mesopotamian which is pretty cool.
What strong conclusion? You "skim" the article and feel justified making outlandish politicized statements?
> They claim their own unique, uninterrupted, history and connection to the land as well as their civilizational independence from Mesopotamian, Asia Minor, Europe, and Africa.
As does everyone else and which is true for the most part. Does anyone dispute ancient egypt's civilizational status?
> While this might be a matter of ancient history and science to everyone
It isn't a matter of ancient history and science to everyone. Ancient history, science and archaelogy are political for everyone. Egyptology as a field was created by europeans partly to justify taking over egypt. It literally was part of european colonialism.
> It's also the same you rarely find Egyptian archeologists/scholars on scientific papers.
You find it odd that egyptians aren't too keen on egyptology?
> The "findings" of the paper has to agree with the narrative built and proposed by the ministry of antiquities or they will literally charge whoever publishes it with a national crime.
I highly doubt that. Maybe if the "study" undermines egypt's attempt to get their stolen antiquities back. But even then your claim seems outlandish.
The article states that 'his genetic affinity is similar to the ancestry appearing in Anatolia and the Levant during the Neolithic and Bronze Age.' As a layperson, I don't think we would find this particularly shocking. It's well known from written sources that there was significant communication and movement between Egypt and those areas during the broader Bronze Age, even extending back into the Neolithic for some cultural exchanges. This even aligns with biblical narratives that describe individuals and families traveling to and from Egypt for periods of time.
Worth noting for context that "Anatolia and the Levant" (better known perhaps as the Ancient Near East) also included plenty of darker-skinned folks in that time period, with an appearance that we might nowadays associate with Sub-Saharan Africa - and they were highly integrated in their societies, not just a servile underclass. This is also true of the ancient Mediterranean region as a whole. We're especially sure about this because of surviving pictorial/visual (e.g. from the Minoan civilization in Crete) and textual sources. So our Old-Kingdom Ancient Egyptian could well have looked quite "Sub-Saharan" in appearance, despite not originating anywhere south of present-day Sahara.
How do we even know this person was upper class or some itinerant migrant worker that came from somewhere else?
Even the citation claiming the burial method was associated with upper class raises doubts: following the link mentions "pot burial" which has commonly been associated with the poor. The problem with identifying bones with "population" is it often says what the common man was like but not the minority elite that ruled and had power if one isn't careful about who they think they're identifying or the demographic structure of society in these ancient cultures.
Well, I assume the lowest-budget way to deal with a corpse in ancient Egypt is to toss it into the Nile.
More generally, if what you're looking at is a cemetery for the poor, there should be a lot of remains, and there shouldn't be much in the way of decoration. If someone carved a tomb for the remains to be in ("The body was interred in a ceramic pot within a rock-cut tomb"), that already disqualifies them from being poor.
Can’t we think of it as just one large land mass? Maybe 5000 years ago the Sinai peninsula was more land, less sea—the Red Sea not as big, and the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba as we know it now was land mass. Then it wouldn’t be hard to imagine freedom of travel in all kinds of directions.
> 5000 years ago the Sinai peninsula was more land, less sea—the Red Sea not as big, and the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba as we know it now was land mass.
5,000 is a split second in geological terms. We KNOW how Sinai and the Red Sea looks like 5000 or 20,000 years ago.
Lower egypt always had Levantine genetic influence. Middle and Upper Egypt always had Kush/Sudanese genetic influence. The Ancient Egypt we know originated from Upper Egypt when Narmer conquered Lower Egypt and established the first dynasty.
[+] [-] eddythompson80|8 months ago|reply
Egyptians don't like the notion that "they moved there from somewhere". They claim their own unique, uninterrupted, history and connection to the land as well as their civilizational independence from Mesopotamian, Asia Minor, Europe, and Africa.
It's also the same you rarely find Egyptian archeologists/scholars on scientific papers. While this might be a matter of ancient history and science to everyone, it's a matter of current day politics for Egyptians and especially the Egyptian government. The "findings" of the paper has to agree with the narrative built and proposed by the ministry of antiquities or they will literally charge whoever publishes it with a national crime.
[+] [-] dilawar|8 months ago|reply
Same here in India.
These ideas about civilization and racial purity/superiority are a scientific nonsense but very useful for getting people to hate each other.
[+] [-] jasonfarnon|8 months ago|reply
How do you conclude that from the fact that 1 man of the era had 20% of his genetic material from Mesopotamia?
[+] [-] jjtheblunt|8 months ago|reply
there was no such conclusion that i saw having read this.
they are talking of genetic admixture...so the person shared ancestors with someone else sequenced from the mesopotamian area...maybe they both were kids with a parent elsewhere, for example.
[+] [-] rayiner|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] KurSix|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] pqtyw|8 months ago|reply
Finding some individuals to whom this applies "20% of his genetic ancestry can be traced to genomes representing the eastern Fertile Crescent" doesn't really prove that at all, though?
[+] [-] vuxie|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] vasco|8 months ago|reply
If you want to see examples you don't even need my school books. Compare these chronological lists in both languages, in English wikipedia or Portuguese wikipedia:
- https://pt.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronologia_da_aboli%C3%A7%C3...
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_sla...
Very different!
[+] [-] sandworm101|8 months ago|reply
Politics. The egyption government is very sensitive about egyptology. They can make normal life difficult for people who rock the boat. Novel research or theories are activley discouraged. So it is hard for locals, and safer for outsiders, to make news.
https://youtube.com/@historyforgranite
(No, this isnt an ancient aliens crackpot channel. This guy is doing solid work and does discuss how egyptology is so locked down.)
[+] [-] n4r9|8 months ago|reply
> Although our analyses are limited to a single Egyptian individual who ... may not be representative of the general population, our results revealed ancestry links to earlier North African groups and populations of the eastern Fertile Crescent. ... The genetic links with the eastern Fertile Crescent also mirror previously documented cultural diffusion ... opening up the possibility of some settlement of people in Egypt during one or more of these periods.
[+] [-] dsign|8 months ago|reply
However, it has to be said that many third-world nations are extremely jealous of their identity (and of the narrative around it), due to the perceived threat (or rather, historic record) of foreign interference.
[+] [-] yieldcrv|8 months ago|reply
I don’t think it is interesting that there aren’t Egyptian scholars on the topic, whether this national/cultural identity existed or not.
I obviously don’t care if it bruises an ego, I would care if the lack of representation overlooks something though.
[+] [-] prmph|8 months ago|reply
Like, you know people till now take pride in the exploits and culture of their supposed ancient ancestors, never mind that for the the vast majority of people, there is no simple and direct line from some ancient illustrious people to them.
The latent political context is the assumption driving the research, that Egyptian culture had to have come from somewhere else, so let's go look for it. You see the same thing when evidence of cultural achievements elsewhere in Africa is unearthed.
Of course you will find a somewhere else, no matter how tenuous the connection, in which case my first sentence above comes into play: let's keep finding the somewhere else until we all get back to Africa, supposedly the birthplace of it all.
EDIT: Since this is being misunderstood, this what I actually mean: For some reason, this finding somewhere else is not applied consistently. Either we should keep finding the somewhere else for all cultures for as far back as we can, or else stop with this nonsensical subtext that just because a culture has some roots from elsewhere, so therefore it cannot have made innovations by itself beyond its supposed origins.
[+] [-] DemocracyFTW2|8 months ago|reply
Touch some grass, seriously. They looked at the DNA of 1 (in words: one) guy and now it's "hey in fact Egyptians all came from Mesopotamia"? You'd have to take many more samples to support such a broad claim, and it's not because of the Ministry of Antiquities suppressing ideas.
Mankind likely did not originate in the Nile valley, hence the fact we find people there from some point in history means they migrated from somewhere else. If you subscribe to the single-origin story (which I think is plausible but not the only possible one, the alternative being various human populations that got separated and re-united in different parts of the world) and think, just for the sake of argument, of Lucy as 'the first human' then humans are immigrants almost everywhere (this will be hard to swallow for lots of people and we know from the historical record (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIJF2RomfGE) that the Voth had problems with that, too, so it's very human).
The narrower Nile valley must have been a relatively inhospitable place for a human during the African Wet Period. When that came to an end around ~7ky ago or so that change made the Nile valley rather suddenly more attractive to many thousands of people who used to roam the lands to the right and left of it. As desertification progressed, communities were forced to go someplace else with some ending up in the Nile valley. In a way, you can to this day see the echoes of that time in the ethnic and cultural diversity of Egyptian society which I think is more of a hallmark of this civilization than an imagined homogenized one-mold-fits-all view.
And it's totally not out of place that some people with roots in Ancient Egypt should have an ancestry that came from the Levant or further from Anatolia or Mesopotamia. Egypt was a big place, rich in people, culture, food, arts and opportunity (and, not to forget, regular festivals with beer, wine and music at the cultural centers; today people cross continents for taking part in festivals with beer, wine and music). Egypt had trade, diplomatic relations and 'military exchanges' (war) with those far-flung places and captives were either maimed or indentured, so as a matter of course we find Egyptians with Mesopotamian admixtures, what did you think?
[+] [-] NL807|8 months ago|reply
It seems like Egyptian archaeologists is a clique of academics that do not like to rock the apple cart and go against established ideas about Egyptian history. There is a lot of gate keeping going on, mostly in part of Zahi Hawass, a narcissist that likes to self insert into every research into the subject, and control publication of results, etc. Even worse, claim attribution for work he's not even part of. So, if you don't kiss the ring, or dare to challenge ideas without his blessing, you'll be pretty much become a pariah that will never access archaeological sites again. Because of this, research in the field seems to be stagnant.
[+] [-] dr_dshiv|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] appleaday1|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] hearsathought|8 months ago|reply
What strong conclusion? You "skim" the article and feel justified making outlandish politicized statements?
> They claim their own unique, uninterrupted, history and connection to the land as well as their civilizational independence from Mesopotamian, Asia Minor, Europe, and Africa.
As does everyone else and which is true for the most part. Does anyone dispute ancient egypt's civilizational status?
> While this might be a matter of ancient history and science to everyone
It isn't a matter of ancient history and science to everyone. Ancient history, science and archaelogy are political for everyone. Egyptology as a field was created by europeans partly to justify taking over egypt. It literally was part of european colonialism.
> It's also the same you rarely find Egyptian archeologists/scholars on scientific papers.
You find it odd that egyptians aren't too keen on egyptology?
> The "findings" of the paper has to agree with the narrative built and proposed by the ministry of antiquities or they will literally charge whoever publishes it with a national crime.
I highly doubt that. Maybe if the "study" undermines egypt's attempt to get their stolen antiquities back. But even then your claim seems outlandish.
[+] [-] rietta|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] zozbot234|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] PKop|8 months ago|reply
Even the citation claiming the burial method was associated with upper class raises doubts: following the link mentions "pot burial" which has commonly been associated with the poor. The problem with identifying bones with "population" is it often says what the common man was like but not the minority elite that ruled and had power if one isn't careful about who they think they're identifying or the demographic structure of society in these ancient cultures.
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|8 months ago|reply
More generally, if what you're looking at is a cemetery for the poor, there should be a lot of remains, and there shouldn't be much in the way of decoration. If someone carved a tomb for the remains to be in ("The body was interred in a ceramic pot within a rock-cut tomb"), that already disqualifies them from being poor.
[+] [-] hbarka|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] eddythompson80|8 months ago|reply
5,000 is a split second in geological terms. We KNOW how Sinai and the Red Sea looks like 5000 or 20,000 years ago.
[+] [-] KurSix|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] AlotOfReading|8 months ago|reply
That said, it's essentially how most people think of the Mediterranean basin by the middle bronze age, not too much later than this.
[+] [-] andsoitis|8 months ago|reply
Note, Ancient Egypt emerged from prehistoric times in 3150 BCE (it hadn’t existed for millennia then), with the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt.
[+] [-] dumbledoren|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] KurSix|8 months ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 months ago|reply
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[+] [-] imadierich|8 months ago|reply
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[+] [-] imadierich|8 months ago|reply
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