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Ancient Egyptians - Cultural Origin, genetics, etc.

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
Graham:

You're talking to someone who looks to have created an account solely for the purpose of arguing this point. It is a way of trolling, and may be an alter ego created for that purpose. Regardless, continuing to feed is not recommended.

Morphological data is not dispositive in terms of genetic relationships. It is just another piece of the puzzle. People tend to give it more or less weight depending on their own predispositions.

Finally, posting snippets from studies remains less than useful, as noted above, because you can't determine much (or anything) from such cut-and-paste posts. Anyone here can use Google. If you really want to get anything out of the studies provided, you're going to have to go do a lot of research, not just rely on someone who is cut-and-pasting portions of them. It's not really a good means of going about a discussion like this unless your purpose is simply to obfuscate by burying people in text.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
Why would me disproving an outright fallacy (i.e the Semitic argument) equate as "aggressive"?

I can think of a few reasons.

This is a public research forum, but it's purpose is to help people conduct research for fantasy writing projects. The forum is also the home of an active writing community - everyone else who's posted on this thread has talked elsewhere on the forums, built up a level of trust and respect, a rapport which is ultimately more important to us than being right or wrong on this limited and complicated topic. But you've shown no interest in the purpose of the forum or the community behind it, but intrude on the thread with the sole purpose of proving everyone else wrong. That's called trolling.

But it's more than even just that. You're presupposing the rectitude of your own sources and you ignore their fairly obvious faults and limitations. You present blankets of text and graphs on the condescending, self-fulfilling notion that nobody else would care enough to click a link and study the material themselves. You engage with hostile remarks, okay, but you also respond to the rational rebuttals as if they were equally hostile. You've ignored the rules of the moderators, and you've snapped at others when they try to hold you to account.

And you repeatedly say that the things you post prove the matter to be settled - strongly implying that nobody else's opinion - in fact, the entire discussion - matters at all.

And by the way, the science of even the most rigorous studies need to be peer reviewed before they can hold any weight - as does the logic and presentation of your arguments, which are currently doing poorly by those peer-review standards. But it's not too late to turn it around. Calm down, take some accountability for your attitude, and engage with the discussion.

Lastly, this community is filled with extremely smart, qualified, hard working people who are more than capable of engaging with the complicated research involved in this topic. You'd probably do very well to engage the discussion realizing that - even if you are right - you might still learn something about approaching and discussing this kind of material in a manner that's more accurate, calm and effective.
 
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S

Sir Shawn

Guest
So.... you two don't really have any rebuttal to my overall argument, therefore you must devote post after post to personal attacks against me. Yes very mature!:rolleyes:
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
So.... you two don't really have any rebuttal to my overall argument, therefore you must devote post after post to personal attacks against me. Yes very mature!:rolleyes:

Fallacy: Argument from Silence, the conclusion that an opponent's silence on a topic implies that the opponent has no response or further, that no response exists. This argument is not valid, especially when used to claim victory after making yourself so unlikable that nobody wants to respond to your arguments.

It's particularly telling because, as has been stated, some of the people in this discussion agree with your position and have still told you that you are behaving like a douche. Can you even tell me what my position on this topic is?
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
Devor:

Why feed? A number of points have been presented, and ignored, by the poster, including points on how to judge studies (from the primary literature and elsewhere), the point that morphological evidence is not dispositive in terms of genetic relationships, descriptions taken from contemporary sources distinguishing the ancient Egyptians from other Africans in terms of skin tone, genetic evidence, and so on.

The guy discounts out of hand anything that doesn't support his view, and so is selective in terms of evidence used, and is clearly so emotionally tied into his argument that he can't even accept the fact that the topic is unsettled.

I'd say it is time to continue with more reasonable persons, as opposed to those who created accounts here to troll this subject (or who may be secondary accounts of existing users who want to troll it, or whatever).
 
Graham:

You're talking to someone who looks to have created an account solely for the purpose of arguing this point. It is a way of trolling, and may be an alter ego created for that purpose. Regardless, continuing to feed is not recommended.

Yeah I know what you mean, and I was going to just ignore him. Till I saw the silly post about my supposedly using the Berlin Nefertiti as an argument, when I was merely commenting on my best friends looks. He's actually up to 26 posts now and still doesn't get why he is so unwelcome - pretty sad when you think about it.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
Why feed?

Only one reason, I'm curious to hear people talk more about evidence he posted, and I don't think that'll happen much unless he calms down. I can be done - I should probably have stopped with the one post - but I thought it was worth a shot.
 
Only one reason, I'm curious to hear people talk more about evidence he posted, and I don't think that'll happen much unless he calms down. I can be done - I should probably have stopped with the one post - but I thought it was worth a shot.

Trouble is there is just so much that he has posted that I can't even be bothered to read it, I would have to be really obsessed with the subject to even try!
 

Jabrosky

Banned
Perhaps the moniker "Sir Shabrosky" is warranted? :D

I am not associated with Mr. Shawn in any way, but I will say that even if he comes across as an obsessive and confrontational jackass, his terrible attitude does not change the fact that he has actually offered very cogent arguments and data in favor of his position. I'm afraid that most people's reactions in this thread really do amount to little more than attacks on his presentation rather than the substance of his claims. Sir Shawn should definitely calm down and adopt a less aggressive and arrogant tone if he wants to persuade anyone, but that does not justify the knee-jerk ad hominems we have given him.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
I am not associated with Mr. Shawn in any way, but I will say that even if he comes across as an obsessive and confrontational jackass, his terrible attitude does not change the fact that he has actually offered very cogent arguments and data in favor of his position. I'm afraid that most people's reactions in this thread really do amount to little more than attacks on his presentation rather than the substance of his claims. Sir Shawn should definitely calm down and adopt a less aggressive and arrogant tone if he wants to persuade anyone, but that does not justify the knee-jerk ad hominems we have given him.

Sir Shawn is a brick wall who is only interested in his own opinion. His evidence has to be viewed in light of all the other evidence, of whatever sort, in order to try to best determine how it all fits together. His response to that has been to re-state the same sorts of evidence repeatedly and claim the matter is solved. Then, when people aren't persuaded, he uses personal insults. It's humorous, really, but you can't expect it to be taken seriously.

We're just having at you a bit about the Shabrosky thing, because you were both pasting walls of text (of the same sort of evidence, in fact), and this subject seems to upset you both. Plus he came out of the blue, and it would be hard to find this thread for just this topic without previous knowledge of it. So it was kind of a humorous jab. But putting that aside, there is no way a reasonable person can take Shawn seriously because he can't think about the issue rationally. He only appears to be able to take as final any evidence that supports his view and then insult people from there.

Given the evidence we've seen so far, from everyone, whether from you or Shockley or Graham or Mindfire or Shawn, or anyone else, it seems reasonable to conclude that the morphological data, genetic, data, contemporary historical sources, etc. are inconclusive. That, in and of itself, should be telling. But if one only takes into account evidence that supports one's own viewpoint, then it is easy to take a side and stick to it no matter what.
 
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Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
Sir Shawn should definitely calm down and adopt a less aggressive and arrogant tone if he wants to persuade anyone, but that does not justify the knee-jerk ad hominems we have given him.

I think you're right a little bit, but I've seen plenty of trolls on other forums, and sometimes they can turn around if you tell them, strongly and cogently, how they are trolling, although it takes a few days to "sink in."

Sir Shawn cares a lot about the subject and has spent a lot of time investing in it. If he would calm down, I think he could contribute quite a bit to the conversation. But if he won't calm down, our only options are to report him and get him banned, ignore him, or debate him. I don't think people want to debate him, and ignoring him is going to mean more ad hominem attacks in both directions. So if he posts with the same attitude again I'm going to report him again, and given that he has no intentions of contributing to a writing community, I don't think his moniker will survive it.
 
but that does not justify the knee-jerk ad hominems we have given him.

If I was trying to discredit his academic standpoint then I could indeed be accused of using Ad Hominems. But since I have no particular problem with his opinion or the point he is trying to make, such a claim is fallacy in itself.

My argument is with the Trolling methods he uses to steamroller everyone into accepting his point of view, and the way he tried to ascribe arguments to me that I never even tried to make.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
So, to get away from the trolling aspects, let me ask this question:

Apart from considerations of historical accuracy, does it matter to those here what origins or ancestry the Egyptians had? In other words, I think it matters to us all to the extent that we want to have an accurate picture of history, but going beyond that does it matter for other reasons? In other words, if the ancient Egyptians turned out to be very dark people closely related to sub-Saharan Africans does that change your perception of them? If they were semitic, hypothetically, does that change your perceptions? If their genetic heritage had influences of both African and Eurasian, does that change your view?

For me, the answer to that is 'no,' but I'm curious what everyone else thinks. Apart from being historically accurate, does the final answer make a difference?
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
For me, the answer to that is 'no,' but I'm curious what everyone else thinks. Apart from being historically accurate, does the final answer make a difference?

I would've said no earlier in the conversation, and it's still mostly no. But now I think an answer that helps people to visualize a richer ethnic diversity within Africa might serve as a vessel to help tell that history, which right now is largely muddled and obscure outside of Egypt. Something like the proposition which Ravana mentioned, of a distinct north-African ethnicity, might help to do that if it were to be true. But I don't think it matters in-and-of-itself who got which genes from who - at the very least, it doesn't matter to me.
 
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