Ancient Egyptians - Cultural Origin, genetics, etc.

[grahamguitarman]

I have no personal investment in regards to what Egyptians should look like. If they were black then they were black, if they intermixed with semitic or eurasian races then so what. Its their art and culture that I love, not their racial identity. My only concern with regards to race is seeing the right people get credit for their beautiful culture.

I agree with Devor that the Idea of northern African ethnicity being different from the south is intriguing. But I'm not going to lose any sleep over it, at the end of the day its just an interesting academic conversation.

Just to throw a curve into the discussion I came across this photo earlier of a Himba girl covering herself in red ochre:

At the risk of undermining my own arguments, does that body paint look just like the red-brown seen in Egyptian paintings or what? Makes you think doesn't it, could the paintings have been depicting Egyptians using body make-up? (regardless of ethnicity BTW).

I'm not making any claims here by the way, just making an interesting observation

 

[Shockley]

@Steerpike: Not at all. My interest in Egypt is only cursory (in their dealings with Greeks and Romans), so my stake in this is purely academic.

 

[Steerpike]

Thanks, guys. I figured that was generally the case, but I was wondering nonetheless.

 

[Ravana]

I'm not certain I should bother responding to this, given that the person expressing these views is no longer with us… but I don't much care for attacks against my person (as opposed to my arguments). So I'll just try to keep it brief, instead. (Yeah, right. No, I'm not. Y'all should know me better than that by now.)

I would consider Christopher Ehret a leading linguist as far as Africa is concerned, considering the fact that he spoke on behalf of the linguistic segment at the African Genetic international Conference last month.

I might have been more convinced if you'd cited a linguistics conference he'd spoken at. Ehret was indeed the only person speaking on language at this conference about genetics: that does not mean he spoke "on behalf of" anybody other than himself. He certainly wasn't elected by peers to represent any "linguistic segment."

To make the point a bit more firmly, though:
(1) Sir Shawn is, I think we can safely assume, not a linguist.
(2) I am.
(3) Ehret is an emeritus member of the History department at UCLA.
(4) Total number of Ehret's publications, including volumes edited, monographs, reviews of other articles, and rewrites of previous works, according to his UCLA faculty page: 90.
(5) Total number of these that mention linguistics, language, or specific languages in their titles: 53, most on reconstruction of proto-languages (you'll see why I mention this in a sec), or on reconstructions of history based on his linguistic reconstructions.
(6) Number of these that appeared in refereed linguistics journals: 0.

So he might be a "linguist," in the sense that his work has often involved language… but hardly a well-respected, let alone "leading" one. As witness:

- "Ehret has been criticized by linguists for his tenuous evidence, for his disregard for methodological rigour, for resorting to glottochronology, and for not revealing his sources of data." (W. H. G. Haacke, Department of African Languages, University of Namibia)

- "Ehret… omits almost all reference to publications that might contradict his proposals on a scale that is almost unique." [Thirteen specific examples follow.] "The pattern is unfortunately all too evident: every time a published reconstruction could challenge those used by Ehret, he systematically omits all reference to it.… Apart from the general literature on historical reconstruction, Ehret has an idiosyncratic response to material on individual languages. He cites the Ph.D. thesis of [Jakobi] on Fur rather than the published version of her grammar. He ignores the Kanuri dictionaries [published in 1990 and 1994] in favor of Lukas (1937). [Et cetera.] For an author somewhat prone to hector the historical linguistics community on its inadequacies of method, this seems somewhat inconsistent." (Roger Blench, consulting linguist, formerly University of Cambridge)

(I included the second in spite of length, because I thought it was hysterical. Well, maybe it isn't to you folks: it is to me. Ehret doesn't seem much better liked by historians or anthropologists, far as I can tell… but I'm not going to bother digging further.)

I'd also add that appealing to linguistics in this situation is counterproductive to the claim being put forth, as the Egyptian language–of any period–is held to be part of the Afroasiatic family… the distribution of which includes Northern Africa, the Sahara region, part of the Sahel (immediately south of the desert), Egypt, the Horn of Africa, and the Middle East. In other words, linguistic evidence wouldn't connect the Egyptians to sub-Saharan African populations: it would separate them. (Along lines nearly identical to those suggested by the biometric studies cited, in fact.) Ehret himself puts Egyptian in the sub-subgroup that includes Semitic and Berber… and none of the other Afroasiatic languages–let alone any other African ones.

[quibble about my use of the term "sub-Saharan"]

Granted–that the term does not, geographically, include the Horn at least. Not sure that renders it "meaningless." I used the term in order to avoid using the terms "black" or "negroid"–as do most people discussing these fields. Including several posters prior to my contribution.

That being said, the primary affinity of the early ancient Egyptians lie with the range of populations seen in Northeast Africans.

Well, that's what I was pointing out, actually.…

link to study.

Pity the chart doesn't appear in that study: it might have been legible there.

If anything, and I'm not sating it is true- I'd say that your interpretation of this data shows that you have a fundamental lack of knowledge in regards to indigenous African diversity.

Actually, I am aware of African diversity. I'm even quite familiar with the diversity of Africans from within a single country–Somalia. I've been working with refugees for a decade now. And they're far from the only Africans I've worked with.

Horn Africans and people of the Sudanese are black Africans, so why would the ancient Egyptians who also fit perfectly into this bio-cultural continuum defy this, by somehow be something other than black African?

The question presupposes the answer: it considers all Africans to be "black Africans," and therefore "black" (a presupposition that contradicts the preceding claim of "diversity," by the way). I honestly couldn't care less what color their skin is–nor, for that matter, what color skin ancient Egyptians had. I reiterate, however, since SS apparently does care, that these populations are "black" now; this says nothing about what color skin these populations had 3-5k years ago. I think very few people would say that the present population of Egypt is dominated by "black" people… not the way the term is usually interpreted in my experience. Anybody using the term "black" to refer to everybody with skin tones darker than those of Northern Europeans is using it in a different fashion, so I really can't address their interpretations.

Cranio-metric while not the best at determining population relationships, do give incite into a populations phenotype. For example indigenous African populations and certain Southeast Asians/aboriginal Australians are genetically as distinct from one another as populations can get, but craniometrically they are very similar and thus have been noted to have very similar phenotypes.… This is why early anthropologist considered aboriginal Australians to be recent tropical African migrants, before they were given their own "racial grouping".

I'm not sure how this aids the contention about Egyptians; if anything, it shows that phenotype is irrelevant to determining ethnic origins. I'm also not sure how attaching additional weight to an increasingly discounted methodology aids the argument, either. (The same applies to limb proportions, which I'll otherwise skip.)

…one of the leading biologist of Africans S.O.Y. Keita

Keita, while seeming to command slightly greater respect than Ehret, holds positions that diverge heavily from those of most of his peers. Nor does it help him any that he relies heavily on a small number of similarly-positioned sources–including, notably, Ehret. Which doesn't mean he's wrong (nor Ehret, for that matter), just that he isn't necessarily the best source to appeal to.

Keep in mind however that tropical Africa has the most indigenous skin color diversity of any region on Earth. While all generally considered "black" in the social sense

"Considered"? By? I know "black"-skinned Africans who will tell you with a straight face that they are not "black"… that they are not "African," for that matter. They're from the Horn… and they consider themselves a different ethnic group. They aren't experts on the subject (in terms of being geneticists, anthropologists, what have you)… but it does add an interesting perspective to the matter.

Which Ethiopians

The ones inhabiting the region during the time in question. I thought that was clear enough… and that I was making the point that the Ethiopians of that period may or may not be indicative of the modern population (just as the modern Egyptian population may or may not be indicative of ancient ones).

Many early anthropologist considered all of these populations (and thus the Egyptians) to be "Caucasoid" because they did not conform to the dubious "true Negroid" myth.

So many early anthropologists were racist, agenda-driven hypocrites. I think we all knew that already.…

Also what evidence do you have to suggest that there was change in the Ethiopian populations?

None. Nor did I suggest there was. I merely pointed out that the "evidence" that was being put forth–not by me–could support this conclusion as well as it could an opposite one.

I conversely have presented much evidence that there has been significant change in the Nile Valley (particularly Lower Egypt) which even includes parts of northern Sudan.

"Significant"? "Change"? Meaning the present population of the Lower Nile doesn't reflect historical ones? I thought the argument was that it did.…

-

Okay, folks, for anyone who didn't catch it: I have no opinions on the skin color of Egyptians at any point in history. I flat-out don't care. What I do care about is shoddy research, spurious data, and misrepresentations. Hope y'all don't mind too much.…

 

[Ravana]

P.S. Iman looks like that out of makeup, too. Well, at least with less of it, and without the costume accessories in the picture. I doubt if anybody other than her husband has seen her out of makeup in years.

On the other hand, I'm not sure how many people have seen him out of makeup in years, though he certainly wears a lot less than he used to. Wish she'd brought him along.…

 

[gavintonks]

I think looking at dna is out of context to the when. When we look at the history of the area from Mesopotamia, Sumatra etc and then see this civilization that rises from the dessert [they were meant to have found the pillars of civilization where all human knowledge was inscribed] Then look at the enormous amount of history over the area, wars conquests slaves etc would rate a dna mix at various stages of evolution. It would be difficult to say who truly was a pure egyptian

 

[Sia]

Mmm...I don't know how strong the evidence is but I read that the Gypsy-slur came about as a shortening of "Egyptian". That would suggest that Romani and the other traveller-race and Egyptians looked alike enough that it would be easy for a causal observer to confuse the two.