grahamguitarman
Sage
You raise valid points there. Honestly, I'm probably too used to the confrontational and uncivil tone of other message boards where I've debated this particular subject in the past. I apologize for my attitude.
No problem
You raise valid points there. Honestly, I'm probably too used to the confrontational and uncivil tone of other message boards where I've debated this particular subject in the past. I apologize for my attitude.
Debates are usually about convincing a third party, Jabrosky. They are actually counter-productive towards convincing the person you are addressing.
Debates are supposed to be arguments, aren't they?
Sorry for the confrontational language, but as I understand it, the goal of a debate is to convince the opposition.
Yeah Debate was the wrong term to use - My bad!Let's not call it a debate then. Let's call it a "discussion" or "dialogue," because this isn't a competition, and clearly, even if it were, we'd be gridlocked for eternity and wouldn't find a "winner" anyway.
I know this is going to sound like an admittance of defeat, and perhaps it is, but I am honestly losing my temper here and so don't feel fit to continue this exchange. Perhaps this thread should be locked.
Let's not call it a debate then. Let's call it a "discussion" or "dialogue," because this isn't a competition, and clearly, even if it were, we'd be gridlocked for eternity and wouldn't find a "winner" anyway.
Normally, at this point I'd try and dissect the thread and make a post showing how much everyone actually seemed to agreed, but the whole thing was over my head. I think it looked like everyone said that Egypt was a pretty mixed bag, with a plurality of red-brown skin and a unique African heritage, and were fighting about the proportions of the mix. Is that about right?
Debates are usually about convincing a third party, Jabrosky. They are actually counter-productive towards convincing the person you are addressing.
Normally, at this point I'd try and dissect the thread and make a post showing how much everyone actually seemed to agreed, but the whole thing was over my head. I think it looked like everyone said that Egypt was a pretty mixed bag, with a plurality of red-brown skin and a unique African heritage, and were fighting about the proportions of the mix. Is that about right?
That sounds accurate.
Normally, at this point I'd try and dissect the thread and make a post showing how much everyone actually seemed to agreed, but the whole thing was over my head. I think it looked like everyone said that Egypt was a pretty mixed bag, with a plurality of red-brown skin and a unique African heritage, and were fighting about the proportions of the mix. Is that about right?
I agree to a degree. At least, they're not solely for that purpose. They're actually a very good tool for learning, as well as following the logic of one's own view. A goal might be to convince another person, but of course to be effective in that regard you have to maintain your composure.
Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture
Christopher Ehret
Professor of History, African Studies Chair
University of California at Los Angeles
Ancient Egyptian civilization was, in ways and to an extent usually not recognized, fundamentally African. The evidence of both language and culture reveals these African roots.
The origins of Egyptian ethnicity lay in the areas south of Egypt. The ancient Egyptian language belonged to the Afrasian family (also called Afroasiatic or, formerly, Hamito-Semitic). The speakers of the earliest Afrasian languages, according to recent studies, were a set of peoples whose lands between 15,000 and 13,000 B.C. stretched from Nubia in the west to far northern Somalia in the east.....
The above hardly seems dispositive, given all of the controversy in the area even in the scientific literature. Another piece of the puzzle perhaps.
"The question of the genetic origins of ancient Egyptians, particularly those during the Dynastic period, is relevant to the current study. Modern interpretations of Egyptian state formation propose an indigenous origin of the Dynastic civilization (Hassan, 1988). Early Egyptologists considered Upper and Lower Egyptians to be genetically distinct populations, and viewed the Dynastic period as characterized by a conquest of Upper Egypt by the Lower Egyptians. More recent interpretations contend that Egyptians from the south actually expanded into the northern regions during the Dynastic state unification (Hassan, 1988; Savage, 2001), and that the Predynastic populations of Upper and Lower Egypt are morphologically distinct from one another, but not sufficiently distinct to consider either non-indigenous (Zakrzewski, 2007). The Predynastic populations studied here, from Naqada and Badari, are both Upper Egyptian samples, while the Dynastic Egyptian sample (Tarkhan) is from Lower Egypt. The Dynastic Nubian sample is from Upper Nubia (Kerma). Previous analyses of cranial variation found the Badari and Early Predynastic Egyptians to be more similar to other African groups than to Mediterranean or European populations (Keita, 1990; Zakrzewski, 2002). In addition, the Badarians have been described as near the centroid of cranial and dental variation among Predynastic and Dynastic populations studied (Irish, 2006; Zakrzewski, 2007). This suggests that, at least through the Early Dynastic period, the inhabitants of the Nile valley were a continuous population of local origin, and no major migration or replacement events occurred during this time.
Studies of cranial morphology also support the use of a Nubian (Kerma) population for a comparison of the Dynastic period, as this group is likely to be more closely genetically related to the early Nile valley inhabitants than would be the Late Dynastic Egyptians, who likely experienced significant mixing with other Mediterranean populations (Zakrzewski, 2002). A craniometric study found the Naqada and Kerma populations to be morphologically similar (Keita, 1990). Given these and other prior studies suggesting continuity (Berry et al., 1967; Berry and Berry, 1972), and the lack of archaeological evidence of major migration or population replacement during the Neolithic transition in the Nile valley, we may cautiously interpret the dental health changes over time as primarily due to ecological, subsistence, and demographic changes experienced throughout the Nile valley region."
-- AP Starling, JT Stock. (2007). Dental Indicators of Health and Stress in Early Egyptian and Nubian Agriculturalists: A Difficult Transition and Gradual Recovery. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 134:520—528
"Analysis of crania is the traditional approach to assessing ancient population origins, relationships, and diversity. In studies based on anatomical traits and measurements of crania, similarities have been found between Nile Valley crania from 30,000, 20,000 and 12,000 years ago and various African remains from more recent times (see Thoma 1984; Brauer and Rimbach 1990; Angel and Kelley 1986; Keita 1993). Studies of crania from southern predynastic Egypt, from the formative period (4000-3100 B.C.), show them usually to be more similar to the crania of ancient Nubians, Kushites, Saharans, or modern groups from the Horn of Africa than to those of dynastic northern Egyptians or ancient or modern southern Europeans."
(S. O. Y and A.J. Boyce, "The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians", in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 20-33)
"Limb length proportions in males from Maadi and Merimde group them with African rather than European populations. Mean femur length in males from Maadi was similar to that recorded at Byblos and the early Bronze Age male from Kabri, but mean tibia length in Maadi males was 6.9cm longer than that at Byblos. At Merimde both bones were longer than at the other sites shown, but again, the tibia was longer proportionate to femurs than at Byblos (Fig 6.2), reinforcing the impression of an African rather than Levantine affinity."
-- Smith, P. (2002) The palaeo-biological evidence for admixture between populations in the southern Levant and Egypt in the fourth to third millennia BCE. in E.C.M van den Brink and TE Levy, eds. Egypt and the Levant: interrelations from the 4th through the 3rd millenium, BCE. Leicester Univ Press: 2002, 118-28
"There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas." ("Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999). pp 328-332)
"must be placed in the context of hypotheses informed by archaeological, linguistic, geographic and other data. In such contexts, the physical anthropological evidence indicates that early Nile Valley populations can be identified as part of an African lineage, but exhibiting local variation. This variation represents the short and long term effects of evolutionary forces, such as gene flow, genetic drift, and natural selection, influenced by culture and geography."(Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999) pp 328-332)
Another interesting fact to note, is that all the way up until the Late Dynasties the vast majority of Egyptians resided and originated in Upper Egypt (the south). Prior to this period Lower Egypt was sparsely populated. The assertion that early Lower Egyptians were essentially Levantine transplants is equally false...
They were a tropically adapted population, residing in a non tropical environment. This could mean that early Lower Egyptians (just like those in the south) were recent migrants from the more southerly regions of Africa (the tropics).