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Scientists extract DNA from Ancient Egyptian Mummies

haha I read that wrong then. usually when someone says "at least" it means the same as "well thank God." as in "Well thank God we know they weren't black. What a relief!"

Oh, nah. I study archaeology as part of my degree, so when I mean 'at least' I do legitimately mean 'this is the most we can be relatively certain of'. Because unfortunately that comes up a lot when estimating ancient population models.
 

CDX

Member
Wow. This is interesting.

Eventually, I'd like to read an article or something with brief bit about the DNA from each individual mummy tested, and the estimated year that mummy was from.

I find this stuff fascinating.
 
At last, we can resurrect our Scorpion King, who we lost too soon.

tumblr_no3mp6gOk41qhwoa6o1_500.gif
 
Wow. This is interesting.

Eventually, I'd like to read an article or something with brief bit about the DNA from each individual mummy tested, and the estimated year that mummy was from.

I find this stuff fascinating.

Would be useful for context at least, if possible. The period we define as 'ancient Egypt' was fucking long.
 
This is the actual link to the research if anyone wants to read it.

Abstract
Egypt, located on the isthmus of Africa, is an ideal region to study historical population dynamics due to its geographic location and documented interactions with ancient civilizations in Africa, Asia and Europe. Particularly, in the first millennium BCE Egypt endured foreign domination leading to growing numbers of foreigners living within its borders possibly contributing genetically to the local population. Here we present 90 mitochondrial genomes as well as genome-wide data sets from three individuals obtained from Egyptian mummies. The samples recovered from Middle Egypt span around 1,300 years of ancient Egyptian history from the New Kingdom to the Roman Period. Our analyses reveal that ancient Egyptians shared more ancestry with Near Easterners than present-day Egyptians, who received additional sub-Saharan admixture in more recent times. This analysis establishes ancient Egyptian mummies as a genetic source to study ancient human history and offers the perspective of deciphering Egypt's past at a genome-wide level.

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15694
 

R0ckman

Member
What kind of trash is this?

Egypt is in Africa, not sure what segment of the populous that will surprise. If you mean Sub-saharan African genetics then I suppose you neglected to read the article.

"Sub-saharan African" is a disingenuous myth term.

From Golden Age of the Moor the author Ivan Van Sertima cuts straight to the chase on page 2.

"Many historians, however, make clear cut distinctions between the early North Africans and the Africans of the Sahara. They contend that the Africans who made contact and left their mark on Europe should not be confused with the sub-Saharan African type. They see these people as Euro-Africans (another version of the "brown Mediterranean race" myth used to account for the genius of ancient Egypt). Since many North Africans in modern times seem to fit into this theoretical construct it has worked very well to confuse and confound the definition of their ethnicity"

Thats just the first part of it, but it goes into more detail of the dishonesty further on in the page.
 
"Sub-saharan African" is a disingenuous myth term.

From Golden Age of the Moor the author Ivan Van Sertima cuts straight to the chase on page 2.

"Many historians, however, make clear cut distinctions between the early North Africans and the Africans of the Sahara. They contend that the Africans who made contact and left their mark on Europe should not be confused with the sub-Saharan African type. They see these people as Euro-Africans (another version of the "brown Mediterranean race" myth used to account for the genius of ancient Egypt). Since many North Africans in modern times seem to fit into this theoretical construct it has worked very well to confuse and confound the definition of their ethnicity"

Thats just the first part of it, but it goes into more detail of the dishonesty further on in the page.

It's also heavily used in modern archaeology when discerning the ethnic ancestry of individuals. One common manifestation of this is the lack of Neanderthal DNA in most sub-saharan populations.

And well, untangling the uncertainty around the ethnicity of regions and cultures like Ancient Egypt - which in terms of human migration out from Africa would serve as the most apparent 'border' - is exactly what studies like this are for. So you can either engage with what is in the article and the study's findings in a critical manner, or you can focus on the semantics.
 
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