Denial that the ancient Egyptians were black Africans?

MDP · Aug 7, 2011

There seems to be some strong denial on the part of Whites and even some Westernized modern Egyptians that the early ancient Egyptian came from and looked no different than the black Africans in the areas south of Egypt (like Somalis and Ethiopians). The consensus in mainstream academia confirms that the migrations of people that lead to the creation of ancient Egypt were Afro-Asiatic speakers of Sub Saharan East Africa and Nilo Saharan speaking Africans of the Sahara, who are black Africans.

Some people purposely misinterpret this argument as African Americans claiming descent from ancient Egypt, when we are not. We are merely pointing out the fact that a lot of people have been lied to about the true appearance of the original ancient Egyptians.

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. They supported themselves by gathering wild grains. The first elements of Egyptian culture were laid down two thousand years later, between 12,000 and 10,000 B.C., when some of these Afrasian communities expanded northward into Egypt, bringing with them a language directly ancestral to ancient Egyptian. They also introduced to Egypt the idea of using wild grains as food.

A new religion came with them as well. Its central tenet explains the often localized origins of later Egyptian gods: the earliest Afrasians were, properly speaking, neither monotheistic nor polytheistic. Instead, each local community, comprising a clan or a group of related clans, had its own distinct deity and centered its religious observances on that deity. This belief system persists today among several Afrasian peoples of far southwest Ethiopia. And as Biblical scholars have shown, Yahweh, god of the ancient Hebrews, an Afrasian people of the Semitic group, was originally also such a deity. The connection of many of Egypt's predynastic gods to particular localities is surely a modified version of this early Afrasian belief. Political unification in the late fourth millennium brought the Egyptian deities together in a new polytheistic system. But their local origins remain amply apparent in the records that have come down to us.

One of the exciting archeological events of the past twenty years was the discovery that the peoples of the steppes and grasslands to the immediate south of Egypt domesticated these cattle, as early as 9000 to 8000 B.C. The societies involved in this momentous development included Afrasians and neighboring peoples whose languages belonged to a second major African language family, Nilo-Saharan (Wendorf, Schild, Close 1984; Wendorf, et al. 1982). The earliest domestic cattle came to Egypt apparently from these southern neighbors, probably before 6000 B.C., not, as we used to think, from the Middle East.......

References Cited:

Ehret, Christopher, Nilo-Saharans and the Saharo-Sahelian Neolithic. In African Archaeology: Food, Metals and Towns. T. Shaw, P Sinclair, B. Andah, and A. Okpoko, eds. pp. 104-125. London: Routledge. 1993

Ehret, Christopher, Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): Vowels, Tone Consonants, and Vocabulary. Los Angeles: University of California Press, Berkeley. 1995

Wendorf, F., et al., Saharan Exploitation of Plants 8000 Years B.P. Nature 359:721-724. 1982

Wendorf, F., R. Schild, and A. Close, eds. Cattle-Keepers of the Eastern Sahara. Dallas: Southern Methodist University, Department of Anthropology. 1984

link to the entire article

http://wysinger.homestead.com/keita.html
Click to expand...

Genetic migrations from Sub Saharan East African into Egypt and across Northern across correlate with the origins and spread of the Afro-Asiactic languages shown by professor Christopher Ehret above. From Luis et al. 2004

(link to study containing the image in title above)

Archaeological evidence simply does not the support the common misconception that Middle Easterners and certainly not Europeans were
present or seen in notable numbers during the Pre-Early Dynastic periods.

"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, 198. 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 134:520528
Click to expand...

MDP · Aug 7, 2011

The peer reviewed article above summarizes what mainstream research has concluded about the population history of ancient Egypt. They clearly find that the crania early ancient Egyptians more closely resembled tropical African populations (like Ethiopians and Somalis) to the south rather than to modern Egyptians, other populations on the Mediterranean or Europe. The dendrogram below is from Kemp 2006 which demonstrates the exact same finding:

(link to study in title above)

Notice that the early Egyptians and Nubians are the most overlapping population on the entire dendrogram. The next in line with the early ancient Egyptians are modern Ethiopians. Leading anthropologist on this subject S.O.Y Keita as groups the early ancient Egyptians with the populations above:

"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, Ku(*)(*)(*)(*)es, 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)
Click to expand...

This does not mean that modern Egyptians are not the descendants of the ancient Egyptians, because other studies including this one finds continuity from early ancient Egyptians to modern Egyptians. What these findings disproves however is that the phenotype of modern Egyptians is the same as the early ancient Egyptians. This is not surprising due to the fact that modern Egyptians are the result of a mixture of the countless foreign invasions from the Levant and Europe and the original black Africans of ancient Kemet (Egypt's real name). Modern genetic studies have also found some modern Egyptian populations (mostly in the south or isolated) to group closer to Horn Africans than to Northwest Africans and Middle Easterners, based on both common Mtdna and Y-DNA.

"The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diversity of 58 individuals from Upper Egypt, more than half (34 individuals) from Gurna, whose population has an ancient cultural history, were studied by sequencing the control-region and screening diagnostic RFLP markers. This sedentary population presented similarities to the Ethiopian population by the L1 and L2 macrohaplogroup frequency (20.6%), by the West Eurasian component (defined by haplogroups H to K and T to X) and particularly by a high frequency (17.6%) of haplogroup M1. We statistically and phylogenetically analysed and compared the Gurna population with other Egyptian, Near East and sub-Saharan Africa populations; AMOVA and Minimum Spanning Network analysis showed that the Gurna population was not isolated from neighbouring populations. Our results suggest that the Gurna population has conserved the trace of an ancestral genetic structure from an ancestral East African population, characterized by a high M1 haplogroup frequency. The current structure of the Egyptian population may be the result of further influence of neighbouring populations on this ancestral population."
(Stevanovitch A, Gilles A, Bouzaid E, et al. (2004) Mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity in a sedentary population from Egypt.Ann Hum Genet. 68(Pt 1):23-39.)
Click to expand...

Other researchers have concluded that the general population of ancient Egypt was 'super tropically adapted' like the tropical Africans to the south of them. Based on ecological principal populations who have super tropically adapted body plans are within the range of the world's darkest skin colors:

"The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the super-Negroid body plan described by Robins (1983).. This pattern is supported by Figure 7 (a plot of population mean femoral and tibial lengths; data from Ruff, 1994), which indicates that the Egyptians generally have tropical body plans. Of the Egyptian samples, only the Badarian and Early Dynastic period populations have shorter tibiae than predicted from femoral length. Despite these differences, all samples lie relatively clustered together as compared to the other populations." (Zakrzewski, S.R. (2003). "Variation in ancient Egyptian stature and body proportions". American Journal of Physical Anthropology 121 (3): 219-229.
Click to expand...

What do limb proportions indicate:

"In this regard it is interesting to note that limb proportions of Predynastic Naqada people in Upper Egypt are reported to be "Super-Negroid," meaning that the distal segments are elongated in the fashion of tropical Africans.....skin color intensification and distal limb elongation are apparent wherever people have been long-term residents of the tropics." (-- C.L. Brace, 1993. Clines and clusters..")
Click to expand...

The skin color of early ancient Egypt nobles was found to have been packed with melanin like other black Africans to the south:

"During an excavation headed by the German Institute for Archaeology, Cairo, at the tombs of the nobles in Thebes-West, Upper Egypt, three types of tissues from different mummies were sampled to compare 13 well known rehydration methods for mummified tissue with three newly developed methods. .. Skin sections showed particularly good tissue preservation, although cellular outlines were never distinct. Although much of the epidermis had already separated from the dermis, the remaining epidermis often was preserved well (Fig. 1). The basal epithelial cells were packed with melanin as expected for specimens of Negroid origin."
--(A-M Mekota and M Vermehren. (2005) Determination of optimal rehydration, fixation and staining methods for histological and immunohistochemical analysis of mummified soft tissues. Biotechnic & Histochemistry 2005, Vol. 80, No. 1, Pages 7-13
Click to expand...

MDP · Aug 7, 2011

Here are some images that based on my own subjective viewpoint (which is all that imagery can provide) illustrate my point:

Ancient depiction of King Tut (not a reconstruction)

Ethiopian Children

Modern Southern Egyptian children

Modern Arabanized Northern Egyptians

MDP · Aug 7, 2011

Depictions of the ancient Egyptians along side Dinka Nubians, Libyans, Semitics

Beja man

Egyptian dancers

Somali Lady

MDP · Aug 13, 2011

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjCgZt0ok1Y&feature=related"]Kemet (Egypt) and saharan North africa - A black civilization 1 - YouTube[/ame]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkbExSrmhok&feature=related"]Kemet (Egypt) and Saharan North Africa - A black civilization 2 - YouTube[/ame]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Apl3Xtlabjc&feature=related"]Kemet (Egypt) and Saharan North Africa - A black civilization 3 - YouTube[/ame]

Egypt's cultural origins explained by late African historian Basil Davidson.

MDP · Aug 19, 2011

In the documentary below forensic experts have found the facial structure of the sphinx to be consistent with broad featured African populations:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cDYQ9OppkU&feature=player_embedded[/ame]

Homeless Guy · Sep 27, 2011

They were Black, only racists say otherwise. The Arabs came in later and oppressed the Blacks.

Log in or Sign up

Denial that the ancient Egyptians were black Africans?

MDP New Member

MDP New Member

MDP New Member

MDP New Member

MDP New Member

MDP New Member

Homeless Guy New Member

Share This Page

Log in or Sign up

Denial that the ancient Egyptians were black Africans?

MDP New Member

MDP New Member

MDP New Member

MDP New Member

MDP New Member

MDP New Member

Homeless Guy New Member

Share This Page

Useful Searches