quote:Originally posted by Tazarah: Hello Swenet, do you know a woman who goes by the name "Konjoe Monroe" on a website called Lipstick Alley?
No I do not. Why?
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Tazarah
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@Swenet
I was going back and forth with somebody a few years ago on a different website and I referenced a blog, they said you were the person who wrote it. They claimed to have personally discussed the blog with you, as well the conclusions you reached from your research. Their name was "Konjo Monroe".
posted
Going through that article you cite, I came across the part where it talks about 'from Africans to Ksar Hill I', which frankly, gave me the cringe reading it again (though I still stand by everything else I wrote).
But no, I do not know anyone posting under that name. But I did talk to some people I've met online without any prior message board interaction (ie only via PM) about some things discussed on that blog and what I've talked about above, so maybe that's what they mean.
BTW, If their name is Konjo (and not Konjoe, as you said at first), the only thing that sounds familiar about it, is that I can translate it as a word spoken in a Caribbean language (female body parts in the language spoken in Curaçao).
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quote:Originally posted by Doug M: I actually first heard about this paper on the youtube channel MrImhotep a few days ago. And he was the one pointing out these African connections.
Ok. Fair enough.
I feel all the things researchers are bungling are literally for the taking if calling them out is what you want to do, but I don't think most of what you are posting are good examples.
For instance, you post Gebel Ramlah. They did talk about Gebel Ramlah. They admit it's culturally ancestral to predynastics (which is not really true, but close enough), but said if you assume it's biologically ancestral to predynastics, then you run into issues because there is a rift between this sample and later samples, with predynastics and especially dynastics looking distant.
[T]he epipalaeolithic subjects of the valley (for which there are clearly questions of dating) are morphologically close to the Neolithic subjects of Gebel Ramlah, cultural precursors of Predynastic, but that these are morphologically distant from predynastic subjects. ---Crubezy 2010
All of the Palaeolithic Egyptians you post can be safely dismissed for the same reason, because it's even worse with them (at least Neolithic Gebel Ramlah was part of the cultural convergence that predynastics also derived their culture from, and at least they have a broad/general resemblance to predynastics, which is not the case if you go further back).
So I feel you are not really addressing the real points that need to be addressed, and that you're shooting yourself in the foot. But, like I said, you already know this because we've been over this before, a bunch of times.
The point was that at the times in question the primary population centers were in the South of the country. Therefore, that goes against back migration as a source of populations from Eurasia in that same period. Again, the paper is about "settlement on the Nile", which has no time limit, unless they are talking exclusively about the dynastic, which technically they aren't. Obviously the original settlers of the Nile by any and all metrics would have been Africans, not Eurasian back migrants. And whatever population affinities would have been present among the early populations of the Upper Nile responsible for the dynastic era, they would have been closer to African populations, such as those from between Upper Egypt and Sudan. Whatever "traits" they would have had still would have fallen clearly within an African population and like I said, they refuse to identify most of these population clusters and metrics as African in that paleolithic to late Neolithic era except in a very tertiary way. And this is without the Khoisan like features they describe, as those populations should still rightly be part of an African basal cluster.
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quote:Originally posted by Doug M: The point was that at the times in question the primary population centers were in the South of the country. Therefore, that goes against back migration as a source of populations from Eurasia in that same period. Again, the paper is about "settlement on the Nile", which has no time limit, unless they are talking exclusively about the dynastic, which technically they aren't. Obviously the original settlers of the Nile by any and all metrics would have been Africans, not Eurasian back migrants. And whatever population affinities would have been present among the early populations of the Upper Nile responsible for the dynastic era, they would have been closer to African populations, such as those from between Upper Egypt and Sudan. Whatever "traits" they would have had still would have fallen clearly within an African population and like I said, they refuse to identify most of these population clusters and metrics as African in that paleolithic to late Neolithic era except in a very tertiary way. And this is without the Khoisan like features they describe, as those populations should still rightly be part of an African basal cluster.
There's still the question of how much the Paleolithic populations you cited contributed to the ancestry of later ones in the region. A lot of Eurocentrics like to claim Neolithic Levantines as the predominant ancestors of historic Egypto-Nubians, so they won't be impressed by Upper Egypt and areas being further south as the most populous regions during the late Pleistocene. Now, as was mentioned earlier, we do have the skeletal remains of people who at least somewhat resemble later Egypto-Nubians in northeastern Africa prior to the Neolithic, but they're not quite the people you listed earlier.
Tazarah
Why are you stalking my social media?
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quote:Originally posted by Swenet: Going through that article you cite, I came across the part where it talks about 'from Africans to Ksar Hill I', which frankly, gave me the cringe reading it again (though I still stand by everything else I wrote).
But no, I do not know anyone posting under that name. But I did talk to some people I've met online without any prior message board interaction (ie only via PM) about some things discussed on that blog and what I've talked about above, so maybe that's what they mean.
BTW, If their name is Konjo (and not Konjoe, as you said at first), the only thing that sounds familiar about it, is that I can translate it as a word spoken in a Caribbean language (female body parts in the language spoken in Curaçao).
Ok, thanks. I don't have any problems with what you wrote and I'm not trying to contest anything you wrote, I'm moreso trying to figure out if this person in question was lying about speaking with you in order to make themselves look better during our back and forth. Myself and another individual felt that this "konjo" was misrepresenting what you wrote in order to support his/her argument, and it seemed as though he/she was trying to gaslight us and pretending to have discussed the information with you personally to make it seem as though he/she had a better understanding of what you wrote.
But I think I'll just leave it at that without going into anymore details than what I already have because it's off topic and I don't want to get in trouble
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Strouhal has the best, most succinct quote. You can definitely rank anthropologists in expertise in Palaeolithic Egypt by whether they understand this. Keita apparently does not understand this.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti and Lo Stranger:
quote:The origin of the Egyptians was looked for in the course of almost two centuries in nearer or more distant regions in all possible directions. It has not been, however, established yet with certainty.
I would only add that it has been found but only ancestors in quotes. That is, not actual ancestors, but older members of the ancestry/morphology that Bronze Age Egyptians mainly belonged to.
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quote:Originally posted by Swenet: @Tazarah. Got it. Thanks for the heads up.
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Strouhal has the best, most succinct quote. You can definitely rank anthropologists in expertise in Palaeolithic Egypt by whether they understand this. Keita apparently does not understand this.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti and Lo Stranger:
quote:The origin of the Egyptians was looked for in the course of almost two centuries in nearer or more distant regions in all possible directions. It has not been, however, established yet with certainty.
I would only add that it has been found but only ancestors in quotes. That is, not actual ancestors, but older members of the ancestry/morphology that Bronze Age Egyptians mainly belonged to.
Are you referencing Skhirat-Rouazi?
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I would have to read up on the genetic reports of the last couple of years to learn about that population as I've been out of the loop.
The three populations I alluded to above are al Khiday, Silsilians and alleged victors of that so-called 'race war', in that seedy daily mail article. They claimed to have found a site in Sudan where the victors came from, and they were supposedly of 'North African' identity, but the remains never published. I later learned Irish was the inside guy they used for population affinity info, to write that story. Which is probably the only reason why I'm still mentioning it: his experience with nonmetric traits in North Africa.
Silsilians don't have bones, of course, only affinities to other archaeological cultures, and seemingly intrusive presence in Egypt. They shared the Nile Valley with other unrelated cultures, but had affinities with non-Egyptian cultures east and west. In all these things the have exactly what is called for, and also, what the other Egyptian cultures lack. Wadi Kubbaniya and Fakhurian, for instance, are disqualified because we already have their bones. Contemporary or slighly younger Sebilians also have some published remains. They are all 'mechtoid' and thus, incompatible.
That also helps to narrow things down to Silsilian being part of the Palaeolithic Afroasiatic presence as both Wadi Kubbaniya and Silsilian have links with Iberomaurusians, but only Silsilians have good links with the Iberomaurusians and the Levant. Both regions we now know for sure have North African E-M35.
quote:The resemblance of various typo-technological features in the Mushabian to certain Maghrebian and Nilotic Terminal Palaeolithic industries was noted, especially the microburin technique, which provides parallels with the Iberomaurusian and Silsilian (Phillips and Mintz, 1977). Furthermore, these techno-typological characteristics were previously considered to be basically alien to Terminal Palaeolithic developments in central and northern Palestine, such as to provide further evidence that the Mushabian represents the penetration of groups from the area of the Nile Delta into the Sinai during a period of climatic amelioration.
At the Edge Terminal Pleistocene Hunter-Gatherers in the Negev and Sinai
Contrary to the author's speculations, I'm not saying that Silsilian is the origin of the Levantine and Iberomaurusian relatives. I see this industry as intrusive in Egypt, not as a center of migrations to east and west.
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quote:Originally posted by Swenet: Silsilians don't have bones, of course, only affinities to other archaeological cultures, and seemingly intrusive presence in Egypt. They shared the Nile Valley with other unrelated cultures, but had affinities with other cultures east and west. In all these things the have exactly what is called for, and also, what the others lack. Wadi Kubbaniya and Fakhurian, which are slightly older are disqualified because we already have their bones. Contemporary or slighly younger Sebilians also have some remains. They are all 'mechtoid' and thus, incompatible.
That also helps to narrow things down to Silsilian being part of the Palaeolithic Afroasiatic presence as both Wadi Kubbaniya and Silsilian have links with Iberomaurusians, but only Silsilians have good links with the Iberomaurusians and the Levant. Both regions we now know for sure have North African E-M35.
Ehret mentions the Silsilian industry in a chapter he wrote for The Cambridge World History titled "Africa from 48,000 to 9500 BCE".
quote:In Egypt, in contrast, this second era lasted for a shorter time, down to around 15,000 bce. The last phase of the previous era, represented by the Halfan and Kubbiyan cultures, came to an end around 19,000 bce, in keeping with a history in which the new technocomplex would have taken hold in Egypt about the same time as it did in the Maghreb. But because of a gap in the Egyptian archaeological record between about 19,000 and 17,000 bce, direct supporting evidence for the new kind of tool industry is lacking until around 17,000, by that time the Egyptian counterpart of Oranian, the Silsilian, was well established in Upper Egypt. Silsilian like Oranian was characterized by various kinds of bladelets and, most notably, by abundant evidence, as for Oranian, of the new tool-making feature, the microburin technique.
The origins of this technocomplex are uncertain, but in their high proportions of bladelets and microliths, both Silsilian and Oranian have more in common with African Later Stone Age technologies farther south in the continent than with the pre-Glacial Maximum cultures of Egypt and Libya. The Oranian peoples practiced one custom of possible more southerly inspiration as well: they excised the incisor teeth. This trait is not known earlier in North Africa, nor was it found in the contemporary Silsilian in Egypt. But it was a very old custom among Nilo-Saharan peoples farther south in the middle and upper Nile regions. Together these features suggest a possible history for future testing in the archaeology – that a new population element, following the Nile north from the Middle Nile Basin around 19,000 bce, may have contributed to the origins of the new technocomplex of that period.
(Oranian is his term for Iberomaurusian. I dunno which technologies he's referencing when he says both they and the Silsilians have "more in common with African Later Stone Age technologies farther south", or whether the similarities he cites indicate cultural affinity or simple coincidence.)
quote:Originally posted by Doug M: The point was that at the times in question the primary population centers were in the South of the country. Therefore, that goes against back migration as a source of populations from Eurasia in that same period. Again, the paper is about "settlement on the Nile", which has no time limit, unless they are talking exclusively about the dynastic, which technically they aren't. Obviously the original settlers of the Nile by any and all metrics would have been Africans, not Eurasian back migrants. And whatever population affinities would have been present among the early populations of the Upper Nile responsible for the dynastic era, they would have been closer to African populations, such as those from between Upper Egypt and Sudan. Whatever "traits" they would have had still would have fallen clearly within an African population and like I said, they refuse to identify most of these population clusters and metrics as African in that paleolithic to late Neolithic era except in a very tertiary way. And this is without the Khoisan like features they describe, as those populations should still rightly be part of an African basal cluster.
There's still the question of how much the Paleolithic populations you cited contributed to the ancestry of later ones in the region. A lot of Eurocentrics like to claim Neolithic Levantines as the predominant ancestors of historic Egypto-Nubians, so they won't be impressed by Upper Egypt and areas being further south as the most populous regions during the late Pleistocene. Now, as was mentioned earlier, we do have the skeletal remains of people who at least somewhat resemble later Egypto-Nubians in northeastern Africa prior to the Neolithic, but they're not quite the people you listed earlier.
Again, the title of the paper is about the settlement of the Nile Valley. That goes back over to the beginning of humans in Africa and OOA. So common sense tells you that the first settlers of the Nile were African. That is a completely different question than what populations in the late neolithic were responsible for the rise of the dynastic kingdom. And in that case, if most of the main sites leading up to the dynastic era are in the Upper Nile, then all logic would argue they were Africans. Unless they can show how and where these other "non African" populations came from. All of these discussions about different metric traits not matching between different populations at different points of time is implying that somehow these differences represent Eurasian back migration. When and how? They haven't shown that at all. Africans have always been diverse and we know many populations were seasonal and semi-nomadic, migrating between the Nile and other areas as seasons and environments changed. And many of the papers studying this history point out that the Nile has fluctuated over time and wasn't always so fertile in the Egyptian Nile Valley region. Which is why most of the populations were in the South because that is where the Nile and surrounding environments were most suitable to habitation at specific points of time. So it is quite possible that other groups migrated in and out of the area at various times with different traits. That doesn't make them non African. Also, most importantly, most of the key sites from this era, between Upper Egypt and Lower Sudan are now under Lake Nasser.
If you look at the paper on the spread of farming in Europe, they make it quite clear which populations and what traits represent European groups in different areas at different times and which traits represent non European groups from different regions and different times. They are not clearly doing that here and just leaving it open to interpretation, which makes no sense.
At the end of the day, they keep claiming Eurasian back migration as a key to the settlement in the Nile Valley in all of these related papers we are posting. Yet NONE of them show how any of the sites they excavated show proof of that migration. If anything they show proof of migrations within Africa vs migrations from outside of Africa. I am not sure what part of that people are having a hard time with.
Again all these paper are saying the same thing: nile Valley as a corridor for migrations, with the assumption that Eurasian back migration is a key element, but then turn around and say most of the key sites are in the South, far from an entry point of Eurasians.....
quote: During the Nubia Salvage Campaign and the subsequent expeditions from the 1960’s to the 1980’s, numerous sites attributed to the Late Palaeolithic (~25–15 ka) were found in the Nile Valley, particularly in Nubia and Upper Egypt. This region is one of the few to have allowed human occupations during the dry Marine Isotope Stage 2 and is therefore key to understanding how human populations adapted to environmental changes at this time. This paper focuses on two sites located in Upper Egypt, excavated by the Combined Prehistoric Expedition: E71K18, attributed to the Afian industry and E71K20, attributed to the Silsilian industry. It aims to review the geomorphological and chronological evidence of the sites, present a technological analysis of the lithic assemblages in order to provide data that can be used in detailed comparative studies, which will allow discussion of technological variability in the Late Palaeolithic of the Nile Valley and its place within the regional context. The lithic analysis relies on the chaîne opératoire concept combined with an attribute analysis to allow quantification. This study (1) casts doubts on the chronology of E71K18 and related Afian industry, which could be older or younger than previously suggested, highlights (2) distinct technological characteristics for the Afian and the Silsilian, as well as (3) similar technological characteristics which allow to group them under a same broad techno-cultural complex, distinct from those north or south of the area.
The Nile Valley geographically links eastern Africa to North Africa and the Levant, and is therefore key in discussions of modern human dispersals out-of and back-into-Africa during the Upper Pleistocene [1–6]. However, the number, routes and timing of these dispersals are highly controversial [7]. Archaeological evidence supporting the ‘northern’ route out of Africa through the Nile Valley is sparse and debated ([8], but see [9,10]) and human remains from this period, all attributed to modern human remains, remain few [11–14]. Most of the evidence for Pleistocene dispersals thus comes from genetic results. Comparisons between the archaeological record of the Nile Valley and adjacent regions are at the heart of testing dispersal hypotheses and their archaeological visibility.
The question is why are they lumping OOA with back to Africa when they are separated by many thousands of years. And why are they refusing to admit that those Upper Nile Valley sites represent migrations from the Sahara and other points in Africa versus migration from outside Africa. Just at face value that makes no sense. It is like they are trying to force the data to fit into a model they have predefined for Eurasian back migration. This is especially odd when many of these areas are in so-called Nubia. So now are they going to claim that so-called Nubians are Eurasian back migrants also?
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there is some I didn't post and translate and I did not read every word, so there may be more to look into in the article
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quote:Originally posted by Swenet: I would have to read up on the genetic reports of the last couple of years to learn about that population as I've been out of the loop.
The three populations I alluded to above are al Khiday, Silsilians and alleged victors of that so-called 'race war', in that seedy daily mail article. They claimed to have found a site in Sudan where the victors came from, and they were supposedly of 'North African' identity, but the remains never published. I later learned Irish was the inside guy they used for population affinity info, to write that story. Which is probably the only reason why I'm still mentioning it: his experience with nonmetric traits in North Africa.
Silsilians don't have bones, of course, only affinities to other archaeological cultures, and seemingly intrusive presence in Egypt. They shared the Nile Valley with other unrelated cultures, but had affinities with non-Egyptian cultures east and west. In all these things the have exactly what is called for, and also, what the other Egyptian cultures lack. Wadi Kubbaniya and Fakhurian, for instance, are disqualified because we already have their bones. Contemporary or slighly younger Sebilians also have some published remains. They are all 'mechtoid' and thus, incompatible.
That also helps to narrow things down to Silsilian being part of the Palaeolithic Afroasiatic presence as both Wadi Kubbaniya and Silsilian have links with Iberomaurusians, but only Silsilians have good links with the Iberomaurusians and the Levant. Both regions we now know for sure have North African E-M35.
quote:The resemblance of various typo-technological features in the Mushabian to certain Maghrebian and Nilotic Terminal Palaeolithic industries was noted, especially the microburin technique, which provides parallels with the Iberomaurusian and Silsilian (Phillips and Mintz, 1977). Furthermore, these techno-typological characteristics were previously considered to be basically alien to Terminal Palaeolithic developments in central and northern Palestine, such as to provide further evidence that the Mushabian represents the penetration of groups from the area of the Nile Delta into the Sinai during a period of climatic amelioration.
At the Edge Terminal Pleistocene Hunter-Gatherers in the Negev and Sinai
Contrary to the author's speculations, I'm not saying that Silsilian is the origin of the Levantine and Iberomaurusian relatives. I see this industry as intrusive in Egypt, not as a center of migrations to east and west.
Were you alluding to this way back then? I of course couldn't find and biological info on the Silsilian but seen reading about them I can't object to what you're saying. In fact, I used the lack of mention of these various site as the sole evidence of the lack of importance (thinking I'm just not informed) but I was 90% sure m78 or just m35 proper expanded with that culture.
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That IB2 I mentioned in your link has affinity to the Silsilian mentioned here. That IB1 mentioned there has affinities to Wadi Kubbaniyan and Fakhurian in Egypt.
The subdivision of Iberomaurusian at Taforalt into IB1, IB2 and IB3 (see Barton et al 2013), with most or all of these showing links with industries at the Nile, shows that the Iberomaurusian is not one thing. Hence my comment above about the misleading use of postglacial Afalou and Taforalt skeletal remains as the face of the Iberomaurusian, even though older Iberomaurusians like Taza I and Afalou #28, look very different.
But, yes, I would like to think the microlithic cultures are older in N. Africa than 25ky (in your link I predicted they would be pushed back to 33ky, based on the age of North African-specific mtDNAs like L3k), but such dates would have to come from refugia that so far seem to be very elusive. Yet they must have existed, because you can't have this cultural convergence happening repeatedly over these distances, without some unknown source population being involved.
quote:On the basis of this (admittedly preliminary) analysis. one could argue that the Iberomaurusian was introduced to the Maghreb from the east. On the other hand, and given the very early dates for the Iberomaurusian at Tamar Hat, one could just as easily say that the Iberomaurusian is the source for at least some of the Nilotic industries. The cemetery at Jebel Sahaba in the Sudan. which is dated between 14,000 and 12,000 BP (Wendorf 1968:954), and in which the human remains show strong resemblances to those from the Maghreb (Anderson 1968), would allow for either possibility. The studies done by Close (1977; Close et al. 1979) tend to reinforce the idea of separate but similar traditions in the Nile Valley, Cyrenaica, and the Maghreb. Thus, a third option is to postulate some as-yet-unidentified pan-North African tradition (or traditions) that could be a result of population movements, or of diffusion of ideas, or of adaptive solutions to analogous problems. The data presently available do not allow us to test this thought.
Continuity in the Epipaleolithic of northern Africa with emphasis on the Maghreb
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Baalberith
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What role would the Aterians play in the formation of the Oranian & Dabban cultures?
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I also find it odd that these discussions of the history of settlement on the Nile are skipping over many other sites in the Western desert that cover the neolithic to late neolithic transition like Nabta Playa, Gilf Kebir, Bir Ksieba, Gebel Uweinat and so forth. It is like the work of Fred Wendorf and others often gets short shrift in these works from other researchers more bent on connecting North Africa with Eurasia via coastal sites and the Maghreb.
Case in point Gebel Ramlah which also has a well preserved cemetery:
quote: One reason why we know so little about Neolithic Egypt is that the sites are often inaccessible, lying beneath the Nile's former flood plain or in outlying deserts.
With permission from Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) we—members of the Combined Prehistoric Expedition – explore Neolithic sites in Egypt's western desert. The sites we are currently excavating lie along the former shores of an extinct seasonal lake near a place called Gebel Ramlah.
quote: The Nabta Playa Basin is one of the largest palaeolakes of the playa type on the South–Western Desert border, located around 100 km west of the Nile Valley (Fig. 1). Remains of hundreds of Neolithic encampents and settlements have been found around it and excavated by the Combined Prehistoric Expedition (Wendorf and Schild 1980, 1998, 2001a; Banks 1984; Close 1987; Nelson et al. 2002). In 2006, a research project commenced that aimed at examining various aspects of the Early Neolithic settlement, beginning with the identification of its earliest phase. An extensive archaeological survey was carried out in the Nabta Playa Basin as part of that project.
Aterians are NAMSA. Dabban is considered part of a new kind of era, to which Nazlet Khater is also considered to belong (not implying that they are close, but they do belong in the general ballpark of affinities considered 'Mode 4'). Shuwikhatian in Egypt likely also fits there. They are all blade-based industries resembling Eurasian OOA industries (again, not implying close links, but in the same ballpark), and they also all retained some links to the older NAMSA period.
Nazlet Khater and Shuwikhatian in pic above.
Oranian is part of an entirely new period, in the same way that Dabban and Nazlet are part of a new period relative to the Aterian and NAMSA in general. This 3rd new period starts with the LGM (Late Glacial Maximum), though I would say its older in North Africa. This is when industries appear that have an origin ultimately in the Howieson's poort of South Africa, or something similar.
So to answer your question. They are different periods, with different humans in them. Though there is some carryover of Aterian genetics to the later periods.
Though I used the phrase 'new era', and though Dabban and related industries are generally presented as human progress, this is not true (ie they were not innovated in that order). The 'more advanced' Mode 4 is older than Aterians and Neanderthals and signs of it are already attested in Israel ~400ky, implying that sapiens are older than 'archaics' and older than supposed near sapiens (e.g. Jebel Irhoud, Omo, Herto, Qafzeh, Skhul). Hence you have a sign that the models these academics are working with are contradictions in terms because sapiens are more 'archaic' (older, earlier attestation) than certain 'archaics'.
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Baalberith
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quote:Originally posted by Doug M: I also find it odd that these discussions of the history of settlement on the Nile are skipping over many other sites in the Western desert that cover the neolithic to late neolithic transition like Nabta Playa, Gilf Kebir, Bir Ksieba, Gebel Uweinat and so forth. It is like the work of Fred Wendorf and others often gets short shrift in these works from other researchers more bent on connecting North Africa with Eurasia via coastal sites and the Maghreb.
Case in point Gebel Ramlah which also has a well preserved cemetery:
quote: One reason why we know so little about Neolithic Egypt is that the sites are often inaccessible, lying beneath the Nile's former flood plain or in outlying deserts.
With permission from Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) we—members of the Combined Prehistoric Expedition – explore Neolithic sites in Egypt's western desert. The sites we are currently excavating lie along the former shores of an extinct seasonal lake near a place called Gebel Ramlah.
quote: The Nabta Playa Basin is one of the largest palaeolakes of the playa type on the South–Western Desert border, located around 100 km west of the Nile Valley (Fig. 1). Remains of hundreds of Neolithic encampents and settlements have been found around it and excavated by the Combined Prehistoric Expedition (Wendorf and Schild 1980, 1998, 2001a; Banks 1984; Close 1987; Nelson et al. 2002). In 2006, a research project commenced that aimed at examining various aspects of the Early Neolithic settlement, beginning with the identification of its earliest phase. An extensive archaeological survey was carried out in the Nabta Playa Basin as part of that project.
What is your opinion on Swenet's point about the morphological distance of Gebel Ramlah from Predynastic Egyptians?
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quote:Originally posted by Baalberith: How would you describe the LSA North Africans residing along the Red Sea Coasts?
Unconvincing source of North African LSA. Not rich in LSA culture (compared to, say, rich LSA culture at Howiesons poort, which involves sea shells, red ochre, art, tools made of bone, etc).
As a result, it's an unconvincing refugium or center of migrations. At least as it stands now. Wherever these refugia are that we are looking for in North Africa, we'd expect to find abundance or richness in culture. The cultural convergence that happens much later, during the Neolithic, involving Gebel Ramlah and predynastics, also has the same sense of abundance (e.g. grave goods). You don't find that in the Red Sea coast AFAIK.
quote:The caves appear to have been used initially for predynastic burials. From debris remaining in the caves, and from material recovered from our sifting of an old rob- bers' spoil heap, we can say that at least one adult and a juvenile were buried in the caves. There were also dog bones, having a patina and state of preservation identical to those of the human remains. They were interred with a number of leather gar- ments of varying thicknesses, several of the fragments preserving the threads with which various pieces were stitched together, some pieces preserving a folded rim of leather. We found fragments of a quartz palette, retaining the green stain of the malachite for eye makeup once ground there; a portion of a large shell probably originally contained a quantity of malachite for the deceased (compare Junker's dis- coveries at Kubaniya south). A number of white feathers also appear to have be- longed to the initial burials, along with many fragments of black, handmade pottery, one fragment of a bottle neck preserving white filled, incised triangles as decora- tion. These features suggest a predynastic or Nubian origin for the burials, and the shape of the black pottery most closely resembles that known as Tasian. The Tasian culture, unlike the contemporary predynastic Egyptian culture, made use of stones other than slate for palettes. As a preliminary conclusion we can suggest that we have here a Tasian burial, at a point on a Western Desert Road suggesting that the Tasian culture entered the Nile Valley from elsewhere. The use of quartz for our Tasian palette suggests a Nubian connection to the Tasians, or at least to the Tasians buried in the caves on the Farshut Road. The probable presence of a dog buried with the people would also be consistent with Nubian desert dwellers (compare the ca- nine burials associated with the Nubian Pan Graves of Hou). The location of the burials and the use of quartz for the palette lends support to Renee Friedman's hy- pothesis that the "Tasians" were not a chronologically distinct culture, but rather a nomadic people with whom Badarian and Amratian cultures interacted, just as later Egyptians did with desert-dwelling Nubians.
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Would you say that the Delta would be a refugium for LSA North Africans, especially in regards to the Dabban culture in Cyrenaica?
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The Dabban is another group of people compared to those we find during the LGM. So I would not look for one refugium or ancestral home for all of the N. African LSA. Also, the industries within the LSA, in North Africa, have their own subdivisions, with Silsilians, for instance, matching IB2, but not IB1. The implication is that entirely different people are involved, with predynastics mostly descending from one of these (ie, in my view, they belong to the population Silsilians also belonged to), and Iberomaurusians descending from multiple (hence, IB1, IB2, IB3). This also explains why Taforalt and Afalou have been so difficult to assign to a population based on their skeletal remains. The later ones (postglacial) even have European hg, based on Kefi's work.
If you look above at the Ehret quote. He says the pre-LGM LSA (ie Dabban, Nazlet Khater) industries are differentiated from from the LGM LSA, in that the latter show connections to Sub-Saharan industries owing to a common origin in Howieson's Poort or something similar. So the grouping 'LSA' in N. Africa has subdivisions that have genetic and morphological implications. Different groups inhabiting N. Africa, some of which persisted down to the Holocene (ie, several retained their unique bio-affinities well into the holocene) would then call for different refugia.
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quote:Originally posted by Doug M: I also find it odd that these discussions of the history of settlement on the Nile are skipping over many other sites in the Western desert that cover the neolithic to late neolithic transition like Nabta Playa, Gilf Kebir, Bir Ksieba, Gebel Uweinat and so forth. It is like the work of Fred Wendorf and others often gets short shrift in these works from other researchers more bent on connecting North Africa with Eurasia via coastal sites and the Maghreb.
Case in point Gebel Ramlah which also has a well preserved cemetery:
quote: One reason why we know so little about Neolithic Egypt is that the sites are often inaccessible, lying beneath the Nile's former flood plain or in outlying deserts.
With permission from Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) we—members of the Combined Prehistoric Expedition – explore Neolithic sites in Egypt's western desert. The sites we are currently excavating lie along the former shores of an extinct seasonal lake near a place called Gebel Ramlah.
quote: The Nabta Playa Basin is one of the largest palaeolakes of the playa type on the South–Western Desert border, located around 100 km west of the Nile Valley (Fig. 1). Remains of hundreds of Neolithic encampents and settlements have been found around it and excavated by the Combined Prehistoric Expedition (Wendorf and Schild 1980, 1998, 2001a; Banks 1984; Close 1987; Nelson et al. 2002). In 2006, a research project commenced that aimed at examining various aspects of the Early Neolithic settlement, beginning with the identification of its earliest phase. An extensive archaeological survey was carried out in the Nabta Playa Basin as part of that project.
What is your opinion on Swenet's point about the morphological distance of Gebel Ramlah from Predynastic Egyptians?
Honestly it depends on what is being called the "predynastic" population. Like I was saying earlier, they refuse to map out all these various population clusters at various sites and times into a coherent model. Part of the problem is the environmental history of the region promoting seasonal migration along with shifts in the river. So over time different groups at different eras would settle in different sites and then move on to other areas. Keeping in mind that these ancient populations have always been nomadic to begin with going back to prehistory.
And therefore, because of the range of sites spread across such a large area, different scholars include different locations and regions as part of "predynastic" culture. Wendorf and others would include sites like Nabta Playa and Wadi Halfa as part of it, others will focus exclusively on sites nearer to the river and north of Aswan, while some will include sites along the Mediterranean coast and into the Maghreb. There is no consistency in identification on what consists of a "predynastic" population in general, whether based on skeletal morphology, stone tools or anything else. And that in itself is problematic because logic suggests that all of these populations in this region are technically part of a predynastic cultural horizon in a general sense as part of the history of that part of the Nile. So it depends on who is using the term and how they are defining it. IF they go by the strict definition of historic Egyptology they will stick to those sites like Badari, Naqada and so forth, but when dealing with general population studies in a region it goes beyond that.
All of that to say, that all data should be included from the region and then mapped out to provide the best possible explanation for any possible population flows. That means all sites in the region in the given time period and then expanding further out. But unfortunately most researchers don't have the capacity for that and only focus on a few sites at one time as opposed to comprehensive studies such as those involving multiple teams concerning the spread of farming in Europe.
Suffice to say, regardless of that, the overall pattern is quite clear that the Sahara played an important role in the evolution and movement of populations along the Nile in the time period of up to 10,000 BC. And that population movement is most noticeable in areas around the Upper Nile so the most logical answer is that it is some population from that region. Of course some other group of people from much further away from the Nile COULD have popped up here and triggered a massive revolution of lifestyles and cultures but I doubt it.
quote: By taking into account: the ecological context and human-environment co-evolution; contemporary genetic data African; recent summaries on discrete characters, it appears: 1/ that the epipalaeolithic subjects of the valley (for which there are clearly questions of dating) are morphologically close to the Neolithic subjects of Gebel Ramlah, cultural precursors of Predynastic, but that these are morphologically distant from predynastic subjects. 2/ There seems to be a clear evolution of populations between the predynastic and the dynastic, but it is Greek and Roman eras in the delta important gene flows are to suspect. 3/ Contemporary populations hardly reflect ancient history of the valley insofar as the exchanges with Ethiopia for the Copts and the Middle East with the Muslims seem to have been of importance. 4/ Studies like the one dealing with the predynastic series of Adaima provide unpublished data on the evolution of populations by suggesting in particular how epidemics may have been selective and evolutionary factors at certain times.
So in the context of the above who are the "predynastic subjects" being referred to? What traits are they comparing and how do those traits among those "predynastic subjects" compare to any other populations elsewhere in the same region from a similar time frame?
And then as I said before, there is a difference between "predynastic" history of the Nile implying direct relationship to dyastic culture and the history of population settlement of the Nile which has no time depth or cultural and metric boundaries. Unfortunately, as i mentioned earlier, this paper jumps around a lot and mixes up these contexts.
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Damn! I swear everytime I'm kept away from this forum due to business, you guys create excellent threads. By the way, I've been in correspondence with Dr. Aaron De Souza.
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: Unfortunately, I am unable to read the text of the .pdf in the OP since I don't speak French. But it does have this graphic, if anyone is interested.
Yeah the PCA charts pretty much confirm all previous ones. All the predynastic samples, at least those from Upper Egypt consistently cluster together. Of course the dynastic samples are more heterogeneous because they include samples from Lower Egypt. The Gebel Ramlah sample is relatively close to Upper Egyptians but still a ways off due to other traits that are more Sub-Saharan.
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: No, there is no contradiction.
This is one of the reasons why you pay attention to updates presented in new papers (see my previous post). It's so you don't take a tumble over a banana peel left in these researchers papers, that they fell over themselves, and then cause their colleagues/readers to fall over.
Contrary to what they say, L0f is not a Khoisan haplogroup. Meaning, it's not carried by living Khoisan; it's East African. But that is not really the point, because it could still be, and likely is, genetic legacy left behind by extinct Palaeolithic East African Khoisan populations, a contentious subject that has come up many times in anthropology (I believe Coon had Khoisans all over Africa in one of his maps), but which most modern anthropologists (partly due to their incompetence) feel is debunked.
Anyway, this has already been talked about here occasionally. I think this was posted by Bass more than a decade ago. You do your own homework and work it out.
Unfortunately the problem is that the label of "Khoisan" is placed on the East African hunter-gatherers solely because they have clicks in their languages. The truth is that both the Hadzabe and Sandawe languages are isolates with no genetic relation to each other much less the Khoisan of southern Africa. Swenet you are correct that the problem is that these anthropologists are terrible at population reconstruction but it's due to the very fact their specific disciplines are disconnected from each other. As par example the disconnect of the genetic data with linguistics. Even Cruciani mistakenly associated R-V88 with Afroasiatic etc.
quote: I will talk about it elsewhere when I'm ready to say all the things I feel need to be said along with that.
But those who are curious might find the answer going through certain old, but relevant, anthro works. Clue is, I said 'in the region', but perhaps I should have said 'wider region'.
Also, we do know Al Khiday was found at the Nile, and they resemble Bronze Age Egypto-Nubians non-metrically (and presumably also metrically). Some Nile Valley sites Doug did not explicitly mention (like al Khiday, and at least two others I know of) I'm expecting to likely have had those traits. So it's not true that the Nile was always devoid of these populations. The main point here, though, is that none of these 'ancestors' actually controlled the Nile during the Palaeolithic (e.g. al Khiday was followed by Wadi Halfa-type populations), and their bones have only been found in the last 11 years, while 'mechtoids' have been found exclusively before that.
All of this indicates that populations of this type were always a minority population until the Bronze Age, and were likely absorbed after arriving, much like Iberomaurusian populations on the other side of North Africa who also received these population waves (they had E-M78, after all), but who don't have a whole lot to show for it in their bones. (All we see is domination of the postglacial Maghreb by the much-hyped 'Caucasoid' Afalou and Taforalt postglacial remains that the anthro community keeps presenting as the face of this culture). Once such expansions have been absorbed, the resulting populations no longer count as ancestors of Bronze Age Egyptians, for obvious reasons.
This is the crux of the issue that I'm really interested in. The cranio-morphological divide between North Africans and Sub-Saharans is clear yet since the Pleistocene the latter type seems to predominate in North Africa from Nazlet Khater down to Jebel Sahaba and even the Qarunian woman in the Delta. I agree that Al Khiday shows the N. African type was present as far south as central Sudan.
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: This is the crux of the issue that I'm really interested in. The cranio-morphological divide between North Africans and Sub-Saharans is clear yet since the Pleistocene the latter type seems to predominate in North Africa from Nazlet Khater down to Jebel Sahaba and even the Qarunian woman in the Delta. I agree that Al Khiday shows the N. African type was present as far south as central Sudan.
Maybe we should look at some of the oases in the Sahara (both west and east of the Nile) for possible refugia? This article suggests that inhabitants of the Dakhleh Oasis may have contributed to predynastic Egyptian cultures, although I don't know if they have found Upper Paleolithic skeletal remains that resemble predynastic people there.
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: I would have to read up on the genetic reports of the last couple of years to learn about that population as I've been out of the loop.
The three populations I alluded to above are al Khiday, Silsilians, and alleged victors of that so-called 'race war', in that seedy daily mail article. They claimed to have found a site in Sudan where the victors came from, and they were supposedly of 'North African' identity, but the remains never published. I later learned Irish was the inside guy they used for population affinity info, to write that story. Which is probably the only reason why I'm still mentioning it: his experience with nonmetric traits in North Africa.
Silsilians don't have bones, of course, only affinities to other archaeological cultures, and seemingly intrusive presence in Egypt. They shared the Nile Valley with other unrelated cultures, but had affinities with non-Egyptian cultures east and west. In all these things the have exactly what is called for, and also, what the other Egyptian cultures lack. Wadi Kubbaniya and Fakhurian, for instance, are disqualified because we already have their bones. Contemporary or slighly younger Sebilians also have some published remains. They are all 'mechtoid' and thus, incompatible.
That also helps to narrow things down to Silsilian being part of the Palaeolithic Afroasiatic presence as both Wadi Kubbaniya and Silsilian have links with Iberomaurusians, but only Silsilians have good links with the Iberomaurusians and the Levant. Both regions we now know for sure have North African E-M35.
quote:The resemblance of various typo-technological features in the Mushabian to certain Maghrebian and Nilotic Terminal Palaeolithic industries was noted, especially the microburin technique, which provides parallels with the Iberomaurusian and Silsilian (Phillips and Mintz, 1977). Furthermore, these techno-typological characteristics were previously considered to be basically alien to Terminal Palaeolithic developments in central and northern Palestine, such as to provide further evidence that the Mushabian represents the penetration of groups from the area of the Nile Delta into the Sinai during a period of climatic amelioration.
At the Edge Terminal Pleistocene Hunter-Gatherers in the Negev and Sinai
Contrary to the author's speculations, I'm not saying that Silsilian is the origin of the Levantine and Iberomaurusian relatives. I see this industry as intrusive in Egypt, not as a center of migrations to east and west.
Wow! I forgot about the Silsilians and Afians. I didn't think they would be of the same N. African type since I haven't read anything about them in terms of cranial morphology.
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: Ehret mentions the Silsilian industry in a chapter he wrote for The Cambridge World History titled "Africa from 48,000 to 9500 BCE".
quote:In Egypt, in contrast, this second era lasted for a shorter time, down to around 15,000 bce. The last phase of the previous era, represented by the Halfan and Kubbiyan cultures, came to an end around 19,000 bce, in keeping with a history in which the new technocomplex would have taken hold in Egypt about the same time as it did in the Maghreb. But because of a gap in the Egyptian archaeological record between about 19,000 and 17,000 bce, direct supporting evidence for the new kind of tool industry is lacking until around 17,000, by that time the Egyptian counterpart of Oranian, the Silsilian, was well established in Upper Egypt. Silsilian like Oranian was characterized by various kinds of bladelets and, most notably, by abundant evidence, as for Oranian, of the new tool-making feature, the microburin technique.
The origins of this technocomplex are uncertain, but in their high proportions of bladelets and microliths, both Silsilian and Oranian have more in common with African Later Stone Age technologies farther south in the continent than with the pre-Glacial Maximum cultures of Egypt and Libya. The Oranian peoples practiced one custom of possible more southerly inspiration as well: they excised the incisor teeth. This trait is not known earlier in North Africa, nor was it found in the contemporary Silsilian in Egypt. But it was a very old custom among Nilo-Saharan peoples farther south in the middle and upper Nile regions. Together these features suggest a possible history for future testing in the archaeology – that a new population element, following the Nile north from the Middle Nile Basin around 19,000 bce, may have contributed to the origins of the new technocomplex of that period.
(Oranian is his term for Iberomaurusian. I dunno which technologies he's referencing when he says both they and the Silsilians have "more in common with African Later Stone Age technologies farther south", or whether the similarities he cites indicate cultural affinity or simple coincidence.)
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: Maybe we should look at some of the oases in the Sahara (both west and east of the Nile) for possible refugia? This article suggests that inhabitants of the Dakhleh Oasis may have contributed to predynastic Egyptian cultures, although I don't know if they have found Upper Paleolithic skeletal remains that resemble predynastic people there.
Yeah, I read that article when it was first published. I have no doubt that the Western Desert was a source of Egyptian ancestry. In fact, I remember old studies showing that the highest rates of HBS in Egypt is found in the western oases. Plus, there is a theory that the Badarians originated from the Western Desert whereas Naqada originates from the Eastern Desert.
But getting back to the topic of the Adaïma settlement, here are two older papers on topic:
I agree. Very good paper in the OP, potentially. I can't remember the last time there was progress an a number of things I like to see updates on. A lot of times in anthropology you can only progress as much as the field gives you leads to investigate and confirm what you need clarity on. But like I said, I haven't read the paper yet, so I don't want to get ahead of myself.
I agree that Hadza and Sandawe should not be regarded as closely related to Khoisan.
You might be interested in reading Rito et al 2013 (see link and map below). It's my view that East African L0 (e.g. L0f, L0a, etc) and Khoisan L0 (L0d and L0k), have a TMRCA time depth where the people bearing this mtDNA could be very different today, while still showing lingering linguistic and morphological evidence that a much larger network of Khoisan-like people once existed in Africa.
Compare L0 map from Rito et al 2013, with the distribution of purple (Khoisan) in one of Coon's maps. The below is based on skeletal remains of course (depicts population distributions after the pleistocene). Coon didn't have the benefit of DNA, and still got the rough outlines of his purple, correct. Unlike modern anthropologists, who have the benefit of DNA analysis, but apparently don't understand population affinity.
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^ That's very interesting. I'd say a striking case of coincidence especially since Coon seemed to rely almost solely on metric features. I think part of the reason for the "North African Capoid" hypothesis happened to certain superficial traits being found among North African populaces particularly Haratin in the Maghreb and Egyptians such as epicanthic eyes, steatopygia, and another peculiar female trait that tied Egyptians to both East Africans and South African Khoisan. Of course the problem is that such features especially the former two are found throughout Africa. Skeletally there is also the occurrence pedomorphic traits which again can be found among many populations in Africa.
But you're right that in terms of mitochondrial lineages, L0 is so old that the phenotypes of the carriers of the ancestral subclades and even autosomal profiles could be really different from their modern descendants.
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I've remained undecided on this for a long time. Not really because I was skeptical but because the various pieces of evidence seemed too vague or lacking coherence to really do anything with it. (Think those medieval Moroccans said to have 'South African' ancestry, but it was never clarified if that meant Bantu or Khoisan, or why there was such uncertainty in classifying their ancestry components). I've posted some really puzzling evidence on this in the past (some might remember), but I never did anything with it.
A lot of times jumping ahead of the anthro literature you risk it going pear shaped (e.g. Vincente Cabrera 2018, or Anatole Klyosov or even Keita's claim that 30% haplotype IV in Upper Egypt and northern Sudan is E-M2). But I'm pretty confident I won't regret taking a stance on this in a writeup. Posts: 8877 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: This is the crux of the issue that I'm really interested in. The cranio-morphological divide between North Africans and Sub-Saharans is clear yet since the Pleistocene the latter type seems to predominate in North Africa from Nazlet Khater down to Jebel Sahaba and even the Qarunian woman in the Delta. I agree that Al Khiday shows the N. African type was present as far south as central Sudan.
Why do you omit Iberomaurusians ? Capsians ? Also I'm not aware of any skeletal remain being retrieved from the Delta for such old periods because of its particular climatic conditions (Qarunian was from the Fayoum not the Delta per se).
In 1978, M.-C. Chamla had already demonstrated that during the Holocene, 'negroid' remains constituted only a small percentage of North African remains, with only 4 out of 62 remains being classified as such :
Also Irish 2021 proposed that populations like the one from Jebel Sahaba were not native to the Nile Valley but settled there during the Green sahara phase :
quote: Assuming phenetic affinities reflect genetic relatedness, Gebel Sahaba appears too divergent to be ancestral to succeeding Nubians—differing significantly based on 36 and 21 traits. Such findings were reported previously [22–30,33,34]. These same studies indicate the Gebel Sahaba/Tushka/Wadi Halfa population was not indigenous to Nubia or the region, instead showing affinities to sub-Saharan Africans,notably West Africa. This too is not new, and two earlier studies reported cranial similarities with sub-Saharan samples: West African Ashanti [41], and Late Palaeolithic Ishango, Democratic Republic of the Congo ([40], also see [64]). [...] Of interest, the Ashanti crania from [41] comprise the Ghana (GHA) sample near Gebel Sahaba. The latter’s location shows it most akin to West Africans and three Central African samples, sharing traits common among subcontinental populations [57,65,66].
quote:A sub-Saharan population in late Pleistocene Nubia should not be unexpected, given northward expansions of Sahelian vegetation and sub-Saharan fauna during Saharan ‘green’ periods ; the most recent initiated 15 000 BP [67], before its maximum around 9000 BP [67–69]. It may seem surprising that these apparent migrants originated so far away, but many well-watered migration routes were available then[22,26,68].
J.D. Irish, The transition from hunting–gathering to agriculture in Nubia: dental evidence for and against selection, population continuity and discontinuity, 2021
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^ Both Nazlet Khater and his successor Wadi Kubbaniya predate Ibero-Maurusians and even in the latter the early populations were said to constitute a "Mechta type" or form that differs from succeeding Capsians who do more closely align to Bronze Age North Africans especially in Libya and the Egyptian Delta, while Egyptians of the Valley-- Badarian and Naqada resemble Sub-Saharans of the Horn. So I find it funny how you call the Sub-Saharan types "intrusive" or late-comers when Nazlet Khater and Wadi Kubbaniya show otherwise.
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: @Djehuti
I've remained undecided on this for a long time. Not really because I was skeptical but because the various pieces of evidence seemed too vague or lacking coherence to really do anything with it. (Think those medieval Moroccans said to have 'South African' ancestry, but it was never clarified if that meant Bantu or Khoisan, or why there was such uncertainty in classifying their ancestry components). I've posted some really puzzling evidence on this in the past (some might remember), but I never did anything with it.
A lot of times jumping ahead of the anthro literature you risk it going pear shaped (e.g. Vincente Cabrera 2018, or Anatole Klyosov or even Keita's claim that 30% haplotype IV in Upper Egypt and northern Sudan is E-M2). But I'm pretty confident I won't regret taking a stance on this in a writeup.
I'm curious as to what your take on it is.
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Has there been any recent information on where the Capsians originally came from Djehuti and Swenet? If so, would the Delta be a probable source for them and the Proto-Berbers?
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^ As far I know there have been no genetic analyses on Capsian remains but the prevailing view is that Capsians and Neolithic culture in Africa general is "Eurasian" in origin. But of course that has been called into question and for good reason.
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The Capsians weren't originally Pastoralists though, they were Hunter Gatherers who adopted the Neolithic food strategy themselves.
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: [QB] ^ Both Nazlet Khater and his successor Wadi Kubbaniya predate Ibero-Maurusians and even in the latter the early populations were said to constitute a "Mechta type" or form that differs from succeeding Capsians who do more closely align to Bronze Age North Africans especially in Libya and the Egyptian Delta, while Egyptians of the Valley-- Badarian and Naqada resemble Sub-Saharans of the Horn. So I find it funny how you call the Sub-Saharan types "intrusive" or late-comers when Nazlet Khater and Wadi Kubbaniya show otherwise.
This is outdated information since we now know they had nothing to do with mechta folks :
quote:As could be expected, the biologically non-sub-Saharan nature of the Iberomaurusian and Capsian and the biologically sub-Saharan nature of the Late Pleistocene Nubian material have been repeatedly pointed out in this context. Irish (2000: 404) summed it up perfectly when he wrote: “ Thus, evidence for a common Mechta-Afalou population in both the Maghreb and Nubia is not supported. … Moreover, even a casual inspection of crania in the three samples reveals that many characteristic Nubian traits, including, for example, alveolar prognathism, are uncommon or absent in Iberomaurusians
The prehistoric inhabitants of the wadi howar and anthropological study of human skeletal remains from the sudanese part of the eastern sahara, 2011, pp. 238-239
Are you implying that all individuals from sub-Saharan Africa share the same physical characteristics? If not, what's the issue with the arrival of newcomers or intruders from other regions of SSA into the Nile Valley during a period of high humidity? I already showed you how your "Sub-saharans of the Horn" do not plot with other sub-saharans and how closer genetically they are to north africans and middle easterners.
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Looking at the entire paper, it appears that it includes multiple articles related to research and study of the Nile Valley. Given that, maybe reading some of the other articles can help bring clarity to the situation.
However, the picture I am seeing in conjunction with other studies such as those of Irish concerning so-called 'Nubian' teeth, is that the ancient populations of the region were hyper diverse and cannot be easily fit into simple population structures. And this idea that somehow cannot find the "source" population of the ancient pre-dynastic Nile is kind of ridiculous. Sure, there could be a specific population or set of "ancestral" populations that is missing that would perfectly match, but given the remains we already have there isn't any reason to invoke "ghost" populations. And if there are any that are missing I again would argue they are under Lake Nasser.
Anyway, this is only one paper out of many published in 2010 as part of this group established to study Nile Valley history that is still ongoing.
You can easily translate any of these by downloading the pdf and then uploading it to google translate.
The following paper had some interesting observations, relating well to what was said here on this thread:
The Predynastic seen from the Mediterranean
quote: We can, by hypothesis, attribute it to a balance between environmental data and the needs of the population whose way of life, based on hunting, fishing and gathering, would have for many centuries opposed a robust veto to the production economy almost at its doorstep.
Admittedly, no barrier is impermeable and we know that some PPNB bridgeheads were able to reach the Cairo region since the arrowheads of the Abu Salem type, characteristic of the southern Levant, Sinai included, and up to the Isthmus of Suez, were previously reported in Helwan, which seems to confirm early incursions perhaps in connection with hunting expeditions (Kozlowski & Aurenche 2005). However, Egypt rejected this village "modernity" which then permeated the Levantine zone. Of course, I am aware that, at the same time, in the Eastern Sahara, other innovations could see the light of day. Thus ceramics which is attested among the exclusively hunting groups of the central and eastern Sahara (nothing so ancient is yet known in the Eastern Desert, between the Nile and the Red Sea) and from Sudan to Niger from the 9th millennium ( even older dates would have been obtained in Mali). This has nothing to do with the Neolithic. In eastern Siberia, northern and southern China, and Japan, hunter-gatherers also used clay vessels in even more remote times. On the other hand, with regard to the production of food, I always remain a little circumspect on an autochthonous domestication of the aurochs from the 9th millennium, proposed by F. Wendorf and A. Gautier from the sites of the Eastern Sahara, hypothesis supported genetically by D. Bradley and R. Loftus (Bradley & Loftus 2000). Indeed on the whole periphery of this supposed hearth (Nile valley, Sudan, Sahara), the oldest presences of domestic ox are hardly previous to 6000/5000 before our era and it is difficult to understand why this driving center of a form of domestication would not have immediately irradiated and would therefore have remained confined to this sector. More recently, however, Mr. Honegger reported a probably domestic ox in Sudan in a "Mesolithic" context around 7200 BC. our era (personal communication during the Archéo-Nil days). We should also remember that a domestic ox was perhaps present as early as the 7th millennium in Ath-Thayyilah, in the highlands of Yemen: we have spoken of local domestication without excluding a Near Eastern origin (Cleuziou 2004). The question of the autochonous domestication of the African aurochs therefore remains open. However, goats, sheep and pigs seem to have been introduced, like cereals, from the Near East: why would only beef have escaped this process of north-south and/or east-west descent (via the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea) which seems to be placed in the 6th millennium? For this purpose, it would be interesting to deepen the mechanisms of establishment of the agricultural economy in the Nile Valley and this subject of the Neolithization of Egypt remains a very stimulating theme. Trying to appreciate, for example, how certain Palestinian cultural traits (Yarmoukian, old Chalcolithic type Wadi Rabah) can be read among the materials of the first Egyptian agricultural establishments alongside other characters having a very African tone (thus the points with a concave base from Fayoum and Merimde or bone harpoons in particular).
Precisely the late establishment of the Neolithic with regard to the Near East only makes it all the more astonishing the speed in Egypt of the later evolution since the Nile valley and Mesopotamia will soon rob the Levant of the leadership of technical innovation. and social transformation. I know how much your work aims in particular, from material remains which are not always very eloquent, to clearly show the stages which led to villa communities geoises to the state. And all the difficulty lies precisely in this matching between the reading of archaeological remains and the underlying social evolution.
If we examine, about the 5th millennium for example, the content of the Badarian tombs, this does not seem to be, despite its indisputable specificities ("black-top" pottery, development of ivory work, greywacke palettes, steatite ornaments), more innovative - insofar as these comparisons make sense - than that of other contemporary Chalcolithic cultures, whether from the cultures of the Indus Valley, Iran , from the Ghassoulian of Palestine or even, in Europe, from the culture of Varna, on the Black Sea. In the metallurgical field, Egypt is even latecomer if we try around - 4000 some comparisons with the astonishing deposit of preposterous coins of Nahal Mishmar in Judea. This is undoubtedly where comparatism finds its limits, each culture using specific markers to transcribe the social differences existing within its own communities. All that can be said is that in Egypt a process of making elites is certainly underway in this ending 5th millennium, even though the sedentary lifestyle, in the south at least, remains relative if I judge for example according to data from the Mahgar-Dendera 2 site (Hendrickx, Midant-Reynes & Van Neer 2001).
It is in the 4th millennium that everything will change and the question I wonder about is whether we are dealing with a long-term process that begins in the first centuries of the millennium or whether, following a runaway social pyramid, everything is played by multiplier effect in the last four to five centuries before 3000BC. I belong to an already ancient generation to whom it was taught that the sovereign of Upper Egypt had conquered the lands of the Delta and united the country under his banner. Other authors, based on the geographical area of emergence of the Gerzéen, have argued the opposite: a driving North, a subjugated South. Archeology has of course shown that things are not so simple: rather than a single and violent episode, there would have taken place a slow and progressive impregnation of the countries of the Delta by the Nagadian culture of Upper Egypt leading to a kind of cultural standardization, a prelude to political unification. How did this come about?
I do not see, in my own field of Mediterranean study and more particularly during the 'proto-urban' stage, any suggestive example which could serve as a point of comparison with what will happen in Egypt in the second half of the 4th millennium. At most we guess then, leaving aside the Mesopotamian urban world and its margins, the presence of lordships or principalities made up of localities or small territorial units: between 3500 and 2500, Anatolia or the Aegean for example provide good examples. Later, in the West, at the beginning of the 2nd millennium, that is to say here during the Bronze Age, the state was sometimes spoken of in connection with the Argaric sphere of the south-east of the Iberian Peninsula , but that seems very extrapolated to me. Egypt being then alone in the running in such an experiment leading to the State, the reflection must start from the archaeological documentation (of which we know the difficulty in accounting for the social), possibly with the help of anthropological models. We can hypothesize that political unification could only be achieved at the end of a series of federative processes: elites, present at least since the Badarian period, were able to gradually generate sorts of hereditary lordships dominating territories of varying extent. These entities would later have been integrated into larger structures, sorts of 'proto-kingdoms' managed by local dynasties. From the competition between these would come two main sets, one in the south, the other in the north, the ultimate term being that of unification.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ As far I know there have been no genetic analyses on Capsian remains but the prevailing view is that Capsians and Neolithic culture in Africa general is "Eurasian" in origin. But of course that has been called into question and for good reason.
It is assumed to be Eurasian, except when it comes to Natufians and other Saharan wet phase cultures that appear to be independently transitioning from hunter gathering to domestication of certain local wild species. Not to mention using pottery to store wild seeds independent of the Levant at Takarkori and Uan Afuda rockshelters. Or using sickles to harvest wild grain in Wadi Kubbaniyah. This is exactly part of the conundrum facing the scholars studying the predynastic Nile as it doesn't precisely fit a simple Eurasian origin for the African early Neolithic package.
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: [QB] ^ Both Nazlet Khater and his successor Wadi Kubbaniya predate Ibero-Maurusians and even in the latter the early populations were said to constitute a "Mechta type" or form that differs from succeeding Capsians who do more closely align to Bronze Age North Africans especially in Libya and the Egyptian Delta, while Egyptians of the Valley-- Badarian and Naqada resemble Sub-Saharans of the Horn. So I find it funny how you call the Sub-Saharan types "intrusive" or late-comers when Nazlet Khater and Wadi Kubbaniya show otherwise.
This is outdated information since we now know they had nothing to do with mechta folks :
quote:As could be expected, the biologically non-sub-Saharan nature of the Iberomaurusian and Capsian and the biologically sub-Saharan nature of the Late Pleistocene Nubian material have been repeatedly pointed out in this context. Irish (2000: 404) summed it up perfectly when he wrote: “ Thus, evidence for a common Mechta-Afalou population in both the Maghreb and Nubia is not supported. … Moreover, even a casual inspection of crania in the three samples reveals that many characteristic Nubian traits, including, for example, alveolar prognathism, are uncommon or absent in Iberomaurusians
The prehistoric inhabitants of the wadi howar and anthropological study of human skeletal remains from the sudanese part of the eastern sahara, 2011, pp. 238-239
arrival of newcomers or intruders from other regions of SSA into the Nile Valley during a period of high humidity? I already showed you how your "Sub-saharans of the Horn" do not plot with other sub-saharans and how closer genetically they are to north africans and middle easterners.
I'm questioning the relevance of this post. This comment almost has nothing to do with what anyone here is focused on. EDIT: furthermore on a more relevant note. We now know to a better extent that the Mechtoid phenoytpe developed in situ due to an extreme bottleneck basically rivaling that of the Western Hunter gatherers OOA. Of-course there's no mechtoid source of common ancestry east, no one is searching for that. Everybody here understand that there were waves either continuous or pulse migratory from sources east that provided both Gracialation and or other Subsahran affinities. You can feel free to pick and choose which ones you feel are "invaders" but that's irrelevant to this topic.
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quote:Originally posted by Antalas: This is outdated information since we now know they had nothing to do with mechta folks:
quote:As could be expected, the biologically non-sub-Saharan nature of the Iberomaurusian and Capsian and the biologically sub-Saharan nature of the Late Pleistocene Nubian material have been repeatedly pointed out in this context. Irish (2000: 404) summed it up perfectly when he wrote: “ Thus, evidence for a common Mechta-Afalou population in both the Maghreb and Nubia is not supported. … Moreover, even a casual inspection of crania in the three samples reveals that many characteristic Nubian traits, including, for example, alveolar prognathism, are uncommon or absent in Iberomaurusians
The prehistoric inhabitants of the wadi howar and anthropological study of human skeletal remains from the sudanese part of the eastern sahara, 2011, pp. 238-239
I myself never made the claim that the Mechta have direct ties to the Nile Valley though I think Swenet also brought that notion up. My point was that precursors to modern Sub-Saharans i.e. Nazlet Khater and Wadi Kubbaniya were present in North Africa first.
quote:Are you implying that all individuals from sub-Saharan Africa share the same physical characteristics? If not, what's the issue with the arrival of newcomers or intruders from other regions of SSA into the Nile Valley during a period of high humidity? I already showed you how your "Sub-Saharans of the Horn" do not plot with other Sub-Saharans and how closer genetically they are to North Africans and Middle easterners.
Again, Nazlet Khater and Wadi Kubbaniya predate all the peoples you tout as modern North African types, yet there is no evidence for their likes in Sub-Sahara proper! As for your last sentence, LOL You are rather presumptuous to think you "showed" me anything! I have long known about the affinities both morphologically and genetically between North Africans and Horn Africans years before you showed up in this forum, boy. So spare me. Also, has it ever occurred to you that Middle Easterners plot genetically close due to their African admixture. Hence why you have African lineages via paternal E (E‐M293) and maternal L2 and N1!
I see that although you've returned to this blog you still haven't sought helf for your delusions.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26853 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Doug M: It is assumed to be Eurasian, except when it comes to Natufians and other Saharan wet phase cultures that appear to be independently transitioning from hunter gathering to domestication of certain local wild species. Not to mention using pottery to store wild seeds independent of the Levant at Takarkori and Uan Afuda rockshelters. Or using sickles to harvest wild grain in Wadi Kubbaniyah. This is exactly part of the conundrum facing the scholars studying the predynastic Nile as it doesn't precisely fit a simple Eurasian origin for the African early Neolithic package.
What's also funny is that when you do a quick search in Wiki, it will say that Capsian shows a "West Asian influence" but fails to specify what that is. Meanwhile it will describe cultural traits of Capsian like ritual use of red ochre and the use of ostrich eggs and egg shells for water storage and jewelry-- all of which are found solely in Africa. Make that make sense.
And last I checked pottery in Africa, specifically the Sahara predates pottery in Southwest Asia and even LP genes in Africa are more diverse than those in West Eurasia, perhaps the most diverse in the world so unless someone can find definitive evidence that Neolithic culture in Africa is solely the product of Eurasian back-migrants I won't be holding my breath.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26853 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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Ancient Egypt: A Tale of Human Sacrifice? Adaima lies about 550km south of Cairo and was primarily excavated between 1989 and 2005. Its two cemeteries contain almost 900 Predynastic graves studied by osteoarchaeologists and anthropobiologists. Some skeletons showed clear cut marks on the upper vertebrae and it seems that skulls were removed after decomposition. But does this constitute human sacrifice?
Predynastic Hierakonpolis, about 20km south of Adaima, has yielded the most intriguing finds from the 4th millennium BCE. Hierakonpolis was the legendary capital of Upper Egypt in the 4th millennium BCE and the major cult centre for the falcon god Horus whose earthly human incarnation was the divine reigning king of Egypt, seen as the shepherd of his people.
The ‘working class’ Cemetery HK43, (ca. 3600-3400/3300 BCE), contains around 450 burials. Around 3% of individuals show lacerated vertebrae indicative of decapitation, and the skeletal remains of a 20-35 year old male also exhibits cut marks on the skull similar to those at Adaima. It is possible that we are seeing a similar ritual as at Hierakonpolis, but there is no evidence this was done prior to death; the sacrifice of a living human cannot be proven.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26853 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: I myself never made the claim that the Mechta have direct ties to the Nile Valley though I think Swenet also brought that notion up. My point was that precursors to modern Sub-Saharans i.e. Nazlet Khater and Wadi Kubbaniya were present in North Africa first.
When I said 'mechtoid' I was using it as one would use any 'oid'. Hence, one could use that word to describe Wadi Halfa type remains who share robusticity with Maghrebis, while having an entirely different underlying ancestry. The underlying ancestry is not really at issue, because the postglacial Afalou and Taforalt are themselves alleged to be mostly European (at least in their mtDNA). So why is mechtoid not allowed for Wadi Halfa, simply because they have foreign (Sub-Saharan African) DNA, while it's allowed for postglacial Afalou and Taforalt, whose mtDNAs are largely foreign (European) as well??
So we are really talking about some ancient ghost population whose ancestry confers unsually strong skeletons on populations they hybridized with. When you check the resulting hybrid populations for DNA you can find European hgs (Kefi et al), North African hgs (Loosdrecht et al), or Sub-Saharan African hgs (newcomers like Jebel Sahaba and Wadi Halfa). All of them are mechtoid, but not all of them are Mechta-Afalou.
quote:Originally posted by Baalberith: Has there been any recent information on where the Capsians originally came from Djehuti and Swenet? If so, would the Delta be a probable source for them and the Proto-Berbers?
I don't know much about the Capsians. But their industries included large backed blades and bladelets, so I think they seem like a mixture of the tools that were common in the pre-LGM LSA and LGM LSA (see earlier comments, like Ehret quote). Such industries have been found in East Africa but I don't know where else in Africa they're found.
Posts: 8877 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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posted
^ Hence why Supercar says they aren't really a "type" on their own. This why I get confused sometimes with certain labels being applied to various populations.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26853 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ Hence why Supercar says they aren't really a "type" on their own. This why I get confused sometimes with certain labels being applied to various populations.
There is so much non sense out there, that sometimes my quotes are contaminated with it and I have to seriously ask myself, do I want to post this quote because a sentence later it's all over the place. And then when you post it, it almost looks like you're endorsing the non sense. That Lubell quote I posted on the previous page also claims that Jebel Sahaba mechtoid status supports migration from the Maghreb, or the other way around. Almost did not post it.
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quote:In effect, it is a well-preserved children's cemetery. The dental crowns of the permanent dentition are in place but not worn (included in the bone for the most part) and the duration of the cemetery, such as its representativeness in relation to the general population are getting better and better identified. One of the peculiarities of the population of Adaïma, highlighted during a preliminary study, is the important frequency upper canines called “Bushmen” which present a very frequent anatomical variation in certain African populations, especially the Khoisans. The African origin of the population, already widely suspected (Crubézy et al. 2002) is here confirmed.
Link to relevant info: admixtures in the Egyptian population that tend to fly under the radar with modern genetic tools and with modern anthropologists in general (who are often nowhere near as competent as some of their their predecessors before the 1970s).
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You are rather presumptuous to think you "showed" me anything! I have long known about the affinities both morphologically and genetically between North Africans and Horn Africans years before you showed up in this forum, boy. So spare me. Also, has it ever occurred to you that Middle Easterners plot genetically close due to their African admixture. Hence why you have African lineages via paternal E (E‐M293) and maternal L2 and N1!
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