Fig 1. Distribution of current major linguistic groups in Africa. Note the Afroasiatic and the importance of the Bantu languages (Niger-Congo). Khoisan/Afroasiatic/Nilosaharian/Niger-Congo A/Niger-Congo B (Bantu)/Austronesian
Fig 2. Distribution of Khoisans at different periods. -Current distribution of Khoisans -Probable distribution at the end of the 17th century (oral tradition) -Probable distribution in the "late stone age" -Sites having delivered bone remains attributed to Khoisans. _________________________________________________________________
ARCHÉO-NIL Revue de la société pour l’étude des cultures prépharaoniques de la vallée du Nil
Archéo-Nil 1990-2010. 20 ans de recherches prédynastiques
(Eng: ARCHAEO-NILE Journal of the Society for the Study of Pre-pharaonic Cultures of the Nile Valley Archaeo-Nile 1990-2010. 20 years of predynastic research) p. 25
LE PEUPLEMENT DE LA VALLÉE DU NIL PAR ÉRIC CRUBÉZY 2010
(Eng: The Settlement of the Nile Valley)
AMIS - Laboratoire d’anthropologie moléculaire et imagerie de synthèse
(AMIS - Laboratory of Molecular Anthropology and computer-generated imagery, National Center for Scientific Research - CNRS Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier University, France
excerpts:
translated from the French:
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Muslims seem to have been of importance. 4/ Studies like the one dealing with the predynastic series of Adaima provide unpublished data on the evolution of populations by suggesting in particular how epidemics may have been selective and evolutionary factors at certain times.
26
With regard to the series of studyable skeletons, the material available has increased, thanks to the development of an "anthropology of field” (Crubézy et al. 2007) and in this context the end of the excavation of the Adaïma necropolis (Crubézy et al. 2008) was an important element whose entire documentation still partly remains to be analysed. ... We will therefore define here the geographical, human and ecological frameworks likely to have caused the populations of the valley to evolve. of the Nile. We will then examine the main data of the history of settlement, both paleontological than genetic, then we consider, based on unpublished data on the predynastic population of Adaïma, what were some of the factors of co-evolution man/environment of populations. Future prospects will then be considered.
34 From Greek and Roman times, variability increases further, especially when approaching the delta, a sign of openings via the Mediterranean than known Egypt at these times. One of the problems posed by analyzes using The origin of these results is that the samples are poorly defined. It is in particular impossible for ancient excavations to know which part of the population spread over what time frame they represent. In this context, the study of the population of the cemetery East of Adaïma will take on its full value. 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.
35 In Egypt, these genetic studies aim to been underdeveloped at the moment. They were limited to the oases of Siwa (Coudray et al. 2009) and el-Hayez (Kujanová et al. 2009) as well as samples taken from subjects of Gourna (Stevanovitch et al. 2004). Subjects labeled "Egyptian" are sometimes taken up in more global analyses, but it is likely that these are hospital samples with ill-defined origins. We studied with our Egyptian colleagues two samples important unrelated subjects of the contemporary population of the village of Adaïma in Upper Egypt located next to the archaeological site of the same name, eight kilometers south of Esna. In this traditional village live side by side a Coptic and Muslim community. Knowing that before the 7th century of our era all of Egypt was Christian, our starting hypothesis was that by comparing these two samples we would have for the markers similar between communities a reflection of the Upper Egypt around the 6th century of our era and with those specific to the two communities, their particular biological histories since this period. A posteriori, surprisingly, there are very few similarities between the two communities and the observed discrepancies could very well be explained in terms of the history of the last 1300 years. When considering the haplotypes ("groups") of the Y chromosome (paternal lines), it is the G haplotype which is largely majority (88%) among Muslims and E1b1 (74%) among Copts. But it turns out that the distribution of haplotype G in the Middle East and the Mediterranean basin largely follows that of the "Arab invasions" and it could be of Middle Eastern origin. Note however, that it is not totally absent in the Copts (7%) which could sign flows can be engaged formerly. The haplotype E1b1 has a fairly wide distribution in Africa, but he had never been described with such frequency in this area. On the other hand, Ethiopia is one of the areas of the world where it is the most common. The church of Ethiopia depended, from the 4th century until 1959, from the patriarch Coptic of Alexandria who appointed a monk Egyptian Archbishop. Circulations of subjects are documented in historical times between communities. It could be that we we have, with the results of Adaïma, one of the elements making it possible to suggest the importance of it, especially since it is almost absent from Muslims, which brings to mind even more relations between religious communities. When looking at female lines, we immediately note the extreme diversity of lineages, which is a characteristic often noted in populations of African origin. Despite this diversity, the overlaps between communities are rare. Some haplogroups go in the direction of what had been observed with the markers of the Y chromosome. Thus haplogroup L3C, common in Ethiopia, is found more frequently among Copts (9%) than among Muslims (1%) and haplogroup J1, very common in Middle East (Saudi Arabia in particular) is present at 14% among Muslims against only 1% among the Copts. Those data suggest that the "Arab invasions" and that the contacts of the Copts with Ethiopia do not
36 accompanied not only by movements male but also, to a lesser extent, female. Moreover, if these haplogroups result solely from historical phenomena, they would demonstrate that marriages and/or conversions could sometimes take place between communities. It's a phenomenon that we were able to observe in Ethiopia there are a few years where in some cases the choice preference of the spouse of Muslims focused on Christian women. Some haplogroups are significantly more frequent in one or the other community; they could be explained by a choice of wives in places and/or other specific communities. Thus haplogroup T1, frequent in Eurasia and on the Mediterranean coasts is present in 27% Copts and only 7% of Muslims and K3, common in communities of Jewish and/or Palestinian origin is present among 3% of Copts and absent among Muslims. The ethnological and genealogical investigation carried out in the Coptic community of Adaïma revealed movements between Christian communities which, although relatively well established between Upper Egypt, are not no less distant from each other. So, it appeared that the subjects move quite a bit easily to go on pilgrimage or to meet a member of their family several tens of kilometers away, or even go to Alexandria, where the chief (patriarch) resides of the Coptic Church. Therefore, these haplogroups sign an important gene flow with the Mediterranean basin and its communities Christians from which part of the female lines of the community come. Among Muslims, a haplogroup that predominates at 19%, while it is absent among Copts, is L2a whose origin is pan-African and Middle Eastern; also noted among low-frequency Muslims (0% among the Copts) of L3, L3f and L2c who are African. L2c being from West Africa is quite surprising in this traditional population. All of these African lineages, sometimes remote, present among Muslims, but not among Copts, is troubling, because it signs historical period reports with sub-Saharan Africa. The hypothesis that seems to us to have to be explored is that of slavery. Indeed, one of the main avenues trans-Saharan route coming up from Darfur to go to Cairo passed near Adaima and the Muslims who controlled the traffic and who benefited from it could have had children with certain slaves or their descendants. Two haplogroups, found with some frequency in both communities, could all the same refer to an older story. This is M1a (8% in Muslims and 16% among Copts) and H1 (12% among Muslims and 7% among Copts). M1 is mainly found from the east of Africa (frequency of 17% in Ethiopia; Kivisild et al. 2004) to North Africa where among the Moroccan Berbers its frequency varies between 2% and 13%. If the authors agree to recognize that it would come from a return to Africa of subjects who were initially came out, the date of this return is widely discussed between 40,000 and 45,000 (Behard et al. 2007) at 20,000 years before our era (Forster & Romano 2007). Whatever the dates chosen, they do not always agree with those proposed by linguists for Afro-Asian (Coudray et al. 2009) of which this haplogroup nevertheless follows the geographical distribution. THE first authors (Behard et al. 2007) by postulating a high date suggest that, since the Levant, thanks to climate change fragmenting the desert areas that were to isolate Europe and North Africa, two human expansions took place: one towards Europe, of which the Aurignacian would be the cultural component and haplogroup U5 a mitochondrial component; the other to North Africa, including the culture of Dabban (a site in Libya showing an evolution from the Middle Paleolithic to a Paleolithic greater than blades) would be the cultural component and haplogroup M1 (but also U6 –not found in Adaïma-) a mitochondrial component. The second authors (Forster & Romano 2007) postulating a lower date, concomitant with the last European glaciation, propose a return to Africa some time ago 20,000 to 15,000 years ago. As M1 is found among Muslims and Copts, given
37 of the seniority indicated, as a hypothesis it could sign the persistence of a part of the epipalaeolithic component of the valley. However, a late intake cannot be ruled out; indeed, it is more common among Copts than among Muslims and it is particularly raised in Ethiopia, the place from which lines of this community. The pursuit of analyzes should make it possible to specify the frequency common to the two groups thanks to the total reading of mitochondrial sequences. H1 is one of three mitochondrial haplogroups, H1, H3 and V, found with very high frequencies in the Iberian Peninsula and decreasing in the surrounding regions (Torroni et al. 2001, Pereira et al. 2005; Achilli et al. 2004), including North Maghreb (Northern Morocco in particular). They would have an origin between 16,000 and 11,500 BP and their presence could be linked to a postglacial re-expansion from the Franco-Cantabrian isolate. Concordance with certain data interesting paleoanthropological subjects iberomaurusians from Taforalt has been widely discussed due to H1 participation to a possible genesis of the Berbers (Crubézy 2009a; 2009b). Note in this regard that currently the area of extension of Berber extends to the oasis of Siwa. In this case, if we can postulate the presence of H1 since more than 1700 years in the valley, its origin exact remains largely hypothetical: gene flows from the north of the valley at different eras or older substrate, the question does not maybe just asked. Haplogroup L0f, present at 3% among Muslims, is currently common in Africa from the south among the Khoisans and almost absent elsewhere. Its presence in Adaïma is intriguing because the slave trade did not go back as far. In this case, we can ask ourselves if we would not have there the vestige of a population "proto-Khoisan" partly at the origin of populations predynastic. Also in this case, further investigations should be carried out. In conclusion of these first genetic studies, it appears that in the case of Adaïma, the contemporary population seems to have been greatly influenced by events recent events involving the valley. The invasions Arabs could have brought bloodlines Middle Eastern which have become predominant for the masculine and quite present for the women. At the same time, the Coptic communities seem to have largely integrated paternal lines originating from Ethiopia certainly via the churches with which they were in touch. If among the Copts, the men seem to have married women who for a many originated from Mediterranean Christian communities, Muslims may have contracted many marriages with sub-Saharan women originating or descending from the slave trade. AT from the paternal lines, it is almost impossible to find the origin dynastic and predynastic populations. With regard to maternal lines, the contemporary population present in the two communities of mitochondrial haplogroups which could refer to the epipalaeolithic or even beyond and which in the two cases have an extra-African origin. This is reminiscent of these epipalaeolithic with extra-African origins often mentioned on their morphological characters. For the Neolithic and predynastic contributions, the analyzes of contemporary populations are for the moment of little help; either the morphological analyzes overestimate changes during these periods; either the current traces are tenuous, such as that evoking the remains of a “proto-Khoisan” population.
38 The factors of evolution, the contribution of the Adaïma necropolis
The History of Settlement in the Nile Valley has so far insisted on phenomena migrations, even population changes in the sense often understood by the archaeologists: the replacement of a population by another from elsewhere. In the 1990s, several studies have studied the historiography of the genesis of these hypotheses in the Nile Valley largely based on preconceived ideas of “invasions” (historical in Crubézy 1992). In fact, populations can evolve depending on several factors whose long-distance migrations are not just one of the possibilities. Other factors can be mentioned, ranging from natural selection to the preferential choice of spouse or even to phenomena linked to chance when the human groups contain only a few breeders (Crubézy et al. 2008). What's more current work places great emphasis on phenomena of co-evolution where man goes influence the environment which in turn will influence on it (neolithization and breeding for example). For now in the Nile Valley, these phe nomena have been rarely mentioned and still less demonstrated. However, we had underlined how the opening of housing through example alone could account for the evolution of the population between the Meroitic phase and that of the “X group” in the necropolis of Missiminia in Sudan (Crubézy et al. 1999). The Eastern Cemetery at Adaima (Upper Egypt) which topochronologically extends from the middle of the predynastic to the end of this period enabled us, thanks to the remarkable preservation of human remains, to highlight in children more than 24 cases of tuberculosis bone (Dabernat & Crubézy 2009). This one had already been demonstrated and then confirmed on genetic bases (Crubézy et al. 1998) on a contemporary case of the Eastern Cemetery in the West Cemetery a few hundred meters away. The topochronological distribution of all the cases (located in a part of the East cemetery) makes it possible to evoke tuberculosis in epidemic phase in a dynamic comparable to that responsible for the extinction in about three hundred years (duration similar to Adaïma) of part of
39 some Native American populations in the 19th century (Dabernat et al. unpublished). Moreover, the study of part of the genetic sequence of the mycobacterium responsible for Adaima tuberculosis, demonstrated that it was different from contemporary mycobacteria (Crubézy et al. 2006). This fits well with recent studies on the origin of mycobacteria which demonstrate that the current ones are the descendants of those having eliminated the strains prior to some point in their history. What is of interest for our discussion on the history of settlement is to take into consideration how the outbreak has unfolded developed and the impact it may have had on the population. The development of the epidemic itself must have been linked to the introduction of one or more of several adults carrying pulmonary tuberculosis in a population until there free of any encounter with the mycobacterium. This implies the arrival, either at Adaima, either in a community that exchanged with it, of one or more original infected subjects far enough away that their original populations had no contact in a past dating back thousands of years; in the same way as Europeans have could contaminate Amerindian or Siberian populations when they arrive, for example (Mann 2007). In an epidemic context like that of Adaïma, over the long term (three hundred years), tuberculosis killed all the susceptible subjects and she therefore selected the population which at the end of the epidemic was no longer as susceptible to the mycobacterium as it was at the beginning, which could also allow other types of mycobacteria (more close to contemporaries) to develop in the dynastic period, or even to be in competition with it from the Predynastic (Zink et al. 2003). In the context of the Eastern Cemetery where the distribution of children modeled on that of a natural population when considering those greater than one year (work in progress), the selection can be estimated. It is important, more than 70% subjects died before the age of 18. With a such mortality in a group that one can estimate at a few tens, or even at most one hundred subjects (classic figure in the valley still in historic times; Crubézy et al. 1989), in each generation several dozen adults from other communities must join it to prevent its disappearance. These exchanges themselves could only facilitate spread of tuberculosis in proportions which remain to be simulated but which evoke a chain reaction of the "dominoes" type. On the whole valley, or at least on all the populations of the valley who were in contact, this must have led to either a decrease in the population, or a significant gene flow, the two phenomena not being exclusive and being able to intervene in varying proportions. In conclusion, the demonstration of tuberculosis in the epidemic phase in Adaïma before the end of the Predynastic implies significant phenomena in the history of settlement whose impact remains to be assessed, both both biologically and culturally. They could be partly responsible for the differentiations encountered during certain analyzes morphology between predynastic and dynastic populations.
Conclusions and perspectives
Syntheses on the morphology of populations of the Nile Valley and Africa from the north in recent years joined to the genetic analyzes that develop on the valley and on the work in progress on the necropolis of Adaïma which provides for the first times well-preserved subjects in a context well framed topo-chronological, allow to consider the prospects for future studies. The contemporary populations of the valley can no longer be considered, just as easily that we could have envisaged in the past, as the "direct" descendants of the dynastic populations. Indeed, the historical era seems have led to the arrival of subjects as well as to distinct matrimonial choices between religious communities. With regard to the populations of the past, important developments seem to have
40 took place at the end of the Neolithic, between the predynastic and the dynastic and during the Roman and Greek periods. If for these last two, the “melting pot” of cities as Alexandria seems easy to evoke, for the others the reasons remain unknown even if phenomena like that of tuberculosis in epidemic phase demonstrated at Adaïma must have been selection factors and significant development. Finally, the origin of epipalaeolithic and predynastic substrates, as well as that of the detection of their lineages in contemporary populations, remain an element of questioning of research even if leads are now open. In the future, only the study of samples of populations from the past that are better framed chronologically and culturally will make it possible to provide new elements especially if they managed to be supplemented by paleogenetic analyzes which will therefore have to be taken taken into account from the initial phases of the excavation and which will involve technological advances in the context of highlighting degraded DNA. The genetic study of contemporary populations should be developed at large scale taking into account different types of markers but above all by relying on culturally well-defined samples on which a maximum of historical data should be jointly analyzed.In the future, only the study of samples of populations from the past that are better framed chronologically and culturally will make it possible to provide new elements especially if they managed to be supplemented by paleogenetic analyzes which will therefore have to be taken taken into account from the initial phases of the excavation and which will involve technological advances in the context of highlighting degraded DNA. The genetic study of contemporary populations should be developed at large scale taking into account different types of markers but above all by relying on culturally well-defined samples on which a maximum of historical data should be jointly analyzed.
Analysis of morphological distances (Mahalanobis distance of MDS with discrete characters) between groups and periods (see map in figure 4).
Sample from the Neolithic site of Gebel Ramlah. Sample dated to the Greek period. Samples of cemeteries from the predynastic period. Samples of cemeteries from the dynastic period. Samples of cemeteries from Roman times.
Figure 5 Example of analysis of morphological distances (Mahalanobis distance of MDS of discrete characters) between groups and periods (see map fig. 4) modified from Schillaci et al., 2009. Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
Burial 9000.4. Child’s burial 9000.1. This one to two-year-old child was buried in the settlement area. The child is wearing several bone bracelets on the wrist and is accompanied by two Blacked-topped vessels, a basalt pot and an ivory comb. (Photo Y. Tristant)
The funerary material of burial 9000.4 (Photo A. Lecler, Ifao)
Cosmetic palette in the shape of a fish with an eye composed of a limestone slice mounted on one face (19 x 8,9 x 0,9 cm). Western Cemetery. S218 (Naqada IIB)
(Photo A. Lecler, Ifao)
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
Notice in the OP on page 37, the paragraph from page 37
Haplogroup L0f, present at 3% among Muslims, is currently common in Africa from the south among the Khoisans and almost absent elsewhere. Its presence in Adaïma is intriguing because the slave trade did not go back as far .
_________________
This is about predynastic cemetery at Adaima (Upper Egypt), the location in the map , second post, small print in the middle
Wikipedia makes a statement but with no reference:
Haplogroup L0f is present in relatively small frequencies in Tanzania among the Sandawe people who are known to be older then the Khoisan. L0a is most prevalent in South-East African populations (25% in Mozambique), and L0b is found in Ethiopia.
Look at the OP again the article in French is from
AMIS - Laboratoire d’anthropologie moléculaire et imagerie de synthèse (AMIS - Laboratory of Molecular Anthropology and computer-generated imagery, National Center for Scientific Research - CNRS Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier University, France
The are speaking in the article as if they had tested this predynastic Adaima remains and found L0f I have not posted the entire article and gone over every bit translated but I'm wondering why I'm not seeing something with sample and testing data that would have been charted and submitted to a journal for review
________________________
Also look at their site , interesting info on serval predynastic sites
I never participate in the posting of modern dark skinned Egyptians to prove a point about ancient Egyptian Africanity, and have generally avoided threads where people post that type of stuff, especially after the announcement of post-Roman 20% increase of SSA ancestry in Egypt, which solidified with aDNA sth that was already hinted at by skeletal analyses (e.g. Mukherjee's Roman 'Egyptian Negro' sample) and genetics (e.g. Henn et al 2012's Tunisian sample, or Hassan et al's Coptic sample from Sudan, which show little trace of modern SSA). But recently I've been thinking. Adaima girl posted originally by Ish Gebor, I think, would be a good example of certain atavistic traits in the region going back to the Palaeolithic.
Exclusive : Adaima Or The Birth Of Pharaoh On January 11Th, 2002, Egypt. EGYPT - NOVEMBER 01: Exclusive : Adaima Or The Birth Of Pharaoh On January 11Th, 2002, Egypt. In The Close Neighborhood Of The Site, People Still Live In The Same Kind Of Houses The Archaeologist Try To Unearth. The Team Often Go Talks With Them, To Better Understand The Tiny Traces They Find, Like The Millenia Old Oven, Still Used In Town To Bake Bread. (Photo by Patrick AVENTURIER/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images) https://www.gettyimages.nl/detail/nieuwsfoto%27s/adaima-or-the-birth-of-pharaoh-on-january-11th-egypt-in-nieuwsfotos/109108342
Relevance? Adaima girl is from the site studied by the author in the OP.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
Nature Published: 23 February 2022 Ancient DNA and deep population structure in sub-Saharan African foragers
Two individuals from Malawi (I19529 from Hora 1, dating to about 16 ka and carrying L5b, and I4426 from Fingira, dating to about 2.3 ka and carrying L0f/L0f3) have eastern-Africa-associated haplogroups
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
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.
Posted by Doug M (Member # 7650) on :
Unfortunately this paper, while lauded by some, unfortunately is bogged down in much of the historical baggage of European anthropology.
The fundamental question is simple. Did the original populations of the Nile during the predynastic originate in Africa or somewhere else? And the obvious answer is the former, yet nowhere in this paper does it clearly establish a baseline of what represents an "African" population. It just throws together a bunch of traits and morphologies but never clearly state which of these traits represents an African population vs which indicate evidence of non African populations. At this point it is clear they are avoiding clear unambiguous labels of certain ancient sites as African. So we get a description of populations from the Badarian and places like Gebel Ramlah and they are treated as just populations without a clear affinity with Africa. And the only time any suggestion of a clear African affinity is when they throw in the term "sub saharan". As if this entire region between the Sahara and the Nile is not fully and totally within the continent of Africa. And just taken at face value, there is no reason NOT to simply state the obvious that these are African populations. Then of course they throw in the obligatory reference to Mediterranean, European paleolithic and "North African" populations all to muddy the water even further, without clearly establishing a baseline of what represents indigenous African ancestry on the ancient Nile. It is kind of annoying if you think about it. Nowhere else do they avoid these kinds of clear unambiguous associations, as if they are trying to pretend that "Egypt" is some prehistoric ancestral archetype of its own separate and distinct from Africa.....
And it is in that context of avoiding a clear definition of population affinities as African or non African, comes the discussion of Adaima, which is then immediately compared to more modern populations from the Greco Roman periods and so forth which does not actually answer the question of where the original settlers of the Nile came from. And that is a question that even without any metric traits, would immediately involve 5 or 6 clear population clusters, for example, something like: populations on the Lower Nile to the North of Middle Egypt, populations on the Upper Nile and to the 2nd Cataract, Red Sea populations in the Eastern Desert to Horn region, Eastern Saharan populations, Sahelian Populations, Levantine populations and then more further away a few more populations: North West African populations, Southern European populations, Anatolian populations. But this paper isn't doing that and keeps these populations mostly as ambiguous in terms of their African affinities.
And that certainly carries over into the genetic discussions, which jumps from ancient predynastic and early dynastic remains to Muslim, Coptic, European and other populations that had absolutely nothing to do with the settlement of the Nile Valley. So it just sounds like a refusal to clearly define a 'basal' population for the Nile, except to claim that possible back migrations from Eurasia going back 40,000 years. Which obviously contradicts their own testimony of few remains during the paleolithic in the Lower Nile Valley and most of the remains being much further South and in the Sahara.
Similar papers on the Nile during MIS2 (Paleolithic):
quote: The reconstruction of the environment and the human population history of the Nile Valley during the Late Pleistocene have received a lot of attention in the literature thus far. There seems to be a consensus that during MIS2 extreme dry conditions prevailed over north-eastern Africa, which was apparently not occupied by humans. The Nile Valley seems to be an exception; numerous field data have been collected suggesting an important population density in Upper Egypt during MIS2. The occupation remains are often stratified in, or at least related to, aeolian and Nile deposits at some elevation above the present-day floodplain. They are rich in lithics and animal bones, mainly fish, illustrating the exploitation of the Nile Valley by the Late Palaeolithic inhabitants. The fluvial processes active during that period have traditionally been interpreted as a continuously rising highly braided river.
quote: Late Palaeolithic sites in north-eastern Africa are located mostly in southern Egypt and Nubia. Most sites were discovered during prehistoric investigations as part of the Nubia Campaign which began in 1961–1962, (Schild and Wendorf, 2002) and archaeological expeditions that followed, until the end of the 1980s. This leads to a record biased toward certain geographical areas (in particular, the location of the Aswan Dam in northern Nubia), although geomorphological reasons also explain why virtually no Late Palaeolithic sites are known north of Qena (see also The Late Pleistocene main Nile in southern Egypt and Nubia section). The only possible occurrences of Late Palaeolithic assemblages in northern Egypt are in the region of Helwan, near Cairo, where P. Bovier-Lapierre at the beginning of the 20th century (Bovier-Lapierre, 1926) and F. Debono in 1936 (Debono, 1948; Debono and Mortensen, 1990, 9–11) noted several surface occurrences or ‘stations’ of material that they attribute to the end of the Palaeolithic. In a later reassessment of Debono’s surface collections, Schmidt (1996) attributed Debono site 7 ‘ostrich’ to the Late Upper Palaeolithic and published two dates on ostrich eggshell fragments of ca. 18 ka BP (or ca. 21–23 ka cal BP). Schmidt (1996) also mentions several localities with microlithic artefacts that he attributes to the Epipalaeolithic, although it is unclear whether this refers to the Epipalaeolithic or Late Palaeolithic. Recent research in the Nile Delta has also reported the presence of Epipalaeolithic assemblages (Rowland and Tassie, 2014; Tassie, 2014). However, with the exception of the two dates on ostrich eggshell fragments which must be considered with caution as these are surface finds, the Late Palaeolithic or Epipalaeolithic surface occurrences in the Nile Delta are poorly dated and may not in fact date to MIS 2 (see discussion below).
quote: With regard to the post-Paleolithic phases, the works of Irish, from the Neolithic to Roman times (Irish 2006), still based on the discrete dental characters, allow to specify different morphological affinities. Note, however, that the Neolithic remains are rare and that it is only from the Egyptian predynastic as human remains become numerous in the valley. Particularly interesting is the series of Gebel Ramlah (Kobusiewicz et al. 2009) which comes from of 32 tombs having provided 60 subjects from the 5th millennium BC in the southern part of the desert Western Egyptian. Indeed, this Neolithic series, isolated today in the desert, was initially in a savannah. Funeral practices and furniture undeniably evoke the predynastic beginnings « The communities using the cemeteries described above were almost the last dwellers of the dying savanna, which is today’s desert. The worsening drought soon forced them to migrate toward the Nile Valley, where they undoubtedly brought their culture, organizational system and beliefs contributing to the birth of ancient Egyptian civilization » (Kobusiewicz et al. 2009). Despite discussions already old who saw a continuity in Nubia, from the Palaeolithic to the populations sub-contemporaries (Carlson & Van Gerven 1977), these affinities are much debated currently (Irish 2001; 2006) and there would be eu, based on dental discrete characters, either population replacement or a contribution or significant gene flow around from the end of the Neolithic. Gebel Ramlah fits well with these findings. If marked affinities are noted between this Neolithic series cultural precursor of the Predynastic and that of Jebel Sahaba, population hunter-gatherers from Lower Nubia, and whether « from a physical anthropological viewpoint, the population sample exhibits evidence of North African and sub-Saharan admixture affinites » (Kobusiewicz et al. 2009), morphological differences with predynastic populations are important (Shillaci et al. 2009)
When the analyzes relate in Egypt to the predynastic populations and their successors until Roman times, and, in the Sudan, on post-Neolithic populations up to the Christian era, the perspective of an evolution on site from the Predynastic and of group A, is still relevant, although that current analyzes show marked changes at certain times. Three phases seem particularly crucial: the transition from Predynastic to Dynastic, variations during the Greek periods and Romans, the Meroitic/Period transition Christian in Sudan. In these three cases there has had a morphological evolution of the populations.
Predynastic and Badarian populations are not discernible on the basis of the characters discrete teeth (Irish 2006; Schillaci and para. 2009). These same characters (Irish 2006; Schillaci et al. 2009) show a continuum between predynastic and dynastic populations which are not, however, confused. During the analyses, the predynastic populations group together and remain distinct dynastics which are much more variable.
From Greek and Roman times, variability increases further, especially when approaching the delta, a sign of openings via the Mediterranean than known Egypt at these times.
One of the problems posed by analyzes using The origin of these results is that the samples are poorly defined. It is in particular impossible for ancient excavations to know what part of the population spread over what time frame they represent. In this context, the study of the population of the cemetery East of Adaïma will take on its full value. In effect, it is a well-preserved children's cemetery. Dental crowns of permanent teeth are in place but not worn (included in the bone for the most part) and the duration of the cemetery, 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 "Buschmen" which present a very frequent anatomical variation in some African populations, especially the Khoisans. The African origin of the population, already widely suspected (Crubézy et al. 2002) is here confirmed. In Sudan, upstream from the Dal Cataract, the long-standing discussion on the continuity between Meroitic populations and post-Meroitic remains relevant (Stynder et al. 2009), although the morphological evolution always seems linked to an opening of habitat, perhaps synonymous with a slight flow gene rather than a replacement of the population (Crubézy et al. 1999).
In conclusion, if the Iberomaurusians and the Epipalaeolithic subjects from the Nile Valley present morphological characteristics municipalities that bring them closer to the populations of the European Upper Paleolithic, they are, however, quite distinct. Furthermore, if we considers that most of these subjects fall of the post-Aterian arid phase and that they lived in the two main inhabited refuges regularly by humans, this difference is not surprising since the populations to which they belonged were separated by more than four thousand kilometers of arid zones. In the hypothesis that the epipalaeolithic subjects of the Nile Valley (Jebel Sahaba) would be more recent than what could have been envisaged during their discovery, then these discrepancies would be even less surprising. In this case, we better understand their similarities with the Neolithic subjects of the Gebel Ramlah, subject to a different way of life, but who were very close to them chronologically and spatially. Anyway, the similarities between these two series come from either of a common ancestry (the population from which Jebel Sahaba comes would have may have given rise to Neolithic populations, including Gebel Ramlah), or exchanges important among hunter-gatherer populations of the valley and those of the Neolithic who lived in what is now the desert western.
If the predynastic subjects look good culturally the descendants of Neolithic subjects of Gebel Ramlah, it seems there have had a great morphological evolution between the two groups. This is found, for the entire valley, between the subjects of the end of the Neolithic and those of later phases. We currently have no items allowing us to explain this phenomenon. However, one should be cautious, the morphological data indeed give more often feelings of rupture than genetic data that allows finer "dissections" (Crubézy 2009b). THE populations of the Nile Valley certainly result of a decline in this population zone which should initially have an area of wider extension and which had not yet been assimilated and/or dissociated by the expansion Bantu. A "proto-Khoisan" population could she have occupied the valley before and/or concomitantly to populations Neolithic and assimilate, in a phenomenon of fusion that one can very well imagine in the case of population withdrawal towards the same place, Saharan Neolithic populations having developed a proto-dynastic culture ? Today, the question cannot be than asked.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
. added the other chart to OP, with Eng. trasl.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
@Doug M. If you are alluding to me, I did not really 'laud' them, but I'll take whatever crumbs they can give me, as far as Adaima now apparently being confirmed as another example of a pocket of North African uniparental continuity a la Gurna and Jordan Dead Sea. For me this paper seems to provide updates on several things I already suspected and had wanted clarification on (one of them is that single picture of a girl possibly representing continuity, but which is not admissible as a picture is not much to go by, as I already stated in my post). But I understand such updates on outstanding issues might not mean much to others.
As far as all that stuff about Palaeolithic populations, I see you're still going to post those extinct Palaeolithic Nile cultures in 2023... and pass them off as ancestral to Bronze Age ancient Egyptians..
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:
LE PEUPLEMENT DE LA VALLÉE DU NIL PAR ÉRIC CRUBÉZY 2010
(Eng: The Settlement of the Nile Valley)
Haplogroup L0f, present at 3% among Muslims, is currently common in Africa from the south among the Khoisans and almost absent elsewhere. Its presence in Adaïma is intriguing..
For the Neolithic and predynastic contributions, the analyzes of contemporary populations are for the moment of little help; either the morphological analyzes overestimate changes during these periods; either the current traces are tenuous, such as that evoking the remains of a “proto-Khoisan” population.
2013 Feb 5. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.22227 PMCID: PMC3581736 NIHMSID: NIHMS431370 PMID: 23382080 Mitochondrial DNA diversity in two ethnic groups in southeastern Kenya: perspectives from the northeastern periphery of the Bantu expansion Ken Batai, Kara B. Babrowski, Juan Pablo Arroyo, Chapurukha M. Kusimba, and Sloan R. Williams
Haplogroup L0f is common in both southeastern Afro-Asiatic groups (30.0%) and east African Bantu populations (13.4% in the Taita, 9.4% in previously sampled east African Bantu populations).
2019
quote:
Nature October 2019 Human origins in a southern African palaeo-wetland and first migrations Eva K. F. Chan,
Within the L0a’b’f’g lineage, L0f is highly divergent (emerging around 125 ka; 95% confidence interval,149–101 ka). By including a further five L0f mitogenomes, we were able to show that L0f1 (13 out of 27; around 113 ka) predominates south and L0f2’3 (14 out of 27; about 121 ka) north of the Zambezi river (Extended Data Fig. 2c and Supplementary Table 8). Within L0f1, we recognize three new branches: the northeast sister clades L0f1c (Zambian) and L0f1b (Tanzanian), and the South African clade L0f1a (n = 8). Lack of L0f representation within contemporary KhoeSan suggests that the presence of L0f1a within South Africa is probably a result of more recent east-coastal agropastoral back-migration. While the L0a’g lineages coalesce around 117 ka (95% confidence interval, 145–94 ka), contributing 19 southern African to 347 L0a mitogenomes, we concur that the L0a lineage probably diverged northeast of the Zambezi river (around 85 ka) and spread throughout Africa3 ; th
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
As far as the Adaima remains having "Bushman canine", that's a trait Djehuti has pointed out which shows (aboriginal) North Africans to be intermediate in dental or skeletal morphology between Eurasians on the one hand and "sub-Saharan" Africans on the other.
quote:Thus, I proposed (Irish, 1993b, 1998a) that the North African dental trait complex is one which parallels that of Europeans, yet displays higher frequencies of Bushman Canine, two-rooted UP1, three-rooted UM2, LM2 Y- groove, LM1 cusp 7, LP1 Tome's root, two-rooted LM2, and lower frequencies of UM1 enamel extension and peg/reduced or absent UM3. North Africans also exhibit a higher frequency of UM1 Carabelli's trait than sub-Saharan Africans or Europeans. --Irish (1998)
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: However in 2013
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.
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: @Doug M. If you are alluding to me, I did not really 'laud' them, but I'll take whatever crumbs they can give me, as far as Adaima now apparently being confirmed as another example of a pocket of North African uniparental continuity a la Gurna and Jordan Dead Sea. For me this paper seems to provide updates on several things I already suspected and had wanted clarification on (one of them is that single picture of a girl possibly representing continuity, but which is not admissible as a picture is not much to go by, as I already stated in my post). But I understand such updates on outstanding issues might not mean much to others.
As far as all that stuff about Palaeolithic populations, I see you're still going to post those extinct Palaeolithic Nile cultures in 2023... and pass them off as ancestral to Bronze Age ancient Egyptians..
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.
As for the Paleolithic populations, the point is that from the paleolithic to the Neolithic and late neolithic there is a clear chain of sites and settlements along the Upper Nile and in the Eastern Sahara that provide evidence for population movement between the Nile before, during and after the last wet phase directly leading up to the predynastic. Gebel Ramlah, Nabta Playa, Wadi Halfa, Wadi Kubbaniya and so forth are all testaments to this population flow. And this is proof of a South to North direction of population movement in these eras leading up to the dynastic. And it is in direct contradiction to this idea of "back migration" into the Nile as the basis for the settlement of the Nile Valley. It is funny how they find all these upper Nile Valley sites going back 20,000 years far from the Meditterranean and still claim back migration as the basis for ancient Nile Valley settlement.
That is precisely what this paper is talking about : The Main Nile Valley at the End of the Pleistocene (28–15 ka): Dispersal Corridor or Environmental Refugium?
quote: Under present environmental conditions, the Nile Valley acts as a ‘natural’ route between Africa and Eurasia, and is often considered as a corridor for dispersals out of and back into Africa in the past. This review aims to address the role played by the Nile Valley at the end of the Pleistocene (28-15 ka) in the context of post-‘Out of Africa’ modern human dispersals. Genetic studies based on both modern and ancient DNA suggest pre-Holocene dispersals ‘back into Africa’ as well as genetic interactions between modern humans across Africa and the Levant.
Yet nowhere is it explained how these sites so far to the south represent proof of "back migration" in that time frame.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
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.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
@ Swenet
If you don't mind me asking, I am a little confused about your comments on Paleolithic inhabitants of Egypt. You cited a girl from modern Adaima as possibly resembling Paleolithic Egyptians, but now you're saying the Paleolithic cultures in Egypt that Doug M mentioned couldn't have been ancestral to later Egyptians. That may well be the case, but then how could a girl living in Egypt today "be a good example of certain atavistic traits in the region going back to the Palaeolithic" if Egypt's Paleolithic inhabitants didn't contribute ancestry to later populations in the area?
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
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.
Posted by Tazarah (Member # 23365) on :
Hello Swenet, do you know a woman who goes by the name "Konjoe Monroe" on a website called Lipstick Alley?
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Doug M: I actually first heard about this paper on the youtube channel MrImhotep a few days ago.
SSA affinities of modern Egyptians from Abusir El-Meleq might be attributed to ancient early settlers as there is a notable frequency of the “Bushmen canine”- deemed a SSA trait in Predynastic samples dating to 4,000 BC from Adaima, Upper Egypt. Haplogroup L0f, usually associated with southern Africans, is present in living Egyptians in Adaima[9] and could represent the product of an ancient “ghost population” from the Green Sahara that contributed widely. Distributions and admixtures in the African past may not match current “SSA” groups
[9]Crubézy, E. Le peuplement de la vallée du Nil. Archéo-Nil20, 25–42 (2010)
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
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?
Posted by Tazarah (Member # 23365) on :
@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".
Are you the author?
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
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).
Posted by Doug M (Member # 7650) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
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.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
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.
Posted by Tazarah (Member # 23365) on :
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
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
@Tazarah. Got it. Thanks for the heads up.
------------------
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.
Posted by Elmaestro (Member # 22566) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: @Tazarah. Got it. Thanks for the heads up.
------------------
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?
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
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.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
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.)
EDIT: Saw your edit just now, as well as Elmaestro’s response below. Can’t wait to find the refugia where these populations would have come from.
Posted by Doug M (Member # 7650) on :
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP:
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?
Sites in the discussion: Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
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
Posted by Elmaestro (Member # 22566) on :
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.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
other sites to take note of, in projects drop down
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
@Elmaestro
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
Posted by Baalberith (Member # 23079) on :
What role would the Aterians play in the formation of the Oranian & Dabban cultures?
Posted by Doug M (Member # 7650) on :
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'.
Posted by Baalberith (Member # 23079) on :
How would you describe the LSA North Africans residing along the Red Sea Coasts?
Posted by Baalberith (Member # 23079) on :
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?
Posted by Askia_The_Great (Member # 22000) on :
Intelligent discussions slowly returning to ES.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
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.
Abundance.
Posted by Baalberith (Member # 23079) on :
Would you say that the Delta would be a refugium for LSA North Africans, especially in regards to the Dabban culture in Cyrenaica?
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
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.
Posted by Doug M (Member # 7650) on :
quote:Originally posted by Baalberith:
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.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
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.
Posted by BrandonP (Member # 3735) on :
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.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
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.)
EDIT: Saw your edit just now, as well as Elmaestro’s response below. Can’t wait to find the refugia where these populations would have come from.
I also question what if any, these cultures have to do with Proto-Afrasian.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
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:
By the way, El Adaïma was one of the sites north of Hierakonpolis known to have a good quantity of A-Group material mainly pottery.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
@Whatsup DJ
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.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ 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.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
@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. Posted by Antalas (Member # 23506) on :
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
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ 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.
Posted by Baalberith (Member # 23079) on :
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?
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ 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.
Posted by Baalberith (Member # 23079) on :
The Capsians weren't originally Pastoralists though, they were Hunter Gatherers who adopted the Neolithic food strategy themselves.
Posted by Antalas (Member # 23506) on :
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.
Posted by Doug M (Member # 7650) on :
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.
Posted by Elmaestro (Member # 22566) on :
quote:Originally posted by Antalas:
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.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
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.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
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.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
More to the topic..
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. Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
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.
Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
^ 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.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
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.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,:
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!