posted
The reason I propose this is because Upper Egypt is often identified with those AE having a darker complexion. I know Dynasties like the 12th, 17th, and 18th Dynasties all had very southern origins. Coming from the region that was once Ta-Seti (before unification).
Which ones DIDN'T have a Southern origin?
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quote:Originally posted by King_Scorpion: The reason I propose this is because Upper Egypt is often identified with those AE having a darker complexion. I know Dynasties like the 12th, 17th, and 18th Dynasties all had very southern origins. Coming from the region that was once Ta-Seti (before unification).
Which ones DIDN'T have a Southern origin?
The origins of Egyptian culture comes from the south, therefore I'd say all Dynasties and Egyptian culture civilization etc... are of Southern Origin.
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posted
"The origins of Egyptian culture comes from the south"
^^Good answer! What else should matter?
Besides King Scorp, ponder on this while you are so reluctant to attribute a "dark complexion" to Northern Egyptians:
Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation(Paperback) by Barry Kemp (Author) Publisher: Routledge; 2 edition (December 12, 2005) p.54
"Moving to the opposite geographic extremity, the very small sample populations available from northern Egypt from before the 1st Dynasty(Merimda, Maadi and Wadi Digla) turn out to be significantly different from sample populations from early Palestine and Byblos, suggesting a lack of common ancestors over a long time. If there was a south-north cline of variation along the Nile Valley it did not, from this limited evidence, continue smoothly on into Palestine. The **limb-length proportions** of males from the Egyptian sites group them with Africans rather than with Europeans"
AND:
"The elongation of the distal segments of the limbs is also clearly related to the dissipation of metabolically generated heat. Because heat stress and latitude are clearly related, one would expect to find a correlation between the two sets of traits that are associated with adaptation to survival in areas of great ambient temperature, namely, **skin color and limb proportions**. This is clearly the case in such areas as Equatorial Africa, the tropical portions of South Asia, and northern Australia, although there is little covariation with other sets of inherited traits. In this regard it is interesting to note that the limb proportions of the Predynastic Naqada in Upper Egypt are reported to be "super-Negroid", meaning that the distal segments are elongated in the fashion of tropical Africans." - Brace, 1993
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Sundjata: "The origins of Egyptian culture comes from the south"
^^Good answer! What else should matter?
Besides King Scorp, ponder on this while you are so reluctant to attribute a "dark complexion" to Northern Egyptians:
Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation(Paperback) by Barry Kemp (Author) Publisher: Routledge; 2 edition (December 12, 2005) p.54
"Moving to the opposite geographic extremity, the very small sample populations available from northern Egypt from before the 1st Dynasty(Merimda, Maadi and Wadi Digla) turn out to be significantly different from sample populations from early Palestine and Byblos, suggesting a lack of common ancestors over a long time. If there was a south-north cline of variation along the Nile Valley it did not, from this limited evidence, continue smoothly on into Palestine. The **limb-length proportions** of males from the Egyptian sites group them with Africans rather than with Europeans"
AND:
"The elongation of the distal segments of the limbs is also clearly related to the dissipation of metabolically generated heat. Because heat stress and latitude are clearly related, one would expect to find a correlation between the two sets of traits that are associated with adaptation to survival in areas of great ambient temperature, namely, **skin color and limb proportions**. This is clearly the case in such areas as Equatorial Africa, the tropical portions of South Asia, and northern Australia, although there is little covariation with other sets of inherited traits. In this regard it is interesting to note that the limb proportions of the Predynastic Naqada in Upper Egypt are reported to be "super-Negroid", meaning that the distal segments are elongated in the fashion of tropical Africans." - Brace, 1993
Maybe there wasn't a difference. I just think that it's been a belief (whether right or wrong) that during the Pre-Dynastic to Proto-Dynastic era, there were two groups or confederation of tribes that attacked warred with each other and were different.
Though, now that I think about it...there was some overlapping between Badarian and Naqada culture.
Posts: 1219 | From: North Carolina, USA | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Sundjata: "The origins of Egyptian culture comes from the south"
^^Good answer! What else should matter?
Besides King Scorp, ponder on this while you are so reluctant to attribute a "dark complexion" to Northern Egyptians:
Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation(Paperback) by Barry Kemp (Author) Publisher: Routledge; 2 edition (December 12, 2005) p.54
"Moving to the opposite geographic extremity, the very small sample populations available from northern Egypt from before the 1st Dynasty(Merimda, Maadi and Wadi Digla) turn out to be significantly different from sample populations from early Palestine and Byblos, suggesting a lack of common ancestors over a long time. If there was a south-north cline of variation along the Nile Valley it did not, from this limited evidence, continue smoothly on into Palestine. The **limb-length proportions** of males from the Egyptian sites group them with Africans rather than with Europeans"
AND:
"The elongation of the distal segments of the limbs is also clearly related to the dissipation of metabolically generated heat. Because heat stress and latitude are clearly related, one would expect to find a correlation between the two sets of traits that are associated with adaptation to survival in areas of great ambient temperature, namely, **skin color and limb proportions**. This is clearly the case in such areas as Equatorial Africa, the tropical portions of South Asia, and northern Australia, although there is little covariation with other sets of inherited traits. In this regard it is interesting to note that the limb proportions of the Predynastic Naqada in Upper Egypt are reported to be "super-Negroid", meaning that the distal segments are elongated in the fashion of tropical Africans." - Brace, 1993
Maybe there wasn't a difference. I just think that it's been a belief (whether right or wrong) that during the Pre-Dynastic to Proto-Dynastic era, there were two groups or confederation of tribes that attacked warred with each other and were different.
Though, now that I think about it...there was some overlapping between Badarian and Naqada culture.
No, there wasn't a difference in the Ancient Egyptian Pharaonic period which reigned thousands of years. Egypt was an indigenous African nation, with NO outside influence. There was an overall population continuity, in which the Ancient Egyptians possessed super tropically adapted body plans(which is extremely significant, being that Egypt is not in the tropics) Arabs and Europeans are NOT super tropically adapted or even tropically adapted at all, as East Africans and Ancient Egyptians are/were. Even west Africans aren't as super tropically adapted as East Africans and the Ancient Egyptians. West Africans only exhibit tropically adapted body plans, whereas East Africans exhibit super tropical, Understand?
"A British analysis of craniometric traits from several Egyptian predynastic gravesites showed a wide range of physical variability, making it difficult to establish a rigid taxonomy of races. However the same study compared craniometric traits found on the Egyptian samples, to samples from other areas such as Caanan and found limited matches with the predynastic crania. It thus concluded that at no time did any non-Egyptian group provide a significant change to the Egyptian gene pool for the length of the Pharaonic monarchy. As noted with the example of the fellahin above, the genetic or racial elements on the ground (whatever the unique mix of racial types that made up Egypt), at least in the early millenia of Egyptian civilization, were thus not significantly affected by any influx of distant outsiders from Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean or elsewhere. Such outsiders, like the well known Hyksos, were to appear in significant numbers on the scene much later, about 1000 years after Eygptian dynastic civilization had been established." ("Genetical Change in Ancient Egypt," Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 1967).
The origins of the ancient Egyptian state and its formation have received much attention through analysis of mortuary contexts, skeletal material, and trade. Genetic diversity was analyzed by studying craniometric variation within a series of six time-successive Egyptian populations in order to investigate the evidence for migration over the period of the development of social hierarchy and the Egyptian state. Craniometric variation, based upon 16 measurements, was assessed through principal components analysis, discriminant function analysis, and Mahalanobis D2 matrix computation. Spatial and temporal relationships were assessed by Manteland Partial Mantel tests. The results indicate overallpopulation continuity over the Predynastic and earlyDynastic, and high levels of genetic heterogeneity, therebysuggesting that state formation occurred as a mainlyindigenous process. Nevertheless, significant differences were found in morphology between both geographically-pooled and cemetery-specific temporal groups, indicating that some migration occurred along the Egyptian Nile Valley over the periods studied. Am J Phys Anthropol 132:501–509, 2007.
Variation in Ancient Egyptian Stature and Body Proportions Sonia R. Zakrzewski*
Stature is comprised of contributions from several body portions, i.e., from the lower limb and from the trunk and cranium. The analyses performed on each individual bone were undertaken to see whether the small stature change found could be assigned to differences in growth of either the lower limb or the trunk (employing upper limb measurements as an indirect proxy for trunk size). Both upper and lower limb measurements (individual long bone lengths) exhibited significant change through time, although neither upper limb length (humerus radius) nor lower limb length (femur tibia) themselves exhibited significant change through time. All long bone lengths that changed display the same trend of increasing in length up until the start of the Dynastic period, and then decrease to the MK. None of the body ratios separating upper and lower portions exhibit statistically significant change through time. This pattern supports suggestions that the relative constancy of stature (i.e., the relatively low level of change through time) cannot easily be compartmentalized. This result is in agreement with previous research that found no significant change in body proportions between the Predynastic period and the Middle Kingdom (Masali, 1972; Robins, 1983). The ancient Egyptians have been described as having a “super negroid” body plan (Robins, 1983). Variations in the proximal to distal segments of each limb were therefore examined. Of the ratios considered, only maximum humerus length to maximum ulna length (XLH/XLU) showed statistically significant change through time. This change was a relative decrease in the length of the humerus as compared with the ulna, suggesting the development of an increasingly African body plan with time. This may also be the result of Nubian mercenaries being included in the sample from Gebelein. EGYPTIAN STATURE AND BODY PROPORTIONS 227 The nature of the body plan was also investigated by comparing the intermembral, brachial, and crural indices for these samples with values obtained from the literature. No significant differences were found in either index through time for either sex. The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the “super-negroid”body plan described by Robins (1983). The values for the brachial and crural indices show that the distal segments of each limb are longer relative to the proximal segments than in many “African” populations (data from Aiello and Dean, 1990).
This pattern is supported by Figure 7 (a plot of population mean femoral and tibial lengths; data from Ruff, 1994), which indicatesthat the Egyptians generallyhave tropical bodyplans.Of the Egyptian samples, only the Badarian and Early Dynastic period populations have shorter tibiae than predicted from femoral length. Despite these differences, all samples lie relatively clusteredtogether as compared to the other populations. [/QB][/QUOTE]
quote: there was some overlapping between Badarian and Naqada culture.
"These findings are contrasted with those resulting from previous skeletal and other studies, and are used to appraise the viability of five Egyptian peopling scenarios. Specifically, affinities among the 15 time-successive samples suggest that: 1) there may be a connection between Neolithic and subsequent predynastic Egyptians, 2) predynastic Badarian and Naqada peoples may be closely related, 3) the dynastic period is likely an indigenous continuation of the Naqada culture, 4) there is support for overall biological uniformity through the dynastic period, and 5) this uniformity may continue into postdynastic times." J. Irish, "Irish J (2006). "Who were the ancient Egyptians? Dental affinities among Neolithic through postdynastic peoples", 2006)
----
Early Nile Valley Farmers From El-Badari Aboriginals or "European"AgroNostratic Immigrants? Craniometric Affinities Considered With Other Data S. O. Y. Keita
National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution
Male Badarian crania were analyzed using the generalized distance of Mahalanobis in a comparative analysis with other African and European series from the Howells’s database. The study was carried out to examine the affinities of the Badarians to evaluate, in preliminary fashion, a demic diffusion hypothesis that postulates that horticulture and the Afro-Asiatic language family were brought ultimately from southern Europe. (The assumption was made that the southern Europeans would be more similar to the central and northern Europeans than to any indigenous African populations.) The Badarians show a greater affinity to indigenous Africans while not being identical. This suggests that the Badarians were more affiliated with local and an indigenous African population than with Europeans. It is more likely that Near Eastern/southern European domesticated animals and plants were adopted by indigenous Nile Valley people without a major immigration of non-Africans. There was more of cultural transfer.
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posted
^ That could be correct but "Different" how? The difference may have been probably large enough to classify them as two separate Ethnic groups but that's it. How different is an African American from a Jamaican? Or an Oromo from Somali? Yeah there are differences but all in all they overlap and you will see North East African continuity in the Features. I personally think that some differences were large enough for the populations to create featured stereotypes. But remember that Egyptians labeled MANY groups to the south simply as "Southerners" Nubian just means southerner right? Someone correct me if I am wrong.
Posts: 2463 | From: New Jersey USA | Registered: Dec 2007
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quote:Originally posted by astenb: [Q] ^ That could be correct but "Different" how? The difference may have been probably large enough to classify them as two separate Ethnic groups but that's it. How different is an African American from a Jamaican? Or an Oromo from Somali? Yeah there are differences but all in all they overlap and you will see North East African continuity in the Features. I personally think that some differences were large enough for the populations to create featured stereotypes. But remember that Egyptians labeled MANY groups to the south simply as "Southerners" Nubian just means southerner right? Someone correct me if I am wrong. [/Q]
That's what I would like to know. It's just always been a "mentality" even here on ES (you see I've been a member for a very long time) that Lower Egyptians may have had a lighter tone than Upper Egyptians. I don't exactly know where that comes from though.
Knowledgeiskey718: I think we're in agreement on the what the Egyptians looked like. I believe Ancient Kemet was a Black and AFRICAN civilization. Don't confuse me for a troll...lol.
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quote:It's just always been a "mentality" even here on ES (you see I've been a member for a very long time) that Lower Egyptians may have had a lighter tone than Upper Egyptians. I don't exactly know where that comes from though.
^ Eventually they obviously did come to have a lighter tone.
This is where the asiatic incursions of the 'reds' into the land of the 'blacks' came about.
Today only 'mostly rural' populations of Upper Egyptians resemble ancient Kemetians.
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quote:How different is an African American from a Jamaican? Or an Oromo from Somali?
Of course there could have been different African people who would provide a sort of distinction, but the point is they were African.
Note how the supposed "Negroid" presence in Egypt is always explained by a Southern intrusion, but also note this is because some Ancient Egyptians fit a orthogonal profile, which many indigenous Africans fit. Elongated Africans adapted to a hot/dry climate exhibit these keen features. So in actuality, the differences, and examples that are presented between populations (upper and lower Egypt), is actually because many Africans exhibit different profiles, there is NO true Negro. Anthropologist falsely classify Elongated Africans as a Mediterranean type, which is absolutely false., and this is why Ancient Egyptians are falsely classified as such(Mediterraneans).
The point that needs to be taken is, the Ancient Egyptians exhibited super tropically adapted limbs and there was absolutely NO distinction or confusion or change about this, tropically adapted Egyptians is a fact. Arabs and Europeans are NOT tropically adapted. Plain and simple.
Posts: 6572 | From: N.Y.C....Capital of the World | Registered: Jun 2008
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quote:Originally posted by King_Scorpion: That's what I would like to know. It's just always been a "mentality" even here on ES (you see I've been a member for a very long time) that Lower Egyptians may have had a lighter tone than Upper Egyptians. I don't exactly know where that comes from though.
This is one of the first things I inquired about when I registered here and I'm able to comprehend a lot better the complexities of these supposed "differences", to where I feel an emphasis on them is unwarranted. You just have to read the relevant information and discern for yourself.
quote:Originally posted by astenb: [Q] ^ That could be correct but "Different" how? The difference may have been probably large enough to classify them as two separate Ethnic groups but that's it. How different is an African American from a Jamaican? Or an Oromo from Somali? Yeah there are differences but all in all they overlap and you will see North East African continuity in the Features. I personally think that some differences were large enough for the populations to create featured stereotypes. But remember that Egyptians labeled MANY groups to the south simply as "Southerners" Nubian just means southerner right? Someone correct me if I am wrong. [/Q]
That's what I would like to know. It's just always been a "mentality" even here on ES (you see I've been a member for a very long time) that Lower Egyptians may have had a lighter tone than Upper Egyptians. I don't exactly know where that comes from though.
Knowledgeiskey718: I think we're in agreement on the what the Egyptians looked like. I believe Ancient Kemet was a Black and AFRICAN civilization. Don't confuse me for a troll...lol.
I think many hold this idea due to the location of the Nile Delta to the Arabian Penisula(Arabs) and the Mediteranian Sea(Europeans). Also some forign colonies such as the Greek trading city Naucratis and the fact that dialects and cultures were different in the Lower Egypt that Southern Egypt.
As far as a non southern Dynasty...I can only think of the 19th...Seti and the Ramses Dynasy were from the Delta...Also was not Imhotep from Lower Egypt.? Oh also Amunhotep son of Hapu the Architect under Amunhotep the 3rd....? Correct me if Im wrong.
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quote:Jari Ankhamun wrote: I think many hold this idea due to the location of the Nile Delta to the Arabian Penisula(Arabs) and the Mediteranian Sea(Europeans).
Iraqi:
Proximity to the Southern fringe of South West Asia does not equate to a significantly lighter range of skin tones other than those which are immaterial (as in non-outlier skin tones compared with other Africans or even their Southern cousins).
Information on their skeletal morphology
the Northern Egyptian general resemblance to African populations
as well as their dissimilarity to either European and contemporary Middle Eastern neighbors
as posted by Sundiata is of note, but not all that surprising since we know that in ancient times the Nile acted as a demographic pump from Central Africa down the Nile anyway, and that there weren't any large scale migrations into the Nile Valley from outside of Africa at this time. Does a river come from Central Asia and run down into the Nile Valley? No.
And hence:
"the Egyptians **generally** have tropical body plans." - A. Zakrzewski 2007
^The tropical zones of Africa lie South of the latittude Egypt is at.
And combining this with the citations already posted above to more fully illustrate the way in which ancient Egyptians' body types were African:
"The **limb-length proportions** of males from the Egyptian sites group them with Africans" - Barry Kemp
"The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the “super-negroid” body plan described by Robins (1983). The values for the brachial and crural indices show that the distal segments of each limb are longer relative to the proximal segments than in many “African” populations (data from Aiello and Dean, 1990).
This pattern is supported by Figure 7 (a plot of population mean femoral and tibial lengths; data from Ruff, 1994), which indicates that the Egyptians **generally** have tropical body plans. Of the Egyptian samples, only the Badarian and Early Dynastic period populations have shorter tibiae than predicted from femoral length. Despite these differences, all samples lie relatively clustered together as compared to the other populations." - Zakrzewski 2007
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posted
Come on guys. Let's not make things anymore complicated than they really are! There is no need to cite anthropological data. We all know *all* Egyptians were African and black even those of Lower Egypt!
Scorpi just asked the simple question of which dynasties as in actual royal families did not originate to the south of Egypt as in 'Nubia'??
We have to look at those which did originate from the south first:
dynasties 0-3rd, possibly 4th,
then dynasty 12, possibly 11,
then dynasties 17-18,
and of course dynasty 25.
So I guess all the rest of the dynasties did not descend from the south but originate locally in Egypt.
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quote: Elephantine was probably not the favourite place of residence for officials of the Fourth Dynasty. This changed considerably towards the Sixth Dynasty and was closely connected with the end of the central state of the Old Kingdom.15 However, evidence for inconsistencies in this development emerges. The first hints of elite burials on the island date to the second half of the Fifth Dynasty: a relief gives evidence for a doorway or for a representative facade and must have belonged to a mastaba.16 However, these structures suffered from immediate destruction shortly after the officials were buried. Merely one or two generations later, such funerary monuments were being taken out of their original context. A frieze-block of the late Fifth Dynasty, belonging to a mastaba of the expedition official Niankhmin, was reused in a workshop of only slightly later date.17 Furthermore, a fragment of a very well made limestone statuette was found in a late 5th Dynasty context. A limestone column base also hints that there was an elite necropolis at this time. It seems highly unlikely that limestone would have been brought 200km from the north just to be plastered and used as a post support in a simple workshop of the reign of Pepi II (fig. 5). The same speed of neglect can be observed in the harbour at the southern landing place. Within two generations, inscriptions of the early Sixth Dynasty were covered by simple harbour habitations and storage facilities (figs. 6–7).18
quote:Jari Ankhamun wrote: I think many hold this idea due to the location of the Nile Delta to the Arabian Penisula(Arabs) and the Mediteranian Sea(Europeans).
Iraqi:
Proximity to the Southern fringe of South West Asia does not equate to a significantly lighter range of skin tones other than those which are immaterial (as in non-outlier skin tones compared with other Africans or even their Southern cousins).
Information on their skeletal morphology
the Northern Egyptian general resemblance to African populations
as well as their dissimilarity to either European and contemporary Middle Eastern neighbors
as posted by Sundiata is of note, but not all that surprising since we know that in ancient times the Nile acted as a demographic pump from Central Africa down the Nile anyway, and that there weren't any large scale migrations into the Nile Valley from outside of Africa at this time. Does a river come from Central Asia and run down into the Nile Valley? No.
And hence:
"the Egyptians **generally** have tropical body plans." - A. Zakrzewski 2007
^The tropical zones of Africa lie South of the latittude Egypt is at.
And combining this with the citations already posted above to more fully illustrate the way in which ancient Egyptians' body types were African:
"The **limb-length proportions** of males from the Egyptian sites group them with Africans" - Barry Kemp
"The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the “super-negroid” body plan described by Robins (1983). The values for the brachial and crural indices show that the distal segments of each limb are longer relative to the proximal segments than in many “African” populations (data from Aiello and Dean, 1990).
This pattern is supported by Figure 7 (a plot of population mean femoral and tibial lengths; data from Ruff, 1994), which indicates that the Egyptians **generally** have tropical body plans. Of the Egyptian samples, only the Badarian and Early Dynastic period populations have shorter tibiae than predicted from femoral length. Despite these differences, all samples lie relatively clustered together as compared to the other populations." - Zakrzewski 2007
I never implied the Lower Egyptians were "Lighter" skinned than Upper Egyptians...I said this is the idea people get due to the location of the Delta.
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