"Nubian culture is one of the oldest and richest in Africa and dates back before Egyptian civilisation although this later overtook it."
"The original environment of the Nubian is to be on the shore of the Nile. It is the source of life itself - but also our myths and traditions."
"Tens of thousands of Nubians were moved from their ancestral homeland along the Nile - in southern Egypt and northern Sudan - because of the dam."
"In the desert, Nubians are kept away from all their intangible heritage connected to the Nile. The living culture will disappear soon if they do not go back home."
"Evidence of the oldest recognizable monarchy in human history, preceding the rise of the earliest Egyptian kings by several generations, has been discovered in artifacts from ancient Nubia in Africa."
“The new findings suggest that the ancient Nubians may have reached this stage of political development as long ago as 3300 B.C., several generations before the earliest documented Egyptian king.”
“Dr. Williams said there were accounts in later Egyptian writings of the Egyptians attacking Ta-Seti some time around 3000 B.C. This is just about the time, according to the archaeological record, when a major cultural transformation began in that part of Nubia. Little is known of what was happening in this region between 3000 B.C. and 2300 B.C. when inhabitants were unquestionably governed by separate chiefdoms.”
Early Egyptian civilization an extension of Upper Sudan per mainstream encyclopedia of Pre-Colonial Africa
Quote:
"The period when sub-Saharan Africa was most influential in Egypt was a time when neither Egypt, as we understand it culturally, nor the Sahara, as we understand it geographically, existed. Populations and cultures now found south of the desert roamed far to the north. The culture of Upper Egypt, which became dynastic Egyptian civilization, could fairly be called a Sudanese transplant.(Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa, by Joseph O. Vogel, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek,California (1997), pp. 465-472)
Modern studies show diversity in how people look is heavily based on distance from sub-Saharan Africa, not merely climate. In genetically diverse Africa, broad-nosed people live on the cool or cold mountain slopes of East Africa or the hot, dry Sahara, and narrow-nosed peoples like many Fulani like in the wet tropics of West Africa. Yellowish-skinned San tribes live in the hot zones of Southern Africa.
"The relative importance of ancient demography and climate in determining worldwide patterns of human within-population phenotypic diversity is still open to debate. Several morphometric traits have been argued to be under selection by climatic factors, but it is unclear whether climate affects the global decline in morphological diversity with increasing geographical distance from sub-Saharan Africa. Using a large database of male and female skull measurements, we apply an explicit framework to quantify the relative role of climate and distance from Africa. We show that distance from sub-Saharan Africa is the sole determinant of human within-population phenotypic diversity, while climate plays no role. By selecting the most informative set of traits, it was possible to explain over half of the worldwide variation in phenotypic diversity. These results mirror those previously obtained for genetic markers and show that 'bones and molecules' are in perfect agreement for humans." (Distance from Africa, not climate, explains within-population phenotypic diversity in humans.(2008) by: Lia Betti, François Balloux, William Amos, Tsunehiko Hanihara, Andrea Manica, Proceedings B: Biological Sciences, 2008/12/02)
More to come, stay tuned!
Posts: 447 | Registered: Apr 2010
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The Eastern Sahara covers an area the size of Western Europe
Prehistoric humans roamed the world's largest desert for some 5,000 years, archaeologists have revealed.
The Eastern Sahara of Egypt, Sudan, Libya and Chad was home to nomadic people who followed rains that turned the desert into grassland.
When the landscape dried up about 7,000 years ago, there was a mass exodus to the Nile and other parts of Africa.
The close link between human settlement and climate has lessons for today, researchers report in Science.
"Even modern day conflicts such as Dafur are caused by environmental degradation as it has been in the past," Dr Stefan Kropelin of the University of Cologne, Germany, told the BBC News website.
"The basic struggle for food, water and pasture is still a big problem in the Sahara zone. This process started thousands of years ago and has a long tradition.
Jigsaw puzzle
The Eastern Sahara, which covers more than 2 million sq km, an area the size of Western Europe, is now almost uninhabited by people or animals, providing a unique window into the past.
Rock art from the "swimmers cave" in remote southwest Egypt. Image: Science
The settlers left their mark with art
Dr Kropelin and colleague Dr Rudolph Kuper pieced together the 10,000-year jigsaw of human migration and settlement; studying more than 100 archaeological sites over the course of 30 years.
In the largest study of its kind, they built up a detailed picture of human evolution in the world's largest desert. They found that far from the inhospitable climate of today, the area was once semi-humid.
Between about 14,000 and 13,000 years ago, the area was very dry. But a drastic switch in environmental conditions some 10,500 years ago brought rain and monsoon-like conditions.
Nomadic human settlers moved in from the south, taking up residence beside rivers and lakes. They were hunter-gatherers at first, living off plants and wild game.
Eventually they became more settled, domesticating cattle for the first time, and making intricate pottery.
Neolithic farmers Humid conditions prevailed until about 6,000 years ago, when the Sahara abruptly dried out. There was then a gradual exodus of people to the Nile Valley and other parts of the African continent.
"The Nile Valley was almost devoid of settlement until about exactly the time that the Egyptian Sahara was so dry people could not live there anymore," Dr Kropelin told the BBC News website.
The domestication of cattle was invented in the Sahara in the humid phase and was then slowly pushed over the rest of Africa Dr Stefan Kropelin of the University of Cologne
"People preferred to live on savannah land. Only when this wasn't possible they migrated towards southern Sudan and the Nile.
"They brought all their know-how to the rest of the continent - the domestication of cattle was invented in the Sahara in the humid phase and was then slowly pushed over the rest of Africa.
"This Neolithic way of life, which still is a way of life in a sense; preservation of food for the dry season and many other such cultural elements, was introduced to central and southern Africa from the Sahara."
Motor of evolution' Dr Kuper said the distribution of people and languages, which is so politically important today, has its roots in the desiccation of the Sahara. The switch in environmental conditions acted as a "motor of Africa's evolution," he said. "It happened during these 5,000 years of the savannah that people changed from hunter-gathers to cattle keepers," he said. "This important step in human history has been made for the first time in the African Sahara."
The Sahara Desert covers over 3.5 million square miles and has only 2.5 million inhabitants - roughly 1 person per square mile (0.4 sq km)- which is one of the lowest population densities on earth. Wherever abundant food and water sources occur, one will find relatively large masses of people and wildlife. On the whole, the Sahara is one of the harshest environments known to man.
Many researchers have gone into the Sahara looking for clues as to how long ago humans began inhabiting the desert. According to archeologists, the Sahara was much more densely populated thousands of years ago when the desert's climate was not as harsh as it is today. Fossils, rock art, stone artifacts, bone harpoons, shells and many other items have been found in areas which today are considered too hot and dry to inhabit. This suggests that these areas were quite habitable thousands of years ago, but that the climate of the Sahara has since changed drastically. The artifacts found were located near remains of giraffe, elephant, buffalo, antelopes, rhinoceros, and warthog, as well as the remains of fish, crocodiles, hippopotamuses and other aquatic animals which suggests that thousands of years ago water was quite abundant in the Sahara.
Physical Features
The Sahara's topographical features include shallow basins, large oasis depressions, serirs or regs (gravel-covered plains), plateaus, mountains, sand sheets, dunes and sand seas (ergs). The highest part of the desert is at the summit of Mount Koussi, which is 11,204 feet (3,415 m) high. However, the lowest point of the Sahara is 436 feet (133 m) below sea level: in the Qattera Depression in Egypt.
Over 25 percent of the Sahara's surface is covered by sand sheets and dunes. The most common types of dunes include tied dunes, blowout dunes, barchan and transverse dunes, longitudinal seirfs, and complex sand seas. Within the Sahara are several pyramidal dunes that reach over 500 feet in height while the draa, a mountainous sand ridge, reaches over 1,000 feet. Researchers have for many years tried to figure out how these dunes were formed, but the case remains unsolved.
The Sahara itself is at least as large as the whole of Europe, if not much bigger. And the sub Sahara itself has a lot more variation in the landscape, be it flora and or fauna! Causing more variation within the phenotype of these inhabitance! Posts: 447 | Registered: Apr 2010
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provide evidence that anyone has ever read more than 1/8th of a 9th Element multi-post
Posts: 42940 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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^ How about you provide evidence for 1-10th of your claims, fool?! What, are you mad cuz 9th Element doused you in factual evidence? Posts: 26302 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Skeptic: Why don't you all actually read those studies, instead of nitpicking select graphics and appropriating your distorted renditions to what was actually stated in the study. That figure comes from the paper The Levant versus the Horn of Africa: Evidence for Bidirectional Corridors of Human Migrations. In that paper it is made perfectly clear that the J haplogroups found amongst the Egyptians dates to roughly between 11.1K years and 16.4K years ago, i.e. It was already there prior to the emergence of Dynastic Egypt!
The non-Berber Egyptian sample in that study is explicitly labeled "Arab"---that is, it represents Arab immigrants rather than native Egyptians. Haplogroup J may have indeed expanded within that particular group 16.4-11.1 millennia ago, but that doesn't mean the group hasn't moved in the last few thousands years.
Why wouldn't the Egyptians be of similar stock to the Berbers? They're both on the same latitude and if you were coming from Asia you would have to pass through Egypt to get to Libya
Good question -
The Berbers were originally composed of peoples related to the modern East African Cushites adn Fulani, and then the modern Nilo-Saharan speakers lived among them such as the Tida Garawan or Ghu'ara or Gor'an.
The latter were most likely related closely to the ancient Egyptians and other small gracile Nubian peoples.
Berber is the name of a linguistic group today and many who speak Berber are only partially related to ancient Africans. Posts: 4226 | From: New Jersey, USA | Registered: Mar 2007
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quote: ^ How about you provide evidence for 1-10th of your claims, fool?! What, are you mad cuz 9th Element doused you in factual evidence?
^^Indeed..
-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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Actually dark brown should be fairly prevalant in Egyptian art. The red paint that the Egyptians used was composed partly of iron oxide. Even after the red paint had faded, any traces of iron oxide{rust} left would have been brown in color.
Posts: 676 | From: the Alpha and the Omega | Registered: Nov 2010
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^ The iron oxide explains the reddish color but NOT the brown. Thus most paintings, particularly of men that are faded tend to be redder in appearance than they originally were and not as dark or brown!
Posts: 26302 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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