posted
First off... Any extreme off-topic posts will be removed.
Anyways, I want us to have an in depth discussion on how exactly sparsely populated Lower Egypt was and how much foreign admixture did the region receive? Certain circles on the African side believe there was small foreign influence while other circles believe there was large scale influence and that Lower Egypt was not sparsely populated. I'm specifically talking pre-dynastic and early dynastic times.
I'm going to be using some very dated studies(hell prior to DNA studies) but they are relevant to this discussion. Anyhow...
quote:It was. Between 7,000 and 4,000 BCE (the beginnings of the dynastic phase) “the northern third of the Delta was reduced to a vast tract of swamp and lagoon."
Butzer continues:
quote:"a considerable body of information can be marshaled to show that the Delta was underdeveloped"
quote:"... Butzer suggests thateven in Pharaonic times the Delta was under-populated when compared with Upper Egyptand that settlements were highly dispersed."
Now according to Butzer, the Delta/Lower Egypt was not just underpopulated but also underdeveloped like it was some backwoods area like in America. We also already know based on Egyptology 101 that the pharaonic culture started in Upper Egypt and so this could be the case if we go by Butzer.
But then we have this also this which backs up those who argue there was no large scale foreign migration into Lower Egypt.
quote:"There is no archaeological, linguistic, or historical data which indicate a European or Asiatic invasion of, or migration to, the Nile Valley during First Dynasty times. Previous concepts about the origin of the First Dynasty Egyptians as being somehow external to the Nile Valley or less native are not supported by archaeology... In summary, the Abydos First Dynasty royal tomb contents reveal a notable craniometric heterogeneity. Southerners predominate.
(Kieta, S. (1992) Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis of Crania From First Dynasty Egyptian Tombs, Using Multiple Discriminant Functions. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 87:245-254)"
^^However, the study above is quite dated especially since we now have ancient genetic material.
Anyhow, on another site this poster made a good point that Lower Egypt couldn't have been sparsely populated and couldn't have had little foreign influence. Because the non-African ancestry of Somalis/Cushitic speakers is largely Levantine and NOT gulf Arabian. That ancestry which would've migrated into the Horn. And so Lower Egypt couldn't have been sparsely populated or with little foreign ancestry. But what is you guys thoughts on this?
Just how sparsely populated was Lower Egypt? Because we hear this all the time.
Posts: 1891 | From: NY | Registered: Sep 2014
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A low founder population in the Delta means that even the slightest migrations from the Levant could've produced heavily admixed Lower Egyptians by the dynastic period. Why they didn't speak Semetic as dynastic Egyptians can also be explained. Lower Egypt was conquered so it's very possible that Lower Egyptians did what many people did when conquered and adapted the languages of those they assimilated with. These people were not one ethnicity until unification so it remains highly unlikely they all spoke the same language before they were conquered.
Posts: 2508 | From: . | Registered: Nov 2011
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posted
The threads question was directly answered by oshun via the table he posted. It was also directly discussed HERE He also competently broke down months ago the relative effects of demographic change given time and low founding population sizes HERE. http://www.egyptsearch.com/forums/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=009707;p=1 ^^All of page one with the exception of the back n forth with Doug is worth the read...
I'd suggest we start from everything that've been covered so far going forth... most of what could be reported on the matter should be out there. future studies will involve techniques using heterogeneity to recreate founding population sizes with Bayesian statistics if we ever settle on a good representative sample of A.Egyptians.
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posted
Don't know how accurate the counts will be but most scholarship, including recent scholarship states that the population density in ancient times going back towards the predynastic and beyond was towards Upper Egypt. Most of the sites being excavated going back > 5,000 years are in Upper Egypt/Sudan.
Ultimately the question becomes how much flow from direct migration from the Levant took place in the Neolithic/Predynastic and how much flow took place as a result of Egyptian expansion into the Levant after unification. My assumption is Egyptian cultural influence expanded outwards to the Levant and produced a somewhat cosmopolitan population in parts of the North.
Full Oriental institute paper on Nile Valley "Hydraulic" culture emergence:
quote: The archeological record is more informative. In the south, in Upper Nubia, dotted wavy-line pottery of Khartum type overlaps in time with the latest Epi-Paleolithic, but the associated lithic assemblages are clearly different and intrusive (Wendorf and Schild 1975; also Wendorf 1968, pp. 1051 ff.). The earliest known agricultural site within the modern boundaries of Egypt is related to the Khartum Variant, and found in the southern Libyan Desert (see footnote 10 above). Although one Epi-Paleo- lithic group, the Abkan of the Second Cataract, acquired pottery manufacture while retaining a local lithic tradition, the Khartum Neolithic appears to play no significant role in early agricul- ture within the Egyptian Nile Valley. In the north, the Faiyum "A," linked to Merimde by its bifacial knives and concave-based arrowheads (J. L. Phillips, personal communication), is macro- lithic and quite distinct from all preceding and coeval micro- lithic traditions in the Nile Valley, both on technological and typological grounds (see Said, Albritton, et al. 1972; Wendorf and Schild 1975). This argues for an intrusive origin of the Neolithic and, ultimately, Predynastic, involving migration rather than trait diffusion or local innovation. Significantly, however, this new lithic tradition finds no parallels in Sinai or the Levant (J. L. Phillips, personal communication), precluding immigration from that sector. If anything, the only plausible technological roots of the strong Neolithic-Predynastic bifacial tradition would be in the North African Aterian of the late Pleistocene. This does not, of course, preclude the probability of later Asiatic influences, such as the introduction of metal- lurgy
quote:In the north, the Faiyum "A," linked to Merimde by its bifacial knives and concave-based arrowheads (J. L. Phillips, personal communication), is macro- lithic and quite distinct from all preceding and coeval micro- lithic traditions in the Nile Valley, both on technological and typological grounds (see Said, Albritton, et al. 1972; Wendorf and Schild 1975). This argues for an intrusive origin of the Neolithic and, ultimately, Predynastic, involving migration rather than trait diffusion or local innovation. Significantly, however, this new lithic tradition finds no parallels in Sinai or the Levant (J. L. Phillips, personal communication), precluding immigration from that sector. If anything, the only plausible technological roots of the strong Neolithic-Predynastic bifacial tradition would be in the North African Aterian of the late Pleistocene. This does not, of course, preclude the probability of later Asiatic influences, such as the introduction of metallurgy.
Isn't the Aterian a Middle Stone Age culture from northwestern Africa that is supposed to have disappeared ~30 kya? I can buy that there were people with Aterian-style tools living in the Sahara west of Egypt that may have contributed to the Neolithic cultures of Fayyum and Merimde. On the other hand, the Afrasan linguistic affinities of ancient Egyptian suggests an origin in Northeast rather than Northwest Africa for the predynastic Egyptian culture. That is, unless Neolithic Lower Egyptians had a more "westerly" affinity than their Upper Egyptian counterparts.
posted
^^Yes, the Aterian culture was a Northwest African culture that existed around 100-80k years ago. I would have died out way before the time of the Neolithic predynastic cultures if I am not mistaken.
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