For a few years now I've turned my attention on the subject of race more towards the Race & IQ debate than the origins of the Ancient Egyptians which I used to spend a lot of time on this forum discussing. During this period I spent a lot of time trying to debunk the racial claims of J. Philippe Rushton. Recently I came across some Youtube videos where racists can be found denying that the Ancient Egyptians were Black. Some of these racists posted on my Youtube channel defending the research of Rushton.
This got me thinking....
What did Rushton have to say about the Ancient Egyptians?
I decided to do a keyword search on a PDF of the book Race, Evolution and Behavior to see what he had to say. Not too surprisingly he did mention the Ancient Egyptians a few times and the language makes it quite clear that he believed them to be racially distinct from Blacks.
Here are some examples:
Identification of racial variation in man based on differences in morphology and pigmentation is as old as recorded history. As referenced by Loehlin et al. (1975), in 1200 B.C. the Egyptians of the Nineteenth Dynasty painted polychromatic human figures on the walls of their royal tombs depicting peoples of different skin color and hair form: red (Egyptians), yellow (Asiatic and Semitic), black (sub-Saharan African), and white (western and northern European, also shown with blue eyes and blond beards).
Source: Race, Evolution and Behavior p. 91
Hostility and hybridization both characterized ethnic relations among those ancient Middle Eastern groups who affected history—the Egyptians, the Sumerians, the Akkadians, the Israelites, the Hittites, the Persians, and later, the Greeks and the Romans. The nobility and leadership of the varying factions often urged against hybridization. The Bible provides many examples of the Hebrews being enjoined to avoid it. Tribes and nations thought it natural and legitimate to despise, conquer, enslave, and displace each other. Slavery is attested from the very earliest written records among the Sumerians, the Babylonians, and the Egyptians, as well as the Greeks and the Romans. The wall paintings of ancient Egypt, for example, typically depict the gods and pharaohs as larger than life while Negroes and other outlanders were posed as servants and slaves.
Source: Race, Evolution and Behavior p. 96-97
Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), the Swiss naturalist famous for studying fossil fishes, traveled to America in 1846 and was persuaded to stay on as professor of zoology at Harvard, where he founded and directed the Museum of Comparative Zoology. He theorized that the creation of species occurred in discrete geographical centers with minimum variation, a view he later applied to the human situation. Agassiz believed that God had created the races as separate species; the biblical tale of Adam referred only to the origin of Caucasians. For him, mummified remains from Egypt implied that Negroes and Caucasians were as distinct 3,000 years earlier as they were in his day, and since the biblical story of Noah's Ark had been dated only 1,000 years before that, there would not have been time for all the sons of Noah to have developed their distinct attributes. For Agassiz, these included intellectual and moral qualities, with Europeans ranking higher than Amerindians and Orientals, and Africans ranking the lowest. Agassiz lived to become America's leading opponent of the Darwinian revolution.
Source: Race, Evolution and Behavior p. 105
Twenty-one criteria by which a civilization could be judged were set up by J. R. Baker (1974), some of whose work was described in chapter 5. J. R. Baker suggested that in civilized societies, the majority of people complied with most of the requirements set out in Table 6.11. He then proceeded to analyze the historical record to ascertain which races have originated civilizations. His conclusion was that the Caucasoid peoples developed all 21 components of civilization in four independent locations, the Sumerian in the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Cretan, the Indus Valley, and the ancient Egyptian. The Mongoloids also developed a full civilization in the Sink civilization in China. The Amerindians achieved about half of the 21 components in the Maya society of Guatemala, a little less in the Inca and Aztec societies, but these peoples never invented a written script, the wheel (except possibly in children's toys), the principle of the arch in their architecture, metal working, or money for the exchange of goods. The Negroids and the Australian aborigines achieved virtually none of the criteria of civilization.
Source: Race, Evolution and Behavior p. 141-142
Much disputed also is the contention that the pattern of racial differences in behavior show up historically. Some have suggested that blacks played a significant intellectual role in the civilization of ancient Egypt (Weizmann et al., 1991). Some proponents of Afro-centrism have gone so far as to claim that Aristotle and other geniuses from ancient Greece stole their ideas from black Africa (James, 1992). Flynn (1989) challenged the evidence of history on law abidingness, pointing to the authority-driven criminality of this century in China, Japan, Germany, and Russia. Gabor and Roberts (1990: 343) dismissed the entire effort of examining such data as "idle speculation" with "no place" in the scientific enterprise.
Source: Race, Evolution and Behavior p. 245
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
What's up Morpheus
White supremacy and 1) the downplaying of the contributions of those not deemed white and 2) the lumping of various culturally advanced groups who were never deemed white in ancient literature into the "white" category to undermine any evidence that goes against white supremacy, go hand in hand. What is the surprise?
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
Baker (1974) isn't so bad on race of Egyptians if you simply take "Aethiopid" out of his "Europoid".
"From predynastic times onwards a principal part of the population of Egypt appears to have been composed of a section of the Aethiopid subrace."
"In their monuments the dynastic Egyptians represented themselves as having a long face, pointed chin with scantly beard, a straight or somewhat aquiline nose, black irises, and a reddish-brown complexion. On the evidence of their mummies it would appear that the head-hair was curly, wavy, or almost straight, and very dark brown or black. Facial and body-hair was scantly apart from the chin tuft of males. The skeletons show that stature was low, and the bones are slight and suggest a rather feeble frame. The skulls stand near the dividing-line between meso-and dolicocranial, with bulging occiput; viewed from on top they appear coffin-shaped or ovoid; supraciliary ridges are poorly developed or absent; the forehead is nearly vertical. The cheeks are narrow, the reliability of their images. There is some tendency towards projection of the face and jaws(mesognathy)."
These are accurate descriptions of what the average ancient Egyptian would have looked like.
Baker also recognised the variation in Egypt itself, structured from a south-north gradient in cephalic index (with more "Negrid" skeletal traits appearing in the south via Nubian mixture):
"The Upper Egyptians had narrower skulls and consequently somewhat lower cranial indices(commonly about 73.5, in comparison with 75.0 or rather more among the Lower Egyptians) and one may condense a very large body of statistically data into a few words by saying that all six criteria by which Egyptian skulls can be distinguished from Negrid ones, the Upper Egyptian skulls approximated at first a little more closely towards the Negrid condition than did those of Lower Egypt."
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead: Baker (1974) isn't so bad on race of Egyptians if you simply take "Aethiopid" out of his "Europoid".
So Baker isn't so bad on the race of the Egyptians being Caucasian (Europid) We simply need to take the Ethiopian out of the European, so it's pure
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
Mainstream classicists and Egyptologists don't regard the ancient Egyptians to have been 'black':
"Snowden did not include ancient Egyptians in his book Blacks in Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass. 1970), but he later revised his description of the color of the Egyptians’ skin, as Keita might have remarked,in favor of ancient terminologies such as subfuscus (“somewhat dark,” in M. R. Lefkowitz and G. M. Rogers, eds., Black Athena Revisited [Chapel Hill, N.C. 1996]: 113). According to Egyptologist Donald Redford (From Slave to Pharaoh [Baltimore, Md. 2004]: 5–6), the ancient Egyptians perceived themselves “as a russet hue,” Asiatics “of a paler yellowish color,” and Southerners as “chocolate brown or black.” Nubians were Nhsi, “bronzed/burnt,” a term analogous to Greek Αἰθίοψ". (Lefkowitz, 2013)
The ancient Egyptians depicted and described their complexion as lighter than the black Nubians; the Greeks and Romans likewise did not consider the Egyptians black, they did not apply the term Αἰθίοψ [Aethiops] to the Egyptians, but their southern neighbours (i.e. any inhabitant of Sub-Saharan Africa).
Posted by Truthcentric (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: What's up Morpheus
White supremacy and 1) the downplaying of the contributions of those not deemed white and 2) the lumping of various culturally advanced groups who were never deemed white in ancient literature into the "white" category to undermine any evidence that goes against white supremacy, go hand in hand. What is the surprise?
I thought the same thing. Of course a guy like Rushton and his Pioneer Fund buddies would delimit "Black African" identity to exclude Nile Valley populations. He probably wouldn't consider Mali, Great Zimbabwe, or any other native African state to have been authentically "Black African" (or "Negroid" or whatever he preferred) if he even knew about them. So I wouldn't place much stock in his delusions.
We've all observed that once you cite Egypt as an example of "Black African civilization", they'll move the goalpost of "Blackness" away from indigenous dark-skinned Africans in general (the original sense of the phrase) towards West and Central Africans (or affiliated groups like the Bantu) more specifically. If you really want to mess with them, I'd recommend asking them whether they would call Barack Obama, Halle Berry, or any other "Afro-Diasporan" individuals with lighter skin as "Black" even if they have less exclusively African ancestry than most ancient Egyptians.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
You posting crap.
Egypt is on the same latitude as Pakistan, North India, Nepal and south China. None of the native ethnic groups in these areas have ever been considered/described as 'black', so why should Egyptians?
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
^The people in the regions you mention were dark skinned before people with gene variants that code for light skin entered those regions.
There is every reason to believe that the hue seen on the figures of the Cave of Swimmers in Egypt is what the Ancient Egyptians looked like before such high latitude groups trickled into the Nile Valley.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
Strabo + tun of other ancient Greco-Roman sources liken the skin of Egyptians to North Indians. Not a surprise since they are on the same latitude.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
I've seen many make that argument, but they never demonstrate how they came to the conclusion that the North Indians that were referenced back then should be equated with people who look like, say, Pashtuns? That's a huge assumption.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
Ancient Egypt = c. 3100 BC - 646 AD. Those cave paintings are 10,000 years old, and are not relevant. We're talking historical times only.
The following geographical pattern for skin colour had appeared by the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age:
For frequency of SLC24A5 (rs1426654) and SLC45A2 (rs16891982) in Europe, over the last 8,000 years see figure two.
quote:Originally posted by Dead: Ancient Egypt = c. 3100 BC - 646 AD. Those cave paintings are 10,000 years old, and are not relevant. We're talking historical times only.
The following geographical pattern for skin colour had appeared by the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age:
For frequency of SLC24A5 (rs1426654) and SLC45A2 (rs16891982) in Europe, over the last 8,000 years see figure two.
But what reason do you have to suppose that the Egyptians had turned significantly lighter than those characters in the Cave of Swimmers by early historical times? They probably wouldn't have possessed the same mutations for lighter skin as West Eurasians (which developed in more northerly latitudes than Egypt by the way).
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
The Wadi Sura paintings are not irrelevant. All human pale skin today traces back to just a couple of sources outside of Africa and at least one in southern Africa. This means that ALL instances of light(er) skin in Egypt can be understood as a combination of native dark skin phenotypes + non-native phenotypes that had a severe lightening effect.
Since the cave paintings give an idea of what pigment people in the region had 10kya, we know that the claim that the reddish pigment used by Egyptians in their art is somehow outside of the skin pigment range that the AE would have used for modern day Africans, is simply not true.
Remember, there are only a couple of sources of the light skin phenotypes. The rest of the people are dark because they have the ancestral alleles or they are brown skinned because they possess both.
Therefore, there is no such thing as a "red" skinned Egyptian "race" as understood by the Egyptologists and academics you cite.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
The idea all Australian aborigines are dark brown skinned was shown to be false by C. Loring Brace. There is a skin pigmentation cline in Australia, i.e. "skin pigment also lightens toward the south in Australia." (Brace, 2000) Even in old racial typology literature this was recognised. The Australoids in old texts were split into north/south divisions based on the frequency of two subraces: "Carpentarians" and "Murrayians". The latter mostly were concentrated in the southern regions of Australia, and were lighter brown skinned than the "Carpentarians" of the tropical north.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
There was a migration of Indian-like people to Australia ~4kya. There are also native variations in local dark skinned groups due to micro evolution, but I'm not sure that they will ever produce the full-fledged light skin phenotypes under discussion.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by Truthcentric: But what reason do you have to suppose that the Egyptians had turned significantly lighter than those characters in the Cave of Swimmers by early historical times? They probably wouldn't have possessed the same mutations for lighter skin as West Eurasians (which developed in more northerly latitudes than Egypt by the way). [/QB]
Before the Neolithic there was a lack of strong positive selection. This changed with the rapid increase in population sizes and shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies.
So by the late Neolithic - early Bronze Age, strong positive selection would have shaped the geographical pattern/distribution in skin pigmentation across the globe, only excluding a few areas.
Mike111 is asking why Tasmanians remained so dark skinned at that latitude, it can be explained by the fact they were left almost isolated and remained strict hunter-gatherers.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: The Wadi Sura paintings are not irrelevant. All human pale skin today traces back to just a couple of sources outside of Africa and at least one in southern Africa. This means that ALL instances of light(er) skin in Egypt can be understood as a combination of native dark skin phenotypes + non-native phenotypes that had a severe lightening effect.
Since the cave paintings give an idea of what pigment people in the region had 10kya, we know that the claim that the reddish pigment used by Egyptians in their art is somehow outside of the skin pigment range that the AE would have used for modern day Africans, is simply not true.
Remember, there are only a couple of sources of the light skin phenotypes. The rest of the people are dark because they have the ancestral alleles or they are brown skinned because they possess both.
Therefore, there is no such thing as a "red" skinned Egyptian "race" as understood by the Egyptologists and academics you cite.
I'm saying they became a lighter brown complexion between the Neolithic and early Bronze Age because of the changes in population size (strong positive selection). At the same time across most the globe - populations adapted to be darker or lighter (depending on their latitude). Ancient Egyptians on average would have resembled North Indians: a light to moderate brown, rather than dark (chocolate) brown/black like Africans in the tropics.
The problem you have with claiming ancient Egyptians on average were that dark as those cave paintings, is that they contrasted themselves to their southern neighbours who were of that black complexion (Nubians).
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
@Dead
Revisit that post again. I'm not saying that dynastic Egyptians necessarily all looked like that. I'm saying that is the context in which their later, dynastic use of reddish pigment, and ethnicity should be understood. If these ancestral Saharans are your starting point, which they should be, you can't arrive at the conclusion that the Egyptians were significantly different from regional groups in the Eastern Sahara. The painted figures in the Cave of Swimmers contextualize their use of reddish pigment 5kya later, in the pharaonic age. There is a context to it, and the underlying meaning isn't that they were tanned, that they had a swarthy complexion or that they were in a clade of their own as your sources are trying to insinuate.
Posted by kdolo (Member # 21830) on :
Posted by Truthcentric (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
quote:Originally posted by Truthcentric: But what reason do you have to suppose that the Egyptians had turned significantly lighter than those characters in the Cave of Swimmers by early historical times? They probably wouldn't have possessed the same mutations for lighter skin as West Eurasians (which developed in more northerly latitudes than Egypt by the way).
Before the Neolithic there was a lack of strong positive selection. This changed with the rapid increase in population sizes and shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies.
So by the late Neolithic - early Bronze Age, strong positive selection would have shaped the geographical pattern/distribution in skin pigmentation across the globe, only excluding a few areas.[/QB]
Wait, so you're saying population increases cause lighter skin? There is the hypothesis that a transition to agriculture led to Vitamin D deficiencies which necessitated lighter skin in northern regions, but I've never seen this put forward for populations much closer to the tropics (you're right that Egypt isn't strictly tropical by latitude, but it's still quite close to the tropical periphery).
And since you keep mentioning artistic contrasts between Egyptians and Kushites, I cannot believe you haven't noticed that Egyptians also portrayed themselves as darker than Middle Easterners (who on the other hand appear much closer to your Northern Indian-like, light to moderate brown ideal): Posted by kdolo (Member # 21830) on :
Posted by kdolo (Member # 21830) on :
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
quote:Originally posted by Truthcentric:
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
quote:Originally posted by Truthcentric: But what reason do you have to suppose that the Egyptians had turned significantly lighter than those characters in the Cave of Swimmers by early historical times? They probably wouldn't have possessed the same mutations for lighter skin as West Eurasians (which developed in more northerly latitudes than Egypt by the way).
Before the Neolithic there was a lack of strong positive selection. This changed with the rapid increase in population sizes and shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies.
So by the late Neolithic - early Bronze Age, strong positive selection would have shaped the geographical pattern/distribution in skin pigmentation across the globe, only excluding a few areas.
Wait, so you're saying population increases cause lighter skin? There is the hypothesis that a transition to agriculture led to Vitamin D deficiencies which necessitated lighter skin in northern regions, but I've never seen this put forward for populations much closer to the tropics (you're right that Egypt isn't strictly tropical by latitude, but it's still quite close to the tropical periphery).
And since you keep mentioning artistic contrasts between Egyptians and Kushites, I cannot believe you haven't noticed that Egyptians also portrayed themselves as darker than Middle Easterners (who on the other hand appear much closer to your Northern Indian-like, light to moderate brown ideal): [/QB]
The people the Egyptians painted with that reddish pigment in the Middle East are some of the Mitanni, some Syrians, some Philistines and some Keftiu--all presumably strongly admixed with proto-Semitic groups. I'm sure there are some others that can be added, but it clearly doesn't include the West Eurasian groups West Europeans generally think of as swarthy.
quote:Originally posted by Mike111:
Painting of King Amenhotep II from the Tomb of Kenamun
This figure with light skin, red hair and black beard represents the people who roamed the Eastern desert. It belonged to the group of Egyptian enemies because together with other tribes and nations, it always presented the threat of an invading force.
Albinos are just Sooo pathetic! Sorry lioness, Humans can't have BLACK beards "And" RED hair on the HEAD! Btw - that is a CLOTH HEADDRESS "Not" HAIR!
This figure with light skin, black beard and hair ending with tresses, represents the land of Libya. The ancient Egyptian name for the people of Libya was Tjehenu, and the Egyptians often fought against them especially in the area of Lower Egypt
This figure with red hair and a black beard represents the land of Mentiu, located in Asia. Mentiu was one of the 'nine bows of Egypt', the foreign peoples outside Egypt. The ancient Egyptian considered these foreigners as enemies and used their figures in decoration as symbols of Egyptian superiority.
This figure with dark skin, red hair and a black beard represents the land of Mitanni, which was located in Asia, north of today's Syria. The ancient Egyptian name for Mitanni was Naharin, one of the most challenging opponents of Egypt during the New Kingdom.
This figure with black hair and a narrow hair-band represents one tribe from Crete called Menu Minos by the ancient Egyptians. The word for the Minoans appears in many Theban tombs, starting in the time of Queen Hatshepsut and continuing until the Late Period.
This figure with red skin and black hair represents the people from Lower Egypt, called Ta Mehu in ancient Egyptian. The word Mehu was written with the hieroglyphic sign of a papyrus plant, which grew all around the Nile Delta, and was the symbol of Lower Egypt. The figure is depicted without a beard because the Egyptians always shaved and only foreigners had beards.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
????
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Posted by kdolo (Member # 21830) on :
Posted by kdolo (Member # 21830) on :
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by Truthcentric: Wait, so you're saying population increases cause lighter skin? There is the hypothesis that a transition to agriculture led to Vitamin D deficiencies which necessitated lighter skin in northern regions, but I've never seen this put forward for populations much closer to the tropics (you're right that Egypt isn't strictly tropical by latitude, but it's still quite close to the tropical periphery).
True, a cline by itself does not specify the role of an evolutionary mechanism. The clinal distribution of skin colour could be the result of significant gene flow between high and low latitude populations (at their peripheries), or strong selection along a geographical gradient:
"A cline might result if natural selection favoured a slightly different feature at each point along a geographic gradient. It could also result from gene flow between two groups previously adapted to different environments." (Graves, 2001)
But the San people (Bushmen) being a lot lighter brown skinned at the southern edge of Africa, supports the geographical gradient/selection view, over gene flow.
I also disagree with the idea North Indians etc., are lighter skinned through gene flow. That argument only explains some inhabitants of South-East Asia and the Americas as C. Loring Brace shows. The idea for example there was a large movement of pale skinned "Aryans" into India has certainly been falsified.
quote:
And since you keep mentioning artistic contrasts between Egyptians and Kushites, I cannot believe you haven't noticed that Egyptians also portrayed themselves as darker than Middle Easterners (who on the other hand appear much closer to your Northern Indian-like, light to moderate brown ideal): [/QB]
[/quote]
If the average ancient Egyptian was that dark the Great Hymn to Aten would not have bothered to distinguish the (darker) Nubian colour. The Nubians were black, not Egyptians.
quote:Egyptians on average would have resembled North Indians: a light to moderate brown, rather than dark (chocolate) brown/black like Africans in the tropics.
The usual BS from a that degenerate Baker. Who people like Baker with phony pseudo-anthropological chatter.
Dead you don't seem to realise that North Indians migrated into the Sub-Continent from the NORTH. They are not indigenous to North India. The AEs migrated into places like Luxor and Abu Simbel from the SOUTH. This is common knowledge and the brain-dead troll is just not aware of that fact.
The latitude of Central Egypt is 23 degrees N of the Equator. Cuba is is also 23 degrees N. Capetown where all those indigenous Africans live is 33 degrees South. The latitude of Windhoek, Namibia--the land of the Herero people--is 22 degrees.
In any case, do you discount Aristotle's comment that "Too black a hue as an Egyptian or Nubian marks a coward. So too, too white a hue as in the case of women. The best colour is the intermediate colour as you see with lions. Their tawny colour marks for courage".
So is the colour of these AE Royals same as your supposed "light brown North Indians"?
Obviously Rushton-now late--was an eccentric buffoon of sorts. How else when you stop blac males at the entrance of subway entrances and ask them "How far do you shoot"?
And what should a sane person make of this vaunted paranoid thesis from the same Rushton:"Brains and Penis, you just cannot have both".
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
Dead sez
quote: Mainstream classicists and Egyptologists don't regard the ancient Egyptians to have been 'black':
I say crap.
BTW, specifically, your Lefkowitz quote certainly DOES NOT help prove your point. Actually.
Do you know what I'm saying?
Posted by Morpheus (Member # 16203) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
If the average ancient Egyptian was that dark the Great Hymn to Aten would not have bothered to distinguish the (darker) Nubian colour. The Nubians were black, not Egyptians.
I think that the Ancient Egyptian artwork is far more reliable an indicator of their actual skin color than a translation of the Hymn to Aten (which doesn't say anything about Nubian skin color) or the view points of a Classicist like Frank Snowden. The Ancient Egyptians consistently showed themselves to be darker than Asiatics and slightly lighter than Nubians as well as much darker than pale-skinned Libyans.
According to Keita if you want scientific evidence of the Ancient Egyptians' skin color you need to do a histological analysis of mummy skin.
One study did just that. Here is their result:
Skin sections showed particularly good tissue preservation, although cellular outlines were never distinct. Although much of the epidermis had already separated from the dermis, the remaining epidermis often was preserved well (Fig. 1). The basal epithelial cells were packed with melanin as expected for specimens of Negroid origin.
Source: Determination of optimal rehydration, fixation and staining methods for histological and immunohistochemical analysis of mummified soft tissues Biotechnic & Histochemistry 2005, 80(1): 7-13
Posted by Doug M (Member # 7650) on :
Racists are going to lie no matter how much the facts contradict them. That is the point. Egyptology is an institution of white supremacy designed to promote ancient Egypt as a white society no matter what the facts and science say. Even though they admit that ancient Egyptian culture started in the South they claim, like Petrie, that the people were migrants from "west Asia" via the Red sea. So all these non black folks migrated into Southern Egypt and upper Sudan and did not leave a mark and moved into upper Egypt and created this white civilization. That is their logic. No matter what the facts say.
So even now, they go to Egypt and are surrounded by black native Egyptians and they still sit there and pretend the Egyptians looked like them as pale versus the dark natives working with them every day. And they claim "Afrocentrics" are stealing history.....
Perfect example: This guy Vassil Dobrev discovers the tomb of this guy from the old kindgdom named Hau-Nefer. This is from a rather obscure period of the 6th dynasty. And then he uses this discovery as an excuse to do this French funded show with reenactments showing all these pale white Egyptians while all the images in the tomb are dark and all the natives around him doing the excavation are also black.
Actual native Egyptian in the tomb looking EXACTLY like the portraits in the tomb. Guess these so called expert anthropologists didn't notice that huh? Obviously they did, but they know they are lying that is why they posted the pics of the natives along with their reenactments so at leas they can be 'tongue in cheek' about the fact the reenactments are totally fake. http://www.stephanecompoint.com/41,,,4194,fr_FR.html
I notice that the French, just like the others, love to try and be slick and make reconstructions and reenactments of ancient Egyptians that look like themselves. The reenactors for this video they made "Search for the lost pharoah" look exactly like some ancient family line of Dobrev himself and nothing like actual ancient Egyptian portraits or the local upper Egyptians. In fact, they are trying to be consistent with their lies having reenactors that look exactly like their fake Tut reconstruction which looks like the frenchwoman who made it. I am getting like Mike, "damn mulattoes".... Because if they are going to sit there and claim to be close to ancient Egyptians and North Africans as light skinned mulattoes then Europeans are mulattoes then.
I thought your reference to North Indians was meant to liken Egyptians to people who look like Indo-European groups in the region, but now that I revisit your posts, the skin color map you posted seems to agree with my position that said groups were nowhere near North India; it depicts the latitude their level of skin pigmentation is most adapted to on both sides of the Caspian Sea, in and immediately south of the Eurasian steppes, which agrees with my earlier observation that the original North Indians and Pakistanis had dark skin prior to the inflow of Indo-Aryan speakers and some of the same light skin gene variants that are found in Europeans.
Note also that your map is about predictions. It predicts where different levels of skin pigmentation will be found if groups are allowed to adapt without moving out of the demarcated zones and without outside genetic influences from people outside of said zones. In other words, the map predicts what any given human group will eventually end up looking like in terms of pigmentation levels, if you place them in any of the depicted pigmentation zones. But, as Lamin already pointed out, some groups that joined the pre-existing native regional people during Egypt's formative period came from the south, southwest, the Central Sahara and maybe further west where so-called "Maghrebi Mechtoids" dwelled.
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: [QB]
Posted by kdolo (Member # 21830) on :
Vile Degenerates
Posted by Truthcentric (Member # 3735) on :
If you take a closer look at Jablonski et al's predictive map, you'll observe that parts of the Congo Basin have the same predicted skin color as most of Egypt (probably due to the cloud and treetop cover in humid rainforest regions). You know who probably represents the aboriginal inhabitants of the Congo region? The so-called "Pygmy" peoples like the Mbuti or Aka. They are commonly described as less dark than later Bantu-speaking colonists to be sure, but I would dispute that most non-Africans wouldn't consider their skin tone within the "black" range.
For that matter, most of New Guinea (especially the lowlands) and the rest of Melanesia has a similar range of values to Egypt on that predictive map. Now let the photos of lowland New Guineans.
So I guess we should conclude that, in terms of skin tone alone, purely indigenous Egyptians would have most closely matched aboriginal rainforest-dwellers in places like the Congo or New Guinea?
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by lamin:
quote:Egyptians on average would have resembled North Indians: a light to moderate brown, rather than dark (chocolate) brown/black like Africans in the tropics.
The usual BS from a that degenerate Baker. Who people like Baker with phony pseudo-anthropological chatter.
Dead you don't seem to realise that North Indians migrated into the Sub-Continent from the NORTH. They are not indigenous to North India. The AEs migrated into places like Luxor and Abu Simbel from the SOUTH. This is common knowledge and the brain-dead troll is just not aware of that fact.
The latitude of Central Egypt is 23 degrees N of the Equator. Cuba is is also 23 degrees N. Capetown where all those indigenous Africans live is 33 degrees South. The latitude of Windhoek, Namibia--the land of the Herero people--is 22 degrees.
In any case, do you discount Aristotle's comment that "Too black a hue as an Egyptian or Nubian marks a coward. So too, too white a hue as in the case of women. The best colour is the intermediate colour as you see with lions. Their tawny colour marks for courage".
So is the colour of these AE Royals same as your supposed "light brown North Indians"?
So the idea North Indians lightened via admixture with northerners is nonsense. Regarding the classical quote, μέλᾱς (melas) has several different meanings, so does λευκός (leukos). They don't strictly translate as black and white; μέλᾱς often is "dark" and λευκός, "light". So these have to be understood in context when applied to pigmentation: "too dark a hue as an Egyptian or Ethiopian" doesn't mean the author of the Physiognomonica (Pseudo-Aristotle) considered the Egyptians to be black.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
quote: Originally posted by Truthcentric: So I guess we should conclude that, in terms of skin tone alone, purely indigenous Egyptians would have most closely matched aboriginal rainforest-dwellers in places like the Congo or New Guinea?
^That's what their model predicts and also what the early holocene Wadi Sura cave walls demonstrate. Obviously, the reddish paint used in Pharaonic times should be looked at as a slight departure from the pigmentation levels of their ancestors, a basic common sense inference that the academics who love to emphasise the "redness" of the Egyptians (which they see as a fundamental racially differentiating feature relative to other Africans in Egyptian artwork), seem frightened by, judging by their refusal to connect the dots between the human figures in Wadi Sura and Pharaonic Egyptian artwork.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by Morpheus:
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
If the average ancient Egyptian was that dark the Great Hymn to Aten would not have bothered to distinguish the (darker) Nubian colour. The Nubians were black, not Egyptians.
I think that the Ancient Egyptian artwork is far more reliable an indicator of their actual skin color than a translation of the Hymn to Aten (which doesn't say anything about Nubian skin color) or the view points of a Classicist like Frank Snowden. The Ancient Egyptians consistently showed themselves to be darker than Asiatics and slightly lighter than Nubians as well as much darker than pale-skinned Libyans.
According to Keita if you want scientific evidence of the Ancient Egyptians' skin color you need to do a histological analysis of mummy skin.
One study did just that. Here is their result:
Skin sections showed particularly good tissue preservation, although cellular outlines were never distinct. Although much of the epidermis had already separated from the dermis, the remaining epidermis often was preserved well (Fig. 1). The basal epithelial cells were packed with melanin as expected for specimens of Negroid origin.
Source: Determination of optimal rehydration, fixation and staining methods for histological and immunohistochemical analysis of mummified soft tissues Biotechnic & Histochemistry 2005, 80(1): 7-13 [/QB]
All that tells us is that ancient Egyptians were not leukoderms which no one has ever claimed.
"Moving on to softer tissues than bone, one histological study on Egyptian mummies (Mekota and Vermehren 2005) noted in passing that the skin cells were packed with melanin (the pigment that determines human skin color) as expected for people “of Negroid [African] origin”, although they neither specified the exact density nor went into depth." - African Origin of the Ancient Egyptians (this is an essay Truthcentric wrote which I think he submitted to his university as a course module)
"Packed with melanin" is rather ambiguous. People at subtropical latitude have considerable levels of melanin, but are not dark brown/black.
Posted by Truthcentric (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
quote: Originally posted by Truthcentric: So I guess we should conclude that, in terms of skin tone alone, purely indigenous Egyptians would have most closely matched aboriginal rainforest-dwellers in places like the Congo or New Guinea?
^That's what their model predicts and also what the early holocene Wadi Sura cave walls demonstrate. Obviously, the reddish paint used in Pharaonic times should be looked at as a slight departure from the pigmentation levels of their ancestors, a basic common sense inference that the academics who love to emphasise the "redness" of the Egyptians (which they see as a fundamental racially differentiating feature relative to other Africans in Egyptian artwork), seem frightened by, judging by their refusal to connect the dots between the human figures in Wadi Sura and Pharaonic Egyptian artwork.
With regards to the "slight departure" comment, I would add that ancient painters anywhere in the world would have possessed less varied palettes than guys like me who have modern Photoshop's color picker, in keeping with their material limitations. I don't know if the Wadi Sura figures were painted with the exact same materials as their dynastic Egyptian counterparts, but it wouldn't surprise me if there might have been subtle variations in the red ocher they used that gave different tones. And that's not taking into account issues with paint preservation, or how photographs render those paintings (e.g. it wouldn't surprise me if Wadi Sura paintings were less likely to have their lighting "improved" than dynastic Egyptian ones, since not everyone might perceive a familial affinity between these cultures).
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: @Dead
I thought your reference to North Indians was meant to liken Egyptians to people who look like Indo-European groups in the region, but now that I revisit your posts, the skin color map you posted seems to agree with my position that said groups were nowhere near North India; it depicts the latitude their level of skin pigmentation is most adapted to on both sides of the Caspian Sea, in and immediately south of the Eurasian steppes, which agrees with my earlier observation that the original North Indians and Pakistanis had dark skin prior to the inflow of Indo-Aryan speakers and some of the same light skin gene variants that are found in Europeans.
Note also that your map is about predictions. It predicts where different levels of skin pigmentation will be found if groups are allowed to adapt without moving out of the demarcated zones and without outside genetic influences from people outside of said zones. In other words, the map predicts what any given human group will eventually end up looking like in terms of pigmentation levels, if you place them in any of the depicted pigmentation zones. But, as Lamin already pointed out, some groups that joined the pre-existing native regional people during Egypt's formative period came from the south, southwest, the Central Sahara and maybe further west where so-called "Maghrebi Mechtoids" dwelled.
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: [QB]
Those movie images above being laughed at, e.g. the guy under "vile degenerates" I regard to be accurate for Lower Egyptians. Middle and Upper Egyptians (on average) would have been darker, a more moderate brown, grading into dark brown at the extreme south in Egypt, bordering Nubia.
I don't see any racism with those movie portrayals, they would be fine for Lower Egyptians at least.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
Why would that guy fall in the brown zone when he's not brown? He has the same level of pigmentation as the people who fall under the ecological regime that the map assigns to Turkey, Greece and Iberia. Does he look brown to you?
Posted by kdolo (Member # 21830) on :
Dead,
stop the degeneracy
we all know who you are....
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by tropicals redacted: Dead sez
quote: Mainstream classicists and Egyptologists don't regard the ancient Egyptians to have been 'black':
I say crap.
BTW, specifically, your Lefkowitz quote certainly DOES NOT help prove your point. Actually.
Do you know what I'm saying?
Can you show a source saying ancient Egyptians were black/dark brown? This is not said in either classics or Egyptology.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by kdolo: Dead,
stop the degeneracy
we all know who you are....
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: Why would that guy fall in the brown zone when he's not brown? He has the same level of pigmentation as the people who fall under the ecological regime that the map assigns to Turkey, Greece and Iberia. Does he look brown to you?
"As to the physical characteristics of the ancient Egyptians, both iconographie and written evidence differentiated between the physical traits of Egyptians and the populations south of Egypt. The art of ancient Egypt frequently painted Egyptian men as reddish brown, women as yellow, and people to the south as black. Ancient Egyptians, like their modern descendants, varied in complexion from a light Mediterranean type, to a light brown in Middle Egypt, to a darker brown in southern Egypt. (Snowden, 1997)
I would only substitute "light Mediterranean type" with "light brown" and "light brown in Middle Egypt" with "moderate brown". Yurco (1989) basically agrees. The "Mediterranean type", olive skin would perhaps be found though on the northern coast in places like Alexandria.
And I regard that man to be light brown.
Also this is a pretty good write up on the movie controversy:>
you do have a great sense of humor i give you that !!!
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead: I would only substitute "light Mediterranean type" with "light brown" and "light brown in Middle Egypt" with "moderate brown". Yurco (1989) basically agrees. The "Mediterranean type", olive skin would perhaps be found though on the northern coast in places like Alexandria.
Whether that's true might not even matter as much as you think. Revisit my earlier posts. Whatever deviations you find from the Wadi Sura types are exactly that: deviations. They are non-native additions to the earlier phenotypes that can be seen in the Wadi Sura caves. Also, in the predynastic, the "predynastic physical type" found at Naqada and types related to it, are found all over Egypt, including in the north. The way I see it, the sailors depicted on the predynastic linen Gebelein cloth exemplify what this predynastic type would have looked like, pigmentation wise:
So, it needs to be made clear that any such lighter types, assuming they were numerous enough in the north to be mention-worthy in discussion such as this one, need to be understood as the result of contact with people that came from elsewhere, and so they wouldn't be as physically representative of the proto-Egyptians as the southern Egyptians, and even the lower Nubians were. The latter remained mostly unchanged (morphometrically speaking) from this proto-Egyptian type, even more so than Upper Egyptians (even Samuel Morton concedes that the Napatan royal skeletal remains still resembled the proto-Egyptians as late as ~1000BC, when other studies tell us that Upper Egyptians had changed and were already starting to look more and more like contemporary Lower Egyptians and Berbers).
If that's the context in which you place that Snowden citation, then we're in agreement.
Posted by lamin (Member # 5777) on :
quote:So the idea North Indians lightened via admixture with northerners is nonsense. Regarding the classical quote, μέλᾱς (melas) has several different meanings, so does λευκός (leukos). They don't strictly translate as black and white; μέλᾱς often is "dark" and λευκός, "light". So these have to be understood in context when applied to pigmentation: "too dark a hue as an Egyptian or Ethiopian" doesn't mean the author of the Physiognomonica (Pseudo-Aristotle) considered the Egyptians to be black.
A totally unintelligent response to the post in question. Given that North Indians are phenotypically close to neighbours such as Iranians, Afghans, North Pakistanis, etc., it is safe to conjecture that North Indians branched out from the same environmental node as the others mentioned. This would mean that they originally migrated from further North.
Re the Aristotle citation: The logic of the quote seems to escape you. This was comparative colour analysis which stated that the best colour was the one between the the 2 extremes of black and white. I mean, how much blacker can you get than "black" itself. In fact the Greek word "melas" is strongest world in the Greek language for that colour.
Furthermore, Aristotle--or his note-taking student--could have made the same point if "Egyptian" was left out of the comparative observation. But the fact that it was included and placed side by side with "Ethiopian" meant that both Egyptian and Ethiopian(Nubian] were equally black. That is, both groups represented the "extremes of blackness" just as women represented the extremes of whiteness, according to Aristotle. Do you follow the logic here? If not,then either of 2 things: either you are a low-IQ fool or someone so totally brainwashed in Eurocentric anthropology[ I mean , who the heck quotes a pseudoscientist like Baker?]that you are incapable of thinking freely, logically, and critically.
Posted by Truthcentric (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by lamin: Furthermore, Aristotle--or his note-taking student--could have made the same point if "Egyptian" was left out of the comparative observation. But the fact that it was included and placed side by side with "Ethiopian" meant that both Egyptian and Ethiopian(Nubian] were equally black. That is, both groups represented the "extremes of blackness" just as women represented the extremes of whiteness, according to Aristotle. Do you follow the logic here? If not,then either of 2 things: either you are a low-IQ fool or someone so totally brainwashed in Eurocentric anthropology[ I mean , who the heck quotes a pseudoscientist like Baker?]that you are incapable of thinking freely, logically, and critically.
I agree quotes like those show that ancient Greeks perceive a common affinity between Egyptians and Nubians, even if they recognized subtle differences in skin tone. Interpret "melanchroes" however you want (it's not like "black" or its Spanish form "negro" were literally accurate descriptors for dark brown skin either), you can't deny they're grouping Egyptians and Nubians together as darker-skinned peoples (and in another quote, peoples with curlier hair relative to Greeks).
I've always felt "Aethiopian" might have been used for the very darkest Africans, since it literally meant "burnt faces" (as if evoking burnt wood). For example, a Greek might have called this lady an "Aethiopian":
But maybe not this one:
So it wouldn't have been synonymous with the later "Negroid" taxon, but a reference to a certain very dark shade of skin. But I suspect it was largely a national designator for the kingdom of Kush, as seen in Herodotus et al.
Posted by Morpheus (Member # 16203) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
All that tells us is that ancient Egyptians were not leukoderms which no one has ever claimed.
"Moving on to softer tissues than bone, one histological study on Egyptian mummies (Mekota and Vermehren 2005) noted in passing that the skin cells were packed with melanin (the pigment that determines human skin color) as expected for people “of Negroid [African] origin”, although they neither specified the exact density nor went into depth." - African Origin of the Ancient Egyptians (this is an essay Truthcentric wrote which I think he submitted to his university as a course module)
"Packed with melanin" is rather ambiguous. People at subtropical latitude have considerable levels of melanin, but are not dark brown/black.
They didn't simply say packed with melanin though. They said "as expected for specimens of Negroid origin", in other words the Ancient Egyptians were dark-skinned like Sub-Saharan African populations (dark brown to black).
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
Dead sez
quote: Can you show a source saying ancient Egyptians were black/dark brown? This is not said in either classics or Egyptology.
One of the Egyptologists I've corresponded with: "by acknowledging that the ancient Egyptians were indeed by any reasonable modern definition black and its civilization distinctively African (as the evidence indicates), then it undermines the logic of racism."
A classicist:
"They probably looked different to West Africans and more like East Africans."
Another classicist:
In e-mail communication, I asked whether the Greeks saw the ancient Egyptians as a black population, and they replied:
"yes we think so."
Posted by lamin (Member # 5777) on :
quote:I've always felt "Aethiopian" might have been used for the very darkest Africans, since it literally meant "burnt faces" (as if evoking burnt wood). For example, a Greek might have called this lady an "Aethiopian"
Can you gives us the exact morphemic etymology of the Greek word "Aethiop"? I doubt it means "black" at all. I strongly suspect it means persons who lived "South of Egypt".
Note that the Spanish "negro" and French "negre" are terms used broadly for the generic dark/brown pigmented African. In fact in most African ethnic groups "colours" range from very dark to brown/yellow, some more than others. And even more so in the U.S. where the traditional term "negro" referred to anyone with ostensible African ancestry.
Posted by Morpheus (Member # 16203) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
Can you show a source saying ancient Egyptians were black/dark brown? This is not said in either classics or Egyptology.
I don't think scholars from either discipline can say conclusively what skin color the Ancient Egyptians had. Egyptologists focus more on the culture of Ancient Egypt than the physical appearance of the people and Classicists are more focused on ancient Greece and Rome than Egypt altogether.
The study I cited is the most objective form of scientific evidence we have and it says that the Ancient Egyptians were as dark-skinned as Negroid (Sub-Saharan African) populations. The Ancient Egyptians' own artwork can give us clues to their appearance but even that is somewhat problematic as the art is often symbolic and stylized even with unrealistic skin colors. However some of the skin colors are clearly meant to be realistic and the most often depict the Ancient Egyptians with a dark skin tone.
Here are some observations from Anthropologists who have spoken to me on the subject.
Shomarka Keita
Email #1:
Without an analysis of histology of the skin and accurate portraits one cannot say exactly how they looked. We can only extrapolate by looking at the variability of the modern Egyptian with a focus on Upper Egypt, considering a predictive approach based on latitude, and imagining what they would have been like without the gene flow from the Near East ad Europe over thousands of years. This will help you conceptualise the variability of the Nile indigenous population.
My research cannot indicate skin color in any empirical sense. Body build has been known for some time, see the work of Sonia Zakrezewski's and others--it is tropical in the eariest formative times. In fact you should write everyone who has written on the biology of the Egyptians recently and pose your questions.
My advice is to think in evolutionary terms--but also accept that like the Roman empire that foreigners were absorbed into Egypt.
Email #2:
HAPPY THANKSGIVING AND NATIVE AMERICAN CELEBRATION!
Please give the full reference for the studies that you referenced: title, authors, year and journals, and of this interesting citation. It sounds interesting Histologically one would be interested in how the melanin is packaged. What cannot be accepted is a study on one mummy. One needs a study on groups of mummies from all social classes, periods, and regions, of those whom one thinks are native Egyptians as opposed to immigrants. Also of course you know that craniofacial analyses give you some idea of facial conformation--which is why I did not mention this--but alone cannot give you skin color. There is a range of African facial confirmations--your starting point in analysis is very important.
There is a history of ideas in anthropology on Africa that is problematic.
My research only effectively covers up to Dynasty I. I have not studied remains in a systematic fashion from the dynastic period in a given region , but hope to do this. There is clear continuity, but also change in morphology for various regions. Please send me that reference so that I can further explore the issue with you.
I think that if one modelled gene flow into Egypt over thousands of years that the model would indicate a change in biology in an average sense, but there was always likely a cline in Egypt. However there was no wholesale replacement of the Egyptian population in the traditional sense, and no evacuation of the whole populace or pushing it aside. My remarks about Upper Egypt are an educated guess--with the caveat that foreigners may have settled in any urbanised region or center. It would be difficult to say more than this with scientific confidence. There is a color gradation in Egypt in some average sense, but of course there are exceptions to the cline.
By compiling information from different sources and getting different opinions you will be able to come to your own conclusions about appearance--which has not been a major focus of mine.
Scott MacEachern
Two different issues here. First, I know Shomarka well, and I agree with his conclusions in this article. For me, though, I think that you're rather playing on Rushton's terrain if you accept his 3-race model in the first place: that's simply not a good way to capture human biological variability, whether expressed in somatic or genetic terms. You don't have to try and fit people into any sort of racial straitjacket to note that Egyptians have biological affinities with other African populations: their position along the Nile makes this quite expectable. You might also note that genetic research provides the same result: see for example the article that I have attached to this paper. But I think that any view of ancient Egypt that doesn't take into account both its contacts with other parts of Africa and with areas of the Near East and eastern Mediterranean do not do the culture justice. Egypt is Egypt precisely because it is both African and situated at a crossroad of continent.
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
Didn't Keita also suggest that:
"one might reasonably say that the typical Upper Egyptian to Nubian color would have been the modal colour in most of the country.”
quote: Without an analysis of histology of the skin and accurate portraits one cannot say exactly how they looked. We can only extrapolate by looking at the variability of the modern Egyptian with a focus on Upper Egypt, considering a predictive approach based on latitude, and imagining what they would have been like without the gene flow from the Near East ad Europe over thousands of years. This will help you conceptualise the variability of the Nile indigenous population.
Posted by lamin (Member # 5777) on :
quote:I don't think scholars from either discipline can say conclusively what skin color the Ancient Egyptians had.
Would that observation also apply to the Ancient Greeks and Romans? After all, both groups are practically at continental crossroads too.
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
I think it would have varied like it does for other black African populations.
In one of the e-mail conversations, a classicist used the term "darker". (We were talking about the casting for Exodus.)When I asked whether by "darker" they meant a skin tone that we would readily recognise as African, they replied: yes.
If there's ever a scientific investigation on the skin colour of the ancient Egyptians, I'm wondering whether even we might be surprised.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
I don't see any racism with those movie portrayals, they would be fine for Lower Egyptians at least.
SETI I
So you are saying any major Pharoah before the late period of whom there are paintings and Will Smith, are not dark enough to be considered black in skin tone?
Mention any major pharoah before the late period of whom there are paintings and Hollywood has consistantly portrayed them as much lighter than the paintings. That is racist
.
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
quote: I don't see any racism with those movie portrayals, they would be fine for Lower Egyptians at least.
I don't see any racism with those movie portrayals,
____________________________ tags: Ridley Scott white washed Egypt race Caucasion Joel Edgerton John Turturro Sigourney racial controversy skin black changed racist Christian Bale protest huffington cnn guardian screenrant
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by lamin: A totally unintelligent response to the post in question. Given that North Indians are phenotypically close to neighbours such as Iranians, Afghans, North Pakistanis, etc., it is safe to conjecture that North Indians branched out from the same environmental node as the others mentioned. This would mean that they originally migrated from further North.
The Indus Valley civilization inhabitants would have been light - moderate brown like the ancient Egyptians, not black.
quote:Re the Aristotle citation: The logic of the quote seems to escape you. This was comparative colour analysis which stated that the best colour was the one between the the 2 extremes of black and white. I mean, how much blacker can you get than "black" itself. In fact the Greek word "melas" is strongest world in the Greek language for that colour.
Furthermore, Aristotle--or his note-taking student--could have made the same point if "Egyptian" was left out of the comparative observation. But the fact that it was included and placed side by side with "Ethiopian" meant that both Egyptian and Ethiopian(Nubian] were equally black. That is, both groups represented the "extremes of blackness" just as women represented the extremes of whiteness, according to Aristotle. Do you follow the logic here?
Both were considered dark relative to the Greeks, but that doesn't mean the Egyptians were black; only the Aethiopians were. Again to quote Snowden:
"In other words, to all these peoples--Ethiopians, Indians, Egyptians, and Moors--who were darker than the Greeks and Romans, classical authors applied color-words but it should be emphasized that in general the ancients described only one of these--Ethiopians--as unmistakably Negroid. To summarize this point, there is no justification to equate Egyptians, Moors or any other north Africans, with Ethiopians, even when a color-word is applied to them, unless details are given as to other physical traits such as color, hair, nose, or lips, or unless there is additional evidence to support an equivalence with Ethiopian."
quote: If not,then either of 2 things: either you are a low-IQ fool or someone so totally brainwashed in Eurocentric anthropology[ I mean , who the heck quotes a pseudoscientist like Baker?]that you are incapable of thinking freely, logically, and critically. [/QB]
Baker's book was published by Oxford University Press, and he worked in the Department of Zoology at Oxford. If he was a pseudo-scientist he wouldn't have worked there and published his research. His book Race appeared in 1974, but was written several years earlier. Its obviously now old (like Carleton Coon's books) and this has to be taken into account, since their approach to human biological variation is obsolete but the book is still useful. All the measurements Baker recorded for Egyptians skulls for example are accurate.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by lamin:
quote:I don't think scholars from either discipline can say conclusively what skin color the Ancient Egyptians had.
Would that observation also apply to the Ancient Greeks and Romans? After all, both groups are practically at continental crossroads too.
The Greeks and Romans left plenty of literature describing their (average) complexion. The Egyptians left almost nothing, other than the Hymn to Aten:
"The Egyptian texts almost never mention the colour the skin in their descriptions [...] The 'Hymn to Aten' is just saying about races of mankind - that their skin is different without giving further clarifications." (Froment, 1991)
However since this ancient hymn contrasts the colour of the Nubian to the Egyptian, it is clear the peoples of Egypt did not consider themselves to be black. If the Egyptians were dark brown they would not have bothered to contrast their skin to the Nubians. This would be like a German contrasting their pale complexion to a Norwegian, when they are virtually indistinguishable.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead: [QB]
quote:Originally posted by lamin: A totally unintelligent response to the post in question. Given that North Indians are phenotypically close to neighbours such as Iranians, Afghans, North Pakistanis, etc., it is safe to conjecture that North Indians branched out from the same environmental node as the others mentioned. This would mean that they originally migrated from further North.
The Indus Valley civilization inhabitants would have been light - moderate brown like the ancient Egyptians, not black.
Not black according to DEAD
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,:
So you are saying any major Pharoah before the late period of whom there are paintings and Will Smith, are not dark enough to be considered black in skin tone?
Mention any major pharoah before the late period of whom there are paintings and Hollywood has consistantly portrayed them as much lighter than the paintings. That is racist
. [/QB]
Excluding this debate about skin, why should Will Smith (or other male African-Americans) take those movie roles when their craniofacial features and hair texture poorly match the ancient Egyptians? Is that not then racism by the same standards?
If we go along with Egyptians = black, then only Somalis or some other Horner populations should take the roles, not African-Americans or West/Central Africans.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by tropicals redacted: Dead sez
quote: Can you show a source saying ancient Egyptians were black/dark brown? This is not said in either classics or Egyptology.
One of the Egyptologists I've corresponded with: "by acknowledging that the ancient Egyptians were indeed by any reasonable modern definition black and its civilization distinctively African (as the evidence indicates), then it undermines the logic of racism."
A classicist:
"They probably looked different to West Africans and more like East Africans."
Another classicist:
In e-mail communication, I asked whether the Greeks saw the ancient Egyptians as a black population, and they replied:
"yes we think so."
They're all anonymous, and probably nobodies. And the first quote is nonsensical: "agree the Egyptians were black to stop racism!", has nothing to do with the evidence but politics.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by lamin:
quote:I've always felt "Aethiopian" might have been used for the very darkest Africans, since it literally meant "burnt faces" (as if evoking burnt wood). For example, a Greek might have called this lady an "Aethiopian"
Can you gives us the exact morphemic etymology of the Greek word "Aethiop"? I doubt it means "black" at all. I strongly suspect it means persons who lived "South of Egypt".
Note that the Spanish "negro" and French "negre" are terms used broadly for the generic dark/brown pigmented African. In fact in most African ethnic groups "colours" range from very dark to brown/yellow, some more than others. And even more so in the U.S. where the traditional term "negro" referred to anyone with ostensible African ancestry.
It means burnt face: aithó (to burn) and ops (an eye, face).
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
The Greeks and Romans left plenty of literature describing their (average) complexion. The Egyptians left almost nothing, other than the Hymn to Aten:
"The Egyptian texts almost never mention the colour the skin in their descriptions [...] The 'Hymn to Aten' is just saying about races of mankind - that their skin is different without giving further clarifications." (Froment, 1991)
However since this ancient hymn contrasts the colour of the Nubian to the Egyptian, it is clear the peoples of Egypt did not consider themselves to be black. If the Egyptians were dark brown they would not have bothered to contrast their skin to the Nubians. This would be like a German contrasting their pale complexion to a Norwegian, when they are virtually indistinguishable.
^^^ This is a person described in the 17-18th century as "Black Complexion" , look it up John Macky, Memoirs of the secret services, 1733. You will find more of thes these sort of descriptions in the rest of the text as well as other European texts. So sometimes they would describe people who weren't super pale as "black complexioned" like the man above as well as much darker skinned Africans.
The term "black" is a social contruct which changes in different time periods and places
Dead says that although the Egyptians didn't talk about skin color categories because the Egyptians in some tomb painting scenes depicted themslves as brown and the Nubians as jet black that the term "black" means jet black, not brown of any sort.
So accordingly Will Smith and 90% of Africans are not black
another example: Nigerian man, lacking in blackness
.
Posted by Morpheus (Member # 16203) on :
quote:Originally posted by tropicals redacted: Didn't Keita also suggest that:
"one might reasonably say that the typical Upper Egyptian to Nubian color would have been the modal colour in most of the country.”
Yes, he said that to me as well. Note that in the second email I posted above Keita says that statement is an educated guess based on the likelihood that foreigners affected the genetic composition of Egypt. He also mentions craniofacial evidence and body build which are both relevant to the biological affinities of the Ancient Egyptians.
Here is another email:
Shomarka Keita
Question: What is your basis for stating that the Ancient Egyptian statuary is "Somali-like" in appearance?
Keita: Best way to think of this is in terms of parallelism or microconvergent evolution. Somali males are predominantly of E group lineages; African in origin. Look for yourself at the Egyptian statuary for the architecture of faces if you trust the statuary, and look at Greek or Roman statuary. Go over the faces point by point, of course there is variability, but look for a distillation. Look at faces of Oromo, a range of Nilotic folk etc, and you might be able to see what I mean.
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
The Greeks and Romans left plenty of literature describing their (average) complexion. The Egyptians left almost nothing, other than the Hymn to Aten:
"The Egyptian texts almost never mention the colour the skin in their descriptions [...] The 'Hymn to Aten' is just saying about races of mankind - that their skin is different without giving further clarifications." (Froment, 1991)
However since this ancient hymn contrasts the colour of the Nubian to the Egyptian, it is clear the peoples of Egypt did not consider themselves to be black. If the Egyptians were dark brown they would not have bothered to contrast their skin to the Nubians. This would be like a German contrasting their pale complexion to a Norwegian, when they are virtually indistinguishable.
Where in the Hymn to Aten do the Ancient Egyptians contrast their skin with Nubians? It just says that the people of the world vary in skin color, nothing about Egyptians and Nubians having different skin tones. In their art they make a contrast between reddish-brown Egyptians and jet-back Nubians but reddish-brown is consistent with many tropical African populations.
Again the best scientific evidence we have for their skin color is the histological analysis of their skin which indicates that they were as dark-skinned as Sub-Saharan African populations. There's also no reason to believe the depiction of the Ancient Egyptians as reddish-brown is symbolic when their ethnographic murals have realistic skin tones for other groups.
Posted by lamin (Member # 5777) on :
quote:It means burnt face: aithó (to burn) and ops (an eye, face).
Your answer is amusing. If "Aethiop" means what you say it means that's even much weaker than "melas" or "melanchroes". A lot of whites travel to Africa for holidays and return with "burnt faces", i.e. tanned faces. Be serious now. Let's have some good answers.
And Baker? So what if he published his nonsense text with Oxford University Press and actually taught there.
Many crackpots have published with Oxford University Press and have taught there too. The fact is that Baker's 1974 text is mainly speculative BS. The Oxford cachet means nothing when a work is confronted by serious intellectual eyes. Either it passes muster or it doesn't. Baker's work doesn't.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Dead: Whether that's true might not even matter as much as you think. Revisit my earlier posts. Whatever deviations you find from the Wadi Sura types are exactly that: deviations. They are non-native additions to the earlier phenotypes that can be seen in the Wadi Sura caves. Also, in the predynastic, the "predynastic physical type" found at Naqada and types related to it, are found all over Egypt, including in the north. The way I see it, the sailors depicted on the predynastic linen Gebelein cloth exemplify what this predynastic type would have looked like, pigmentation wise.
I don't think they lightened by gene flow, but selection. Also I don't think the reddish glow was common across Africa, but unique to the Saharan desert. I could probably explain why in some detail in later post, but it is linked to heat tolerance. Paul Baker wrote a paper on it in a compendium I used to own, "The Biological Adaptation of Man to Hot Deserts". (1958) Am. Nat. 92:33 7-357, in Readings on Race (Garn ed. 1960).
Posted by Morpheus (Member # 16203) on :
Here are some observations from MacEachern on Baker's work as cited by Rushton:
He further (Rushton 2000: 142) makes use of John Baker's (1974) racist and unsystematic list of twenty-one 'criteria for civilization'- which begins to evaluate cultural advance by scoring the amount of clothing that people wear and ends with criteria like 'some appreciation of the fine arts' - in order to dismiss African and American cultural achievements.
Source: Africanist Archaeology and Ancient IQ: Racial Science and Cultural Evolution in the Twenty-First Century World Archaeology, Vol. 38, No. 1, Race, Racism and Archaeology (Mar., 2006), pp. 72-92
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by Morpheus: Here are some observations from MacEachern on Baker's work as cited by Rushton:
He further (Rushton 2000: 142) makes use of John Baker's (1974) racist and unsystematic list of twenty-one 'criteria for civilization'- which begins to evaluate cultural advance by scoring the amount of clothing that people wear and ends with criteria like 'some appreciation of the fine arts' - in order to dismiss African and American cultural achievements.
Source: Africanist Archaeology and Ancient IQ: Racial Science and Cultural Evolution in the Twenty-First Century World Archaeology, Vol. 38, No. 1, Race, Racism and Archaeology (Mar., 2006), pp. 72-92
I don't see a problem with the criteria. Northern Europeans had virtually none of them, so the accusations of racism are quite baseless, unless MacEachern is stating Baker is racist against whites too.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
According to Dead. there's actually no black people posting in this thread or elsewhere on Egyptsearch.
Either you resemble a piece of chacoal or you don't /close thared
Posted by lamin (Member # 5777) on :
quote:However since this ancient hymn contrasts the colour of the Nubian to the Egyptian, it is clear the peoples of Egypt did not consider themselves to be black. If the Egyptians were dark brown they would not have bothered to contrast their skin to the Nubians. This would be like a German contrasting their pale complexion to a Norwegian, when they are virtually indistinguishable.
A wrong and illogical interpretation of the Hyman to Aten. The hypothetical fact that the Hymn may have distinguished the two groups in terms of "skin"--granted your interpretation--does not mean that that the 2 groups may not be both black. Swedes, Rumanians, Spaniards, and French may differ slightly in shade but hey, they are all European white.
But reference is made not only to Kush but also to Khor("widow of Egypt"). Why not reference too the races of Asia known to the Egyptians?
The reference here to Kush and Khor( an area of Ancient Egypt)is made on the basis that they were kin to Egypt yet they spoke different languages and were also culturally different--in much the same way that Scotland and England are culturally different and spoke different traditional languages, and, in other words, different in their skin(persona and personality).
The point is that "different in their skin" could mean a number of things in terms of interpretation.
And Akhenaten, the hymn writer, and his immediate family as in the case of his daughters could fit right into some West African area.
Trick question: what is the colour of those Amarna princesses, Akhenaten's daughters? Congo colour, Sudan colour, Nigeria colour, Mali colour, Kenya colour, South African colour, etc? 20 points if you get it right. Now don't play brain dead and live up to your moniker.
Posted by Morpheus (Member # 16203) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
I don't see a problem with the criteria. Northern Europeans had virtually none of them, so the accusations of racism are quite baseless, unless MacEachern is stating Baker is racist against whites too.
According to Rushton Baker's aim in Race (1974) was to find out which races had originated civilization by studying modern people and seeing if they fit the criteria for civilization.
Here is the full list of criteria from Race, Evolution and Behavior p. 142:
TABLE 6.11 Criteria for Civilization
1. In the ordinary circumstances of life in public places, they cover the greater part of the trunk with clothes.
2. They keep the body clean and take care to dispose of its waste products.
3. They do not practice severe mutilation or deformation of the body, except for medical reasons.
4. They have knowledge of building in brick or stone, if the necessary materials are available in their territory.
5. Many of them live in towns or cities, which are linked by roads.
6. They cultivate food plants.
7. They domesticate animals and use some of the larger ones for transport (or have in the past so used them), if suitable species are available.
8. They have knowledge of the use of metals, if these are available.
9. They use wheels.
10. They exchange property by the use of money.
11. They order their society by a system of laws, which are enforced in such a way that they ordinarily go about their various concerns in times of peace without danger of attack or arbitrary arrest.
12. They permit accused persons to defend themselves and to bring witnesses for their defense.
13 They do not use torture to extract information or for punishment.
14. They do not practice cannibalism.
15. Their religious systems include ethical elements and are not purely or grossly superstitious.
16. They use a script (not simply a succession of pictures) to communicate ideas.
17. There is some facility in the abstract use of numbers, without consideration of actual objects (or, in other words, at least a start has been made in mathematics).
18. A calendar is in use, accurate to within a few days in the year.
19. Arrangements are made for the instruction of the young in intellectual subjects.
20. There is some appreciation of the fine arts.
21. Knowledge and understanding are valued as ends in themselves.
Note. Adapted from J. R. Baker ( 1 9 7 4 , pp. 5 0 7 - 5 0 8 ) . Copyright 1974 by J. R. Baker.
I can see why MacEachern considers the list to be racist and unsystematic. Baker clearly selected his criteria to exclude certain groups of people based on cultural customs or lack of cultural customs in order to denigrate certain groups (ex. #14, "Ha! Look at those savages eating people! They are clearly uncivilized!").
Yes, Northern Europeans before the Greco-Roman period would not fit many of these criteria but that is beside the point. Baker is trying to say that certain groups of people at the time of publication are uncivilized because of their lack of cultural development and ignores the state of Europe's ancient tribes.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: According to Dead. there's actually no black people posting in this thread or elsewhere on Egyptsearch.
Either you resemble a piece of chacoal or you don't /close thared
Google football teams by country.
Nigerian:
Congo:
Ethiopian:
Eritrean:
These Sub-Saharan African populations are all shades of dark brown (black). North Africans however are not and are moderate - light brown.
Egypt:
Why is this so complicated? Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Dead: Whether that's true might not even matter as much as you think. Revisit my earlier posts. Whatever deviations you find from the Wadi Sura types are exactly that: deviations. They are non-native additions to the earlier phenotypes that can be seen in the Wadi Sura caves. Also, in the predynastic, the "predynastic physical type" found at Naqada and types related to it, are found all over Egypt, including in the north. The way I see it, the sailors depicted on the predynastic linen Gebelein cloth exemplify what this predynastic type would have looked like, pigmentation wise.
I don't think they lightened by gene flow, but selection. Also I don't think the reddish glow was common across Africa, but unique to the Saharan desert. I could probably explain why in some detail in later post, but it is linked to heat tolerance. Paul Baker wrote a paper on it in a compendium I used to own, "The Biological Adaptation of Man to Hot Deserts". (1958) Am. Nat. 92:33 7-357, in Readings on Race (Garn ed. 1960).
The field is much further now to warrant entertaining this sort of speculation. We now know that the R-V88 Y chromosome, among other lineages, entered Egypt from the north, ~7kya, which is at the same date that the Levantine domesticates entered Egypt and appear in the rock art record in north Africa, e.g. the Acacus and Jebel Quenat.
At this time, styles atypical of the earlier styles appear, and these come with "new" thin-looking figures, most of which were depicted with a mixture of brown and red pigments (reddish brown), or just brown. Together both pigments overlap with the full range of brown and brown-red pigments we're familiar with in pharaonic art. Said figures were, in contrast with the earlier styles, also usually depicted with neolithic features, indicating that these figures really do represent a break from the preceding status quo and that we're not dealing with just an artistic convention used by the earlier groups.
Pale figures also appear here and there in Libya, for the first time.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by lamin:
quote:It means burnt face: aithó (to burn) and ops (an eye, face).
Your answer is amusing. If "Aethiop" means what you say it means that's even much weaker than "melas" or "melanchroes". A lot of whites travel to Africa for holidays and return with "burnt faces", i.e. tanned faces. Be serious now. Let's have some good answers.
And Baker? So what if he published his nonsense text with Oxford University Press and actually taught there.
Many crackpots have published with Oxford University Press and have taught there too. The fact is that Baker's 1974 text is mainly speculative BS. The Oxford cachet means nothing when a work is confronted by serious intellectual eyes. Either it passes muster or it doesn't. Baker's work doesn't.
Aethiops derives from a Greco-Roman etiological myth which explains the origin of the dark brown skin of Sub-Saharan Africans: Phaethon burned the colour of the Sub-Saharan Africans, by scorching them while riding the sun chariot too close (so the peoples there became a 'burnt' complexion).
As Snowden's literature shows, the ancient Egyptians were never considered to be Aethiops, since their skin hue was not dark enough. Of course the Greeks and Romans still described the Egyptians to be darker than themselves, but they were not black.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:A lot of whites travel to Africa for holidays and return with "burnt faces", i.e. tanned faces. Be serious now. Let's have some good answers.
I see what you are saying, but the myth is literally saying these peoples were burnt as in scorched or put on fire, not a mere suntan.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: According to Dead. there's actually no black people posting in this thread or elsewhere on Egyptsearch.
Either you resemble a piece of chacoal or you don't /close thared
Google football teams by country.
Nigerian:
Congo:
Ethiopian:
Eritrean:
These Sub-Saharan African populations are all shades of dark brown (black). North Africans however are not and are moderate - light brown.
Egypt:
Why is this so complicated?
Although the term "black" cannot be measured to an anthropoloical standard 99.99% of Americans and Brits would regard Will Smith as a black man. As we can see Will Simth is slightly lighter than this depiction of Ramesses, similar are depictions of just about any other Pharoah and thousands of other Egyptian artworks (not to mention, Ramesses as depicted in the movie Exodus much lighter still than artifacts of Ramesses)
So in order for your notion to work, you have to move the goal posts so Will Smith is not black
but you won't say it outloud because then your scam and name dropping falls apart
Posted by lamin (Member # 5777) on :
The DEAD fool does not want to acknowledge that after Egypt fell and after 3,000 years of an impressive civilisation the place was invaded by myriad ruffians and rapists from West Asia and then Greece and then Rome.
The gene pool was eventually rubbished and polluted by savage degenerates from West Asia and Turkey in the form of Islamic invaders. That's what that football photo of occupied Egypt shows--a place rotting and infected under the colonial language of Arabic and its barbaric camel, goat and tent religion of Islam.
And that's Egypt today: weak in sports and weak in intellect. Great Egypt has become a compost pit these days.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
quote:A lot of whites travel to Africa for holidays and return with "burnt faces", i.e. tanned faces. Be serious now. Let's have some good answers.
I see what you are saying, but the myth is literally saying these peoples were burnt as in scorched or put on fire, not a mere suntan.
Not that I think this "he said, she said" sort of anecdotal stuff is admissible in serious discussions on ancient population affinity (although it is interesting from a subjective point of view), but what's ironic is that the Bible and other ancient texts in the wider region apply analogous terms to all the people you've claimed weren't thought of as having a 'burnt' appearance, INCLUDING North Indians. Aint that a trip? You should know better, with your biblical background.
Posted by Truthcentric (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Morpheus: TABLE 6.11 Criteria for Civilization
1. In the ordinary circumstances of life in public places, they cover the greater part of the trunk with clothes.
2. They keep the body clean and take care to dispose of its waste products.
3. They do not practice severe mutilation or deformation of the body, except for medical reasons.
4. They have knowledge of building in brick or stone, if the necessary materials are available in their territory.
5. Many of them live in towns or cities, which are linked by roads.
6. They cultivate food plants.
7. They domesticate animals and use some of the larger ones for transport (or have in the past so used them), if suitable species are available.
8. They have knowledge of the use of metals, if these are available.
9. They use wheels.
10. They exchange property by the use of money.
11. They order their society by a system of laws, which are enforced in such a way that they ordinarily go about their various concerns in times of peace without danger of attack or arbitrary arrest.
12. They permit accused persons to defend themselves and to bring witnesses for their defense.
13. They do not use torture to extract information or for punishment.
14. They do not practice cannibalism.
15. Their religious systems include ethical elements and are not purely or grossly superstitious.
16. They use a script (not simply a succession of pictures) to communicate ideas.
17. There is some facility in the abstract use of numbers, without consideration of actual objects (or, in other words, at least a start has been made in mathematics).
18. A calendar is in use, accurate to within a few days in the year.
19. Arrangements are made for the instruction of the young in intellectual subjects.
20. There is some appreciation of the fine arts.
21. Knowledge and understanding are valued as ends in themselves.
As an aside, I can name a leading political party in the US that would qualify as "uncivilized" by virtue of #13. Many of them wouldn't care much for #15 and #21 either. Posted by mena7 (Member # 20555) on :
Cheikh Anta Diop argues that many Ancient Egyptians were Black Africans; the Greek debt to Egypt. Peter Myers, July 6, 2002; update September 12, 2005. My comments are shown {thus}. Write to me at contact.html.
The argument that Ancient Egypt was African deserves to be put.
Of course, there was also mixing with the Semitic-speaking peoples (the Akkadians, Phoenicians and Hyksos, the people of Babylonia and Assyria, and later the invading Arab armies) and with Indo-Europeans (elements of the Mitanni, Hyksos, Hittites and Sea Peoples; the invading Persian Empire, the Greeks that came in Alexander's wake; then the Romans).
(1) Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization (2) G. K. Osei, a black American (3) DIODORUS OF SICILY (4) Herodotus Histories: the Egyptians (2.35-91) (5) Martin Bernal puts the case for African/Semitic influence on the formation of Greek culture and institutions (6) Cyrus H. Gordon on race-mixing in Egypt (7) Donald B. Redford enters the Afrocentrist debate
(1) Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization, edited and translated by Mercer Cook, Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago 1974.
The Great Sphinx had a negro head: diop1.jpg
King Narmer, long regarded as the first Pharaoh - with negro features: diop5.jpg
Pharaohs Zoser and Cheops: diop6-7.jpg
Pharaohs Mycerinus and Mentuhotep I: diop8-9.jpg
Pharaoh Sesostris I: diop10.jpg
Pharaohs Tuthmosis III and Taharqa: diop12-13.jpg
Egyptian women - note their wavy braided "Afro" hair: egypt-women.jpg
Another painting of Egyptian women - 18th Dynasty, c. 1400 B.C. - from The British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, by Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson (The British Museum Press, London 1995; pocket edition 2002), p. 193: egypt-women-2.jpg
Egyptian women's braided wigs: diop25-6.jpg
I'm not trying to polemicise history, as Martin Bernal is in his Black Athena series. Bernal keeps accusing other scholars of "Anti-Semitism", making out that Jews are the saviors of the Black movement today. Yet he ignores the Jewish Bible's responsibility for giving Ancient Egypt - its Pharaohs, its religion, its achievements - a bad reputation. What else does "Exodus" mean, but escape from Pharaonic Egypt? The Jewish Bible's enmity towards Ancient Egypt was later taken up by Christians who stamped out the Egyptian religion, and Moslems who pillaged the pyramids.
Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization, edited and translated by Mercer Cook, Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago 1974.
{p. 1} What Were the Egyptians?
In contemporary descriptions of the ancient Egyptians, this question is never raised. Eyewitnesses of that period formally affirm that the Egyptians were Blacks. On several occasions Herodotus insists on the Negro character of the Egyptians and even uses this for indirect demonstrations. For example, to prove that the flooding of the Nile cannot be caused by melting snow, he cites, among other reasons he deems valid, the following observation: "It is certain that the natives of the country are black with the heat. ..." {endnote 1: The History of Herododus, translated by George Rawlinson. New York. Tudor, 1928, p. 88.}
To demonstrate that the Greek oracle is of Egyptian origin, Herodotus advances another argument: "Lastly, by calling the dove black, they [the Dodonaeans] indicated that the woman was Egyptian. ..." {endnote 2: Ibid., p. 101.} The doves in question symbolize two Egyptian women allegedly kidnapped from Thebes to found the oracles of Dodona and Libya.
To show that the inhabitants of Colchis were of Egyptian origin and had to be considered a part of Sesostris' army who had settled in that region, Herodotus says: "The Egyptians said that they believed the Colchians to be descended from the army of Sesostris. My own conjectures were founded, first, on the fact that they are black-skinned and have woolly hair. ..." {endnote 3: Ibid., p. 115.} Finally, concerning the population of India, Herodotus distinguishes between the Padaeans and other Indians, describing them as follows: "They all also have the same tint of skin, which approaches that of the Ethiopians." {endnote 4: Ibid., p. 184.}
Diodorus of Sicily writes:
{quote} The Ethiopians say that the Egyptians are one of their colonies which was brought into Egypt by Osiris. They even allege that this country was originally under water, but that the Nile, dragging much mud as it flowed from Ethiopia, had finally filled it in and made it a part of the continent. ... They add that from them, as from their authors and ancestors, the Egyptians get most of their laws. It is from them that the Egyptians have learned to honor
{p. 2} kings as gods and bury them with such pomp; sculpture and writing were invented by the Ethiopians. The Ethiopians cite evidence that they are more ancient than the Egyptians, but it is useless to report that here. {endquote} {endnote 5: Histoire universelle, translated by Abbe Terrasson. Paris, 1758, Bk. 3 p. 341.}
If the Egyptians and Ethiopians were not of the same race, Diodorus would have emphasized the impossibility of considering the former as a colony (i.e., a fraction) of the latter and the impossibility of viewing them as forebears of the Egyptians.
In his Geography, Strabo mentioned the importance of migrations in history and, believing that this particular migration had proceeded from Egypt to Ethiopia, remarks: "Egyptians settled Ethiopia and Colchis." {endnote 6: Bk. 1, Chap. 3, par. 10.} Once again, it is a Greek, despite his chauvinism, who informs us that the Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Colchians belong to the same race, thereby confirming what Herodotus had said about the Colchians. {endnote 7: The Colchians formed a cluster of Negroes among white populations near the Black Sea ... }
The opinion of all the ancient writers on the Egyptian race is more or less summed up by Gaston Maspero (1846-1916): "By the almost unanimous testimony of ancient historians, they belonged to an African race [read: Negro] which first settled in Ethiopia, on the Middle Nile; following the course of the river, they gradually reached the sea. ... Moreover, the Bible states that Mesraim, son of Ham, brother of Chus (Kush) the Ethiopian, and of Canaan, came from Mesopotamia to settle with his children on the banks of the Nile." {endnote 8: Gaston Maspero, Histoire ancienne des peuples de l'Orient. Paris: Hachette, 1917, p. 15, 12th ed. (Translated as: The Dawn of Civilization. London, 1894; reprinted, New York: Frederick Ungar, 1968.)} ...
{p. 3} Besides, Herodotus was not a credulous historian who recorded everything without checking; he knew how to weigh things. When he relates an opinion that he does not share, he always takes care to note his disagreement. Thus, referring to the mores of the Scythians and Neurians, he writes apropos the latter: "It seems that these people are conjurers; for both the Scythi- ans and the Greeks who dwell in Scythia say that every Neurian once a year becomes a wolf for a few days, at the end of which time he is restored to his proper shape. Not that I believe this, but they constantly affirm it to be true, and are even ready to back up their assertion with an oath." {endnote 10: Herodotus, p. 236.}
He always distinguishes carefully between what he has seen and what he has been told. After his visit to the Labyrinth, he writes:
{quote} There are two different sorts of chambers throughout - half under ground, half above ground, the latter built upon the former; the whole number of these chambers is three thousand, fifteen hundred of each kind. The upper chambers I myself passed through and saw, and what I say concerning them is from my own observation; of the underground chambers I can only speak from report, for the keepers of the building could not be got to show them, since they contained, as they said, the sepulchers of the kings who built the Labyrinth, and also those of the sacred crocodiles. Thus it is from hearsay only that I can speak of the lower chambers. The upper chambers, however, I saw with my own eyes and found them to excel all other human productions. {endquote} {endnote 11: Ibid., pp. 133-134.}
Was Herodotus a historian deprived of logic, unable to penetrate complex phenomena? On the contrary, his explanation of the inundations of the Nile reveals a rational mind seeking scientific reasons for natural phenomena:
{quote} Perhaps, after censuring all the opinions that have been put forward on this obscure subject, one ought to propose some theory of one's own. I will therefore proceed to explain what I think to be the reason of the Nile's swelling in the summertime. During the winter, the sun is driven out of his usual course by the storms, and removes to the upper parts of Libya. This is the whole secret in the fewest possible words; for it stands to reason that the coun-
{p. 4} try to which the Sun-god approaches the nearest, and which he passes most directly over, will be scantest of water, and that here streams which feed the rivers will shrink the most. To explain, however, more at length, the case is this. The sun, in his passage across the upper parts of Libya, affects them in the following way. As the air in these regions is constantly clear, and the country warm through the absence of cold winds, the sun in his passage across them acts upon them exactly as he is wont to act elsewhere in summer, when his path is in the middle of heaven - that is, he attracts the water. After attracting it, he again repels it into the upper regions, where the winds lay hold of it, scatter it, and reduce it into a vapor, whence it naturally enough comes to pass that the winds which blow from this quarter - the south and southwest - are of all winds the most rainy. And my own opinion is that the sun does not get rid of all the water which he draws year by year from the Nile, but retains some about him. {endquote} {endnote 12. Ibid., pp. 88-89.}
These three examples reveal that Herodotus was not a passive reporter of incredible tales and rubbish, "a liar." On the contrary, he was quite scrupulous, objective, scientific for his time. Why should one seek to discredit such a historian, to make him seem naive? Why "refabricate" history despite his explicit evidence?
Undoubtedly the basic reason for this is that Herodotus, after relating his eyewitness account informing us that the Egyptians were Blacks, then demonstrated, with rare honesty (for a Greek), that Greece borrowed from Egypt all the elements of her civilization, even the cult of the gods, and that Egypt was the cradle of civilization. Moreover, archeological discoveries continually justify Herodotus against his detractors. Thus, Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt writes about recent excavations in Tanis* {footnote: Tanis, the Biblical Zoan, at the mouth of the eastern branch of the Nile Delts}: "Herodotus had seen the outer buildings of these sepulchers and had described them. [This was the Labyrinth discussed above.] Pierre Montet has just proved once again that 'The Father of History did not lie.'" {endnote 13: Sciences et Avenir, No. 56, October 1951.} It could be objected that, in the fifth century B.C. when Herodotus visited Egypt, its civilization was already more than 10,000 years old and that the race which had created it was not necessarily the Negro race that Herodotus found there.
But the whole history of Egypt, as we shall see, shows that the
{p. 5} mixture of the early population with white nomadic elements, conquerors or merchants, became increasingly important as the end of Egyptian history approached. According to Cornelius de Pauw, in the low epoch Egypt was almost saturated with foreign white colonies: Arabs in Coptos, Libyans on the future site of Alexandria, Jews around the city of Hercules (Avaris?), Babylonians (or Persians) below Memphis, "fugitive Trojans" in the area of the great stone quarries east of the Nile, Carians and Ionians over by the Pelusiac branch. Psammetichus (end of seventh century) capped this peaceful invasion by entrusting the defense of Egypt to Greek mercenaries. "An enormous mistake of Pharaoh Psammetichus was to commit the defense of Egypt to foreign troops and to introduce various colonies made up of the dregs of the nations." {endnote 14: Cornelius de Pauw, Recherches philosophiques sur les Egyptiens et les Chinois. Berlin, 1773, II, 337.} Under the last Saite dynasty, the Greeks were officially established at Naucratis, the only port where foreigners were authorized to engage in trading. After the conquest of Egypt by Alexander, under the Ptolemies, crossbreeding between white Greeks and black Egyptians flourished, thanks to a policy of assimilation: "Nowhere was Dionysus more favored, nowhere was he worshiped more adoringly and more elaborately than by the Ptolemies, who recognized his cult as an especially effective means of promoting the assimilation of the conquering Greeks and their fusion with the native Egyptians." {endnote 15: J. J. Bachofen, Pages choisies par Adrien Turel, "Du Regne de la mere au patriarcat." Paris: F. Alcan, 1938, p. 89.}
These facts prove that if the Egyptian people had originally been white, it might well have remained so. If Herodotus found it still black after so much crossbreeding, it must have been basic black at the start.
{p. 27} Before examining the contradictions circulating in the modern era and resulting from attempts to prove at any price that the Egyptians were Whites, let us note the astonishment of a scholar of good faith, Count Constantin de Volney (1757-1820). After being imbued with all the prejudices we have just mentioned with regard to the Negro, Volney had gone to Egypt between 1783 and 1785, while Negro slavery flourished. He reported as follows on the Egyptian race, the very race that had produced the Pharaohs: the Copts.
{quote} ... all have a bloated face, puffed up eyes, flat nose, thick lips; in a word, the true face of the mulatto. I was tempted to attribute it to the climate, but when I visited the Sphinx, its appearance gave me the key to the riddle. On seeing that head, typically Negro in all its features, I remembered the remarkable passage where Herodotus says: "As for me, I judge the Colchians to be a colony of the Egyptians because, like them, they are black with woolly hair. ..." In other words, the ancient Egyptians were true Negroes of the same type as all native-born Africans. That being so, we can see how their blood, mixed for several centuries with that of the Romans and Greeks, must have lost the intensity of its original color, while retaining nonetheless the imprint of its original mold. We can even state as a general principle that the face is a kind of monument able, in many cases, to attest or shed light on historical evidence on the origins of peoples. {endquote}
After illustrating this proposition by citing the case of Normans who still resembled the Danes 900 years after the conquest of Nor- mandy, Volney adds:
{quote} But returning to Egypt, the lesson she teaches history contains many reflections for philosophy. What a subject for meditation, to see the present barbarism and ignorance of the Copts, descendants of the alliance between the profound genius of the Egyptians and
{p. 28} the brilliant mind of the Greeks! Just think that this race of black men, today our slave and the object of our scorn, is the very race to which we owe our arts, sciences, ana even the use of speech! Just imagine, finally, that it is in the midst of peoples who call themselves the greatest friends of liberty and humanity that one has approved the most barbarous slavery and questioned whether black men have the same kind of intelligence as Whites! {endquote} {endnote 7: C. F. Volney, Voyages en Syrie et en Egypte. Paris, 1787, I, 74-77.}
{p. 28} In 1799 Bonaparte undertook his campaign in Egypt. Thanks to the Rosetta stone, hieroglyphics were deciphered in 1822 by Champollion the Younger, who died in 1832. He left as his "calling card" an Egyptian grammar and a series of letters to his brother, Champollion-Figeac, letters written during his visit to Egypt (1828-1829). Thesc were published in l833 by Champollion-Figeac. From then on the wall of the hieroglyphics was breached, unveiling surprising riches in their most minute details.
{p. 46} Let us start with the oldest of these theses, that of Champollion the Younger, set forth in the thirteenth letter to his brother. It concerns bas-reliefs on the tomb of Sesostris I, also visited by Rienzi. These date back to the sixteenth century B.C. (Eighteenth Dynasty) and represent the races of man known to the Egyptians. This monument is the oldest complete ethnological document available. Here is what Champollion says about it:
{quote} Right in the valley of Biban-el-Moluk, we admired, like all previous visitors, the astonishing freshness of the paintings and the fine sculptures on several tombs. I had a copy made of the peoples represented on the bas-reliefs. At first I had thought, from copies of these bas-reliefs published in England, that these peoples of different races led by the god Horus holding his shepherd's staff, were indeed nations subject to the rule of the Pharaohs. A study of the legends informed me that this tableau has a more general meaning. It portrays the third hour of the day, when the sun is beginning to turn on its burning rays, warming all the inhabited countries of our hemisphere. According to the legend itself, they wished to represent the inhabitants of Egypt and those of foreign lands. Thus we have before our eyes the image of the various races of man known to the Egyptians and we learn at the same time the great geographical or ethnographical divisions established during that early epoch. Men led by Horus, the shepherd of the peoples, belong to four distinct families. The first, the one closest to the god, has a dark red color, a well-proportioned body, kind face, nose slightly aquiline, long braided hair, and is dressed in white. The legends designate this species as Rot-en-ne-Rome, the race of men par excellence i.e., the Egyptians. There can be no uncertainty about the racial identity of the man who comes next: he belongs to the Black race, designated under the general term Nahasi. The third presents a very different aspect; his skin color borders on yellow or tan; he has a strongly aquiline nose, thick, black pointed beard, and wears a short garment of varied colors; these are called Namou. Finally, the last one is what we call flesh-colored, a white skin of the most delicate shade, a nose straight or slightly arched, blue eyes, blond or reddish beard, tall stature and very slender clad in a
{p. 47} hairy ox-skin, a veritable savage tattooed on various parts of his body; he is called Tamhou. I hastened to seek the tableau corresponding to this one in the other royal tombs and, as a matter of fact, I found it in several. The variations I observed fully convinced me that they had tried to represent here the inhabitants of the four corners of the earth, according to the Egyptian system, namely: 1. the inhabitants of Egypt which, by itself, formed one part of the world ...; 2. the inhabitants of Africa proper: Blacks; 3. Asians; 4. finally (and I am ashamed to say so, since our race is the last and the most savage in the series), Europeans who, in those remote epochs, frankly did not cut too fine a figure in the world. In this category we must include all blonds and white-skinned people living not only in Europe, but Asia as well, their starting point. This manner of viewing the tableau is all the more accurate because, on the other tombs, the same generic names reappear, always in the same order. We find there Egyptians and Africans represented in the same way, which could not be otherwise; but the Namou (the Asians) and the Tamhou (Europeans) present significant and curious variants. Instead of the Arab or the Jew, dressed simply and represented on one tomb, Asia's representatives on other tombs (those of Ramses II, etc.) are three individuals, tanned complexion, aquiline nose, black eyes, and thick beard, but clad in rare splendor. In one, they are evidently Assyrians, their costume, down to the smallest detail, is identical with that of personages engraved on Assyrian cylinders. In the other, are Medes or early inhabitants of some part of Persia. Their physiognomy and dress resemble, feature for feature, those found on monuments called Persepolitan. Thus, Asia was represented indiscriminately by any one of the peoples who inhabited it. The same is true of our good old ancestors, the Tamhou. Their attire is sometimes different; their heads are more or less hairy and adorned with various ornaments; their savage dress varies somewhat in form, but their white complexion, their eyes and beard all preserve the character of a race apart. I had this strange ethnographical series copied and colored. I certainly did not expect, on arriving at Biban-el-Moluk, to find sculptures that could serve as vignettes for the history of the primitive Europeans, if ever one has the courage to attempt it. Nevertheless, there is something flat-
{p. 48} tering and consoling in seeing them, since they make us appreciate the progress we have subsequently achieved. {endquote} {endnote 3: Champollion-Figeac, Egypte ancienne. Paris: Collection l'Univers, 1839, pp. 30-31. ...}
For a very good reason, I have reproduced this extract as Champollion-Figeac published it, rather than take it from the "new edition" of the Letters published in 1867 by the son of Champollion the Younger (Cheronnet-Champollion). The originals were addressed to Champollion-Figeac; therefore his edition is more authentic.
{p. 49} Champollion's conclusion is typical. After stating that these sculptures can serve as vignetles for the history of the early inhabitants of Europe, he adds, "if ever one has the courage to attempt it." Finally, after those comments, he presents his opinion on the Egyptian race:
{quote} The first tribes that inhabited Egypt, that is, the Nile Valley between the Syene cataract and the sea, came from Abyssinia to Sennar. The ancient Egyptians belonged to a race quite similar to the Kennous or Barabras, present inhabitants of Nubia. In the Copts of Egypt, we do not find any of the characteristic features of the ancient Egyptian population. The Copts are the result of crossbreeding with all the nations that have successively dominated Egypt. It is wrong to seek in them the principal features of the old race. {endquote} {endnote 4: Champollion-Figeac, ibid., p. 27.}
{p. 50} Champollion's opinion on the Egyptian race was recorded in a memoir prepared for the Pasha of Egypt, to whom he delivered it in 1829.
{p. 63} In Les Egyptes, a volume published around 1880, Marius Fontanes attacks the same problem:
{quote} Since the Egyptians always painted themselves red on their monu- ments, partisans of the "southern origin" had to point out a great number of interesting peculiarities likely to help solve the ethno-graphical problem. Near the Upper Nile today, among the Fulbe, whose skin is quite yellow, those whom contemporaries consider as belonging to a pure race, are rather red; the Bisharin are exactly of the same brick-red shade used on Egyptian monuments. To other ethnographers, these "red men" would probably be Ethiopians modified by time and climate, or perhaps Negroes who have reached the halfway mark in the evolution from blackness to whiteness. It has been noted that, in limestone areas, the Negro is less black than in granitic and plutonic regions. It has even been thought that the hue changed with the season. Thus, Nubians were former Blacks, but only in skin color, while their osteology has rcmained absolutely Negritic. The Negroes represented on Pharaonic paintings, so clearly deline- ated by engravers and named Nahasou or Nahasiou in the hiero- glyphics, are not related to the Ethiopians, the first people to come down into Egypt. Were the latter then attenuated Negroes, Nubians? Lepsius's canon gives ... the proportions of the perfect Egyptian body; it has short arms and is Negroid or Negritian. From the anthropological point of view, the Egyptian comes after the Polynesians, Samoyeds, Europeans, and is immediately fol- lowed by African Negroes and Tasmanians. Besides, there is a scientific tendency to find in Africa, after excluding foreign influences, from the Mediterranean to the Cape, from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, nothing but Negroes or Negroids of various colors. The ancient Egyptians were Negroes, but Negroes to the last degree. {endquote} {endnote 20: Marius Fontanes, Les Egyptes (de 5000 a715). Paris: Ed. Lemerre, n.d., pp 44-45.}
2) G. K. Osei, a black American (LL.B., LL.M., Ph.D.), wrote in his 1983 Introduction to G. Elliot Smith's booklet The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilization in the East and in America (New York, 1983; I have this booklet but its publisher details are unclear; I obtained it from a Black American bookstore, most likely A&B Books Publishers Brooklyn, NY 11201):
"The Great kings of Africa peacefully spread the African civilization to other parts. This peaceful process was disturbed by the coming of the Hyksos into Egypt. These people conquered lower Egypt and ruled it for nearly two hundred years. They were eventually expelled by a king from Upper Egypt. The kings who came after the explusion of the Hyksos extended the boundaries of Egypt into Asia. Many nations in Asia came under the direct control of Egypt. At this time Egypt was the most powerful country in the world. African culture spread to those conquered nations until a mad half-cast (mulatto) came on the throne. This mad king was non other than Amenophis IV also known as Akhanaten.
"Akhanaten when he mounted the mighty throne deserted the old culture. He changed the religion of Egypt, and he married a white woman from Mitanni. His wife's name was Nefert-iti ("The Fair One Comes"). It was the Egyptians who called Tadukhipa, Dushratta's daughter Nefer-iti. She was at first sent to Egypt to marry Amenophis III but when she arrived the king had died so she had to marry the king's son -Akhenaton. Akhenaton changed his wife's name from Nefertiti to Nefer-neferu-Aten, "Aten is the Fairest of the Fair." It is very important to state here that the decline of the mighty Kingdom began from the time Akhenaton came on the throne. The royal blue blood that ran through the veins of those mighty kings had become diluted by the end of the eighteenth Dynasty. The Kings were the sons of white women from Asia. It must be remembered that the mother of Akhenaton was a white woman called Tyi or Tii. Queen Tii was a foreign woman whose father's name was Iuya and came from Asia Minor. The marriages of the Pharoahs to foreign women shocked the priests of Amen. The priests told Akhenaton that the dynastic miracle of the divine birth should continue but this mad king Akhenaton paid them no attention. Instead the priests were persecuted and Amen was deserted by the King. Akhenaton built a new capital where he started to worship his god. The history of the African Race would be different today if Akenaton had not abandoned the old African Culture to embrace that of a foreign country. He failed to send the army to defend the frontiers his great and proud ancestors had established. As a result of his negligence the mighty empire of Africa fell to pieces. The present day (1983) African leaders must never marry white women. White women will never help them to build Africa to become once again the teacher of the world. We will teach the African to see beauty in himself."
Osei was introducing G. Elliot Smith's booklet THE INFLUENCE OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION IN THE EAST AND IN AMERICA : before-columbus.html.
I do not post ALL of Diop's material. The fact that he and Elliot Smith overstated their case, that they were wrong about some things, does not undo the ways in which they were right. The reaction against Diffusion has gone too far.
Posted by mena7 (Member # 20555) on :
10 Arguments That Prove Ancient Egyptians Were Black
October 25, 2013 | Posted by A Moore Tagged With: ancient egypt, ancient egyptians are black, black egypy, Cheikh Anta Diop
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Even today, a significant number of mainstream Egyptologists, anthropologists, historians and Hollywood moviemakers continue to deny African people’s role in humankind’s first and greatest civilization in ancient Egypt. This whitewashing of history negatively impacts Black people and our image in the world. There remains a vital need to correct the misinformation of our achievements in antiquity.
Senegalese scholar Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop (1923-1986) dedicated his life to scientifically challenging Eurocentric and Arab-centric views of precolonial African culture, specifically those that suggested the ancient civilization of Egypt did not have its origins in Black Africa.
Since some people continue to ignore the overwhelming evidence that indicates ancient Egypt was built, ruled, and populated by dark-skinned African people, Atlanta Blackstar will highlight 10 of the ways Diop proved the ancient Egyptians were Black.
Egyptian mummy with negroid hair
Physical Anthropology Evidence Based on his review of scientific literature, Diop concluded that most of the skeletons and skulls of the ancient Egyptians clearly indicate they were Negroid people with features very similar to those of modern Black Nubians and other people of the Upper Nile and East Africa. He called attention to studies that included examinations of skulls from the predynastic period (6000 B.C.) that showed a greater percentage of Black characteristics than any other type.
From this information, Diop reasoned that a Black race existed in Egypt at that time and did not migrate at a later stage as some previous theories had suggested.
mummy-scan
Melanin Dosage Test Diop invented a method for determining the level of melanin in the skin of human beings. Melanin is the chemical responsible for skin pigmentation and it is preserved for millions of years in the skins of fossil animals.
Diop conducted the melanin test on Egyptian mummies at the Museum of Man in Paris, and determined the levels found in the dermis and epidermis of a small sample would classify all ancient Egyptians as “unquestionably among the Black races.”
hqdefault
Osteological Evidence According to Diop, osteological measurements (analysis of bones) are perhaps the least misleading of the criteria accepted in physical anthropology for classifying the races of men. A first study of this kind was completed by a German archeologist Karl Richard Lepsius at the end of the 19th century. The Lepsius canon, which distinguishes the bodily proportions of various racial groups, categories the “ideal Egyptian” as “short-armed and of Negroid or Negrito physical type.”
queen tiye
Evidence From Blood Types Diop found that even after hundreds of years of intermixing with foreign invaders, the blood type of modern Egyptians is the “same group B as the populations of Western Africa on the Atlantic seaboard and not the A2 group characteristic of the white race prior to any crossbreeding.”
Banqueting Scene, Thebes, tomb of Nebamum & Ipuky, 1400 BC
The Egyptians as They Saw Themselves Diop noted that “Egyptians had only one term to designate themselves: KMT, which literally means ‘the Blacks.’ This is the strongest term existing in the Pharaonic tongue to indicate blackness.”
He added: “The term is a collective noun which thus described the whole people of Pharaonic Egypt as a Black people.”
For further evidence, Diop focused on both the monuments and how the ancient Egyptians represented themselves in their art.
egyptian-pictures
Cultural Unity of Egypt With The Rest of Africa
Diop found that in ancient Egypt there existed “African cultural commonalities” of matriarchy, totemism, divine kinship, and cosmology.”
Through a study of circumcision and totemism, he offers detailed data on the cultural unity between Egypt and the rest of Africa. He noted: “Historians are in general agreement that the Ethiopians, Egyptians, Colchians, and people of the Southern Levant were among the only people on earth practicing circumcision, which confirms their cultural affiliations, if not their ethnic affiliation.”
He added: “The Egyptian style of (adolescent) circumcision was different from how circumcision is practiced in other parts of the world, but similar to how it is practiced throughout the African continent.”
egypt_ancient_rel01
Divine Epithets Diop also demonstrates that “Black or Negro” was a divine epithet invariably used to refer to the chief benevolent gods of Egypt, while evil spirits were depicted as red. InEurasian culture, good is described as white and evil as black.
Somali Egyptian-Puntite Culture and The 'Issa Princesses during the coronation of the 19th King of Issa - Ugaas Rooble
Evidence From the Bible Diop wrote: “The Bible tells us that ‘…the sons of Ham [were] Cush and Mizraim [i.e. Egypt], and Phut, and Canaan. And the sons of Cush; Seba, and Havilah, and Sabtah, and Raamah and Sabtechah.”
According to biblical tradition, Ham was the father of the Black race. Diop asserted that “generally speaking, all Semitic tradition (Jewish and Arab) class ancient Egypt with the countries of the Blacks.”
5ket78
Linguistic Unity With Southern and Western Africa In a detailed study of languages, Diop illustrated the strength of the cultural ties between ancient Egypt and its African neighbors by comparing the Egyptian language with Wolof, a Senegalese language spoken in West Africa near the Atlantic Ocean.
Diop clearly demonstrates that ancient Egyptian, modern Coptic of Egypt, and Wolof are related, with the latter two having their origin in the former.
“The kinship between ancient Egyptian and the languages of Africa,” Diop wrote in the General History of Africa, “is not a hypothetical but a demonstrable fact which it is impossible for modern scholarship to thrust aside.”
He believed the kinship to be genealogical, and he provided examples:
In ancient Egyptian “kef” means “to grasp, to take a strip (of something)”; in Wolof it means “to seize a prey.”
“Feh” means “go away” in ancient Egyptian; in Wolof it means “to rush off.”
To further demonstrate similarity between the two languages, Diop also examined verb forms, demonstratives, and phonemes. The results, he found, showed little difference between the two.
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Testimony of Classical Greek and Roman Historians Virtually all of the early Latin eyewitnesses described the ancient Egyptians as black-skinned with woolly hair. Several ancient Greek historians noted that Egyptians and Ethiopians had complexions that were “melanchroes,” which most scholars translate as black, while some scholars translate it as “dark” or “dark skinned.”
Some of the most-often quoted historians are Diodorus Siculus and Herodotus.
According to most translations, Herodotus wrote that a Greek oracle was known to be from Egypt because she was “black,” that the natives of the Nile region are “black with heat,’ and that Egyptians were “black skinned with woolly hair.”
Diodorus Siculus wrote that the Ethiopians considered the Egyptians their colony.
Lucian observes an Egyptian boy and notices that he is not merely black, but has thick lips.
Appollodorus called Egypt the country of the black-footed ones.
Aeschylus, a Greek poet, wrote that Egyptian seamen had “black limbs.”
Gaston Maspero states that “by the almost unanimous testimony of ancient [Greek] historians, they [ancient Egyptians] belonged to the African race, which settled in Ethiopia.”
KingTut DNA Evidence (BONUS)
DNATribes, a genomics company that specializes in tracing individuals’ ancestry to certain global populations has recently subjected the published STRs profiles (DNA samples) of Pharaoh Tutankhamen and family to analysis. They report that the closest living relatives of the mummies are sub-Saharan Africans, especially those from Southern Africa and the Great Lakes region.
The company also tested the STR profiles of Ramesses III and found that among present-day populations, Ramesses’ autosomal STR profile is most frequently found in the African Great Lakes region, where it is approximately 335.1 times as frequent as in the world as a whole.
Sources: ORIGIN OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS by Cheikh Anta Diop
"I'm just trying to make a way out of no way, for my people" -Modejeska Monteith Simpkins
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
@Dead
quote: They're all anonymous, and probably nobodies. And the first quote is nonsensical: "agree the Egyptians were black to stop racism!", has nothing to do with the evidence but politics.
What's your point about them being anonymous? How does that in any way diminish the relevance of what they've concluded? So when someone gives evidence anonymously at a legal trial, their submission is irrelevant?
I'm still in conversation with them so won't name them, and the moderator here has already advised against posting responses from named professionals.
You suggested that no one in mainstream classics or Egyptology regards the ancient Egyptians as 'blacks', but when I provide quotes from Professors and Phds, you say that they're probably "nobodies". Hahahahahahaha! Says some recent graduate on the internet. And the first quote wasn't saying that we should conclude Egyptian blackness to stop racism, but because the conclusion is a reasonable one, and that this would 'also' have an effect of countering racism.
Don't forget, before fighting against the idea tooth and nail, you yourself twice admitted that people were right to conclude that the ancient Egyptians were a black population. Clearly it became too much for you accept and you renounced your previous acknowledgments.
I think your response pretty much encapsulates the effect your 'issues' have on your ability to bring any sort of objectivity to this discussion. But it seems that you're now it troll mode, treating the issue with half-engaged, dismissive levity.
But hey, keep it up.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
black is not skin color alone
therefore any correspondance seeking acknowledgment must define the term clearly
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by tropicals redacted: @Dead
quote: They're all anonymous, and probably nobodies. And the first quote is nonsensical: "agree the Egyptians were black to stop racism!", has nothing to do with the evidence but politics.
What's your point about them being anonymous? How does that in any way diminish the relevance of what they've concluded? So when someone gives evidence anonymously at a legal trial, their submission is irrelevant?
I'm still in conversation with them so won't name them, and the moderator here has already advised against posting responses from named professionals.
You suggested that no one in mainstream classics or Egyptology regards the ancient Egyptians as 'blacks', but when I provide quotes from Professors and Phds, you say that they're probably "nobodies". Hahahahahahaha! Says some recent graduate on the internet. And the first quote wasn't saying that we should conclude Egyptian blackness to stop racism, but because the conclusion is a reasonable one, and that this would 'also' have an effect of countering racism.
Don't forget, before fighting against the idea tooth and nail, you yourself twice admitted that people were right to conclude that the ancient Egyptians were a black population. Clearly it became too much for you accept and you renounced your previous acknowledgments.
I think your response pretty much encapsulates the effect your 'issues' have on your ability to bring any sort of objectivity to this discussion. But it seems that you're now it troll mode, treating the issue with half-engaged, dismissive levity.
But hey, keep it up.
I never posted Egyptians are black. You are well known as a pathological liar who manipulates and distorts what people post for your own agenda. If you want to revisit your lies on this forum, i'm sure we can... but its pretty boring. There is like 100+ of them, plus all the slanders you post to the extent the forum owner had enough of you and thinks you are a lunatic troll (deleting most your posts on your first user). And once again, you are presenting fictitious "anonymous" emails, or if someone gave you something, you probably twisted it out of context like you did mine. I gave you an email 2 years ago stating I no longer supported the Hamitic model. It is foolish to lie and then state I posted the Egyptians were black, when at the same time of that email I have posts on forums clearly stating they were not black.
Does this guy look black to you?
Him?
Do you just ignore all these? How "objective" of you.
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
@Lioness Oh please. How lame.
The discussions were within the context of the ancient Egyptians as a black African population. Something people unfamiliar with the twilight zone Egyptsearch-esque utterances of Lioness and Dead types are able to conceptualise.
Nice try though.
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
@ Dead
quote: And once again, you are presenting fictitious "anonymous" emails
Jeez, you sound as irrational as Amun-Ra...
1/12/2013: Me to you:
quote: In your opinion therefore, are people right when they describe the ancient Egyptians as predominantly 'black Africans', regardless of whether 'black' refers to populations from the Horn of Africa, or groups such as the Tutsis?
Look forward to reading your response.
02/12/2013 You to me:
quote: Yes they are correct. Two sources from Keita, I had access through a classics archive, which explains this -
Keita, S. O. Y. (1993a) “Black Athena: ‘Race,’ Bernal and Snowden”. Arethusa. xxvi. pp. 295-314.
Keita, S. O. Y. (1993b). “Response to Bernal and Snowden”. Arethusa. xxvi. pp. 329-33.
Everything I posted to you in the last email is true. For me, racialism/racism was delusional and it deteriorated my mental health. I no longer want to write or research this topic, and I have/still am in the process of cutting off all contact. My past is terrible, however I have better help, and am trying to improve.
Like I say, twilight zone...whatever help you were getting clearly hasn't worked.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: black is not skin color alone
therefore any correspondance seeking acknowledgment must define the term clearly
He's already admitted Egyptians looked nothing like him and did not resemble the hair texture or facial features of West Africans ("Negroids"). So that's why he clings onto "blackness" so he can still try to cluster or attach himself to these people. Its basically desperation. If you take "blackness" out, he has no link. This is why he's obsessed with that term and spends his time harassing academics via email to agree the Egyptians were "black".
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
^Uh, no. So you're saying that because the AEs differed from stereotyped West Africans, that modern people today wouldn't refer to them as black?
That people wouldn't regard East Africans as black?
More nutty twilight zone nutjob bs.
You can try and deflect from your e-mailed capitulation all you want, but it's there for all to see.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by tropicals redacted: @ Dead
quote: And once again, you are presenting fictitious "anonymous" emails
Jeez, you sound as irrational as Amun-Ra...
1/12/2013: Me to you:
quote: In your opinion therefore, are people right when they describe the ancient Egyptians as predominantly 'black Africans', regardless of whether 'black' refers to populations from the Horn of Africa, or groups such as the Tutsis?
Look forward to reading your response.
02/12/2013 You to me:
quote: Yes they are correct. Two sources from Keita, I had access through a classics archive, which explains this -
Keita, S. O. Y. (1993a) “Black Athena: ‘Race,’ Bernal and Snowden”. Arethusa. xxvi. pp. 295-314.
Keita, S. O. Y. (1993b). “Response to Bernal and Snowden”. Arethusa. xxvi. pp. 329-33.
Everything I posted to you in the last email is true. For me, racialism/racism was delusional and it deteriorated my mental health. I no longer want to write or research this topic, and I have/still am in the process of cutting off all contact. My past is terrible, however I have better help, and am trying to improve.
Like I say, twilight zone...whatever help you were getting clearly hasn't worked.
Just completely distorted emails. You are really a sick man Claus.
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
quote: Just completely distorted emails. You are really a sick man Claus.
Oh my god. Hahahahaha! You're making a fool of yourself. Sorry to interrupt your trolling with a dose of reality -
Damn, I have to do everything around here!
Did you or did you not send that me that e-mail?
Posted by tropicals redacted (Member # 21621) on :
That was fun, but alas I'm bored now.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by tropicals redacted: ^Uh, no. So you're saying that because the AEs differed from stereotyped West Africans, that modern people today wouldn't refer to them as black?
That people wouldn't regard East Africans as black?
More nutty twilight zone nutjob bs.
You can try and deflect from your e-mailed capitulation all you want, but it's there for all to see.
East Africans do not cluster with West Africans in any racial/population sense. They are only "black" since they share dark brown skin (so too do Melanesians). So your obsession with trying to label this or that "black" is quite pointless. Why not categorize by hair texture? Answer is obvious. You just cherrypick the feature you have (black skin) and can relate to, over something you don't have (wavy hair).
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
Its pretty stupid to call people delusional when you provide no evidence whatsoever for your emails. And yes, its not only me claiming you make them up from scratch or distort them, but other posters here (who you have even quoted).
And instead of pesting academics by email to get them to state the Egyptians were black (when they weren't), why not do your own research? You seem incredibly lazy, and just resort to strange manipulative behaviour via emails, or then slandering people online. I see those alleged academics who have told you the Egyptians were not black, you've already started speaking ill of, and smearing them as "racists" or "white supremacists". Like I said, one sick man.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by tropicals redacted:
quote: Just completely distorted emails. You are really a sick man Claus.
Oh my god. Hahahahaha! You're making a fool of yourself. Sorry to interrupt your trolling with a dose of reality -
Damn, I have to do everything around here!
Did you or did you not send that me that e-mail?
Yes, but I said you distorted it. All your quotes on this page are also inaccurate because you selectively cut and paste them and rearrange them to twist what was actually said. So above, you quote just one line from an academic (if it is even real and not made up). His/her email was only one line? The rest of their email could be saying something very different. Anyone can misrepresent by quoting selectively. You've done this to multiple people on this forum.
Posted by Morpheus (Member # 16203) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
Does this guy look black to you?
Him?
Do you just ignore all these? How "objective" of you.
What do they look like to you? To me they look like statues with faded paint and facial features that easily fit within East African variation.
For example look at the seated scribe and compare his face to this photo.
We know the paint is faded because in earlier pictures you can see remnants of the dark brown paint which have since faded or been wiped off.
Take note of what Keita has to say about this evidence:
Art objects are not generally used by biological anthropologists. They are suspect as data and their interpretation highly dependent on stereotyped thinking. However, because art has often been used to comment on the physiognomies of ancient Egyptians, a few remarks are in order. A review of literature and the sculpture indicates characteristics that also can be found in the Horn of (East) Africa (see, e.g., Petrie 1939; Drake 1987; Keita 1993). Old and Middle Kingdom statuary shows a range of characteristics; many, if not most, individuals depicted in the art have variations on the narrow-nosed, narrow-faced morphology also seen in various East Africans. This East African anatomy, once seen as being the result of a mixture of different "races," is better understood as being part of the range of indigenous African variation.
Source: The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
quote:A lot of whites travel to Africa for holidays and return with "burnt faces", i.e. tanned faces. Be serious now. Let's have some good answers.
I see what you are saying, but the myth is literally saying these peoples were burnt as in scorched or put on fire, not a mere suntan.
Not that I think this "he said, she said" sort of anecdotal stuff is admissible in serious discussions on ancient population affinity (although it is interesting from a subjective point of view), but what's ironic is that the Bible and other ancient texts in the wider region apply analogous terms to all the people you've claimed weren't thought of as having a 'burnt' appearance, INCLUDING North Indians. Aint that a trip? You should know better, with your biblical background.
Kushites are described as black, not Egyptians. I think the Biblical and Rabbinical literature supports the distinction I am making. Midrash Yalkut Shim'oni. Noah Sec. 58 for example confines black skin (through the curse of Ham) to Kush, not the other descendants of Ham that represent North Africa.
I am surprised how people on this forum are in denial about all this, when it is a simply an observable reality North Africans are lighter skinned than Sub-Saharan Africans.
Posted by Morpheus (Member # 16203) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
I am surprised how people on this forum are in denial about all this, when it is a simply an observable reality North Africans are lighter skinned than Sub-Saharan Africans.
Some of them are some of them aren't. There are dark-skinned people in North Africa including Egypt today. I don't think the Biblical text or Greco-Roman quotes are useful. The Greeks and Romans talked about Egypt during the Late period when many foreigners had immigrated there and the Bible rarely mentions skin color.
Why do you ignore the dark skin tones of the Ancient Egyptians own art? Or the histological analysis of their skin which shows they were dark-skinned? That's the best evidence we have for what skin color they had.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead: Kushites are described as black, not Egyptians. I think the Biblical and Rabbinical literature supports the distinction I am making. Midrash Yalkut Shim'oni. Noah Sec. 58 for example confines black skin (through the curse of Ham) to Kush, not the other descendants of Ham that represent North Africa.
I didn't say anything about black skin; I said they were all thought of as having a 'burnt' appearance. For instance, what does 'Ham' mean, if not 'burnt'? Egypt, and Egypt only, is referred throughout the Bible as "the land of Ham". There is also Middle Eastern folklore about Cush having progeny that settled in the Indus Valley and elsewhere in ancient India, not to mention, that the Sumerians you say had a similar skin tone to Egyptians, were thought of as having more immediate common ancestry with very dark skinned Africans than with Egyptians, by the authors of the Genesis, for instance.
There is clearly a memory in the mind of the authors of Genesis, if not first hand experience, of Egyptians being dark skinned enough to be considered "other" and not get lumped into Shem's lineage, way after the neolithic (Genesis presumably being written ~2.5kya), when you say selection for light skin should have already occurred.
quote:I am surprised how people on this forum are in denial about all this, when it is a simply an observable reality North Africans are lighter skinned than Sub-Saharan Africans.
What is disputed is not that they are light skinned, what is disputed is that the genetic basis for their light skin is due to local evolution and not the same as that of Europeans and Indians. This goes back to what I tried to tell you earlier about there only being a couple of global light skin variants that together explain most of skin pigmentation diversity in the world. Logically, then, light skin in Egypt and the Indus Valley and elsewhere in South Asia is mostly driven by recent admixture with high latitude groups, without said admixture necessarily being proportional to the frequency of the derived pigmentation gene variants. Europe was a recipient in this as well.
Take note of what Keita has to say about this evidence:
Art objects are not generally used by biological anthropologists. They are suspect as data and their interpretation highly dependent on stereotyped thinking. However, because art has often been used to comment on the physiognomies of ancient Egyptians, a few remarks are in order. A review of literature and the sculpture indicates characteristics that also can be found in the Horn of (East) Africa (see, e.g., Petrie 1939; Drake 1987; Keita 1993). Old and Middle Kingdom statuary shows a range of characteristics; many, if not most, individuals depicted in the art have variations on the narrow-nosed, narrow-faced morphology also seen in various East Africans. This East African anatomy, once seen as being the result of a mixture of different "races," is better understood as being part of the range of indigenous African variation.
Source: The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians [/QB]
If the paint faded it wouldn't originally be as dark as the man you posted, but i have no problem with the Keita quote. What I've bolded is what my email to Claus (tropical redacted) precisely agreed with and why i abandoned Hamiticism. What this does not mean is that populations in Africa cluster/pool together. Claus/Zaharan/Tukelar and the rest of that ilk are pan-African racialists who want to basically revive the Homo Afer race of Linnaeus. Bizarrely these same people then turn around and call other people racists or criticize "race realists" like Rushton, yet who propose the exact same obsolete racial classification: Blacks, Caucasians and Mongoloids.
Posted by kdolo (Member # 21830) on :
shut up
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: [QB]
quote:Originally posted by Dead: Kushites are described as black, not Egyptians. I think the Biblical and Rabbinical literature supports the distinction I am making. Midrash Yalkut Shim'oni. Noah Sec. 58 for example confines black skin (through the curse of Ham) to Kush, not the other descendants of Ham that represent North Africa.
I didn't say anything about black skin; I said they were all thought of as having a 'burnt' appearance. For instance, what does 'Ham' mean, if not 'burnt'? Egypt, and Egypt only, is referred throughout the Bible as "the land of Ham". There is also Middle Eastern folklore about Cush having progeny that settled in the Indus Valley and elsewhere in ancient India, not to mention, that the Sumerians you say had a similar skin tone to Egyptians, were thought of as having more immediate common ancestry with very dark skinned Africans than with Egyptians, by the authors of the Genesis, for instance.
There is clearly a memory in the mind of the authors of Genesis, if not first hand experience, of Egyptians being dark skinned enough to be considered "other" and not get lumped into Shem's lineage, way after the neolithic (Genesis presumably being written ~2.5kya), when you say selection for light skin should have already occurred.
I'm not denying the Egyptians were "dark", but this term is too broad to be considered useful.
The following is how the Jews described their own skin complexion, c. 120 AD: "the boxwood tree [eshkeroa], neither black [kushi] nor white [germani], but in between." (Mishnah Nega'im 2:1)
The two skin colour extremes, black (dark brown) and white (pale pink) equate with Sub-Saharan Africans and Northern Europeans, respectively. Now the Egyptians were almost never included in the latter "polarization", also outside of ancient Jewish literature, e.g. "black Ethiopians and white Germans", omnes in Aethiopia nigri, in Germania candidi; Eugippius, more:
These were compiled by Snowden. So my point is "black" should only be restricted to Sub-Saharan Africans (or populations in the tropics). If ancient Egyptians were black, does this mean the ancient Greeks and Romans were white? This is not what the classical literature says, and today it can be observed Southern Europeans are not white.
Here is the Italian football team:
They are light skinned, but not white. Compare them to the Swedish football team to see this.
quote:What is disputed is not that they are light skinned, what is disputed is that the genetic basis for their light skin is due to local evolution and not the same as that of Europeans and Indians. This goes back to what I tried to tell you earlier about there only being a couple of global light skin variants that together explain most of skin pigmentation diversity in the world. Logically, then, light skin in Egypt and the Indus Valley and elsewhere in South Asia is mostly driven by recent admixture with high latitude groups, without said admixture necessarily being proportional to the frequency of the derived pigmentation gene variants. Europe was a recipient in this as well.
There would have to be large scale mixture for that to have happened, which didn't happen in those areas. And I think the selection/local evolution view is supported by the lighter brown average skin variation observed in the San.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by Morpheus:
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
I am surprised how people on this forum are in denial about all this, when it is a simply an observable reality North Africans are lighter skinned than Sub-Saharan Africans.
Some of them are some of them aren't. There are dark-skinned people in North Africa including Egypt today. I don't think the Biblical text or Greco-Roman quotes are useful. The Greeks and Romans talked about Egypt during the Late period when many foreigners had immigrated there and the Bible rarely mentions skin color.
Why do you ignore the dark skin tones of the Ancient Egyptians own art? Or the histological analysis of their skin which shows they were dark-skinned? That's the best evidence we have for what skin color they had.
You are using lame word-play, "dark". Yes, they were dark, but not black.
Southern Europeans are "light", but not white. Why is this hard to understand?
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by Morpheus: According to Rushton Baker's aim in Race (1974) was to find out which races had originated civilization by studying modern people and seeing if they fit the criteria for civilization.
I can see why MacEachern considers the list to be racist and unsystematic. Baker clearly selected his criteria to exclude certain groups of people based on cultural customs or lack of cultural customs in order to denigrate certain groups (ex. #14, "Ha! Look at those savages eating people! They are clearly uncivilized!").
Yes, Northern Europeans before the Greco-Roman period would not fit many of these criteria but that is beside the point. Baker is trying to say that certain groups of people at the time of publication are uncivilized because of their lack of cultural development and ignores the state of Europe's ancient tribes.
Before Northern European tribes were "civilized" they had very little on that criteria list. The same applies to West Africans. I think Baker's main focus is who originated civilization; people who were influenced, stole or adopted from another cannot be ticked on his list. So modern Northern Europeans would not qualify as civilized like West Africans. The reason Baker didn't recognise this for Northern Europeans is because he was categorizing by 'Europid', 'Negrid' and 'Mongoloid'. So despite Northern Europeans inventing very little in ancient times and living in straw huts etc, since Baker puts them in the 'Europid' he doesn't conclude them to be not civilized.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead: I'm not denying the Egyptians were "dark", but this term is too broad to be considered useful.
Only if one ignores the context that has already been established so far. I've already specified a reasonable upper boundary of skin pigmentation in pre-neolithic Egypt, and inferred that lighter skin from this point on is just a deviation from this compartive point. I then added another benchmark for both neolithic and predynastic Egypt, referencing Jebel Ouenat rock art and the Gebelein cloth. Benchmarks for Egyptian perceptions of their northern neighbours were also posted. Sure, "dark" is a broad term, but there should be little ambiguity by now as to what it means in the context of post- neolithic Egypt.
Also, 'burnt' should be understood in a general sense. The Greeks and others who shared their narrative of a temperature-based determination of global pigmentation variation didn't consider only what you call dark brown people to have been 'scorched' by the sun, so your equation of 'burnt' with having a dark brown complexion in the eyes of the ancients is not necessarily correct. Both Egyptians and Indians were seen as 'burnt' in this sense, to a degree that would have never been attributed to the North African soccer teams you posted.
The Hebrews also grouped some Asiatic populations under 'Ham', who we know would have been no more than just a few shades darker than a regular swarthy Syrian by the time they wrote that (late Greeks were cognizant of the fact that groups not seen as Aethiopian in their time were back in early Greek times), and it's almost certain that the proto-Semetic speaking nomads--one of several sources of dark skinned Asiatics grouped under Ham--were never jet black/"dark brown" to begin with since their arrival in Asia 7-6kya.
So, we're dealing with a bunch of people who may very well have not been what you call dark brown since the (mid)holocene, but who are nevertheless closer in pigmentation to dark brown groups than they are to the swarthy North Indian types who your own predictive pigmentation map identifies as being adapted to the Eurasian steppes.
quote: Originally posted by Dead: There would have to be large scale mixture for that to have happened, which didn't happen in those areas.
Strong selection doesn't require instantaneous, dramatic demographic events. Either way, just stating this objection doesn't explain why much of the coastal North African and Saharan ancestral pigmentation alleles at various loci got replaced with specific derived versions that are identical to West Eurasian ones. This is not a signature of the indigenous evolution you say took place in Egypt.
Posted by Morpheus (Member # 16203) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
If the paint faded it wouldn't originally be as dark as the man you posted...
Judging by the dark brown coloring on the seated scribe's legs it is likely that the original color before the skin faded was very similar to painted ancient Egyptian art that does not show much fading.
Not quite as dark as the man I posted but still dark or reddish-brown and the point is that the facial features are consistent with indigenous East African variation.
quote:but i have no problem with the Keita quote. What I've bolded is what my email to Claus (tropical redacted) precisely agreed with and why i abandoned Hamiticism.
So you agree that African populations are variable in their physical characteristics?
What do you believe the Ancient Egyptians looked like?
quote:What this does not mean is that populations in Africa cluster/pool together.
Genetically many of them do cluster/pool together when compared to non-African populations even if they are phentypically variable.
quote:Claus/Zaharan/Tukelar and the rest of that ilk are pan-African racialists who want to basically revive the Homo Afer race of Linnaeus.
Of the three I am only familiar with Zaharan as a poster and I don't believe he is a racialist. What many of the veterans of the board argue is that the Ancient Egyptians shared biological affinities with more Southerly African populations and would be classified as Black by modern Western standards. If you disagree with that ok but that doesn't make one a racialist.
quote:Bizarrely these same people then turn around and call other people racists or criticize "race realists" like Rushton, yet who propose the exact same obsolete racial classification: Blacks, Caucasians and Mongoloids.
I don't see them proposing racial classifications. If they agree with the work of Keita they are simply saying that the ancient Egyptians looked like some dark-brown skinned East African populations who we commonly today call Black. I don't believe subscribing to idea that racial classifications are valid is racist. It becomes racist when you use that racial classification scheme to denigrate certain groups which Rushton does.
By the way is that email by tropicals redacted accurate?
quote: Yes they are correct. Two sources from Keita, I had access through a classics archive, which explains this -
Keita, S. O. Y. (1993a) “Black Athena: ‘Race,’ Bernal and Snowden”. Arethusa. xxvi. pp. 295-314.
Keita, S. O. Y. (1993b). “Response to Bernal and Snowden”. Arethusa. xxvi. pp. 329-33.
Everything I posted to you in the last email is true. For me, racialism/racism was delusional and it deteriorated my mental health. I no longer want to write or research this topic, and I have/still am in the process of cutting off all contact. My past is terrible, however I have better help, and am trying to improve.
Did you used to have racist views? If so, can you honestly say that your aversion towards considering the Ancient Egyptians Black still isn't motivated by racist bias?
I think that people like me are trying to correct the African historical record and combat racism. That's certainly why I got interested in the subject. I'm not trying to say that East African are the same as West Africans or cluster/pool together in any racialist sort of way, I'm only saying that dark-brown skinned people however you want to classify or group them have a history and Ancient Egyptian civilization is part of that history.
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
You are using lame word-play, "dark". Yes, they were dark, but not black.
Southern Europeans are "light", but not white. Why is this hard to understand?
I'm not using word play. By dark-skinned I mean brown to black skin pigmentation, far darker than tan-skinned Middle Eastern folk. Black or dark-brown if your prefer.
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
Before Northern European tribes were "civilized" they had very little on that criteria list. The same applies to West Africans. I think Baker's main focus is who originated civilization; people who were influenced, stole or adopted from another cannot be ticked on his list. So modern Northern Europeans would not qualify as civilized like West Africans. The reason Baker didn't recognise this for Northern Europeans is because he was categorizing by 'Europid', 'Negrid' and 'Mongoloid'. So despite Northern Europeans inventing very little in ancient times and living in straw huts etc, since Baker puts them in the 'Europid' he doesn't conclude them to be not civilized.
My impression of Baker's work based on what I know of it from Rushton's writing is that Baker was trying to say not only who founded civilization but who can found civilizations based on the criteria that he selectively chose.
I haven't read the book but based on what I have read it seems clear to me that Baker like Rushton was a racist with an ideological axe to grind.
Posted by Truthcentric (Member # 3735) on :
Looking at one of Swenet's graphs on frequencies of West Eurasian depigmentation alleles, I observe that two samples from southern Egypt actually have minority frequencies of one allele (between 14-20%). So maybe we should look at Egyptians living today who don't carry alleles like that, if we want in-the-flesh models for the indigenous Egyptian skin tone? Even if that would be finding needles in a haystack today, we've all seen photos of contemporary Egyptians in places like Luxor to Aswan who are still quite dark even if their regional gene pool has some of those Eurasian alleles floating around. So maybe something in their ballpark, or even darker, would be typical for indigenous Egyptians?
On the subject of ideal subtropical skin tones, I notice this one graph shows the San people in southern Africa having a small but significant frequency of one Eurasian-affiliated skin color allele. Whenever they assimilated this, I can't help but wonder if alleles like this have some influence on their lighter skin. Maybe they started out a darker shade of brown less divergent from the tropical African norm, but only turned lighter because the new alleles had a less severe selective disadvantage in southernmost Africa relative to equatorial regions?
ARDO EDIT: =================== Before posting oversize images please shrink to a size that will not stretch the screen causing constant left right scrolling to read all the other posts thanks
[ 28. April 2015, 08:42 PM: Message edited by: ausar ]
Posted by Truthcentric (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Morpheus:
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
If the paint faded it wouldn't originally be as dark as the man you posted...
Judging by the dark brown coloring on the seated scribe's legs it is likely that the original color before the skin faded was very similar to painted ancient Egyptian art that does not show much fading.
For the record, since Dead has emphasized the chromatic difference between Egyptians and Nubians as suggested by artistic portrayals and later Greco-Roman descriptions, let me put forward the suggestion (which I have said before elsewhere) that those artistic representations may not necessarily reflect the phenotypical reality.
If we look past the artistic conventions and examine the actual skeletal data, we consistently find that Egyptians and Nubians weren't actually that different. Remember Keita's finding that Kushites from Kerma---the most commonly depicted Nubians in New Kingdom-era art---were practically indistinguishable from Badarian/Naqada-era Egyptians with regards to cranial morphology. Factor in that both of these Northeast African populations would have walked around in brief loincloths day-to-day, and you wouldn't have been able to tell them apart so easily if you saw them in person.
On the other hand, Egyptian representations of foreigners were intended to set them apart from the Egyptians themselves. This wouldn't have been so hard for heavily clothed people in the Middle East, but the differences in attire for Egyptian and Nubian peoples were much subtler since they were both clad in loincloths. Giving Nubian representations a distinct skin color would have better set them apart from Egyptians. The difference would have had less to do with real physical differences than the needs of Egyptian artists.
As for how Kushites and other Nubians would have depicted themselves, Swenet has cited early to mid-Holocene rock art in the eastern Sahara as possibly representing the indigenous Egyptian phenotype. The thing is that, since most of those sites are actually located near the Sudanese border, it's possible their creators were ancestral to Kushites and other Nubians as well as Egyptians. And yet they still use dark reddish-brown paint to represent themselves instead of jet-black or extremely dark brown.
And then of course you have dynastic Kushite self-portrayals like this.
So maybe reddish-brown ocher, for whatever reason, was the preferred painting material for representing one's own tribe along the Nile.
Posted by Tukuler (Member # 19944) on :
Baker was convinced that all races differed in their intellectual abilities and was of the opinion that the concept of “superior” and “inferior” ethnic groups was completely justified. 108 In the end, outside of the network around Mankind Quarterly (link), these considerations essentially found no resonance in scientific work.
Coon and his oids Baker and his ids Review Coon's last pub here. Oxford allowed its copyright of Baker to lapse.
[ 28. April 2015, 06:22 PM: Message edited by: ausar ]
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
Morpheus:
1. Lower Egyptians were obviously lighter than Middle, and Upper Egyptians. The painted bust you posted, I (and Snowden etc) regard as falling at the end of the Upper Egyptian colour spectrum. But I do not think this was the "modal" hue in Egypt. The most common would have been either a moderate brown, or something close to it. This (click) is probably accurate. Note i'm not saying light brown was common, other than in Lower Egypt, especially in the Nile delta.
2. "What do you believe the Ancient Egyptians looked like?" --> read Baker's description I earlier posted. Overall, in skeletal morphology, hair and pigmentation: I regard the ancient Egyptians to be intermediate between (modern) Mediterranean and Horner populations. However if you broke down Egypt into smaller regions: Lower Egyptians would be closer to Mediterraneans, and Upper Egyptians closer to Horners.
3. Strong "breaks" in phenotypic and genotypic variation are found within continents, or rather between local populations, not between continents:
"Further support for the conclusions of this study comes from the observation that, almost without exception, gene frequencies form smooth clines over all continents [...] In addition, such regions of relatively sharp genetic change do not surround large clusters of populations, on a continental or nearly continental scale. On the contrary, they occur irregularly, within continents and even within single countries." http://www.pnas.org/content/94/9/4516.abstract
Populations in Africa do not cluster/pool together, nor do Europeans, East Asians and so on. This does not though mean there is no geographical structure to human biological variation, rather it is much more localized. This is why I abandoned the racial approach for gamodemes (local populations) and ecotypes.
4. "If you disagree with that ok but that doesn't make one a racialist." --> If you support a nested hierarchy and cluster populations into large continental groupings (e.g. "Aethiopid" or "Negroid" > "Africoid") this is racialism.
5. "Did you used to have racist views? If so, can you honestly say that your aversion towards considering the Ancient Egyptians Black still isn't motivated by racist bias?" --> On the contrary, what I am saying has no racial bias whatsoever since I reject clustering (like C. Loring Brace). The racialist baggage is from most Afrocentrics posting here who think Egyptians somehow group with other African populations.
I was a sysop and edited Metapedia (2012-2013). After I changed my position on race, I edited Rationalwiki and my work debunking racialism has been praised there. I could have easily been made a sysop, but I retired my account at the start of this year.
Edit: removed offtopic.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler:
Baker was convinced that all races differed in their intellectual abilities and was of the opinion that the concept of “superior” and “inferior” ethnic groups was completely justified. 108 In the end, outside of the network around Mankind Quarterly (link), these considerations essentially found no resonance in scientific work.
Coon and his oids Baker and his ids Review Coon's last pub here. Oxford allowed its copyright of Baker to lapse.
Those books have useful content despite their racial approach. Secondly, your buddy Clyde Winters published in the white supremacist and scientific racist Mankind Quarterly.
Yeah, Baker is real useful where he credits Greeks for introducing Lost Wax to Nigerians.
Mankind Quarterly? It is what it is.
No time to argue w/you.
Carry on.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
I missed this:
quote:I'm not trying to say that East African are the same as West Africans or cluster/pool together in any racialist sort of way, I'm only saying that dark-brown skinned people however you want to classify or group them have a history and Ancient Egyptian civilization is part of that history.
This is total nonsense. So someone who trivially has dark brown skin, but has no close ancestral ties to Egypt (like African-Americans), can consider ancient Egypt part of their history?
And in regards to Baker vs. Rushton. I treat them separate. Baker was a biologist and although his racial views are outdated now and shown to be wrong, some of his stuff is still useful. Rushton was never a biologist. He was a psychologist and his theories about race were total pseudo-science from the start.
Posted by Morpheus (Member # 16203) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
This is total nonsense. So someone who trivially has dark brown skin, but has no close ancestral ties to Egypt (like African-Americans), can consider ancient Egypt part of their history?
Exactly what problem do you have with an African-American identifying with Ancient Egypt? If they want to do that, why should you care?
quote:And in regards to Baker vs. Rushton. I treat them separate. Baker was a biologist and although his racial views are outdated now and shown to be wrong, some of his stuff is still useful. Rushton was never a biologist. He was a psychologist and his theories about race were total pseudo-science from the start.
They were both racists who although coming from different fields came to similar conclusions about racial hierarchies in intelligence.
Both individuals promoted pseudoscience.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
If there is useful info in their work - it should not be discarded. This applies to Coon as well.
"William W. Howells writing in an 1989 article, notes that Coon's research is "still regarded as a valuable source of data."
Howells' memoir of Coon was published by the National Academy of Sciences. And I would say Racial Adaptations is a very good book for its discussion on phenotypic adaptations.
Posted by Morpheus (Member # 16203) on :
Indeed IF there is useful information within their work THAT should not be discarded but when speaking to their legacy I do feel that both of them have tainted reputations as does Coon for promoting pseudoscientific racism.
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead: I'm not denying the Egyptians were "dark", but this term is too broad to be considered useful.
Only if one ignores the context that has already been established so far. I've already specified a reasonable upper boundary of skin pigmentation in pre-neolithic Egypt, and inferred that lighter skin from this point on is just a deviation from this compartive point. I then added another benchmark for both neolithic and predynastic Egypt, referencing Jebel Ouenat rock art and the Gebelein cloth. Benchmarks for Egyptian perceptions of their northern neighbours were also posted. Sure, "dark" is a broad term, but there should be little ambiguity by now as to what it means in the context of post- neolithic Egypt.
Also, 'burnt' should be understood in a general sense. The Greeks and others who shared their narrative of a temperature-based determination of global pigmentation variation didn't consider only what you call dark brown people to have been 'scorched' by the sun, so your equation of 'burnt' with having a dark brown complexion in the eyes of the ancients is not necessarily correct. Both Egyptians and Indians were seen as 'burnt' in this sense, to a degree that would have never been attributed to the North African soccer teams you posted.
The Hebrews also grouped some Asiatic populations under 'Ham', who we know would have been no more than just a few shades darker than a regular swarthy Syrian by the time they wrote that (late Greeks were cognizant of the fact that groups not seen as Aethiopian in their time were back in early Greek times), and it's almost certain that the proto-Semetic speaking nomads--one of several sources of dark skinned Asiatics grouped under Ham--were never jet black/"dark brown" to begin with since their arrival in Asia 7-6kya.
So, we're dealing with a bunch of people who may very well have not been what you call dark brown since the (mid)holocene, but who are nevertheless closer in pigmentation to dark brown groups than they are to the swarthy North Indian types who your own predictive pigmentation map identifies as being adapted to the Eurasian steppes.
quote: Originally posted by Dead: There would have to be large scale mixture for that to have happened, which didn't happen in those areas.
Strong selection doesn't require instantaneous, dramatic demographic events. Either way, just stating this objection doesn't explain why much of the coastal North African and Saharan ancestral pigmentation alleles at various loci got replaced with specific derived versions that are identical to West Eurasian ones. This is not a signature of the indigenous evolution you say took place in Egypt.
Predicted shading of skin colors for indigenous humans
Looking at this I am not fully wrong because indigenous Lower Egyptians would not be dark brown according to this. That was really my emphasis, but yea, it looks like those modern maps I posted have to take into account more recent gene flow.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by Truthcentric:
So I guess we should conclude that, in terms of skin tone alone, purely indigenous Egyptians would have most closely matched aboriginal rainforest-dwellers in places like the Congo or New Guinea? [/QB]
View the table I found above. Middle and Upper Egyptians, it looks yes, not though Lower.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
This is one of the reasons why the scientific establishment is so hard on Afrocentrism and pseudoscience in general. They have preconceived notions and motivations that underlies and motivates their line of questioning and everything they do.
How can you do science if you don't start from a clean slate and already announce yourself as an Afrocentrist? Most of the people who call themselves this have no formal training or real interest in science and it shows in their writings. These people clearly cannot get with the program and are not qualified to speak on matters or teach Africans their history. Many of them also lack integrity; they can't be trusted and whenever they make unusual claims you know you have to start fact-checking the crap out of that text.
They have no interest in science beyond what it can do for them and how it can be manipulated to help them boost their self-confidence. They're completely dumbfounded as to what science is about. Science describes nature and the fabric of reality, it's not about boosting your fragile confidence and what you want things to be. The concept of "black" and assumptions about what it means to be an indigenous African in Afrocentric writings or elsewhere have no correlates in nature and they even obscure what it means to be indigenous African.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
Predicted shading of skin colors for indigenous humans
Looking at this I am not fully wrong because indigenous Lower Egyptians would not be dark brown according to this. That was really my emphasis, but yea, it looks like those modern maps I posted have to take into account more recent gene flow. [/QB]
This is why you're better off investing equally in genetics. Physical anthropology will never offer this type of resolution and conclusiveness:
Our data confirm significant association of rs1426654 SNP with skin pigmentation, explaining about 27% of total phenotypic variation in the cohort studied.
and:
Sequencing 11.74 kb of SLC24A5 in 95 individuals worldwide reveals that the rs1426654-A alleles in South Asian and West Eurasian populations are monophyletic and occur on the background of a common haplotype that is characterized by low genetic diversity.
The low genetic diversity of the shared haplotype suggests that it has had little time to differentiate and that the groups who disseminated it to Europe and South Asia were close sister populations.
This allele is rampant in modern day North African groups, just like the aforementioned 374f allele. Much of what we discussed in this thread regarding skin pigmentation in North Africa and North India is pretty much a closed case and taken for granted in the past decade.
Posted by Truthcentric (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: The concept of "black" in Afrocentric writings or elsewhere has no correlate in nature.
To reiterate what I said over in lioness's thread, the central point of contention in this whole mess isn't so much describing how anyone in the past would have looked or even which adjectives you prefer for those descriptions, but in drawing or cutting certain mental associations between these ancient populations and modern-day racial taxa. There are the Afrocentrists you mention who insist on linking ancient Egyptians and Nubians to today's perception of Black racial identity, and then there are the Afrophobic racists who don't want those civilizations to have any affinity whatsoever with the "Negroids" they despise. It all boils down to telling people what kind of mental connections they should make between certain subjects.
Posted by CelticWarrioress (Member # 19701) on :
Dead, so you've become an Anti-White then? Even going as far as somewhat Nordicist denying S.Europeans as being part of the European family (IE White). Shame on you.
Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
quote:Originally posted by Truthcentric:
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: The concept of "black" in Afrocentric writings or elsewhere has no correlate in nature.
To reiterate what I said over in lioness's thread, the central point of contention in this whole mess isn't so much describing how anyone in the past would have looked or even which adjectives you prefer for those descriptions, but in drawing or cutting certain mental associations between these ancient populations and modern-day racial taxa. There are the Afrocentrists you mention who insist on linking ancient Egyptians and Nubians to today's perception of Black racial identity, and then there are the Afrophobic racists who don't want those civilizations to have any affinity whatsoever with the "Negroids" they despise. It all boils down to telling people what kind of mental connections they should make between certain subjects.
To me there are alternative options. If one just takes the facts as they are, one can conclude that they were indigenous Africans and that the degree of exclusive relatedness of equatorial Africans to aboriginal groups in the northeast African corner is measured in post-divergence genetic contacts in both directions and with intermediary groups, for which there is evidence of course. But there is no special affinity (i.e. affinity that is to the exclusion of OOA groups) to be detected in terms of pigmentation levels or phylogenetics.
Posted by Truthcentric (Member # 3735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swenet:
quote:Originally posted by Truthcentric:
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: The concept of "black" in Afrocentric writings or elsewhere has no correlate in nature.
To reiterate what I said over in lioness's thread, the central point of contention in this whole mess isn't so much describing how anyone in the past would have looked or even which adjectives you prefer for those descriptions, but in drawing or cutting certain mental associations between these ancient populations and modern-day racial taxa. There are the Afrocentrists you mention who insist on linking ancient Egyptians and Nubians to today's perception of Black racial identity, and then there are the Afrophobic racists who don't want those civilizations to have any affinity whatsoever with the "Negroids" they despise. It all boils down to telling people what kind of mental connections they should make between certain subjects.
To me there are alternative options. If one just takes the facts as they are, one can conclude that they were indigenous Africans and that the degree of exclusive relatedness of equatorial Africans to aboriginal groups in the northeast African corner is measured in post-divergence genetic contacts in both directions and with intermediary groups, for which there is evidence of course. But there is no special affinity (i.e. affinity that is to the exclusion of OOA groups) to be detected in terms of pigmentation levels or phylogenetics.
Since most self-proclaimed Afrocentric activists gleefully celebrate the Out-of-Africa model for modern human origins, and since the substructure you describe is an inevitable corollary of that, they shouldn't feel the need to make Egypto-Nubians purely of West/Central African affiliation. It's not like having one sibling clade leave Africa makes Northeast Africans themselves non-African, or even less pigmented.
Speaking of pigment, I wonder whether we'd even be having all these long and pointless arguments over "blackness" if the adjective was never used to describe anyone's skin tone. I remember that when I was a little kid, I was flabbergasted as to why African people were ever called "black" even though they all looked brown to me. No one in the world is black in color, so who was the idiot who called brown people black?
Posted by the lioness, (Member # 17353) on :
Most African Americans love being called Black and that is a matter of personal choice.
However, if African Americans wish to associate themselves with the ancient Egyptians it is more effective to do it on the basis of taking the position that the Egyptians were indigenous Africans.
Taking that position frees one from dealing with "black" a term when put into scientific context can't be measured and is open to interpretation, where nothing can be resolved
And once the issue of whether or not the ancient Egyptian were indigenous Africans is dealt with the terms "black" and "white" become the irrelevant stereotypes they are, each verifying the other's existence (Nevertheless it is difficult to avoid these terms in casual conversation and political power is attached to these terms)
_____________
So in then dealing with the issue of whether or not the ancient Egyptians were indigenous Africans or not Dead then pursues a division between Sub Saharans, Northern Africans and Khoisans
and there are differences between these groups
However, the proposal of those who are of African descent is that each of these groups have more in common with each other than to groups outside of Africa
Posted by LEDAMA (Member # 21677) on :
THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS PAINTED THEMSELVES DARK BROWN OR REDDISH BROWN LIKE MOST BANTUS AND KHOISAN. where do bantus live today,they migrated over 3000yrs ago to great lakes,west africa and southern africa from north-east africa there original home ANCIENT LIBYANS ACCORDING TO GREKO-ROMAN HISTORIANS
ANCIENT EGYPTIANS PAINTED THE SO-CALLED NUBIANS OR KUSHITES JET BLACK LIKE MOST NILOTES where do nilotes live?most nilotes live in sudan and south sudan their cradle land.ofcourse some live in uganda,kenya,tanzania and senegal.
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN PAINTED ASIATICS LIGHT BROWN OR YELLOW BROWN LIKE MOST ARABS,PERSIANS,SYRIANS.
THIS IS THE COLOUR OF WHITES including meditereneans before they were mixed with black moors and arabs
THE MIDDLE WOMAN REPRESENTS THE TRUE COLOUR OF ANCIENT EGYPTIANS guys this getting old,ofcourse ancient egyptians were indigenous black africans(bantus,benue-congo and southern nilotes)
Posted by LEDAMA (Member # 21677) on :
quote:Originally posted by Truthcentric:
quote:Originally posted by Morpheus:
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
If the paint faded it wouldn't originally be as dark as the man you posted...
Judging by the dark brown coloring on the seated scribe's legs it is likely that the original color before the skin faded was very similar to painted ancient Egyptian art that does not show much fading.
For the record, since Dead has emphasized the chromatic difference between Egyptians and Nubians as suggested by artistic portrayals and later Greco-Roman descriptions, let me put forward the suggestion (which I have said before elsewhere) that those artistic representations may not necessarily reflect the phenotypical reality.
If we look past the artistic conventions and examine the actual skeletal data, we consistently find that Egyptians and Nubians weren't actually that different. Remember Keita's finding that Kushites from Kerma---the most commonly depicted Nubians in New Kingdom-era art---were practically indistinguishable from Badarian/Naqada-era Egyptians with regards to cranial morphology. Factor in that both of these Northeast African populations would have walked around in brief loincloths day-to-day, and you wouldn't have been able to tell them apart so easily if you saw them in person.
On the other hand, Egyptian representations of foreigners were intended to set them apart from the Egyptians themselves. This wouldn't have been so hard for heavily clothed people in the Middle East, but the differences in attire for Egyptian and Nubian peoples were much subtler since they were both clad in loincloths. Giving Nubian representations a distinct skin color would have better set them apart from Egyptians. The difference would have had less to do with real physical differences than the needs of Egyptian artists.
As for how Kushites and other Nubians would have depicted themselves, Swenet has cited early to mid-Holocene rock art in the eastern Sahara as possibly representing the indigenous Egyptian phenotype. The thing is that, since most of those sites are actually located near the Sudanese border, it's possible their creators were ancestral to Kushites and other Nubians as well as Egyptians. And yet they still use dark reddish-brown paint to represent themselves instead of jet-black or extremely dark brown.
And then of course you have dynastic Kushite self-portrayals like this.
So maybe reddish-brown ocher, for whatever reason, was the preferred painting material for representing one's own tribe along the Nile.
because the kushite ta-seti rulers of napata were mostly bantu hyksos who migrated to kush after chased from egypt by amasis..meroe were also bantu ta-meru.
The real kushites;nehesu(luo;nuer& nuba),meshwesh jet black libyans(western dinka and serer) and wawat(karamoja and turkana)
jet black egyptians rmt=southern nilotes(tuthmoside line).. dark brown egyptians reth=bantus(rameside line)
Posted by LEDAMA (Member # 21677) on :
Incase anybody is wondering why i didn't include horners aka ethiopians,eritreans and somalians in my comparisons..i did it on purpose because horners have the same skin complexion,brown and dark brown similar to most bantus and khoisan..the only difference is that horners have thin noses,stream line bodies,straight wavy hair..but we have bantus like the tutsi who look like horners.
ALSO..most horners(afro-asiatic speakers) were still in south arabia untill the egyptian late periods when they migrated to horn africa via yemen route.There were no afro-asiatic speakers in ethiopia before 700BC.. most were still in southern arabia EXCEPT OMOTICS AND NILOTES e.g somalis(dedan),oromo(sheba),amhara(akkad/elam/sea people,tigray and tigrinya(himyarites/havillah),afar(ophir)..seba consisted of maa speakers masai and samburu..sabaeans migrated from the horn to the great lakes.
Posted by lamin (Member # 5777) on :
quote:Incase anybody is wondering why i didn't include horners aka ethiopians,eritreans and somalians in my comparisons..i did it on purpose because horners have the same skin complexion,brown and dark brown similar to most bantus and khoisan..the only difference is that horners have thin noses,stream line bodies,straight wavy hair..but we have bantus like the tutsi who look like horners.
Just wrong. I have seen so-called horners many times. Some even travel as far as West Africa. The vast majority have kink/frizzy hair and their facial features are quite common in West Africa. Same for body type. Many West Africans--males and females--are quite lean--and not due to lack of food.
O.K., here's a very international known horner. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, frequently on TV. Look at her carefully. She is nothing as you describe. Her hair is straightened and her facial features are generic African. The Western Left snubbed her when she went to the U.S., so the Right embraced here. She was even pushed into marriage by a Right-wing blubber-faced Scotsman. Just hope her children don't look like him.
quote:Originally posted by CelticWarrioress: Dead, so you've become an Anti-White then? Even going as far as somewhat Nordicist denying S.Europeans as being part of the European family (IE White). Shame on you.
They aren't white (pale pink). This was recognised in classical antiquity.
Posted by lamin (Member # 5777) on :
A question that the curious might ask is "why did the U.S Left snub Ali? The reason is that she rejects Islam which is a no no for the white Left in the U.S. No criticisms of Islam allowed.
And of course, most African American intellectuals are basically navel-gazers and have little or no interest in Africa or African affairs.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: So in then dealing with the issue of whether or not the ancient Egyptians were indigenous Africans or not Dead then pursues a division between Sub Saharans, Northern Africans and Khoisans
and there are differences between these groups
However, the proposal of those who are of African descent is that each of these groups have more in common with each other than to groups outside of Africa [/QB]
Relatively sharp genetic breaks don't exist at the continental level - they are only found within continents, usually always between local populations or small regions such as countries. Barbujani and Sokal (1990) for example found a strong correlation between linguistic and genetic boundaries in Europe:
"The association of rapid genetic change with these obstacles, and particularly with linguistic change in 31 of the 33 boundaries, strongly suggests that the genetic variation observed has little to do with adaptation to local environments."
What this means is that abrupt genetic change corresponds far more with cultural (e.g. language)boundaries, than geography (say a mountain, or sea). Once this is realized it is clear there are no clusters of populations, at least not "Africans" or "Europeans" in the broad Linnaean sense of meta-populations, races or subspecies.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:However, the proposal of those who are of African descent is that each of these groups have more in common with each other than to groups outside of Africa
This makes no sense since Egypt is north-east Africa. So ancient Egyptians would be intermediate to their southern and northern neighbours.
Their northern neighbours were East Mediterraneans.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
Excluding those local sharp genetic breaks within continents, this is overall how genetics plots globally and between continents:
"In contrast, when these researchers designed a study that sampled individuals “such that their geographic distribution around the world approximates the distribution of the human population as a whole and includes areas where Africa, Asia, and Europe meet,” the pattern of genetic variation they found was “one of gradients of allele frequencies that extend over the entire world, rather than discrete clusters” (Serre and Pääbo 2004:1679-1680" - Morning, A. (2014). "Does Genomics Challenge the Social Construction of Race?". Sociological Theory. 32(3): 189–207
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
quote:Originally posted by Morpheus:
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
This is total nonsense. So someone who trivially has dark brown skin, but has no close ancestral ties to Egypt (like African-Americans), can consider ancient Egypt part of their history?
Exactly what problem do you have with an African-American identifying with Ancient Egypt? If they want to do that, why should you care?
quote:And in regards to Baker vs. Rushton. I treat them separate. Baker was a biologist and although his racial views are outdated now and shown to be wrong, some of his stuff is still useful. Rushton was never a biologist. He was a psychologist and his theories about race were total pseudo-science from the start.
They were both racists who although coming from different fields came to similar conclusions about racial hierarchies in intelligence.
Both individuals promoted pseudoscience.
Yes, and you promote racialist pseudo-science like Zaharan and most on this forum. I am one of the few posters here now showing any consistency: if there are no races (continental genetic clusters) ancient Egyptians cannot be said to be "genetically and phenotypically African having more relation to other Africans than to non-Africans" (your quote).
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
??? How is this:
"more relation to other Africans than to non-Africans"
compatible with this:
"the pattern of genetic variation they found was “one of gradients of allele frequencies that extend over the entire world, rather than discrete clusters"
Posted by Doug M (Member # 7650) on :
LOL! These morons know full damn well that there is no one 'shade' of black in 'black African' yet they are allowed to spew their hypocrisy all over the planet. Europeans created the concept of black meaning any of the brown skinned people in Africa darker than Europeans. They then used this to make them separate and different for the purposes of white supremacy. But oh, they discovered Egypt and all of a sudden the great 'white' race all of a sudden includes shades of brown. What pathetic people. Knowing that at the same damn token one of those 'brown' Egyptians in America would be called black if they put on the same clothes as the American Negroes. This is hypocrisy at its finest.
According to them 'blacks' come from Africa, meaning dark skinned people of various shades, except of course in Egypt where 'dark' skin is not due to being from Africa. OK. So where did this 'dark' skin come from in Egypt that wasn't in Africa then? But at the same time these people are 'native' Nile Valley Africans but a different kind of 'black'.
Think about how stupid that sounds.
Posted by Morpheus (Member # 16203) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
Yes, and you promote racialist pseudo-science like Zaharan and most on this forum. I am one of the few posters here now showing any consistency: if there are no races (continental genetic clusters) ancient Egyptians cannot be said to be "genetically and phenotypically African having more relation to other Africans than to non-Africans" (your quote)
Race is defined as a subspecies not a continental genetic cluster. I certainly do not subscribe to any form of racialism (races differing in mental characteristics) nor do I believe that biological races exist. Population affinity is another matter. Some groups of people are more genetically related to each other than they are to other populations including some continental populations vs. others.
There is nothing wrong with using geographic labels to designate people. Major continental terms are just fine, and sub-regional refinements such as Western European, Eastern African, Southeast Asian, and so forth carry no unintentional baggage. In contrast, terms such as "Negroid," "Caucasoid," and "Mongoloid" create more problems than they solve. Those very terms reflect a mix of narrow regional, specific ethnic, and descriptive physical components with an assumption that such separate dimensions have some kind of common tie. Biologically, such terms are worse than useless. Their continued use, then, is in social situations where people think they have some meaning.
Source: Does Race Exist? An Antagonist's perspective by C Loring Brace
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
"Some groups of people are more genetically related to each other than they are to other populations."
Yes, but only as an average:
"Among the first genomes completely typed were those of James Watson and Craig Venter, two U.S. geneticists of European origin; they share more alleles with Seong-Jin Kim, a Korean scientist (1,824,482 and 1,736,340, respectively) than with each other (1,715,851). On average, nearby populations tend to resemble each other more than distant ones, but individual members of the same population, Watson and Venter in this case, can be very different." (Barbujani & Pigliucci, 2013)
And "nearby populations tend to resemble each other more than distant ones" = ancient Egyptians fall intermediate between (modern) Horners/East Africans and Southern Europeans. That's what the skeletal data overall shows.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
"Race is defined as a subspecies not a continental genetic cluster."
Where have you been all these years? "race = continental genetic cluster" is the new racialism:
"A new racial naturalist in the biological race debate is a person who uses genetic clusters of human populations to argue that humans can be divided into biological races according to a concept of race in use among professional biologists." - Spencer, Q. (2014). "The unnatural racial naturalism". Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. 46: 38-43
I am surprised you don't realize this when you've been debating Mikemikev since like 2011.
Posted by Morpheus (Member # 16203) on :
I'm familiar with how racialists define race most usually blending the population and typological model but in traditional anthropology race is defined as a subspecies.
We argue that the correct use of the term 'race' is the most current taxonomic one, because it has been formalized. 'Race' gains its force from its natural science root. The term denotes 'natural' distinctions and connotes differences not susceptible to change Posted by Swenet (Member # 17303) on :
quote:Originally posted by Truthcentric: Since most self-proclaimed Afrocentric activists gleefully celebrate the Out-of-Africa model for modern human origins[/qb]
See, that's the thing. I don't think most of them do. They see OOA as useful when it restores the importance of the continent in prehistory, but OOA becomes inconvenient to their agenda when it complicates the narrative.
It's not comforting when you have to face the reality that you don't have a monopoly on what you see as part of your identity, much like Nordicists having to deal with the reality that light skin came from elsewhere, that they're not an archetypal, but a hybrid "race" and that blondism isn't unique to them.
Posted by Dead (Member # 21978) on :
Froment (1992, 1994) has ancient Egyptians in craniometry equidistant between South Europeans and Horners, however if you look at the other data, they are closer to Horners (or other Sub-Saharan African populations, e.g. brachial index), but in others, closer to Europeans (e.g. tooth size). An ingenious solution by Krantz (1980) having re-read his work, would be to divide those neutral or non-adaptive traits to "climatic traits", and offer a dual scheme of biological classification: "descent groups" and "climatic races" (ecotypes). So ancient Egyptians could be regarded as equidistant between Horners and South Europeans in neutral traits, as a descent group, but 'Saharans', showing closer eco-geographical selected trait variation to Sub-Saharan or tropical Africans (especially in Upper Egypt).
Posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead: I missed this:
quote:I'm not trying to say that East African are the same as West Africans or cluster/pool together in any racialist sort of way, I'm only saying that dark-brown skinned people however you want to classify or group them have a history and Ancient Egyptian civilization is part of that history.
This is total nonsense. So someone who trivially has dark brown skin, but has no close ancestral ties to Egypt (like African-Americans), can consider ancient Egypt part of their history?
And in regards to Baker vs. Rushton. I treat them separate. Baker was a biologist and although his racial views are outdated now and shown to be wrong, some of his stuff is still useful. Rushton was never a biologist. He was a psychologist and his theories about race were total pseudo-science from the start.
You do have a point there, same as it counts for ancient Greece/ Rome, connecting it to white skin. Just as creasy, but it happens anyway. I have always wondered about this double standard.
Posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
Froment (1992, 1994) has ancient Egyptians in craniometry equidistant between South Europeans and Horners, however if you look at the other data, they are closer to Horners (or other Sub-Saharan African populations, e.g. brachial index), but in others, closer to Europeans (e.g. tooth size). An ingenious solution by Krantz (1980) having re-read his work, would be to divide those neutral or non-adaptive traits to "climatic traits", and offer a dual scheme of biological classification: "descent groups" and "climatic races" (ecotypes). So ancient Egyptians could be regarded as equidistant between Horners and South Europeans in neutral traits, as a descent group, but 'Saharans', showing closer eco-geographical selected trait variation to Sub-Saharan or tropical Africans (especially in Upper Egypt).
That's odd,
quote: This is one of the most profound places, as a building block for ancient Egypt.
"Ancient finds in the Western Desert of Egypt at Gebel Ramlah circa 5,000 BC show culture closely linked with indigenous tropical Africans of both the Saharan and sub-Saharan regions, not Europe or the Middle East. Dental studies put the inhabitants of Gebel Ramlah, closest to indigenous tropical African populations.
"During three seasons of research (in 2000, 2001 and 2003) carried out by the Combined Prehistoric Expedition at Gebel Ramlah in the southern part of the Egyptian Western Desert, three separate Final Neolithic cemeteries were discovered and excavated. Skeletal remains of 67 individuals, comprising both primary and secondary interments, were recovered from 32 discrete burial pits. Numerous grave goods were found, including lithics, pottery and ground stone objects, as well as items of personal adornment, pigments, shells and sheets of mica. Imports from distant areas prove far-reaching contacts.
Analysis of the finds sheds important light on the burial rituals and social conditions of the Final Neolithic cattle keepers inhabiting Ramlah Playa. This community, dated to the mid-fifth millennium B.C. (calibrated), was composed of a phenotypically diverse population derived from both North and sub-Saharan Africa. There were no indications of social differentiation. The deteriorating climatic conditions probably forced these people to migrate toward the Nile Valley where they undoubtedly contributed to the birth of ancient Egyptian civilization."
-- Burial practices of the Final Neolithic pastoralists at Gebel Ramlah, Western Desert of Egypt
Michal Kobusiewicz, Jacek Kabacinski, Romuald Schild, Joel D. Irish and Fred Wendorf
British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan 13 (2009): 147–74
quote: "Of special interest are finds that may testify to the beliefs of the population discussed here. Namely, in two cases from cemetery E-01-2, skulls were found that indicated tooth replacement in antiquity. In both cases, the teeth were apparently collected and repositioned by Neolithic people after being disturbed by later burials. In the first case, a young female’s maxillary anterior alveoli contained a combination of mandibular and misplaced maxillary teeth (Irish et al. 2005). In the second case, another young female’s maxilla and mandible contained two incorrectly placed teeth. Also in the same cemetery, four bracelets were found encircling a right humerus (Fig. 38), which had been moved from its original anatomical position during the deposition of a later burial. However, the bracelets were maintained in place by the insertion of the individual’s own right ulna and radius that had been fractured post-mortem."
--Michał Kobusiewicz, Jacek Kabaciński, Romuald Schild, Joel D. Irish and Fred Wendorf
Burial practices of the Final Neolithic pastoralists at Gebel Ramlah, Western Desert of Egypt
quote:Originally posted by Dead: You posting crap.
Egypt is on the same latitude as Pakistan, North India, Nepal and south China. None of the native ethnic groups in these areas have ever been considered/described as 'black', so why should Egyptians?
The groups you've mentioned in your example are called Asians.
Whereas Egypt is Northeast Africa, i.e. Africans. The modern definition of African is synonymous to black.
Posted by Doug M (Member # 7650) on :
quote:Originally posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor:
quote:Originally posted by Dead: I missed this:
quote:I'm not trying to say that East African are the same as West Africans or cluster/pool together in any racialist sort of way, I'm only saying that dark-brown skinned people however you want to classify or group them have a history and Ancient Egyptian civilization is part of that history.
This is total nonsense. So someone who trivially has dark brown skin, but has no close ancestral ties to Egypt (like African-Americans), can consider ancient Egypt part of their history?
And in regards to Baker vs. Rushton. I treat them separate. Baker was a biologist and although his racial views are outdated now and shown to be wrong, some of his stuff is still useful. Rushton was never a biologist. He was a psychologist and his theories about race were total pseudo-science from the start.
You do have a point there, same as it counts for ancient Greece/ Rome, connecting it to white skin. Just as creasy, but it happens anyway. I have always wondered about this double standard.
Here is the difference. African Americans are Africans and Africans are black, so in that sense, the brown skin of African Americans connects them to Africa as much as the brown skin of the Egyptians. And that is what white folks have a problem with. They don't want black people anywhere to have pride in what black people can do and Egypt is just one example where it is undeniable that black people built it. But the whites have no problem twisting logic and history claiming that these black people were more closer to THEM than to African Americans, which is false. This isn't even an issue of cultural ties, West Africa versus East Africa or anything else. It all boils down to propaganda against black people. Period. White people love Greece because Greece was built by white folks and that is all that counts. Whether they were closely tied to North West Europe or not is irrelevant. It is propaganda that allows them to stand on the idea of white intellectual and cultural superiority and why you must bow down and accept it as non whites. And they need to claim ancient Egypt for the same reasons, because they know having ancient Egypt identified as black inspires pride and confidence in black people word wide to stand against them.
Posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by Doug M:
quote:Originally posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor:
quote:Originally posted by Dead: I missed this:
quote:I'm not trying to say that East African are the same as West Africans or cluster/pool together in any racialist sort of way, I'm only saying that dark-brown skinned people however you want to classify or group them have a history and Ancient Egyptian civilization is part of that history.
This is total nonsense. So someone who trivially has dark brown skin, but has no close ancestral ties to Egypt (like African-Americans), can consider ancient Egypt part of their history?
And in regards to Baker vs. Rushton. I treat them separate. Baker was a biologist and although his racial views are outdated now and shown to be wrong, some of his stuff is still useful. Rushton was never a biologist. He was a psychologist and his theories about race were total pseudo-science from the start.
You do have a point there, same as it counts for ancient Greece/ Rome, connecting it to white skin. Just as creasy, but it happens anyway. I have always wondered about this double standard.
Here is the difference. African Americans are Africans and Africans are black, so in that sense, the brown skin of African Americans connects them to Africa as much as the brown skin of the Egyptians. And that is what white folks have a problem with. They don't want black people anywhere to have pride in what black people can do and Egypt is just one example where it is undeniable that black people built it. But the whites have no problem twisting logic and history claiming that these black people were more closer to THEM than to African Americans, which is false. This isn't even an issue of cultural ties, West Africa versus East Africa or anything else. It all boils down to propaganda against black people. Period. White people love Greece because Greece was built by white folks and that is all that counts. Whether they were closely tied to North West Europe or not is irrelevant. It is propaganda that allows them to stand on the idea of white intellectual and cultural superiority and why you must bow down and accept it as non whites. And they need to claim ancient Egypt for the same reasons, because they know having ancient Egypt identified as black inspires pride and confidence in black people word wide to stand against them.
Yes, I have noticed this fear by whites. And nowhere else do we see Greek temples in the rest of Europe during the same time span.
quote: Iwo Eleru's place among Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene populations of North and East Africa
LOL @ this supposed African American woman. Which we all know is pure B.S. and bigotry.
Posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: Why would that guy fall in the brown zone when he's not brown? He has the same level of pigmentation as the people who fall under the ecological regime that the map assigns to Turkey, Greece and Iberia. Does he look brown to you?
"As to the physical characteristics of the ancient Egyptians, both iconographie and written evidence differentiated between the physical traits of Egyptians and the populations south of Egypt. The art of ancient Egypt frequently painted Egyptian men as reddish brown, women as yellow, and people to the south as black. Ancient Egyptians, like their modern descendants, varied in complexion from a light Mediterranean type, to a light brown in Middle Egypt, to a darker brown in southern Egypt. (Snowden, 1997)
I would only substitute "light Mediterranean type" with "light brown" and "light brown in Middle Egypt" with "moderate brown". Yurco (1989) basically agrees. The "Mediterranean type", olive skin would perhaps be found though on the northern coast in places like Alexandria.
And I regard that man to be light brown.
Also this is a pretty good write up on the movie controversy:>
"There are hundreds such documents – even thousands. Just imagine a stack of such texts from ancient Rome or Athens – the whole world would be all over it! A similar project was undertaken for the documents found on the island of Elephantine in southernmost Egypt (B. Porten ed., The Elephantine Papyri in English, 1996), so why not for Alexandria on the other, Mediterranean, end?"
Posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
quote:Originally posted by Morpheus:
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
If the average ancient Egyptian was that dark the Great Hymn to Aten would not have bothered to distinguish the (darker) Nubian colour. The Nubians were black, not Egyptians.
I think that the Ancient Egyptian artwork is far more reliable an indicator of their actual skin color than a translation of the Hymn to Aten (which doesn't say anything about Nubian skin color) or the view points of a Classicist like Frank Snowden. The Ancient Egyptians consistently showed themselves to be darker than Asiatics and slightly lighter than Nubians as well as much darker than pale-skinned Libyans.
According to Keita if you want scientific evidence of the Ancient Egyptians' skin color you need to do a histological analysis of mummy skin.
One study did just that. Here is their result:
Skin sections showed particularly good tissue preservation, although cellular outlines were never distinct. Although much of the epidermis had already separated from the dermis, the remaining epidermis often was preserved well (Fig. 1). The basal epithelial cells were packed with melanin as expected for specimens of Negroid origin.
Source: Determination of optimal rehydration, fixation and staining methods for histological and immunohistochemical analysis of mummified soft tissues Biotechnic & Histochemistry 2005, 80(1): 7-13
All that tells us is that ancient Egyptians were not leukoderms which no one has ever claimed.
"Moving on to softer tissues than bone, one histological study on Egyptian mummies (Mekota and Vermehren 2005) noted in passing that the skin cells were packed with melanin (the pigment that determines human skin color) as expected for people “of Negroid [African] origin”, although they neither specified the exact density nor went into depth." - African Origin of the Ancient Egyptians (this is an essay Truthcentric wrote which I think he submitted to his university as a course module)
"Packed with melanin" is rather ambiguous. People at subtropical latitude have considerable levels of melanin, but are not dark brown/black. [/QB]
Well the place where these mummies were found is called the Valley of the Kings, this is in Upper Egypt/ Southern Egypt. By now we know what Southern Egyptians look like. Therefore we can use simple logic.
Posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by CelticWarrioress: Dead, so you've become an Anti-White then? Even going as far as somewhat Nordicist denying S.Europeans as being part of the European family (IE White). Shame on you.
There is a term, called being objective. You also have mediate and natural.
Posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by kdolo: Vile Degenerates
Not just that, but it's also amusingand pathetic at the same time.
Posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,:
So you are saying any major Pharoah before the late period of whom there are paintings and Will Smith, are not dark enough to be considered black in skin tone?
Mention any major pharoah before the late period of whom there are paintings and Hollywood has consistantly portrayed them as much lighter than the paintings. That is racist
.
Excluding this debate about skin, why should Will Smith (or other male African-Americans) take those movie roles when their craniofacial features and hair texture poorly match the ancient Egyptians? Is that not then racism by the same standards?
If we go along with Egyptians = black, then only Somalis or some other Horner populations should take the roles, not African-Americans or West/Central Africans. [/QB]
West Africa is a diverse place when it comes to ethnography. There are certainly ethnic groups that fit the ancient Egyptian profile. Certainly considering Central Saharans were the progenitors for the Nile Valley Culture. All these ethnic groups have been in place for the last 5-10Kya, at least.
Posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: According to Dead. there's actually no black people posting in this thread or elsewhere on Egyptsearch.
Either you resemble a piece of chacoal or you don't /close thared
Google football teams by country.
Nigerian:
Congo:
Ethiopian:
Eritrean:
These Sub-Saharan African populations are all shades of dark brown (black). North Africans however are not and are moderate - light brown.
Egypt:
Why is this so complicated?
These countries have a history, of course.
And these countries also have ethnogroupings. This is not going to be reflexed in a soccer team.
quote:Originally posted by lamin: The DEAD fool does not want to acknowledge that after Egypt fell and after 3,000 years of an impressive civilisation the place was invaded by myriad ruffians and rapists from West Asia and then Greece and then Rome.
The gene pool was eventually rubbished and polluted by savage degenerates from West Asia and Turkey in the form of Islamic invaders. That's what that football photo of occupied Egypt shows--a place rotting and infected under the colonial language of Arabic and its barbaric camel, goat and tent religion of Islam.
And that's Egypt today: weak in sports and weak in intellect. Great Egypt has become a compost pit these days.
Posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
quote:Originally posted by Morpheus:
quote:Originally posted by Dead:
Do you just ignore all these? How "objective" of you.
What do they look like to you? To me they look like statues with faded paint and facial features that easily fit within East African variation.
[...]
We know the paint is faded because in earlier pictures you can see remnants of the dark brown paint which have since faded or been wiped off.
Take note of what Keita has to say about this evidence:
Art objects are not generally used by biological anthropologists. They are suspect as data and their interpretation highly dependent on stereotyped thinking. However, because art has often been used to comment on the physiognomies of ancient Egyptians, a few remarks are in order. A review of literature and the sculpture indicates characteristics that also can be found in the Horn of (East) Africa (see, e.g., Petrie 1939; Drake 1987; Keita 1993). Old and Middle Kingdom statuary shows a range of characteristics; many, if not most, individuals depicted in the art have variations on the narrow-nosed, narrow-faced morphology also seen in various East Africans. This East African anatomy, once seen as being the result of a mixture of different "races," is better understood as being part of the range of indigenous African variation.
Source: The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians
quote: Almost everyone has seen this image of the Seated Scribe. Located on the upper floor of the Department of Egyptian Antiquities, this is the most famous of unknown figures. We know nothing about the person portrayed: neither his name, nor title, nor even the exact period during which he lived. Nevertheless, this statue never fails to impress visitors discovering it for the first time.
A specific posture
The Louvre's scribe, known as the "Seated Scribe", is indeed sitting cross-legged, his right leg crossed in front of his left. The white kilt, stretched over his knees, serves as a support. He is holding a partially rolled papyrus scroll in his left hand. His right hand must have held a brush, now missing. The most striking aspect of this sculpture is the face, particularly the elaborately inlaid eyes: they consist of a piece of red-veined white magnesite, in which a piece of slightly truncated rock crystal was placed. The front part of the crystal was carefully polished. The back side was covered with a layer of organic material, creating the color of the iris and also probably serving as an adhesive. The entire eye was then held in the socket by two large copper clips welded on the back. A line of black paint defines the eyebrows. The hands, fingers, and fingernails are sculpted with a remarkable delicacy. His chest is broad and the nipples are marked by two wooden dowels. The statue was cleaned in 1998, although the process merely reduced the wax overpainting. This restoration brought out the well-conserved ancient polychromy.
An unknown figure
The semicircular base on which the figure sits must have originally fit into a larger base that carried his name and titles, such as the base for the statue of Prince Setka, exhibited in room 22 of the Louvre. This base is missing, and the context of the discovery does not provide any additional information. According to the archeologist Auguste Mariette, who found the work, the statue of the scribe was apparently discovered in Saqqara on 19 November 1850, to the north of the Serapeum's line of sphinxes. But the precise location is not known; unfortunately, the documents concerning these excavations were published posthumously, the excavation journals had been lost, and the archives were scattered between France and Egypt. Furthermore, the site had been pillaged and ransacked, and no information concerning the figure's identity could be provided. Some historians have tried to link it to one of the owners of the statues discovered at the same time. The most convincing of these associates the scribe to Pehernefer. Certain stylistic criteria, such as the thin lips, which was unusual, the form of the torso, and the broad chest could support this theory. The statue of Pehernefer dates from the 4th Dynasty. This is an additional argument in favor of an earlier dating for this statue, which has sometimes been dated to the 6th Dynasty. Another argument supporting this date is that "writing" scribes were mostly created in the 4th and early 5th Dynasties; after this period, most scribes were portrayed in "reading" poses.
A scribe at work
The scribe is portrayed at work, which is unusual in Egyptian statuary. Although no king was ever portrayed in this pose, it seems that it was originally used for members of the royal family, such as the king's sons or grandsons, as was the case for the sons of Didufri (4th Dynasty), who were represented in this position.
Bibliography
Bouquillon Anne, "La couleur et les pigments", in Techne 4, 1996, p. 55, fig. 6.
Catalogue, L'Art égyptien au temps des pyramides, Paris, 1999, pp. 383-384.
Ziegler Christiane, Le Scribe "accroupi", collection solo (21), Paris, 2002.
Ziegler Christiane, Musée du Louvre, Département des Antiquités égyptiennes, Les Statues égyptiennes de l'Ancien Empire, Paris 1997, n 58, pp. 204-208.
According to the website, march of the titans: this scribe as a white man.
He too is unknown, or at least I have not found any vilid source telling about him.
Posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
Then we have Egyptian scribe by name of Mitri, who is a white male too, according to the website march of the titans.
Posted by Troll Patrol # Ish Gebor (Member # 18264) on :
Next we have: Scribe Statue of Amunhotep, Son of Nebiry.
The Egyptians valued learning and literacy above all other skills, including physical strength and military prowess. Egyptian men who mastered reading and writing were frequently represented as scribes: sitting cross-legged with inscribed papyrus rolls in their laps. Some examples, such as this one, show the subject with his head gently inclined as if reading the papyrus.
So-called scribe statues were first produced in Dynasty 4 (circa 2625–2500 B.C.). Originally only princes were permitted to appear in this form, but as access to schooling increased over time, scribe statues became relatively common. The subject of this sculpture, a man named Amunhotep, held several priestly and administrative offices.
Medium: Limestone
Place Made: Thebes, Egypt Dates: ca. 1426-1400 B.C.E. Dynasty: XVIII Dynasty Period: New Kingdom Dimensions: 26 x 13 3/16 x 14 13/16 in. (66 x 33.5 x 37.6 cm) (show scale)
Collections:Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art Museum Location: This item is on view in Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity, Egyptian Orientation Gallery, 3rd Floor
Exhibitions:
Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity (On view since April 12, 2003) Accession Number: 37.29E
Credit Line: Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund Rights Statement: Creative Commons-BY
Caption: Scribe Statue of Amunhotep, Son of Nebiry, ca. 1426-1400 B.C.E. Limestone, 26 x 13 3/16 x 14 13/16 in. (66 x 33.5 x 37.6 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.29E. Creative Commons-BY
Image: front, 37.29E_front_SL1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph
Catalogue Description: Pale cream-colored limestone squatting sread more...
quote:Seated Statuette of Si-Hathor This statuette combines the seated image of the deceased with the base where the inscription would normally be carved. Here, the artist carved the offering prayer directly onto Si-Hathor’s garment, a solution that saved on the amount of stone to be purchased.
Medium: Limestone, painted Reportedly From: Thebes, Egypt Dates: ca. 1818-1630 B.C.E. Dynasty: late XII Dynasty-early XIII Dynasty Period: Middle Kingdom
Dimensions: 10 1/4 x 6 x 7 5/8 in. (26 x 15.2 x 19.4 cm) (show scale)
Collections:Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art Museum Location: This item is on view in Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity, Old Kingdom to 18th Dynasty, Egyptian Galleries, 3rd Floor
Exhibitions:
To Live Forever: Art and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt (February 12, 2010 through May 2, 2010) Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity (On view since April 12, 2003) Accession Number: 37.97E Credit Line: Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund Rights Statement: Creative Commons-BY Caption: Seated Statuette of Si-Hathor, ca. 1818-1630 B.C.E. Limestone, painted, 10 1/4 x 6 x 7 5/8 in. (26 x 15.2 x 19.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.97E. Creative Commons-BY
Image: front, 37.97E_front_PS2.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2006
Catalogue Description: Limestone statue of a man named Sa-Hathor represented squatting, on a round-backed base. He wears a long skirt which envelops his legs. This statue has been described as a “scribe” statue. On the portion of the skirt covering the lap and between the two hands which rest palms down on the thighs is an inscription. The figure wears a heavy wig once painted black. Black also are the base and the details of the eyes; the skin is reddish brown; the garment is white. Within the plain-incised signs of the inscription are the remains of blue frit inlays. The eyebrows are modelled and not in relief; the eyebrows are also somewhat arched, and the eyes are heavily outlined in black. The nipples are executed in relief. The head is titled slightly upwards. Inscription on Skirt: Ns’w di htp Skr-Ws;r ntr ‘; nb ;bdw di.f prt-hrw t hnkt ihw ;pdw n k; n im;hy S;-Hthr iri n ‘nhw msi n ddt-nbw Condition: Base chipped on right side; superficial chips from body and hands. Paint well-preserved on entire body except top of wig and left arm. Record Completeness: Best (92%)
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