posted
There are so many DNA studies out there that they are hard to keep track of. I've tried looking at older threads but cannot seem to find a reliable one that addresses the origins of the Ancient Egyptians. Do any of you have preferred studies that you point to when discussing the origins of the Ancient Egyptians based on DNA evidence?
Quotes and charts are welcome.
ausar Member # 1797
posted
Here is a study but DNA sources in regards to ancient Egypt are primarily on modern Egyptians and Northern Africans.
Biological Anthropology and the Study of Ancient Egypt, ed. W. Vivian Davies and Roxie Walker, (London: British Museum Press,1993),87-88
Morpheus Member # 16203
posted
quote:Originally posted by ausar: Here is a study but DNA sources in regards to ancient Egypt are primarily on modern Egyptians and Northern Africans.
Biological Anthropology and the Study of Ancient Egypt, ed. W. Vivian Davies and Roxie Walker, (London: British Museum Press,1993),87-88
Thanks, Ausar
I found a link for it on Amazon:
This publication attempts to convey the huge potential of bio-anthropology in the study of ancient civilizations. It is based on the papers presented at an international colloquium in 1990 by over 20 experts in the field. The papers cover a wide range of topics, some of which involve completely new research areas, such as: Egyptian medicine and the evidence for the existence of certain diseases in antiquity; the analyses of skeletal populations from different parts of the Nile Valley, the extraction of DNA from mummified tissue and from bone; the results of various archaeobotanical and archaeozoological field projects. W. Vivian Davies is the author of "Egyptian Hieroglyphs", and Volume VII of the "Catalogue of Egyptian Antiquities in the British Museum".
What about studies on modern Egyptians? What can we learn from those? I'm still learning about DNA research so the findings aren't all that clear to me. I've read a couple of Keita's studies posted in the History in Africa journal but I couldn't find many quotes that directly address the origins of the Ancient Egyptians.
Where's a study posted by Sundjata in another thread:
"The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diversity of 58 individuals from Upper Egypt, more than half (34 individuals) from Gurna, whose population has an ancient cultural history, were studied by sequencing the control-region and screening diagnostic RFLP markers. This sedentary population presented similarities to the Ethiopian population by the L1 and L2 macrohaplogroup frequency (20.6%), by the West Eurasian component (defined by haplogroups H to K and T to X) and particularly by a high frequency (17.6%) of haplogroup M1. We statistically and phylogenetically analysed and compared the Gurna population with other Egyptian, Near East and sub-Saharan Africa populations; AMOVA and Minimum Spanning Network analysis showed that the Gurna population was not isolated from neighbouring populations. Our results suggest that the Gurna population has conserved the trace of an ancestral genetic structure from an ancestral East African population, characterized by a high M1 haplogroup frequency. The current structure of the Egyptian population may be the result of further influence of neighbouring populations on this ancestral population."
Though like ausar says, studies studying directly the DNA material/content of ancient Egyptians are rare. Most who do explore it use models based on multi-disciplinary data. I know in another study cited on The Explorer's blog references possible sickle cell genes common to west Africa found in ancient Egyptian remains, and other studies cited by Keita found ABO blood frequencies similar to the Haratin. (See: Mahmoud, L. et. al, Human blood groups in Dakhlaya. Egypt. Annuals of Human Biology. 14(6):487-493. 1987)..
Since reliable results from direct DNA extraction are elusive, most use models and Keita is so widely respected because he has the most sound models and is among the few who address this question directly using DNA with out any pre-conceived notions or biased racial schema.
See Keita and Boyce (2005) for a good example of good methodology using DNA Y-chromosome data.
Also see: ---Bengtson, John D. (ed.), In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory: Essays in the four fields of anthropology. 2008. xxiv, 476 pp. (pp. 3–16)
I have the ebook to the above citation if you need it, though part of it is on google books. Paabo and A. Di Rienzo also supposedly found "sub-Saharan" DNA signatures in AE remains as part of the research compilation cited by ausar.
posted