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Ancient Egyptian DNA from 1300BC to 426 AD
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Oshun: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Cass/: [qb] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Oshun: Asiatics didn't have to pour in by the second millennium. Research suggests that the Delta area and Faiyum doubled in size. Rather than "mass migration" it's possible that the North was always more diffused compared to southerners who had more affinity to Nubians, [b]or that small-scale migration over the course of thousands of years gradually changed the North[/b].[/QUOTE]That argument only works if you're talking about very different population-sizes. I don't see any evidence this was the case for north vs. south ancient Egypt. From Butzer’s (1976) estimates, he has pre-dynastic Egyptians at 866,000; 1,614,000 during Old Kingdom, 1,966,000 for Middle Kingdom and up to 3,000,000 for New Kingdom. [/qb][/QUOTE]Now this is a bit ironic...You're looking at the estimated numbers of Egypt in it's entirety and not with respect to region. First, the north and south were not equals with respect state formation and both had more (or less) physical access to different groups of people. The idea is that since predynastic times Northern Egyptians could've interacted more with the Levant, and Southern Egyptians probably had more contact with Nubia which is generally considered to be closest to biologically and culturally to predynastic Egypt. This would in turn create a spectrum of related people within Egypt that varied locally regarding affinities. Faiyum (Middle Egypt) and the Delta had far fewer people and many of [b]those[/b] people were usurped and absorbed by Southern Egypt. Faiyum only had less than 10,000 people and then exploded in number to 61,000 in 1,800 BC. Obviously the Delta as a whole fares better, but it was still originally nowhere near the size of the valley. [QUOTE] Memphis is pretty far north in Middle Egypt, not that far from the Delta, estimates vary- [quote][b]According to T. Chandler, Memphis had some 30,000 inhabitants and was by far the largest settlement worldwide from the time of its foundation until around 2250 BCE and from 1557 to 1400 BCE.[/b][/QUOTE]But this doesn't really change the general population of the North being much more sparse. Unless Memphis held an amount of people comparable to the rest of the valley then Memphis doesn't change the weaker numbers we generally would see in the Delta or at Faiyum. Adding the extra 22k from Memphis into the delta with the Faiyum population and 83% still live elsewhere. Though the point isn't even who had more, but was is plausible for such population figures to eventually diffuse as they expanded. And THEN that's not an end-all either (more on that later). Regardless of number, as long as migration and intermarriage accounts for a certain percentage of births within the country, it will eventually change the population. It just becomes easier to imagine the fewer people we're workubg with. 1% intermarriage per generation will slowly diffuse a population over the course of several thousand years. Is it impossible to imagine a predynastic (4k BC) Egypt with only 80,000 people in the Delta and Faiyum possibly having 3-5% or so of their children from people living in the Levant per generation? Is it impossible to imagine that 3-5% (2,400- 4,000 stereotypical "Levanites" void of "African" lineages) could've changed the character of northern Egypt during the predynastic? And even if we were to suppose mixing with the people next to them only started in the early dynastic instead of the pre dynastic, that would've been meant that perhaps 11,000 people from the Levant would've needed to create families in Egypt [b]per generation[/b]. Something like this couldn't have happened over the course of 2-4 thousand years despite evidence of geneflow in both directions? Given it's placement to the Levant, and how few numbers they'd have needed to pull if off, I believe it could have happened. I also believe the same could've happened between southern Egypt and "Nubia." We could ponder this further, but I imagine it's largely moot to do so unless you're simply interested in understanding for knowledge's sake. The people whose culture was chiefly responsible for hegemony and unification were more southern. What the north was, is usually regarded as more irrelevant. "African Egypt" hypothesizers are not going to really let go of southern Egypt's origins, no matter how large a population lived in the North. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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