Talk:Genetic history of Egypt

Inclusion Of The Study By DNA Tribes

This is the best evidence - it is from the Valley Of The Kings, and it is the most detailed. If anyone can spell out why it should not be included, feel free. Under the title: Genetic studies on ancient Egyptians, should be included:

2012 DNA Tribes

In 2012, DNA Tribes found that the dna of the 2nd millennium BC Amarna Dynasty is most like people today living in the African Great Lakes region and Southern Africa, who are mainly Eastern Bantu and descended from the 2nd Bantu Expansion. This study includes the dna of Tutankhamun, Ramses III, Amenhotep III, Thuya, Yuya, and possibly Pentawer and Tiye. In their Conclusion, DNA Tribes state: "Results indicated the autosomal STR profiles of the Amarna period mummies were most frequent in modern populations in several parts of Africa."

The same results were found for Ramses III and Unknown Man E, possibly Pentawer.

DNA Tribes: "A previous issue of DNA Tribes Digest identified African related ancestry for King Tut and other royal mummies from the Amarna Period.1 In this issue, results indicate that the later pharaoh Ramesses III also inherited alleles that are most frequent in present day populations of Sub-Saharan Africa. This provides additional, independent evidence of Sub-Saharan African ancestry (possibly among several ancestral components) for pharaonic families of ancient Egypt."

In another study, DNA Tribes found that Neolithic dna ancestral to current Sub-Saharan Africans was found in the Arabian Peninsula. “In the Arabian Peninsula, EEF farmers mixed with ancestral Sub-Saharan Africans related to modern Nigerian, Gambian, and Botswanan populations.”

I included it before, however it was removed on unclear grounds. 2001:1C00:1E20:D900:D108:E292:4ECE:682B (talk) 21:20, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

"Unclear grounds"? WP:reliable sources is a crystal-clear requirement for inclusion. DNA Tribes articles are not "studies" on par with peer-reviewed scholarly publications that are needed for this topic. –Austronesier (talk) 21:32, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Let me quote the Wikipedia Reliable Sources page:

'Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published sources, making sure that all majority and significant minority views that have appeared in those sources are covered (see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view). If no reliable sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it."

Need I add, that there is an inclusion in this Wikipedia article from an unpublished source from Schuenemann and Urban?

"Later findings

"A unpublished, follow-up study by Schuenemann & Urban et al. (2021) was carried out"

Why is the unpublished work of Schuenemann not excluded from being mentioned on this page, if it's in blatant violation of Wikipedia's Reliable Sources rule? 2001:1C00:1E20:D900:D4A3:77AC:C23A:FD93 (talk) 09:53, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

DNA Tribes is: reliable - their results were repeated by Keita, Anselin et al - published and I'm sure all views within it were taken into account. In fact there is no dispute within the paper on what is in it. It is a DNA testing company based in Arlington, VA. This is what they found. This is also what, with less detail, SOY Keita, Alain Anselin et al found.

If you can spell out why the DNA Tribes study does not comply with the WP:reliable sources rule, then you should do so. Keita:

"data suggest main sub-Saharan affinities of pharaonic mummies from the 18th and 20th dynasty (circa 1,300 BC)..."

SSA = Sub-Saharan African, EA = Eurasian, A = Asian

Tutankhamun: SSA 93.9%, EA: 4.6%, A: 1.5%

Ramesses III: SSA 93.5%, EA: 6.1%, A: 0.3%

Ancient Egyptian Genomes from northern Egypt: Further discussion

AUTHORS Jean-Philippe Gourdine, Shomarka Keita, Jean-Luc Gourdine, and Alain Anselin

Table 1: Geographical region affinities of Amarna and Ramesside mummies based on popAffiliator 18 analysis of 8 pairs of STR

And another thing - the reason DNA Tribes and S.O.Y. Keita made the same findings, is that they both looked at the same dna - the best dna. Not an obscure graveyard south of Cairo like Abusir-el-Meleq, from the 1st millennium BC and later. 2001:1C00:1E20:D900:109A:476A:FE7A:C8DB (talk) 15:17, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

DNA Tribes is not reliable. Those are blog-like posts in a commercial website that haven't undergone any peer-review process. Quality sources are unnegiotiable for Wikipedia, see: WP:SCHOLARSHIP). Scientific topics require peer-reviewed academic publications, ideally secondary sources. –Austronesier (talk) 15:47, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

"Those are blog-like posts in a commercial website that haven't undergone any peer-review process." Show me where in WP:Reliable Sources it states that submissions to Wikipedia have to be from peer reviewed journals only. In fact, before invoking WP:reliable sources, you might want to quote specifically which text is relevant and explain why. Also... they're true. There's that. Also... "blog-like posts in a commercial website" is diminishing and discrediting language. DNA Tribes is a dna testing company, not a random fan blog. Oh and by the way... peer reviewed BMJ found that Ramses III has haplogroup E1b1a - most common today in 'Sub-Saharan Africans'. In fact, if you search the BMJ for E1b1a, only one article comes up:

(BMJ) Revisiting the harem conspiracy and death of Ramesses III: anthropological, forensic, radiological, and genetic study

In fact, all the above data is based on that 2012 study, published in the BMJ by Zahi Hawass. That E1b1a today is nearly exclusively found in Sub-Saharan Africa is a fact that is already included on Wikipedia.

2001:1C00:1E20:D900:109A:476A:FE7A:C8DB (talk) 15:55, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#Questionable_sources specifically warns: Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for checking the facts or with no editorial oversight. Such sources include websites and publications expressing views that are widely acknowledged as extremist, that are promotional in nature, or that rely heavily on rumors and personal opinions. and, Beware of sources that sound reliable but do not have the reputation for fact-checking and accuracy that this guideline requires. That a source may agree with something that is in Wikipedia does not make it reliable, as, per Wikipedia:Reliable sources#User-generated content, Wikipedia itself is not a reliable source. Donald Albury 20:01, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

"Such sources include websites and publications expressing views that are widely acknowledged as extremist, that are promotional in nature, or that rely heavily on rumors and personal opinions. and, Beware of sources that sound reliable but do not have the reputation for fact-checking and accuracy that this guideline requires."

DNA Tribes, a dna testing company from Arlington,VA, does not violate any of the above statements. Their findings are not "widely acknowledged as extremist, that are promotional in nature, or that rely heavily on rumors and personal opinions." After all, it is a dna testing company.

"Beware of sources that sound reliable but do not have the reputation for fact-checking and accuracy that this guideline requires."

Explain how this applies to DNA Tribes.

That a source may agree with something that is in Wikipedia does not make it reliable, as, per Wikipedia:Reliable sources#User-generated content, Wikipedia itself is not a reliable source.

Are you 'discrediting' Wikipedia itself now? There is no dispute in the real world where E1b1a is located or who has it. Or that Ramses III has it. If it was in the BMJ, you'd start questioning whether they're peer reviewed too. (Happened before.) Why don't you just admit you're throwing up possible problems, without linking those problems to DNA Tribes, because you're objecting to what they found? You don't like the results. WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT is referred to as "a feeble argument". That's the only real objection you have with it, no matter how true - or rather because it is true. Also... the dna from the Valley Of The Kings is the best dna. It is identified by name and pharaoh, unlike the nameless remains (many aren't mummies) from Abusir-el-Meleq. And it is from the 2nd millennium BC, the highpoint of the New Kingdom empire, where Abusir-el-Meleq is from the 1st millennium BC, near the Fayoum complex. So, this is the best dna. And you're excluding it from Wikipedia, and have been doing so for 12 years. 2001:1C00:1E20:D900:D108:E292:4ECE:682B (talk) 20:21, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Comment From Professor Stuart Tyson Smith

And it is withering:

"This bias was illustrated in the modern scientific context by a recent dna study in Nature Communications, that received a great deal of press, unfortunately. They concluded that the foundational population of Ancient Egypt was related not to other Africans, but rather to Middle Eastern peoples, contradicting modern genetic studies of contemporary Egyptians.

They go on to posit that modern genetic ties between Egyptians came with the medieval Arab slave trade. Nature's own publicity for this piece, reflects how deeply embedded this assumption is, even in the academy, and... here we have someone saying that 'how nice it is that this study now provided empirical evidence for this assumption at the genetic level, without even realizing that this completely begs the question.

The study was fundamentally flawed.

The authors overgeneralized all of the Egyptian, all of Egyptian history from a sample of only 90 individuals, from a single, poorly documented cemetery in Northern Egypt. Only three with a full genome.

The burials date to the latest periods of Egyptian history, so how you extrapolate them back to the very dawn of Egyptian civilization, is puzzling at best. All but 3 or 4 individuals came from after 1000 BCE.

They did not include any individuals from Southern Egypt or Nubia, something they admit as a weakness only at the very end of the article.

They also conflate Sub-Saharan African and Africa, as well as assuming a haplotype that is normally regarded as African, is really Middle Eastern. Haplotypes are groups of genes that tend to be inherited from parent to children and indicate population affinities. This was called out in peer review comments, but never adequately addressed by the authors.

Additionally, they are oblivious to the fact that the mouth of the Fayoum Oasis, where the sample was located, is well known, through historical documents, as an area where Middle Eastern people, like the Sherden, were settled as a reward for military service, during the late New Kingdom, about 1300 to 1070 BCE. This provides a far more likely explanation for any stronger affinity to Middle Eastern populations, and weaker ties to Sub-Saharan populations than modern Egyptians in their sample, but was not even considered.

Even worse, they were completely oblivious to the long history of racism, centered around the question like Petrie's Dynastic Race and the Hamitic Hypothesis.

So to conclude, the question of race in Ancient Egypt is of great importance in modern society, because of egyptology's central and profoundly disturbing role in the creation of a theory of scientific racism, that justified the worst kinds of discrimination, especially in America. Egyptologists might object that many Egyptians, like you see here on the left here, Nubians on the right, would disagree with this conclusion, and that's correct, but my point here is about American and European constructions of race, by modern American systems of racial classification, the ancient and modern Egyptians would both fall into the category of Black African.

As Ann Roth and Bruce Williams pointed out years ago, an Ancient Egyptian transported to the American South in the days of segregation, would not be allowed to sit at a Woolworth's bar, would have to go to the back of the bus, would be barred from facilities reserved for Whites. The same applies to most of the Modern Egyptians and Nubians I know and have worked with, even though they might not self-identify that way, all the evidence points to a broad continuity of both groups as Northeast African populations.

And yet I am the only person in these photographs who would be welcome at a lunch counter at Woolworth's or be allowed to sit at the front of the bus and not have to surrender my seat to a white person. The power of acknowledging both Nubia and Egypt as African civilizations, is that it destroys the logic of racism. Especially American racism, with it's strongly polarizing view of blackness and whiteness drawn from slavery.

Young observes perceptively, and I quote: "Egypt is the earliest civilization, developed in Africa, clearly represented the major potential stumbling block, for the permanent inferiority of the Black race, which it was alleged, had never created or produced anything of value." Similarly, Trafton points out that this debate lies at the heart of the often polarizing back and forth between mainstream and Afrocentric Egyptology.

A hierarchy of race, like that developed by Morton, Nott and Gliddon, and still deployed today by white supremacists, cannot be sustained if not one, but two great Black civilizations arose in Africa, at the dawn of history. It is therefore entirely appropriate and even necessary to confront constructions of race for Nubia and Egypt in the recent past, and acknowledge both cilivilizations as African and Black. Dispelling the myth of racial classification and ranking, which have their genesis with Gliddon, and the beginnings of American Egyptology. Thank you."

References

POV Pushing, Inconsistent and Biased Application Of Wikipedia Rules

In 2012, DNA Tribes showed that the Ancient Egyptians of the Amarna Dynasty were most like people today living in Southern Africa and the African Great Lakes region, who are Eastern Bantu.

This seems to have been countered 5 years later, by the fraudulent Schuenemann Krause study in Nature, which misidentified Jews, Greeks and Romans in 1st millennium Ancient Egypt, in order to paint them as the true Ancient Egyptians.

The DNA Tribes contribution has been fanatically excluded, using various excuses, including the Wikipedia Reliable Sources rule. Suddenly, results from DNA companies are no longer good enough. However, Reliable Sources also clearly states that: "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published sources, making sure that all majority and significant minority views that have appeared in those sources are covered (see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view)."

Well, confirmation for the Schuenemann Krause study is provided by Schuenemann and Urban, in an unpublished study, clearly violating Wikipedia Reliable Sources, which clearly states that sources must be published. And if they haven't been published, clearly, they also haven't been peer reviewed.

"Later findings A unpublished, follow-up study by Schuenemann & Urban et al. (2021) was carried out "

Therefore, based on this standard of evidence, I suggest that the reference to the Schuenemann Urban study should be removed.

2001:1C00:1E20:D900:D108:E292:4ECE:682B (talk) 12:09, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

As has been explained above, DNA Tribes is not a reliable source for use in Wikipedia. Also, please read Wikipedia:Published. We cannot use unpublished material as a source. You are not going to change our policies by continually posting your rants on this page. I recommend that you find something else to spend your time on. Donald Albury 17:19, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

"We cannot use unpublished material as a source." Well that's my point. So you agree that the reference to the Schueneman Urban study in "Later Findings" should be removed? 2001:1C00:1E20:D900:D108:E292:4ECE:682B (talk) 00:16, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

DNA tribes is not a reliable source. The text based on unpublished conference presentations has been removed now. Case closed. If any of these studies/presentations actually have an impact by being cited in a peer-reviewed publication, we will cite the peer-reviewed publication. Until then, no way, per WP:RS and WP:UNDUE. –Austronesier (talk) 05:11, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

"DNA tribes is not a reliable source. The text based on unpublished conference presentations has been removed now. Case closed." My comment was not about DNA Tribes. This is about the existing inclusion in the text of this article of a reference to the Schuenemann Urban study, which literally stated in the text that it was not published. This actually is a very blatant violation of the Wikipedia Reliable Sources rule.

Just for clarity, this is what I am referring to: ""Later findings A unpublished, follow-up study by Schuenemann & Urban et al. (2021) was carried out". Also, it's "an unpublished", not "a unpublished". 2001:1C00:1E20:D900:D108:E292:4ECE:682B (talk) 08:40, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Problematic Claim: Djehutynakht's U5b2b5 Is 'European'?

Wikipedia: "Two laboratories independently analysed Djehutynakht's DNA and found that he belonged to the mtDNA haplogroup U5b2b5,[21] described by the lead author Odile Loreille as "a European haplogroup".[22]"

Problem: it is also found in Nubia, among people who have on average 43% Nilotic dna. And this particular variation was found in a population in Nubia, which had West Eurasian related female ancestry and Nilotic male ancestry.

Sirak, Reich: "Ten individuals from both cemeteries belong to mtDNA haplogroup U5b2b5, though they also exhibit three additional mutations not typically found in members of this haplogroup. One of these mutations was detected in a 4000-year-old mummy from Deir el-Bersha, Egypt also assigned to this haplogroup, raising the possibility that the presence of U5b2b5 at Kulubnarti reflects deep connections with Egypt;"

However the Nubian samples...

"The Kulubnarti Nubians had ~43% Nilotic-related ancestry (individual variation between ~36–54%) with the remaining ancestry consistent with being introduced through Egypt and ultimately deriving from an ancestry pool like that found in the Bronze and Iron Age Levant. The Kulubnarti gene pool – shaped over a millennium – harbors disproportionately female-associated West Eurasian-related ancestry."

In other words, to claim that U5b2b5 is 'European' is a bit of a leap, especially when ignoring the evidence from Nubia. Something Schuenemann also did in the 2017 study.

Even more, Western Hunter Gatherer or WHG haplogroup R1b's subclade R1b1a1b is very high in Western Europe, especially Scotland and Ireland. However R1b1b is both an older subclade and is very high in Eastern Nigeria, among the Hausa. And it are the Hausa who left the Nile Valley 4,000 years ago, and whose language is most like Ancient Egyptian among the Afro-Asiatic language families. Yet their dna is nearly 50/50 Yoruba and Nilotic.

U5 on the whole is very high in northern Scandinavia, where there is a high percentage of WHG ancestry. It is very low in North Africa, and even lower in modern Egypt (1-2.5% of the population) - wich doesn't suggest continuity. See map at Eupedia.

And that is the problem with relying on haplogroups: it says nothing about the rest of the DNA. 2001:1C00:1E20:D900:7DA4:6F88:4F2:A516 (talk) 19:31, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

It's not a leap at all. U5b2b5 came from Europe, as did the 18th dynasty R1b-M269 and the Hausa's R1b-V88. Ario1234 (talk) 21:50, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

When? Western Hunter Gatherer haplogroup R-V88 came to Africa at the start of the Neolithic, likely to get away from the Early European Farmers from Anatolia, 8,000 years ago.

Actually they all came from Africa, if you want to be glib about it. So to say that this ancient Western Hunter Gatherer gene is 'European' is misleading, because Europe's population looked very different than today's or even of the last 4,000 years. No Indo-Europeans, and for R-V88, no Early European Farmers from Anatolia. The Western Hunter Gatherers came from a gene pool called 'Ancient Non-Africans', same as the Andaman Islanders, who they resembled. They had no pigmentation deletion genes, unlike the EEF and Bronze age Yamna.

Also, I am not aware that Tutankhamun had the subclade R-M269, and I'd love to read your source for that.

Especially when we already know what Tutankhamun looked like, and we have his dna, which is 93% modern Sub-Saharan African (Keita, Anselin).

And the fact remains - you can't presume a mummy's dna from their haplogroup, especially when it is a very rare haplogroup that is barely around anymore. And especially when only looking at female haplogroups and not even male haplogroups, as Schuenemann does. Which is clear from the Nubian example, with female derived Western Eurasian (but really, Levantine) dna and male derived Nilotic dna. 2001:1C00:1E20:D900:D108:E292:4ECE:682B (talk) 09:41, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

No that's all complete nonsense. Ario1234 (talk) 21:05, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

You are talking complete nonsense. Says who? The same Johannes Krause whose study in Nature you're defending to the death. (UCTV) CARTA: Ancient DNA and Human Evolution – Johannes Krause: Ancient European Population History.

Prof. dr. Johannes Krause: "Just briefly, what we could also do is look at the genetic and phenotypic change through, we could look at the different phenotypes and how they change over the last 8,000 years, to look at evolution basically in citu. What we saw actually quite surprising, that the first Europeans or the Europeans that lived about 8,000 years ago, the hunter gatherers, they actually had a very distinct phenotype from people that live in Europe today. They actually had dark skin and blue eyes. You can see that 100% frequency of those foragers had blue eyes and dark skin. So that actually goes down blue eyes frequency then, with the early agriculturalists and then spread again in the last few thousand years. And actually light skin that we have so typically in Europe today is in low frequency, even in the early farmers but only starts to spread in the Bronze Age. So this phenotype which is so typical for Europeans, this light skin, seems to be only 4,000 years old, so actually quite a recent chapter in our evolution."

For the absence of skin pigmentation deletion mutations in Western Hunter Gatherers (SLC24A5 and SLC45A2), read (Nature Communications) The genetic prehistory of the Baltic Sea region by Mittnik and Krause. Supplementary Table 6. Required for modern skin depigmentation among Modern Europeans is 100% for both SCL45A2 and SCL24A5. Most relevant to Western Hunter Gatherers are EHG (Eastern Hunter Gatherers) and Baltic Mesolithic (i.e. pre-Neolithic arrival of the Early European Farmers and their SLC24A5 mutation.) And I'm still waiting for you to supply the study that states that Tutankhamun had the R-M269 subclade of R1b.2001:1C00:1E20:D900:5464:4780:4659:53E5 (talk) 12:16, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

what you wrote has nothing to do with David Reich. Ario1234 (talk) 12:30, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

David Reich's study showed the divergence between male and female dna, which is relevant when only looking at female haplogroups. 2001:1C00:1E20:D900:5464:4780:4659:53E5 (talk) 12:54, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

The DNA Of The Amarna Dynasty Pharaohs Is Known - And It Is Eastern Bantu

Percentage, SSA = Sub-Saharan African, EA = Eurasian, A = Asian

Table 1: Geographical region affinities of Amarna and Ramesside mummies based onpopAffiliator 18 analysis of 8 pairs of STR

Pharaoh	SSA	EA	A
Thuya	93.4	6.3	0.3
Yuya	93.7	6	0.3
KV35ELa, c	71.9	21.8	6.3
Amenhotep III	93.7	6.0	0.3
KV55 b,c	41.7	41.5	16.7
KV35YL c	68.3	31.2	0.5
Tutanhkamun	93.9	4.6	1.5
Ramesses III	93.6	6.1	0.3
Unknown Man E	93.7	6.0	0.3

Source: Ancient Egyptian Genomes from northern Egypt: Further discussion, SOY Keita, Anselin

KV35EL (King's Valley, Tomb 35, Elder Lady) is thought to be Queen Tiye. She is 71.9% Sub-Saharan African, and 21.8% Eurasian. And we know what she looks like from her bust.

Table 1: Top MLI (Match Likelihood Index) scores for Amarna mummies based on the world regions identified by DNA Tribes® STR analysis. Each MLI score identifies the likelihood of occurrence of an STR profile in that region versus the likelihood of occurrence in the world as a whole.

MLI for World Region	Thuya	Yuya	KV35EL	Amen‐hotep III	KV55	KV35YL	Tut	Average
Southern African	359.72	34.48	20.73	108.53	174.90	71.17	1,519.03	326.94
African Great Lakes	233.49	35.53	20.87	222.53	381.30	44.58	1,328.01	323.76
Tropical West African	142.84	8.91	6.93	37.43	53.03	22.99	314.00	83.74
Horn of Africa	14.65	0.79	5.17	12.03	4.54	22.00	44.35	14.79
Sahelian	39.14	0.74	5.76	2.97	4.40	16.85	30.41	14.33
Levantine	0.40	1.56	0.66	10.30	6.07	8.40	21.08	6.92
Aegean	0.12	0.35	0.87	9.06	7.05	20.16	9.85	6.78
Arabian	0.12	0.42	0.70	5.58	2.83	21.41	10.91	6.00
Northwest European	0.21	0.28	1.26	3.99	10.41	15.01	5.33	5.21
Mediterranean	0.08	0.23	0.74	4.54	5.81	16.80	6.04	4.89
North African	2.22	0.21	0.75	3.39	3.25	12.63	6.55	4.14
Mesopotamian	0.06	0.41	0.63	6.24	2.69	11.54	5.27	3.84

Source: DNA Tribes Digest January 1, 2012, Table 1 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:1C00:1E20:D900:D108:E292:4ECE:682B (talk) 11:43, 1 September 2024 (UTC)