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Research notes 2

Double standards and selective exclusions in research on Nile Valley peoples: A review of Kemp dendrogram

1) Egyptians group more with each other and Nubians first, then other Africans like Ethiopians then with Europeans or Middle Easterners

2) The closest match to the Nubians & Egyptians is based on using ANCIENT Europeans and Middle Easterners who looked like East Africans. The Near East ancients could also include the Negroid Natufians as well. Europe was populated by a subset of peoples from East Africa in the OOA model. It is no surprise that East African looking people based in Europe, match up with East African looking people based in Egypt. This is confirmed by Brace 2005., and Hanihara (1996) states similarly: ‘Early West Asians looked like Africans.” 

3) Other “Africans” are lumped together as ‘Negroid’ but this is a misleading implying that they all are the same, when in fact they include Ethiopians, Nubians, Upper Egyptians Saharans, etc. Note the double standards at work. People from Greece, Anatolia, Malta, Cyprus etc are broken out separately so their diversity is counted, but the diverse peoples of ‘sub-Saharan Africa are lumped together to hide variability. Note the selective exclusions of Saharan and sub-Saharans from Somalia, Kenya, Chad, etc, again serving to screen out variability. Note how older Euros are lumped with modern Euros, so that the older Euro features serve to buffer differences and create closer ‘matches’ with Egyptians. Selective definitions of ‘Negroid’ also play a part such as defining away narrow noses as ‘Non-African.” (Keita 2005)

Selective exclusions and strange result of a Nordic Egypt? A review of hanihara 2003

1) Somalians group with other East Africans (sub-Saharans)

2) Egyptians (Naqda, Gizeh) group with each other and Nubians (Kerma). Ancient Nubians from Egypt’s early dynasties and before were excluded. ‘Kerma’ refers to 12th Dynasty.

3) Early Nubia excluded. The other Nubians below Gizeh are Medieval Era. Strangely, recent Frenchmen, Englishmen, Russians, Italians and Nordics like Germans appear closer to ancient Egyptians and recent (medieval) Nubians than Southern Europeans like Greeks. Could this be proof of an ‘Aryan’ Egypt? 

Not quite.. the Euros cluster with each other first, then the Nubians, but forensic misclassification of Nubian crania using this same data series has been conclusively demonstrated by Williams et al (2005) who examined analysis programs and found them way off- “matching” ancient Nubians for example with Japanese and Easter islanders. Such matches spring from the diversity of the dataset itself not any “race” migration or mix. Quote: "If Fordisc 2.0 is revealing genetic admixture of Late Period Dynastic Egypt and Meroitic Nubia, then one must also consider these ancient Meroitic Nubians to be part of Hungarian, part Easter Islander, part Norse, and part Australian Aborigine... In fact, all human groups are essentially heterogeneous, including samples within Fordisc 2.0. Howells’s cranial samples exhibit far more variation within than between skeletal series...” (Williams et al, 2005, "Forensic Misclassification of Ancient Nubian Crania)

 So, still proof of inflowing white Frenchmen, Russians and Germans etc into ancient Egypt or Nubia? Just such a possibility was debunked by Keita (Early Nile Valley Farmers From El-Badari, 2005, Journal of Black Studies, 36(2), 191-208). In head to head comparisons, the ancient Badarians of Egypt grouped much more with other Africans than Europeans, including ‘Nordic’ Berg and Norse. Quote: “The Badarian series clusters with the tropical African groups no matter which algorithm is employed .. In none of them did the Badarian sample affiliate with the European series." (Keita 2005, “Early Nile Valley farmers..”) Keita 2004 (Northeast African Craniofacial..) also notes that in comparisons with the same Europeans above, native Africans had MUCH MORE DIVERSE craniofacial features, without the need of any ‘race mix’ to explain why. The PN2 DNA clade also links numerous different Africans together, who don’t need for any ‘Caucasoid blood’ to look different.

4) Only recent sub-Saharan samples used, and people close to Egypt like Sudanese or Saharans, or Ethiopians excluded,




Debunking the Ward dental studies being used as "proof" of a "white" Egypt

Debunking population studies of ancient Egypt based on skewed and/or biased sampling:

Upper Egypt- older research- 1966 and continuity:

Sir Alan Gardiner: These were long-headed-dolicocephalic is the learned term-and below even medium stature, but Negroid features are often to be observed. Whatever may be said of the northerners, it is safe to describe the dwellers in Upper Egypt as of essentially African stock , a character always retained despite alien influences brought to bear on them from time to time." (pg. 392; Egypt of the Pharaohs 1966)

Alleged Mediterranean invaders sweeping into Sahara

says one book- "The Berbers"
"the original Saharans were 'negroid' and left behind their distinctive art and iconography in rock carvings and art."

Assorted authors claim that said native peoples were overrun by incoming Caucasoid Mediterraneans who brought horses and chariots with them, and that around the end of the second millenium, the Saharan rock art changed from largely pastoral scenes to show the coming of QUOTE: "elongated white men with characteristic long hair and pointed beards. Some confirmation of this racial shift comes from physical anthropology, although the skeletons seem to show closer resemblance to groups from the upper Nile Valley than to contemporary material from the Maghreb."

What is interesting is that the frescoes that supposedly show this 'white' invasion, are backed up anthropologically by skeletal material from the Upper Nile Valley, in other words, Egyptians, not Libyans or alleged Mediterranean Caucasoids. The Upper Nile Valley is in Southern Egypt closer to Nubia than the north and the Mediterranean sea. And it is in this area that Keita et al shows cranio-skeletal material that matches a tropical African pattern. The limb proportion studies of Zakrzewski also confirm Keita's data. Hence those "long haired" chariot drivers were not incoming white people but good old Nile Valley African stock.

The Long-hair and pointed beards is interesting because it again shows the diversity of peoples and styles in Africa. Both Nubians and Egyptians themselves wore wigs of long hair, and hair was a trade item, (Fletcher 2002). It is thus questionable whether the chariots or horses are of some "Mediterranean" invasion, since the backup skeletal evidence noted by the authors themselves, comes from the "darker" areas of Egypt. Whether the fresco depicts "invasions" is also questionable. They could merely represent documentation of travelers with horses, or persons engaging in trade, or any one of several different possibilities. There is little parallel corroborating evidence from other sources of sweeping 'invasions'. Nor do they necessarily represent "foreigners." They could well be more native Saharan peoples. In any event the skeletal evidence points to other indigenous African peoples.

Ethiopians notes

(Source: Ethiopians and Khoisan share the deepest clades of the human Y-chromosome phylogeny, Semino et al, 2002


Semino shows three sets of Ethiopians being used and only the Amhara show any high frequencies of J haplogroups, the Oromo and another set of Ethiopians whose ethnicity is not listed show low to negligible frequencies of J, the predominant "Eurasian" lineage in Ethiopians. African haplogroups form the predominant Y chromosone variation in Ethiopians, with haplogroups A and B and E2-M75 and various E-M35 derived lineages, thus J and the numerous small Eurasian lineages have had only a relatively moderate to minor impact on the pre-existing African NRY diversity. In earlier studies purporting to be "representative" of the Ethiopians, the Oromo were conspicuously downplayed. Quote:

"These data, together with those reported elsewhere (Ritte et al. 1993a, 1993b; Hammer et al. 2000) suggest that the Ethiopian Jews acquired their religion without substantial genetic admixture from Middle Eastern peoples and that they can be considered an ethnic group with essentially a continental African genetic composition."

"This difference, not revealed in the study by Passarino et al. (1998), in which the Oromo were underrepresented, might reflect distinct population histories.." (--Semino, et al. (2002). Ethiopians and Khoisan Share the Deepest Clades of the Human Y..")

Haplogroup M1 is significantly represented in Ethiopians, but is widespread in Northeast Africa too. It is present in Ethiopia at frequencies of about 20% (Passarino et al. 1998), and declines north-westwards (Nubians 10%, Egyptians 8%) (Krings et al. 1999), whereas its frequency in the Middle East is lower (3% in Jordan, 2% in Palestinians, 2% in Druze) (Macaulay et al. 1999). Furthermore, M1 frequencies significantly diminish westward (where it reaches frequencies of 3-4%) (Rando et al. 1998, Plaza et al. 2003), and also going South of sub-equatorial areas. Recently in Upper Egypt, high frequencies of M1 (17%) have been found, pointing to a close genetic relationship with Ethiopia (Stevanovitch et al. 2004).
(Ottoni, C. (2008). Holocene human peopling of Libyan Sahara. Dissertation. Univ Roma)

Are Europeans 'hybrids' according to data by conservative scholars Bowcock and Cavalli-Sforza?

Intermediate clustering of genes in modern studies does not signify "race" nevertheless under assorted "race" models some argue that Europeans may well be a hybrids between Asians and Africans and not at all a primary race according to data by conservative geneticists. According to one review of Cavalli-Sforza's work for example:

"Cavalli-Sforza shows that the European population is the most genetically mixed-up on earth, being a mix of genes from Asia and Africa. He uses this to poke fun at Arthur de Gobineau, the 19th-century French author of the ''Essay on the Inequality of Human Races,'' which helped inspire German racism. De Gobineau, he says, ''would die of rage and shame at this suggestion since he believed that Europeans . . . were the most genetically pure race, the most intellectually gifted and the least weakened by racial mixing.''
[--Mark Ridley, "How Far From the Tree?" NY Times Book Review, August 20, 2000]

One reasonable hypothesis is that the genetic distance between Asia and Africa is shorter than that between Africa and the other continents in Table 1 because both Africans and Asians contributed to the settlement of Europe, which began about 40,000 years ago. It seems very reasonable to assume that both continents nearest to Europe contributed to its settlement, even if perhaps at different times and maybe repeatedly. It is reassuring that the analysis of other markers also consistently gives the same results in this case. Moreover, a specific evolutionary model tested, i.e., that Europe is formed by contributions from Asia and Africa, fits the distance matrix perfectly (6). In this simplified model, the migrations postulated to have populated Europe are estimated to have occurred at an early date (30,000 years ago), but it is impossible to distinguish, on the basis of these data, this model from that of several migrations at different times. The overall contributions from Asia and Africa were estimated to be around two-thirds and one-third, respectively. Simulations have shown (7) that this hypothesis explains quite well the discrepancy between trees obtained by maximum likelihood and neighbor joining.  - L. Cavalli-Sforza, Genes, Culture, and Human Evolution: 

Drift, Admixture, and Selection in Human Evolution: A Study with DNA Polymorphisms
Anne M. Bowcock; Judith R. Kidd; Joanna L. Mountain; Joan M. Herbert; LucianoCarotenuto; Kenneth K. Kidd; Luca Cavalli-Sforza
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,Vol 88, Issue 3 (1991), 839-843.

Tree constructed by maximum likelihood, assuming a model of admixture between ancestral Africans and ancestral Asians, fitting the distances of the lower triangle of Table 1. According to this model two divergent populations contribute in specified proportions to form a new population. Various pairs of ancestral populations from which the European branch may have descended by admixture were tested for choosing ancestral types that contributed to the admixture. Data were found to be most consistent with this tree; ancestral Europeans are estimated to be an admixture of 65% ancestral Chinese and 35% ancestral Africans.
[-- Bowcock et al.]

GENES, PEOPLES, AND LANGUAGES
By Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza. (2000) Translated by Mark Seielstad. North Point Press/Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Quotes:

In terms of genetic distance the greatest difference is between Africans and non Africans.

East Asian [including Black Melanesiasn] and Africans show the greatest genetic distance regardless of phenotype.

Europeans are intermediate between Africans and East Asians.

The genetic difference between Italians and British is 250% greater than the difference between the British and the Germans.

Although not homogeneous, the European landscape has been characterized by relatively short genetic distances between individual populations. Classic genetic markers have revealed a few clearly pronounced genetic outliers, such as the Greeks....

[---Luigi Cavalli-Sforza [Italian, population geneticist.]

Ironically, such 'hybrid' patterns throw into question notions of a primary white race, i.e. Europeans:

The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence,
S. O. Y. Keita, Rick A. Kittles, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 99, No. 3 (Sep., 1997), pp. 534-544

"Nuclear DNA studies also contribute to the deconstruction of received racial entities. Ann Bowcock and her colleague's interpretation (Bowcock et al. 1991; Bowcock et al. 1994) of analyses of restriction-site polymorphisms and microsatellite polymorphisms (STRPs) suggests that Europeans, the defining Caucasians, are descendants of a population that arose as a consequence of admixture between already differentiated populations ancestral to (some) Africans and Asians. Therefore, Caucasians would be a secondary type or race due to its hybrid origin and not a primary race".
[- S.O.Y Keita]

The present-day Egyptian E3b distribution most likely results from a juxtaposition of various demic episodes. Since the E3b lineages appear to be confined mostly to the sub-Saharan populations, it is conceivable that the initial migrations toward North Africa from the south primarily involved derivative E3b-M35 lineages.

These include E3b1-M78, a haplogroup especially common in Ethiopia (23%), and, perhaps, E3b2 (2%), which is present as well (Underhill et al. 2000; Cruciani et al. 2002; Semino et al. 2002). The data suggest that two later expansions may have followed: one eastward along the Levantine corridor into the Near East and the other toward northwestern Africa.

The extant North African and Middle Eastern distribution (Underhill et al. 2001b; Cruciani et al. 2002; present study) of these lineages suggests that both routes are associated with the dissemination of E3b.

However, the E3b3 chromosomes may have spread predominantly toward the east, whereas E3b2, which is present in relatively high levels in Morocco (33% and 69% in Moroccan Arabs and Moroccan Berbers, respectively [Cruciani et al. 2002]), dispersed mainly to the west.

This proposal is in accordance with a population expansion involving E3b2 believed to have occurred in northwestern Africa ∼2 ky ago (Cruciani et al. 2002).

The Levant versus the Horn of Africa: Evidence for Bidirectional Corridors of Human Migrations

J. R. Luis,1,2,* D. J. Rowold,1,* M. Regueiro,2 B. Caeiro,2 C. Cinnioğlu,3 C. Roseman,3 P. A. Underhill,3 L. L. Cavalli-Sforza,3 and R. J. Herrera1

Aryan race model | Time phases in peopling | Saharan genesis | Sampling bias | Melanin & mummies | X-rays of the mummies | Egypt Civ based on Upper Sudan | Upper Egypt and Berbers | Skewed methods | Hiernaux on African diversity | 
Ancient East Africans | Dark skin and Egypt | Europeans as hybrids| Greeks and blacks | Black Americans | Quotes
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