C.L. Brace debunks myths about foreign migrants to ancient Egypt

C.L. Brace debunks myths about foreign migrants to ancient Egypt



quote:

"In this regard it is interesting to note that limb proportions of Predynastic Naqada people in Upper Egypt are reported to be "Super-Negroid," meaning that the distal segments are elongated in the fashion of tropical Africans.....skin color intensification and distal limb elongation are apparent wherever people have been long-term residents of the tropics."

"An earlier generation of anthropologists tried to explain face form in the Horn of Africa as the result of admixture from hypothetical “wandering Caucasoids,” (Adams, 1967, 1979; MacGaffey, 1966; Seligman, 1913, 1915, 1934), but that explanation founders on the paradox of why that supposedly potent “Caucasoid” people contributed a dominant quantity of genes for nose and face form but none for skin color or limb proportions. It makes far better sense to regard the adaptively significant features seen in the Horn of Africa as solely an in situ response on the part of separate adaptive traits to the selective forces present in the hot dry tropics of eastern Africa. From the observation that 12,000 years was not a long enough period of time to produce any noticeable variation in pigment by latitude in the New World and that 50,000 years has been barely long enough to produce the beginnings of a gradation in Australia (Brace, 1993a), one would have to argue that the inhabitants of the Upper Nile and the East Horn of Africa have been equatorial for many tens of thousands of years."
(-- C.L. Brace, 1993. Clines and clusters..")

Brace 2005 Fig 4 lumps together ancient Egyptians (Naqada), Nubians, Somalians and Israeli Fellaheen to create a Northeast Africa category. The closest non-Africans to that group are OLDER Europeans and North Africans who looked like dark-skinned Africans.

Quote: “The surprise is that the Neolithic peoples of Europe and their Bronze Age successors are not closely related to the modern inhabitants.. It is a further surprise that the Epipalaeolithic Natufian of Israel from whom the Neolithic realm was assumed to arise has a clear link to Sub-Saharan Africa..”


Assorted "Nordic" or "Mediterranean" Egypt theories put out by Neo-Nazis देबुन्केद

Assorted “Aryan” thinkers use this diagram from Tishkoff (2000) to claim Caucasoid primacy in Ethiopians। However Tishkoff avoids admixture models, noting that the intermediate position of Ethiopians is due to their position in the Out of Africa flow.

Said ‘Aryans’ somehow fail to notice that their own diagram debunks their claims। The people in the Ethiopian cluster are dark-skinned tropically adapted types, including sub-Saharan Somalis, and Papuans/Melanesians. Other closer peoples are dark-skinned and tropically adapted like South African Nama and tropical Atayal Taiwanese indigenes. “White Caucasoids” like Nordic Danes or Near Eastern Yemenis are even further away. The primary resemblance is with black tropical peoples.

“The fact that the Ethiopians and Somalis have a subset of the sub-Saharan African haplotype diversity and that the non-African populations have a subset of the diversity present in Ethiopians and Somalis makes simple-admixture models less likely.. a subset of this northeastern-African population migrated out of Africa and populated the rest of the globe.
[Tishkoff et al. (2000) Short Tandem-Repeat]

Asian hordes sweeping into the Nile Valley to civilize the natives?

Stymied by lack of evidence for ‘Nordic’ or ‘Mediterranean’ Egyptians, Aryan ‘thinkers’ have seized on an Asian angle. The work of Indian researchers Chandrasekar. et al. (2007). "YAP insertion signature in South Asia” found YAP changes to haplogroup D in India. Aryan thinkers use this to postulate an influx of ‘Caucasian’ Asians into the Nile Valley to civilize the natives, arguing that the African haplogroup ‘E” is a sub-set of ‘D”. However, the reputed ‘Aryan’ mutation (M174 allele) is found in the ancestral state in all African lineages including haplogroup E, effectively killing the Asiatic origin theory. African Haplogroup ‘E” has its highest distribution and occurrence in Africa, not Asia, and the work of scientist Underhill (2000. 2001), Cruciana (2004) and Hammer (2008) confirm its African provenance. According to Underhill et al 2000, the M174 data alone would support an African origin of the YAP insertion.

Underhill and Kivisild, (2007) "Use of Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA" hold that the African origin of the YAP+ polymorphism is more parsimonious and more plausible than the Asian origin hypothesis. Other authors who have published or co-published works in support of an African origin the YAP+ include Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Toomas Kivisild, Spencer Wells, Linda Stone and Paul F. Lurquin.

Another study of haplogroup DE world wide found it in only 2 individuals from Nigeria (Weale 2003). A 2007 study by Rosa, et al (Y-chromosomal diversity..") found DE in Guinea, West Africa, and another in 2008, (Shi, Zhing, et al ("Y chromosome evidence..") found it in 2 Tibetans.. Overall the main weight of data lies with Africans, not Asiatics like Tibetans or Indians, again discrediting 'Aryan' claims॥

“Haplogroup CF and DE molecular ancestors first evolved inside Africa and subsequently contributed as Y chromosome founders to pioneering migrations that successfully colonized Asia. While not proof, the DE and CF bifurcation (Figure 8d ) is consistent with independent colonization impulses possibly occurring in a short time interval."
(- Underhill and Kivislid, 2007, ‘Use of Y Chromosome and Mitochondrial DNA..’)





DNA Haplogroup "E" originated in Africa and has its highest frequencies in Africa,. DNA studies show Africans with "E" migrated to populate ancient Egypt and the Nile Valley.

DNA studies of haplogroup ‘E’ show that the primary peopling of ancient Egypt was by Africans with ‘E” derived lineages, not those of Europe or the Middle East. “E” appears at higher frequencies than other individual haplotypes such as the Near Eastern “J” in some studies of modern Egypt. (Luis 2004)

DNA Haplogroup ‘E” originated in Africa, and is the dominant DNA haplogroup on the continent. It appears in Europe and the Near East due to the Out of Africa migrations (-Cruciani et al. (2007), "Tracing Past Human Male..”

Sub-clades of haplogroup ‘E” were to move north into Egypt, North Africa & other areas of Africa. Other branches later moved into the Middle East, and Europe.

From:
Luis et. al (2004). The Levant versus the Horn of Africa: Am J Hum Genet. 2004 March; 74(3): 532-544

“Nearly all of the Y chromosomes in the sub-Saharan collections belong to groups A, B, and E. Furthermore, the vast majority of these individuals (92.2%) are members of group E , the only group observed in all nine populations.. In Egypt, the order of the polymorphic groups is slightly different: E (39.5%) , J (32.0%), G (8.8%), K2 (8.2%), and R (7.5%).. Egyptian M35 lineages are considerably larger than those of Oman.”
“A more recent dispersal out of Africa , represented by the E3b-M35 chromosomes, expanded northward during the Mesolithic (Underhill et al. 2001b). The East African origin of this lineage is supported by the much larger variance of the E3b-M35 males in Egypt versus Oman (0.5 versus 0.14; table 3)..”

"M35 chromosomes are seen in the Oman, North African, and East African populations, as well as in the South African Khoisans (Underhill et al. 2000; Cruciani et al. 2002; present study) .. In contrast, the E3b*-M35 lineages appear to be confined almost exclusively to the sub-Saharan populations , except for a very low incidence in Egypt (2.7%) and a somewhat larger frequency in Ethiopia..”

“The present-day Egyptian E3b-M35 distribution most likely results from a juxtaposition of various demic episodes। Since the E3b*-M35 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॥"

Ethiopians share some of the deepest DNA links with one of the most ancient of African populations - the Khosians or San (aka 'Bushmen'). Khosians have several genetic strands but are predominantly and clearly an African population, not Eurasian.

"only the Ethiopians share with the Khoisan the deepest human Y-chromosome clades (the African specific Groups I and II) but with a repertoire of very different haplotypes. “
(-- Cavalli-Sforza et at. “Ethiopians and Khoisan Share the Deepest Clades of the Human y-chromosome Phylogeny” 2002)


Knight (2003- ‘African Y-chromosome and mtDNA..’ found that the Khoisan are similar to other sub-Saharan African populations, rather than Eurasians.

"According to Knight et al. (2003) Y-haplogroup A, the most diverse or oldest-diverging Y haplogroup transmitted purely by patrilineal descent, is today present in various Khoisan groups at frequencies of 12-44%, and the other Y-haplogroups present have been formed by recent admixture of Bantu male lineages E3a (18-54%), and in some groups, noticeable Pygmy traces are visible (B2b). The Khoisan also show the largest genetic diversity in matrilineally transmitted mtDNA of all human populations. Their original mtDNA haplogroups L1d and L1k are one of the oldest-diverging female lineages as well. However, analysis of neutral autosomal (inherited through either parent) genes finds that the Khoisan are similar to other sub-Saharan African populations.'
(See--*Knight, Alec, et al.: African Y chromosome and mtDNA divergence provides insight into the history of click languages. Current Biology, 13, 464-473 (2003).)

"In a comparison of the different groups of Ethiopians, the Oromo show an incidence (62.8%) of the M35 cluster higher than that in the Amhara (35.4%, P<.005); the Amhara value is similar to the frequency (31.8%) found in the Ethiopian sample of Underhill et al. (2000). Among them, the Amhara are by far the most important component (33.4%, vs. 3.8% for the Oromo [P<.0001] and 3.4% for the other Ethiopian data [P < .0001]). This difference, not revealed in the study by Passarino et al. (1998), in which the Oromo were underrepresented, might reflect distinct population histories. It is reported (Levine 1974) that the Amhara experienced a strong influence from Middle Eastern populations, in which the 12f2 8-kb allele has a very high frequency and probably originated (Santachiara-Benerecetti et al. 1993; Semino et al. 1996; Quintana-Murci et al. 2001). This is further supported by the opposite distribution of the M35 subclade (35.4% for the Amhara, vs. 62.8% for the Oromo [P<.005] and 31.8% for the other Ethiopian data)."

(- Semino, Cavalli-Sforza et al.. Ethiopians and Khosians share...)