Early Ancient Egyptian DNA
You still wuzn't.
Ancient DNA studies have not been kind to Nordicist interpretations of history, although Nordicists twist things to attempt to show otherwise. As regards Ancient Rome, they “elegantly” moved away from insisting that the Roman Republic was “Nordic” (although, amazingly, you can still find a few who try to peddle that) to the idea that the Romans of the Republic were “West Alpinid” types who were completely race replaced by Anatolian-Levantines and that, somehow, despite these radical changes in Rome from 200 BC to 200 AD, Italy has been completely unchanged since then, and “brownoid” from 200 AD to the present (except that somehow Northern Italians are “pretty Germanic” which of course they are not). With respect to Ancient Greece, their only grasping point is a contaminated sample that even leftist population geneticists do not believe is legitimate data; all other samples, more properly handled, of course demonstrate a “Mediterranean” character of the Ancient Greeks. As regards Egypt, the limited samples so far available have utterly destroyed the “Nordic desert empire” narrative.
Let us look at a recent paper. Emphasis is added (I deleted reference numbers as well).
Abstract
Ancient Egyptian society flourished for millennia, reaching its peak during the Dynastic Period (approximately 3150–30 bce). However, owing to poor DNA preservation, questions about regional interconnectivity over time have not been addressed because whole-genome sequencing has not yet been possible. Here we sequenced a 2× coverage whole genome from an adult male Egyptian excavated at Nuwayrat (Nuerat, نويرات). Radiocarbon dated to 2855–2570 cal. bce, he lived a few centuries after Egyptian unification, bridging the Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom periods. The body was interred in a ceramic pot within a rock-cut tomb1, potentially contributing to the DNA preservation. Most of his genome is best represented by North African Neolithic ancestry, among available sources at present. Yet approximately 20% of his genetic ancestry can be traced to genomes representing the eastern Fertile Crescent, including Mesopotamia and surrounding regions. This genetic affinity is similar to the ancestry appearing in Anatolia and the Levant during the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Although more genomes are needed to fully understand the genomic diversity of early Egyptians, our results indicate that contacts between Egypt and the eastern Fertile Crescent were not limited to objects and imagery (such as domesticated animals and plants, as well as writing systems) but also encompassed human migration.
Excerpts from the main text:
So far, only three individuals from Abusir el-Meleq (Fig. 1a) have yielded nuclear DNA, all post-dating the emergence of Dynastic Egypt by thousands of years (from 787 cal. bce to 23 cal. ce)
And showed that they were NOT Nordic.
Moreover, these are not complete genome sequences but are limited to approximately 90,000–400,000 target-enriched genotypes.
The best available data for those samples.
Over the millennia spanning the Dynastic Period, Egypt witnessed several wide-ranging wars, occupation by foreign rulers and dramatic episodes of internal political collapse (First, Second and Third Intermediate periods). Together, these processes may have substantially altered or reshaped the overall genetic structure and ancestry of the Egyptian population.
OK. Let us look at an early Egyptian sample. Yes, it is only one, but that is what we currently have available and single data points have not deterred Der Movement, have they?
Here we present a whole-genome sequence of an ancient Egyptian individual (2.02× coverage; Supplementary Table 1), recovered from a necropolis at Nuwayrat (نويرات, Nuerat; Fig. 1a).
Nuwayrat is located near the village of Beni Hasan, 265 km south of Cairo (Fig. 1a). Radiocarbon dating of the skeletal remains showed that the Nuwayrat individual died between 2855 and 2570 cal. bce (95.4% probability; Supplementary Information section 1 and Supplementary Table 2), which overlaps with the Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom periods (Fig. 1e).
Early Egyptian period.
Although acknowledging known limitations in predicting phenotypic traits in understudied populations, the Nuwayrat individual is predicted to have had brown eyes, brown hair and skin pigmentation ranging from dark to black skin, with a lower probability of intermediate skin colour…
Hmmm. Doesn’t quite seem to be a phenotypic clone of Dolph Lundgren. Fancy that. See this as well.
We merged the Nuwayrat genome (NUE001) with those of 3,233 present-day individuals that were either whole-genome sequenced or genotyped on the Human Origins Array and 805 ancient individuals with either whole-genome or 1.2 million single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) capture data. We first projected the Nuwayrat genome in a principal component analysis (PCA) using a population panel representing present-day worldwide genetic diversity. The Nuwayrat individual is genetically most similar to present-day people in North Africa and West Asia (Fig. 2a and Extended Data Fig. 4), which is consistent with the results from ADMIXTURE clustering (Extended Data Fig. 5). The mitochondrial DNA (haplogroup I/N1a1b2) and chromosome Y (haplogroup E1b1b1b2b~) haplogroups of the Nuwayrat individual are most common in present-day North African and West Asian groups (Supplementary Table 4), consistent with the whole-genome affinities. Furthermore, the Nuwayrat genome had no extended runs of homozygosity above 4 cM, indicating no recent consanguinity in his ancestry
What? Not overlapping with England or Sweden? What happened? Say it ain’t so!
We used the qpAdm42 framework to model the genetic ancestry components that best represent the Nuwayrat genome using a fully rotating model competition approach, in which a set of candidate populations are iteratively used as sources to construct one-source, two-source and three-source population ancestry models, whereas the remaining candidates are set as outgroup (right) populations (Supplementary Information section 4). We used a set of 13 populations from Neolithic and Chalcolithic West Asia, North Africa and the North Mediterranean region that predate the Nuwayrat individual as potential sources (Fig. 3c,d and Methods). No single-source model fitted the data (maximum P value observed = 2.39 × 10−6 for a model with Morocco_MN as a single source). Instead, a single two-source model (P = 0.12) met the significance criteria (P > 0.05), which consisted of a mixture of 77.6 ± 3.8% ancestry represented by genomes from the Middle Neolithic Moroccan site of Skhirat-Rouazi dated to 4780–4230 bce (Morocco_MN), and the remainder most closely related to genomes from 9000 to 8000 bce Neolithic Mesopotamia (22.4 ± 3.8%; Fig. 3a). In addition, two three-source models showed similar ancestry proportions but with a minor contribution of a third ancestry component represented by genomes from the Neolithic/Chalcolithic Levant (4.7 ± 8.2% at P = 0.11 and 1.1 ± 8.7% at P = 0.07, respectively; Supplementary Table 6).
Thus, majority North African, minority Levantine. That is not quite consistent with a “Nordic desert empire.”
All accepted qpAdm models showed the presence of ancestry related to Middle Neolithic Morocco in the Nuwayrat genome; therefore, our results could indicate shared ancestry across North Africa during this period and, consequently, that local Egyptian Neolithic populations contributed genetically to the Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom people, as indicated from material culture and bioarchaeological analyses. However, because the genomes from Middle Neolithic Morocco have previously been modelled to comprise both Iberomaurusian-like and Levantine Neolithic ancestry components, which we corroborated (Extended Data Fig. 6, Supplementary Information section 4 and Supplementary Table 5), the affinity to Levantine Neolithic groups could reflect several migration events. To explore these alternative hypotheses in detail, further ancient DNA studies on pre-Bronze Age genomes from North Africa are required.
Further ancient DNA studies on Bronze Age Scandinavia not required.
The second genetic ancestry component detected in the Nuwayrat individual is most closely related to Neolithic Mesopotamians, out of the potential sources included in the model competition (Methods).
Der Movement weeps.
…this finding provides direct evidence of genetic ancestry related to the eastern Fertile Crescent in ancient Egypt. Archaeological evidence lends support to the Early Neolithic shared regional ancestry between Egypt and West Asia.
More weeping.
Moreover, it is notable that both our qpAdm modelling and ADMIXTURE clustering excluded any substantial ancestry in the Nuwayrat genome related to the 4,500-year-old genome from Mota, Ethiopia or other individuals in central, eastern or southern Africa…
Afrocentrists weep. That also shows that dark skin does not necessarily equate with Negro.
Ancestry in later Egypt
The Nuwayrat genome extends the genetic record of ancient Egypt beyond previously published data from the Third Intermediate Period (787–544 bce; Fig. 1e). We modelled these latter individuals using qpAdm with putative sources from a set of nine populations from North Africa (including Nuwayrat), West Asia and Greece, who lived between the Old Kingdom and the Third Intermediate Period and also included genomes from the Middle Neolithic Morocco and Neolithic Mesopotamia (see Supplementary Information section 4 for more models that tested the potential overfitting of these sources). We can reject all one-source models, including one with 100% continuity from Nuwayrat to the Third Intermediate Period (P = 3.00 × 10−7). Two similar two-source models fit the data (Fig. 4a and Supplementary Table 7), differing only in whether the Nuwayrat or Middle Neolithic Moroccan individuals are one of the best-fit sources. In both models, the main source of ancestry is the Bronze Age Levant (for example, 64.5 ± 5.6% in the model with Middle Neolithic Morocco; P = 0.32; Supplementary Information section 4). These results are consistent with the Third Intermediate Period genomes deriving part of their ancestry from local groups related to the Nuwayrat individual while evidencing a significant increase in Levantine ancestry.
More Levantine, still no Nordic ancestry anywhere to be found.
We next tested how present-day Egyptian ancestry could be traced to the Bronze Age populations living in North Africa, including the Nuwayrat individual, West Asia, Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, using qpAdm. Despite substantial heterogeneity, most present-day Egyptian genomes can be modelled as deriving their ancestry from five sources related to (1) Nuwayrat (32.1–74.7%); (2) Middle Neolithic Morocco (28.9–72.7%); (3) Bronze Age Levant (11.6–57.1%); (4) the 4,500-year-old individual from Ethiopia (‘Mota’) (7.4–56.0%); and (5) two approximately 230-year-old individuals from Congo (4.8–52.0%) (Fig. 4b and Supplementary Table 8). Thus, if tracing the ancestry of many present-day Egyptians in our study to the Bronze Age, much of it would be found in groups related to Nuwayrat or alternatively to sources best represented by Middle Neolithic Morocco from which approximately 80% of Nuwayrat’s ancestry derives. The second most common ancestry component is related to the Bronze Age Levant, consistent with the ancestry detected in the Third Intermediate Period individuals. Bronze Age Caucasus ancestry is present in a fraction of the present-day Egyptians but is similar to the Bronze Age Levant ancestry. Our models show a more recent arrival of East and West African ancestries in present-day Egyptians, which has also been previously suggested and dated to 27 generations ago using linkage disequilibrium-based admixture dating. Moreover, we note that there is a substantial diversity in ancestry across Egypt; approximately 20% of the present-day Egyptian genomes included here did not fit the model described above.
Yes, modeling can be suspect – but that applies even more so to Der Movement’s “home-brewed” X-posted “analyses” – but the overall data so far indicates no “Nordic desert empire” anywhere to be found.
Although our analyses are limited to a single Egyptian individual who, on the basis of his relatively high-status burial, may not be representative of the general population…
But if this was a high-status individual then that helps refute the “elite Nordic ruling class" theory. Unless the Nordicists want to invoke dark-skinned North African-Levantine types lording it over Nordic serfs, it seems that Der Movement’s Egyptian paradigms have as much staying power as the Sphinx’s nose. Afrocentrists may grasp onto “general population” paradigms but that is unlikely given the overall thrust of the data.
So, “movement” (and Negroes) – you still wuzn’t.