1-Basic Database of Nile Valley Studies

[zarahan]

White skin a recent occurrence for Europeans- say some scientists



DNA and other studies show that white skin only developed recently in Europeans and dark tropical people lived in early Europe

Pale skin and lactose tolerance a recent occurrence in Europe- Quote: “Most of us think of Europe as the ancestral home of white people. But a new study shows that pale skin, as well as other traits such as tallness and the ability to digest milk as adults, arrived in most of the continent relatively recently. The work, presented here last week at the 84th annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, offers dramatic evidence of recent evolution in Europe and shows that most modern Europeans don’t look much like those of 8000 years ago... First, the scientists confirmed an earlier report that the hunter-gatherers in Europe could not digest the sugars in milk 8000 years ago, according to a poster. They also noted an interesting twist: The first farmers also couldn’t digest milk. The farmers who came from the Near East about 7800 years ago and the Yamnaya pastoralists who came from the steppes 4800 years ago lacked the version of the LCT gene that allows adults to digest sugars in milk. It wasn’t until about 4300 years ago that lactose tolerance swept through Europe... The modern humans who came out of Africa to originally settle Europe about 40,000 years are presumed to have had dark skin, which is advantageous in sunny latitudes. And the new data confirm that about 8500 years ago, early hunter-gatherers in Spain, Luxembourg, and Hungary also had darker skin: They lacked versions of two genes—SLC24A5 and SLC45A2—that lead to depigmentation and, therefore, pale skin in Europeans today."
--Ann Gibbon, 2007. How Europeans evolved white skin. Science Magazine, 4-2-2015.


Peoples in Europe until Relatively recently appear to have had dark skin:
"We also found evidence of selection at two loci that affect skin pigmentation. The derived alleles 63 of rs1426654 at SLC24A5 and rs16891982 at SLC45A2 are, respectively, fixed and almost fixed in present -64 day Europeans 23,24. As previously reported 7,11,12, both derived alleles are absent or very rare in western 65 hunter -gatherers. suggesting that mainland European hunter -gatherers may have had dark skin 66 pigmentation. SLC45A2 first appears in our data at low frequency in the Early Neolithic, and increases 67 steadily in frequency until the present... In contrast, the derived allele of 69 SLC24A5 increases rapidly in frequency to around 0.9 in the Early Neolithic, suggesting that most of the 70 increase in frequency of this allele is due to its high frequency in the early farmers who migrated from the southeast at this time..”
--Mathieson et al 2015. Eight thousand years of natural selection in Europe. bioRxiv 2015.
------------

"The second strongest signal in our analysis is at the derived allele of rs16891982 in SLC45A2, which contributes to light skin pigmentation and is almost fixed in present-day Europeans but occurred at much lower frequency in ancient populations..."

"The strongest signal of selection is at the SNP (rs4988235) responsible for lactase persistence in Europe15,16. Our data (Fig. 3) strengthens previous reports that an appreciable frequency of lactase persistence in Europe only dates to the last 4,000 years3,5,17. The allele’s earliest appearance in the dataset is in a central European Bell Beaker sample (individual I0112) dated to between 2450 and 2140 bc."
--Mathieson, Lizardis et al. 2015. Genome-wide patterns of selection in 230 ancient Eurasians. Nature volume 528, pages 499–503



QUOTE: "a new report on the evolution of a gene for skin color suggests that Europeans lightened up quite recently, perhaps only 6,000 to 12,000 years ago. This contradicts a long-standing hypothesis that modern humans in Europe grew paler about 40,000 years ago, as soon as they migrated into northern latitudes. Under darker skies, pale skin absorbs more sunlight than dark skin, allowing ultraviolet rays to produce more vitamin D for bone growth and calcium absorption. “The [evolution of] light skin occurred long after the arrival of modern humans in Europe,” molecular anthropologist Heather Norton of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said in her talk... Either way, the implication is that Europeans were brown-skinned for tens of thousands of years—a suggestion made 30 years ago by Stanford University geneticist L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza. --A Gibbons. 2007. European Skin Turned Pale Only Recently, Gene Suggests. Science 20, V316, I5823, p364


Tropical African types: "Upper Paleolithic peoples of tropical African genetic origins who populated the rest of the globe after 65,000 ybp were exposed to other stresses. Earlly Upper Paleolithic peoples in Europe were particularly tall, apparently an expression of both tropical origins and better-quality food during an interglacial."
--John Brooke. 2014. Climate Change and the Course of Global History: A Rough Journey. 216.


Cranial studies show that many ancient Neolithic peoples in Europe were not closely related to modern Europeans:
"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."
--CL Brace,. 2006. The questionable contribution ..of the Neolithic & the Bronze Age to European craniofacial form; PNAS v103, n1, 242-247


Tropical African limb data- Quote:"He differs, however, from most recent Europeans in his high crural index and tibial length/trunk height indices... these latter two traits may be interpreted as evidence of a large African role in the origins of anatomically modern Europeans."
--Holliday and Churchill 2003. Gough's Cave 1.. BNHM Geology 58

[zarahan]

"The early Askumites built in stone. They erected massive carved monoliths over the graves of their leaders (one was 33 meters long and weighed over 700 tonnes, arguably the largest single piece of worked stone ever hewn."--John Reader, 1998. Africa: The Biography of the continent. pg 208).

"Perhaps the best -known symbols of the Aksumites' particular ideas and style are the great carved monoliths, some of which still stand, erected to commemorate their dead rulers; they also record the considerable skill of the Aksumite quarrymen, engineers, and stone-carvers, being in some cases among the largest single stones ever employed in ancient times."
--Stuart Munro-Hay 1991. Askum: An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity


“The exquisitely carved monolithic stelae dating from the 3rd and 4th centuries AD are unique masterpieces of human creative genius. “ UNESCO World Heritage citation 1980








"an intricate network of over 16,000 kilometers of banks and ditches (iya) enclosed a 4000 kilometer cluster of community lands- a vast legacy on earth.. The earthworks run four to five times longer than the Great Wall of China, and involve moving more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops." --PJ Darling, A Legacy in Earth- Ancient Benin and Ishan, Southern Nigeria in: Historical Archaeology in Nigeria, 1998. ed k. Weaver. p143

[zarahan]

Some claim a huge influx of outsiders is responsible for body mass increases in the Nile Valley. But credible scholars show that NUTRITION ALSO affects body mass significantly, not merely climate. In Africa some data shows sub-Saharan Africans themselves have varying body mass due to nutrition, with mass sometimes going up in tropical ranges. Like some ancients, recent Africans have also changed to bigger body mass as they get better nutrition



FROM --Katzmarzyk et al. 1998. Climatic Influences on Human Body Size and Proportions. AJPA 106,

QUOTE:
"For populations living in warmer areas, there is a 6.9 kg difference in mass between Robert’s sample and the present sample, compared with only a 4.7 kg difference in the cooler regions. Similarly, differences in BMI between the two samples are twice as great in the warmer climates as Fig. 3. Plot of body mass and mean annual temperature among females of the current sample. they are in the colder ones. Conversely, SA/mass ratios show sharper declines at warmer temperatures. Thus, although there has been a general, world-wide increase in body mass over the last 40 years, the increases appear to be disproportionately larger in tropical regions. The differential increases in body mass among tropical populations are clearly evident in Figures 2–4, which present the plots of mass vs. temperature for the current sample and Roberts’ sample. Figures 2 and 3 show that, in both men and women of the current sample, the greatest variation in mass occurs among tropical populations. Moreover, this variation is considerably greater than that observed by Roberts (1953; see Fig. 4).

Consequently, the lower correlations and shallower regression slopes of the relationship between mass and temperature in the current analyses reflect marked increases in average size and variation among tropical populations since the 1950s.

The present study confirms the results of Roberts (1953) in finding a significant, negative association between body weight (i.e., mass, BMI) and mean annual temperature. In addition, our results show that this relationship exists in both men and women. Roberts’ (1953, 1973) previous work had been suggestive of this; however, his results were based on only a small number of female samples (n 5 33). The results are consistent with regional reports of covariation between climate and body size. Crognier (1981) reported significant negative associations between mean annual temperature and both body mass (r 5 20.71) and stature (r 5 20.28) in a sample of 85 male populations living in Europe and the Mediterranean. However, no indication was given about when the data had been collected. Similarly, body mass (r5 20.46) and the body mass/SA ratio (r 5 20.54) were negatively associated with mean annual temperature of birth place in U.S. Army recruits (Newman and Munro, 1955).



On the other hand, body mass varied directly with the temperature of the hottest month (r 5 0.25) in 78 populations in sub-Saharan Africa (Hiernaux and Froment, 1976). Noting that these results are in contradiction to Bergmann‘s rule, the authors suggest that this ecological rule fails to apply to sub-Saharan Africans, because, in that area of the world, body size has been affected by climatic variables that are not captured by temperature (moisture, wind, etc.). Some authors (see, e.g., Baker, 1958; Schreider, 1975) have questioned the use of body mass as an indicator of body size in examining the applicability of the ecological rules to humans. Schreider (1975), for example, has suggested that a ratio of body mass to SA is more appropriate, because it captures the true thermolytic characteristic of an individual. He argues that mass alone fails to convey explicitly the underlying adaptive variable (SA/body mass) and its relationship to climate. He described a gradient in which the SA/body mass ratio increases from temperate to tropical regions (Schreider, 1950), and the ratio of limbs to mass increases from temperate to tropical regions (Schreider, 1957)...

Consequently, to test Schreider’s hypotheses, SA/mass ratios were determined for both Roberts’ original data set and the current data. There is a significant positive relationship, as predicted, between the SA/body mass ratio and mean annual temperature among both men and women of the current sample as well as Roberts’ sample. Clearly, climate plays an important role in shaping variation in body mass. However, as Roberts (1978) notes, there are many avenues through which climate may operate. Temperature, for example, may act directly as a selective agent, favoring genetic adaptations in morphology that dissipate or retain heat most efficiently. Differences in body morphology may also result from developmental responses to temperature stress. Thus, according to this developmental hypothesis, differences in adult size and proportion are acquired during growth rather than determined by genetic differences (see Frisancho, 1993). Finally, climate may shape morphology through its influence on food availability and nutrition. According to this scenario, lower body mass and linear builds of tropical populations are the consequence of nutritional rather than thermal stress... However, there is also evidence to suggest that nutrition plays a critical role...

Newman and Munro (1955) demonstrated a significant association between body mass and mean annual temperature in a sample of 15,000 European American males. Because genetic constitution was held relatively constant, the authors attributed the association to regional variation in eating and activity patterns within the United States. Consequently, these results support the hypothesis that nutritional variation due to climatic differences is important in describing the association between body mass and mean annual temperature on a regional basis...

This trend likely reflects the impact of acculturation and lifestyle change and the associated improvements in health care and nutrition. These improvements have disproportionately affected developing world populations of the tropics and subtropics. Thus, the strong associations between body size and temperature reported previously by Roberts and others reflect the adaptations to joint influence of thermal and nutritional stress."


FROM --Katzmarzyk et al. 1998. Climatic Influences on Human Body Size and Proportions. AJPA 106,

--------------------------------------------



NUTRITION not merely Climate can affect Body Mass
[/b]
Better nutrition does not necessarily rely on sedentary agriculture, and can be obtained by intensive resource exploitation. In the Nile Valley, a substantial, mixed subsistence economy was long in place. The ancient Egyptian Badarians had a substantial population and resource base- reflecting rich subsistence foraging and harvesting, not merely sedentary agriculture.

Body mass impacted by Nutrition: QUOTE:
"Here we demonstrate that this transition is also associated with a modest reduction and subsequent improvement in stature and body mass. This trend could be broadly interpreted in the context of models of relationship between body size and nutrition. In this case, the greater body size of early hunter-gatherers may reflect the benefit of broadly based hunting and gathering subsistence... Archaological evidence suggest that the Badarian civilization had higher population density than did other contemporaneous civilizations (Gabriel, 1987; Hassan 1988)."
--Pihnasi and Stock (2011) Human Bioarchaeology of the Transition to Agriculture


In the Americas, better nutrition & agriculture also associated with body mass- Quote:

"Finally body mass has long been recognized as a morphological trait amongst humans that relates to ecogeographic patterns in association with climate (Holliday, 1997, Rull 1994). However, Auerbach (2007) found that the relationship between climatic factors and body mass amongst a broad sample of New World groups was inconsistent and may have been influenced by subsistence.. ..there is a similar trend amongst both males and females: the agriculturalists are taller and more massive, on the average. This is identical to patterns of diachronic change in stature documented using different samples from the southeast... There is also a coincident slight increase in sexual dimorphism among the agriculturalist samples, accompanied by a slight increase in overall variance in stature, body mass and bi-iliac breath.. the long temporal perspective on the development of agriculture in the Southeast may be characterized by significant overall increases in body size for both males and females."
-- PInhasi and Stock (2011). Human Bioarchaeology of the Transition to Agriculture


Modern body mass studies also show changes due to better Nutrition not simply climate- Quote:

“.. although climatic factors continue to be significant correlates of world-wide variation in human body size and morphology, differential changes in nutrition among tropical, developing world populations have moderated their influence.. Thus, the strong associations between body size and temperature reported previously by Roberts and others reflect the adaptations to joint influence of thermal and nutritional stress.” --Katzmarzyk et al. 1998. Climatic Influences on Human Body Size and Proportions. AJPA 106,


Long native settlement- No mass influx of outsiders- QUOTE:
“Furthermore, the archaeology of northern Africa does not support demic diffusion of farming from the Near East. The evidence presented by Wetterstrom indicates that early African farmers in the Fayum initially incorporated Near Eastern domesticates into an INDIGENOUS foraging strategy, and only over time developed a dependence on horticulture. This is inconsistent with in-migrating farming settlers, who would have brought a more abrupt change in subsistence strategy. "The same archaeological pattern occurs west of Egypt..” --Ehret, Keita, Newman, Bellwood (2004). The Origins of Afroasiatic Science 3 v306, n5702, p1680


A rich, indigenous foraging and harvesting strategy is old news in boosting better nutrition in ancient Africa.
“The adoption of this broad adaptive strategy provided the large food supply needed by a growing population, but achieving maximum production called for a good deal of planning and the management of labor. This marks the beginning of an organized food-producing system: agriculture.” “Dating from more than 15,000 years ago, the evidence from the Nile valley is arguably the earliest comprehensive instance of an organized food-producing system known anywhere on Earth.”
--Africa: A Biography of the Continent, J. Reader, 1998, 120-173

[zarahan]

2017 study finds sub-Saharan influence around Roman period. Ancient samples drawn from later period
of Dynastic Egypt -taken from the farther north- downplaying the south, and excluding nearby Nubia & Sudan


Ancient samples from Abusir, near Faiyum in the north


Samples from Late period-of Egypt- which have more foreign influence quote:

“According to the radiocarbon dates .. the samples can be grouped into three time periods:
Pre-Ptolemaic (New Kingdom, Third Intermediate Period and Late Period), Ptolemaic and Roman Period."


Sampling from the far north- quote:
Written sources indicate that by the third century BCE Abusir el-Meleq was at the centre of a wider region that comprised the northern part of the Herakleopolites province, and had close ties with the Fayum.. We aim to study changes and continuities in the genetic makeup of the ancient inhabitants of the Abusir el-Meleq community .. since all sampled remains derive from this community in Middle Egypt and have been radiocarbon dated to the late New Kingdom to the Roman Period..”


Limitations of study candidly admitted by authors - Quote:

“However, we note that all our genetic data were obtained from a single site in Middle Egypt and may not be representative for all of ancient Egypt. It is possible that populations in the south of Egypt were more closely related to those of Nubia and had a higher sub-Saharan genetic component, in which case the argument for an influx of sub-Saharan ancestries after the Roman Period might only be partially valid and have to be nuanced. Throughout Pharaonic history there was intense interaction between Egypt and Nubia, ranging from trade to conquest and colonialism, and there is compelling evidence for ethnic complexity within households with Egyptian men marrying Nubian women and vice versa 51,52,53. Clearly, more genetic studies on ancient human remains from southern Egypt and Sudan are needed before apodictic statements can be made."
--Schuenemann 2016 Ancient Egyptian mummy genomes suggest increase of Sub-Saharan African ancestry in post-Roman periods. NatComm, 8:15694

[zarahan]

New study suggests total conquest or "swamping" of the north by the south is overstated and that actual takeover may have been more peaceful. Overall results do not change current consensus that the south rose to dominate all of Kemet.

www.academia.edu/29528126/A_preliminary_analysis_of_diachronic_craniometric_geographical_variation_during_the_Predynastic-Early_Dynastic_period_possible_population_implications_for_the_theories_of_the_merger_of_upper_and_lower_Egypt

NOTES:
The study by Keita and Godde tests the predominance of the south in early Kemetic state formation. Was the north "swamped" by the south or was it more assimilated peacefully? Results support a more peaceful interaction and spread.

Bottom line:
The study does not shake the traditional view that the south rose to prominence and assumed dominance over all Kemet. And the notion of "swamping" in older models may be overblown. Few Egyptologists today argue that there was massive migration, replacement and conquest- south to north. Authors focus on the model of W Keiser from the 1950s on this, but few modern Egyptologists since the 1980s hold to any "swamping" model. And yet there are well documented artifacts and inscriptions as to warfare during the state formation period, so some conquest or warring must have been in place- alongside peaceful trade. The bottom line is that the south rose to dominate Egypt. Whether it was halfway peaceful with a mix or trade or warfare, or total conquest or whatever, makes little difference.

The study does affirm southern primacy:-Quote:

"Kohler^ does not deny a “special” role for Upper Egypt in state formation (i.e. a political process) stating: 'What happened during the Dynasty, as part of the second stage in state formation, clearly bears out a strong southern political influence.."

----Keita, SOY, Godde, K. 2016. A preliminary analysis of diachronic craniometric geographical variation during the Predynastic-Early Dynastic period: possible population implications for the theories of the merger of upper and lower Egypt. Göttinger Miszellen 249: 97-110.

[zarahan]

Interestingly per Keita and Godde, the data from Maadi, a major predynastic
site in Northern (Lower) Egypt clusters more with the southern data. Quote:

"Maadi and both northern Early Dynastic series, while distinctive, are
closer to the Upper Egyptians on PC 2 in “shape” than Wadi Digla, which
indicates a level of diversity in Lower Egypt. Interestingly, the Maadi
PD sample is more similar overall to Upper Egyptians than to Lower Egyptians
(with the exception of Wadi Digla) when compared to Badari. The Abydos ED series,
as noted, shows similarity to the Predynastic Upper Egyptian series, but is also
distinctive along both axes of variation. On PC 1 and 2 the Predynastic Upper
Egyptian series (Abydos, Naqada, Badari) group more closely to each other overall
than do the Lower Egyptian Predynastic series (Wadi Digla and Maadi), depicting
the greater level of diversity in northern Egypt."
--Keita and Godde

This tracks with limb proportion data showing some northern samples clustering
with Africans of tropical provenance in the south, per Egyptologist Kemp below.

[zarahan]

One of the oldest human religious sanctuaries, dating back to 40,000BC in Palestine, shows
African influences. Later developments in the region may have drawn on the previous ancients

www.harkarkom.com/index.php

This book presents archaeological evidence unearthed by Prof.
Emmanuel Anati at Har Karkom, in the Negev desert, Israel. Geographically,
Mount Karkom is situated approximately half way between Kadesh Barnea and Petra.

Har Karkom was a paramount cult centre and a sacred mountain beginning in the
Palaeolithic Age, reaching its peak of religious activity in the third millennium BC,
when it was a true "Mecca" for the desert people.

If the epic accounts described in the books of Exodus and Numbers rely
on a historical background, and if indeed an exodus from Egypt took place with
stops at Mount Sinai and at Kadesh-barnea, the chronological context may refer
only to the BAC period, and more precisely to phase BAC IV (2350-2000 BC).

Har Karkom was a primary sacred mountain in that period, and the topography
and archaeological evidence of its plateau appear to reflect the location and
character of the biblical Mount Sinai.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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See also:
www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/exodus/out-of-egypt-israels-exodus-between-text-and-memory-history-and-imagination/


Out of Egypt: Israel’s Exodus Between Text and Memory, History and Imagination
Watch full-length lecture videos as dozens of top scholars discuss new Exodus research at a recent UCSD conference

[zarahan]

EARLY STATE FORMATION IN KEMET ORIGINATED FROM "DARKER" SOUTH.
Almost half of southern or Upper Egypt lies in the tropical zone
QUOTE:

"The earliest burials known in the Nile Valley are those at Nazlet Khater and
Kubbaniya, mentioned above. A group of three slightly younger burials was found at
Deir el-Fakhuri, near Esna. All of these skeletons are of fully modern Homo sapiens
sapiens, but they were very robust, with short wide faces and pronounced alveolar
prognathism. They have been compared with a type known as Mechtoid (from the site of
Mechta el-Arbi), which are found in Late Paleolithic sites throughout North Africa, and
particularly in the Maghreb.


In the Nile Valley there are three Late Paleolithic graveyards, all associated with
Qadan assemblages: Jebel Sahaba, a few kilometers north of Wadi Haifa on the east bank
of the Nile, with 59 burials; Site 6-B-36, on the west bank almost opposite Wadi Haifa,
with 39 burials; and Wadi Tushka, north of Abu Simbel in southern Egypt, with 19
burials. The radiocarbon dates range between 14,000 and 13,000 BP. All of the skeletons
are Mechtoid, indicating a long and unbroken history for this type in the Nile Valley.


North of the el-Badari district, no Predynastic sites are known for over 300km.
Archaeological evidence in the Fayum of both Nagada and Ma'adi culture wares now
seems to suggest that this region was where peoples of the Predynastic cultures of Upper
and Lower Egypt first came into contact. The best known Predynastic site in the Fayum
region is the small cemetery at Gerza, from which the term Gerzean (Nagada II) is
derived. Excavated by Petrie, this cemetery contained 288 burials with (Upper Egyptian)
ceramics which are typically Nagada II. A later Predynastic cemetery with several
hundred burials, excavated by Georg Moller, is located at Abusir el-Meleq, about 10km
west of the present Nile. Ma'adi culture ceramics are found at the cemetery of es-Saff on
the east bank opposite Gerza, and a site near Qasr Qarun in the southwestern region of
the Fayum, excavated by Caton Thompson and E.W.Gardner in the 1930s.


Archaeological evidence clearly demonstrates the existence of two different material
cultures with different belief systems in Egypt in the fourth millennium BC: the Nagada
culture of Upper Egypt and the Ma'adi culture of Lower Egypt. Evidence in Lower Egypt
consists mainly of settlements with very simple burials, in contrast to Upper Egypt,
where cemeteries with elaborate burials are found. The rich grave goods in several major
cemeteries in Upper Egypt represent the acquired wealth of higher social strata, and these
cemeteries were probably associated with centers of craft production. Trade and
exchange of finished goods and luxury materials from the Eastern and Western Deserts
and Nubia would also have taken place in such centers. In Lower Egypt, however, while
excavated settlements permit a broader reconstruction of the prehistoric economy, there is
little evidence for any great socioeconomic complexity.


State formation

Archaeological evidence points to the origins of the state which emerged by the 1st
Dynasty in the Nagada culture of Upper Egypt, where grave types, pottery and artifacts
demonstrate an evolution of form from the Predynastic to the 1st Dynasty. This cannot be
demonstrated for the material culture of Lower Egypt, which was eventually displaced by
that originating in Upper Egypt.

By circa 3050 BC the Early Dynastic state had emerged in Egypt. One result of the
expansion of Nagada culture throughout northern Egypt would have been a greatly
elaborated (state) administration, and by the beginning of the 1st Dynasty this was
managed in part by the invention of writing, used on sealings and tags affixed to state
goods. The early Egyptian state was a centrally controlled polity ruled by a (god-)king
from the newly founded capital of Memphis in the north, near Saqqara. What is truly
unique about the early state in Egypt is the integration of rule over an extensive
geographic region. There was undoubtedly heightened commercial contact with
southwest Asia in the late fourth millennium BC, but the Early Dynastic state in Egypt
was unique and indigenous in character."

FROM:
--Bard K. ed 1999. Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. p 29-30

[zarahan]

DNA analysis demonstrates aub-Saharan Africa's greater diversity and how diversity
decreases with distance from sub-Saharan Africa (other populations are subsets of African
diversity.) Other data, cranial, dental, skeletal etc show the same pattern of principal diversity
in sub-Saharan Africa and decrease as distance grows from sub-Saharan Africa.
QUOTE:

Tracing the paths of modern humans from Africa

"In the 1980s, genetic and fossil evidence began
to call attention to Africa’s preeminence in the
origins of modern human populations (1), but this
evidence could be interpreted in two fundamentally
different ways (2). Was Africa’s role greater than
other continents because it always harbored a larger
human population (size) or because modern humans
arose in Africa first and subsequently expanded
their range across the world (time)? In the 2000s,
improvements in DNA sequencing technology and
genetic sampling of more present day human groups
made it possible to accurately characterize the
genetic diversity of groups from different regions
of the world, and it became clear that within-
group genetic diversity decreased predictably with
increased geographic distance from sub-Saharan Africa (3, 4).

Subsequently, similar, albeit weaker, relationships
were found between within-group variation in aspects
of skeletal morphology (cranial, dental, and pelvic
measurements) and distance from sub-Saharan Africa
(5⇓⇓–8)."

--Weaver 2014-Tracing the paths of modern humans from Africa-PNAS

[zarahan]

Diversity of tropical African ecozones- not just "jungle" but including
savanna, high altitude plateau, cold high altitude cloud forest, to
snow-capped mountains. An also desert. All of these are "tropical."

[zarahan]

"Backflow blues" - back migration etc.. Many "backflowees" or "back migrants"
looked like Africans- well within the range of African diversity..

[zarahan]

WEAKNESS OF MULTI-REGIONALISM"



Some info from Chris Stringer, on why multiregionalism
is still somewhat weak despite recent evidence of Neanderhal/archaic admix.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534714000470

QUOTE:

"RAO is still the most appropriate model

The big picture is that we are predominantly of recent African origin, and RAO is not just about the sources of our shared modern morphology and most of our genes; it is also about the genesis of our shared patterns of behaviour. Inferred behavioural gaps between Neanderthals and modern humans have certainly narrowed from recent research, but in my view they have not disappeared. I think that the pre-eminence of Africa in the story of modern human origins was primarily a question of its larger geographic and human population size, which gave greater opportunities for morphological and behavioural variations, and for innovations to develop and be conserved, rather than the result of a special evolutionary pathway. By contrast, genomic data suggest that the lineages of the Neanderthals and Denisovans had much greater demographic attrition [25], perhaps related to the challenges posed by the unstable climates of Eurasia, and this might well have inhibited their cultural as well as physical evolution [6].

‘Modernity’ was not a package that had a single African origin in one time, place, and population, but was a composite whose elements appeared, and sometimes disappeared, at different times and places and then coalesced to assume the form we see in extant humans [6]. However, during the past 400 000 years, most of that assembly took place in Africa, which is why a recent African origin still represents the predominant (but not exclusive) mode of evolution for H. sapiens. Rather than saying ‘we are all multiregionalists trying to explain the out-of-Africa pattern’ [1], it would be more appropriate to say ‘we are all out-of-Africanists who accept some multiregional contributions’."

[zarahan]

Diversity of African limb proportion indexes. While much data is distinctly tropical
it can vary into the ranges of the temperate zone. This is not surprising since:

(a) Tropical Africans are the most diverse people phenotypically

(b) Tropical Africans do move around the continent, and can adapt to
the many micro-climates on the continent- whether it be cold high altitude
plateau, or temperate coastal zone. Africans move around. They do not "confine"
themselves below any climatic "apartheid" barrier somewhere below the Sahara as
many ignoramuses and distorters claim.



^^Note the African crural index range drops as low as 82.8- which is
BELOW/UNDER some European ranges. The low/diverse African range trumps the claim
of so-called "European" patterns. Africans ALREADY match such patterns
as part of their BUILT-IN diversity.




^^Late period samples cluster away from typical Egyptian series.

[zarahan]

2017 study finds sub-Saharan influence around Roman period. Ancient samples drawn from later period
of Dynastic Egypt -taken from the farther north- downplaying the south, and excluding nearby Nubia & Sudan


Ancient samples from Abusir, near Faiyum in the north


Limitation 1: Samples from Late period-of Egypt- which have more foreign influence quote:

“According to the radiocarbon dates .. the samples can be grouped into three time periods:
Pre-Ptolemaic (New Kingdom, Third Intermediate Period and Late Period), Ptolemaic and Roman Period."


Limitation 2: Sampling from the far north- quote:
Written sources indicate that by the third century BCE Abusir el-Meleq was at the centre of a wider region that comprised the northern part of the Herakleopolites province, and had close ties with the Fayum.. We aim to study changes and continuities in the genetic makeup of the ancient inhabitants of the Abusir el-Meleq community .. since all sampled remains derive from this community in Middle Egypt and have been radiocarbon dated to the late New Kingdom to the Roman Period..”




Limitation 3-summary: Limitations of study candidly admitted by authors - Quote:

“However, we note that all our genetic data were obtained from a single site in Middle Egypt and may not be representative for all of ancient Egypt. It is possible that populations in the south of Egypt were more closely related to those of Nubia and had a higher sub-Saharan genetic component, in which case the argument for an influx of sub-Saharan ancestries after the Roman Period might only be partially valid and have to be nuanced. Throughout Pharaonic history there was intense interaction between Egypt and Nubia, ranging from trade to conquest and colonialism, and there is compelling evidence for ethnic complexity within households with Egyptian men marrying Nubian women and vice versa 51,52,53. Clearly, more genetic studies on ancient human remains from southern Egypt and Sudan are needed before apodictic statements can be made."
--Schuenemann 2016 Ancient Egyptian mummy genomes suggest increase of Sub-Saharan African ancestry in post-Roman periods.

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