Post by zarahan on May 8, 2010 5:51:09 GMT -5
On the web there seems to be an recent uptick in claims about allegedly superior "cold climate" evolution and "light skin" evolution being responsible for advanced civilization. Let's put this nonsense to rest by pointing out that one of the most advanced civilizations of all time was inn tropical and sub-tropical environments, and created by tropically adapted peoples. That civilization was ancient Egypt. We've seen much of this before but let's summarize 10 points quickly to dismiss these bogus claims. Map of tropical areas added to round out the well known text.
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SUMMARY
africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/coldclimatelightskindebunk.htm
1) Southern Egypt, from which the genesis of Ancient Egypt civilization sprang, lies in the tropical zone, from the Tropics of Cancer to Capricorn. The rest of Egypt is very similar, and lies in the immediately adjacent subtropical or arid tropic zone, NOT the cold-climate zones of Europe or Asia.
(Thompson and Perry, 1997; Griffiths, 1976)
2) The peoples of ancient Egypt, in the aforementioned tropical and semi-tropical/arid tropic zones, show clear limb proportion characteristics of tropically adapted people, and MORE closely resemble other tropically adapted Africans on the continent, than Europeans or Middle Easterners.
(Raxter and Ruff 2008, Zakrewski 2003, 2007; Holliday et al, 2003, Kemp, 2005)
3) Undermining claims of cold-climate or skin color primacy for civilization, the great ancient Nile Valley civilization arose from the 'darker' more tropical south, NOT the cold climate or cool climate Mediterranean, Europe or Asia.
(Clark, 1982; Shaw 1976, 2003; Bard, 2004; Vogel, 1997; Kemp 2005)
4) The ancient Egyptians in their tropical and sub-tropical/arid tropic environment, did not need cold climate people to develop their distinct culture. Several strands of culture from religion to material living put the Egyptians closer to nearby Africans than to cold-climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Asiatics.
(Keita, 1996, 2004; Yurco 1989, 1996; Williams, 1980; Britannia 1984; Wilkinson 1999; Wendorf, 2001)
5) European/Asiatic cold climate or light skin inspiration was unneeded by the tropically adapted Africans of ancient Egypt. They peopled the Nile Valley from the Sahara and the Sudan, and ancient Egypt is part of a tropical African lineage. Indigenous development sprang from a long tradition going back deep into the Sahara and the Sudan.
(Lovell, 1999; Lefkowitz, 1993, 1996; Keita 1993, Irish 2006)
6) European/Asiatic cold climate or light skin inspiration was unneeded by the tropically adapted Africans of ancient Egypt. DNA studies show the Egyptians link with other Africans via Haplogroup "E" to a much greater extent than cold climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Middle easterners.
(Keita 2004, 2008; Richards 2003; Battaglia, 2008; Cruciani 2007; Lucotte 2003; Stevanovitch et al 2004)
7) African people have a range of physical variation and don't need any inspiration or mixes from cold-climate/light skinned Europeans or Asiatics to explain why. Features like narrow noses, thin lips, height etc are all indigenous to Africa. Africa has both the highest phenotypic diversity and the highest genetic diversity in the world and don’t need cold-climate/light skin inspiration for that established fact. All cold-climate/light skinned Europeans and Asiatics are SUBSETS of original African diversity. Modern DNA studies find even though some African peoples look different, they are genetically related through the PN2 transition clade of the Y-chromosome. Thus light-skinned African Libyans and dark-skinned Zulus are all genetically related Africans, even though they don't look exactly the same.
(Keita 2004; Tishkoff 2002, Ely et al, 2006, Stevanovitch 2004)
8) African peoples are the most diverse in the world whether analyzed by DNA or skeletal or cranial methods. The peoples of the Nile Valley vary but they are still related. The people most related ethnically to the ancient Egyptians are other Africans like Nubians not cold-climate/light skinned Europeans or Asiatics.
(Keita 1996; Rethelford, 2001; Bianchi 2004, Yurco 1989; Godde 2009)
9) Not needing cold-climate/slight-skinned inspiration, the peoples of ancient Egypt are more closely linked with fellow tropical Africans in terms of cranial studies than with Europeans or Asiatics. Analysis of skeletal and cranial remains reveals that the ancient Egyptians of the early Dynastic and pre-Dynastic phases, link closer to nearby Saharan, Sudanic and East African populations than Mediterranean and Middle Eastern peoples. Greeks, Romans, Hyskos, Arabs and others were to appear later in Egyptian history. Craniometric studies generally place ancient Upper Egyptian populations closer to the range of tropical Africans in the Nile Valley and East Africa than to Mediterraneans, or Middle Easterners.
(Keita 1990, 1993, 1996, 2004; Hiernaux 1975; Froment 2002; Kemp 2005)
10) Comparatively recent (in evolutionary terms) Europeans and Asiatics LOOKED LIKE tropical Africans with dark skin and other features, before cold-climate adaptation changed them. Light skin color is a RECENT development for Europeans and Asiatics. The foundations of civilization in terms of key animal and plant domesticates, and associated technology in Europe and Asia were thus laid by these dark-skinned migrants from Africa, who resembled today's Africans, undermining claims of the efficacy of white skin in laying the basic foundations or in building advanced civilizations such as that built by the tropically adapted peoples of the Nile Valley.
(Jablonski 2000; Brace 2005; Hanihara 1996; Rethelford 2000)
DETAILS
1) Debunking #1: Southern Egypt, from which the genesis of Ancient Egypt civilization sprang, lies in the tropical zone. he rest of Egypt lies in the subtropical or arid tropic zone, NOT the cold-climate zones of Europe or Asia.The subtropics are the geographical and climatic zone of the Earth immediately north and south of the tropical zone, which is bounded by the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, at latitudes 23.5°N and 23.5°S. The term "subtropical" describes the climatic region found adjacent to the tropics, usually between 20 and 40 degrees of latitude in both hemispheres. Egypt is also assigned to the subtropics or the arid tropics by modern climatologists. (See: Russell D. Thompson, Allen Howard Perry (1997) Applied climatology: principles and practice. Routhledge: pg 179.; See also Applied Climatology: An Introduction by John F. Griffiths. Oxford University Press. 1976 pg 22)
2) Debunking #2: The peoples of ancient Egypt, in the aforementioned tropical and semi-tropical/arid tropic zones show clear limb proportion characteristics of tropically adapted people, and MORE closely resemble other tropically adapted Africans on the continent, than Europeans or Middle Easterners.
In short, the ancient Egyptians have tropically adapted body plans not the body plans of cold adapted Europeans or Asiatics. Quotes by credible mainstream scholars:
----- The very distinctive tropical adaptation of the Egyptians - termed 'super negroid' because of its clarity:
"The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the “super-Negroid” body plan described by Robins (1983).. This pattern is supported by Figure 7 (a plot of population mean femoral and tibial lengths; data from Ruff, 1994), which indicates that the Egyptians generally have tropical body plans. Of the Egyptian samples, only the Badarian and Early Dynastic period populations have shorter tibiae than predicted from femoral length. Despite these differences, all samples lie relatively clustered together as compared to the other populations."
--(Zakrzewski, S.R. (2003). "Variation in ancient Egyptian stature and body proportions". American Journal of Physical Anthropology 121 (3): 219-229.
------- Northern Egypt near the Mediterranean shows the same pattern- limb length data puts its peoples closer to tropically adapted Africans that cold climate Europeans
"..sample populations available from northern Egypt from before the 1st Dynasty (Merimda, Maadi and Wadi Digla) turn out to be significantly different from sample populations from early Palestine and Byblos, suggesting a lack of common ancestors over a long time. If there was a south-north cline variation along the Nile valley it did not, from this limited evidence, continue smoothly on into southern Palestine. The limb-length proportions of males from the Egyptian sites group them with Africans rather than with Europeans." (Barry Kemp, "Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation. (2005) Routledge. p. 52-60)
------- Comparisons of ancient Egyptians, US blacks and us whites put the Egyptians closer to blacks because of the tropical adaptations
"Intralimb (crural and brachial) indices are significantly higher in ancient Egyptians than in American Whites (except crural index among females), i.e., Egyptians have relatively longer distal segments (Table 4). Intralimb indices are not significantly different between Egyptians and American Blacks... Many of those who have studied ancient Egyptians have commented on their characteristically ‘‘tropical’’ or ‘‘African’’ body plan (Warren, 1897; Masali, 1972; Robins, 1983; Robins and Shute, 1983, 1984, 1986; Zakrzewski, 2003). Egyptians also fall within the range of modern African populations (Ruff and Walker, 1993).. brachial indices are definitely more ‘‘African’’).. In terms of femoral and tibial length to total skeletal height proportions, we found that ancient Egyptians are significantly different from US Blacks, although still closer to Blacks than to Whites.
Comparisons of linear body proportions of Old Kingdom and non-Old Kingdom period individuals, and workers and high officials in our sample found no statistically significant differences among them. Zakrzewski (2003) also found little evidence for differences in linear body proportions of Egyptians over a wider temporal range. In general, recent studies of skeletal variation among ancient Egyptians support scenarios of biological continuity through time. Irish (2006) analyzed quantitative and qualitative dental traits of 996 Egyptians from Neolithic through Roman periods, reporting the presence of a few outliers but concluding that the dental samples appear to be largely homogeneous and that the affinities observed indicate overall biological uniformity and continuity from Predynastic through Dynastic and Post dynastic periods.
Zakrzewski (2007) provided a comprehensive summary of previous Egyptian craniometric studies and examined Egyptian crania from six time periods. She found that the earlier samples were relatively more homogeneous in comparison to the later groups. However, overall results indicated genetic continuity over the Egyptian Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods, albeit with a high level of genetic diversity within the population, suggesting an indigenous process of state formation. "
("Stature estimation in ancient Egyptians: A new technique based on anatomical reconstruction of stature." Michelle H. Raxter, Christopher B. Ruff, Ayman Azab, Moushira Erfan, Muhammad Soliman, Aly El-Sawaf, (Am J Phys Anthropol. 2008, Jun;136(2):147-55
------- Older limb studies find the same- tropically adapted Blacks are closer to ancient Egyptians than whites:
"An attempt has been made to estimate male and female Egyptian stature from long bone length using Trotter & Gleser negro stature formulae, previous work by the authors having shown that these rather than white formulae give more consistent results with male dynastic material... When consistency has been achieved in this way, Predynastic proportions are founded to be such that distal segments of the limbs are even longer in relation to the proximal segments than they are in modern negroes. Such proportions are termed "super-negroid"...
Robins (1983) and Robins & Shute (1983) have shown that more consistent results are obtained from ancient Egyptian male skeletons if Trotter & Gleser formulae for negro are used, rather than those for whites which have always been applied in the past. .. their physical proportions were more like modern negroes than those of modern whites, with limbs that were relatively long compared with the trunk, and distal segments that were long compared with the proximal segments. If ancient Egyptian males had what may be termed negroid proportions, it seems reasonable that females did likewise."
(Robins G, Shute CCD. 1986. Predynastic Egyptian stature and physical proportions. Hum Evol 1:313–324. Ruff CB. 1994.)
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Egyptians have tropical body plans as expected for groups evolving/living in tropical environments. these tropical body plans put them closer to fellow Africans than cold-climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Asiatics.
3) Debunking #3: Undermining claims of cold-climate or skin color primacy for civilization, the great ancient Nile Valley civilization arose from the 'darker' more tropical south, NOT the cold climate or cool climate Mediterranean, Europe or Asia.
Quotes by credible mainstream scholars:
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"While communities such as Ma'adi appear to have played an important role in entrepots through which goods and ideas form south-west Asia filtered into the Nile Valley in later prehistoric times, the main cultural and political tradition that gave rise to the cultural pattern of Early Dynastic Egypt is to be found not in the north but in the south.":
The Cambridge History of Africa: Volume 1, From the Earliest Times to c. 500 BC, (Cambridge University Press: 1982), Edited by J. Desmond Clark pp. 500-509
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"..the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life."
(Source: Shaw, Thurston (1976) Changes in African Archaeology in the Last Forty Years in African Studies since 1945. p. 156-68. London.)
"What is truly unique about this state is the integration of rule over an extensive geographic region, in contrast to other contemporaneous Near Easter polities in Nubia, Mesopotamia, Palestine and the Levant. Present evidence suggests that the state which emerged by the First Dynasty had its roots in the Nagada culture of Upper Egypt, where grave types, pottery and artifacts demonstrate an evolution of form from the Predynastic to the First Dynasty, This cannot be demonstrated for the material culture of Lower Egypt, which was eventually displaced by that which originated in Upper Egypt. Hierarchical society with much social and economic differentiation, as symbolized in the Nagada II cemeteries of Upper Egypt, does not seem to have been present, then, in Lower Egypt, a fact which supports an Upper Egyptian origin for the unified state. Thus archaeological evidence cannot support earlier theories that the founders of Egyptian civilization were an invading Dynastic race from the east.."
"Egyptian contact in the 4th millennium B.C. with SW Asia is undeniable, but the effect of this contact on state formation is Egypt is less clear... The unified state which emerged in Egypt in the 3rd millennium B.C. however, was unlike the polities in Mesopotamia, the Levant, northern Syria, or Early Bronze Age Palestine- in sociopolitical organization, material culture, and belief system. There was undoubtedly heightened commercial contact with SW Asia in the 4th millennium B.C., but the Early Dynastic state which emerged in Egypt is unique and religious in character."
(Bard, Kathryn A. 1994 The Egyptian Predynastic: A Review of the Evidence. Journal of Field Archaeology 21(3):265-288.)
~~~~
"From Petrie onwards, it was regularly suggested that despite the evidence of Predynastic cultures, Egyptian civilization of the 1st Dynasty appeared suddenly and must therefore have been introduced by an invading foreign 'race'. Since the 1970s however, excavations at Abydos and Hierakonpolis have clearly demonstrated the indigenous, Upper Egyptian roots of early civilization in Egypt."
(Ian Shaw ed. (2003) The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt By Ian Shaw. Oxford University Press, page 40-63)
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"..sample populations available from northern Egypt from before the 1st Dynasty (Merimda, Maadi and Wadi Digla) turn out to be significantly different from sample populations from early Palestine and Byblos, suggesting a lack of common ancestors over a long time. If there was a south-north cline variation along the Nile valley it did not, from this limited evidence, continue smoothly on into southern Palestine. The limb-length proportions of males from the Egyptian sites group them with Africans rather than with Europeans."
(Barry Kemp, "Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation. (2005) Routledge. p. 52-60)
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"Populations and cultures now found south of the desert roamed far to the north. The culture of Upper Egypt, which became dynastic Egyptian civilization, could fairly be called a Sudanese transplant."(Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa: Their Interaction. Encyclopedia of Pre-colonial Africa, by Joseph O. Vogel, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California (1997), pp. 465-472 )
africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/forgottenoriginals1.jpg
Genesis of ancient Egyptian civilization in the 'darker' tropical south.
The genesis of Egyptian civilization was in the 'darker' topical south not the north, the Mediterranean, Europe or Asia
4) Debunking #4: The ancient Egyptians in their tropical and sub-tropical/arid tropic environment, did not need cold climate people to develop their distinct culture. Several strands of culture from religion to material living put the ancient Egyptians closer to nearby Africans than to cold-climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Asiatics. A 1996 collection of art and material culture for example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, also highlights several cultural links between the Nile Valley peoples, and demonstrates that they were part of a larger indigenous African context, with local variation. The exhibit suggests 8 common areas of interchange, similarity and linkage, grouping artifacts according to such themes as: Mother and child figures, Headrests, Depictions of humans, Ancestor worship and divine kingship, Animal Deities and symbols, Masking, Body art and Circumcision and male initiation (Egypt in Africa, 1996, Theodore Celenko (ed), Curator, Indianapolis Museum of Art). Other detailed studies confirm the same pattern of indigenous African development, as shown below.
[quotes from credible scholars]
------- Ancient Egyptian religion closer to the religion of African regions than to Mesopotamia, Europe or the Middle East
QUOTE(s):
Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508
"A large number of gods go back to prehistoric times. The images of a cow and star goddess (Hathor), the falcon (Horus), and the human-shaped figures of the fertility god (Min) can be traced back to that period. Some rites, such as the "running of the Apis-bull," the "hoeing of the ground," and other fertility and hunting rites (e.g., the hippopotamus hunt) presumably date from early times.. Connections with the religions in southwest Asia cannot be traced with certainty."
"It is doubtful whether Osiris can be regarded as equal to Tammuz or Adonis, or whether Hathor is related to the "Great Mother." There are closer relations with northeast African religions. The numerous animal cults (especially bovine cults and panther gods) and details of ritual dresses (animal tails, masks, grass aprons, etc) probably are of African origin. The kinship in particular shows some African elements, such as the king as the head ritualist (i.e., medicine man), the limitations and renewal of the reign (jubilees, regicide), and the position of the king's mother (a matriarchal element). Some of them can be found among the Ethiopians in Napata and Meroe, others among the Prenilotic tribes (Shilluk)."
(Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508)
------- Credible scholarship shows cultural similarities between ancient Egypt and the rest of Africa, contradicting claims of Middle Eastern inspiration.
* Specific central African tool designs found at the well known Naqada, Badari and Fayum archaeological sites in Egypt (de Heinzelin 1962, Arkell and Ucko, 1956 et al). Shaw (1976) states that "the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life."
* Pottery evidence first seen in the Saharan Highlands then spreading to the Nile Valley (Flight 1973).
* Art motifs of Saharan rock paintings showing similarities to those in pharaonic art. A number of scholars suggest that these earlier artistic styles influenced later pharaonic art via Saharans leaving drier areas and moving into the Nile Valley taking their art styles with them (Mori 1964, Blanc 1964, et al)
* Earlier pioneering mummification outside Egypt. The oldest mummy in Africa is of a black Saharan child (Donadoni 1964, Blanc 1964) Frankfort (1956) suggests that it is thus possible to understand the pharaonic worldview by reference to the religious beliefs of these earlier African precursors. Attempts to suggest the root of such practices are due to Caucasoid civilizers from elsewhere are thus contradicted by the data on the ground.
* Several cultural practices of Egypt show strong similarities to an African totemic clan base. Childe (1969, 1978), Aldred (1978) and Strouhal (1971) demonstrate linkages with several African practices such as divine kingship and the king as divine rainmaker.
* Physical similarities of the early Nile valley populations with that of tropical Africans. Such connections are demonstrated in the work of numerous scholars such as Thompson and Randall Mclver 1905, Falkenburger 1947, and Strouhal 1971. The distance diagrams of Mukherjee, Rao and Trevor (1955) place the ancient Badarians genetically near 'black' tribes such as the Ashanti and the Taita. See also the "Issues of lumping under Mediterranean clusters" section above for similar older analyses.
* Serological (blood) evidence of genetic linkages. Paoli 1972 for example found a significant resemblance between ABO frequencies of dynastic Egyptians and the black northern Haratin who are held to be the probable descendants of the original Saharans (Hiernaux, 1975).
* Language similarities which include several hundred roots ascribable to African elements (UNESCO 1974)
* Ancient Egyptian origin stories ascribing origins of the gods and their ancestors to African locations to the south and west of Egypt (Davidson 1959, White 1970).
quote: "It may be noted that the ancient Egyptians themselves appear to have been convinced that their place of origin was African rather than Asian. They made continued reference to the land of Punt as their homeland." --(White, Jon Manchip., Ancient Egypt: Its Culture and History (Dover Publications; New Ed edition, June 1, 1970), p. 141.
* Advanced state building and political unity in Nubia, including writing, administrative apparatus and insignia some 300 years before dynastic Egypt, and the long demonstrated interchange between Nubia and Egypt (Williams 1980)
* Newer studies (Wendorf 2001, Wilkinson 1999, et al.) confirm these older analyses. Excavations from Nabta Playa, located about 100km west of Abu Simbel for example, suggest that the Neolithic inhabitants of the region were migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa, based on cultural similarities and social complexity which is thought to be reflective of Egypt's Old Kingdom
* Other scholars (Wilkinson 1999) present similar material and cultural evidence- including similarities between Predynastic Egypt and traditional African cattle-culture, typical of Southern Sudanese and East African pastoralists of today, and various cultural and artistic data such as iconography on rock art found in both Egypt and in the Sudan.
Several strands of culture from religion to material living put the ancient Egyptians closer to nearby Africans than to cold-climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Asiatics.
5) Debunking #5. European/Asiatic cold climate or light skin inspiration was unneeded by the tropically adapted Africans of ancient Egypt. They peopled the Nile Valley from the Sahara, and ancient Egypt is part of a tropical African lineage. Indigenous development sprang from a long tradition going back deep into the Sahara and the Sudan.
[quotes by credible mainstream scholars, including Mary Lefkowitz:]
------- The tropical African lineage of ancient Egyptians
"There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas."
and
"[research] must be placed in the context of hypotheses informed by archaeological, linguistic, geographic and other data. In such contexts, the physical anthropological evidence indicates that early Nile Valley populations can be identified as part of an African lineage, but exhibiting local variation.
--("Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999). pp 328-332)
----- Afrocentric critic Mary Lefkowitz says the Egypt was peopled by people from sub-Saharan Africa, not cold-climate Europeans or Middle Easterners.
"Recent work on skeletons and DNA suggests that the people who settled in the Nile valley, like all of humankind, came from somewhere south of the Sahara; they were not (as some nineteenth-century scholars had supposed) invaders from the North. See Bruce G. Trigger, "The Rise of Civilization in Egypt," Cambridge History of Africa (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), vol I, pp 489-90; S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54."
(Mary Lefkowitz (1997). Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History. Basic Books. pg 242)
------- In Black Athena Revisited, Lefkowitz finds similarity between Egyptians and Sudanics and recommends the work of conservative anthropologist Nancy Lovell for more research on the subject.
Quote:
"not surprisingly, the Egyptian skulls were not very distance from the Jebel Moya skulls, but were much more distance from all others, including those from West Africa. Such a study suggests a closer genetic affinity between peoples in Egypt and the northern Sudan, which were close geographically and are known to have had considerable cultural contact throughout prehistory and pharaonic history... Clearly more analyses of the physical remains of ancient Egyptians need to be done using current techniques, such as those of Nancy Lovell at the University of Alberta is using in her work.."
(- Mary Lefkowitz, "Black Athena Revisited. pp. 105-106)
------- Lefkowitz cites Keita 1993 in Not Out of Africa. Here is Keita on the Jebel Moya studies:
"Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Jebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have 'donated' people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)... Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese."
S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54
------- Here is the work of the anthropologist so strongly recommended by Lefkowitz, Nancy Lovell:
"There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas."
and
"[research] must be placed in the context of hypotheses informed by archaeological, linguistic, geographic and other data. In such contexts, the physical anthropological evidence indicates that early Nile Valley populations can be identified as part of an African lineage, but exhibiting local variation.
-- ("Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999). pp 328-332)
The same Nancy Lovell recommended by Lefkowitz studied dental traits among some high status persons of the key Egyptian Naqada group and found that they resembled the peoples of Nubia.
"A biological affinities study based on frequencies of cranial nonmetric traits in skeletal samples from three cemeteries at Predynastic Naqada, Egypt, confirms the results of a recent nonmetric dental morphological analysis. Both cranial and dental traits analyses indicate that the individuals buried in a cemetery characterized archaeologically as high status are significantly different from individuals buried in two other, apparently non-elite cemeteries and that the non-elite samples are not significantly different from each other. A comparison with neighboring Nile Valley skeletal samples suggests that the high status cemetery represents an endogamous ruling or elite segment of the local population at Naqada, which is more closely related to populations in northern Nubia than to neighboring populations in southern Egypt."
(T. Prowse, and N. Lovell "Concordance of cranial and dental morphological traits and evidence for endogamy in ancient Egypt". American journal of physical anthropology. 1996, vol. 101, no2, pp. 237-246 (2 p.1/4)
6) Debunking #6: European/Asiatic cold climate or light skin inspiration was unneeded by the tropically adapted Africans of ancient Egypt. DNA studies show the Egyptians link with other Africans via Haplogroup "E" to a much greater extent than cold climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Middle easterners.
Most studies of Egyptian Y-DNA find lineages closer to African populations than Europe or the Middle East.
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The predominant Haplogroup in Egypt is 'E" - which has the highest frequency in Africa
7) Debunking 7: African people have a range of physical variation and don't need any inspiration or mixes from cold-climate/light skinned Europeans or Asiatics to explain why. Features like narrow noses, thin lips, height etc are all indigenous to Africa. Africa has both the highest phenotypic diversity and the highest genetic diversity in the world and don’t need cold-climate/light skin inspiration for that established fact. All cold-climate/light skinned Europeans and Asiatics are SUBSETS of original African diversity. Modern DNA studies find even though some African peoples look different, they are genetically related through the PN2 transition clade of the Y-chromosome. Thus light-skinned African Libyans and dark-skinned Zulus are all genetically related Africans ,even though they don't look exactly the same.
"But the Y-chromosome clade defined by the PN2 transition (PN2/M35, PN2/M2) shatters the boundaries of phenotypically defined races and true breeding populations across a great geographical expanse. African peoples with a range of skin colors, hair forms and physiognomies have substantial percentages of males whose Y chromosomes form closely related clades with each other, but not with others who are phenotypically similar. The individuals in the morphologically or geographically defined 'races' are not characterized by 'private' distinct lineages restricted to each of them." (S O Y Keita, R A Kittles, et al. "Conceptualizing human variation," Nature Genetics 36, S17 - S20 (2004)
"Recall that the Horn–Nile Valley crania show, as a group, the largest overlap with other regions. A review of the recent literature indicates that there are male lineage ties between African peoples who have been traditionally labeled as being ‘‘racially’’ different, with ‘‘racially’’ implying an ontologically deep divide. The PN2 transition, a Y chromosome marker, defines a lineage (within the YAPþ derived haplogroup E or III) that emerged in Africa probably before the last glacial maximum, but after the migration of modern humans from Africa (see Semino et al., 2004). This mutation forms a clade that has two daughter subclades (defined by the biallelic markers M35/215 (or 215/M35) and M2) that unites numerous phenotypically variant African populations from the supra-Saharan, Saharan, and sub-Saharan regions.."
(S.O.Y Keita. Exploring northeast African metric craniofacial variation at the individual level: A comparative study using principal component analysis. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 16:679–689, 2004.)
"Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages.. Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world." (Tishkoff SA, Williams SM., Genetic analysis of African populations: human evolution and complex disease. Nature Reviews Genetics. 2002 Aug (8):611-21.)
------- DNA of some modern Egyptians found a genetic ancestral heritage to East Africa:
"The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diversity of 58 individuals from Upper Egypt, more than half (34 individuals) from Gurna, whose population has an ancient cultural history, were studied by sequencing the control-region and screening diagnostic RFLP markers. This sedentary population presented similarities to the Ethiopian population by the L1 and L2 macrohaplogroup frequency (20.6%), by the West Eurasian component (defined by haplogroups H to K and T to X) and particularly by a high frequency (17.6%) of haplogroup M1. We statistically and phylogenetically analysed and compared the Gurna population with other Egyptian, Near East and sub-Saharan Africa populations; AMOVA and Minimum Spanning Network analysis showed that the Gurna population was not isolated from neighbouring populations. Our results suggest that the Gurna population has conserved the trace of an ancestral genetic structure from an ancestral East African population, characterized by a high M1 haplogroup frequency. The current structure of the Egyptian population may be the result of further influence of neighbouring populations on this ancestral population."
(Stevanovitch A, Gilles A, Bouzaid E, et al. (2004) Mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity in a sedentary population from Egypt.Ann Hum Genet. 68(Pt 1):23-39.)
------- Tishkoff et al- Africa has highest genetic diversity
"Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages (see online link to Ethnologue). Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world(TABLE 1).However, most studies report only a few markers in divergent African populations, which makes it difficult to draw general conclusions about the levels and patterns of genetic diversity in these populations (FIG. 1). Because genetic studies have been biased towards more economically developed African countries that have key research or medical centres, populations from more underdeveloped or politically unstable regions of Africa remain under sampled (FIG. 1). Historically, human population genetic studies have relied on one or two African populations as being representative of African diversity, but recent studies show extensive genetic variation among even geographically close African populations, which indicates that there is not a single ‘representative’ African population."
-- Tishkoff NATURE REVIEWS | GENETICS VOLUME 3 | AUGUST 2002
------- Bogus "racial split" theories debunked
"Genetic studies that attempt to recover the biological history of the species have generally found that there is a split between their restricted African samples and "the rest of the world." These approaches conceptualize human population history as a series of bifurcations with each node being relatively uniform. The "Africans" usually used are either the short statured Aka or Mbuti, Khoisan speakers, or West African stereotype s, in keeping with a socially, not scientifically constructed concept of African. Studies using individuals as the unit of analysis evince a different pattern. A select subset of Africans called the "group of 49" forms a unit versus the rest of humankind. However the latter individuals ("rest of humankind") also includes non-East African sub-Saharans. Hence there is no "racial" split. As has been stated, the idea that human variation can be described as being structured by subspecies(races) that are treated as lineages is fundamentally false. In actuality, also, although averages are used, the gene studies usually give us histories that are not necessarily the same as population histories."
Writing African History Chapter 4, Physical Anthropology and African History, Shomarka Keita University of Rochester Press p.134
------- Continent wide African DNA linkages
"The most extensive pan-African haplotype (16189 16192 16223 16278 16294 16309 16390) is in the L2a1 haplogroup. This sequence is observed in West Africa among the Malinke, Wolof, and others; in North Africa among the Maure, Hausa, Fulbe, and others; in Central Africa among the Bamileke, Fali, and others; in South Africa among the Khoisan family including the Khwe and Bantu speakers; and in East Africa among the Kikuyu. Closely related variants are observed among the Tuareg in North and West Africa and among the East African Dinka and Somali."
(-- Bert Ely , Jamie Lee Wilson , Fatimah Jackson and Bruce A Jackson. (2006). African-American mitochondrial DNAs often match mtDNAs found in multiple African ethnic groups. BMC Biology 2006, 4:34)
-------- The PN2 transition:
"It is of interest that the M35 and M2 lineages are united by a mutation – the PN2 transition. This PN2 defined clade originated in East Africa, where various populations have a notable frequency of its underived state. This would suggest that an ancient population in East Africa, or more correctly its males, form the basis of the ancestors of all African upper Paleolithic populations – and their subsequent descendants in the present day."
(--Bengtson, John D. (ed.), In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory: Essays in the four fields of anthropology. 2008. John Benjamins Publishing: pp. 3–16)
8) Debunking 8: African peoples are the most diverse in the world whether analyzed by DNA or skeletal or cranial methods. The peoples of the Nile Valley vary but they are still related. The people most related ethnically to the ancient Egyptians are other Africans like Nubians not cold-climate/light skinned Europeans or Asiatics.
------- African people, particularly SUB-SAHARAN Africans, vary the most in how they look, more so than any other population in the world.
"Estimates of genetic diversity in major geographic regions are frequently made by pooling all individuals into regional aggregates. This method can potentially bias results if there are differences in population substructure within regions, since increased variation among local populations could inflate regional diversity. A preferred method of estimating regional diversity is to compute the mean diversity within local populations. Both methods are applied to a global sample of craniometric data consisting of 57 measurements taken on 1734 crania from 18 local populations in six geographic regions: sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, East Asia, Australasia, Polynesia, and the Americas. Each region is represented by three local populations. Both methods for estimating regional diversity show sub-Saharan Africa to have the highest levels of phenotypic variation, consistent with many genetic studies."
(Relethford, John "Global Analysis of Regional Differences in Craniometric Diversity and Population Substructure". Human Biology - Volume 73, Number 5, October 2001, pp. 629-636)
"The living peoples of the African continent are diverse in facial characteristics, stature, skin color, hair form, genetics, and other characteristics. No one set of characteristics is more African than another. Variability is also found in "sub-Saharan" Africa, to which the word "Africa" is sometimes erroneously restricted. There is a problem with definitions. Sometimes Africa is defined using cultural factors, like language, that exclude developments that clearly arose in Africa. For example, sometimes even the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea) is excluded because of geography and language and the fact that some of its peoples have narrow noses and faces.
However, the Horn is at the same latitude as Nigeria, and its languages are African. The latitude of 15 degree passes through Timbuktu, surely in "sub-Saharan Africa," as well as Khartoum in Sudan; both are north of the Horn. Another false idea is that supra-Saharan and Saharan Africa were peopled after the emergence of "Europeans" or Near Easterners by populations coming from outside Africa. Hence, the ancient Egyptians in some writings have been de-Africanized. These ideas, which limit the definition of Africa and Africans, are rooted in racism and earlier, erroneous "scientific" approaches." (S. Keita, "The Diversity of Indigenous Africans," in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Clenko, Editor (1996), pp. 104-105. [10]
)
Nubian - Egyptian links. Debunking "racial conflict" claims about the 2 peoples. Nubians were the closest people ethnically to the ancient Egyptians, sharing a common culture, intermarrying and having the same pharaonic structure. All this was millennia BEFORE the 25th Dynasty.
9) Debunking #9: Not needing cold-climate/slight-skinned inspiration, the peoples of ancient Egypt are more closely linked with fellow tropical Africans in terms of cranial studies than with Europeans or Asiatics. Analysis of skeletal and cranial remains reveals that the ancient Egyptians of the early Dynastic and pre-Dynastic phases, link closer to nearby Saharan, Sudanic and East African populations than Mediterranean and Middle Eastern peoples. Greeks, Romans, Hyskos, Arabs and others were to appear later in Egyptian history. Craniometric studies generally place ancient Upper Egyptian populations closer to the range of tropical Africans in the Nile Valley and East Africa than to Mediterraneans, or Middle Easterners.
QUOTE(s):
S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54
"Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Kebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have 'donated' people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)... Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese." (Keita 1993)
"When the unlikely relationships [Indian matches] and eliminated, the Egyptian series are more similar overall to other African series than to European or Near Eastern (Byzantine or Palestinian) series." (Keita 1993)
"Populations and cultures now found south of the desert roamed far to the north. The culture of Upper Egypt, which became dynastic Egyptian civilization, could fairly be called a Sudanese transplant."(Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa: Their Interaction. Encyclopedia of Pre-colonial Africa, by Joseph O. Vogel, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California (1997), pp. 465-472 )
"Analysis of crania is the traditional approach to assessing ancient population origins, relationships, and diversity. In studies based on anatomical traits and measurements of crania, similarities have been found between Nile Valley crania from 30,000, 20,000 and 12,000 years ago and various African remains from more recent times (see Thoma 1984; Brauer and Rimbach 1990; Angel and Kelley 1986; Keita 1993). Studies of crania from southern Predynastic Egypt, from the formative period (4000-3100 B.C.), show them usually to be more similar to the crania of ancient Nubians, Kushites, Saharans, or modern groups from the Horn of Africa than to those of dynastic northern Egyptians or ancient or modern southern Europeans."
(S. O. Y and A.J. Boyce, "The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians", in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 20-33)
"There is no archaeological, linguistic, or historical data which indicate a European or Asiatic invasion of, or migration to, the Nile Valley during First Dynasty times. Previous concepts about the origin of the First Dynasty Egyptians as being somehow external to the Nile Valley or less native are not supported by archaeology... In summary, the Abydos First Dynasty royal tomb contents reveal a notable craniometric heterogeneity. Southerners predominate. (Kieta, S. (1992) Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis of Crania From First Dynasty Egyptian Tombs, Using Multiple Discriminant Functions. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 87:245-254)"
"The predominant craniometric pattern in the Abydos royal tombs is 'southern' (tropical African variant), and this is consistent with what would be expected based on the literature and other results (Keita, 1990). This pattern is seen in both group and unknown analyses... Archaeology and history seem to provide the most parsimonious explanation for the variation in the royal tombs at Abydos.. Tomb design suggests the presence of northerners in the south in late Nakada times (Hoffman, 1988) when the unification probably took place. Delta names are attached to some of the tombs at Abydos (Gardiner, 1961; Yurco, 1990, personal communication), thus perhaps supporting Petrie's (1939) and Gardiner's contention that north-south marriages were undertaken to legitimize the hegemony of the south. The courtiers of northern elites would have accompanied them.
Given all of the above, it is probably not possible to view the Abydos royal tomb sample as representative of the general southern Upper Egyptian population of the time. Southern elites and/or their descendants eventually came to be buried in the north (Hoffman, 1988). Hence early Second Dynasty kings and Djoser (Dynasty 111) (Hayes, 1953) and his descendants are not buried in Abydos. Petrie (1939) states that the Third Dynasty, buried in the north, was of Sudanese origin, but southern Egypt is equally likely. This perhaps explains Harris and Weeks' (1973) suggested findings of southern morphologies in some Old Kingdom Giza remains, also verified in portraiture (Drake, 1987). Further study would be required to ascertain trends in the general population of both regions. The strong Sudanese affinity noted in the unknown analyses may reflect the Nubian interactions with upper Egypt in Predynastic times prior to Egyptian unification (Williams, 1980,1986)..."
(S. Keita (1992) Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis of Crania From First Dynasty Egyptian Tombs, Using Multiple Discriminant Functions. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 87:245-254)
------- Early Dynastic Periods.
"When the Elephantine results were added to a broader pooling of the physical characteristics drawn from a wide geographic region which includes Africa, the Mediterranean and the Near East quite strong affinities emerge between Elephantine and populations from Nubia, supporting a strong south-north cline."
(Barry Kemp. (2006) Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. p. 54)
Gene flow into the Nubian area during the Neolithic was not from reputed "wandering Caucasoids" but from tropical, Sub-Saharan types.
"Prior to the Neolithic, populations of the Nile Valley in Nubia are very robust, and, because of a gap in the fossil record, it is difficult to connect them to later populations. Some have postulated a local evolution, due to diet change, while others postulated migrations, especially from the Sahara area. But between 5000 and 1000 BC, many cemeteries have supplied a large amount of skeletons, and the anatomical characters of Nubian populations are easier to follow-up. Twenty-seven archaeological samples (4 at 5000 BC, 5 at 4000 BC, 10 at 3000 BC, 3 at 2000 BC, 5 at 1000 BC), and 10 craniofacial measurements, have been considered. While cerebral skull is fairly stable, facial skull displays several regular modifications, and specially a reduction of facial and nasal heights, a broadening of the nose, and an increase of prognathism, while bizygomatic breadth is unchanged. These features illustrate a trend towards a growing resemblance with populations of Sub-Saharan Africa living in wet environments. However, paleoclimatological studies show that Nubia experienced an increasing aridification during that period. It is then unlikely that such a morphological change could be related to any local adaptive evolution to environment. Random drift is also unlikely, because the anatomical trend is relatively uniform during these millennia. It then seems more plausible that these changes correspond to the increasing presence of Southern populations migrating northward."
-- Froment, A. (2002) Morphological micro-evolution of Nubian Populations from, A-Group to Christian Epochs: gene flow, not local adaptation. Am J Phys Anthropol [Suppl] 34:72.
Numerous cranial studies put ancient Egyptians closer to other Africans like Nubians than cold-climate/light-skinned Europeans or Asiatics.
10) Debunking #10: Comparatively recent (in evolutionary terms) Europeans and Asiatics LOOKED LIKE tropical Africans with dark skin and other features before cold-climate adaptation changed them. Light skin color is a recent development for Europeans and Asiatics. The key foundations of civilization in terms of key animal and plant domesticates and associated technoloigy in Europe and Asia were thus laid by these dark-skinned migrants from Africa, undermining claims of the efficiacy of white skin in laying the basic foundations or in building advanced civilizations such as that built by the tropically adapted peoples of the Nile Valley.
Early West Asians for example, as recently as the Iranian Bronze Age looked like Africans (Hanihara 1996). Civilizations built around this period was by these dark-skinned tropically adapted types who looked like Africans not the much touted white Nordics or high yellow East Asians. Early European Neolithics migrated from Africa via the Mideast and also looked like tropical Africans, again undermining claims of the "need" for the much touted white Nordics or high yellow East Asians. Brace 2005 shows ancient Egyptians link with Africans such as Nubians and Somalians first. Older Europeans look like Africans hence they tend to resemble various Africans studied in Africa. Nevertheless Europe owes a debt to these African migrants via the Middle East that brought key technologies, animal and plant domesticates. The Natufians of the Mideast, the Israel area in particular show some sub-Saharan African elements and are key transmitters of Neolithic technology.
Human skin color also varies in Africa as part of the INDIGENOUS makeup without the "need" for the touted white Nordics or high-yeller Asiatics.
Human skin color diversity is highest in sub-Saharan African populations.
[quote:]
"Previous studies of genetic and craniometric traits have found higher levels of within-population diversity in sub-Saharan Africa compared to other geographic regions. This study examines regional differences in within-population diversity of human skin color. Published data on skin reflectance were collected for 98 male samples from eight geographic regions: sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, Europe, West Asia, Southwest Asia, South Asia, Australasia, and the New World. Regional differences in local within-population diversity were examined using two measures of variability: the sample variance and the sample coefficient of variation. For both measures, the average level of within-population diversity is higher in sub-Saharan Africa than in other geographic regions. This difference persists even after adjusting for a correlation between within-population diversity and distance from the equator. Though affected by natural selection, skin color variation shows the same pattern of higher African diversity as found with other traits."
-- Relethford JH.(2000). Human skin color diversity is highest in sub-Saharan African populations. Hum Biol. 2000 Oct;72(5):773-80.)
---Afrocentric critic Brace debunks "Caucasoid race mix" claims for Horn of Africa peoples and notes tropically adapted peoples are usually dark-skinned and with limb elongation.
"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..")
------- Modern studies show diversity in how people look is heavily based on distance from sub-Saharan Africa, not merely climate. In genetically diverse Africa, broad-nosed people live on the cool or cold mountain slopes of East Africa or the hot, dry Sahara, and narrow-nosed peoples like many Fulani like in the wet tropics of West Africa. Yellowish-skinned San tribes live in the hot zones of Southern Africa.
"The relative importance of ancient demography and climate in determining worldwide patterns of human within-population phenotypic diversity is still open to debate. Several morphometric traits have been argued to be under selection by climatic factors, but it is unclear whether climate affects the global decline in morphological diversity with increasing geographical distance from sub-Saharan Africa. Using a large database of male and female skull measurements, we apply an explicit framework to quantify the relative role of climate and distance from Africa. We show that distance from sub-Saharan Africa is the sole determinant of human within-population phenotypic diversity, while climate plays no role. By selecting the most informative set of traits, it was possible to explain over half of the worldwide variation in phenotypic diversity. These results mirror those previously obtained for genetic markers and show that ‘bones and molecules’ are in perfect agreement for humans." (Distance from Africa, not climate, explains within-population phenotypic diversity in humans. (2008) by: Lia Betti, François Balloux, William Amos, Tsunehiko Hanihara, Andrea Manica, Proceedings B: Biological Sciences, 2008/12/02)
-------Early West Asians looked like Africans. Thus any migrants from West Asia to Africa in thos period would be by people who look like Africans to begin with. Brace 2005 shows this as to Europeans. Hanihara 1996, demonstrates this below as to West Asians (i.e. 'Middle easterners'). quote:
"Distance analysis and factor analysis, based on Q-mode correlation coefficients, were applied to 23 craniofacial measurements in 1,802 recent and prehistoric crania from major geographical areas of the Old World. The major findings are as follows: 1) Australians show closer similarities to African populations than to Melanesians. 2) Recent Europeans align with East Asians, and early West Asians resemble Africans. 3) The Asian population complex with regional difference between northern and southern members is manifest. 4) Clinal variations of craniofacial features can be detected in the Afro-European region on the one hand, and Australasian and East Asian region on the other hand. 5) The craniofacial variations of major geographical groups are not necessarily consistent with their geographical distribution pattern. This may be a sign that the evolutionary divergence in craniofacial shape among recent populations of different geographical areas is of a highly limited degree. Taking all of these into account, a single origin for anatomically modern humans is the most parsimonious interpretation of the craniofacial variations presented in this study."
(Hanihara T. Comparison of craniofacial features of major human groups. Am J Phys Anthropol. 1996 Mar;99(3):389-412.)
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SUMMARY
africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/coldclimatelightskindebunk.htm
1) Southern Egypt, from which the genesis of Ancient Egypt civilization sprang, lies in the tropical zone, from the Tropics of Cancer to Capricorn. The rest of Egypt is very similar, and lies in the immediately adjacent subtropical or arid tropic zone, NOT the cold-climate zones of Europe or Asia.
(Thompson and Perry, 1997; Griffiths, 1976)
2) The peoples of ancient Egypt, in the aforementioned tropical and semi-tropical/arid tropic zones, show clear limb proportion characteristics of tropically adapted people, and MORE closely resemble other tropically adapted Africans on the continent, than Europeans or Middle Easterners.
(Raxter and Ruff 2008, Zakrewski 2003, 2007; Holliday et al, 2003, Kemp, 2005)
3) Undermining claims of cold-climate or skin color primacy for civilization, the great ancient Nile Valley civilization arose from the 'darker' more tropical south, NOT the cold climate or cool climate Mediterranean, Europe or Asia.
(Clark, 1982; Shaw 1976, 2003; Bard, 2004; Vogel, 1997; Kemp 2005)
4) The ancient Egyptians in their tropical and sub-tropical/arid tropic environment, did not need cold climate people to develop their distinct culture. Several strands of culture from religion to material living put the Egyptians closer to nearby Africans than to cold-climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Asiatics.
(Keita, 1996, 2004; Yurco 1989, 1996; Williams, 1980; Britannia 1984; Wilkinson 1999; Wendorf, 2001)
5) European/Asiatic cold climate or light skin inspiration was unneeded by the tropically adapted Africans of ancient Egypt. They peopled the Nile Valley from the Sahara and the Sudan, and ancient Egypt is part of a tropical African lineage. Indigenous development sprang from a long tradition going back deep into the Sahara and the Sudan.
(Lovell, 1999; Lefkowitz, 1993, 1996; Keita 1993, Irish 2006)
6) European/Asiatic cold climate or light skin inspiration was unneeded by the tropically adapted Africans of ancient Egypt. DNA studies show the Egyptians link with other Africans via Haplogroup "E" to a much greater extent than cold climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Middle easterners.
(Keita 2004, 2008; Richards 2003; Battaglia, 2008; Cruciani 2007; Lucotte 2003; Stevanovitch et al 2004)
7) African people have a range of physical variation and don't need any inspiration or mixes from cold-climate/light skinned Europeans or Asiatics to explain why. Features like narrow noses, thin lips, height etc are all indigenous to Africa. Africa has both the highest phenotypic diversity and the highest genetic diversity in the world and don’t need cold-climate/light skin inspiration for that established fact. All cold-climate/light skinned Europeans and Asiatics are SUBSETS of original African diversity. Modern DNA studies find even though some African peoples look different, they are genetically related through the PN2 transition clade of the Y-chromosome. Thus light-skinned African Libyans and dark-skinned Zulus are all genetically related Africans, even though they don't look exactly the same.
(Keita 2004; Tishkoff 2002, Ely et al, 2006, Stevanovitch 2004)
8) African peoples are the most diverse in the world whether analyzed by DNA or skeletal or cranial methods. The peoples of the Nile Valley vary but they are still related. The people most related ethnically to the ancient Egyptians are other Africans like Nubians not cold-climate/light skinned Europeans or Asiatics.
(Keita 1996; Rethelford, 2001; Bianchi 2004, Yurco 1989; Godde 2009)
9) Not needing cold-climate/slight-skinned inspiration, the peoples of ancient Egypt are more closely linked with fellow tropical Africans in terms of cranial studies than with Europeans or Asiatics. Analysis of skeletal and cranial remains reveals that the ancient Egyptians of the early Dynastic and pre-Dynastic phases, link closer to nearby Saharan, Sudanic and East African populations than Mediterranean and Middle Eastern peoples. Greeks, Romans, Hyskos, Arabs and others were to appear later in Egyptian history. Craniometric studies generally place ancient Upper Egyptian populations closer to the range of tropical Africans in the Nile Valley and East Africa than to Mediterraneans, or Middle Easterners.
(Keita 1990, 1993, 1996, 2004; Hiernaux 1975; Froment 2002; Kemp 2005)
10) Comparatively recent (in evolutionary terms) Europeans and Asiatics LOOKED LIKE tropical Africans with dark skin and other features, before cold-climate adaptation changed them. Light skin color is a RECENT development for Europeans and Asiatics. The foundations of civilization in terms of key animal and plant domesticates, and associated technology in Europe and Asia were thus laid by these dark-skinned migrants from Africa, who resembled today's Africans, undermining claims of the efficacy of white skin in laying the basic foundations or in building advanced civilizations such as that built by the tropically adapted peoples of the Nile Valley.
(Jablonski 2000; Brace 2005; Hanihara 1996; Rethelford 2000)
DETAILS
1) Debunking #1: Southern Egypt, from which the genesis of Ancient Egypt civilization sprang, lies in the tropical zone. he rest of Egypt lies in the subtropical or arid tropic zone, NOT the cold-climate zones of Europe or Asia.The subtropics are the geographical and climatic zone of the Earth immediately north and south of the tropical zone, which is bounded by the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, at latitudes 23.5°N and 23.5°S. The term "subtropical" describes the climatic region found adjacent to the tropics, usually between 20 and 40 degrees of latitude in both hemispheres. Egypt is also assigned to the subtropics or the arid tropics by modern climatologists. (See: Russell D. Thompson, Allen Howard Perry (1997) Applied climatology: principles and practice. Routhledge: pg 179.; See also Applied Climatology: An Introduction by John F. Griffiths. Oxford University Press. 1976 pg 22)
2) Debunking #2: The peoples of ancient Egypt, in the aforementioned tropical and semi-tropical/arid tropic zones show clear limb proportion characteristics of tropically adapted people, and MORE closely resemble other tropically adapted Africans on the continent, than Europeans or Middle Easterners.
In short, the ancient Egyptians have tropically adapted body plans not the body plans of cold adapted Europeans or Asiatics. Quotes by credible mainstream scholars:
----- The very distinctive tropical adaptation of the Egyptians - termed 'super negroid' because of its clarity:
"The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the “super-Negroid” body plan described by Robins (1983).. This pattern is supported by Figure 7 (a plot of population mean femoral and tibial lengths; data from Ruff, 1994), which indicates that the Egyptians generally have tropical body plans. Of the Egyptian samples, only the Badarian and Early Dynastic period populations have shorter tibiae than predicted from femoral length. Despite these differences, all samples lie relatively clustered together as compared to the other populations."
--(Zakrzewski, S.R. (2003). "Variation in ancient Egyptian stature and body proportions". American Journal of Physical Anthropology 121 (3): 219-229.
------- Northern Egypt near the Mediterranean shows the same pattern- limb length data puts its peoples closer to tropically adapted Africans that cold climate Europeans
"..sample populations available from northern Egypt from before the 1st Dynasty (Merimda, Maadi and Wadi Digla) turn out to be significantly different from sample populations from early Palestine and Byblos, suggesting a lack of common ancestors over a long time. If there was a south-north cline variation along the Nile valley it did not, from this limited evidence, continue smoothly on into southern Palestine. The limb-length proportions of males from the Egyptian sites group them with Africans rather than with Europeans." (Barry Kemp, "Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation. (2005) Routledge. p. 52-60)
------- Comparisons of ancient Egyptians, US blacks and us whites put the Egyptians closer to blacks because of the tropical adaptations
"Intralimb (crural and brachial) indices are significantly higher in ancient Egyptians than in American Whites (except crural index among females), i.e., Egyptians have relatively longer distal segments (Table 4). Intralimb indices are not significantly different between Egyptians and American Blacks... Many of those who have studied ancient Egyptians have commented on their characteristically ‘‘tropical’’ or ‘‘African’’ body plan (Warren, 1897; Masali, 1972; Robins, 1983; Robins and Shute, 1983, 1984, 1986; Zakrzewski, 2003). Egyptians also fall within the range of modern African populations (Ruff and Walker, 1993).. brachial indices are definitely more ‘‘African’’).. In terms of femoral and tibial length to total skeletal height proportions, we found that ancient Egyptians are significantly different from US Blacks, although still closer to Blacks than to Whites.
Comparisons of linear body proportions of Old Kingdom and non-Old Kingdom period individuals, and workers and high officials in our sample found no statistically significant differences among them. Zakrzewski (2003) also found little evidence for differences in linear body proportions of Egyptians over a wider temporal range. In general, recent studies of skeletal variation among ancient Egyptians support scenarios of biological continuity through time. Irish (2006) analyzed quantitative and qualitative dental traits of 996 Egyptians from Neolithic through Roman periods, reporting the presence of a few outliers but concluding that the dental samples appear to be largely homogeneous and that the affinities observed indicate overall biological uniformity and continuity from Predynastic through Dynastic and Post dynastic periods.
Zakrzewski (2007) provided a comprehensive summary of previous Egyptian craniometric studies and examined Egyptian crania from six time periods. She found that the earlier samples were relatively more homogeneous in comparison to the later groups. However, overall results indicated genetic continuity over the Egyptian Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods, albeit with a high level of genetic diversity within the population, suggesting an indigenous process of state formation. "
("Stature estimation in ancient Egyptians: A new technique based on anatomical reconstruction of stature." Michelle H. Raxter, Christopher B. Ruff, Ayman Azab, Moushira Erfan, Muhammad Soliman, Aly El-Sawaf, (Am J Phys Anthropol. 2008, Jun;136(2):147-55
------- Older limb studies find the same- tropically adapted Blacks are closer to ancient Egyptians than whites:
"An attempt has been made to estimate male and female Egyptian stature from long bone length using Trotter & Gleser negro stature formulae, previous work by the authors having shown that these rather than white formulae give more consistent results with male dynastic material... When consistency has been achieved in this way, Predynastic proportions are founded to be such that distal segments of the limbs are even longer in relation to the proximal segments than they are in modern negroes. Such proportions are termed "super-negroid"...
Robins (1983) and Robins & Shute (1983) have shown that more consistent results are obtained from ancient Egyptian male skeletons if Trotter & Gleser formulae for negro are used, rather than those for whites which have always been applied in the past. .. their physical proportions were more like modern negroes than those of modern whites, with limbs that were relatively long compared with the trunk, and distal segments that were long compared with the proximal segments. If ancient Egyptian males had what may be termed negroid proportions, it seems reasonable that females did likewise."
(Robins G, Shute CCD. 1986. Predynastic Egyptian stature and physical proportions. Hum Evol 1:313–324. Ruff CB. 1994.)
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Egyptians have tropical body plans as expected for groups evolving/living in tropical environments. these tropical body plans put them closer to fellow Africans than cold-climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Asiatics.
3) Debunking #3: Undermining claims of cold-climate or skin color primacy for civilization, the great ancient Nile Valley civilization arose from the 'darker' more tropical south, NOT the cold climate or cool climate Mediterranean, Europe or Asia.
Quotes by credible mainstream scholars:
~~~~~
"While communities such as Ma'adi appear to have played an important role in entrepots through which goods and ideas form south-west Asia filtered into the Nile Valley in later prehistoric times, the main cultural and political tradition that gave rise to the cultural pattern of Early Dynastic Egypt is to be found not in the north but in the south.":
The Cambridge History of Africa: Volume 1, From the Earliest Times to c. 500 BC, (Cambridge University Press: 1982), Edited by J. Desmond Clark pp. 500-509
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"..the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life."
(Source: Shaw, Thurston (1976) Changes in African Archaeology in the Last Forty Years in African Studies since 1945. p. 156-68. London.)
"What is truly unique about this state is the integration of rule over an extensive geographic region, in contrast to other contemporaneous Near Easter polities in Nubia, Mesopotamia, Palestine and the Levant. Present evidence suggests that the state which emerged by the First Dynasty had its roots in the Nagada culture of Upper Egypt, where grave types, pottery and artifacts demonstrate an evolution of form from the Predynastic to the First Dynasty, This cannot be demonstrated for the material culture of Lower Egypt, which was eventually displaced by that which originated in Upper Egypt. Hierarchical society with much social and economic differentiation, as symbolized in the Nagada II cemeteries of Upper Egypt, does not seem to have been present, then, in Lower Egypt, a fact which supports an Upper Egyptian origin for the unified state. Thus archaeological evidence cannot support earlier theories that the founders of Egyptian civilization were an invading Dynastic race from the east.."
"Egyptian contact in the 4th millennium B.C. with SW Asia is undeniable, but the effect of this contact on state formation is Egypt is less clear... The unified state which emerged in Egypt in the 3rd millennium B.C. however, was unlike the polities in Mesopotamia, the Levant, northern Syria, or Early Bronze Age Palestine- in sociopolitical organization, material culture, and belief system. There was undoubtedly heightened commercial contact with SW Asia in the 4th millennium B.C., but the Early Dynastic state which emerged in Egypt is unique and religious in character."
(Bard, Kathryn A. 1994 The Egyptian Predynastic: A Review of the Evidence. Journal of Field Archaeology 21(3):265-288.)
~~~~
"From Petrie onwards, it was regularly suggested that despite the evidence of Predynastic cultures, Egyptian civilization of the 1st Dynasty appeared suddenly and must therefore have been introduced by an invading foreign 'race'. Since the 1970s however, excavations at Abydos and Hierakonpolis have clearly demonstrated the indigenous, Upper Egyptian roots of early civilization in Egypt."
(Ian Shaw ed. (2003) The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt By Ian Shaw. Oxford University Press, page 40-63)
~~~~~~~
"..sample populations available from northern Egypt from before the 1st Dynasty (Merimda, Maadi and Wadi Digla) turn out to be significantly different from sample populations from early Palestine and Byblos, suggesting a lack of common ancestors over a long time. If there was a south-north cline variation along the Nile valley it did not, from this limited evidence, continue smoothly on into southern Palestine. The limb-length proportions of males from the Egyptian sites group them with Africans rather than with Europeans."
(Barry Kemp, "Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation. (2005) Routledge. p. 52-60)
~~~~~
"Populations and cultures now found south of the desert roamed far to the north. The culture of Upper Egypt, which became dynastic Egyptian civilization, could fairly be called a Sudanese transplant."(Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa: Their Interaction. Encyclopedia of Pre-colonial Africa, by Joseph O. Vogel, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California (1997), pp. 465-472 )
africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/forgottenoriginals1.jpg
Genesis of ancient Egyptian civilization in the 'darker' tropical south.
The genesis of Egyptian civilization was in the 'darker' topical south not the north, the Mediterranean, Europe or Asia
4) Debunking #4: The ancient Egyptians in their tropical and sub-tropical/arid tropic environment, did not need cold climate people to develop their distinct culture. Several strands of culture from religion to material living put the ancient Egyptians closer to nearby Africans than to cold-climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Asiatics. A 1996 collection of art and material culture for example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, also highlights several cultural links between the Nile Valley peoples, and demonstrates that they were part of a larger indigenous African context, with local variation. The exhibit suggests 8 common areas of interchange, similarity and linkage, grouping artifacts according to such themes as: Mother and child figures, Headrests, Depictions of humans, Ancestor worship and divine kingship, Animal Deities and symbols, Masking, Body art and Circumcision and male initiation (Egypt in Africa, 1996, Theodore Celenko (ed), Curator, Indianapolis Museum of Art). Other detailed studies confirm the same pattern of indigenous African development, as shown below.
[quotes from credible scholars]
------- Ancient Egyptian religion closer to the religion of African regions than to Mesopotamia, Europe or the Middle East
QUOTE(s):
Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508
"A large number of gods go back to prehistoric times. The images of a cow and star goddess (Hathor), the falcon (Horus), and the human-shaped figures of the fertility god (Min) can be traced back to that period. Some rites, such as the "running of the Apis-bull," the "hoeing of the ground," and other fertility and hunting rites (e.g., the hippopotamus hunt) presumably date from early times.. Connections with the religions in southwest Asia cannot be traced with certainty."
"It is doubtful whether Osiris can be regarded as equal to Tammuz or Adonis, or whether Hathor is related to the "Great Mother." There are closer relations with northeast African religions. The numerous animal cults (especially bovine cults and panther gods) and details of ritual dresses (animal tails, masks, grass aprons, etc) probably are of African origin. The kinship in particular shows some African elements, such as the king as the head ritualist (i.e., medicine man), the limitations and renewal of the reign (jubilees, regicide), and the position of the king's mother (a matriarchal element). Some of them can be found among the Ethiopians in Napata and Meroe, others among the Prenilotic tribes (Shilluk)."
(Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508)
------- Credible scholarship shows cultural similarities between ancient Egypt and the rest of Africa, contradicting claims of Middle Eastern inspiration.
* Specific central African tool designs found at the well known Naqada, Badari and Fayum archaeological sites in Egypt (de Heinzelin 1962, Arkell and Ucko, 1956 et al). Shaw (1976) states that "the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life."
* Pottery evidence first seen in the Saharan Highlands then spreading to the Nile Valley (Flight 1973).
* Art motifs of Saharan rock paintings showing similarities to those in pharaonic art. A number of scholars suggest that these earlier artistic styles influenced later pharaonic art via Saharans leaving drier areas and moving into the Nile Valley taking their art styles with them (Mori 1964, Blanc 1964, et al)
* Earlier pioneering mummification outside Egypt. The oldest mummy in Africa is of a black Saharan child (Donadoni 1964, Blanc 1964) Frankfort (1956) suggests that it is thus possible to understand the pharaonic worldview by reference to the religious beliefs of these earlier African precursors. Attempts to suggest the root of such practices are due to Caucasoid civilizers from elsewhere are thus contradicted by the data on the ground.
* Several cultural practices of Egypt show strong similarities to an African totemic clan base. Childe (1969, 1978), Aldred (1978) and Strouhal (1971) demonstrate linkages with several African practices such as divine kingship and the king as divine rainmaker.
* Physical similarities of the early Nile valley populations with that of tropical Africans. Such connections are demonstrated in the work of numerous scholars such as Thompson and Randall Mclver 1905, Falkenburger 1947, and Strouhal 1971. The distance diagrams of Mukherjee, Rao and Trevor (1955) place the ancient Badarians genetically near 'black' tribes such as the Ashanti and the Taita. See also the "Issues of lumping under Mediterranean clusters" section above for similar older analyses.
* Serological (blood) evidence of genetic linkages. Paoli 1972 for example found a significant resemblance between ABO frequencies of dynastic Egyptians and the black northern Haratin who are held to be the probable descendants of the original Saharans (Hiernaux, 1975).
* Language similarities which include several hundred roots ascribable to African elements (UNESCO 1974)
* Ancient Egyptian origin stories ascribing origins of the gods and their ancestors to African locations to the south and west of Egypt (Davidson 1959, White 1970).
quote: "It may be noted that the ancient Egyptians themselves appear to have been convinced that their place of origin was African rather than Asian. They made continued reference to the land of Punt as their homeland." --(White, Jon Manchip., Ancient Egypt: Its Culture and History (Dover Publications; New Ed edition, June 1, 1970), p. 141.
* Advanced state building and political unity in Nubia, including writing, administrative apparatus and insignia some 300 years before dynastic Egypt, and the long demonstrated interchange between Nubia and Egypt (Williams 1980)
* Newer studies (Wendorf 2001, Wilkinson 1999, et al.) confirm these older analyses. Excavations from Nabta Playa, located about 100km west of Abu Simbel for example, suggest that the Neolithic inhabitants of the region were migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa, based on cultural similarities and social complexity which is thought to be reflective of Egypt's Old Kingdom
* Other scholars (Wilkinson 1999) present similar material and cultural evidence- including similarities between Predynastic Egypt and traditional African cattle-culture, typical of Southern Sudanese and East African pastoralists of today, and various cultural and artistic data such as iconography on rock art found in both Egypt and in the Sudan.
Several strands of culture from religion to material living put the ancient Egyptians closer to nearby Africans than to cold-climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Asiatics.
5) Debunking #5. European/Asiatic cold climate or light skin inspiration was unneeded by the tropically adapted Africans of ancient Egypt. They peopled the Nile Valley from the Sahara, and ancient Egypt is part of a tropical African lineage. Indigenous development sprang from a long tradition going back deep into the Sahara and the Sudan.
[quotes by credible mainstream scholars, including Mary Lefkowitz:]
------- The tropical African lineage of ancient Egyptians
"There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas."
and
"[research] must be placed in the context of hypotheses informed by archaeological, linguistic, geographic and other data. In such contexts, the physical anthropological evidence indicates that early Nile Valley populations can be identified as part of an African lineage, but exhibiting local variation.
--("Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999). pp 328-332)
----- Afrocentric critic Mary Lefkowitz says the Egypt was peopled by people from sub-Saharan Africa, not cold-climate Europeans or Middle Easterners.
"Recent work on skeletons and DNA suggests that the people who settled in the Nile valley, like all of humankind, came from somewhere south of the Sahara; they were not (as some nineteenth-century scholars had supposed) invaders from the North. See Bruce G. Trigger, "The Rise of Civilization in Egypt," Cambridge History of Africa (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), vol I, pp 489-90; S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54."
(Mary Lefkowitz (1997). Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History. Basic Books. pg 242)
------- In Black Athena Revisited, Lefkowitz finds similarity between Egyptians and Sudanics and recommends the work of conservative anthropologist Nancy Lovell for more research on the subject.
Quote:
"not surprisingly, the Egyptian skulls were not very distance from the Jebel Moya skulls, but were much more distance from all others, including those from West Africa. Such a study suggests a closer genetic affinity between peoples in Egypt and the northern Sudan, which were close geographically and are known to have had considerable cultural contact throughout prehistory and pharaonic history... Clearly more analyses of the physical remains of ancient Egyptians need to be done using current techniques, such as those of Nancy Lovell at the University of Alberta is using in her work.."
(- Mary Lefkowitz, "Black Athena Revisited. pp. 105-106)
------- Lefkowitz cites Keita 1993 in Not Out of Africa. Here is Keita on the Jebel Moya studies:
"Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Jebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have 'donated' people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)... Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese."
S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54
------- Here is the work of the anthropologist so strongly recommended by Lefkowitz, Nancy Lovell:
"There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas."
and
"[research] must be placed in the context of hypotheses informed by archaeological, linguistic, geographic and other data. In such contexts, the physical anthropological evidence indicates that early Nile Valley populations can be identified as part of an African lineage, but exhibiting local variation.
-- ("Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999). pp 328-332)
The same Nancy Lovell recommended by Lefkowitz studied dental traits among some high status persons of the key Egyptian Naqada group and found that they resembled the peoples of Nubia.
"A biological affinities study based on frequencies of cranial nonmetric traits in skeletal samples from three cemeteries at Predynastic Naqada, Egypt, confirms the results of a recent nonmetric dental morphological analysis. Both cranial and dental traits analyses indicate that the individuals buried in a cemetery characterized archaeologically as high status are significantly different from individuals buried in two other, apparently non-elite cemeteries and that the non-elite samples are not significantly different from each other. A comparison with neighboring Nile Valley skeletal samples suggests that the high status cemetery represents an endogamous ruling or elite segment of the local population at Naqada, which is more closely related to populations in northern Nubia than to neighboring populations in southern Egypt."
(T. Prowse, and N. Lovell "Concordance of cranial and dental morphological traits and evidence for endogamy in ancient Egypt". American journal of physical anthropology. 1996, vol. 101, no2, pp. 237-246 (2 p.1/4)
6) Debunking #6: European/Asiatic cold climate or light skin inspiration was unneeded by the tropically adapted Africans of ancient Egypt. DNA studies show the Egyptians link with other Africans via Haplogroup "E" to a much greater extent than cold climate Mediterraneans, Europeans or Middle easterners.
Most studies of Egyptian Y-DNA find lineages closer to African populations than Europe or the Middle East.
The predominant Haplogroup in Egypt is 'E" - which has the highest frequency in Africa
7) Debunking 7: African people have a range of physical variation and don't need any inspiration or mixes from cold-climate/light skinned Europeans or Asiatics to explain why. Features like narrow noses, thin lips, height etc are all indigenous to Africa. Africa has both the highest phenotypic diversity and the highest genetic diversity in the world and don’t need cold-climate/light skin inspiration for that established fact. All cold-climate/light skinned Europeans and Asiatics are SUBSETS of original African diversity. Modern DNA studies find even though some African peoples look different, they are genetically related through the PN2 transition clade of the Y-chromosome. Thus light-skinned African Libyans and dark-skinned Zulus are all genetically related Africans ,even though they don't look exactly the same.
"But the Y-chromosome clade defined by the PN2 transition (PN2/M35, PN2/M2) shatters the boundaries of phenotypically defined races and true breeding populations across a great geographical expanse. African peoples with a range of skin colors, hair forms and physiognomies have substantial percentages of males whose Y chromosomes form closely related clades with each other, but not with others who are phenotypically similar. The individuals in the morphologically or geographically defined 'races' are not characterized by 'private' distinct lineages restricted to each of them." (S O Y Keita, R A Kittles, et al. "Conceptualizing human variation," Nature Genetics 36, S17 - S20 (2004)
"Recall that the Horn–Nile Valley crania show, as a group, the largest overlap with other regions. A review of the recent literature indicates that there are male lineage ties between African peoples who have been traditionally labeled as being ‘‘racially’’ different, with ‘‘racially’’ implying an ontologically deep divide. The PN2 transition, a Y chromosome marker, defines a lineage (within the YAPþ derived haplogroup E or III) that emerged in Africa probably before the last glacial maximum, but after the migration of modern humans from Africa (see Semino et al., 2004). This mutation forms a clade that has two daughter subclades (defined by the biallelic markers M35/215 (or 215/M35) and M2) that unites numerous phenotypically variant African populations from the supra-Saharan, Saharan, and sub-Saharan regions.."
(S.O.Y Keita. Exploring northeast African metric craniofacial variation at the individual level: A comparative study using principal component analysis. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 16:679–689, 2004.)
"Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages.. Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world." (Tishkoff SA, Williams SM., Genetic analysis of African populations: human evolution and complex disease. Nature Reviews Genetics. 2002 Aug (8):611-21.)
------- DNA of some modern Egyptians found a genetic ancestral heritage to East Africa:
"The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diversity of 58 individuals from Upper Egypt, more than half (34 individuals) from Gurna, whose population has an ancient cultural history, were studied by sequencing the control-region and screening diagnostic RFLP markers. This sedentary population presented similarities to the Ethiopian population by the L1 and L2 macrohaplogroup frequency (20.6%), by the West Eurasian component (defined by haplogroups H to K and T to X) and particularly by a high frequency (17.6%) of haplogroup M1. We statistically and phylogenetically analysed and compared the Gurna population with other Egyptian, Near East and sub-Saharan Africa populations; AMOVA and Minimum Spanning Network analysis showed that the Gurna population was not isolated from neighbouring populations. Our results suggest that the Gurna population has conserved the trace of an ancestral genetic structure from an ancestral East African population, characterized by a high M1 haplogroup frequency. The current structure of the Egyptian population may be the result of further influence of neighbouring populations on this ancestral population."
(Stevanovitch A, Gilles A, Bouzaid E, et al. (2004) Mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity in a sedentary population from Egypt.Ann Hum Genet. 68(Pt 1):23-39.)
------- Tishkoff et al- Africa has highest genetic diversity
"Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages (see online link to Ethnologue). Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world(TABLE 1).However, most studies report only a few markers in divergent African populations, which makes it difficult to draw general conclusions about the levels and patterns of genetic diversity in these populations (FIG. 1). Because genetic studies have been biased towards more economically developed African countries that have key research or medical centres, populations from more underdeveloped or politically unstable regions of Africa remain under sampled (FIG. 1). Historically, human population genetic studies have relied on one or two African populations as being representative of African diversity, but recent studies show extensive genetic variation among even geographically close African populations, which indicates that there is not a single ‘representative’ African population."
-- Tishkoff NATURE REVIEWS | GENETICS VOLUME 3 | AUGUST 2002
------- Bogus "racial split" theories debunked
"Genetic studies that attempt to recover the biological history of the species have generally found that there is a split between their restricted African samples and "the rest of the world." These approaches conceptualize human population history as a series of bifurcations with each node being relatively uniform. The "Africans" usually used are either the short statured Aka or Mbuti, Khoisan speakers, or West African stereotype s, in keeping with a socially, not scientifically constructed concept of African. Studies using individuals as the unit of analysis evince a different pattern. A select subset of Africans called the "group of 49" forms a unit versus the rest of humankind. However the latter individuals ("rest of humankind") also includes non-East African sub-Saharans. Hence there is no "racial" split. As has been stated, the idea that human variation can be described as being structured by subspecies(races) that are treated as lineages is fundamentally false. In actuality, also, although averages are used, the gene studies usually give us histories that are not necessarily the same as population histories."
Writing African History Chapter 4, Physical Anthropology and African History, Shomarka Keita University of Rochester Press p.134
------- Continent wide African DNA linkages
"The most extensive pan-African haplotype (16189 16192 16223 16278 16294 16309 16390) is in the L2a1 haplogroup. This sequence is observed in West Africa among the Malinke, Wolof, and others; in North Africa among the Maure, Hausa, Fulbe, and others; in Central Africa among the Bamileke, Fali, and others; in South Africa among the Khoisan family including the Khwe and Bantu speakers; and in East Africa among the Kikuyu. Closely related variants are observed among the Tuareg in North and West Africa and among the East African Dinka and Somali."
(-- Bert Ely , Jamie Lee Wilson , Fatimah Jackson and Bruce A Jackson. (2006). African-American mitochondrial DNAs often match mtDNAs found in multiple African ethnic groups. BMC Biology 2006, 4:34)
-------- The PN2 transition:
"It is of interest that the M35 and M2 lineages are united by a mutation – the PN2 transition. This PN2 defined clade originated in East Africa, where various populations have a notable frequency of its underived state. This would suggest that an ancient population in East Africa, or more correctly its males, form the basis of the ancestors of all African upper Paleolithic populations – and their subsequent descendants in the present day."
(--Bengtson, John D. (ed.), In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory: Essays in the four fields of anthropology. 2008. John Benjamins Publishing: pp. 3–16)
8) Debunking 8: African peoples are the most diverse in the world whether analyzed by DNA or skeletal or cranial methods. The peoples of the Nile Valley vary but they are still related. The people most related ethnically to the ancient Egyptians are other Africans like Nubians not cold-climate/light skinned Europeans or Asiatics.
------- African people, particularly SUB-SAHARAN Africans, vary the most in how they look, more so than any other population in the world.
"Estimates of genetic diversity in major geographic regions are frequently made by pooling all individuals into regional aggregates. This method can potentially bias results if there are differences in population substructure within regions, since increased variation among local populations could inflate regional diversity. A preferred method of estimating regional diversity is to compute the mean diversity within local populations. Both methods are applied to a global sample of craniometric data consisting of 57 measurements taken on 1734 crania from 18 local populations in six geographic regions: sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, East Asia, Australasia, Polynesia, and the Americas. Each region is represented by three local populations. Both methods for estimating regional diversity show sub-Saharan Africa to have the highest levels of phenotypic variation, consistent with many genetic studies."
(Relethford, John "Global Analysis of Regional Differences in Craniometric Diversity and Population Substructure". Human Biology - Volume 73, Number 5, October 2001, pp. 629-636)
"The living peoples of the African continent are diverse in facial characteristics, stature, skin color, hair form, genetics, and other characteristics. No one set of characteristics is more African than another. Variability is also found in "sub-Saharan" Africa, to which the word "Africa" is sometimes erroneously restricted. There is a problem with definitions. Sometimes Africa is defined using cultural factors, like language, that exclude developments that clearly arose in Africa. For example, sometimes even the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea) is excluded because of geography and language and the fact that some of its peoples have narrow noses and faces.
However, the Horn is at the same latitude as Nigeria, and its languages are African. The latitude of 15 degree passes through Timbuktu, surely in "sub-Saharan Africa," as well as Khartoum in Sudan; both are north of the Horn. Another false idea is that supra-Saharan and Saharan Africa were peopled after the emergence of "Europeans" or Near Easterners by populations coming from outside Africa. Hence, the ancient Egyptians in some writings have been de-Africanized. These ideas, which limit the definition of Africa and Africans, are rooted in racism and earlier, erroneous "scientific" approaches." (S. Keita, "The Diversity of Indigenous Africans," in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Clenko, Editor (1996), pp. 104-105. [10]
)
Nubian - Egyptian links. Debunking "racial conflict" claims about the 2 peoples. Nubians were the closest people ethnically to the ancient Egyptians, sharing a common culture, intermarrying and having the same pharaonic structure. All this was millennia BEFORE the 25th Dynasty.
9) Debunking #9: Not needing cold-climate/slight-skinned inspiration, the peoples of ancient Egypt are more closely linked with fellow tropical Africans in terms of cranial studies than with Europeans or Asiatics. Analysis of skeletal and cranial remains reveals that the ancient Egyptians of the early Dynastic and pre-Dynastic phases, link closer to nearby Saharan, Sudanic and East African populations than Mediterranean and Middle Eastern peoples. Greeks, Romans, Hyskos, Arabs and others were to appear later in Egyptian history. Craniometric studies generally place ancient Upper Egyptian populations closer to the range of tropical Africans in the Nile Valley and East Africa than to Mediterraneans, or Middle Easterners.
QUOTE(s):
S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54
"Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Kebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have 'donated' people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)... Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese." (Keita 1993)
"When the unlikely relationships [Indian matches] and eliminated, the Egyptian series are more similar overall to other African series than to European or Near Eastern (Byzantine or Palestinian) series." (Keita 1993)
"Populations and cultures now found south of the desert roamed far to the north. The culture of Upper Egypt, which became dynastic Egyptian civilization, could fairly be called a Sudanese transplant."(Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa: Their Interaction. Encyclopedia of Pre-colonial Africa, by Joseph O. Vogel, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California (1997), pp. 465-472 )
"Analysis of crania is the traditional approach to assessing ancient population origins, relationships, and diversity. In studies based on anatomical traits and measurements of crania, similarities have been found between Nile Valley crania from 30,000, 20,000 and 12,000 years ago and various African remains from more recent times (see Thoma 1984; Brauer and Rimbach 1990; Angel and Kelley 1986; Keita 1993). Studies of crania from southern Predynastic Egypt, from the formative period (4000-3100 B.C.), show them usually to be more similar to the crania of ancient Nubians, Kushites, Saharans, or modern groups from the Horn of Africa than to those of dynastic northern Egyptians or ancient or modern southern Europeans."
(S. O. Y and A.J. Boyce, "The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians", in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 20-33)
"There is no archaeological, linguistic, or historical data which indicate a European or Asiatic invasion of, or migration to, the Nile Valley during First Dynasty times. Previous concepts about the origin of the First Dynasty Egyptians as being somehow external to the Nile Valley or less native are not supported by archaeology... In summary, the Abydos First Dynasty royal tomb contents reveal a notable craniometric heterogeneity. Southerners predominate. (Kieta, S. (1992) Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis of Crania From First Dynasty Egyptian Tombs, Using Multiple Discriminant Functions. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 87:245-254)"
"The predominant craniometric pattern in the Abydos royal tombs is 'southern' (tropical African variant), and this is consistent with what would be expected based on the literature and other results (Keita, 1990). This pattern is seen in both group and unknown analyses... Archaeology and history seem to provide the most parsimonious explanation for the variation in the royal tombs at Abydos.. Tomb design suggests the presence of northerners in the south in late Nakada times (Hoffman, 1988) when the unification probably took place. Delta names are attached to some of the tombs at Abydos (Gardiner, 1961; Yurco, 1990, personal communication), thus perhaps supporting Petrie's (1939) and Gardiner's contention that north-south marriages were undertaken to legitimize the hegemony of the south. The courtiers of northern elites would have accompanied them.
Given all of the above, it is probably not possible to view the Abydos royal tomb sample as representative of the general southern Upper Egyptian population of the time. Southern elites and/or their descendants eventually came to be buried in the north (Hoffman, 1988). Hence early Second Dynasty kings and Djoser (Dynasty 111) (Hayes, 1953) and his descendants are not buried in Abydos. Petrie (1939) states that the Third Dynasty, buried in the north, was of Sudanese origin, but southern Egypt is equally likely. This perhaps explains Harris and Weeks' (1973) suggested findings of southern morphologies in some Old Kingdom Giza remains, also verified in portraiture (Drake, 1987). Further study would be required to ascertain trends in the general population of both regions. The strong Sudanese affinity noted in the unknown analyses may reflect the Nubian interactions with upper Egypt in Predynastic times prior to Egyptian unification (Williams, 1980,1986)..."
(S. Keita (1992) Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis of Crania From First Dynasty Egyptian Tombs, Using Multiple Discriminant Functions. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 87:245-254)
------- Early Dynastic Periods.
"When the Elephantine results were added to a broader pooling of the physical characteristics drawn from a wide geographic region which includes Africa, the Mediterranean and the Near East quite strong affinities emerge between Elephantine and populations from Nubia, supporting a strong south-north cline."
(Barry Kemp. (2006) Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. p. 54)
Gene flow into the Nubian area during the Neolithic was not from reputed "wandering Caucasoids" but from tropical, Sub-Saharan types.
"Prior to the Neolithic, populations of the Nile Valley in Nubia are very robust, and, because of a gap in the fossil record, it is difficult to connect them to later populations. Some have postulated a local evolution, due to diet change, while others postulated migrations, especially from the Sahara area. But between 5000 and 1000 BC, many cemeteries have supplied a large amount of skeletons, and the anatomical characters of Nubian populations are easier to follow-up. Twenty-seven archaeological samples (4 at 5000 BC, 5 at 4000 BC, 10 at 3000 BC, 3 at 2000 BC, 5 at 1000 BC), and 10 craniofacial measurements, have been considered. While cerebral skull is fairly stable, facial skull displays several regular modifications, and specially a reduction of facial and nasal heights, a broadening of the nose, and an increase of prognathism, while bizygomatic breadth is unchanged. These features illustrate a trend towards a growing resemblance with populations of Sub-Saharan Africa living in wet environments. However, paleoclimatological studies show that Nubia experienced an increasing aridification during that period. It is then unlikely that such a morphological change could be related to any local adaptive evolution to environment. Random drift is also unlikely, because the anatomical trend is relatively uniform during these millennia. It then seems more plausible that these changes correspond to the increasing presence of Southern populations migrating northward."
-- Froment, A. (2002) Morphological micro-evolution of Nubian Populations from, A-Group to Christian Epochs: gene flow, not local adaptation. Am J Phys Anthropol [Suppl] 34:72.
Numerous cranial studies put ancient Egyptians closer to other Africans like Nubians than cold-climate/light-skinned Europeans or Asiatics.
10) Debunking #10: Comparatively recent (in evolutionary terms) Europeans and Asiatics LOOKED LIKE tropical Africans with dark skin and other features before cold-climate adaptation changed them. Light skin color is a recent development for Europeans and Asiatics. The key foundations of civilization in terms of key animal and plant domesticates and associated technoloigy in Europe and Asia were thus laid by these dark-skinned migrants from Africa, undermining claims of the efficiacy of white skin in laying the basic foundations or in building advanced civilizations such as that built by the tropically adapted peoples of the Nile Valley.
Early West Asians for example, as recently as the Iranian Bronze Age looked like Africans (Hanihara 1996). Civilizations built around this period was by these dark-skinned tropically adapted types who looked like Africans not the much touted white Nordics or high yellow East Asians. Early European Neolithics migrated from Africa via the Mideast and also looked like tropical Africans, again undermining claims of the "need" for the much touted white Nordics or high yellow East Asians. Brace 2005 shows ancient Egyptians link with Africans such as Nubians and Somalians first. Older Europeans look like Africans hence they tend to resemble various Africans studied in Africa. Nevertheless Europe owes a debt to these African migrants via the Middle East that brought key technologies, animal and plant domesticates. The Natufians of the Mideast, the Israel area in particular show some sub-Saharan African elements and are key transmitters of Neolithic technology.
Human skin color also varies in Africa as part of the INDIGENOUS makeup without the "need" for the touted white Nordics or high-yeller Asiatics.
Human skin color diversity is highest in sub-Saharan African populations.
[quote:]
"Previous studies of genetic and craniometric traits have found higher levels of within-population diversity in sub-Saharan Africa compared to other geographic regions. This study examines regional differences in within-population diversity of human skin color. Published data on skin reflectance were collected for 98 male samples from eight geographic regions: sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, Europe, West Asia, Southwest Asia, South Asia, Australasia, and the New World. Regional differences in local within-population diversity were examined using two measures of variability: the sample variance and the sample coefficient of variation. For both measures, the average level of within-population diversity is higher in sub-Saharan Africa than in other geographic regions. This difference persists even after adjusting for a correlation between within-population diversity and distance from the equator. Though affected by natural selection, skin color variation shows the same pattern of higher African diversity as found with other traits."
-- Relethford JH.(2000). Human skin color diversity is highest in sub-Saharan African populations. Hum Biol. 2000 Oct;72(5):773-80.)
---Afrocentric critic Brace debunks "Caucasoid race mix" claims for Horn of Africa peoples and notes tropically adapted peoples are usually dark-skinned and with limb elongation.
"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..")
------- Modern studies show diversity in how people look is heavily based on distance from sub-Saharan Africa, not merely climate. In genetically diverse Africa, broad-nosed people live on the cool or cold mountain slopes of East Africa or the hot, dry Sahara, and narrow-nosed peoples like many Fulani like in the wet tropics of West Africa. Yellowish-skinned San tribes live in the hot zones of Southern Africa.
"The relative importance of ancient demography and climate in determining worldwide patterns of human within-population phenotypic diversity is still open to debate. Several morphometric traits have been argued to be under selection by climatic factors, but it is unclear whether climate affects the global decline in morphological diversity with increasing geographical distance from sub-Saharan Africa. Using a large database of male and female skull measurements, we apply an explicit framework to quantify the relative role of climate and distance from Africa. We show that distance from sub-Saharan Africa is the sole determinant of human within-population phenotypic diversity, while climate plays no role. By selecting the most informative set of traits, it was possible to explain over half of the worldwide variation in phenotypic diversity. These results mirror those previously obtained for genetic markers and show that ‘bones and molecules’ are in perfect agreement for humans." (Distance from Africa, not climate, explains within-population phenotypic diversity in humans. (2008) by: Lia Betti, François Balloux, William Amos, Tsunehiko Hanihara, Andrea Manica, Proceedings B: Biological Sciences, 2008/12/02)
-------Early West Asians looked like Africans. Thus any migrants from West Asia to Africa in thos period would be by people who look like Africans to begin with. Brace 2005 shows this as to Europeans. Hanihara 1996, demonstrates this below as to West Asians (i.e. 'Middle easterners'). quote:
"Distance analysis and factor analysis, based on Q-mode correlation coefficients, were applied to 23 craniofacial measurements in 1,802 recent and prehistoric crania from major geographical areas of the Old World. The major findings are as follows: 1) Australians show closer similarities to African populations than to Melanesians. 2) Recent Europeans align with East Asians, and early West Asians resemble Africans. 3) The Asian population complex with regional difference between northern and southern members is manifest. 4) Clinal variations of craniofacial features can be detected in the Afro-European region on the one hand, and Australasian and East Asian region on the other hand. 5) The craniofacial variations of major geographical groups are not necessarily consistent with their geographical distribution pattern. This may be a sign that the evolutionary divergence in craniofacial shape among recent populations of different geographical areas is of a highly limited degree. Taking all of these into account, a single origin for anatomically modern humans is the most parsimonious interpretation of the craniofacial variations presented in this study."
(Hanihara T. Comparison of craniofacial features of major human groups. Am J Phys Anthropol. 1996 Mar;99(3):389-412.)
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