History Forum / General / Ancient History / June 2004

[Would you explain  "Ginger," the Upper Egyptian predynastic mummy
that is
displayed at the British Museum.]

Ginger is only one mummy out of how many  burials along the Nile in
Upper Egypt? What you might not know is that many times the salts in
the sand of the salta or dry burial conditions can change dark haired
people into a reddish blondish type color. The only way we know for
sure what ''Ginger'' hair color is through electron microscope.
Otherwise it could be from deteriation within the sands.

    Many burials in Nubia have been found with reddish type hair but
does this mean that Nubians are natural red heads? No!

  Here are some examples:

Here are some interesting paragraphs (_New Scientist) from the study
of the Otzi natural mummy (emphasis is mine).

QUOTE
Reconstructions of ancient diets from hair are based on the
assumption that proportions of stable isotopes of carbon, nitrogen
and sulphur remain constant, even after thousands of years. These
proportions reflect the composition of food-stuffs, offering
pointers to what people ate.

But in analyses of hair from 13 corpses, Wilson found that

***over time cavities appear in the shafts of the hair, allowing
material to leak out and letting in foreign matters such as mineral
salts and microorganisms.***

Although the tough, outer shaft of ancient hair is robust, says
Wilson,

***there is substantial decay of the cortex, the softer material
inside.***

Examining hair with a sensitive chemical technique called Fourier
transform Raman spectroscopy, Wilson discovered that

***the strong bonds in the keratin --- the protein that makes up the
hair --- were often weakened.***

'This increased porosity raises the possibility of contamination,'
he says. The team found hair that had been invaded by threads of
fungus and in one case with iron salts from an iron coffin.
UNQUOTE

16 Oct 1999.

Archaeological Hair

The common misconception that all hair turns red over archaeological
timescales has found its way into archaeological folklore. Whilst
certain environments such as those producing bog bodies are known to
yield hair of a red-brown color, in part because of the breakdown of
organic matter and presence of humic acids which impart a brown color
to recovered remains, it has commonly been assumed that this happens
to all archaeological hair. This concept has been perpetuated by
popular nicknames such as "Ginger"--affectionately given to the
Predynastic burial with red hair on display in the mummy rooms at the
British Museum.

Potential change to hair color can be explained more scientifically by
examining the chemistry of melanin which is responsible for hair color
in life. All hair contains a mixture in varying concentration of both
black-brown eumelanin and red-yellow phaeomelanin pigments, which are
susceptible to differential chemical change under certain extreme
burial conditions (for example wet reducing conditions, or dry
oxidising conditions). Importantly, phaeomelanin is much more stable
to environmental conditions than eumelanin, hence the reactions
occurring in the burial environment favor the preservation of
phaeomelanin, revealing and enhancing the red/ yellow color of hairs
containing this pigment. Color changes occur slowly under dry
oxidising conditions, such as in the burials in sand at Hierakonpolis.
Whether the conditions within the wood and plaster coffin contributed
to accelerated color change, or whether this individual naturally had
more phaeomelanin pigmentation in his hair is hard to say without
further analysis
http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/hierakonpolis/field/hair.html

http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/hierakonpolis/field/2004c.html

Careful brushing later in the lab revealed the reddish eye lashes and
eye brows, and even remnants of a 5 o'clock shadow on the chin. This
is not to say that he was a true blonde. It is known that over time
hair will turn blonde or reddish, but apparently only certain
conditions, as our visiting hair specialist Andrew Wilson <hair.html>
of Bradford University, UK, explains
http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/hierakonpolis/field/2004c.html

Wilson A.S., Dixon R.A., Dodson H.I., Janaway R.C., Pollard A.M.,
Stern B. and Tobin D.J. (2001) Yesterday?s hair - Human hair in
archaeology. Biologist, 48, 213-217.

[Also, other than the papers you cite
below (and whose study is somewhat dated)]

The studies I citied already come with a reference to where most were
obtained. Larry Angel is a professional anthropologist whose work is
held in high esteem and peer reviewed.

Here are some other studies that are not as dated as the one posted.

See the following:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstra
ct&list_uids=1562056

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstra
ct&list_uids=2221029

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstra
ct&list_uids=8893087

[ could you provide online reference
to the remains you are talking about.]

Not all references people cite from online.  The studies exist and can
be obtained through interlibrary loan at your local Unversity library.

[Also, why isn't modern Egyptology
adopting a notion of Egypt as a Negro civilization?]

Egyptologist are not experts in bio or physical anthropology.
Egyptologist really have no  knowleadge in this field so most tend to
rely upon the words of others.   I must point out however that early
Egyptologist never denied that most of Upper Egypt was negriod.

 If you read my post I never made the statements that all Egyptians
were negriod ,but I did point out to you I believe that most remains
found in Upper Egypt were negriod. Upper Egypt is from where the first
pharoahs and culture came from.  Lower Egyptians were probabaly
racially distinct from Upper Egyptians as they are today.     No where
did I say all Egyptians were negriod.   However,a good portion of the
modern population in Upper Egypt is!!!

 Here is some views from two mainstream Egyptologist:

From: pap166@nwu.edu (peter piccione)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 1995 02:21:53 -0600
Subject: Re: Egyptian Ethnicity [long]

There is no doubt that the subject of the ethnicity of the ancient
Egyptians=
=20
is one
that is highly charged.  Emotions tend to run high regarding this
topic.  A=
=20
significant
exception are those purely scientific studies written by human
biologists=
and
anthropologists studying the human remains from Egypt and Nubia. =20
Thankfully, the
cool light of reason still prevails in that area of endeavor, and it
is=20
there that the
debate on Egyptian ethnicities should be carried out.  Actually, there
isn't=
=20
much of a
debate in those circles.  It's very clear that, in general, the
Egyptians=20
and Nubians
were fairly heterogenous folk physically related to each other early
in=20
their history.

Because such studies on the physical ethnology of the Egyptians and
Nubians=
=20
often
pertain to paleobiology and paleopathology, I have been including
these in=
my
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL DATABASE OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN MEDICINE AND
MEDICAL PRACTICE.  Currrently, I have 153 ethnological/biological
studies
catalogued, of which 51 are from 1945 and later.  I use 1945 as a=20
watershed-date in
this topic, since it marks the date of el-Batrawi's first of two
landmark=20
studies of
Egyptian and Nubian crania, which (as I interpret it) marks the
beginning of=
=20
the end
of the dynastic race theory (despite holdouts such as Derry and
Emory).  In=
=20
addition,
the work of the two Berry's and Evgen Strouhal cannot be overestimated
for
understanding this subject.

With these thoughts in mind, I have prepared and included here a
printout of=
=20
these
studies.  Most of these should be used as a basis for understanding
Egyptian=
and
Nubian ethnology and racial affinities.  Many of these are primary
research=
=20
studies;
others are anthropological syntheses.  Admittedly, a few deal more
with=
cultural
issues rather than physical evidence.  I _especially_ recommend the
works of=
=20
Brace
et al. 1993 and Ortiz de Montellano 1993 as good examples of
confronting=
faulty
methodologies for ascertaining Egyptian ethnicity.

Please keep in mind that this bibliography is nowhere near complete,
nor do=
=20
I claim
any measure of completeness for it.  If anyone wants to receive the
listing=
=20
of the 102
pre-1945 studies, I will gladly transmit this off-list.  Those works
pertain=
=20
mostly to
notions of dynastic race, "pure race"-theory, and racial diffusion (a
la G.=
=20
Elliot Smith
et al.).

Finally, let it be said that the ancient Egyptians were not white=20
Caucasians, nor were
they Indo-Aryans.  They were African, primarily a brown race, although
fair=
=20
skinned
and leptorhine in the north, black skinned and platyrhine in the
south, and=
=20
various
shades in the middle.  They manifested all the physical differences
you=20
would expect
in so large a continent as Africa.  Trigger (see below) uses the
term=20
"Nilotic" to
refer to their heterogenous character.  When all is said and done,
though,=
=20
this whole
question of Egyptian racial identity says more about us today than it
does=
=20
about the
ancient Egyptians.

http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/ANE/ANE-DIGEST/V02/v02.n077

[scroll down to see Peter Piccione's views]

 Here are the views of the recently deceased Egyptologist Frank
Joseph Yurco:

 The ancient Egyptians did not think in these terms.  The whole
matter of black or white Egyptians is a
chimera, cultural baggage from our own society that can only be
imposed artificially on ancient Egyptian
society. The ancient Egyptians, like their modern descendants, were of
varying complexions of color,
from the light Mediterranean type (like Nefertiti), to the light brown
of Middle Egypt, to the darker
brown of Upper Egypt, to the darkest shade around Aswan and the First
Cataract region, where even
today, the population shifts to Nubian. (4)

Ancient and modern Egyptian hair ranges from straight to wavy to
woolly; in color, it varies from
reddish brown to dark brown to black.  Lips range from thin to full.
Many Egyptians possess a
protrusive jaw. Noses vary from high-bridged-straight to arched or
even hooked to flat-bridged,
with bulbous to broad nostrils.  In short, ancient Egypt, like modern
Egypt, consisted of a very
heterogeneous population.

The evidence regarding these features of ancient Egyptians comes from
literature, anthropology,
mummies, sculptures, paintings, and inscriptions--all left by the
ancient Egyptians themselves. For
example, the mummies and skeletons of ancient Egyptians indicate they
were Africans of the Afro-
Asiatic ethnic groupings (the term "Afro-Asiatic" has replaced the
less accurate designation
"Hamitic").  This is the population of Northern Africa, the Sahara and
sub-Sahara regions.  Their
physical features vary as described above.  No doubt, many
darker-colored Egyptians would be
called black in our modern, race-conscious terminology.



http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/9507/c-wh1-ane-yurco.htm

[The vast majority of remains from Upper Egypt are not Negroid type
but
clearly Caucasian type.]

According to whom?    No caucasoid types existed in pre-dyanstic
Egypt. The earliest people,the Badarian, are Negriod.

[http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/resources/timeline.html]

I read the link and it said was that some groups of nomads from the
Central Sahara[Modern day Chad] came into Egypt  and settled down
amungst the cultures that already existed like the Badarian and
Naqada.   No where in the link did I see that  anybody found these
types to be caucasoid as you suppose. According to  S.O.Y Keita the
types found in the Sahara correspond to the Elongated African type.

See the following:

Journal Title: American Journal of Physical Anthropology

Volume 87  Issue: 3

Month/Year: March 1992 Pages 245-254

Article Title  Keita,S.O.Y

'Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis
of Crania From First Dyansty Egyptian Tombs Using  Multiple
Discriminant Functions

'''........Hiernaux [1975] has accounted for variations in Africa
using a nonracial approach;he  does not specifically  address the
northern Nile Valley  in great detail ,but his concepts ,based on
microevolutionary principles[adaptation,drift,selection], are
applicable  in this region in the light of recent archaeological data.
For example, in living and fossil  tropical Africans ,narrow faces and
noses [versus  broad ''Negro'' ones] donot usually indicate  European
or Near Eastern migration  or ''Europoid''[Caucasian] genes called
Hamitic as once thought ,but represent indigenous variation,either
connoting  a hot-dry climatic adaptation  or resulting  from drift
[Hiernaux,1975]. Hiernaux calls this morphology  ''Elongated
African.'' Some of the neolithic Saharans  of tropical African
affinity [Sutton ,1974;Hiernaux,1975; after Chamla,1968] who emigrated
to the Nile Valley[Hassan ,1988] might  be an example. The view that
''elongated'' chracteristics  are indigenous and equally tropical
African [''Black''] for specific  archaeological  series  and peoples
is supported by  Gabel [1966], Hiernaux[1975] and Rightmire[1975a,b]
The range of variation,''Broad''[streotypical Negro] to Elongated ,
can be assumed  within a single  unit designated  Africoid ,thereby
acknowleading  the wider affinities  and multiple  tropical
microadpative strategeies,as well as drift...........'''

Scientists have been studying remains from the Egyptian Nile Valley
for years. 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...

In summary, various kinds of data and the evolutionary approach
indicate that the Nile Valley populations had greater ties with other
African populations in the early ancient period. Early Nile Valley
populations were primarily coextensive with indigenous African
populations. Linguistic and archaeological data provide key supporting
evidence for a primarily African origin.

The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient
Egyptians
S.O.Y. Keita, Department of Biological Anthropology, Oxford University

A.J. Boyce
University Reader in Human Population Biology
Oxford University

Taken from Egypt in Africa, by Theodore Celenko

ancient Egyptian civilization was, in ways and to an extent usually
not recognized, fundamentally African. The evidence of both language
and culture reveals these African roots.

The origins of Egyptian ethnicity lay in the areas south of Egypt. The
ancient Egyptian language belonged to the Afrasian family(also called
Afroasiatic or, formerly, Hamito-Semitic). The speakers of the
earliest Afrasian languages, according to recent studies, were a set
of peoples whose lands between 15,000 and 13,000 B.C. stretched from
Nubia in the west to far northern Somalia in the east. They supported
themselves by gathering wild grains. The first elements of Egyptian
culture were laid down two thousand years later, between 12,000 and
10,000 B.C., when some of these Afrasian communities expanded
northward into Egypt, bringing with them a language directly ancestral
to ancient Egyptian. They also introduced to Egypt the idea of using
wild grains as food(Ehret 1995; Ehret forthcoming).....

One of the exciting archeological events of the past twenty years was
the discovery that the peoples of the steppes and grasslands to the
immediate south of Egypt domesticated these cattle, as early as 9000
to 8000 B.C. The socities involved in this momentous development
included Afrasians and neighboring peoples whose languages belonged to
a second major African language family, Nilo-Saharan(Wendorf, Schild,
Close 1984; Wendorf, et tal. 1982). The earliest domestic cattle came
to Egypt apparently from these southern neighbors, probably before
6000 B.C., not, as we used to think, from the Middle East.

One major technological advance, pottery-making, was also initiated as
early as 9000 B.C. by the Nilo-Saharans and Afrasians who lived to the
south of Egypt. Soon thereafter, pots spread to Egyptian sites, almost
2000 years before the first pottery was made in the Middle East......

Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture

Christopher Ehret
Professor of History, African Studies Chair
University of California at Los Angeles

Taken from Egypt in Africa, by Theodore Celenko

The physical types found in pre-dynastic and early dynastic burials
are remarkably consistent, and show that the ancient Egyptian
cultivators were of a short and rather lightly built race
indistinguishable from the modern Beja of the Red Sea hills or from
the Danakil and Somali of the Horn of Africa

A Short History of Africa
Roland Oliver and J.D. Fage
pg 13

FROMENT, Alain, Origines du peuplement de l?Égypte ancienne: l?apport
de l?anthropobiologie, Archéo-Nil 2 (Octobre 1992), 79-98. (fig.,
tables).

The origin of the Ancient Egyptians has long been a subject of
interest for physical anthropologists. Aside from some fanciful
theories, a general consensus used to present them as Mediterranean,
or "leucoderm Africans with a Hamitic background". However, some
African nationalists, like Diop, whose theories now have a large
scholarly audience, challenged this opinion. Using linguistic and
cultural criteria, studies of paintings and carvings, and texts from
Antiquity, he tried to demonstrate that the Ancient Egyptians were
Black. Besides this typological, or raciological view, a more
biologically acceptable, non-racial approach considers human variation
as a clinal, environmental adaptation. Numerical computations are
possible from cranial, or cephalic measurements, which enable
populations to be compared by discriminant analysis. Such an analysis
was carried out on a set of 384 skull samples from Egypt, Nubia,
India, Maghreb, Europe and Subsaharan Africa. Two very discriminant
measurements showed a strong correlation with the axes: nose breadth
and bizygomatic breadth. This representation of population
distribution maps very closely onto their geographic location: on
average, the Ancient Egyptian people is morphologically equidistant
from Europe and Africa. Nile Valley inhabitants display a wide range
of variation, as a consequence of a long process of mixing. Black
populations of the Horn of Africa (Tigré and Somalia) fit well into
Egyptian variations. Abridged author?s summary

In discussing the Badari culture, for example -- Egypt's earliest
predynastic
civilization (4400-4000 BC) -- Shomarka Keita writes that many
researchers
have found their remains to be "fundamentally `Negroid'."

Going back even further in time, Keita states:

"...late paleolithic remains from Egypt indicate characteristics which
distinguish them clearly from their European counterparts at 30,000
and
20,000 years BP... These distinguishing characteristics, commonly
called
`Negroid,' are shared with later Nile valley and more southerly
groups...
Epipaleolithic `mesolithic' Nile valley remains have these
characteristics
and diverge notably from their Maghreban and European counterparts in
key
craniofacial characteristics."

(S.O.Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological
Relationships", History in Africa 20 (1993), page 135).

There was probably a break in occupation between levels I and II at
Merimda. Level II, known as the Mittleren Merimdekultur and considered
by
the by the excavator to be related to the Saharo-Sudanese cultures..."
The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt
Pg 38
======================================================================
"The Fayum Neolithic should thus be viewed as a culture at the
intersection
of three routes: one from the eastern Sahara, one from the Near East
and one
from the Nile Valley itself."
The Prehistory of Egypt
By Beatrix Midant-Reynes
Pg. 106
=====================================================================

Here is Midant-Reynes statement on the remains of a 40 year old
epipaleolithic woman from the Fayum Oasis in the same book:
" The body was that of a 40 year old woman with a height of 1.6
meters, who
was of a more modern racial type than the classic "Mechtoid" of the
Fakhurian culture, being generally gracile, having large teeth and
thick
jaws bearing some resemblance to the modern "negroid' type."
The Prehistory of Egypt
By Beatrix Midant-Reynes
Pg. 82
======================================================================
"The prognathism observed in the skulls from Maadi south and
Heliopolis may
or may not indicate the infiltration of a negroid strain into the
northern
region."
Most Ancient Egypt
By William C. Hayes
===================================

Am J Phys Anthropol. 1992 Mar;87(3):245-54. Related Articles, Links

   Further studies of crania from ancient northern Africa: an
analysis of crania from first dynasty Egyptian tombs, using
discriminant functions.

   Keita SO.

   Department of Anthropology, University of Maryland, College Park.

   An analysis of First Dynasty crania from Abydos was undertaken
using multiple discriminant functions. The results demonstrate greater
affinity with Upper Nile Valley patterns, but also suggest change from
earlier craniometric trends. Gene flow and movement of northern
officials to the important southern city may explain the findings.

   Publication Types:

       * Historical Article

PMID: 1562056 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstra
ct&list_uids=1562056

1: Am J Phys Anthropol. 1990 Sep;83(1):35-48. Related Articles, Links

   Studies of ancient crania from northern Africa.

   Keita SO.

   Department of Surgery, Howard University Hospital, Washington, DC
20060.

   Historical sources and archaeological data predict significant
population variability in mid-Holocene northern Africa. Multivariate
analyses of crania demonstrate wide variation but also suggest an
indigenous craniometric pattern common to both late dynastic northern
Egypt and the coastal Maghreb region. Both tropical African and
European metric phenotypes, as well intermediate patterns, are found
in mid-Holocene Maghreb sites. Early southern predynastic Egyptian
crania show tropical African affinities, displaying craniometric
trends that differ notably from the coastal northern African pattern.
The various craniofacial patterns discernible in northern Africa are
attributable to the agents of microevolution and migration.

   Publication Types:

       * Historical Article

PMID: 2221029 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstra
ct&list_uids=2221029

1: Am J Phys Anthropol. 1996 Oct;101(2):237-46. Related Articles,
Links

   Concordance of cranial and dental morphological traits and
evidence for endogamy in ancient Egypt.

   Prowse TL, Lovell NC.

   Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Edmonton,
Canada.

   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 nonelite cemeteries and
that the nonelite samples are not significantly different from each
other. A comparison with neighbouring 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 neighbouring
populations in southern Egypt.

   Publication Types:

       * Review
       * Review, Tutorial

PMID: 8893087 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstra
ct&list_uids=8893087

The existence of still earlier culture,called the Tasins,has been
claimed. This culture would have been chracterized by the pressure of
round based calic form beakers with incised designs filled with white
pigment,which are also known fropm contexts of similar date in
Nelothic Sudan. However,the exisdtanece of the Tasins as a
chronologically or culturally seperated unit has never been
demonstrated beyond beyond doubt. Although most scholars consider the
tasian to be simply part of the badarian culture,it has also been
argued that the tasian represents the continuation of Lower Egyptian
tradition,which would be the immediate predessor of the Naquda 1
culture. This however,seems rather implausible ,first because
similarities with the neolithic cultures are no
convincing,and,secondly,because of the tasins obvious ceramic links
with the sudan. If the Tasians must be considered as a specific
cultural entity,then it might represent a nomadic culture with a
Sudanese background,which interacted with the badarian culture
page 40

Ian Shaw

Oxford University of Ancient Egypt

[
[Egypt had much tighter Southern boundary control in Pre-dynastic and
dynastic periods and so to presume markers present today were reflect
ancient periods seems quite a leap.]

Not really for sub-saharan types show up in pre-dyanstic Egypt.

See the following:

The position of the Nazlet Khater specimen among prehistoric and
modern African and Levantine populations.

Pinhasi R, Semal P.

Department of Biological Anthropology, University of Cambridge,
Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3DZ, U.K. The morphometric affinities
of the 33,000 year old skeleton from Nazlet Khater, Upper Egypt are
examined using multivariate statistical procedures. In the first part,
principal components analysis is performed on a dataset of mandible
dimensions of 220 fossils, sub-fossils and modern specimens, ranging
in time from the Late Pleistocene to recent and restricted in space to
the African continent and Southern Levant. In the second part, mean
measurements for various prehistoric and modern African and Levantine
populations are incorporated in the statistical analysis.
Subsequently, differences between male and female means are examined
for some of the modern and prehistoric populations. The results
indicate a strong association between some of the sub-Saharan Middle
Stone Age (MSA) specimens, and the Nazlet Khater mandible.
Furthermore, the results suggest that variability between African
populations during the Neolithic and Protohistoric periods was more
pronounced than the range of variability observed among recent African
and Levantine populations. Results also demonstrate a general
reduction in the degree of sexual dimorphism during the Holocene.
However, this pattern of reduction pattern varies by geographic
location and is not uniform across the African continent.

Hope you can read French:

"These two adult men, buried together in the necropolis Adaima, in
Egypt, 3,700 years BCE, were brothers or cousins, according to the
analysis of their ADN. The test also connects them with populations
of sub-Saharan origin, which agrees with the morphological elements
concerning the population as a whole."

<http://www.larecherche.fr/arch/02/05

[Would you explain  "Ginger," the Upper Egyptian predynastic mummy
that is
displayed at the British Museum.]

Ginger is only one mummy out of how many  burials along the Nile in
Upper Egypt? What you might not know is that many times the salts in
the sand of the salta or dry burial conditions can change dark haired
people into a reddish blondish type color. The only way we know for
sure what ''Ginger'' hair color is through electron microscope.
Otherwise it could be from deteriation within the sands.

    Many burials in Nubia have been found with reddish type hair but
does this mean that Nubians are natural red heads? No!

  Here are some examples:

Here are some interesting paragraphs (_New Scientist) from the study
of the Otzi natural mummy (emphasis is mine).

QUOTE
Reconstructions of ancient diets from hair are based on the
assumption that proportions of stable isotopes of carbon, nitrogen
and sulphur remain constant, even after thousands of years. These
proportions reflect the composition of food-stuffs, offering
pointers to what people ate.

But in analyses of hair from 13 corpses, Wilson found that

***over time cavities appear in the shafts of the hair, allowing
material to leak out and letting in foreign matters such as mineral
salts and microorganisms.***

Although the tough, outer shaft of ancient hair is robust, says
Wilson,

***there is substantial decay of the cortex, the softer material
inside.***

Examining hair with a sensitive chemical technique called Fourier
transform Raman spectroscopy, Wilson discovered that

***the strong bonds in the keratin --- the protein that makes up the
hair --- were often weakened.***

'This increased porosity raises the possibility of contamination,'
he says. The team found hair that had been invaded by threads of
fungus and in one case with iron salts from an iron coffin.
UNQUOTE

16 Oct 1999.

Archaeological Hair

The common misconception that all hair turns red over archaeological
timescales has found its way into archaeological folklore. Whilst
certain environments such as those producing bog bodies are known to
yield hair of a red-brown color, in part because of the breakdown of
organic matter and presence of humic acids which impart a brown color
to recovered remains, it has commonly been assumed that this happens
to all archaeological hair. This concept has been perpetuated by
popular nicknames such as "Ginger"--affectionately given to the
Predynastic burial with red hair on display in the mummy rooms at the
British Museum.

Potential change to hair color can be explained more scientifically by
examining the chemistry of melanin which is responsible for hair color
in life. All hair contains a mixture in varying concentration of both
black-brown eumelanin and red-yellow phaeomelanin pigments, which are
susceptible to differential chemical change under certain extreme
burial conditions (for example wet reducing conditions, or dry
oxidising conditions). Importantly, phaeomelanin is much more stable
to environmental conditions than eumelanin, hence the reactions
occurring in the burial environment favor the preservation of
phaeomelanin, revealing and enhancing the red/ yellow color of hairs
containing this pigment. Color changes occur slowly under dry
oxidising conditions, such as in the burials in sand at Hierakonpolis.
Whether the conditions within the wood and plaster coffin contributed
to accelerated color change, or whether this individual naturally had
more phaeomelanin pigmentation in his hair is hard to say without
further analysis
http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/hierakonpolis/field/hair.html

http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/hierakonpolis/field/2004c.html

Careful brushing later in the lab revealed the reddish eye lashes and
eye brows, and even remnants of a 5 o'clock shadow on the chin. This
is not to say that he was a true blonde. It is known that over time
hair will turn blonde or reddish, but apparently only certain
conditions, as our visiting hair specialist Andrew Wilson <hair.html>
of Bradford University, UK, explains
http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/hierakonpolis/field/2004c.html

Wilson A.S., Dixon R.A., Dodson H.I., Janaway R.C., Pollard A.M.,
Stern B. and Tobin D.J. (2001) Yesterday?s hair - Human hair in
archaeology. Biologist, 48, 213-217.

[Also, other than the papers you cite
below (and whose study is somewhat dated)]

The studies I citied already come with a reference to where most were
obtained. Larry Angel is a professional anthropologist whose work is
held in high esteem and peer reviewed.

Here are some other studies that are not as dated as the one posted.

See the following:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstra
ct&list_uids=1562056

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstra
ct&list_uids=2221029

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstra
ct&list_uids=8893087

[ could you provide online reference
to the remains you are talking about.]

Not all references people cite from online.  The studies exist and can
be obtained through interlibrary loan at your local Unversity library.

[Also, why isn't modern Egyptology
adopting a notion of Egypt as a Negro civilization?]

Egyptologist are not experts in bio or physical anthropology.
Egyptologist really have no  knowleadge in this field so most tend to
rely upon the words of others.   I must point out however that early
Egyptologist never denied that most of Upper Egypt was negriod.

 If you read my post I never made the statements that all Egyptians
were negriod ,but I did point out to you I believe that most remains
found in Upper Egypt were negriod. Upper Egypt is from where the first
pharoahs and culture came from.  Lower Egyptians were probabaly
racially distinct from Upper Egyptians as they are today.     No where
did I say all Egyptians were negriod.   However,a good portion of the
modern population in Upper Egypt is!!!

 Here is some views from two mainstream Egyptologist:

From: pap166@nwu.edu (peter piccione)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 1995 02:21:53 -0600
Subject: Re: Egyptian Ethnicity [long]

There is no doubt that the subject of the ethnicity of the ancient
Egyptians=
=20
is one
that is highly charged.  Emotions tend to run high regarding this
topic.  A=
=20
significant
exception are those purely scientific studies written by human
biologists=
and
anthropologists studying the human remains from Egypt and Nubia. =20
Thankfully, the
cool light of reason still prevails in that area of endeavor, and it
is=20
there that the
debate on Egyptian ethnicities should be carried out.  Actually, there
isn't=
=20
much of a
debate in those circles.  It's very clear that, in general, the
Egyptians=20
and Nubians
were fairly heterogenous folk physically related to each other early
in=20
their history.

Because such studies on the physical ethnology of the Egyptians and
Nubians=
=20
often
pertain to paleobiology and paleopathology, I have been including
these in=
my
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL DATABASE OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN MEDICINE AND
MEDICAL PRACTICE.  Currrently, I have 153 ethnological/biological
studies
catalogued, of which 51 are from 1945 and later.  I use 1945 as a=20
watershed-date in
this topic, since it marks the date of el-Batrawi's first of two
landmark=20
studies of
Egyptian and Nubian crania, which (as I interpret it) marks the
beginning of=
=20
the end
of the dynastic race theory (despite holdouts such as Derry and
Emory).  In=
=20
addition,
the work of the two Berry's and Evgen Strouhal cannot be overestimated
for
understanding this subject.

With these thoughts in mind, I have prepared and included here a
printout of=
=20
these
studies.  Most of these should be used as a basis for understanding
Egyptian=
and
Nubian ethnology and racial affinities.  Many of these are primary
research=
=20
studies;
others are anthropological syntheses.  Admittedly, a few deal more
with=
cultural
issues rather than physical evidence.  I _especially_ recommend the
works of=
=20
Brace
et al. 1993 and Ortiz de Montellano 1993 as good examples of
confronting=
faulty
methodologies for ascertaining Egyptian ethnicity.

Please keep in mind that this bibliography is nowhere near complete,
nor do=
=20
I claim
any measure of completeness for it.  If anyone wants to receive the
listing=
=20
of the 102
pre-1945 studies, I will gladly transmit this off-list.  Those works
pertain=
=20
mostly to
notions of dynastic race, "pure race"-theory, and racial diffusion (a
la G.=
=20
Elliot Smith
et al.).

Finally, let it be said that the ancient Egyptians were not white=20
Caucasians, nor were
they Indo-Aryans.  They were African, primarily a brown race, although
fair=
=20
skinned
and leptorhine in the north, black skinned and platyrhine in the
south, and=
=20
various
shades in the middle.  They manifested all the physical differences
you=20
would expect
in so large a continent as Africa.  Trigger (see below) uses the
term=20
"Nilotic" to
refer to their heterogenous character.  When all is said and done,
though,=
=20
this whole
question of Egyptian racial identity says more about us today than it
does=
=20
about the
ancient Egyptians.

http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/ANE/ANE-DIGEST/V02/v02.n077

[scroll down to see Peter Piccione's views]

 Here are the views of the recently deceased Egyptologist Frank
Joseph Yurco:

 The ancient Egyptians did not think in these terms.  The whole
matter of black or white Egyptians is a
chimera, cultural baggage from our own society that can only be
imposed artificially on ancient Egyptian
society. The ancient Egyptians, like their modern descendants, were of
varying complexions of color,
from the light Mediterranean type (like Nefertiti), to the light brown
of Middle Egypt, to the darker
brown of Upper Egypt, to the darkest shade around Aswan and the First
Cataract region, where even
today, the population shifts to Nubian. (4)

Ancient and modern Egyptian hair ranges from straight to wavy to
woolly; in color, it varies from
reddish brown to dark brown to black.  Lips range from thin to full.
Many Egyptians possess a
protrusive jaw. Noses vary from high-bridged-straight to arched or
even hooked to flat-bridged,
with bulbous to broad nostrils.  In short, ancient Egypt, like modern
Egypt, consisted of a very
heterogeneous population.

The evidence regarding these features of ancient Egyptians comes from
literature, anthropology,
mummies, sculptures, paintings, and inscriptions--all left by the
ancient Egyptians themselves. For
example, the mummies and skeletons of ancient Egyptians indicate they
were Africans of the Afro-
Asiatic ethnic groupings (the term "Afro-Asiatic" has replaced the
less accurate designation
"Hamitic").  This is the population of Northern Africa, the Sahara and
sub-Sahara regions.  Their
physical features vary as described above.  No doubt, many
darker-colored Egyptians would be
called black in our modern, race-conscious terminology.



http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/9507/c-wh1-ane-yurco.htm

[The vast majority of remains from Upper Egypt are not Negroid type
but
clearly Caucasian type.]

According to whom?    No caucasoid types existed in pre-dyanstic
Egypt. The earliest people,the Badarian, are Negriod.

[http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/resources/timeline.html]

I read the link and it said was that some groups of nomads from the
Central Sahara[Modern day Chad] came into Egypt  and settled down
amungst the cultures that already existed like the Badarian and
Naqada.   No where in the link did I see that  anybody found these
types to be caucasoid as you suppose. According to  S.O.Y Keita the
types found in the Sahara correspond to the Elongated African type.

See the following:

Journal Title: American Journal of Physical Anthropology

Volume 87  Issue: 3

Month/Year: March 1992 Pages 245-254

Article Title  Keita,S.O.Y

'Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis
of Crania From First Dyansty Egyptian Tombs Using  Multiple
Discriminant Functions

'''........Hiernaux [1975] has accounted for variations in Africa
using a nonracial approach;he  does not specifically  address the
northern Nile Valley  in great detail ,but his concepts ,based on
microevolutionary principles[adaptation,drift,selection], are
applicable  in this region in the light of recent archaeological data.
For example, in living and fossil  tropical Africans ,narrow faces and
noses [versus  broad ''Negro'' ones] donot usually indicate  European
or Near Eastern migration  or ''Europoid''[Caucasian] genes called
Hamitic as once thought ,but represent indigenous variation,either
connoting  a hot-dry climatic adaptation  or resulting  from drift
[Hiernaux,1975]. Hiernaux calls this morphology  ''Elongated
African.'' Some of the neolithic Saharans  of tropical African
affinity [Sutton ,1974;Hiernaux,1975; after Chamla,1968] who emigrated
to the Nile Valley[Hassan ,1988] might  be an example. The view that
''elongated'' chracteristics  are indigenous and equally tropical
African [''Black''] for specific  archaeological  series  and peoples
is supported by  Gabel [1966], Hiernaux[1975] and Rightmire[1975a,b]
The range of variation,''Broad''[streotypical Negro] to Elongated ,
can be assumed  within a single  unit designated  Africoid ,thereby
acknowleading  the wider affinities  and multiple  tropical
microadpative strategeies,as well as drift...........'''

Scientists have been studying remains from the Egyptian Nile Valley
for years. 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...

In summary, various kinds of data and the evolutionary approach
indicate that the Nile Valley populations had greater ties with other
African populations in the early ancient period. Early Nile Valley
populations were primarily coextensive with indigenous African
populations. Linguistic and archaeological data provide key supporting
evidence for a primarily African origin.

The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient
Egyptians
S.O.Y. Keita, Department of Biological Anthropology, Oxford University

A.J. Boyce
University Reader in Human Population Biology
Oxford University

Taken from Egypt in Africa, by Theodore Celenko

ancient Egyptian civilization was, in ways and to an extent usually
not recognized, fundamentally African. The evidence of both language
and culture reveals these African roots.

The origins of Egyptian ethnicity lay in the areas south of Egypt. The
ancient Egyptian language belonged to the Afrasian family(also called
Afroasiatic or, formerly, Hamito-Semitic). The speakers of the
earliest Afrasian languages, according to recent studies, were a set
of peoples whose lands between 15,000 and 13,000 B.C. stretched from
Nubia in the west to far northern Somalia in the east. They supported
themselves by gathering wild grains. The first elements of Egyptian
culture were laid down two thousand years later, between 12,000 and
10,000 B.C., when some of these Afrasian communities expanded
northward into Egypt, bringing with them a language directly ancestral
to ancient Egyptian. They also introduced to Egypt the idea of using
wild grains as food(Ehret 1995; Ehret forthcoming).....

One of the exciting archeological events of the past twenty years was
the discovery that the peoples of the steppes and grasslands to the
immediate south of Egypt domesticated these cattle, as early as 9000
to 8000 B.C. The socities involved in this momentous development
included Afrasians and neighboring peoples whose languages belonged to
a second major African language family, Nilo-Saharan(Wendorf, Schild,
Close 1984; Wendorf, et tal. 1982). The earliest domestic cattle came
to Egypt apparently from these southern neighbors, probably before
6000 B.C., not, as we used to think, from the Middle East.

One major technological advance, pottery-making, was also initiated as
early as 9000 B.C. by the Nilo-Saharans and Afrasians who lived to the
south of Egypt. Soon thereafter, pots spread to Egyptian sites, almost
2000 years before the first pottery was made in the Middle East......

Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture

Christopher Ehret
Professor of History, African Studies Chair
University of California at Los Angeles

Taken from Egypt in Africa, by Theodore Celenko

The physical types found in pre-dynastic and early dynastic burials
are remarkably consistent, and show that the ancient Egyptian
cultivators were of a short and rather lightly built race
indistinguishable from the modern Beja of the Red Sea hills or from
the Danakil and Somali of the Horn of Africa

A Short History of Africa
Roland Oliver and J.D. Fage
pg 13

FROMENT, Alain, Origines du peuplement de l?Égypte ancienne: l?apport
de l?anthropobiologie, Archéo-Nil 2 (Octobre 1992), 79-98. (fig.,
tables).

The origin of the Ancient Egyptians has long been a subject of
interest for physical anthropologists. Aside from some fanciful
theories, a general consensus used to present them as Mediterranean,
or "leucoderm Africans with a Hamitic background". However, some
African nationalists, like Diop, whose theories now have a large
scholarly audience, challenged this opinion. Using linguistic and
cultural criteria, studies of paintings and carvings, and texts from
Antiquity, he tried to demonstrate that the Ancient Egyptians were
Black. Besides this typological, or raciological view, a more
biologically acceptable, non-racial approach considers human variation
as a clinal, environmental adaptation. Numerical computations are
possible from cranial, or cephalic measurements, which enable
populations to be compared by discriminant analysis. Such an analysis
was carried out on a set of 384 skull samples from Egypt, Nubia,
India, Maghreb, Europe and Subsaharan Africa. Two very discriminant
measurements showed a strong correlation with the axes: nose breadth
and bizygomatic breadth. This representation of population
distribution maps very closely onto their geographic location: on
average, the Ancient Egyptian people is morphologically equidistant
from Europe and Africa. Nile Valley inhabitants display a wide range
of variation, as a consequence of a long process of mixing. Black
populations of the Horn of Africa (Tigré and Somalia) fit well into
Egyptian variations. Abridged author?s summary

In discussing the Badari culture, for example -- Egypt's earliest
predynastic
civilization (4400-4000 BC) -- Shomarka Keita writes that many
researchers
have found their remains to be "fundamentally `Negroid'."

Going back even further in time, Keita states:

"...late paleolithic remains from Egypt indicate characteristics which
distinguish them clearly from their European counterparts at 30,000
and
20,000 years BP... These distinguishing characteristics, commonly
called
`Negroid,' are shared with later Nile valley and more southerly
groups...
Epipaleolithic `mesolithic' Nile valley remains have these
characteristics
and diverge notably from their Maghreban and European counterparts in
key
craniofacial characteristics."

(S.O.Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological
Relationships", History in Africa 20 (1993), page 135).

There was probably a break in occupation between levels I and II at
Merimda. Level II, known as the Mittleren Merimdekultur and considered
by
the by the excavator to be related to the Saharo-Sudanese cultures..."
The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt
Pg 38
======================================================================
"The Fayum Neolithic should thus be viewed as a culture at the
intersection
of three routes: one from the eastern Sahara, one from the Near East
and one
from the Nile Valley itself."
The Prehistory of Egypt
By Beatrix Midant-Reynes
Pg. 106
=====================================================================

Here is Midant-Reynes statement on the remains of a 40 year old
epipaleolithic woman from the Fayum Oasis in the same book:
" The body was that of a 40 year old woman with a height of 1.6
meters, who
was of a more modern racial type than the classic "Mechtoid" of the
Fakhurian culture, being generally gracile, having large teeth and
thick
jaws bearing some resemblance to the modern "negroid' type."
The Prehistory of Egypt
By Beatrix Midant-Reynes
Pg. 82
======================================================================
"The prognathism observed in the skulls from Maadi south and
Heliopolis may
or may not indicate the infiltration of a negroid strain into the
northern
region."
Most Ancient Egypt
By William C. Hayes
===================================

Am J Phys Anthropol. 1992 Mar;87(3):245-54. Related Articles, Links

   Further studies of crania from ancient northern Africa: an
analysis of crania from first dynasty Egyptian tombs, using
discriminant functions.

   Keita SO.

   Department of Anthropology, University of Maryland, College Park.

   An analysis of First Dynasty crania from Abydos was undertaken
using multiple discriminant functions. The results demonstrate greater
affinity with Upper Nile Valley patterns, but also suggest change from
earlier craniometric trends. Gene flow and movement of northern
officials to the important southern city may explain the findings.

   Publication Types:

       * Historical Article

PMID: 1562056 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstra
ct&list_uids=1562056

1: Am J Phys Anthropol. 1990 Sep;83(1):35-48. Related Articles, Links

   Studies of ancient crania from northern Africa.

   Keita SO.

   Department of Surgery, Howard University Hospital, Washington, DC
20060.

   Historical sources and archaeological data predict significant
population variability in mid-Holocene northern Africa. Multivariate
analyses of crania demonstrate wide variation but also suggest an
indigenous craniometric pattern common to both late dynastic northern
Egypt and the coastal Maghreb region. Both tropical African and
European metric phenotypes, as well intermediate patterns, are found
in mid-Holocene Maghreb sites. Early southern predynastic Egyptian
crania show tropical African affinities, displaying craniometric
trends that differ notably from the coastal northern African pattern.
The various craniofacial patterns discernible in northern Africa are
attributable to the agents of microevolution and migration.

   Publication Types:

       * Historical Article

PMID: 2221029 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstra
ct&list_uids=2221029

1: Am J Phys Anthropol. 1996 Oct;101(2):237-46. Related Articles,
Links

   Concordance of cranial and dental morphological traits and
evidence for endogamy in ancient Egypt.

   Prowse TL, Lovell NC.

   Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Edmonton,
Canada.

   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 nonelite cemeteries and
that the nonelite samples are not significantly different from each
other. A comparison with neighbouring 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 neighbouring
populations in southern Egypt.

   Publication Types:

       * Review
       * Review, Tutorial

PMID: 8893087 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstra
ct&list_uids=8893087

The existence of still earlier culture,called the Tasins,has been
claimed. This culture would have been chracterized by the pressure of
round based calic form beakers with incised designs filled with white
pigment,which are also known fropm contexts of similar date in
Nelothic Sudan. However,the exisdtanece of the Tasins as a
chronologically or culturally seperated unit has never been
demonstrated beyond beyond doubt. Although most scholars consider the
tasian to be simply part of the badarian culture,it has also been
argued that the tasian represents the continuation of Lower Egyptian
tradition,which would be the immediate predessor of the Naquda 1
culture. This however,seems rather implausible ,first because
similarities with the neolithic cultures are no
convincing,and,secondly,because of the tasins obvious ceramic links
with the sudan. If the Tasians must be considered as a specific
cultural entity,then it might represent a nomadic culture with a
Sudanese background,which interacted with the badarian culture
page 40

Ian Shaw

Oxford University of Ancient Egypt

[
[Egypt had much tighter Southern boundary control in Pre-dynastic and
dynastic periods and so to presume markers present today were reflect
ancient periods seems quite a leap.]

Not really for sub-saharan types show up in pre-dyanstic Egypt.

See the following:

The position of the Nazlet Khater specimen among prehistoric and
modern African and Levantine populations.

Pinhasi R, Semal P.

Department of Biological Anthropology, University of Cambridge,
Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3DZ, U.K. The morphometric affinities
of the 33,000 year old skeleton from Nazlet Khater, Upper Egypt are
examined using multivariate statistical procedures. In the first part,
principal components analysis is performed on a dataset of mandible
dimensions of 220 fossils, sub-fossils and modern specimens, ranging
in time from the Late Pleistocene to recent and restricted in space to
the African continent and Southern Levant. In the second part, mean
measurements for various prehistoric and modern African and Levantine
populations are incorporated in the statistical analysis.
Subsequently, differences between male and female means are examined
for some of the modern and prehistoric populations. The results
indicate a strong association between some of the sub-Saharan Middle
Stone Age (MSA) specimens, and the Nazlet Khater mandible.
Furthermore, the results suggest that variability between African
populations during the Neolithic and Protohistoric periods was more
pronounced than the range of variability observed among recent African
and Levantine populations. Results also demonstrate a general
reduction in the degree of sexual dimorphism during the Holocene.
However, this pattern of reduction pattern varies by geographic
location and is not uniform across the African continent.

Hope you can read French:

"These two adult men, buried together in the necropolis Adaima, in
Egypt, 3,700 years BCE, were brothers or cousins, according to the
analysis of their ADN. The test also connects them with populations
of sub-Saharan origin, which agrees with the morphological elements
concerning the population as a whole."

<http://www.larecherche.fr/arch/02/05

[Would you explain  "Ginger," the Upper Egyptian predynastic mummy
that is
displayed at the British Museum.]

Ginger is only one mummy out of how many  burials along the Nile in
Upper Egypt? What you might not know is that many times the salts in
the sand of the salta or dry burial conditions can change dark haired
people into a reddish blondish type color. The only way we know for
sure what ''Ginger'' hair color is through electron microscope.
Otherwise it could be from deteriation within the sands.

    Many burials in Nubia have been found with reddish type hair but
does this mean that Nubians are natural red heads? No!

  Here are some examples:

Here are some interesting paragraphs (_New Scientist) from the study
of the Otzi natural mummy (emphasis is mine).

QUOTE
Reconstructions of ancient diets from hair are based on the
assumption that proportions of stable isotopes of carbon, nitrogen
and sulphur remain constant, even after thousands of years. These
proportions reflect the composition of food-stuffs, offering
pointers to what people ate.

But in analyses of hair from 13 corpses, Wilson found that

***over time cavities appear in the shafts of the hair, allowing
material to leak out and letting in foreign matters such as mineral
salts and microorganisms.***

Although the tough, outer shaft of ancient hair is robust, says
Wilson,

***there is substantial decay of the cortex, the softer material
inside.***

Examining hair with a sensitive chemical technique called Fourier
transform Raman spectroscopy, Wilson discovered that

***the strong bonds in the keratin --- the protein that makes up the
hair --- were often weakened.***

'This increased porosity raises the possibility of contamination,'
he says. The team found hair that had been invaded by threads of
fungus and in one case with iron salts from an iron coffin.
UNQUOTE

16 Oct 1999.

Archaeological Hair

The common misconception that all hair turns red over archaeological
timescales has found its way into archaeological folklore. Whilst
certain environments such as those producing bog bodies are known to
yield hair of a red-brown color, in part because of the breakdown of
organic matter and presence of humic acids which impart a brown color
to recovered remains, it has commonly been assumed that this happens
to all archaeological hair. This concept has been perpetuated by
popular nicknames such as "Ginger"--affectionately given to the
Predynastic burial with red hair on display in the mummy rooms at the
British Museum.

Potential change to hair color can be explained more scientifically by
examining the chemistry of melanin which is responsible for hair color
in life. All hair contains a mixture in varying concentration of both
black-brown eumelanin and red-yellow phaeomelanin pigments, which are
susceptible to differential chemical change under certain extreme
burial conditions (for example wet reducing conditions, or dry
oxidising conditions). Importantly, phaeomelanin is much more stable
to environmental conditions than eumelanin, hence the reactions
occurring in the burial environment favor the preservation of
phaeomelanin, revealing and enhancing the red/ yellow color of hairs
containing this pigment. Color changes occur slowly under dry
oxidising conditions, such as in the burials in sand at Hierakonpolis.
Whether the conditions within the wood and plaster coffin contributed
to accelerated color change, or whether this individual naturally had
more phaeomelanin pigmentation in his hair is hard to say without
further analysis
http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/hierakonpolis/field/hair.html

http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/hierakonpolis/field/2004c.html

Careful brushing later in the lab revealed the reddish eye lashes and
eye brows, and even remnants of a 5 o'clock shadow on the chin. This
is not to say that he was a true blonde. It is known that over time
hair will turn blonde or reddish, but apparently only certain
conditions, as our visiting hair specialist Andrew Wilson <hair.html>
of Bradford University, UK, explains
http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/hierakonpolis/field/2004c.html

Wilson A.S., Dixon R.A., Dodson H.I., Janaway R.C., Pollard A.M.,
Stern B. and Tobin D.J. (2001) Yesterday?s hair - Human hair in
archaeology. Biologist, 48, 213-217.

[Also, other than the papers you cite
below (and whose study is somewhat dated)]

The studies I citied already come with a reference to where most were
obtained. Larry Angel is a professional anthropologist whose work is
held in high esteem and peer reviewed.

Here are some other studies that are not as dated as the one posted.

See the following:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstra
ct&list_uids=1562056

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstra
ct&list_uids=2221029

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstra
ct&list_uids=8893087

[ could you provide online reference
to the remains you are talking about.]

Not all references people cite from online.  The studies exist and can
be obtained through interlibrary loan at your local Unversity library.

[Also, why isn't modern Egyptology
adopting a notion of Egypt as a Negro civilization?]

Egyptologist are not experts in bio or physical anthropology.
Egyptologist really have no  knowleadge in this field so most tend to
rely upon the words of others.   I must point out however that early
Egyptologist never denied that most of Upper Egypt was negriod.

 If you read my post I never made the statements that all Egyptians
were negriod ,but I did point out to you I believe that most remains
found in Upper Egypt were negriod. Upper Egypt is from where the first
pharoahs and culture came from.  Lower Egyptians were probabaly
racially distinct from Upper Egyptians as they are today.     No where
did I say all Egyptians were negriod.   However,a good portion of the
modern population in Upper Egypt is!!!

 Here is some views from two mainstream Egyptologist:

From: pap166@nwu.edu (peter piccione)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 1995 02:21:53 -0600
Subject: Re: Egyptian Ethnicity [long]

There is no doubt that the subject of the ethnicity of the ancient
Egyptians=
=20
is one
that is highly charged.  Emotions tend to run high regarding this
topic.  A=
=20
significant
exception are those purely scientific studies written by human
biologists=
and
anthropologists studying the human remains from Egypt and Nubia. =20
Thankfully, the
cool light of reason still prevails in that area of endeavor, and it
is=20
there that the
debate on Egyptian ethnicities should be carried out.  Actually, there
isn't=
=20
much of a
debate in those circles.  It's very clear that, in general, the
Egyptians=20
and Nubians
were fairly heterogenous folk physically related to each other early
in=20
their history.

Because such studies on the physical ethnology of the Egyptians and
Nubians=
=20
often
pertain to paleobiology and paleopathology, I have been including
these in=
my
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL DATABASE OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN MEDICINE AND
MEDICAL PRACTICE.  Currrently, I have 153 ethnological/biological
studies
catalogued, of which 51 are from 1945 and later.  I use 1945 as a=20
watershed-date in
this topic, since it marks the date of el-Batrawi's first of two
landmark=20
studies of
Egyptian and Nubian crania, which (as I interpret it) marks the
beginning of=
=20
the end
of the dynastic race theory (despite holdouts such as Derry and
Emory).  In=
=20
addition,
the work of the two Berry's and Evgen Strouhal cannot be overestimated
for
understanding this subject.

With these thoughts in mind, I have prepared and included here a
printout of=
=20
these
studies.  Most of these should be used as a basis for understanding
Egyptian=
and
Nubian ethnology and racial affinities.  Many of these are primary
research=
=20
studies;
others are anthropological syntheses.  Admittedly, a few deal more
with=
cultural
issues rather than physical evidence.  I _especially_ recommend the
works of=
=20
Brace
et al. 1993 and Ortiz de Montellano 1993 as good examples of
confronting=
faulty
methodologies for ascertaining Egyptian ethnicity.

Please keep in mind that this bibliography is nowhere near complete,
nor do=
=20
I claim
any measure of completeness for it.  If anyone wants to receive the
listing=
=20
of the 102
pre-1945 studies, I will gladly transmit this off-list.  Those works
pertain=
=20
mostly to
notions of dynastic race, "pure race"-theory, and racial diffusion (a
la G.=
=20
Elliot Smith
et al.).

Finally, let it be said that the ancient Egyptians were not white=20
Caucasians, nor were
they Indo-Aryans.  They were African, primarily a brown race, although
fair=
=20
skinned
and leptorhine in the north, black skinned and platyrhine in the
south, and=
=20
various
shades in the middle.  They manifested all the physical differences
you=20
would expect
in so large a continent as Africa.  Trigger (see below) uses the
term=20
"Nilotic" to
refer to their heterogenous character.  When all is said and done,
though,=
=20
this whole
question of Egyptian racial identity says more about us today than it
does=
=20
about the
ancient Egyptians.

http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/ANE/ANE-DIGEST/V02/v02.n077

[scroll down to see Peter Piccione's views]

 Here are the views of the recently deceased Egyptologist Frank
Joseph Yurco:

 The ancient Egyptians did not think in these terms.  The whole
matter of black or white Egyptians is a
chimera, cultural baggage from our own society that can only be
imposed artificially on ancient Egyptian
society. The ancient Egyptians, like their modern descendants, were of
varying complexions of color,
from the light Mediterranean type (like Nefertiti), to the light brown
of Middle Egypt, to the darker
brown of Upper Egypt, to the darkest shade around Aswan and the First
Cataract region, where even
today, the population shifts to Nubian. (4)

Ancient and modern Egyptian hair ranges from straight to wavy to
woolly; in color, it varies from
reddish brown to dark brown to black.  Lips range from thin to full.
Many Egyptians possess a
protrusive jaw. Noses vary from high-bridged-straight to arched or
even hooked to flat-bridged,
with bulbous to broad nostrils.  In short, ancient Egypt, like modern
Egypt, consisted of a very
heterogeneous population.

The evidence regarding these features of ancient Egyptians comes from
literature, anthropology,
mummies, sculptures, paintings, and inscriptions--all left by the
ancient Egyptians themselves. For
example, the mummies and skeletons of ancient Egyptians indicate they
were Africans of the Afro-
Asiatic ethnic groupings (the term "Afro-Asiatic" has replaced the
less accurate designation
"Hamitic").  This is the population of Northern Africa, the Sahara and
sub-Sahara regions.  Their
physical features vary as described above.  No doubt, many
darker-colored Egyptians would be
called black in our modern, race-conscious terminology.



http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/9507/c-wh1-ane-yurco.htm

[The vast majority of remains from Upper Egypt are not Negroid type
but
clearly Caucasian type.]

According to whom?    No caucasoid types existed in pre-dyanstic
Egypt. The earliest people,the Badarian, are Negriod.

[http://www.thebanmappingproject.com/resources/timeline.html]

I read the link and it said was that some groups of nomads from the
Central Sahara[Modern day Chad] came into Egypt  and settled down
amungst the cultures that already existed like the Badarian and
Naqada.   No where in the link did I see that  anybody found these
types to be caucasoid as you suppose. According to  S.O.Y Keita the
types found in the Sahara correspond to the Elongated African type.

See the following:

Journal Title: American Journal of Physical Anthropology

Volume 87  Issue: 3

Month/Year: March 1992 Pages 245-254

Article Title  Keita,S.O.Y

'Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis
of Crania From First Dyansty Egyptian Tombs Using  Multiple
Discriminant Functions

'''........Hiernaux [1975] has accounted for variations in Africa
using a nonracial approach;he  does not specifically  address the
northern Nile Valley  in great detail ,but his concepts ,based on
microevolutionary principles[adaptation,drift,selection], are
applicable  in this region in the light of recent archaeological data.
For example, in living and fossil  tropical Africans ,narrow faces and
noses [versus  broad ''Negro'' ones] donot usually indicate  European
or Near Eastern migration  or ''Europoid''[Caucasian] genes called
Hamitic as once thought ,but represent indigenous variation,either
connoting  a hot-dry climatic adaptation  or resulting  from drift
[Hiernaux,1975]. Hiernaux calls this morphology  ''Elongated
African.'' Some of the neolithic Saharans  of tropical African
affinity [Sutton ,1974;Hiernaux,1975; after Chamla,1968] who emigrated
to the Nile Valley[Hassan ,1988] might  be an example. The view that
''elongated'' chracteristics  are indigenous and equally tropical
African [''Black''] for specific  archaeological  series  and peoples
is supported by  Gabel [1966], Hiernaux[1975] and Rightmire[1975a,b]
The range of variation,''Broad''[streotypical Negro] to Elongated ,
can be assumed  within a single  unit designated  Africoid ,thereby
acknowleading  the wider affinities  and multiple  tropical
microadpative strategeies,as well as drift...........'''

Scientists have been studying remains from the Egyptian Nile Valley
for years. 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...

In summary, various kinds of data and the evolutionary approach
indicate that the Nile Valley populations had greater ties with other
African populations in the early ancient period. Early Nile Valley
populations were primarily coextensive with indigenous African
populations. Linguistic and archaeological data provide key supporting
evidence for a primarily African origin.

The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient
Egyptians
S.O.Y. Keita, Department of Biological Anthropology, Oxford University

A.J. Boyce
University Reader in Human Population Biology
Oxford University

Taken from Egypt in Africa, by Theodore Celenko

ancient Egyptian civilization was, in ways and to an extent usually
not recognized, fundamentally African. The evidence of both language
and culture reveals these African roots.

The origins of Egyptian ethnicity lay in the areas south of Egypt. The
ancient Egyptian language belonged to the Afrasian family(also called
Afroasiatic or, formerly, Hamito-Semitic). The speakers of the
earliest Afrasian languages, according to recent studies, were a set
of peoples whose lands between 15,000 and 13,000 B.C. stretched from
Nubia in the west to far northern Somalia in the east. They supported
themselves by gathering wild grains. The first elements of Egyptian
culture were laid down two thousand years later, between 12,000 and
10,000 B.C., when some of these Afrasian communities expanded
northward into Egypt, bringing with them a language directly ancestral
to ancient Egyptian. They also introduced to Egypt the idea of using
wild grains as food(Ehret 1995; Ehret forthcoming).....

One of the exciting archeological events of the past twenty years was
the discovery that the peoples of the steppes and grasslands to the
immediate south of Egypt domesticated these cattle, as early as 9000
to 8000 B.C. The socities involved in this momentous development
included Afrasians and neighboring peoples whose languages belonged to
a second major African language family, Nilo-Saharan(Wendorf, Schild,
Close 1984; Wendorf, et tal. 1982). The earliest domestic cattle came
to Egypt apparently from these southern neighbors, probably before
6000 B.C., not, as we used to think, from the Middle East.

One major technological advance, pottery-making, was also initiated as
early as 9000 B.C. by the Nilo-Saharans and Afrasians who lived to the
south of Egypt. Soon thereafter, pots spread to Egyptian sites, almost
2000 years before the first pottery was made in the Middle East......

Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture

Christopher Ehret
Professor of History, African Studies Chair
University of California at Los Angeles

Taken from Egypt in Africa, by Theodore Celenko

The physical types found in pre-dynastic and early dynastic burials
are remarkably consistent, and show that the ancient Egyptian
cultivators were of a short and rather lightly built race
indistinguishable from the modern Beja of the Red Sea hills or from
the Danakil and Somali of the Horn of Africa

A Short History of Africa
Roland Oliver and J.D. Fage
pg 13

FROMENT, Alain, Origines du peuplement de l?Égypte ancienne: l?apport
de l?anthropobiologie, Archéo-Nil 2 (Octobre 1992), 79-98. (fig.,
tables).

The origin of the Ancient Egyptians has long been a subject of
interest for physical anthropologists. Aside from some fanciful
theories, a general consensus used to present them as Mediterranean,
or "leucoderm Africans with a Hamitic background". However, some
African nationalists, like Diop, whose theories now have a large
scholarly audience, challenged this opinion. Using linguistic and
cultural criteria, studies of paintings and carvings, and texts from
Antiquity, he tried to demonstrate that the Ancient Egyptians were
Black. Besides this typological, or raciological view, a more
biologically acceptable, non-racial approach considers human variation
as a clinal, environmental adaptation. Numerical computations are
possible from cranial, or cephalic measurements, which enable
populations to be compared by discriminant analysis. Such an analysis
was carried out on a set of 384 skull samples from Egypt, Nubia,
India, Maghreb, Europe and Subsaharan Africa. Two very discriminant
measurements showed a strong correlation with the axes: nose breadth
and bizygomatic breadth. This representation of population
distribution maps very closely onto their geographic location: on
average, the Ancient Egyptian people is morphologically equidistant
from Europe and Africa. Nile Valley inhabitants display a wide range
of variation, as a consequence of a long process of mixing. Black
populations of the Horn of Africa (Tigré and Somalia) fit well into
Egyptian variations. Abridged author?s summary

In discussing the Badari culture, for example -- Egypt's earliest
predynastic
civilization (4400-4000 BC) -- Shomarka Keita writes that many
researchers
have found their remains to be "fundamentally `Negroid'."

Going back even further in time, Keita states:

"...late paleolithic remains from Egypt indicate characteristics which
distinguish them clearly from their European counterparts at 30,000
and
20,000 years BP... These distinguishing characteristics, commonly
called
`Negroid,' are shared with later Nile valley and more southerly
groups...
Epipaleolithic `mesolithic' Nile valley remains have these
characteristics
and diverge notably from their Maghreban and European counterparts in
key
craniofacial characteristics."

(S.O.Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological
Relationships", History in Africa 20 (1993), page 135).

There was probably a break in occupation between levels I and II at
Merimda. Level II, known as the Mittleren Merimdekultur and considered
by
the by the excavator to be related to the Saharo-Sudanese cultures..."
The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt
Pg 38
======================================================================
"The Fayum Neolithic should thus be viewed as a culture at the
intersection
of three routes: one from the eastern Sahara, one from the Near East
and one
from the Nile Valley itself."
The Prehistory of Egypt
By Beatrix Midant-Reynes
Pg. 106
=====================================================================

Here is Midant-Reynes statement on the remains of a 40 year old
epipaleolithic woman from the Fayum Oasis in the same book:
" The body was that of a 40 year old woman with a height of 1.6
meters, who
was of a more modern racial type than the classic "Mechtoid" of the
Fakhurian culture, being generally gracile, having large teeth and
thick
jaws bearing some resemblance to the modern "negroid' type."
The Prehistory of Egypt
By Beatrix Midant-Reynes
Pg. 82
======================================================================
"The prognathism observed in the skulls from Maadi south and
Heliopolis may
or may not indicate the infiltration of a negroid strain into the
northern
region."
Most Ancient Egypt
By William C. Hayes
===================================

Am J Phys Anthropol. 1992 Mar;87(3):245-54. Related Articles, Links

   Further studies of crania from ancient northern Africa: an
analysis of crania from first dynasty Egyptian tombs, using
discriminant functions.

   Keita SO.

   Department of Anthropology, University of Maryland, College Park.

   An analysis of First Dynasty crania from Abydos was undertaken
using multiple discriminant functions. The results demonstrate greater
affinity with Upper Nile Valley patterns, but also suggest change from
earlier craniometric trends. Gene flow and movement of northern
officials to the important southern city may explain the findings.

   Publication Types:

       * Historical Article

PMID: 1562056 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstra
ct&list_uids=1562056

1: Am J Phys Anthropol. 1990 Sep;83(1):35-48. Related Articles, Links

   Studies of ancient crania from northern Africa.

   Keita SO.

   Department of Surgery, Howard University Hospital, Washington, DC
20060.

   Historical sources and archaeological data predict significant
population variability in mid-Holocene northern Africa. Multivariate
analyses of crania demonstrate wide variation but also suggest an
indigenous craniometric pattern common to both late dynastic northern
Egypt and the coastal Maghreb region. Both tropical African and
European metric phenotypes, as well intermediate patterns, are found
in mid-Holocene Maghreb sites. Early southern predynastic Egyptian
crania show tropical African affinities, displaying craniometric
trends that differ notably from the coastal northern African pattern.
The various craniofacial patterns discernible in northern Africa are
attributable to the agents of microevolution and migration.

   Publication Types:

       * Historical Article

PMID: 2221029 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstra
ct&list_uids=2221029

1: Am J Phys Anthropol. 1996 Oct;101(2):237-46. Related Articles,
Links

   Concordance of cranial and dental morphological traits and
evidence for endogamy in ancient Egypt.

   Prowse TL, Lovell NC.

   Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Edmonton,
Canada.

   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 nonelite cemeteries and
that the nonelite samples are not significantly different from each
other. A comparison with neighbouring 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 neighbouring
populations in southern Egypt.

   Publication Types:

       * Review
       * Review, Tutorial

PMID: 8893087 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstra
ct&list_uids=8893087

The existence of still earlier culture,called the Tasins,has been
claimed. This culture would have been chracterized by the pressure of
round based calic form beakers with incised designs filled with white
pigment,which are also known fropm contexts of similar date in
Nelothic Sudan. However,the exisdtanece of the Tasins as a
chronologically or culturally seperated unit has never been
demonstrated beyond beyond doubt. Although most scholars consider the
tasian to be simply part of the badarian culture,it has also been
argued that the tasian represents the continuation of Lower Egyptian
tradition,which would be the immediate predessor of the Naquda 1
culture. This however,seems rather implausible ,first because
similarities with the neolithic cultures are no
convincing,and,secondly,because of the tasins obvious ceramic links
with the sudan. If the Tasians must be considered as a specific
cultural entity,then it might represent a nomadic culture with a
Sudanese background,which interacted with the badarian culture
page 40

Ian Shaw

Oxford University of Ancient Egypt

[
[Egypt had much tighter Southern boundary control in Pre-dynastic and
dynastic periods and so to presume markers present today were reflect
ancient periods seems quite a leap.]

Not really for sub-saharan types show up in pre-dyanstic Egypt.

See the following:

The position of the Nazlet Khater specimen among prehistoric and
modern African and Levantine populations.

Pinhasi R, Semal P.

Department of Biological Anthropology, University of Cambridge,
Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3DZ, U.K. The morphometric affinities
of the 33,000 year old skeleton from Nazlet Khater, Upper Egypt are
examined using multivariate statistical procedures. In the first part,
principal components analysis is performed on a dataset of mandible
dimensions of 220 fossils, sub-fossils and modern specimens, ranging
in time from the Late Pleistocene to recent and restricted in space to
the African continent and Southern Levant. In the second part, mean
measurements for various prehistoric and modern African and Levantine
populations are incorporated in the statistical analysis.
Subsequently, differences between male and female means are examined
for some of the modern and prehistoric populations. The results
indicate a strong association between some of the sub-Saharan Middle
Stone Age (MSA) specimens, and the Nazlet Khater mandible.
Furthermore, the results suggest that variability between African
populations during the Neolithic and Protohistoric periods was more
pronounced than the range of variability observed among recent African
and Levantine populations. Results also demonstrate a general
reduction in the degree of sexual dimorphism during the Holocene.
However, this pattern of reduction pattern varies by geographic
location and is not uniform across the African continent.

Hope you can read French:

"These two adult men, buried together in the necropolis Adaima, in
Egypt, 3,700 years BCE, were brothers or cousins, according to the
analysis of their ADN. The test also connects them with populations
of sub-Saharan origin, which agrees with the morphological elements
concerning the population as a whole."

<http://www.larecherche.fr/arch/02/05