Werer the Egyptians white or black?

Thanks Raka. 

Ramses III DNA results were recently published...Im surprised no one mentioned this. His Hablogroup is E1b1a which is almost exclusively a West African/Sub-Saharan African haplogroup.

Originally posted by Fula Ramses III DNA results were recently published...Im surprised no one mentioned this. His Hablogroup is E1b1a which is almost exclusively a West African/Sub-Saharan African haplogroup.   Incidence of E1b1a Population group frequency References Bamileke 96%-100% [9][10] Ewe 97% [7] Ga 97% [7] Yoruba 93.1% [11] Tutsi 85% [9] Fante 84% [7] Mandinka 79%-87% [1][7] Ovambo 82% [7] Senegalese 81% [12] Ganda 77% [7] Bijagós 76% [1] Balanta 73% [1] Fula 73% [1] Herero 71% [7] Nalú 71% [1]

Originally posted by HuCipher There is over whelming evidence that the founders of ancient Egypt where sub Saharan Africans. The genetic evidence is slowly coming in(The Ramses dna results are fantastic White supremacist always point to the mummies red hair as proof of his Whitness) but the an eye witness Herodotus described Egyptians as dark skinned and wooly haired and stated furher he felt the where realted to the Ethiopians because of this and the fact they practiced circumcision which other mediterannean and most middle eastern peoples did not practice. Fula I read your post about the Black Samurai(Myth or Real?) and wanted to post that I don't know where the Okimido guy got the information about Yasuke(the Black slave who became a Samurai)being put in a cage but the only information ive found about Yasuke was the fact that he was risen to the class of Samurai and regarded as handsome by his Japanese retainer. I don't think that's the kinda thing you do to some one who you regard as an animal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuke sorry for posting about another topic hear but I had to get that off my chest lol

HERODOTUS' CONTRIBUTION TO THE "BIG" QUESTIONS
Were Egyptians Africans? Herodotus believed that the Colchians (southern Black Sea area) were introduced to Asia by Egyptian expansion as far as Thrace and Scythia because "they have black skins and curly hair (not that that amounts to much, as other nations have the same)." [Herodotus, Histories, 167.] They also practised circumcision, unlike Mediterranean peoples of the time.
How much did Egyptians know about Africa?: The Assyrian King Necos (609-594BC) sent out an expedition from the Persian Gulf that circumnavigated Africa in three years, returning to Egypt through the Straits of Gibraltar. Herodotus did not believe it because the Phoenician navigators reported that as they traveled west below southern Africa, they saw the noon sun on their right side. (JJ: This is in fact true, because the southern tip of Africa is in the southern hemisphere. Note also that Herodotus is accurate when he described King Necos' canal.) [Selincourt, World, 226-227; Herodotus, Histories, 283-284. Note that Herodotus also says the Carthaginians circumnavigated Africa.]


Edited by HuCipher - 07-Apr-2013 at 17:46

African Americans have a unique perspective on race and what's Black or White. We look at ancient Egyptians and Nubians and see Mario van Peebles and Wesley Snipes not some mysterious brown people with Stevie Wonder braids and one type of Black person. My phenotype looks more like an ancient Egyptian than many of the depictions of Nubians by Egypt. We know the Egyptians mixed with Eurasians, Mediterranean's and such. African Americans recognize ancient Egyptians as Black because we are mixed with some of the same elements. When I say the Egyptians were Black Im not saying they were West Africans but I am saying they were a Black people. Just as Greeks are White but not Northern Europeans. I claim Egypt and Nubia as part of the African legacy juts as a gut from England, Sweden or say Germany claims Greco-Roman civilization as part of the European legacy.
As to how I would define Blackness I would define it as an combination of skin color and phenotype. There are east Indians darker than some African but they have a Caucasian/Asiatic phenotype. There are some African Americans lighter than some Europeans but they have an African phenotype. Ill admit it can become convoluted especially in America

,-I like this little Obama joke with Pharaoh Akhenaton

Oh, yes i heard about these "one-drop-theory". But of course that is not at all near to any science.
If we accept such a one-drop-theory, then I agree, that Egyptians are black. But then probably we are all.

The question of mine had the cause to get an information, how we should classify people. The modern research has shown, that all humans are so very similar according to their genetical material, that a seperation into different races is obsolete. Indeed is the variancy inside types of people greater than the difference between different types of people.

Genetic research has shown, that non-africans are closer related to each other than to Africans. That means, that humans migrated not in many waves out of Africa, but in one, somewhere 100-70,ooo years ago. What scientists have as well discovered is, that such non-african populations migrated as well back to Africa later.

Now we have to ask, where these first non-africans white or caucasians? Where they black? Well, of course they were definitely not white and not caucasian. It is difficult to say whether they were black, cos people in eastern Africa are not black but brown. But of course people who are considered to be black, which means sub-saharan tropical Africans, don't have a single skin colour, but probably even more different skin colourse than people who are considered white. Of course depends this as well on the definition of white.

If we look to these non-africans, then we have a lot of different people today among them. To remain at "black" or brown people, we have today Aboriginies from Australia, Papua, melanesians, Negritos, Andamans and weddide people as such black non-africans.



I suppose you know these map. it shows the distribution of skin colours (before the european expansion and colonisation).
You can see even in SW Africa, that skin colors of people who are considered as subsaharan africans can be quite "bright". If you look to Arabia, you can see, that people who are considered as white or caucasians, can be as well quite dark. Yes, even Indians, who are as well included among Caucasians are sometimes as black as subsaharan africans or, if we look at the Khoisan, even darker.

So to come back to my question what is white and what black. Does skin colour is helpful for a classification if subsaharan africans can be brighter than caucasians and caucasians darker than subsaharan africans? I think the answer is clear. No, it is not.

Let us now look at the genes and here especially to the Y-DNA. I wrote above, that the human migration out of africa began around 100,000 years BP. There a a lot of findings e.g. in the arabian region which indicates this. The splitting of human populations into an african branch and an non-african branch happened probably 70,000 years BP. Here we have a sudden decline of temperature and an aridisation of Northern Africa. Except y-DNA A there is only y-DNA BT, which has an age older than those splitting. The descendents of BT are B and CT. While CT can be found in and outside of Africa, B is only limited to Africa. What does this mean?

well, it can only mean, that it was already BT, which migrated from east Africa to Asia before 70,000 BP. When the glacial period around 70,000 led to a split, the non-african BT evolved into CT, while in Africa B developed.

Well, that leads us to y-dna CT, which includes DE and CF, of which DE is the a bit older one. D is well known from the outskirts of the old world, form the Andamans and Japan. It was later replaced in east asia by C. that leads us now to the question, where did E evolve, cos in opposite to D, E is not limited to a single continent, it is common in Asia and europe, too? there is of course no evidence, neither for the one nor for the other theory, but i think it is obvious, that E originated in South-West Asia and then migrated to NE Africa and later to the west.

This questions the claim, that egyptian populations with haplotype E are necessarily black. And if we look, that typical subsaharan haplotypes are A and B, then it becomes even more questionable.
Indeed is the population of the Nile valley typically north/north-east african, with influences from both direction, from Nubia and from western Asia.

The Egyptians and the egyptian culture are African, but they are neither black nor white, and they are related with neighbouring people and cultures. But focused on their skin colours, they are closer related to their north african neighbours in the west and to their neighbours in Arabia. Only in the south of egypt, there is as well influence from the south. But here as well we should keep in mind, that tropical black africans, like the bantu, migrated quite late in history. So allthough we have black and brown populations in east africa, we shouldn't automatically conclude, that they were identically with western and central african populations. It seems even more, that these populations were closer related with khoisanoide populations.

I grabbed this information from wikipedia. As you can see CT is in orange which represents in Africa origin, but has a branch P143 that migrated out of Africa giving birth to non African CF. The other branch gave birth to YAP M145 - M203, which gave birth to DE. DE has 2 branches on African and one that migrated out of Africa, Asian DE and Asian D. E branched off of the African DE. So you could say DE had 2 kids DE1 and DE2. DE 1 stayed in Africa and had 2 sons DE1 junior and E. DE2 found a job with an international company and moved to India. He also had 2 sons DE2 Junior and D.

Haplogroup B-M42
Possible time of origin	70,000-80,000 years BP
Possible place of origin	Africa
Ancestor	A2-T
Descendants	B-M60, CT
Defining mutations	Page65.1/SRY1532.1/SRY10831.1, M42, M91, M94, M139, M299, P97, V21, V29, V31, V59, V64, V102, V187, V202, V216, V235

Originally posted by beorna well, if you quote from wiki, you should quote all and not stop! "Chandrasekhar et al. 2007, have argued for the Asian origin of the YAP+. They state, The presence of the YAP insertion in Northeast Indian tribes and Andaman Islanders with haplogroup D suggests that some of the M168 chromosomes gave rise to the YAP insertion and M174 mutation in South Asia They also argue that YAP+ migrated back to Africa with other Eurasian haplogroups. These include Haplogroup R1b1* (18-23kya), which has been observed with especially high frequency among the members of some peoples in northern Cameroon, and Haplogroup T (25-30kya), which has been observed in low frequencies in Africa. Haplogroup E at 50kya is considerably older than these haplogroups and has been observed at frequencies of 80-92% in Africa. In a press release concerning a study by Karafet et al. (2008), Michael Hammer, revised the dates for the origin Haplogroup DE from 55,000 years ago to 65,000 years ago. For haplogroup E, Hammer revised the dates from 31,000 years ago to 50,000 years ago. Hammer is also quoted as saying “The age of haplogroup DE is about 65,000 years, just a bit younger than the other major lineage to leave Africa, which is assumed to be about 70,000 years old,” in which he implies that haplogroup DE left Africa along with Haplogroup CF.[17] Peter Underhill states that there will always be uncertainty regarding the precise origins of DNA sequence variants such as YAP because of a lack of knowledge concerning prehistoric demographics and population movements. However Underhill contends that with all the available information, the African origin of the YAP+ polymorphism is more parsimonious and more plausible than the Asian origin hypothesis.[9] Other authors who have published or co-published works in support of an African origin of the YAP+ include Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza,[14] Toomas Kivisild,[9] Spencer Wells,[16] Linda Stone and Paul F. Lurquin.[18]" I agree, that it is difficult to give an exact origin. my arguments are based on paleontology. As you can see is hammer revising the dates of origin for DE from 55ky to 65ky and for E from 31ky to 50ky. But both is after the supposed migration from Africa and even findings of modern humans outside africa, like in east Asia and australia don't correlate with such young estimations. So if DE is not older than 65ky, then it can hardly have originated in Africa.

Originally posted by Rakasnumberone As stated before, the question of whether or not Egyptians were black or white is flawed. Why? Because there is no agreement as to what black or white really means. These are cultural definitions that are not based on scientific evidence. The real question should have been "Were Ancient Egyptians Native Africans or non African Migrants"? The answer to that question is yes. The original inhabitants of Egypt were Native Africans. Skin color does not really factor into it for several reason;

Well, as far as I can see it, is the question of black and white for some very important. If you agree with me, that these question is nonsense, then ok. I agree with you, that the ancient egyptian culture is an african culture, of course with influences from abroad. But I can't see, that this was ever denied.

Originally posted by Rakasnumberone #1 Africans come in a variety of skin tones from very dark to very light. With respect to Egypt, skin colors vary from very dark brown in the South to light brown in the North.

Yes, skin colours are simply a result of solar radiation. That is correct.

Originally posted by Rakasnumberone #2. Skin color can't be told by looking at a person's Y or M haplotype. The fact of the matter is that dark skinned Southern Egyptians and lighter skinned Northern Egyptians share the same genetic patterns. From a genetic stand point Egyptians are most like each other than anyone else. However, the next closest genetic relatives of Egyptians are Nubians. Furthermore, if w look at the Y chromosome, all North Africans share the same common male ancestor as over 70% of all African males. This means that on the male line, the dark brown Dinka and the white skinned blue eyed Berber in Algeria are part of the same family. Skin color alone can not tell who is a part of a family line.

Population history of north Africa: evidence from classical genetic markers.-
Bosch
http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/9708245325/population-history-north-africa-evidence-from-classical-genetic-markers
After an intensive bibliographic search, we compiled all the available data on allele frequencies for classical genetic polymorphisms referring to North African populations and synthesized the data in an attempt to reconstruct the populations' demographic history using two complementary methods: (1) principal components analysis and (2) genetic distances represented by neighbor-joining trees. In both analyses the main feature of the genetic landscape in northern Africa is an east-west pattern of variation pointing to the differentiation between the Berber and Arab population groups of the northwest and the populations of Libya and Egypt. Moreover, Libya and Egypt show the smallest genetic distances with the European populations, including the Iberian Peninsula. The most plausible interpretation of these results is that, although demic diffusion during the Neolithic could explain the genetic similarity between northeast Africa and Europe by a parallel process of gene flow from the Near East, a Mesolithic (or older) differentiation of the populations in the northwestern regions with later limited gene flow is needed to understand the genetic picture. The most isolated groups (Mauritanians, Tuaregs, and south Algerian Berbers) were the most differentiated and, although no clear structure can be discerned among the different Arab- and Berber-speaking groups, Arab speakers as a whole are closer to Egyptians and Libyans. By contrast, the genetic contribution of sub-Saharan Africa appears to be small.


The emerging tree of West Eurasian mtDNAs: a synthesis of control-region sequences and RFLPs.
Am. J. Hum
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1377722/
We show that the main indigenous North African cluster is a sister group to the most ancient cluster of European mtDNAs, from which it diverged approximately 50,000 years ago.

Originally posted by Rakasnumberone   #3, as stated before, this question is one that comes out of the experience of how people of African descent were treated in the Americas by the colonian European powers. Wether dark brown, medium brown or light brown, all Africans were considered inferior to white Europeans and therefore incapable of creating a civilization.

yes, i know

Originally posted by Rakasnumberone #5 The overwhelming majority of Egyptians both Ancient and Modern are no different in appearance from the mixed blooded Africans living in the Americas. What does this mean? It means that if they were to have gone to say South Africa as recent as 25years ago, they would have been classified as "colored", people and denied the rights and priviledges of white Europeans. In other words, they would have been considered mentally, emotionally and intelectually inferior. If they had visited the Southern States of the U.S, say 3 years before I was born, they would have been considered, black, colored, negro etc by the U.S. government. They would not have been able to use the same bathrooms, water fountains, restaurants, hotels, beaches, pools, schools as white Americans. If they rode the buses, trains or any other public transportation, they would have had to sit in the back.

I don't know if you ever where to Egypt? there are of course a lot of people with a subsaharan habitus.But the most are very close to their arabian or north african neighbours and different to subsaharan people.

Originally posted by Rakasnumberone   #6Although according to the map you provided East Africans are "brown", the fact of the matter is that the majority of Southern Egyptians, Northern Sudanese, Ethiopians and Somalis are no different in skin color than the average Afro American, or Afro Latino/caribbean person. In fact, quite often you can't tell one from the other. As stated before, the heart of the question of this thread hasnothing to do with science, but with a historical social political reality in which Europeans justified denying Africans and the darker skinned peoples of the world the same rights as themselves and created a concept of genetic inferiority to justify it. When the British ruled Egypt, they did not treat them as equals but as inferiors, no different than the way they treated any of their other African colonial subjects.

yes,a again, I can imagine, why there is such a strong afrocentrism, especially in the USA, but nevertheless should politics not be involved. At all, these race discussion is completely senseless, cos a lot of scientists like e.g. Pääbö have shown, that people within a population can be more different than two different populations. So races do not exist. We are all members of one big race, with simply some variancies.