Monday, September 27, 2021

What did ancient Egyptians look like?

 A technique called "DNA phenotyping" is giving us the picture.

This article shows reconstructions of three men who lived (or at least died) in Abusir el-Meleq somewhere between 1380 B.C. and A.D. 425.

As you can see, the middle guy looks distinctly African, the right hand guy looks very Middle Eastern or eastern Mediterranean, and the one on the left looks like he had ancestry from both.

Which is about what I would suspect.

The argument about whether ancient Egyptians were Black or Middle Eastern is easy enough to settle: Both.

A major trade route and waves of migration (these men were not closely related to modern Egyptians) would have made Egypt a cosmopolitan country with people with all kinds of ancestry. Probably some people from further north too... One can imagine the streets of Alexandria filled with people from all over the known world...silk traders from Asia, spice traders from sub-Saharan Africa. Northern Europeans selling furs...

The full range of human diversity.

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