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Quotations from research studies
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See bottom of page for latest scholarly quotes:

Recent studies find the ancient Egyptians had a tropical body plan like sub-Saharan Africans, unlike Middle Easterners, and were not cold-adapted like European type populations. Ancient Egyptians were a tropically adapted people, not intermediate, as shown by their distinctive brachial and crural indices, where the distal segments of each limb are longer relative to the proximal segments, a typical marker of tropical African populations. Tropical body plans also indicate non-pale skin, ranging from very black to the reddish or yellowish tinge of the San ("Bushmen") tribes. Tropical Africans are the most genetically diverse in the world with the highest degree of phenotypic variability. Part of Egypt falls within the tropic environmental zone. 

QUOTE:
"The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the “super-Negroid” body plan described by Robins (1983).. This pattern is supported by Figure 7 (a plot of population mean femoral and tibial lengths; data from Ruff, 1994), which indicates that the Egyptians generally have tropical body plans. Of the Egyptian samples, only the Badarian and Early Dynastic period populations have shorter tibiae than predicted from femoral length. Despite these differences, all samples lie relatively clustered together as compared to the other populations." (Zakrzewski, S.R. (2003). "Variation in ancient Egyptian stature and body proportions". American Journal of Physical Anthropology 121 (3): 219-229.

a 2008 Study puts the ancient Egyptians closer to US Blacks than whites:

Quotes:

"Intralimb (crural and brachial) indices are significantly higher in ancient Egyptians than in American Whites (except crural index among females), i.e., Egyptians have relatively longer distal segments (Table 4). Intralimb indices are not significantly different between Egyptians and American Blacks... Many of those who have studied ancient Egyptians have commented on their characteristically ‘‘tropical’’ or ‘‘African’’ body plan (Warren, 1897; Masali, 1972; Robins, 1983; Robins and Shute, 1983, 1984, 1986; Zakrzewski, 2003). Egyptians also fall within the range of modern African populations (Ruff and Walker, 1993), but close to the upper limit of modern Europeans as well, at least for the crural index (brachial indices are definitely more ‘‘African’’).. In terms of femoral and tibial length to total skeletal height proportions, we found that ancient Egyptians are significantly different from US Blacks, although still closer to Blacks than to Whites.


Comparisons of linear body proportions of Old Kingdom and non-Old Kingdom period individuals, and workers and high officials in our sample found no statistically significant differences among them. Zakrzewski (2003) also found little evidence for differences in linear body proportions of Egyptians over a wider temporal range. In general, recent studies of skeletal variation among ancient Egyptians support scenarios of biological continuity through time. Irish (2006) analyzed quantitative and qualitative dental traits of 996 Egyptians from Neolithic through Roman periods, reporting the presence of a few outliers but concluding that the dental samples appear to be largely homogeneous and that the affinities observed indicate overall biological uniformity and continuity from Predynastic through Dynastic and Postdynastic periods. 

Zakrzewski (2007) provided a comprehensive summary of previous Egyptian craniometric studies and examined Egyptian crania from six time periods. She found that the earlier samples were relatively more homogeneous in comparison to the later groups. However, overall results indicated genetic continuity over the Egyptian Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods, albeit with a high level of genetic diversity within the population, suggesting an indigenous process of state formation. She also concluded that while the biological patterning of the Egyptian population varied across time, no consistent temporal or spatial trends are apparent. Thus, the stature estimation formulae developed here may be broadly applicable to all ancient Egyptian populations.."
("Stature estimation in ancient Egyptians: A new technique based on anatomical reconstruction of stature." Michelle H. Raxter, Christopher B. Ruff, Ayman Azab, Moushira Erfan, Muhammad Soliman, Aly El-Sawaf, (Am J Phys Anthropol. 2008, Jun;136(2):147-55

Older limb studies find the same- Blacks closer to ancient Egyptians than whites:

"An attempt has been made to estimate male and female Egyptian stature from long bone length using Trotter & Gleser negro stature formulae, previous work by the authors having shown that these rather than white formulae give more consistent results with male dynastic material... When consistency has been achieved in this way, predynastic proportions are founded to be such that distal segments of the limbs are even longer in relation to the proximal segments than they are in modern negroes. Such proportions are termed "super-negroid"...

Robins (1983) and Robins & Shute (1983) have shown that more consistent results are obtained from ancient Egyptian male skeletons if Trotter & Gleser formulae for negro are used, rather than those for whites which have always been applied in the past. .. their physical proportions were more like modern negroes than those of modern whites, with limbs that were relatively long compared with the trunk, and distal segments that were long compared with the proximal segments. If ancient Egyptian males had what may be termed negroid proportions, it seems reasonable that females did likewise."
(Robins G, Shute CCD. 1986. Predynastic Egyptian stature and physical proportions. Hum Evol 1:313–324. Ruff CB. 1994.)

Ancient "Middle Easterners" lack the tropical body proportions of ancient Egyptians
QUOTE:

"What we can say, however, is that in the Holocene, humans from southwest Asia do not exhibit tropically adapted body shape (Crognier 1981; Eveleth and Tanner 1976; Schreider 1975). In addition, while Levantine winters today are generally characterized as mild (Henkin et al. 1998), they are nonetheless quite often cold, with frequent snowfall—for example, the winter of 1992 was particularly cold and snowy in Israel (Vishnevetsky and Steinberger 19%). Given that the Holocene is a warm phase, yet recent Levantine humans do not exhibit a tropically adapted morphology, there is little reason to assume that in the (generally colder) Pleistocene epoch, natural selection alone could result in tropically adapted morphology in the region.

Thus, the discovery of tropically adapted hominids in the region would therefore likely indicate population dispersal from the tropics, and the most logical geographic source for such an influx is Africa. In this regard, Trinkaus (1981, 1984, 1995) and Ruff (1994) have argued that the high brachial and crural indices, narrow biiliac breadths, and small relative femoral head sizes of the Qafzeh-Skhul hominids suggest an influx of African genes associated with the emergence of modern humans in the region."

---Trenton Holliday (2000) Evolution at the Crossroads: Modern Human Emergence in Western Asia. American Anthropologist. New Series, Vol. 102, No. 1, 54-68

The ancient Badarians were quite representative of ancient Egyptians as a whole and showed clear links with tropical Africans to the south. They have been sometimes excluded in studies of the ancient Egyptian population, which shows continuity in its history, not mass influxes of foreigners until the late periods.

Quotes:
"As a result of their facial prognathism, the Badarian sample has been described as forming a morphological cluster with Nubian, Tigrean, and other southern (or \Negroid") groups (Morant, 1935, 1937; Mukherjee et al., 1955; Nutter, 1958, Strouhal, 1971; Angel, 1972; Keita, 1990). Cranial nonmetric trait studies have found this group to be similar to other Egyptians, including much later material (Berry and Berry, 1967, 1972), but also to be significantly different from LPD material (Berry et al., 1967). Similarly, the study of dental nonmetric traits has suggested that the Badarian population is at the centroid of Egyptian dental samples (Irish, 2006), thereby suggesting similarity and hence continuity across Egyptian time periods. From the central location of the Badarian samples in Figure 2, the current study finds the Badarian to be relatively morphologically close to the centroid of all the Egyptian samples. The Badarian have been shown to exhibit
greatest morphological similarity with the temporally successive EPD (Table 5). Finally, the biological distinctiveness
of the Badarian from other Egyptian samples has also been demonstrated (Tables 6 and 7).

These results suggest that the EDyn do form a distinct morphological pattern. Their overlap with other Egyptian samples (in PC space, Fig. 2) suggests that although their morphology is distinctive, the pattern does overlap with the other time periods. These results therefore do not support the Petrie concept of a "Dynastic race" (Petrie, 1939; Derry, 1956). Instead, the results suggest that the Egyptian state was not the product of mass movement of populations into the Egyptian Nile region, but rather that it was the result of primarily indigenous development combined with prolonged small-scale migration, potentially from trade, military, or other contacts.

This evidence suggests that the process of state formation itself may have been mainly an indigenous process, but that it may have occurred in association with in-migration to the Abydos region of the Nile Valley. This potential in-migration may have occurred particularly during the EDyn and OK. A possible explanation is that the Egyptian state formed through increasing control of trade and raw materials, or due to military actions, potentially associated with the use of the Nile Valley as a corridor for prolonged small scale movements through the desert environment.
(Sonia R. Zakrzewski. (2007). Population Continuity or Population Change: Formation of the Ancient Egyptian State. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 132:501-509)

Ancient Egyptians most related to other Africans and are part of a Nilotic continuity rather than something Mediterranean or Middle Eastern

"Certainly there was some foreign admixture [in Egypt], but basically a homogeneous African population had lived in the Nile Valley from ancient to modern times... [the] Badarian people, who developed the earliest Predynastic Egyptian culture, already exhibited the mix of North African and Sub-Saharan physical traits that have typified Egyptians ever since (Hassan 1985; Yurco 1989; Trigger 1978; Keita 1990.. et al.,)...  The peoples of Egypt, the Sudan, and much of East Africa, Ethiopia and Somalia are now generally regarded as a Nilotic continuity, with widely ranging physical features (complexions light to dark, various hair and craniofacial types) but with powerful common cultural traits, including cattle pastoralist traditions.." (Frank Yurco, "An Egyptological Review," 1996 -in Mary R. Lefkowitz and Guy MacLean Rogers, Black Athena Revisited, 1996, The University of North Carolina Press, p. 62-100)

African peoples are the most diverse in the world whether analyzed by DNA or skeletal or cranial methods. Attempts to deny this are rooted in racism and error. African people, particularly SUB-SAHARAN Africans, vary the most in how they look, more so than any other population in the world.

"Estimates of genetic diversity in major geographic regions are frequently made by pooling all individuals into regional aggregates. This method can potentially bias results if there are differences in population substructure within regions, since increased variation among local populations could inflate regional diversity. A preferred method of estimating regional diversity is to compute the mean diversity within local populations. Both methods are applied to a global sample of craniometric data consisting of 57 measurements taken on 1734 crania from 18 local populations in six geographic regions: sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, East Asia, Australasia, Polynesia, and the Americas. Each region is represented by three local populations.

Both methods for estimating regional diversity show sub-Saharan Africa to have the highest levels of phenotypic variation, consistent with many genetic studies."
(Relethford, John "Global Analysis of Regional Differences in Craniometric Diversity and Population Substructure". Human Biology - Volume 73, Number 5, October 2001, pp. 629-636)

"The living peoples of the African continent are diverse in facial characteristics, stature, skin color, hair form, genetics, and other characteristics. No one set of characteristics is more African than another. Variability is also found in "sub-Saharan" Africa, to which the word "Africa" is sometimes erroneously restricted. There is a problem with definitions. Sometimes Africa is defined using cultural factors, like language, that exclude developments that clearly arose in Africa. For example, sometimes even the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea) is excluded because of geography and language and the fact that some of its peoples have narrow noses and faces. 

However, the Horn is at the same latitude as Nigeria, and its languages are African. The latitude of 15 degree passes through Timbuktu, surely in "sub-Saharan Africa," as well as Khartoum in Sudan; both are north of the Horn. Another false idea is that supra-Saharan and Saharan Africa were peopled after the emergence of "Europeans" or Near Easterners by populations coming from outside Africa. Hence, the ancient Egyptians in some writings have been de-Africanized. These ideas, which limit the definition of Africa and Africans, are rooted in racism and earlier, erroneous "scientific" approaches." (S.  Keita, "The Diversity of Indigenous Africans," in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Clenko, Editor (1996), pp. 104-105. ^[10])

Human skin color diversity is highest in sub-Saharan African populations.
[quote:]
"Previous studies of genetic and craniometric traits have found higher levels of within-population diversity in sub-Saharan Africa compared to other geographic regions. This study examines regional differences in within-population diversity of human skin color. Published data on skin reflectance were collected for 98 male samples from eight geographic regions: sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, Europe, West Asia, Southwest Asia, South Asia, Australasia, and the New World. Regional differences in local within-population diversity were examined using two measures of variability: the sample variance and the sample coefficient of variation. For both measures, the average level of within-population diversity is higher in sub-Saharan Africa than in other geographic regions. This difference persists even after adjusting for a correlation between within-population diversity and distance from the equator. Though affected by natural selection, skin color variation shows the same pattern of higher African diversity as found with other traits."
-- Relethford JH.(2000). Human skin color diversity is highest in sub-Saharan African populations. Hum Biol. 2000 Oct;72(5):773-80.)

Resemblances between Africans and other populations do not necessarily represent any "race mix"  but the Out of Africa migrations, and the subset of features non African populations derive from the African originals.

[I]"What would account for this range of resemblances- infraspecific convergence, parallelism, admixture, chance or all of these? It is perhaps best to consider these findings as reflective primarily of an indigenous northeast African biological evolutionary history and diversity. Hiernaux (1975) reports that the range of values in selected metric units from populations in the northeast quadrant of Africa collectively largely overlaps the range found in the world. Given that this region may be the place from which modern humans left Africa, its people may have retained an overall more generalized craniometric pattern whose individual variants for selected variables may resemble a range of centroid values for non-African population values."[/I]
-- S.O.Y. Keita, "On Meriotic Nubian Crania Fordisc 2.0, and Human Biological History."
Current Anthropology Volume 48, Number 3, June 2007

Computer programs such as FORDISC,  used to classify African peoples like Nubians are deeply flawed and inaccurate. One such test on ancient Nubians yielded ludicrous "matches" with people as far afield as Hungarians, Japanese and islanders of the Pacific.

"If Fordisc 2.0 is revealing genetic admixture of Late Period Dynastic Egypt and Meroitic Nubia, then one must also consider these ancient Meroitic Nubians to be part of Hungarian, part Easter Islander, part Norse, and part Australian Aborigine... In fact, all human groups are essentially heterogeneous, including samples within Fordisc 2.0. Howells’s cranial samples exhibit far more variation within than between skeletal series...” (Williams et al, 2005, "Forensic Misclassification of Ancient Nubian Crania).. The results of the analyses suggest that Fordisc's utility in research and medico-legal contexts is limited. Fordisc will only return a correct ancestry attribution when an unidentified specimen is more or less complete, and belongs to one of the populations represented in the program's reference samples. Even then Fordisc can be expected to classify no more than 1 per cent of specimens with confidence."
-- Frank L'Engle, Williams, Robert L. Belcher, and George J. Armelagos. Forensic Misclassification of Ancient Nubian Crania: Implications for Assumptions About Human Variation. Current Anthropology, Volume 46, Number 2, April 2005

Population change in Egypt:



"...STABILITY and HOMOGENEITY persisted right through the Old and Middle Kingdoms, and breaks down only in the New Kingdom period, when we know from many sources that there was considerable infiltration into the Nile Valley."
--Berry, A.C., & Berry, R.J., 1972. ‘Origins and Relationships of the Ancient Egyptians, Based on the Study of Non-Metrical Variations in the Skull’, Journal of Human Evolution, 1, 1972: 199-206; p.203

"Cosmopolitan northern Egypt is less likely to have a population representative of the core indigenous population of the most ancient times".
- Keita (2005), pp. 564

Upper Egypt (south) was a fertile food producing region from which the dynasties sprung, and was well able to support advanced organization and culture. Lower or northern Egypt was thinly settled  prior to the New Kingdom.
Ancient Egypt was divided into two regions: Upper and Lower Egypt. Lower (northern) Egypt consisted of the Nile River's delta made by the river as it empties into the Mediterranean. Today the Delta is fifteen thousand square miles of alluvium (silt), which has been deposited over the centuries by the annual inundation of the Nile. Prior to the New Kingdom (before about 1539 B.C.), this area was only thinly settled, although it was used as a grazing area for cattle. Its high water table in modern times has made archaeological excavation for evidence of settlements difficult
http://www.carnegiemnh.org/exhibitions/egypt/guide.htm
see also Toby A.H. Wilkinson in his book Early Dynastic Egypt and Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw


Toby A.H. Wilkinson in his book Early Dynastic Egypt writes that Upper Egypt provided its inhabitants with plenty enough grain in ancient times. What was the true importance of Lower Egypt to the traditional ruling class from Upper Egypt from the Predynastic to the late periods? The ease of trade routes to Asia and their control. This is the reason Wilkinson pegs as the major reason that caused the Upper Egyptians of the Predynastic period to unite the Two Lands. Oxford's Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw supports this as well.

Afrocentric critic Brace debunks "Caucasoid race mix" claims for Horn of Africa peoples and notes tropically adapted peoples are usually dark-skinned and with limb elongation.

"In this regard it is interesting to note that limb proportions of Predynastic Naqada people in Upper Egypt are reported to be "Super-Negroid," meaning that the distal segments are elongated in the fashion of tropical Africans.....skin color intensification and distal limb elongation are apparent wherever people have been long-term residents of the tropics."  

"An earlier generation of anthropologists tried to explain face form in the Horn of Africa as the result of admixture from hypothetical “wandering Caucasoids,” (Adams, 1967, 1979; MacGaffey, 1966; Seligman, 1913, 1915, 1934), but that explanation founders on the paradox of why that supposedly potent “Caucasoid” people contributed a dominant quantity of genes for nose and face form but none for skin color or limb proportions. It makes far better sense to regard the adaptively significant features seen in the Horn of Africa as solely an in situ response on the part of separate adaptive traits to the selective forces present in the hot dry tropics of eastern Africa. From the observation that 12,000 years was not a long enough period of time to produce any noticeable variation in pigment by latitude in the New World and that 50,000 years has been barely long enough to produce the beginnings of a gradation in Australia (Brace, 1993a), one would have to argue that the inhabitants of the Upper Nile and the East Horn of Africa have been equatorial for many tens of thousands of years."
(-- C.L. Brace, 1993. Clines and clusters..")

Modern DNA studies find even though some African peoples look different, they are genetically related through the PN2 transition clade of the Y-chromosone. Thus light-skinned African Libyans and dark-skinned Zulus are all genetically related Africans ,even though they don't look exactly the same.

"But the Y-chromosome clade defined by the PN2 transition (PN2/M35, PN2/M2) shatters the boundaries of phenotypically defined races and true breeding populations across a great geographical expanse. African peoples with a range of skin colors, hair forms and physiognomies have substantial percentages of males whose Y chromosomes form closely related clades with each other, but not with others who are phenotypically similar. The individuals in the morphologically or geographically defined 'races' are not characterized by 'private' distinct lineages restricted to each of them." (S O Y Keita, R A Kittles, et al. "Conceptualizing human variation," Nature Genetics 36, S17 - S20 (2004)

"Recall that the Horn–Nile Valley crania show, as a group, the largest overlap with other regions. A review of the recent literature indicates that there are male lineage ties between African peoples who have been traditionally labeled as being ‘‘racially’’ different, with ‘‘racially’’ implying an ontologically deep divide. The PN2 transition, a Y chromosome marker, defines a lineage (within the YAPþ derived haplogroup E or III) that emerged in Africa probably before the last glacial maximum, but after the migration of modern humans from Africa (see Semino et al., 2004). This mutation forms a clade that has two daughter subclades (defined by the biallelic markers M35/215 (or 215/M35) and M2) that unites numerous phenotypically variant African populations from the supra-Saharan, Saharan, and sub-Saharan regions.."
(S.O.Y Keita. Exploring northeast African metric craniofacial variation at the individual level: A comparative study using principal component analysis. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 16:679–689, 2004.)
keita2004neanalysis.htm

"Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages.. Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world." (Tishkoff SA, Williams SM., Genetic analysis of African populations: human evolution and complex disease. Nature Reviews Genetics. 2002 Aug (8):611-21.)

DNA of some  modern Egyptians found a genetic ancestral heritage to East Africa:
"The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diversity of 58 individuals from Upper Egypt, more than half (34 individuals) from Gurna, whose population has an ancient cultural history, were studied by sequencing the control-region and screening diagnostic RFLP markers. This sedentary population presented similarities to the Ethiopian population by the L1 and L2 macrohaplogroup frequency (20.6%), by the West Eurasian component (defined by haplogroups H to K and T to X) and particularly by a high frequency (17.6%) of haplogroup M1. We statistically and phylogenetically analysed and compared the Gurna population with other Egyptian, Near East and sub-Saharan Africa populations; AMOVA and Minimum Spanning Network analysis showed that the Gurna population was not isolated from neighbouring populations. Our results suggest that the Gurna population has conserved the trace of an ancestral genetic structure from an ancestral East African population, characterized by a high M1 haplogroup frequency. The current structure of the Egyptian population may be the result of further influence of neighbouring populations on this ancestral population."
(Stevanovitch A, Gilles A, Bouzaid E, et al. (2004) Mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity in a sedentary population from Egypt.Ann Hum Genet. 68(Pt 1):23-39.)

Tishkoff et al:

"Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages (see online link to Ethnologue). Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world(TABLE 1).However,most studies report only a few markers in divergent African populations, which makes it difficult to draw general conclusions about the levels and patterns of genetic diversity in these populations (FIG. 1). Because genetic studies have been biased towards more economically developed African countries that have key research or medical centres, populations from more underdeveloped or politically unstable regions of Africa remain undersampled (FIG. 1). Historically, human population genetic studies have relied on one or two African populations as being representative of African diversity, but recent studies show extensive genetic variation among even geographically close African populations, which indicates that there is not a single ‘representative’ African population."
-- Tishkoff NATURE REVIEWS | GENETICS VOLUME 3 | AUGUST 2002

"Genetic studies that attempt to recover the biological history of the species have generally found that there is a split between their restricted African samples and "the rest of the world." These approaches conceptualize human population history as a series of bifurcations with each node being relatively uniform. The "Africans" usually used are either the short statured Aka or Mbuti, Khoisan speakers, or West African stereotype s, in keeping with a socially, not scientifically constructed concept of African. Studies using individuals as the unit of analysis evince a different pattern. A select subset of Africans called the "group of 49" forms a unit versus the rest of humankind. However the latter individuals ("rest of humankind") also includes non-East African sub-Saharans. Hence there is no "racial" split. As has been stated, the idea that human variation can be described as being structured by subspecies(races) that are treated as lineages is fundamentally false. In actuality, also, although averages are used, the gene studies usually give us histories that are not necessarily the same as population histories."
Writing African History Chapter 4, Physical Anthropology and African History, Shomarka Keita University of Rochester Press p.134

Continent wide African DNA linkages
"The most extensive pan-African haplotype (16189 16192 16223 16278 16294 16309 16390) is in the L2a1 haplogroup. This sequence is observed in West Africa among the Malinke, Wolof, and others; in North Africa among the Maure, Hausa, Fulbe, and others; in Central Africa among the Bamileke, Fali, and others; in South Africa among the Khoisan family including the Khwe and Bantu speakers; and in East Africa among the Kikuyu. Closely related variants are observed among the Tuareg in North and West Africa and among the East African Dinka and Somali."
(-- Bert Ely , Jamie Lee Wilson , Fatimah Jackson and Bruce A Jackson. (2006). African-American mitochondrial DNAs often match mtDNAs found in multiple African ethnic groups. BMC Biology 2006, 4:34)

"It is of interest that the M35 and M2 lineages are united by a mutation – the PN2 transition. This PN2 defined clade originated in East Africa, where various populations have a notable frequency of its underived state. This would suggest that an ancient population in East Africa, or more correctly its males, form the basis of the ancestors of all African upper Paleolithic populations – and their subsequent descendants in the present day."
(--Bengtson, John D. (ed.), In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory: Essays in the four fields of anthropology. 2008. John Benjamins Publishing: pp. 3–16) 

Modern DNA evidence shows in-situ evolution of several key lineages inside Africa, not outside in Europe.

"..Haplogroup CF and DE molecular ancestors first evolved inside Africa and subsequently contributed as Y chromosome founders to pioneering migrations that successfully colonized Asia. While not proof, the DE and CF bifurcation (Figure 8d ) is consistent with independent colonization impulses possibly occurring in a short time interval."
(--Use of Y Chromosome and Mitochondrial DNA Population Structure in Tracing Human Migrations
Peter A. Underhill , Toomas Kivisild - 2007)

"Both phylogeography and microsatellite variance suggest that E-P2 and its derivative, E-M35, probably originated in eastern Africa. This inference is further supported by the presence of additional Hg E lineal diversification and by the highest frequency of E-P2* and E-M35* in the same region. The distribution of E-P2* appears limited to eastern African peoples. The E-M35* lineage shows its highest frequency (19.2%) in the Ethiopian Oromo but with a wider distribution range than E-P2*. Indeed, it is also found at high frequency (16.7%) in the Khoisan of South Africa (Underhill et al. 2000; Cruciani et al. 2002) (suggesting, once again, their ancient relationship with Ethiopians) and observed in southern Europe (present study). "
(--Semino O, Magri C, Benuzzi G, L. et. al. (2004) Origin, diffusion, and differentiation of Y-chromosome haplogroups E and J: inferences on the neolithization of Europe and later migratory events in the Mediterranean area. Am J Hum Genet. 2004 May;74(5):1023-34.)

Egyptian Y-chromosome haplotypes show preponderance is with African clusters not Europe or the Near East

Other DNA quotes from S.O.Y. Keita
See: http://www.geocities.ws/keitadnaquotes.htm

Recent DNA studies of the Sudan show genetic unity and linkage between the Sudanic, Horn, Egyptian, Nubian and other Nilotic peoples, confirming earlier skeletal/cranial studies and historical data. (Yurco (1989, 1996), Keita (1993,2004, 2005) Lovell (1999), Zakrewski (2003, 2007) et. al). Of note is that DNA data shows that some peoples from one of the oldest Egyptian populations, the original Copts, have a significant frequency of the B-M60 marker, indicating early colonization of Egypt by Nilotics in the state formation period.

QUOTES:

"Haplogroup E-M78, however, is more widely distributed and is thought to have an origin in eastern African. More recently, this haplogroup has been carefully dissected and was found to depict several well-established subclades with defined geographical clustering (Cruciani et al., 2006, 2007). Although this haplogroup is common to most Sudanese populations, it has exceptionally high frequency among populations like those of western Sudan (particularly Darfur) and the Beja in eastern Sudan... Although the PC plot places the Beja and Amhara from Ethiopia in one sub-cluster based on shared frequencies of the haplogroup J1, the distribution of M78 subclades (Table 2) indicates that the Beja are perhaps related as well to the Oromo on the basis of the considerable frequencies of E-V32 among Oromo in comparison to Amhara (Cruciani et al., 2007)...

These findings affirm the historical contact between Ethiopia and eastern Sudan (1998), and the fact that these populations speak languages of the Afroasiatic family tree reinforces the strong correlation between linguistic and genetic diversity (Cavalli-Sforza, 1997)."

"Genetic continuum of the Nubians with their kin in southern Egypt is indicated by comparable frequencies of E-V12 the predominant M78 subclade among southern Egyptians."

"The Copt samples displayed a most interesting Y-profile, enough (as much as that of Gaalien in Sudan) to suggest that they actually represent a living record of the peopling of Egypt. The significant frequency of B-M60 in this group might be a relic of a history of colonization of southern Egypt probably by Nilotics in the early state formation, something that conforms both to recorded history and to Egyptian mythology."
Source:
(Hisham Y. Hassan 1, Peter A. Underhill 2, Luca L. Cavalli-Sforza 2, Muntaser E. Ibrahim 1. (2008). Y-chromosome variation among Sudanese: Restricted gene flow, concordance with language, geography, and history. Am J Phys Anthropology, 2008.)


Older research notes the physical makeup of the original Copts:

"In Libya, which is mostly desert and oasis, there is a visible Negroid element in the sedentary populations, and at the same is true of the Fellahin of Egypt, whether Copt or Muslim. Osteological studies have shown that the Negroid element was stronger in predynastic times than at present, reflecting an early movement northward along the banks of the Nile, which were then heavily forested." (Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. "Populations, Human")

Haplogroup E3A and E3B represent more than 70% of the Y-chromosones on the African continent, with varying proportions found in different parts of the continent. In some African populations for example, E3B exceeds 80%. Migrations out of Africa, are responsible for the spread of E3b to Europe. Non-Africans thus acquired a sub-set f African genes through this migration.


"In Europe, the overall frequency pattern of haplogroup E-M78 does not support the hypothesis of a uniform spread of people from a single parental Near Eastern population... The Y chromosome specific biallelic marker DYS271 defines the most common haplogroup (E3a) currently found in sub-Saharan Africa. A sister clade, E3b (E-M215), is rare in sub-Saharan Africa, but very common in northern and eastern Africa. On the whole, these two clades represent more than 70% of the Y chromosomes of the African continent. A third clade belonging to E3 (E3c or E-M329) has been recently reported to be present only in eastern Africa, at low frequencies.. The new topology of the E3 haplogroup is suggestive of a relatively recent eastern African origin for the majority of the chromosomes presently found in sub-Saharan Africa."

"In conclusion, we detected the signatures of several distinct processes of migration and/or recurrent gene flow associated with the dispersal of haplogroup E3b lineages. Early events involved the dispersal of E-M78d chromosomes from eastern Africa into and out of Africa, as well as the introduction of the E-M34 subclade into Africa from the Near East. Later events involved short-range migrations within Africa (E-M78? and E-V6) and from northern Africa into Europe (E-M81 and E-M78ß), as well as an important range expansion from the Balkans to western and southern-central Europe (E-M78a). This latter expansion was the main contributor to the present distribution of E3b chromosomes in Europe."

(Cruciani, F, et. al. (2004) Phylogeographic Analysis of Haplogroup E3b (E-M215) Y Chromosomes Reveals Multiple Migratory Events Within and Out Of Africa, Am J Hum Genet. 74(5): 1014–1022.)

Fundamental African genetic diversity is built-in and not due to to simplistic "race" mixes say Kittles and Keita

"These genetic differences broadly correlate with geographic distances.
Various populations in Africa have interacted via migrations during past
history. One striking and most apparent signature of migration is the dramatic
eastern-to-western Africa cline of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup L3a
frequencies (Watson et al., 1997). Haplogroup L3a is closely related to a mtDNA
haplotype common in European populations [the Cambridge Reference Sequence
(Anderson et al., 1981)]. A subgroup of related mtDNA haplotypes appears to be
East African specific and may represent a common ancestral sequence for most of
Europe and Eurasia. In other words, the mtDNA diversity observed in non-African
populations is a subset of African mtDNA variation. We note that while this group
of mtDNA haplotypes is common in Eastern Africa, it represents only a subset of
the total mtDNA diversity observed throughout the African continent. A similar
pattern is observed for nuclear (Tishkoff et al., 1996, 1998) and Y chromosome
(Passarino et al., 1998) variation in Eastern Africa. There are several implications
for these observations. First, it provides evidence for an African (specifically,
Eastern African) origin for Eurasians. Second it suggests that before major migrations
occurred out of the continent, populations were diverging. These observations
deconstruct racial thinking, especially the concept of "racial divergence."

The term racial divergence fails to describe the process responsible for producing
the variation that exists as a continuum in the human species. So-called
racial divergence dates reflect the times of differentiation of genes within populations
used in a given analysis and should be interpreted as such. "Racial divergence"
time estimates have been used to infer the age of the common ancestor between
sampled groups, but this is definitely not the time of origin for the so-called "racial
groups," which traditionally have been defined by morphology, nor is it the time
of "origin" for the sampled populations. Time, geography, and other data help elucidate 
the larger meaning of genetic studies. A date of 156,000 years ago has been
suggested by Goldstein etal. (1995) for the separation of African (stereotypically
defined) and non-African populations. Given that there is no fossil evidence for
modern humans anywhere at 150,000 years ago except in Africa, this does not
represent an African/non-African "split." This date is actually an estimate of the
initial genetic divergence that occurred within the continent of Africa among our
modern human ancestors. After the expansion of modern humans out of Africa,
subsets of the resultant genetic variation were distributed throughout the other
continents. Most genetic variants observed outside of Africa are also found within
Africa at various frequencies (and are of indigenous origin); this clearly indicates
that "Africans" are not monomorphic. Northern African genetics, when this information
is considered carefully with palaeontological data, would not seem to be
explicable as simply "hybrids" or lost Eurasians. A different perspective, having
more explanatory power and consistent with the available data, is that northern and
Horn of Africa populations constitute gradients of differentiation largely reflective
of African biohistorical processes."

See full article here:
Rick Kitties1 and S. O. Y. Keita2
Interpreting African Genetic Diversity
African Archaeological Review, Vol. 16, No. 2,1999

 

Modern DNA shows that Horn of Africa populations like Ethiopians are locally derived due to long evolutionary time in Africa, genetic drift, clinal factors etc. and are not due to any race mixes with Eurasians:

"Comparative genetic studies on geographically diverse populations provide evidence of high levels of diversity in continental Africa. Sarah Tishkoff and her colleagues (1986) find an intermediate pattern of genetic variation at the CD4 locus in northeastern (actually Horn) African populations. They explain this by local evolution and not by admixture with Eurasians. In essence they are describing a gradient of differentiation. The Horn, largely at the latitude of Nigeria, contains a subset of the diversity seen in other African regions. Tishkoff and her colleagues suggest that the Horn's inhabitant's are the local descendants of those who left Africa to populate the world." 

".. the Horn of Africa certainly contributed more recently to the Near East, because based on linguistic re- construction and the principles of "least moves" and "greatest diversity." It is the geographical home of the ancestor of Afro-Asiatic languages, spoken primarily in Africa with one member in the Near East (Semitic) (Ehret 1984, 1995; Ruhlen 1987). Early Afro-Asiatic spread out from the Horn and did not come into Africa from Asia (brought by "Caucasians") as was believed at one time, and as is occasionally assumed by non-linguists (e.g., Barbujani and Pilastro 1993; Cavalli-Sforza and Cavalli-Sforza 1995). In fact, there is evidence for movement out of Africa at the very time some claim in-migration (Bar-Josef 1987). By the time of the radiation of Afro-Asiatic speakers there was already genetic differentiation in Africa due to African biohistorical processes.

There is no need to postulate massive European settler colonization of Africa or genetic swamping and/or settler colonization by Eurasians, as is implied or stated in some contemporary genetic work (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994), echoing the now defunct Hamitic hypothesis. Continental African variation may be interpreted largely without external mass invasions. The antiquity of modern humans in Africa means that there has been time to accumulate a large amount of random genetic variation (Cavalli-Sforza et. al. 1983), which has been shaped by great ecological diversity in the continent (Hiernaux 1975). Genetic drift would also contribute to variability due to fluctuations in population size as founder effects and population expansion events occurred throughout the continent. Therefore it is far more accurate to speak of a range of biohistorical African variants than different races of Africans. Northern Africans are more accurately conceptualized as primarily the products of differentiation than of hybridization."

( S.O.Y. Keita and R. Kittles. The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence, S. O. Y. Keita, Rick A. Kittles, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 99, No. 3 (Sep., 1997), pp. 534-544)

Somalis link much more heavily with African populations such as those in Kenya and Ethiopia than Middle Eastern or European ones according to DNA evidence. Eurasian genes only accounted for about 15% of the mix among Somalis, typically associated with recent Arab influence. On such key common DNA markers as E3b1, Europeans only weighed in at 5%, and Middle Easterners at approximately 6%. The overwhelming link of Somalis- over 85% of the total is with Africans. Kenya and Ethiopia are located in "sub-Saharan" Africa.

"The high frequency (77.6%) of haplogroup E3b1 was characteristic of male Somalis. The frequency of E3b1 was significantly lower in Ethiopian Oromos (35.9%), Ethiopian Amharas (22.9%), Egyptians (20.0%), Sudanese (17.5%), Kenyans (15.1%),10 Iraqis (6.3%), Northern Africans (6.1%), Southern Europeans (0.5–5.1%) and sub-Saharan populations." (Sanchez et al.,(2005) High frequencies of Y chromosome lineages characterized by E3b1, DYS19-11, DYS392-12 in Somali males, Eu J of Hum Genet (2005) 13, 856–866)

More on Haplogroups here: http://www.tutorgig.com/ed/Haplogroup

More on Haplogroup E here: from GENEBASE: http://www.genebase.com/app/item.php?aiId=35
"E1 is the predominant subclade, while E2 is much less frequent.  Within E1, E1b1 (defined by SNP P2) is the most abundant and widespread representative, and accounts for most of Haplogroup E worldwide.  E1b1 lineages vary in abundance over Africa and three main regions are evident from the distribution peaks of three subclades: E1b1a (SNP M2) in Sub-Saharan Africa, E1b1b1a (SNP M78) in East Africa and E1b1b1b (SNP M81) in Northwest Africa.   The difference in geographic location of Haplogroup E subclades also aligns with distinct language groups supporting the idea that there is prevailing father to son transmission of language in Africa. "

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simplistic "race percentage" models are dubious in Africa which has the highest genetic diversity in the world. That diversity proceeded from deeper sub-Saharan Africa, to East and N.E. Africa, then to the rest of the globe. All other populations, including Europeans and "Middle easterners" carry this diversity which was built into Africa to begin with. Africans thus don't need any "race mix" to look different. Their diversity is built-in and supplied the whole globe. Any returnees or "backflow" to Africa looked like Africans, including Europeans. (Brace 2005, Hanihara 1996, Holliday 2003).

" These studies suggest a recent and primary subdivision between African and non-African populations, high levels of divergence among African populations, and a recent shared common ancestry of non-African populations, from a population originating in Africa. The intermediate position, between African and non-African populations, that the Ethiopian Jews and Somalis occupy in the PCA plot also has been observed in other genetic studies (Ritte et al. 1993; Passarino et al. 1998) and could be due either to shared common ancestry or to recent gene flow. The fact that the Ethiopians and Somalis have a subset of the sub-Saharan African haplotype diversity and that the non-African populations have a subset of the diversity present in Ethiopians and Somalis makes simple-admixture models less likely; rather, these observations support the hypothesis proposed by other nuclear-genetic studies (Tishkoff et al. 1996a, 1998a, 1998b; Kidd et al. 1998) that populations in northeastern Africa may have diverged from those in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa early in the history of modern African populations and that a subset of this northeastern-African population migrated out of Africa and populated the rest of the globe. These conclusions are supported by recent mtDNA analysis (Quintana-Murci et al. 1999)."
[Tishkoff et al. (2000) Short Tandem-Repeat Polymorphism/Alu Haplotype Variation at the PLAT Locus: Implications for Modern Human Origins. Am J Hum Genet; 67:901-925]

Data on Ethiopian peoples like the Oromo are underreported even though they make up the largest group percentage wise in the Ethiopian population,  (50%) and are often pooled with others, hiding and obscuring their overall contribution to the Ethiopian gene pool.

"This difference, not revealed in the study by Passarino et al. (1998), in which the Oromo were underrepresented, might reflect distinct population histories."
(--Semino, et al. (2002). Ethiopians and Khoisan Share the Deepest Clades of the Human Y..")

"These data, together with those reported elsewhere (Ritte et al. 1993a, 1993b; Hammer et al. 2000) suggest that the Ethiopian Jews acquired their religion without substantial genetic admixture from Middle Eastern peoples and that they can be considered an ethnic group with essentially a continental African genetic composition." (Cruciani, et. al Am J Hum Genet. 2002 May; 70(5): 1197–1214. "A Back Migration from Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa Is Supported by High-Resolution Analysis of Human Y-Chromosome Haplotypes)

Afrocentric critic Mary Lefkowitz says the Egypt was peopled by people from sub-Saharan Africa, not Europeans or Middle Easterners.

"Recent work on skeletons and DNA suggests that the people who settled in the Nile valley, like all of humankind, came from somewhere south of the Sahara; they were not (as some nineteenth-century scholars had supposed) invaders from the North. See Bruce G. Trigger, "The Rise of Civilization in Egypt," Cambridge History of Africa (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), vol I, pp 489-90; S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54."
(Mary Lefkotitz (1997). Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History. Basic Books. pg 242)

In Black Athena Revisited, Lefkowitz finds similarity between Egyptians and Sudanics and recommends the work of conservative anthropologist Nancy Lovell for more research on the subject.

Quote:
"not surprisingly, the Egyptian skulls were not very distance from the Jebel Moya [a Neolithic site in the southern Sudan] skulls, but were much more distance from all others, including those from West Africa. Such a study suggests a closer genetic affinity between peoples in Egypt and the northern Sudan, which were close geographically and are known to have had considerable cultural contact throughout prehistory and pharaonic history... Clearly more analyses of the physical remains of ancient Egyptians need to be done using current techniques, such as those of Nancy Lovell at the University of Alberta is using in her work.."
(- Mary Lefkowitz, "Black Athena Revisted. pp. 105-106)

Lefkowitz cites Keita 1993 in Not Out of Africa. Here is Keita on the Jebel Moya studies:
"Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Jebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have 'donated' people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)... Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese." 
S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54


Here is the work of the anthropologist so strongly recommended by Lefkowitz, Nancy Lovell:
"There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas." (Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999) pp 328-332)

and

"must be placed in the context of hypotheses informed by archaeological, linguistic, geographic and other data. In such contexts, the physical anthropological evidence indicates that early Nile Valley populations can be identified as part of an African lineage, but exhibiting local variation. This variation represents the short and long term effects of evolutionary forces, such as gene flow, genetic drift, and natural selection, influenced by culture and geography." ("Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999). pp 328-332)


The same Nancy Lovell recommended by Lefkowitz studied dental traits among some high status persons of the key Egyptian Naqada group and found that they resembled the peoples of Nubia.

"A biological affinities study based on frequencies of cranial nonmetric traits in skeletal samples from three cemeteries at Predynastic Naqada, Egypt, confirms the results of a recent nonmetric dental morphological analysis. Both cranial and dental traits analyses indicate that the individuals buried in a cemetery characterized archaeologically as high status are significantly different from individuals buried in two other, apparently non-elite cemeteries and that the non-elite samples are not significantly different from each other. A comparison with neighboring Nile Valley skeletal samples suggests that the high status cemetery represents an endogamous ruling or elite segment of the local population at Naqada, which is more closely related to populations in northern Nubia than to neighboring populations in southern Egypt."
(T. Prowse, and N. Lovell "Concordance of cranial and dental morphological traits and evidence for endogamy in ancient Egypt". American journal of physical anthropology. 1996, vol. 101, no2, pp. 237-246 (2 p.1/4)

In "Black Athena Revisted" Lefkowitz warns against Eurocentric "racial" analysis as to the Egyptians and Nubians.
"The Nubian tribute-bearers are painted in two skin tones, black and dark brown. These tones do not necessarily represent actual skin tones in real life but may serve to distinguish each tribute-bearer from the next in a row in which the figures overlap. Alternatively, the brown-skinned people may be of Nubian origin, and the black-skinned ones may be farther south (Trigger 1978, 33). The shading of skin tones in Egyptian tomb paintings, which varies considerably, may not be a certain criterion for distinguishing race. Specific symbols of ethnic identity can also vary. Identifying race in Egyptian representational art, again, is difficult to do- probably because race (as opposed to ethnic affiliation, that is, Egyptians versus all non-Egyptians) was not a criterion for differentiation used by the ancient Egyptians..."
(pg 105-107)

Northern Egypt shows more physical variation than the south, but not necessarily as part of any significant 'race' mix, but local, built-in variation. They were closer to southerners than any other peoples. In comparisons with "Middle Eastern" populations of the same ancient period, the Egyptians link more closely with other Africans than the Middle Easterners. Africans vary in how they look because they have the highest built-in molecular diversity to begin with.

QUOTE(s):
"..sample populations available from northern Egypt from before the 1st Dynasty (Merimda, Maadi and Wadi Digla) turn out to be significantly different from sample populations from early Palestine and Byblos, suggesting a lack of common ancestors over a long time. If there was a south-north cline variation along the Nile valley it did not, from this limited evidence, continue smoothly on into southern Palestine. The limb-length proportions of males from the Egyptian sites group them with Africans rather than with Europeans." (Barry Kemp, "Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation. (2005) Routledge. p. 52-60)


"Individuals from different geographical regions frequently plotted near each other, revealing aspects of variation at the level of individuals that is obscured by concentrating on the most distinctive facial traits once used to construct ‘‘types.’’The high level of African interindividual variation in craniometric pattern is reminiscent of the great level of molecular diversity found in Africa." (S.O.Y Keita. Exploring northeast African metric craniofacial variation at the individual level: A comparative study using principal component analysis. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 16:679–689, 2004.)

Quote on northern Egypt analysis- the Qarunian (Faiyum) remains (c. 7000 BC)
"The body was that of a forty-year old woman with a height of about 1.6 meters, who was of a more modern racial type than the classic 'Mechtoid' of the Fakhurian culture (see pp. 65-6), being generally more gracile, having large teeth and thick jaws bearing some resemblance to the modern 'negroid' type." (Beatrix Midant-Reynes, Ian Shaw (2000). The Prehistory of Egypt. Wiley-Blackwell. pg. 82)

Modern studies show diversity in how people look is heavily based on distance from sub-Saharan Africa, not merely climate. In genetically diverse Africa, broad-nosed people live on the cool or cold mountain slopes of East Africa or the hot, dry Sahara, and narrow-nosed peoples like many Fulani like in the wet tropics of West Africa. Yellowish-skinned San tribes live in the hot zones of Southern Africa.

"The relative importance of ancient demography and climate in determining worldwide patterns of human within-population phenotypic diversity is still open to debate. Several morphometric traits have been argued to be under selection by climatic factors, but it is unclear whether climate affects the global decline in morphological diversity with increasing geographical distance from sub-Saharan Africa. Using a large database of male and female skull measurements, we apply an explicit framework to quantify the relative role of climate and distance from Africa. We show that distance from sub-Saharan Africa is the sole determinant of human within-population phenotypic diversity, while climate plays no role. By selecting the most informative set of traits, it was possible to explain over half of the worldwide variation in phenotypic diversity. These results mirror those previously obtained for genetic markers and show that ‘bones and molecules’ are in perfect agreement for humans." (Distance from Africa, not climate, explains within-population phenotypic diversity in humans. (2008) by: Lia Betti, François Balloux, William Amos, Tsunehiko Hanihara, Andrea Manica, Proceedings B: Biological Sciences, 2008/12/02)

Analysis of skeletal and cranial remains reveals that the ancient Egyptians of the early Dynastic and pre-Dynastic phases, link closer to nearby Saharan, Sudanic and East African populations than Mediterranean and Middle Eastern peoples. Greeks, Romans, Hyskos, Arabs and others were to appear later in Egyptian history. Craniometric studies generally place ancient Upper Egyptian populations closer to the range of tropical Africans in the Nile Valley and East Africa than to Mediterraneans, or Middle Easterners.

QUOTE(s):
S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54


"Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Kebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have 'donated' people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)... Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese." (Keita 1993)

"When the unlikely relationships [Indian matches] and eliminated, the Egyptian series are more similar overall to other African series than to European or Near Eastern (Byzantine or Palestinian) series." (Keita 1993)

"Populations and cultures now found south of the desert roamed far to the north. The culture of Upper Egypt, which became dynastic Egyptian civilization, could fairly be called a Sudanese transplant."(Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa: Their Interaction. Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa, by Joseph O. Vogel, AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California (1997), pp. 465-472 )

"Analysis of crania is the traditional approach to assessing ancient population origins, relationships, and diversity. In studies based on anatomical traits and measurements of crania, similarities have been found between Nile Valley crania from 30,000, 20,000 and 12,000 years ago and various African remains from more recent times (see Thoma 1984; Brauer and Rimbach 1990; Angel and Kelley 1986; Keita 1993). Studies of crania from southern predynastic Egypt, from the formative period (4000-3100 B.C.), show them usually to be more similar to the crania of ancient Nubians, Kushites, Saharans, or modern groups from the Horn of Africa than to those of dynastic northern Egyptians or ancient or modern southern Europeans." 
(S. O. Y and A.J. Boyce, "The Geographical Origins and Population Relationships of Early Ancient Egyptians", in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 20-33)


"There is no archaeological, linguistic, or historical data which indicate a European or Asiatic invasion of, or migration to, the Nile Valley during First Dynasty times. Previous concepts about the origin of the First Dynasty Egyptians as being somehow external to the Nile Valley or less native are not supported by archaeology... In summary, the Abydos First Dynasty royal tomb contents reveal a notable craniometric heterogeneity. Southerners predominate. (Kieta, S. (1992) Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis of Crania From First Dynasty Egyptian Tombs, Using Multiple Discriminant Functions. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 87:245-254)"

"The predominant craniometric pattern in the Abydos royal tombs is 'southern' (tropical African variant), and this is consistent with what would be expected based on the literature and other results (Keita, 1990). This pattern is seen in both group and unknown analyses... Archaeology and history seem to provide the most parsimonious explanation for the variation in the royal tombs at Abydos.. Tomb design suggests the presence of northerners in the south in late Nakada times (Hoffman, 1988) when the unification probably took place. Delta names are attached to some of the tombs at Abydos (Gardiner, 1961; Yurco, 1990, personal communication), thus perhaps supporting Petrie's (1939) and Gardiner's contention that north-south marriages were undertaken to legitimize the hegemony of the south. The courtiers of northern elites would have accompanied them.

Given all of the above, it is probably not possible to view the Abydos royal tomb sample as representative of the general southern Upper Egyptian population of the time. Southern elites and/or their descendants eventually came to be buried in the north (Hoffman, 1988). Hence early Second Dynasty kings and Djoser (Dynasty 111) (Hayes, 1953) and his descendants are not buried in Abydos. Petrie (1939) states that the Third Dynasty, buried in the north, was of Sudanese origin, but southern Egypt is equally likely. This perhaps explains Harris and Weeks' (1973) suggested findings of southern morphologies in some Old Kingdom Giza remains, also verified in portraiture (Drake, 1987). Further study would be required to ascertain trends in the general population of both regions. The strong Sudanese affinity noted in the unknown analyses may reflect the Nubian interactions with upper Egypt in predynastic times prior to Egyptian unification (Williams, 1980,1986)..." (S. Keita (1992) Further Studies of Crania From Ancient Northern Africa: An Analysis of Crania From First Dynasty Egyptian Tombs, Using Multiple Discriminant Functions. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 87:245-254)

Early Dynastic Periods. When the Elephantine results were added to a broader pooling of the physical characteristics drawn from a wide geographic region which includes Africa, the Mediterranean and the Near East quite strong affinities emerge between Elephantine and populations from Nubia, supporting a strong south-north cline. (Barry Kemp. (2006) Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. p. 54)

Gene flow into the Nubian area during the Neolithic was not from reputed "wandering Caucasoids" but from tropical, Sub-Saharan types.

"Prior to the Neolithic, populations of the Nile Valley in Nubia are very robust, and, because of a gap in the fossil record, it is difficult to connect them to later populations. Some have postulated a local evolution, due to diet change, while others postulated migrations, especially from the Sahara area. But between 5000 and 1000 BC, many cemeteries have supplied a large amount of skeletons, and the anatomical characters of Nubian populations are easier to follow-up. Twenty-seven archaeological samples (4 at 5000 BC, 5 at 4000 BC, 10 at 3000 BC, 3 at 2000 BC, 5 at 1000 BC), and 10 craniofacial measurements, have been considered. While cerebral skull is fairly stable, facial skull displays several regular modifications, and specially a reduction of facial and nasal heights, a broadening of the nose, and an increase of prognathism, while bizygomatic breadth is unchanged. These features illustrate a trend towards a growing resemblance with populations of Sub-Saharan Africa living in wet environments. However, paleoclimatological studies show that Nubia experienced an increasing aridification during that period. It is then unlikely that such a morphological change could be related to any local adaptive evolution to environment. Random drift is also unlikely, because the anatomical trend is relatively uniform during these millennia. It then seems more plausible that these changes correspond to the increasing presence of Southern populations migrating northward."
-- Froment, A. (2002) Morphological micro-evolution of Nubian Populations from, A-Group to Christian Epochs: gene flow, not local adaptation. Am J Phys Anthropol [Suppl] 34:72.

Afrocentric critic Froment also notes:
"Black populations of the Horn of Africa (Tigré and Somalia) fit well into Egyptian variations." (Froment, Alain, Origines du peuplement de l’Égypte ancienne: l’apport de l’anthropobiologie, Archéo-Nil 2 (Octobre 1992), 79-98)

Afrocentric critic C. Loring Brace's 2005 study groups ancient Egyptian populations like the Naqada closer to Nubians and Somalis than European, Mediterranean or Middle Eastern populations. Brace's study shows that the closest European linking with Africans in Egypt or Nubia are Middle Stone Age Portugese and Neolithics, OLDER populations more closely resembling AFRICANS than modern Europeans. Early Neolithic populations, like the Nautifians, in what is now Israel, show sub-Saharan 'negroid' affinities. (Brace, et al. The questionable contribution of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age to European craniofacial form, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2006 January 3; 103(1): p. 242-247.)

"The Niger-Congo speakers, Congo, Dahomey and Haya, cluster closely with each other and a bit less closely with the Nubian sample, both the recent and the Bronze Age Nubians, and more remotely with the Naqada Bronze Age sample of Egypt, the modern Somalis, and the Arabic-speaking Fellaheen (farmers) of Israel. When those samples are separated and run in a single analysis as in Fig. 1, there clearly is a tie between them that is diluted the farther one gets from sub-Saharan Africa" (Brace, 2005)

"The surprise is that the Neolithic peoples of Europe and their Bronze Age successors are not closely related to the modern inhabitants, although the prehistoric/modern ties are somewhat more apparent in southern Europe. It is a further surprise that the Epipalaeolithic Natufian of Israel from whom the Neolithic realm was assumed to arise has a clear link to Sub-Saharan Africa... Interestingly enough, however, the small Natufian sample falls between the Niger-Congo group and the other samples used. Fig. 2 shows the plot produced by the first two canonical variates, but the same thing happens when canonical variates 1 and 3 (not shown here) are used. This placement suggests that there may have been a Sub-Saharan African element in the make-up of the Natufians (the putative ancestors of the subsequent Neolithic), .. When canonical variates are plotted, neither sample ties in with Cro-Magnon as was once suggested. The data treated here support the idea that the Neolithic moved out of the Near East into the circum-Mediterranean areas and Europe by a process of demic diffusion but that subsequently the in situ residents of those areas, derived from the Late Pleistocene inhabitants, absorbed both the agricultural life way and the people who had brought it." (Brace, 2005)

Incoming Neolithic to Europe included clear "sub-Saharan" African elements - Brace 2005

QUOTE:
"The assessment of prehistoric and recent human
craniofacial dimensions supports the picture
documented by genetics that the extension of
Neolithic agriculture from the Near East westward
to Europe and across North Africa was accomplished
by a process of demic diffusion (11–15). If
the Late Pleistocene Natufian sample from Israel
is the source from which that Neolithic spread
was derived, then there was clearly a Sub-Saharan
African element present of almost equal
importance as the Late Prehistoric Eurasian
element. At the same time, the failure of the
Neolithic and Bronze Age samples in central and
northern Europe to tie to the modern inhabitants
supports the suggestion that, while a farming
mode of subsistence was spread westward and also
north to Crimea and east to Mongolia by actual
movement of communities of farmers, the indigenous
foragers in each of those areas ultimately absorbed
both the agricultural subsistence strategy and
also the people who had brought it. The interbreeding
of the incoming Neolithic people with the in situ
foragers diluted the Sub-Saharan traces that may
have come with the Neolithic spread so that no
discoverable element of that remained. This
picture of a mixture between the incoming farmers
and the in situ foragers had originally been
supported by the archaeological record alone (6,
9, 33, 34, 48, 49), but this view is now reinforced
by the analysis of the skeletal morphology of the
people of those areas where prehistoric and
recent remains can be metrically compared."

-- Brace, et al. The questionable contribution of
the Neolithic and the Bronze Age to European
craniofacial form, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2006
January 3; 103(1): p. 242-247.)

Both skeletal/cranial and DNA studies by other authors confirm that some Neolithics did not derive from today's Middle Easterners. They most likely resembled African populations. Hence comparisons using older European Neolithics versus Africans are comparisons with older prehistoric Europeans who looked more like Africans, than modern 'white' Europeans, as shown by Brace (2005), and Hanihara (1996) also, who states "Early West Asians looked like Africans."

"The absence of mtDNA haplogroup J in the ancient Portuguese Neolithic sample suggests that this population was not derived directly from Near Eastern farmers. The Mesolithic and Neolithic groups show genetic discontinuity implying colonisation at the Neolithic transition in Portugal." (CHANDLER, H.; SYKES, B.; ZILHÃO, J. (2005) — Using ancient DNA to examine genetic continuity at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Portugal, in ARIAS, P.; ONTAÑÓN, R.; GARCÍA-MONCÓ, C. (eds.) — «Actas del III Congreso del Neolítico en la Península Ibérica», Santander, Monografías del Instituto Internacional de Investigaciones Prehistóricas de Cantabria 1, p. 781-786.)

Early Europeans still resembled modern tropical peoples - some resemble modern Australian and Africans, more than modern Europeans.. Nor does the picture get any clearer when we move on to the Cro-Magnons, the presumed ancestors of modern Europeans. Some were more like present-day Australians or Africans, judged by objective anatomical observations." (Christopher Stringer, Robin McKie (1998). African Exodus. Macmillan, p. 162)

Neolithic people in Europe, as recently as 6,000-9000 years ago, looked somewhat like Africans in terms of retained 'tropical' characteristics. Cold adaptation was to bring about several physical changes over time from the initial Out of Africa migrations to Europe. Retained traces of 'tropical' characteristics, indicate a "large African role in the origins of anatomically modern Europeans." (Holliday and Churchill 2003).

"Body proportions covary with climate, apparently as the result of climatic selection. Ontogenetic research and migrant studies have demonstrated that body proportions are largely genetically controlled and are under low selective rates; thus studies of body form can provide evidence for evolutionarily short-term dispersals and/or gene flow. Replacement predicts that the earliest modern Europeans will possess “tropical” body proportions (assuming Africa is the center of origin), while Regional Continuity permits only minor shifts in body shape, due to climatic change and/or improved cultural buffering. .. results refute the hypothesis of local continuity in Europe, and are consistent with an interpretation of elevated gene flow (and population dispersal?) from Africa, followed by subsequent climatic adaptation to colder conditions." (Holliday, Trenton (1997) Body proportions in Late Pleistocene Europe and modern human origins. Journal of Human Evolution, Volume 32, Issue 5, 1997, Pages 423-447)

".. while the Late Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic humans have significantly higher (i.e., tropically-adapted) brachial and crural indices than do recent Europeans, they also have shorter (i.e., cold-adapted) limbs. The somewhat paradoxical retention of “tropical” indices in the context of more “cold-adapted” limb length is best explained as evidence for Replacement in the European Late Pleistocene, followed by gradual cold adaptation in glacial Europe." (Holliday, Trenton (1999) Brachial and crural indices of European Late Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic humans. Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 36, Issue 5, May 1999, Pages 549-566)

"Stature, body mass, and body proportions are evaluated for the Cheddar Man (Gough's Cave 1) skeleton. Like many of his Mesolithic contemporaries, Gough's Cave 1 evinces relatively short estimated stature (ca. 166.2 cm [5' 5']) and low body mass (ca. 66 kg [146 lbs]). In body shape, he is similar to recent Europeans for most proportional indices. He differs, however, from most recent Europeans in his high crural index and tibial length/trunk height indices. Thus, while Gough's Cave 1 is characterized by a total morphological pattern considered ‘cold-adapted’, these latter two traits may be interpreted as evidence of a large African role in the origins of anatomically modern Europeans." (TRENTON W. HOLLIDAY a1 and STEVEN E. CHURCHILL. (2003). Gough's Cave 1 (Somerset, England): an assessment of body size and shape, Bulletin of the Natural History Museum: Geology, 58:37-44 Cambridge University Press)

Neanderthals and tropical adaptation

"Regarding environmental buffering, Trinkaus (1986 and this volume) reiterates that while Neanderthal limb proportions are suggestive of cold adaptation, no such indications are shown by Eurasian early modern humans. Their distinct limb proportions are instead indicative of an equatorial ancestry and better culturally based thermal protection.. the limb proportions of the Eurasian early modern samples are retentions of the African ancestral morphology of long limbs with long distal segments.."
(-- Erik Trinkaus (ed), 'The Emergence of Modern Humans", (C. Stringer p. 88). School of American Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1989.

Other data showing more advanced peoples in Europe were tropically adapted types like Africans
"Body proportions are under strong climatic selection and evince remarkable stability within regional lineages. As such, they offer a viable and robust alternative to cranio-facial data in assessing hypothesised continuity and replacement with the transition to agro-pastoralism in central Europe. Humero-clavicular, brachial and crural indices in a large sample (n=75) of Linienbandkeramik (LBK), Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age specimens from the middle Elbe-Saale-Werra valley (MESV) were compared with Eurasian and African terminal Pleistocene, European Mesolithic and geographically disparate recent human specimens. Mesolithic Europeans display considerable variation in humero-clavicular and brachial indices yet none approach the extreme "hyper-polar" morphology of LBK humans from the MESV. In contrast, Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age peoples display elongated brachial and crural indices reminiscent of terminal Pleistocene and "tropically adapted" recent humans. These marked morphological changes likely reflect exogenous immigration during the terminal Fourth millennium cal BC. Population expansion and diffusion is a function of increased mobility and settlement dispersal concomitant with significant technological and subsistence changes in later Neolithic societies during the late fourth millennium cal BCE."
-- Gallagher et al. "Population continuity, demic diffusion and Neolithic origins in central-southern Germany: the evidence from body proportions." Homo. 2009;60(2):95-126. Epub 2009 Mar 4.

vvv
Early West Asians looked like Africans. Thus any ancient returnees or "backflow" from West Asia back to Africa is by people who look like Africans to begin with. Brace 2005 shows this as to Europeans. Hanihara 1996, demonstrates this below as to West Asians (i.e. 'Middle easterners'). Also see above.

quote:
"Distance analysis and factor analysis, based on Q-mode correlation coefficients, were applied to 23 craniofacial measurements in 1,802 recent and prehistoric crania from major geographical areas of the Old World. The major findings are as follows: 1) Australians show closer similarities to African populations than to Melanesians. 2) Recent Europeans align with East Asians, and early West Asians resemble Africans. 3) The Asian population complex with regional difference between northern and southern members is manifest. 4) Clinal variations of craniofacial features can be detected in the Afro-European region on the one hand, and Australasian and East Asian region on the other hand. 5) The craniofacial variations of major geographical groups are not necessarily consistent with their geographical distribution pattern. This may be a sign that the evolutionary divergence in craniofacial shape among recent populations of different geographical areas is of a highly limited degree. Taking all of these into account, a single origin for anatomically modern humans is the most parsimonious interpretation of the craniofacial variations presented in this study."
(Hanihara T. Comparison of craniofacial features of major human groups. Am J Phys Anthropol. 1996 Mar;99(3):389-412.)

===================

More studies on early DNA of European farmers show that they are not much related to ancient European caveman types, but rather early Neolithic farmers, who 7500 -10000 years ago, introduced revolutionary agricultural advances into Europe from the subtropical Near East. These early Neolithic farmers in turn were found by Brace 2005 (The Questionable Contribution) to more closely resemble tropical Africans than ancient Cro-Magnon, Neanderthal and other such caveman types, OR modern Europeans of today. In short, the peoples that introduced the Neolithic Revolution to Europe did not look either like old cavemen, neither like today's French, Swedes, Italians, English etc, but rather resembled modern tropical Africans. This technological revolution, in addition to plant and animal domestication, also includes such things as drilling rock, sawing huge stone forms, using levers and pulleys, metal smelting and fabrication, advanced pottery, textiles and weaving,, building in stone and brick, mining and animal domestication and use in agriculture.

"The ancestry of modern Europeans is a subject of debate among geneticists, archaeologists, and anthropologists. A crucial question is the extent to which Europeans are descended from the first European farmers in the Neolithic Age 7500 years ago or from Paleolithic hunter-gatherers who were present in Europe since 40,000 years ago. Here we present an analysis of ancient DNA from early European farmers. 

We successfully extracted and sequenced intact stretches of maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from 24 out of 57 Neolithic skeletons from various locations in Germany, Austria, and Hungary. We found that 25% of the Neolithic farmers had one characteristic mtDNA type and that this type formerly was widespread among Neolithic farmers in Central Europe. Europeans today have a 150-times lower frequency (0.2%) of this mtDNA type, revealing that these first Neolithic farmers did not have a strong genetic influence on modern European female lineages."

-- Wolfgang Haak et al. (2005) Ancient DNA from the First European Farmers in 7500-Year-Old Neolithic Sites. Science 11 Vol. 310. no. 5750, pp. 1016 - 1018.

Modern Europeans a product of incoming Neolithic says DNA study
"Even assuming low mutation rates and long generation times, we found no evidence for population splits older than 10,000 years, with the predictable exception of Saami (Lapps). The simplest interpretation of these results is that the current nuclear gene pool largely reflects the westward and northward expansion of a Neolithic group. This conclusion is now supported by purely genetic evidence on the levels and patterns of microsatellite diversity, rather than by correlations of biological and nonbiological data. We argue that many mitochondrial lineages whose origin has been traced back to the Paleolithic period probably reached Europe at a later time."
-- CHIKHI, et al. 2000. Clines of nuclear DNA markers suggest a largely Neolithic ancestry of the European gene pool. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. Vol. 95, pp. 9053-9058, July 1998

Yet more DNA studies show there were 2 key sets of movements in populating Europe. One early set of movement s was in the Paleolithic, some 40,000 years ago of tropically adapted peoples, part of the Out Of Africa migrations, by way of the Middle East and/or Central Asia. A second key set of movements is the Neolithic Revolution and the introduction of farming. More developed  peoples came in this second group that brought the advances of agriculture. They came from the Near East, but they still looked like or resembled today's tropical Africans. The ancient Natufians, precursors of the Neolithic Revolution for example, show clear links to sub-Saharan Africa (Brace 2005), and Hanihara (1996) shows that early Iranians also looked like today's tropical Africans.

"Y- chromosome data show that living Europeans have deep roots in the region--and researchers say genetic markers may be linked to cultures known from archaeological remains. In a report on page 1155, an international team reports that a wealth of data from the Y chromosome show that more than 80% of European men have inherited their Y chromosomes--which are transmitted only from father to son--from Paleolithic ancestors who lived 25,000 to 40,000 years ago. Thus, the genetic template for European men was set as early as 40,000 years ago, then modified--but not recast--by the Neolithic farmers who arrived in the region about 10,000 years ago."
--Ann Gibbons. 2000. Europeans Trace Ancestry to Paleolithic People. Science 10 November 2000: Vol. 290. no. 5494, pp. 1080 - 1081 DOI: 10.1126/science.290.5494.1080 

So-called "Mechtoids" , early populations of North Africa, resemble other African populations of the Sudan and sub-Saharan Africa

"Population, Health, and Disease. Over 100 human skeletons of Late Paleolithic age are known from Egypt and adjacent Sudan. Physically, they are all classified as Homo Sapiens. They are grouped with the Mechtoids of the Maghreb, but details of their teeth indicate that they are a separate population, with many similarities to groups in sub-Saharan Africa."

-- Encyclopedia of Prehistory - Volume 1: Africa Published in conjunction with the Human Relations Area Files (Encyclopedia of Prehistory) (Hardcover) by Peter N. Peregrine (Editor), Melvin Ember (Editor)
Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (January 2001) p.117

Older studies often show misclassification or exclusion of Nile Valley remains deemed 'negroid'. Although clearly of the "African" type, such remains were frequently relabeled "Mediterranean."

"Analyses of Egyptian crania are numerous. Vercoutter (1978) notes that ancient Egyptian crania have frequently all been lumped (implicitly or explicitly) as Mediterranean, although Negroid remains are recorded in substantial numbers by many workers... "Nutter (1958), using the Penrose statistic, demonstrated that Nagada I and Badari crania, both regarded as Negroid, were almost identical and that these were most similar to the Negroid Nubian series from Kerma studied by Collett (1933). [Collett, not accepting variability, excluded "clear negro" crania found in the Kerma series from her analysis, as did Morant (1925), implying that they were foreign..." (S. Keita (1990) Studies of Ancient Crania From Northern Africa. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 83:35-48)

Europeans, supposedly the defining Caucasians, are simply a hybrid population according to some conservative geneticists, and are not a primary race at all.

".. it appears that Europeans are about two-thirds Asians and one-third African."
(--Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza (2000). Genes, peoples and languages. FARRAR STRAUS AND GIROUX Publishers)

"Nuclear DNA studies also contribute to the deconstruction of received racial entities. Ann Bowcock and her colleague's interpretation (Bowcock et al. 1991; Bowcock et al. 1994) of analyses of restriction-site polymorphisms and microsatellite polymorphisms (STRPs) suggests that Europeans, the defining Caucasians, are descendants of a population that arose as a consequence of admixture between already differentiated populations ancestral to (some) Africans and Asians. Therefore, Caucasians would be a secondary type or race due to its hybrid origin and not a primary race". This compromises the racial schema and also invalidates the metaphysical underpinnings of the persisting race construct, which implies deep and fundamental differences between its units. In this case if the interpretation of Bowcock and her colleagues (1991) is correct then one of the units is not fundamental because its genesis is qualitatively different from the other units and even connects them."
-- S.O.Y. Keita and Rick Kittles. (1997) The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 99, No. 3 (Sep., 1997), pp. 534-544 

From Cavalli-Sforza, Genes, Peoples, Languages

Different features among Africans, particularly EAST AFRICANS, like narrow noses are not due to different "race" mixes but are part of the built-in physical diversity and variation of African peoples. Narrow noses appear in the oldest African populations for example, in Kenya's Gamble Cave complex. East Africans like Somalians or Kenyans do not need any outside race "mix" or migration to make them look the way they do.

QUOTE(s):
".. all their features can be found in several living populations of East Africa, like the Tutsi of Rwanda and Burundi, who are very dark skinned and differ greatly from Europeans in a number of body proportions.. There is every reason to believe that they are ancestral to the living 'Elongated East Africans'. Neither of these populations, fossil and modern, should be considered to be closely related to the populations of Europe and western Asia.. In skin colour, the Tutsi are darker than the Hutu, in the reverse direction to that leading to the caucasoids. Lip thickness provides a similar case: on an average the lips of the Tutsi are thicker than those of the Hutu." [Jean Hiernaux, The People of Africa (1975), pgs 42-43, 62-63)

"In sub-Saharan Africa, many anthropological characters show a wide range of population means or frequencies. In some of them, the whole world range is covered in the sub-continent. Here live the shortest and the tallest human populations, the one with the highest and the one with the lowest nose, the one with the thickest and the one with the thinnest lips in the world. In this area, the range of the average nose widths covers 92 per cent of the world range: only a narrow range of extremely low means are absent from the African record. Means for head diameters cover about 80 per cent of the world range; 60 per cent is the corresponding value for a variable once cherished by physical anthropologists, the cephalic index, or ratio of the head width to head length expressed as a percentage....."
- Jean Hiernaux, "The People of Africa" 1975 p.53, 54

"Prehistoric human crania from Bromhead's Site, Willey's Kopje, Makalia Burial Site, Nakuru, and other localities in the Eastern Rift Valley of Kenya are reassessed using measurements and a multivariate statistical approach. Materials available for comparison include series of Bushman and Hottentot crania. South and East African Negroes, and Egyptians. Up to 34 cranial measurements taken on these series are utilized to construct three multiple discriminant frameworks, each of which can assign modern individuals to a correct group with considerable accuracy. When the prehistoric crania are classified with the help of these discriminants, results indicate that several of the skulls are best grouped with modern Negroes. This is especially clear in the case of individuals from Bromhead's Site, Willey's Kopje, and Nakuru, and the evidence hardly suggests post-Pleistocene domination of the Rift and surrounding territory by "Mediterranean" Caucasoids, as has been claimed. Recent linguistic and archaeological findings are also reviewed, and these seem to support application of the term Nilotic Negro to the early Rift populations." (Rightmire GP. New studies of post-Pleistocene human skeletal remains from the Rift Valley, Kenya. Am J Phys Anthropol. 1975 May;42(3):351-69. )

"....inhabitants of East Africa right on the equator have appreciably longer, narrower, and higher noses than people in the Congo at the same latitude. A former generation of anthropologists used to explain this paradox by invoking an invasion by an itinerant "white" population from the Mediterranean area, although this solution raised more problems than it solved since the East Africans in question include some of the blackest people in the world with characteristically wooly hair and a body build unique among the world's populations for its extreme linearity and height.... The relatively long noses of East Africa become explicable then when one realizes that much of the area is extremely dry for parts of the year." (C. Loring Brace, "Nonracial Approach Towards Human Diversity," cited in The Concept of Race, Edited by Ashley Montagu, The Free Press, 1980, pp. 135-136, 138)

"The .... excavations at Gogoshiis Qabe (Somalia) uncovered eleven virtually complete and articulated primary burials...Closest morphological affinities are with early Holocene skeletons from Lake Turkana, Kenya...and Lake Besaka, Ethiopia.."
(S. Brandt, (1986) The Upper Pleistocene and early Holocene prehistory of the Horn of Africa. Journal African Archaeological Review. Volume 4, Number 1, Pages 41-82 )

"The role of tall, linearly built populations in eastern Africa's prehistory has always been debated. Traditionally, they are viewed as late migrants into the area. But as there is better palaeoanthropological and linguistic documentation for the earlier presence of these populations than for any other group in eastern Africa, it is far more likely that they are indigenous eastern Africans. ... prehistoric linear populations show resemblances to both Upper Pleistocene eastern African fossils and present-day, non-Bantu-speaking groups in eastern Africa, with minor differences stemming from changes in overall robusticity of the dentition and skeleton. This suggests a longstanding tradition of linear populations in eastern Africa, contributing to the indigenous development of cultural and biological diversity from the Pleistocene up to the present."
(L . A . SCHEPARTZ, "Who were the later Pleistocene eastern Africans?" The African Archaeological Review, 6 (1988), pp. 57- 72)

Whether ancient or modern Egyptians are considered, Blacks are closer than white Europeans or Americans. Recent study shows ancient Egyptians physically more like tropically adapted Black Americans than White Americans, confirming older studies that show today's Egyptians closer to US blacks than Northern Europeans, and Southern Europeans as well.

QUOTE(s):
"We also compare Egyptian body proportions to those of modern American Blacks and Whites... Long bone stature regression equations were then derived for each sex. Our results confirm that, although ancient Egyptians are closer in body proportion to modern American Blacks than they are to American Whites, proportions in Blacks and Egyptians are not identical... Intralimb indices are not significantly different between Egyptians and American Blacks. ..brachial indices are definitely more ‘African’... There is no evidence for significant variation in proportions among temporal or social groupings; thus, the new formulae may be broadly applicable to ancient Egyptian remains." ("Stature estimation in ancient Egyptians: A new technique based on anatomical reconstruction of stature." Michelle H. Raxter, Christopher B. Ruff, Ayman Azab, Moushira Erfan, Muhammad Soliman, Aly El-Sawaf, (Am J Phys Anthropol. 2008, Jun;136(2):147-55


Africa is the most genetically diverse region in the world with the original man being from East Africa according to conservative scholars:

"Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages.. Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world." (Tishkoff SA, Williams SM., Genetic analysis of African populations: human evolution and complex disease. Nature Reviews Genetics. 2002 Aug (8):611-21.)

" In other words, all non-Africans carry M168. Of course, Africans carrying the M168 mutation today are the descendants of the African subpopulation from which the migrants originated.... Thus, the Australian/Eurasian Adam (the ancestor of all non-Africans) was an East African Man." (Linda Stone, Paul F. Lurquin, L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Genes, Culture, and Human Evolution: A Synthesis, Wiley-Blackwell: 2006, pg 108)

The Natufians, early inhabitants of the Sinai - Israel- Palestine area, and reputed pioneers of several Neolithic agricultural and technological developments, appear to have had "Negroid" affinities. Important Natufian sites include Mt. Carmel, Jericho and several others.

"Against this background of disease, movement and pedomorphic reduction of body size one can identify Negroid (Ethiopic or Bushmanoid?) traits of nose and prognathism appearing in Natufian latest hunters (McCown, 1939) and in Anatolian and Macedonian first farmers, probably from Nubia via the unknown predecesors of the Badarians and Tasians....". (Biological Relations of Egyptians and Eastern Mediterranean Populations during pre-Dynastic and Dynastic Times. J. Lawrence Angel. Journal of Human Evolutiom. 1972:1, 1, Pg 307)

"The Mushabians moved into Sinai from the Nile Delta, bringing North African lithic chipping tecniques."
("Pleistocene connections between Africa and Southwest Asia: an archaeological perspective. O. Bar-Yosef. African Archaeological Review. 5 (1987) Pg 29)

"It is a further surprise that the Epipalaeolithic Natufian of Israel from whom the Neolithic realm was assumed to arise has a clear link to Sub-Saharan Africa... Interestingly enough, however, the small Natufian sample falls between the Niger-Congo group and the other samples used... This placement suggests that there may have been a Sub-Saharan African element in the make-up of the Natufians (the putative ancestors of the subsequent Neolithic.." (C.L Brace, et. al. 2005. The Questionable contribution of the Neolithic...)

Early inhabitants of the general Natufian Israel area show limb proportions suited to tropical peoples- similar to sub-Saharan's homeland

"However, the real revelation came when Erik [Trinkhaus] inserted his data on the Cro-Magnons of Europe and the Skhul-Qafzeh skeletons from Israel into the equations. In this case, he got a figure of 85 percent for the shinbone-thighbone ratio. Not only were they unlike the Neanderthals, but these people actually fell at the other extreme in their readings on the limb thermometer. The predicted average temperature of origin for folk with an 85% shin-thigh fraction, indicating much longer extremities relative to trunk length — was about 20 degrees higher than the Neanderthals', suggesting a subtropical- if not tropical- homeland!" (African Exodus By Christopher Stringer, Robin McKie, McMillan: pg 79-83)

The 1993 'Clines and Clusters' study by C.L. Brace, et. al. has been used to minmize or downplay the realtionship between Egypt and its African neighbors. For example it:

• Created an "African" or "sub-Saharan" group, but excluded the Maghreb (including parts of the Sahara and Sahel), the Sudan and the Horn area (Ethiopia and Somalia) even though these latter two are BELOW the Sahara, and thus "sub-Saharan".
• Excluded the Badari, and Naqada I and II, key Egyptian groups, thus obscuring the Sudanic/Saharan character of numerous early samples, noted in several earlier analyses.
• Ignored the formative range of the Saharans on Egypt, from the megaliths and cattle cults of the Nabta Playa to early mummification practices was ignored. T
• Excluded the Nubian population of the Badari and early Naqada period, including the rich remains of the well documented Qustul culture, near the present Sudanese-Egyptian border, again obscuring the close relationship between the two peoples.
• Created a vague "Bronze Age" grouping of Nubians, and a "modern" group of medieval samples, an era long after the dynasties and when Nubia had experienced more gene flow of that and the later Arab incursions, beginning in the 700s. Sampling thus ignored the early Badari/Naqada Nubians, jumped the 25th Dynasty era, and shifted to the medieval era in the age range of the Arab conquests.
• Used Somalian samples that were modern, and thus within the range of recent gene flow (such as the Arab era), particularly on the coast.
• The result was a "comparison" finding that the ancient Egyptians had no relationship "at all" to other "sub-Saharan" peoples and were relatively distant from the Nubians and Somalians. peoples. This finding has been undermined by the subsequent research of several scholars, including limb proportion studies.

QUOTE(s):

"However, Brace et al. (1993) find that a series of upper Egyptian/Nubian epipalaeolithic crania affiliate by cluster analysis with groups they designate “sub-Saharan African” or just simply “African” (from which they incorrectly exclude the Maghreb, Sudan, and the Horn of Africa), whereas post-Badarian southern predynastic and a late dynastic northern series (called “E” or Gizeh) cluster together, and secondarily with Europeans. In the primary cluster with the Egyptian groups are also remains representing populations from the ancient Sudan and recent Somalia. Brace et al. (1993) seemingly interpret these results as indicating a population relationship from Scandinavia to the Horn of Africa, although the mechanism for this is not clearly stated; they also state that the Egyptians had no relationship with sub-Saharan Africans, a group that they nearly treat (incorrectly) as monolithic, although sometimes seemingly including Somalia, which directly undermines aspects of their claims. Sub-Saharan Africa does not define/delimit authentic Africanity." (S.O.Y. Keita. "Early Nile Valley Farmers from El-Badari: Aboriginals or "European" Agro-Nostratic Immigrants? Craniometric Affinities Considered With Other Data". Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 191-208 (2005)

Brace carefully excluded the Badari- a key native pre-dynastic group that led into the dynasties, and suggested possible European immigration to ancient Egypt. Keita put this to the test and found that the excluded group matched up more closely with Africans than Europeans.

"An examination of the distance hierarchies reveals the Badarian series to be more similar to the Teita in both analyses and always more similar to all of the African series than to the Norse and Berg groups (see Tables 3A & 3B and Figure 2). Essentially equal similarity is found with the Zalavar and Dogon series in the 11-variable analysis and with these and the Bushman in the one using 15 variables. The Badarian series clusters with the tropical African groups no matter which algorithm is employed (see Figures 3 and 4).. In none of them did the Badarian sample affiliate with the European series."(S.O.Y. Keita. Early Nile Valley Farmers from El-Badari: Aboriginals or "European" Agro-Nostratic Immigrants? Craniometric Affinities Considered With Other Data. Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 191-208 (2005)

More on the 'true negro'

"Another example of the use of a socially constructed typological paradigm is in studies of the Nile Valley populations in which the concept of a biological African is restricted to those with a particular craniometric pattern (called in the past the 'True Negro' though no 'True White' was ever defined). Early Nubians, Egyptians, and even Somalians are viewed essentially as non-Africans, when in fact numerous lines of evidence and an evolutionary model make them a part of African biocultural/biogeographical history. The diversity of 'authentic' Africans is a reality. This diversity prevents biogeographical/biohistorical Africans from clustering into a single unit, no matter the kind of data." (The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence, S. O. Y. Keita, Rick A. Kittles, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 99, No. 3 (Sep., 1997), pp. 534-544)

"..presents all tropical Africans with narrower noses and faces as being related to or descended from external, ultimately non-African peoples. However, narrow-faced, narrow-nosed populations have long been resident in Saharo-tropical Africa... and their origin need not be sought elsewhere. These traits are also indigenous. The variability in tropical Africa is expectedly naturally high. Given their longstanding presence, narrow noses and faces cannot be deemed `non-African."(S.O.Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993), page 134 )

"Another example of the use of a socially constructed typological paradigm is in studies of the Nile Valley populations in which the concept of a biological African is restricted to those with a particular craniometric pattern (called in the past the 'True African' though no 'True White' was ever defined). Early Nubians, Egyptians, and even Somalians are viewed essentially as non-Africans, when in fact numerous lines of evidence and an evolutionary model make them a part of African biocultural/biogeographical history. The diversity of 'authentic' Africans is a reality. This diversity prevents biogeographical/biohistorical Africans from clustering into a single unit, no matter the kind of data."
---Keita and Kittles. "The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence." American Anthropologist 99, no. 3 (September 1997): 534-544

Hair and the 'true negro'

"Strouhal (1971) microscopically examined some hair which had been preserved on a Badrarian skull. The analysis was interpreted as suggesting a stereotypical tropical African-European hybrid (mulatto). However this hair is grossly no different from that of Fulani, some Kanuri, or Somali and does not require a gene flow explanation any more than curly hair in Greece necessarily does. Extremely "wooly" hair is not the only kind native to tropical Africa.." (S. O. Y. Keita. (1993). "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54)

Sampling bias and the true negro. In some Nile Valley research sampling bias persists such as drawing samples from the far north of Egypt, boscuring the region's genetic complexity. The stereotypical "true negro" type is still used to artifically separate related peoples and obscure a fuller, more accurate picture of African genetic diversity. Sampling bias appears both in DNA studies (noted by Keita) and in cranial studies (noted by Egyptologist Barry Kemp).

QUOTE(s):

Keita on DNA studies drawing samples from the far north, an area with more foreign settlement and gene flow

"However, in some of the studies, only individuals from northern Egypt are sampled, and this could theoretically give a false impression of Egyptian variability (contrast Lucotte and Mercier 2003a with Manni et al. 2002), because this region has received more foreign settlers (and is nearer the Near East). Possible sample bias should be integrated into the discussion of results." (S.O.Y. Keita, A.J. Boyce, "Interpreting Geographical Patterns of Y Chromosome Variation1," History in Africa 32 (2005) 221-246 )

Egyptologist Barry Kemp on the worldwide CRANID database that used northern samples near the Mediterranean as "representative" of the ancient Egyptians, and classifying them in a "European" direction, while excluding key historic sites further south.. The CRANID database uses LATE PERIOD SAMPLES, the 26th thru the 30th Dynasties, drawn from the far north of Egypt near Giza. Such late period samples beginning with the 27th Dynasty involved the Persian conquest and influx into Egypt, and they would reflect such Persian/foreign influence. QUOTE:

"..collected by Petrie in 1907 from a cemetery on a desert ridge to the south of Giza and dating from the 26th to the 30th Dynasties.. If, on the other hand, CRANID had used one of the Elephantine populations of the same period, the geographic association would be much more with the African groups to the south. It is dangerous to take one set of skeletons and use them to characterize the population of the whole of Egypt." ⁽Barry Kemp, Ancient Egypt Anatomy of a Civilisation, Routledge: 2005, p. 55)

Sampling bias in the study of North Africa - One researcher explicitly notes that small, scattered sampling is a problem in North African research and often yields a misleading picture of populations

QUOTE:
[i]"The North African patchy mtDNA landscape has
no parallel in other regions of the world and
increasing the number of sampled populations has
not been accompanied by any substantial increase
in our understanding of its phylogeography. Available
data up to now rely on sampling small, scattered
populations.. It is therefore doubtful that this
picture truly represents the complex historical
demography of the region rather than being just
the result of the type of samplings performed so far."[/i]
--Cherni (2005) Female gene pools of Berber and Arab neighboring.. Hum Biol. 2005 77(1):61-70.

More on Natufian affinities

[i]"Descriptions and photographs of late paleolithic
remains from Egypt indicate characteristics which
distinguish them clearly from their European
counterparts at 30,000 and 20,000 years BP (cf.
Thoma, 1984; Stewart, 1985; Angel 1986). These
characteristics, commonly called "Negroid", are
shared with later Nile Valley and more southerly
groups. Epipaleolithic Nile valley remains
diverge notably from their Maghreban and European
counterparts in key craniofacial characteristics
(see comments in Keita, 1990); although late
Natufian hunters and early Anatolian farmers
(Angel, 1972) shared many of these traits,
suggesting late Paleolithic migration out of
Africa, as supported by archaeology (Bar Yosef,
1987)." [/i]
--International journal of anthropology, Volume 10. 1995. pg 110

Modern anthropology shows that the ancient Egyptians are well within the range of tropical Africa, contradicting older research in the 1990s that sought to deny any relationship.
"There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas." (Nancy C. Lovell, " Egyptians, physical anthropology of," in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999) pp 328-332)

One of the oldest remains from Upper Egypt, shows strong sub-Saharan affinities, and early northern Egypt also shows sub-Saharan affinities through cultural traits- the 'Nubian complex' of technology and production. 

"The morphometric affinities of the 33,000 year old skeleton from Nazlet Khater, Upper Egypt are examined using multivariate statistical procedures.. 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." (PINHASI Ron, SEMAL Patrick (2000). The position of the Nazlet Khater specimen among prehistoric and modern African and Levantine populations. Journal of human evolution. 2000, vol. 39, no3, pp. 269-288 )

"..Middle Paleolithic and the transition to the Upper Paleolithic in the Lower Nile Valley are described... the Middle Paleolithic or, more appropriately, Middle Stone Age of this region starts with the arrival of new populations from sub-Saharan Africa, as evidenced by the nature of the Early to Middle Stone Age transition in stratified sites. Throughout the late Middle Pleistocene technological change occurs leading to the establishment of the Nubian Complex by the onset of the Upper Pleistocene." (Van Peer, Philip. Did middle stone age moderns of sub-Saharan African descent trigger an upper paleolithic revolution in the lower nile valley? Anthropologie. vol. 42, no3, pp. 215-225)

Dental studies provide evidence that the ancient Egyptian population maintained a high degree of continuity into the early, mid and late Dynastic periods. A key ancient group, the Badari, found to link to tropical African metrics, was excluded by such studies as Brace (1993) but dental research shows they link well with later pre and Dynastic populations. J. Irish's 2006 dental study examined the ancient Badarian people excluded by Brace and found that they were a "good representative of what the common ancestor to all later predynastic and dynastic Egyptian peoples would be like." His dental results show that:
QUOTE:

"Despite the difference, Gebel Ramlah [the Western Desert- Saharan region] is closest to predynastic and early dynastic samples from Abydos, Hierakonpolis, and Badari.."

the Badarians were a "good representative of what the common ancestor to all later predynastic and dynastic Egyptian peoples would be like"

"A comparison of Badari to the Naqada and Hierakonpolis samples .. contradicts the idea of a foreign origin for the Naqada (Petrie, 1939; Baumgartel, 1970)"

Evidence in favor of continuity is also demonstrated by comparison of individual samples. "Naqada and especially Hierakonpolis share close affinities with First–Second Dynasty Abydos.. These findings do not support the concept of a foreign dynastic ‘‘race’’"

"Thus, despite increasing foreign influence after the Second Intermediate Period, not only did Egyptian culture remain intact (Lloyd, 2000a), but the people themselves, as represented by the dental samples, appear biologically constant as well."

(Joel D. Irish (2006). Who Were the Ancient Egyptians? Dental Affinities Among Neolithic Through Postdynastic Peoples. Am J Phys Anthropol. 2006 Apr;129(4):529-43.)

Africans have the highest dental diversity
"Previous research by the first author revealed that, relative to other modern peoples, sub-Saharan Africans exhibit the highest frequencies of ancestral (or plesiomorphic) dental traits... The fact that sub-Saharan Africans express these apparently plesiomorphic characters, along with additional information on their affinity to other modern populations, evident intra-population heterogeneity, and a world-wide dental cline emanating from the sub-continent, provides further evidence that is consistent with an African origin model." (Irish JD, Guatelli-Steinberg D.(2003) Ancient teeth and modern human origins: an expanded comparison of African Plio-Pleistocene and recent world dental samples. Hum Evol. 2003 Aug;45(2):113-44. )

[b]Dental studies confirm the data yielded by skeletal and cranial studies. The inhabitants of ancient Egypt, particularly in the formative era on into the early Dynastic ages, cluster more closely with African populations that with Europeans or Middle Easterners. These Nile Valley populations are continuous and of local origin, with no major contemporaneous migration or replacement events.[/b]

[quotes:]

[i]"The question of the genetic origins of ancient Egyptians, particularly those during the Dynastic period, is relevant to the current study. Modern interpretations of Egyptian state formation propose an indigenous origin of the Dynastic civilization (Hassan, 1988). Early Egyptologists considered Upper and Lower Egyptians to be genetically distinct populations, and viewed the Dynastic period as characterized by a conquest of Upper Egypt by the Lower Egyptians. More recent interpretations contend that Egyptians from the south actually expanded into the northern regions during the Dynastic state unification (Hassan, 1988; Savage, 2001), and that the Predynastic populations of Upper and Lower Egypt are morphologically distinct from one another, but not sufficiently distinct to consider either non-indigenous (Zakrzewski, 2007). The Predynastic populations studied here, from Naqada and Badari, are both Upper Egyptian samples, while the Dynastic Egyptian sample (Tarkhan) is from Lower Egypt. The Dynastic Nubian sample is from Upper Nubia (Kerma). Previous analyses of cranial variation found the Badari and Early Predynastic Egyptians to be more similar to other African groups than to Mediterranean or European populations (Keita, 1990; Zakrzewski, 2002). In addition, the Badarians have been described as near the centroid of cranial and dental variation among Predynastic and Dynastic populations studied (Irish, 2006; Zakrzewski, 2007). This suggests that, at least through the Early Dynastic period, the inhabitants of the Nile valley were a continuous population of local origin, and no major migration or replacement events occurred during this time.

Studies of cranial morphology also support the use of a Nubian (Kerma) population for a comparison of the Dynastic period, as this group is likely to be more closely genetically related to the early Nile valley inhabitants than would be the Late Dynastic Egyptians, who likely experienced significant mixing with other Mediterranean populations (Zakrzewski, 2002). A craniometric study found the Naqada and Kerma populations to be morphologically similar (Keita, 1990). Given these and other prior studies suggesting continuity (Berry et al., 1967; Berry and Berry, 1972), and the lack of archaeological evidence of major migration or population replacement during the Neolithic transition in the Nile valley, we may cautiously interpret the dental health changes over time as primarily due to ecological, subsistence, and demographic changes experienced throughout the Nile valley region."[/i]

-- AP Starling, JT Stock. (2007). Dental Indicators of Health and Stress in Early Egyptian and Nubian Agriculturalists: A Difficult Transition and Gradual Recovery. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 134:520–528

"It is our view that post- Mesolithic changes in ancient Nubian crania are best explained by in situ evolution, fueled by dietary changes." 
-- Goodman, et al (1986) Post-Mesolithic Craniofacial and Dental Evolution in Sudanese Nubia. Science in Egyptology, R. David, ed. Pp. 201-212. Manches Univ Press, 2001

Ancient Egyptian civilization was indigenous with continuity among its peoples, not an influx of Middle Easterners, Europeans or other outsiders like Arabs until relatively late in history

QUOTE(s):
"Some have argued that various early Egyptians like the Badarians probably migrated northward from Nubia, while others see a wide-ranging movement of peoples across the breadth of the Sahara before the onset of desiccation. Whatever may be the origins of any particular people or civilization, however, it seems reasonably certain that the predynastic communities of the Nile valley were essentially indigenous in culture, drawing little inspiration from sources outside the continent during the several centuries directly preceding the onset of historical times..." (Robert July, Pre-Colonial Africa, 1975, p. 60-61)

"overall population continuity over the Predynastic and early Dynastic, and high levels of genetic heterogeneity, thereby suggesting that state formation occurred as a mainly indigenous process."
(Zakrzewski, S.R. (2007). "Population continuity or population change: Formation of the ancient Egyptian state". American Journal of Physical Anthropology 132 (4): 501-509)

"the peoples of the steppes and grasslands to the immediate south of Egypt domesticated cattle, as early as 9000 to 8000 B.C. They included peoples from the Afroasiastic linguistic group and the second major African language family, Nilo-Saharan (Wendorf, Schild, Close 1984; Wendorf, et al. 1982). Thus the earliest domestic cattle may have come to Egypt from these southern neighbors, circa 6000 B.C., and not from the Middle East.[148] Pottery, another significant advance in material cultural may also have followed this pattern, initiatied "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 2,000 years before the first pottery was made in the Middle East."
(Christopher Ehret, "Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture," in Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 25-27)

X-ray Atlas of the Royal Mummies show some to be linked physically to Nubian types, and some documented royal officials are clearly "Negroid' like Pepi-seneb, an eminent scribe c. 2745 BC. Some royal New Kingdom mummies also show melanin frequencies consistent with Negroid origin.

"In terms of head shape, the XVIV and XX dynasties look more like the early Nubian skulls from the mesolithic with low vaults and sloping, curved foreheads.The XVII and XVIII dynasty skulls are shaped more like modern Nubians with globular skulls and high vaults."
(An X-ray atlas of the royal mummies. Edited by J.E. Harris and E.F. Wente. (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980.) Review: Michael R. Zimmerman, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Volume 56, Issue 2 , (1981) Pages 207 - 208)

"While the Upper Nile Egyptians show phenotypic features that occur in higher frequencies in the Sudan and southward into East Africa (namely, facial prognathism, chamaerrhiny, and paedomorphic cranial architecture with specific modifications of the nasal aperature), these so-called Negroid features are not universal in the region of Thebes, Karnak, and Luxor."
(Kennedy, Kenneth A.R., T. Plummer, J. Chinment, "Identification of the Eminent Dead: Pepi, A Scribe of Egypt," In Katherine J. Reichs (ed.), Forensic Osteology, 1986.)

Nubians were ethnically the closest people to the Egyptians. Conflict between the two were typical clashes between kingdoms without the simplistic "racial" models drawn by some 20th century writers.

Quote 1:
“The ancient Egyptians referred to a region, located south of the third cataract the Nile River, in which Nubians dwelt as Kush.. Within such context, this phrase is not a racial slur. Throughout the history of ancient Egypt there were numerous, well documented instances that celebrate Nubian-Egyptian marriages. A study of these documents, particularly those dated to both the Egyptian New Kingdom (after 1550 B.C.E.) and to Dynasty XXV and early Dynasty XXVI (about 720-640 BCE), reveals that neither spouse nor any of the children of such unions suffered discrimination at the hands of the ancient Egyptians. Indeed such marriages were never an obstacle to social, economic, or political status, provided the individuals concerned conformed to generally accepted Egyptian social standards. Furthermore, at times, certain Nubian practices, such as tattooing for women, and the unisex fashion of wearing earrings, were wholeheartedly embraced by the ancient Egyptians." (Bianchi, 2004: p. 4)


'It is an extremely difficult task to attempt to describe the Nubians during the course of Egypt's New Kingdom, because their presence appears to have virtually evaporated from the archaeological record.. The result has been described as a wholesale Nubian assimilation into Egyptian society. This assimilation was so complete that it masked all Nubian ethnic identities insofar as archaeological remains are concerned beneath the impenetrable veneer of Egypt's material; culture.. In the Kushite Period, when Nubians ruled as Pharaohs in their own right, the material culture of Dynasty XXV (about 750-655 B.C.E.) was decidedly Egyptian in character.. Nubia's entire landscape up to the region of the Third Cataract was dotted with temples indistinguishable in style and decoration from contemporary temples erected in Egypt. The same observation obtains for the smaller number of typically Egyptian tombs in which these elite Nubian princes were interred. (Bianchi, 2004, p. 99-100) 

- Robert Bianchi ( 2004). Daily Life of the Nubians. Greenwood Publishing Group


Quote 2:

"the XIIth Dynasty (1991-1786 B.C.E.) originated from the Aswan region.4 As expected, strong Nubian features and dark coloring are seen in their sculpture and relief work. This dynasty ranks as among the greatest, whose fame far outlived its actual tenure on the throne. Especially interesting, it was a member of this dynasty- that decreed that no Nehsy (riverine Nubian of the principality of Kush), except such as came for trade or diplomatic reasons, should pass by the Egyptian fortress at the southern end of the Second Nile Cataract. Why would this royal family of Nubian ancestry ban other Nubians from coming into Egyptian territory? Because the Egyptian rulers of Nubian ancestry had become Egyptians culturally; as pharaohs, they exhibited typical Egyptian attitudes and adopted typical Egyptian policies." 

- (F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archaeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989)

THE MEDJAY

"The Medjay in the ancient Egyptian documents, or Pan Grave culture Nubians, by archaeologists, because of the characteristic shallow, oval configuration of their graves. Graves of this type have been discovered over a wide geographic area from Nubia as far north into Egypt as Saqqara... That the Medjay are desert-Nubians is certain. Their presence has been detected in Old Kingdom contexts, but the Medjay are more frequently encountered as a distinct group during the Middle Kingdom when their designation, Medjay, appears among the named Egyptian foes in the Execration Texts of the Middle Kingdom. On the other hand, the Medjay like the Nubians of the C-Group culture interacted favorably with the Egyptians. In the case of the Medjay, they appear to be reliable allies and formed, therefore, part of the Egyptian army under Kamose in his campaigns against the Hyksos."
reference: (--Daily Life of the Nubians, Robert Steven Bianchi, 2004, pp. 102-103)

X-Ray analysis of some royal mummies reveal strong Nubian affinities, also confirming Egyptologist Frank Yurco's findings as to such affinities.

"The late XVII Dynasty and XVIII Dynasty royal mummies display the strongest Nubian affinities. In terms of maxillary protrusion as measured by SNA, the mean value for these Pharaohs is 84.21 comparable to that of African Americans. .. They exceed the latter in terms of ANB and SN-M Plane, but are closer to Caucasians in regards to SNB. However, the ability of SNA and SNB to predict maxillary and mandibular protrusion respectively has been questioned. Some studies suggest that measuring prognathism from the Frankfort horizontal would produce more reliable results (See RM Ricketts, RJ Schulhof, L Bagha. Orientation-sella-nasion or Frankfort horizontal. Am J Orthod 1976 Jun;69(6):648-654; also JW Moore. Variation of the sella-nasion plane and its effect on SNA and SNB. J Oral Surg. 1976 Jan; 34(1): 24-26).

In regards to head shape, the late XVII and XVIII dynasty mummies are very close to Nubian samples intermediate between the Mesolithic and Christian periods. The zygomatic arches are almost always vertical or forward and not receding."

--James Harris & Edward Wente, X-ray Atlas of the Royal Mummies (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1980)

2009 study finds the Nubians were ethnically the closest population to the ancient Egyptians not Europeans or Middle Easterners, confirming Egyptologist Frank Yurco's data from the late 1980s.
Quotes:

"The Mahalanobis D2 analysis uncovered close affinities between Nubians and Egyptians. Table 3 lists the Mahalanobis D2 distance matrix... In some cases, the statistics reveal that the Egyptian samples were more similar to Nubian samples than to other Egyptian samples (e.g. Gizeh and Hesa/Biga) and vice versa (e.g. Badari and Kerma, Naqada and Christian). These relationships are further depicted in the PCO plot (Fig. 2).

The clustering of the Nubian and Egyptian samples together supports this paper's hypothesis and demonstrates that there may be a close relationship between the two populations. This relationship is consistent with Berry and Berry (1972), among others, who noted a similarity between Nubians and Egyptians. 

Both mtDNA (Krings et al., 1999) and Y-Chromosome data (Hassan et al., 2008; Keita, 2005; Lucotte and Mercier, 2003) indicate that migrations, usually bidirectional, occurred along the Nile. Thus, the osteological material used in this analysis also supports the DNA evidence.

On this basis, many have postulated that the Badarians are relatives to South African populations (Morant, 1935 G. Morant, A study of predynastic Egyptian skulls from Badari based on measurements taken by Miss BN Stoessiger and Professor DE Derry, Biometrika 27 (1935), pp. 293–309.Morant, 1935; Mukherjee et al., 1955; Irish and Konigsberg, 2007). The archaeological evidence points to this relationship as well. (Hassan, 1986) and (Hassan, 1988) noted similarities between Badarian pottery and the Neolithic Khartoum type, indicating an archaeological affinity among Badarians and Africans from more southern regions. Furthermore, like the Badarians, Naqada has also been classified with other African groups, namely the Teita (Crichton, 1996; Keita, 1990).

Nutter (1958) noted affinities between the Badarian and Naqada samples, a feature that Strouhal (1971) attributed to their skulls possessing “Negroid” traits. Keita (1992), using craniometrics, discovered that the Badarian series is distinctly different from the later Egyptian series, a conclusion that is mostly confirmed here. In the current analysis, the Badari sample more closely clusters with the Naqada sample and the Kerma sample. However, it also groups with the later pooled sample from Dynasties XVIII–XXV.

The reoccurring notation of Kerma affinities with Egyptian groups is not entirely surprising. Kerma was an integral part of the trade between Egypt and Nubia.

However, the archaeological evidence actually showed slow change in form over time (Adams, 1977) and the biological evidence demonstrated a similar trend in the skeletal data (e.g. Godde, in press; Van Gerven et al., 1977). These conclusions negate the possibility of invasion or migration causing the shifts in time periods. The results in this study are consistent with prior work; the Meroites and X-Group cluster with the remaining Nubian population and are not differentiated.

Gene flow may account for the homogeneity across these Nubian and Egyptian groups and is consistent with the biological diffusion precept. Small geographic distances between groups allow for the exchange of genes.
The similarities uncovered by this study may be explained by another force, adaptation.. resemblance may be indicative of a common adaptation to a similar geographic location, rather than gene flow
Egypt and Nubia have similar terrain and climate. Because of the similarity between and the overlapping of the two territories that would require similar adaptations to the environment, common adaptation cannot be discounted.

Gene flow appears likely between the Egyptians and Nubians, although common adaptations to a similar environment may have also been a factor in their cranial similarities. This study does not rule out the possibility that in situ biological evolution occurred at other times not represented by the samples in this analysis. "

-- Godde K. (2009) An Examination of Nubian and Egyptian biological distances: Support for biological diffusion or in situ development? Homo. 2009;60(5):389-404.

Ancient Egyptian religion closer to the religion of African regions than to Mesopotamia, Europe or the Middle East

QUOTE(s):
Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508
"A large number of gods go back to prehistoric times. The images of a cow and star goddess (Hathor), the falcon (Horus), and the human-shaped figures of the fertility god (Min) can be traced back to that period. Some rites, such as the "running of the Apil-bull," the "hoeing of the ground," and other fertility and hunting rites (e.g., the hippopotamus hunt) presumably date from early times.. Connections with the religions in southwest Asia cannot be traced with certainty."
"It is doubtful whether Osiris can be regarded as equal to Tammuz or Adonis, or whether Hathor is related to the "Great Mother." There are closer relations with northeast African religions. The numerous animal cults (especially bovine cults and panther gods) and details of ritual dresses (animal tails, masks, grass aprons, etc) probably are of African origin. The kinship in particular shows some African elements, such as the king as the head ritualist (i.e., medicine man), the limitations and renewal of the reign (jubilees, regicide), and the position of the king's mother (a matriarchal element). Some of them can be found among the Ethiopians in Napata and Meroe, others among the Prenilotic tribes (Shilluk)."
(Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508)

Egyptian dynastic civilization based from the 'darker' south (Upper Egypt) not the north (Lower Egypt)

QUOTE(s):
"While not attempting to underestimate the contribution that Deltaic political and religious institutions made to those of a united Egypt, many Egyptologists now discount the idea that a united prehistoric kingdom of Lower Egypt ever existed."

"While communities such as Ma'adi appear to have played an important role in entrepots through which goods and ideas form south-west Asia filtered into the Nile Valley in later prehistoric times, the main cultural and political tradition that gave rise to the cultural pattern of Early Dynastic Egypt is to be found not in the north but in the south.":
The Cambridge History of Africa: Volume 1, From the Earliest Times to c. 500 BC, (Cambridge University Press: 1982), Edited by J. Desmond Clark pp. 500-509

"..the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life." (Source: Shaw, Thurston (1976) Changes in African Archaeology in the Last Forty Years in African Studies since 1945. p. 156-68. London.)

Egyptian state founded from the south, and indigenous in character. Egyptians dominated Palestine in some eras.

"What is truly unique about this state is the integration of rule over an extensive geographic region, in contrast to other contemporaneous Near Easter polities in Nubia, Mesopotamia, Palestine and the Levant. Present evidence suggests that the state which emerged by the First Dynasty had its roots in the Nagada culture of Upper Egypt, where grave types, pottery and artifacts demonstrate an evolution of form from the Predynastic to the First Dynasty, This cannot be demonstrated for the material culture of Lower Egypt, which was eventually displaced by that which originated in Upper Egypt. Hierarchical society with much social and economic differentiation, as symbolized in the Nagada II cemeteries of Upper Egypt, does not seem to have been present, then, in Lower Egypt, a fact which supports an Upper Egyptian origin for the unified state. Thus archaeological evidence cannot support earlier theories that the founders of Egyptian civilization were an invading Dynastic race from the east.."

"Egyptian contact in the 4th millennium B.C. with SW Asia is undeniable, but the effect of this contact on state formation is Egypt is less clear... The unified state which emerged in Egypt in the 3rd millenium B.C. however, was unlike the polities in Mesopotamia, the Levant, northern Syria, or Early Bronze Age Palestine- in sociopolitical organization, material culture, and belief system. There was undoubtedly heightened commercial contact with SW Asia in the 4th millennium B.C., but the Early Dynastic state which emerged in Egypt is unique and religious in character."
(Bard, Kathryn A. 1994 The Egyptian Predynastic: A Review of the Evidence. Journal of Field Archaeology 21(3):265-288.)

"From Petrie onwards, it was regularly suggested that despite the evidence of Predynastic cultures, Egyptian civilization of the 1st Dynasty appeared suddenly and must therefore have been introduced by an invading foreign 'race'. Since the 1970s however, excavations at Abydos and Hierakonpolis have clearly demonstrated the indigenous, Upper Egyptian roots of early civilization in Egypt.

Contact between northern Egypt and Palestine was overland, as evidence in northern Sinai demonstrates.. Israeli archealogists suggest that this evidence represents a commercial network established and controlled by the Egyptians as early as EBA Ia, and that this network was a major factor in the rise of the urban settlements found later in Palestine EBA II. Naomi Porat's technological study of ceramics from EBA sites in southern Palestine clearly demonstrates that in EBA Ib strata many of the pottery vessels used for food preparation were probably manufactured by Egyptian potters using Egyptian technology but local Palestinian clays. In EBA Ib strata there are also many storage jars made from Nile silt and marl wares, which must have been imported from Egypt. Not only did the Egyptians establish camps and way stations in northern Sinai, but the ceramic evidence also suggests that they established a highly organized network of settlements in southern Palestine where an Egyptian 
population was in residence."
(Ian Shaw ed. (2003) The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt By Ian Shaw. Oxford University Press, page 40-63) 

Much older scholarship shows cultural similarities between ancient Egypt and the rest of Africa, contradicting claims of Middle Eastern inspiration.

• Specific central African tool designs found at the well known Naqada, Badari and Fayum archaeological sites in Egypt (de Heinzelin 1962, Arkell and Ucko, 1956 et al). Shaw (1976) states that "the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life."
• Pottery evidence first seen in the Saharan Highlands then spreading to the Nile Valley (Flight 1973).
  Art motifs of Saharan rock paintings showing similarities to those in pharaonic art. A number of scholars suggest that these earlier artistic styles influenced later pharaonic art via Saharans leaving drier areas and moving into the Nile Valley taking their art styles with them (Mori 1964, Blanc 1964, et al)
• Earlier pioneering mummification outside Egypt. The oldest mummy in Africa is of a black Saharan child (Donadoni 1964, Blanc 1964) Frankfort (1956) suggests that it is thus possible to understand the pharaonic worldview by reference to the religious beliefs of these earlier African precursors. Attempts to suggest the root of such practices are due to Caucasoid civilizers from elsewhere are thus contradicted by the data on the ground.
• Several cultural practices of Egypt show strong similarities to an African totemic clan base. Childe (1969, 1978), Aldred (1978) and Strouhal (1971) demonstrate linkages with several African practices such as divine kingship and the king as divine rainmaker.
• Physical similarities of the early Nile valley populations with that of tropical Africans. Such connections are demonstrated in the work of numerous scholars such as Thompson and Randall Mclver 1905, Falkenburger 1947, and Strouhal 1971. The distance diagrams of Mukherjee, Rao and Trevor (1955) place the ancient Badarians genetically near 'black' tribes such as the Ashanti and the Taita. See also the "Issues of lumping under Mediterranean clusters" section above for similar older analyses.
• Serological (blood) evidence of genetic linkages. Paoli 1972 for example found a significant resemblance between ABO frequencies of dynastic Egyptians and the black northern Haratin who are held to be the probable descendants of the original Saharans (Hiernaux, 1975).
• Language similarities which include several hundred roots ascribable to African elements (UNESCO 1974)
• Ancient Egyptian origin stories ascribing origins of the gods and their ancestors to African locations to the south and west of Egypt (Davidson 1959, White 1970). 
  quote: "It may be noted that the ancient Egyptians themselves appear to have been convinced that their place of origin was African rather than Asian. They made continued reference to the land of Punt as their homeland." --(White, Jon Manchip., Ancient Egypt: Its Culture and History (Dover Publications; New Ed edition, June 1, 1970), p. 141. 
• Advanced state building and political unity in Nubia, including writing, administrative apparatus and insignia some 300 years before dynastic Egypt, and the long demonstrated interchange between Nubia and Egypt (Williams 1980)
• Newer studies (Wendorf 2001, Wilkinson 1999, et al.) confirm these older analyses. Excavations from Nabta Playa, located about 100km west of Abu Simbel for example, suggest that the Neolithic inhabitants of the region were migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa, based on cultural similarities and social complexity which is thought to be reflective of Egypt's Old Kingdom
• Other scholars (Wilkinson 1999) present similar material and cultural evidence- including similarities between predynastic Egypt and traditional African cattle-culture, typical of Southern Sudanese and East African pastoralists of today, and various cultural and artistic data such as iconography on rock art found in both Egypt and in the Sudan. 
•  

Assorted demic diffusion theories holding a mass influx of Europeans or Middle Easterners to Africa bringing cattle and agriculture to the natives is not supported by credible evidence. Indigenous development is most likely.

"Furthermore, the archaeology of northern Africa DOES NOT SUPPORT demic diffusion of farming from the Near East. The evidence presented by Wetterstrom indicates that early African farmers in the Fayum initially INCORPORATED Near Eastern domesticates INTO an INDIGENOUS foraging strategy, and only OVER TIME developed a dependence on horticulture. This is inconsistent with in-migrating farming settlers, who would have brought a more ABRUPT change in subsistence strategy. "The same archaeological pattern occurs west of Egypt, where domestic animals and, later, grains were GRADUALLY adopted after 8000 yr B.P. into the established pre-agricultural Capsian culture, present across the northern Sahara since 10,000 yr B.P. From this continuity, it has been argued that the pre-food-production Capsian peoples spoke languages ancestral to the Berber and/or Chadic branches of Afroasiatic, placing the proto-Afroasiatic period distinctly before 10,000 yr B.P."  | Image gallery | Articles | Google

Source: The Origins of Afroasiatic
Christopher Ehret, S. O. Y. Keita, Paul Newman;, and Peter Bellwood
Science 3 December 2004: Vol. 306. no. 5702, p. 1680

Early Nile Valley Farmers From El-Badari

"National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution

Male Badarian crania were analyzed using the generalized distance of Mahalanobis in a comparative analysis with other African and European series from the Howells?s database. The study was carried out to examine the affinities of the Badarians to evaluate, in preliminary fashion, a demic diffusion hypothesis that postulates that horticulture and the Afroasiatic language family were brought ultimately from southern Europe. (The assumption was made that the southern Europeans would be more similar to the central and northern Europeans than to any indigenous African populations.) The Badarians show a greater affinity to indigenous Africans while not being identical. This suggests that the Badarians were more affiliated with local and an indigenous African population than with Europeans.
(S.O.Y. Keita. "Early Nile Valley Farmers from El-Badari: Aboriginals or "European" Agro-Nostratic Immigrants? Craniometric Affinities Considered With Other Data". Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 191-208 (2005)

The Sahara and the Sudan seem to have provided a major source for the genesis of Egyptian civilization contributing many of its unique elements.

QUOTE(s):
"a critical factor in the rise of social complexity and the subsequent emergence of the Egyptian state in Upper Egypt (Hoffman 1979; Hassan 1988). If so, Egypt owes a major debt to those early pastoral groups in the Sahara; they may have provided Egypt with many of those features that still distinguish it from its neighbors to the east."
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 17, 97-123 (1998), "Nabta Playa and Its Role in Northeastern African Prehistory," Fred Wendorf and Romuald Schild.

"Over the last two decades, numerous contemporary (Khartoum Neolithic) sites and cemeteries have been excavated in the Central Sudan.. The most striking point to emerge is the overall similarity of early neolithic developments inhabitation, exchange, material culture and mortuary customs in the Khartoum region to those underway at the same time in the Egyptian Nile Valley, far to the north." (Wengrow, David (2003) "Landscapes of Knowledge, Idioms of Power: The African Foundations of Ancient Egyptian Civilization Reconsidered," in Ancient Egypt in Africa, David O'Connor and Andrew Reid, eds. Ancient Egypt in Africa. London: University College London Press, 2003, pp. 119-137)

Islamic learning responsible for much advance in Western science

"Moreover, amongst the Muslims, only a number of such scientists were Arabs; most were instead Turks, Iranians, Spanish Muslims, Berbers, Kurds...thus a myriad of people and origins brought under the mantel of Islam, a religion open to all who sought to, and excelled in learning."

"In a time when the movement of ideas was at a relative standstill, 'the Muslims came along with a new outlook, with a sense of enquiry into the old, and finally to a point where Western Europe could take over this thoroughly examined knowledge and endow its ripeness with a completely fresh approach of its own." 
- Martin Levey

"First and foremost, the learning recovered, or found, or available, at that Renaissance of 16th-17th (another illogically based notion of western history) bears no resemblance to anything left by the Greeks. The mathematics, the medicine, the optics, the chemistry, the astronomy, geography, mechanics etc, of the 16th is centuries ahead of that left by the Greeks. Any person with the faintest knowledge of any such subjects can check this by looking at what was left by the Greeks and compare it with what was available in the 16th century, and even with what was available centuries up to the 14th. Anyone can thus question this notion of Greek learning recovered during the Renaissance.

Furthermore, even supposing the Greeks had made some contribution in some of the sciences cited, what is the Greek contribution to the invention of paper, printing, farming techniques, irrigation, windmills, the compass, industrial production, glass making, cotton production, the system of numerals, trade mechanisms, paper money, the cheque? Modern finance as a whole, gardens, flowers, art of living, urban design, personal hygiene, and many more manifestations that compose our modern civilization?"
 — Dr. Salah Zaimeche. Multi-ethnic Science Community with Islam. (2002). by: Foundation for Science Technology and Civilisation.

Image gallery -http://www.africanamericanculturalcenterpalmcoast.org/historyafrican/imagegallery.htm

"Sub-Saharan" genetic elements found as far afield as the Turkish and Greek regions

F. X. Ricaut, M. Waelkens. (2008). Cranial Discrete Traits in a Byzantine Population and Eastern Mediterranean Population Movements Human Biology - Volume 80, Number 5, October 2008, pp. 535-564

"A late Pleistocene-early Holocene northward migration (from Africa to the Levant and to Anatolia) of these populations has been hypothesized from skeletal data (Angel 1972, 1973; Brace 2005) and from archaeological data, as indicated by the probable Nile Valley origin of the "Mesolithic" (epi-Paleolithic) Mushabi culture found in the Levant (Bar Yosef 1987). This migration finds some support in the presence in Mediterranean populations (Sicily, Greece, southern Turkey, etc.; Patrinos et al.; Schiliro et al. 1990) of the Benin sickle cell haplotype. This haplotype originated in West Africa and is probably associated with the spread of malaria to southern Europe through an eastern Mediterranean route (Salares et al. 2004) following the expansion of both human and mosquito populations brought about by the advent of the Neolithic transition (Hume et al 2003; Joy et al. 2003; Rich et al 1998). This northward migration of northeastern African populations carrying sub-Saharan biological elements is concordant with the morphological homogeneity of the Natufian populations (Bocquentin 2003), which present morphological affinity with sub-Saharan populations (Angel 1972; Brace et al. 2005). In addition, the Neolithic revolution was assumed to arise in the late Pleistocene Natufians and subsequently spread into Anatolia and Europe (Bar-Yosef 2002), and the first Anatolian farmers, Neolithic to Bronze Age Mediterraneans and to some degree other Neolithic-Bronze Age Europeans, show morphological affinities with the Natufians (and indirectly with sub-Saharan populations; Angel 1972; Brace et al 2005), in concordance with a process of demic diffusion accompanying the extension of the Neolithic revolution (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994)."

"Following the numerous interactions among eastern Mediterranean and Levantine populations and regions, caused by the introduction of agriculture from the Levant into Anatolia and southeastern Europe, there was, beginning in the Bronze Age, a period of increasing interactions in the eastern Mediterranean, mainly during the Greek, Roman, and Islamic periods. These interactions resulted in the development of trading networks, military campaigns, and settler colonization. Major changes took place during this period, which may have accentuated or diluted the sub-Saharan components of earlier Anatolian populations. The second option seems more likely, because even though the population from Sagalassos territory was interacting with northeastern African and Levantine populations [trade relationships with Egypt (Arndt et al. 2003), involvement of thousands of mercenaries from Pisidia (Sagalassos region) in the war around 300 B.C. between the Ptolemaic kingdom (centered in Egypt) and the Seleucid kingdom (Syria/Mesopotamia/Anatolia), etc.], the major cultural and population interactions involving the Anatolian populations since the Bronze Age occurred with the Mediterranean populations form southeastern Europe, as suggested from historical and genetic data."

""In this context it is likely that Bronze Age events may have facilitated the southward diffusion of populations carrying northern and central European biological elements and may have contributed to some degree of admixture between northern and central Europeans and Anatolians, and on a larger scale, between northeastern Mediterraneans and Anatolians. Even if we do not know which populations were involved, historical and archaeological data suggest, for instance, the 2nd millennium B.C. Minoan and later Mycenaean occupation of Anatolian coast, the arrival in Anatolia in the early 1st millennium B.C. of the Phrygians coming from Thrace, and later the arrival of settlers from Macedonia in Pisidia and in the Sagalassos territory (under Seleucid rule). The coming of the Dorians from Northern Greece and central Europe (the Dorians are claimed to be one of the main groups at the origin of the ancient Greeks) may have also brought northern and central European biological elements into southern populations. Indeed, the Dorians may have migrated southward to the Peloponnese, across the southern Aegean and Create, and later reached Asia Minor."

Berber populations are extremely diverse. "Berber" is a language group, not a "racial" one. Undermining claims of massive European or Asiatic migrations into Africa to create "white Berbers" throughout  the continent, modern DNA studies show that one of the distinctive "Berber" peoples, the Tuareg, show little evidence of the purported "Eurasian" influx.

"The mitochondrial data of the Northwest African populations (Berber from Morocco and Algeria, Moroccans, West-Saharans, Mauritanians, Tuareg) show a mosaic composition of mtDNA types, with a pronounced gradient of sub-Saharan lineages from north to south: at the one extreme, the Berbers from Morocco have a predominantly European (Iberian) affinity, while at the other extreme, the Tuareg are closely related to sub-Saharan West Africans as represented by several Senegalese groups in this study, whereas the West-Saharans and Mauritanians are somewhat intermediate. It is remarkable that the Tuareg bear little mitochondrial resemblance to the Berber populations, although they speak a Berber language."
-- Rando et al. 1998 [mtDNA analysis of Northwest African populations reveals genetic exchanges with European, Near Eastern and sub-Saharan populations] Ann Hum Genet. 1998 Nov;62(Pt 6):531-50.

"It is curious that, at least for the Tuareg maternal gene pool, there are no mtDNA lineages connected with the Neolithic expansion from the Near East despite being present in considerable frequencies in other North African populations."
-- Pereira et. al. "Linking the sub-Saharan and West Eurasian gene pools: maternal and paternal heritage of the Tuareg nomads from the African Sahel"

Recent studies of the Siwa Berber population in Egypt, puts them closer to sub-Saharan populations that other populations. {quote:}
"Admixture values based on Alu/STR combinations indicate that sub-Saharan flow in North Africa ranged from 16% (North East Moroccan Berbers) to 35% (remaining samples) with the exception of Siwa berbers who showed the highest admixture value (51%)"
-- --Gonzalez et al on the Siwa (Egyptian Oasis) Berbers. "Population Relationships in the Mediterranean Revealed by Autosomal Genetic Data" 2009, Amer Jrn Phy. Anth.

Berber populations in Egypt more related to tropical Africans than Europeans or Middle Easterners based on mtDNA.
"The mitochondrial DNA variation of 295 Berber-speakers from Morocco (Asni, Bouhria and Figuig) and the Egyptian oasis of Siwa was evaluated.. A clear and significant genetic differentiation between the Berbers from Maghreb and Egyptian Berbers was also observed. The first are related to European populations as shown by haplogroup H1 and V frequencies, whereas the latter share more affinities with East African and Nile Valley populations as indicated by the high frequency of M1 and the presence of L0a1, L3i, L4*, and L4b2 lineages. Moreover, haplogroup U6 was not observed in Siwa. We conclude that the origins and maternal diversity of Berber populations are old and complex, and these communities bear genetic characteristics resulting from various events of gene flow with surrounding and migrating populations."
-- Coudray et al. (2008). The Complex and Diversified Mitochondrial Gene Pool of Berber Populations. Annals of Human Genetics. Volume 73 Issue 2, Pages 196 - 214

2010 Berber mtDNA study finds Berber roots foundational in Africa - Frigi 2010 
"African roots of the Berber speaking populations" 

"Our objective is to highlight the age of sub-Saharan gene flows in North Africa and particularly in Tunisia. Therefore we analyzed in a broad phylogeographic context sub-Saharan mtDNA haplogroups of Tunisian Berber populations considered representative of ancient settlement. More than 2,000 sequences were collected from the literature, and networks were constructed. The results show that the most ancient haplogroup is L3*, which would have been introduced to North Africa from eastern sub-Saharan populations around 20,000 years ago. Our results also point to a less ancient western sub-Saharan gene flow to Tunisia, including haplogroups L2a and L3b. This conclusion points to an ancient African gene flow to Tunisia before 20,000 years BP. These findings parallel the more recent findings of both archaeology and linguistics on the prehistory of Africa. The present work suggests that sub-Saharan contributions to North Africa have experienced several complex population processes after the occupation of the region by anatomically modern humans. Our results reveal that Berber speakers have a foundational biogeographic root in Africa and that deep African lineages have continued to evolve in supra-Saharan Africa."

-- Ancient Local Evolution of African mtDNA Haplogroups in Tunisian Berber Populations
Frigi et al. Human Biology (August 2010 (82:4)

Evolution shows that the original human skin color is dark and humans until quite recently had dark skin, until they migrated from the tropics.

"The evolution of a naked, darkly pigmented integument occurred early in the evolution of the genus Homo. A dark epidermis protected sweat glands from UV-induced injury, thus insuring the integrity of somatic thermoregulation. Of greater significance to individual reproductive success was that highly melanized skin protected against UV-induced photolysis of folate.. As hominids migrated outside of the tropics, varying degrees of depigmentation evolved in order to permit UVB-induced synthesis of previtamin D3. The lighter color of female skin may be required to permit synthesis of the relatively higher amounts of vitamin D3 necessary during pregnancy and lactation."
-- Jablonski, N (2000). The evolution of human skin coloration. Journal of Human Evolution 39, 57–106

"Humans skin is the most visible aspect of the human phenotype. It is distinguished mainly by its naked appearance, greatly enhanced abilities to dissipate body heat through sweating, and the great range of genetically determined skin colors present within a single species. Many aspects of the evolution of human skin and skin color can be reconstructed using comparative anatomy, physiology, and genomics. Enhancement of thermal sweating was a key innovation in human evolution that allowed maintenance of homeostasis (including constant brain temperature) during sustained physical activity in hot environments. Dark skin evolved pari passu with the loss of body hair and was the original state for the genus Homo. Melanin pigmentation is adaptive and has been maintained by natural selection."
-- Jablonski N (2004)THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN SKIN AND SKIN COLOR. Annual Review of Anthropology Vol. 33: 585-623

Important African mtDNA lineages, such as L3, which gave rise to mutations in Asia, were already undergoing expansion and mutation within Africa well PRIOR to the out of Africa. The rise of outside haplogroups such as M or N are a continuation of a process already begun inside Africa.

Past population size can be estimated from modern genetic diversity using coalescent theory. Estimates of ancestral human population dynamics in sub-Saharan Africa can tell us about the timing and nature of our first steps towards colonizing the globe. Here, we combine Bayesian coalescent inference with a dataset of 224 complete human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences to estimate effective population size through time for each of the four major African mtDNA haplogroups (L0–L3). We find evidence of three distinct demographic histories underlying the four haplogroups. Haplogroups L0 and L1 both show slow, steady exponential growth from 156 to 213 kyr ago. By contrast, haplogroups L2 and L3 show evidence of substantial growth beginning 12–20 and 61–86 kyr ago, respectively. These later expansions may be associated with contemporaneous environmental and/or cultural changes. The timing of the L3 expansion—8–12 kyr prior to the emergence of the first non-African mtDNA lineages—together with high L3 diversity in eastern Africa, strongly supports the proposal that the human exodus from Africa and subsequent colonization of the globe was prefaced by a major expansion within Africa, perhaps driven by some form of cultural innovation.

--Atkinson, et al (2019). Bayesian coalescent inference of major human mitochondrial DNA haplogroup expansions in Africa. Proc Biol Sci. 276(1655):367-73.

2007 DNA study finds that ancient mtDNA haplogroups M and N had an African origin, and expanded from a possible location in East Africa to areas within Africa and the rest of the world.

"Studies of human mitochondrial (mt) DNA genomes demonstrate that the root of the human phylogenetic tree occurs in Africa. Although 2 mtDNA lineages with an African origin (haplogroups M and N) were the progenitors of all non-African haplogroups, macrohaplogroup L (including haplogroups L0-L6) is limited to sub-Saharan Africa. Several L haplogroup lineages occur most frequently in eastern Africa (e.g., L0a, L0f, L5, and L3g), but some are specific to certain ethnic groups, such as haplogroup lineages L0d and L0k that previously have been found nearly exclusively among southern African "click" speakers. Few studies have included multiple mtDNA genome samples belonging to haplogroups that occur in eastern and southern Africa but are rare or absent elsewhere. This lack of sampling in eastern Africa makes it difficult to infer relationships among mtDNA haplogroups or to examine events that occurred early in human history. We sequenced 62 complete mtDNA genomes of ethnically diverse Tanzanians, southern African Khoisan speakers, and Bakola Pygmies and compared them with a global pool of 226 mtDNA genomes.. We propose that a large and diverse human population has persisted in eastern Africa and that eastern Africa may have been an ancient source of dispersion of modern humans both within and outside of Africa."
-- Gonder, M, et al (2007). Whole mtDNA Genome Sequence Analysis of Ancient African Lineages. Mol Biol Evol. 24(3):757-68.

Ancient Egyptian language is part of the Afrasian or Afroasiatic group which has its origins in Africa, and together with other archaeological evidence firmly makes it an African culture. Acording to mainstream research:

QUOTE(s):

"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." (Christopher Ehret (1996) "Ancient Egyptian as an African Language, Egypt as an African Culture." In Egypt in Africa Egypt in Africa, Theodore Celenko (ed), Indiana University Press)

"Ancient Egypt belongs to a language group known as 'Afroasiatic' (formerly called Hamito-Semitic) and its closest relatives are other north-east African languages from Somalia to Chad. Egypt's cultural features, both material and ideological and particularly in the earliest phases, show clear connections with that same broad area. In sum, ancient Egypt was an African culture, developed by African peoples, who had wide ranging contacts in north Africa and western Asia." (Morkot, Robert (2005) The Egyptians: An Introduction. Routledge. p. 10)

Bogus "race" wars in ancient Egypt debunked

Dental
"It is our view that post- Mesolithic changes in ancient Nubian crania are best explained by in situ evolution, fueled by dietary changes." 
-- Goodman, et al (1986) Post-Mesolithic Craniofacial and Dental Evolution in Sudanese Nubia. Science in Egyptology, R. David, ed. Pp. 201-212. Manches Univ Press, 2001

Linguistics
Using primarily linguistic evidence, and taking into account recent archaeology at sites such as Hierakonpolis/Nekhen, as well as the symbolic meaning of objects such as sceptres and headrests in Ancient Egyptian and contemporary African cultures, this paper traces the geographical location and movements of early peoples in and around the Nile Valley. It is possible from this overview of the data to conclude that the limited conceptual vocabulary shared by the ancestors of contemporary Chadic-speakers (therefore also contemporary Cushitic-speakers), contemporary Nilotic-speakers and Ancient Egyptian-speakers suggests that the earliest speakers of the Egyptian language could be located to the south of Upper Egypt or, earlier, in the Sahara. The marked grammatical and lexicographic affinities of Ancient Egyptian with Chadic are well-known, and consistent Nilotic cultural, religious and political patterns are detectable in the formation of the first Egyptian kingships. The question these data raise is the articulation between the languages and the cultural patterns of this pool of ancient African societies from which emerged Predynastic Egypt.

"It is possible from this overview of the data to conclude that the limited conceptual vocabulary shared by the ancestors of contemporary Chadic-speakers (therefore also contemporary Cushitic-speakers), contemporary Nilotic-speakers and Ancient Egyptian-speakers suggests that the earliest speakers of the Egyptian language could be located to the south of Upper Egypt (Diakonoff 1998) or, earlier, in the Sahara (Wendorf 2004), where Takács (1999, 47) suggests their ‘long co-existence’ can be found. In addition, it is consistent with this view to suggest that the northern border of their homeland was further than the Wadi Howar proposed by Blench (1999, 2001), which is actually its southern border. Neither Chadics nor Cushitics existed at this time, but their ancestors lived in a homeland further north than the peripheral countries that they inhabited thereafter, to the south-west, in a Niger-Congo environment, and to the south-east, in a Nilo-Saharan environment, where they interacted and innovated in terms of language. From this perspective, the Upper Egyptian cultures were an ancient North East African ‘periphery at the crossroads’, as suggested by Dahl and Hjort-af-Ornas of the Beja (Dahl and Hjort-af-Ornas 2006).

The most likely scenario could be this: some of these Saharo-Nubian populations spread southwards to Wadi Howar, Ennedi and Darfur; some stayed in the actual oases where they joined the inhabitants; and others moved towards the Nile, directed by two geographic obstacles, the western Great Sand Sea and the southern Rock Belt. Their slow perambulations led them from the area of Sprinkle Mountain (Gebel Uweinat) to the east – Bir Sahara, Nabta Playa, Gebel Ramlah, and Nekhen/Hierakonpolis (Upper Egypt), and to the north-east by way of Dakhla Oasis to Abydos (Middle Egypt)."--Anselin (2009)

--Dr. Alain Anselin (University of Antilles-Guyane) Some notes about an early African pool of cultures from which emerged Egyptian civilization.
In: Egypt in its African Context. 2009. Proceedings of the conference held at the Manchester Museum, University of Manchester, ENgland. Karen Exell (ed). BAR International Series 2204 2011
Archaeopress Publishers of British Archaeological Reports

Race concept
"The belief that human genetic diversity on a global scale can be reduced to simple statistical partitions has limited our understanding of diversity and thwarted training in biological anthropology. For example, a current textbook (Boyd and Silk 2000) states, “Geneticists computed the amount of variation in these characters within each local group, among groups within each race, and among the races. They found that there is much more genetic variation within local groups than there is among local groups or among races themselves. Differences within local groups account for about 85% of all the variation in the human species. To put this another way, suppose a malevolent extraterrestrial wiped out the entire human species except for one local group, which it preserved in an extraterrestrial zoo. The alien could pick any local group at random—the Efe, the Inuit, the citizens of Ames, Iowa, or the people of Patagonia—and then wipe out the rest of the humans on the planet. This group would still contain on average 85% of the genetic variation that exists in the entire human species.” However, our analysis indicates that it would make a great difference which group is chosen. For example, no gene diversity would be lost if the Sokoto were chosen while nearly one-third would be lost by choosing the subpopulation from Papua New Guinea. It is important to point out here that the rich genetic diversity within Africans is a robust finding that is not peculiar to the loci or specific samples analyzed here. Recently, Yu et al. (2002) assayed nucleotide substitutions in 50 randomly chosen noncoding DNA segments (~500 base pairs) in 30 individuals: 10 Africans, 10 Europeans, and 10 Asians. The subjects within each continent were chosen widely from dispersed geographic locations. Interestingly, nucleotide diversity was greater within the Africans than within either Asians or Europeans. More importantly, the nucleotide diversity was greater within Africans than between Europeans and Asians."

--Human Genetic Diversity and the Nonexistence of Biological Races. Jeffrey C. Long1 and Rick A. Kittles2 (2003). Human Biology, v75, no.4. pp. 449-471

quote: "Now, with more genetic data and more populations sampled, we are able to revisit the race problem with greater accuracy. Recently, my colleagues and I have tested the usefulness of race as a way to describe genetic differences among populations by contrasting the results of racial classification with those from generalized hierarchical models (Long et al. 2009). Race fails! Figure 3 diagrams the contrast for a data set consisting of complete DNA sequences for 64 autosomal loci (38,000 bp total). Four resequenced individuals represent each population. A summary of the major problems with using race are as follows. First, imposing the classically defined race structure on populations causes us to estimate less diversity for the species as a whole than does allowing all populations to link back to a common base population in an unrestricted hierarchy. Second, using the race pattern causes us to estimate excess diversity within non-sub- Saharan African populations, but it estimates a deficit of diversity within sub-Saharan African populations. Third, the supposition of races forces all continental populations to diverge equally from a single ancestral node, whereas an unrestricted hierarchy places the basal split within Africa. Fourth, in the classical race framework European and Asian populations diverge from African populations independently, but the unrestricted hierarchy shows that European and East Asian populations link together before either links to sub-Saharan Africans..

--Update to Long and Kittles’s “Human Genetic Diversity and the Nonexistence of Biological Races” (2003): Fixation on an Index. Jeffrey C. Long1 (2010). Human Biology, v81, no5-6, pp. 799-803

Limb proportions
"Limb length proportions in males from Maadi and Merimde group them with African rather than European populations. Mean femur length in males from Maadi was similar to that recorded at Byblos and the early Bronze Age male from Kabri, but mean tibia length in Maadi males was 6.9cm longer than that at Byblos. At Merimde both bones were longer than at the other sites shown, but again, the tibia was longer proportionate to femurs than at Byblos (Fig 6.2), reinforcing the impression of an African rather than Levantine affinity."
-- Smith, P. (2002) The palaeo-biological evidence for admixture between populations in the southern Levant and Egypt in the fourth to third millennia BCE. in E.C.M van den Brink and TE Levy, eds. Egypt and the Levant: interrelations from the 4th through the 3rd millenium, BCE. Leicester Univ Press: 2002, 118-28

"These same log shape variables were subjected to two forms of cluster analysis: neighbor-joining (NJ) and unweighted pair-group method using averages (UPGMA) tree analysis. Figure 8 is the NJ tree. It has two main branches—a long and linear body build branch that includes the Egyptians, Sub-Saharan Africans (except for the Pygmies), and African-Americans and a second, less linear body form branch that includes the Inuit, Europeans, Euro-Americans, Puebloans, Nubians, and Pygmies. Note that the Nubians used in this study are thought by some to represent an immigrant population from Europe or Western Asia [see Holliday (1995)]."
--Holiday, T. (2010) Body proportions of circumpolar peoples as evidenced from skeletal data. AmerJrPhyAntrho, 142: 2. 287-302

Strong genetic components of limb proportions
"Human body proportions also appear to have a substantial genetic component. Differences in body proportions between Eskimos and non-Eskimos, for example, appear early in ontogeny (Guilbeault & Morazain, 1965; Y’Edynak, 1978). The low sitting height/stature ratio of Australian aborigines is present early in development (Eveleth & Tanner, 1976). Schultz (1923, 1926) found significant differences between African–American and Euroamerican fetuses in brachial and crural indices, length of the legs relative to the trunk, and relative pelvic width. The fact that these ‘‘racial’’ features are manifested early in fetal life indicates strong genetic encoding of body and limb proportions. 

In addition, body shape in human appears to be more resistant to nutritional deficiency or disease than is body size (Stini, 1975; Eveleth & Tanner, 1976; Frisancho & Housh, 1988; Martorell et al., 1988). Body proportions of human migrants, for example, are conservative; despite often exhibiting a marked increase in stature, children of migrants tend to retain the body proportions of their ancestral homeland, and do not develop the proportions of their new neighbors (Ito, 1942; Lasker, 1946; Trotter & Gleser, 1952, 1958; Greulich, 1957; Eveleth, 1966; Froehlich, 1970; Benoist, 1971, 1975; Hamill et al., 1973; Martorell et al., 1988; Feldesman et al., 1990). Also, while secular trends in body shape have been documented, they do not negate the value of body proportions as short-term phylogenetic markers. For example, in a long-term study of secular trends in body shape in Japan (Tanner et al., 1982), the authors note that nutritional differences alone cannot explain all of the global variability in body shape. Rather, they note that much of the difference seen today in body shape between broad geographic groups is genetically-driven. 

Migration within a larger time framework took place ca. 15,000–18,000 BP, when the first Asian populations crossed the Bering Strait, ultimately founding the modern Amerindian population. Despite having as much as 18,000 years of selection in environments as diverse as those found in the Old World, body mass and proportion clines in the Americas are less steep than those in the Old World (Newman, 1953; Roberts, 1978). .. This suggests that body proportions tend not to be very plastic under natural conditions, and that selective rates on body shape are such that evolution in these features is long-term."
--Holliday T. (1997). Body proportions in Late Pleistocene Europe and modern human origins. Jrnl Hum Evo. 32: 423-447

Modern Egyptians cluster with Sub-Saharan Africans on several counts
QUOTE:

"The biological characteristics of modern
Egyptians show a north-south cline, reflecting
their geographic location between sub-Saharan
Africa and the Levant. This is expressed in DNA,
blood groups, serum proteins and genetic
disorders (Filon 1996; Hammer et al. 1998; Krings
et al. 1999). They can also be expressed in
phenotypic characteristics that can be identified
in teeth and bones (Crichton 1966; Froment 1992;
Keita 1996). These characteristics include head
form, facial and nasal characteristics, jaw
relationships, tooth size, morphology and
upper/lower limb proportions. In all these
features, Modern Egyptians resemble Sub-Saharan
Africans (Howells 1989, Keita 1995)."

-- Smith, P. (2002) The palaeo-biological 
evidence for admixture between populations in the
southern Levant and Egypt in the fourth to third 
millennia BCE. in E.C.M van den Brink and TE Levy, eds. 
Egypt and the Levant: interrelations from the 4th through the 
3rd millenium, BCE. Leicester Univ Press: 2002, 118-28

Data on tropical limb proportions of many pharaohs
"It can be seen that all the pharonic values, including 
those of 'Smakhare', lie much closer to the negro 
curve than to the white curve. Since stature 
equations only work satisfactorily in the individuals to 
whom they have applied have similar proportions to 
the population group from which they are derived, this 
provides justification for using negro equations for
estimating stature from single bones of the New 
Kingdom pharoahs, renforcing the previous findings of 
Robins (1983). Furthermore, the Troller and Gleser 
white equations for the femur, tibia and humerus yield 
stature values that have a much wider spread than 
those from negro equations with mean values that are 
unacceptably large."

--Robins and Schute. The Physical Proportions and Stature 
of New Kingdom Pharaohs," Journal of Human Evolution 12 
(1983), 455-465

and

[quote]

"Robins (1983) and Robins & Shute
(1983) have shown that more consistent
results are obtained from ancient
Egyptian male skeletons if Trotter &
Gleser formulae for negro are used,
rather than those for whites which have
always been applied in the past. .. their
physical proportions were more like
modern negroes than those of modern
whites, with limbs that were relatively
long compared with the trunk, and distal
segments that were long compared with
the proximal segments. If ancient
Egyptian males had what may be termed
negroid proportions, it seems reasonable
that females did likewise."
From:
(Robins G, Shute CCD. 1986.
Predynastic Egyptian stature and
physical proportions. Hum Evol
1:313–324. Ruff CB. 1994.)


"Estimates of living stature, based on
X-ray measurements applied to the
Trotter & Gleser (1958) negro equations
for the femur, tibia and humerus, have
been made for ancient Egyptian kings
belonging to the 18th and 19th dynasties.
The corresponding equations for whites
give values for stature that are
unsatisfactorily high. The view that
Thutmose III was excessively short is
proved to be a myth. It is shown that the
limbs of the pharaohs, like those of other
Ancient Egyptians, had negroid
characteristics, in that the distal
segments were relatively long in
comparison with the proximal segments.
An exception was Ramesses II, who
appears to have had short legs below the
knees."

--Robins and Schute. The Physical
Proportions and Stature of New
Kingdom Pharaohs," Journal of Human
Evolution 12 (1983), 455-465

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

Early populations of the Cretan/Greek area (the Aegean) were of mixed character with some skeletal remains displaying so-called "Negroid" elements

"The inhabitants of the Aegean area in the Bronze Age may have been much like many people in the Mediterranean basin today, short and slight of build with dark hair and eyes and sallow complexions. Skeletons show that the population of the Aegean was already mixed by Neolithic times, and various facial types, some with delicate features and pointed noses, others pug-nosed, almost negroid, are depicted in wall paintings from the 16th century BC. But men and women are always represented with black hair, and the presence of fair-haired people is not attested in the Aegean until later Greek times. Some very tall men buried in the Mycenaean shaft graves may be descendants of invaders who entered the mainland at the end of the 3rd millennium. A few skeletons from the single graves that appear on the mainland at the very end of the Bronze Age suggest the presence of new people from the north."
--- Sinclair Hood, The Home of the Heroes: The Aegean Before the Greeks (1967) also found in Encyclopedia Britannica 1990 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 20: Greek and Roman Civilizations

Cro-Magnon wrapup

"Similarly, Cro-Magnon skeletons exhibit a
warm-adapted body stature, not the cold-adapted
formula seen in Neanderthals. This character may
be taken as strong evidence of the replacement
of Neanderthals and supports the single African
origin hypothesis."
--Roger Lewin. 2004. Human evolution: an illustrated introduction.


"the oft-repeated European feeling that the
Cro-Magnons are ‘‘us’’ (47) is more a product of
anthropological folklore than the result of the
metric data available from the skeletal remains."

--BRace et al, 2005. The Questionable Contribution...

"Nor does the picture get any clearer when we
move on to the Cro-Magnons, the presumed
ancestors of modern Europeans. Some were more
like present-day Australians or Africans, judged
by objective anatomical categorizations, as is
the case with some early modern skulls from the
Upper Cave at Zhoukoudian in China."
--(Christopher Stringer, Robin McKie (1998). African Exodus; The Origins Of Modern Humanity. (Pg. 162)

Keita on limb proportions
QUOTE:

"Limb ratios are of interest because of limb ratios'
general relationship to climate per Allen's rule.
Mammals (including Homo sapiens sapiens) tend to
have shorter distal members of the extremities in colder
climates; this is viewed as being adaptive. Hence the
shin (tibia)/thigh (femur) index in Europeans would on
the average be expected to differ from an equatorial
population. Indeed, this is one line of evidence used to
support the idea that at least some, if not most, Upper
Paleolithic (anatomically modern) 'Europeans" were
immigrants from warmer areas (Trinkhaus 1981). Of
course variation is expected in any region or population.

Trinkhaus (1981) provides upper and lower extremity
distal/proximal member ratios for numerous
populations, including a predynastic Egyptian and
Mediterranean European series. The predynastic
Egyptian values plotted near tropical Africans, not
Mediterranean Europeans."
------ ENDQUOTE ----------

--S. Keita, (1993). Studies and Comments on Ancient
Egyptian Biological Relationships. History in Africa.
Vol. 20, (1993), pp. 129-154

tropical characteristics of early europeans "Note that there is little overlap between the European Neanderthals and any of the Gravettian individuals. Only the pathological Dolni Vestonice 15 and Paglicci 25 fall within the Neanderthal range.. The summary statistics for the radius length/trunk height index are found in Table 12.4. HEre too the recent Europeans are characterized by relatively low index values, reflective of shorter radii, and the sub-Saharan Africans are characterized by higher indices, indicative of longer radii. The Neanderthals fall very near the recent European mean, and the Gravettian sample mean falls just below the recent sub-Saharan African mean. With the exception of Dolni Vestonice 13, the other Dolni Vestonice individuals appear more "African-like" in their relative radius lengths... Figure 12.6 is a graphical representation of the radius length/trunk height indices among the fossils. Once again, the European Neanderthals evince the lowest indices, and for this index there is no overlap between Gravettian sample amd the Neanderthals- even the pathological DOnli Vestonice 15 individual falls below their range. Dolni Vestonice 15 has the lowest radius/trunk height index of the Gravettian sample, and DOlni Vestonice 3 and 13 fall toward the low end of the GRavettian range; as with the humerus, Paglicci 25 and Barma GRande 2 evince shorter radii, than do the remainder of the nonpathological Gravettian sample..." --Erik Trinkaus, Jiøí Svoboda. 2005. Early modern human evolution in Central Europe: the people of Dolní Vestonice..	Tropical Africans the most diverse peoples in the world The "African climate" incorporates diverse temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elements in a wide range of environments -- from deserts, to high altitude snowy zones, to jungle, to savannah, to mixed woodlands, to higher altitude cloud forest, and all that is WITHIN the TROPICAL zone of Africa. [IMG]http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/3075/nasalnoseshapetropicalc.jpg[/IMG] --------------------------------------------------------- [b]And just as tropical African environments are diverse, so are tropical African peoples as credible scientists note time and time again.[/b] QUOTES: [b]Most phenotypic variation[/b] "Both methods for estimating regional diversity show sub-Saharan Africa to have the highest levels of phenotypic variation, consistent with many genetic studies." --- Relethford, John "Global Analysis of Regional Differences in Craniometric Diversity and Population Substructure". Human Biology - Volume 73, Number 5, October 2001, pp. 629-636) [b]Most genetic variation[/b] "Africa contains tremendous cultural, linguistic and genetic diversity, and has more than 2,000 distinct ethnic groups and languages.. Studies using mitochondrial (mt)DNA and nuclear DNA markers consistently indicate that Africa is the most genetically diverse region of the world." ---Tishkoff SA, Williams SM., Genetic analysis of African populations: human evolution and complex disease. Nature Reviews Genetics. 2002 Aug (8):611-21.) [b]Most skin color variation[/b] "Previous studies of genetic and craniometric traits have found higher levels of within-population diversity in sub-Saharan Africa compared to other geographic regions. This study examines regional differences in within-population diversity of human skin color. Published data on skin reflectance were collected for 98 male samples from eight geographic regions: sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, Europe, West Asia, Southwest Asia, South Asia, Australasia, and the New World. Regional differences in local within-population diversity were examined using two measures of variability: the sample variance and the sample coefficient of variation. For both measures, the average level of within-population diversity is higher in sub-Saharan Africa than in other geographic regions. This difference persists even after adjusting for a correlation between within-population diversity and distance from the equator. Though affected by natural selection, skin color variation shows the same pattern of higher African diversity as found with other traits." -- Relethford JH.(2000). Human skin color diversity is highest in sub-Saharan African populations. Hum Biol. 2000 Oct;72(5):773-80.)
	genetic divergencve in africa [quote]`"population divergence times in sub-Saharan Africa predate the emergence of modern humans outside Africa, raising the possibility that modern humans dispersed from a structured African population. Populations split times were similar to previous estimates in Africa, ranging from 17-142 thousand years ago (KYR). The Khosian exhibited the oldest population split times (range, 102-142 KYR) and Niger-Congo speakers the most recent (range, 17-84 KYR)... " --Maya Metni Pilkington (2008). An apportionment of African genetic diversity based on mitochondrial, Y chromosomal, and X chromosomal data. PH.d Dissertation (published). University of Arizona, pg 1-9. [/quote]
moorjani 2011- African gene flow into Eurasia-West Asia longstanding for thousands of years QUOTE: [i] "Previous genetic studies have suggested a history of sub-Saharan African gene flow into some West Eurasian populations after the initial dispersal out of Africa that occurred at least 45,000 years ago. However, there has been no accurate characterization of the proportion of mixture, or of its date. We analyze genome-wide polymorphism data from about 40 West Eurasian groups to show that almost all Southern Europeans have inherited 1%–3% African ancestry with an average mixture date of around 55 generations ago, consistent with North African gene flow at the end of the Roman Empire and subsequent Arab migrations. Levantine groups harbor 4%–15% African ancestry with an average mixture date of about 32 generations ago, consistent with close political, economic, and cultural links with Egypt in the late middle ages. We also detect 3%–5% sub-Saharan African ancestry in all eight of the diverse Jewish populations that we analyzed. For the Jewish admixture, we obtain an average estimated date of about 72 generations. This may reflect descent of these groups from a common ancestral population that already had some African ancestry prior to the Jewish Diasporas... To gain insight into the African source populations, we carried out PCA analyses, which suggested that the African ancestry in West Eurasians is at least as closely related to East Africans (e.g. Hapmap3 Luhya (LWK)) as to West Africans (e.g. Nigerian Yoruba (YRI)) (the same analyses show that there is no evidence of relatedness to Chadic populations like Bulala) (Text S5 and Figure S12). We also used the 4 Population Test to assess whether the tree ((LWK, YRI),(West Eurasian, CEU)) is consistent with the data, and found no evidence for a violation, which is consistent with a mixture of either West African or East African ancestors or both contributing to the African ancestry in West Eurasians (Table S14; Figure S13). Historically, a mixture of West and East African ancestry is plausible, since African gene flow into West Eurasia is documented from both West Africa during Roman times [34] and from East Africa during migrations from Egypt [7]. It is important to point out, however, that the difficulty of pinpointing the exact African source population is not expected to bias our inferences about the total proportion and date of mixture. The f4 Ancestry Estimation method is unbiased even when we use a poor surrogates for the true ancestral African population (as long as the phylogeny is correct), as we confirmed by repeating analyses replacing YRI with LWK, and obtaining similar results (Table S15). Our ROLLOFF admixture date estimates are also similar whether we use LWK or YRI to represent ancestral African population (Table S15), as predicted by the theory. In summary, we have documented a contribution of sub-Saharan African genetic material to many West Eurasian populations in the last few thousand years. A priority for future work should be to identify the source populations for this admixture. "[/i] --: Moorjani P, et al. (2011) The History of African Gene Flow into Southern Europeans, Levantines, and Jews. PLoS Genet 7(4): e1001373.	Medieval [i]"when infants left at the doors of the hospital 'in a poor and piteous state.. in great danger of being devoured by pigs and other beasts.. [and dying] for want of human milk.' Infants shared rooms with the sick and as many a s a dozen children sometimes slept in one bed. The children usually died within eight to fifteen days."[/i] --Abandoned children: foundlings and child welfare in nineteenth-century France. By Rachel Ginnis Fuchs [i] "Medieval fatherhood however, did not mean participating continuously in the upbringing of a child. Mothers and servants commonly took the lead role in childrearing. .. But father/son companionship bonding is not a prominent theme in literary sources. Fathers may be proud of their sons, but they do not play a major role in their formation. It was a fact of patrilineal reproduction, rather than the relationship with a son, that contributed to medieval manhood."[/i] -- From boys to men: formations of masculinity in late medieval Europe By Ruth Mazo Karras Sinai as part of Africa geographically "The limits of the great majority of the continent are clearly delineated by its coastline; it is bounded on the north by the Mediterraneans Sea, in the West by the Atlantic Ocean, and in the east by the Indian Ocean. Africa's only point of contact with another continent is in the extreme northeast, where the Sinai Peninsula forms a land bridge to Asia. Geographers usually include the Sinai Peninsula, as part of Africa, rather than Asia." --Stokes, J (2009). Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Africa and the Middle East: L to Z.764.   The mushabians "The general resemblance between the Mushabian and certain North African industries is striking. The tradition of intensive use of the micro-burin technique and the production of La Mouillah points are considered to be of African origin." --Sigfried J. de Laet. 1994. History of Humanity: Prehistory and the beginnings of civilization - Page 249
	tropical diversity [b]Tropical climates are extremely diverse – from humid rainforest, to higher altitude cold zones, to arid deserts with sharply dropping night temperatures. Scientists find that nose width is correlated with climate – with narrower noses seen in dry, conditions such as desert areas in eastern parts of Africa.[/b] QUOTE: "Tropical climates range from oppressively hot and humid lowlands to cold, snow-covered mountains, from hot, dry deserts to cold, dry deserts, from extreme seasonal variability of precipitation to nearly constant year-round conditions." --Huston. M. (1994) Biological diversity: the coexistence of species on changing landscapes Cambridge university Press. p 498 QUOTE: "An important function of the nose is to warm and moisten inspired air. When air is exhaled, some heat and moisture are lost to the surroundings. The longer the nasal passage, the more efficient the nose is for warming and moistening incoming air and also the less heat and moisture are lost on exhalation. A narrow, high nose gives a longer nasal passage than a low, broad nose. Therefore, in cold or dry conditions, a high, narrow nose is preferable for warming and moistening air before it reaches the lings, and for reducing loss of heat and moisture in expired air. In hot, humid conditions a low, broad nose serves to dissipate heat (Wolpoff 1968; Franciscis and Long 1991)... The pattern of variation in nasal index corresponds very broadly to that expected if nasal form is indeed an adaptation to regional climate. The highest nasal index values, representing broad, low noses, tend to be those of populations in humid tropical regions of Africa and south-east Asia. Populations with low mean nasal indices (high, narrow noses) tend to be found in the cold, northern latitudes, and also in arid regions, such as the desert areas of east Africa and the Arabian peninsula. ..Davies found the nasal index taken in the living was closely correlated with skeletal nasal index. This suggests that there should likewise be an association between skeletal nasal index and climatic zone, and indeed other workers have found this to be the case.“ -- Mays. S. (2010). The Archaeology of Human Bones. Pg 100-101 [b]2011 study finds significant correlation between nasal shape and climate. Dry areas are common in tropical zone micro-climates such as deserts.[/b] QUOTE: “"The nasal cavity is essential for humidifying and warming the air before it reaches the sensitive lungs. Because humans inhabit environments that can be seen as extreme from the perspective of respiratory function, nasal cavity shape is expected to show climatic adaptation.. We report significant correlations between nasal cavity shape and climatic variables of both temperature and humidity. Variation in nasal cavity shape is correlated with a cline from cold-dry climates to hot-humid climates, with a separate temperature and vapor pressure effect. " -- Noback, M. et al. (2011) Climate-related variation of the human nasal cavity. AJPA, 145: 4. 599-614 [img]http://palscience.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/neanderthal.jpg[/b] [b]Broad noses can be functional in cold areas under certain circumstances as Neanderthals show. It should be noted though that many scientists consider them a separate species, not modern humans[/b] QUOTE: [i]"..Neanderthals and and their predecessors survived for tens of thousands of years in the variable climates of Europe, in which fully glacials only took up a small part of the time, and predominantly in southerly latitudes.." [/i] Others maintain that a broad nose could help with not merely cold but ARID conditions as well, so cold is not the only factor. A large protruding nose could warm air entering the lungs, or - quote: "others [i]"others have suggested that the Neanderthal nose may have been a means of losing heat generated by a very active lifestyle.."[/i] Others [i]"concluded that it must have been adapted to the peripheries of hot, humid regions, perhaps even subtropical to moderate biotopes."[/i] See: (--Neanderthals and modern humans: an ecological and evolutionary perspectiveBy Clive Finlayson, 2004).

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