Well..both. They were indigenous tropically adapted Africans with black-brown skin (as all tropically adapted population have)...black Africans. They were "Blacks" as the Oxford Encyclopedia puts it.
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Black African Origins for the Ancient Egyptians
- Thread starter Asante
- Start date
Well..both. They were indigenous tropically adapted Africans with black-brown skin (as all tropically adapted population have)...black Africans. They were "Blacks" as the Oxford Encyclopedia puts it.
psychoslice
Veteran Member
Thank god I don't use Afro combs.
I don't believe all of them are your sources, or at least I hope they aren't. Because if you really have a copy of the Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, then you blatantly misquoted it. Ellipses are supposed are to indicate some insignificant detail in a quotation has been left out. In a four page article, your "..." represents a gap 2 pages long.
After the parenthesis and before "There is now..." You left out about half of the entire entry. That is blatant misrepresentation, particularly as the first line cut out addresses the "opposing theories" and resolves it: "Contemporary physical anthropologists recognize, however, that race is not a useful biological concept when applied to humans."
The part you quoted reflects an older view that the author quite literally denies as valid the instant you snip content from "your" source. So either you knew this and this was deliberate misrepresentation on your part, or you
quoted somebody else's dishonest distortions.
You use sources that don't agree with you and for you the entire field consists mainly of one or two names. Your "consistent findings" are the "consistent opinions" of a handful of researchers, with some misrepresentations of other sources thrown in.
Why on earth would I care? What possible difference could it make?
Sure.
1) Egyptian is a unique branch of the largest language phylum and yet has resisted or presented difficulties for comparative linguists for some time, as it is almost totally devoid of known characteristics of proto-Afro-asiatic (doubling reflexation of dentals being an exception) and is in some ways as related pre-IE.
2) It is closer to Near-Eastern languages such as Akkadian and is almost as related to Aramaic as it is Hamitic languages.
3) The affinities between Egyptian, proto-Semitic languages, and Pre-IE are greater than between Egyptian and afroasiatic as a whole.
4) Consonant sequences in Old Egyptian are incompatible with afroasiatic language, while proto-afroasiatic glottal afffricatives are incompatible with Old Egyptian.
I did. The encyclopedia you misquoted, among others.
You'd have to have a theory for me to have an alternate to. You don't. You have a handful of papers you've read into, you have a conception of race that your own source could have informed you is outdated had you not cut out two pages between sentences in your quote, and as you are not working within any framework that could constitute theory, the only way for there to be an alternative theory would be for you to cogently formulate one to start with.
You don't have an argument. I've shown this already.
I can't believe you have the gall to accuse me of dishonesty in the very same post you misrepresent yet another source.
Oxford Encyclopedia said:
Do you know what Afro-Asiatic is?
Oxford Encyclopedia said:
Along with Aramaic, Akkadian, Arabic, Phoenician, Ugaritic, etc.
Oxford Encyclopedia said:
Everybody has an African origin.
Oxford Encyclopedia said:
Let's finish that quote:
"A common feature of all of these approaches, including the last, is the connection of race to cultural achievement. At the same time, however, modem physical anthropologists have increasingly challenged the entire notion of race, replacing it with the more complex and scientifically based population genetics."
Why do you insist on misrepresenting your own sources?
1) This says nothing about physical characteristics, hence the "in a social sense"Oxford Encyclopedia said:
2) It says your entire approach is outdated and unscientific.
3) We also find in it the following: "Egyptian ideology separated the world's peoples into four groups: Egyptians, Near Easterners, Libyans, and Nubians. New Kingdom royal tombs provide idealized portraits of these different peoples. Egyptians have red-brown skin, black shoulder-length hair, simple white kilts, and small trimmed beards. Nubians are represented with black skin"
Because you misrepresent your sources, the field, and when you aren't actually cutting out dozens of lines from your source which contradict, you are either relying on basically one researcher and reading into wherever it is you go to get literature specific to this issue, not this field and thus you reflect in every post a significant lack of familiarity with basic issues in the scientific approach to everything from linguistics to physical anthropology all so that you can define a meaningless unscientific category for whatever reason you find so important.
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The saga of "silliness" continues. Notice still no alternative narrative! Nothing but "obfuscation":
You have no argument, because you have no evidence. No amount of quality evidence will sway the opinions of you or people with your same mindset.
Sees
Dragonslayer
I presented a contemporary study which analyzed the skin of ancient Egyptians and described their skin cells as being "packed with melanin". They then go on to stated that they knew that the ancient Egyptians were of black African origins "of Negroid origin" (as they put it) and that it's basically of no surprise. You see how nothing can make people with your mindset accept this clear proven fact...do honestly not see a problem with that?
My argument is based on biological evidence (pictorial references are mainly just to drive the point home). The biological evidence states that the early ancient Egyptians were distinct variations of indigenous black Africans. The biological evidence also finds that the population was generally tropically adapted
That's the main problem with solely relying on their artwork. Many people are ignorant of the diverse phenotypes of black Africans:
Now while this is based on modern African demographics and placement you can get some clue of the ideas of genetic and physical diversity of Africans by studying these Africans. What do you think statues of these indigenous black Africans would like:
Those thin lips, straight hair and thin noses wouldn't like the statue of Thutmose's III:
(stereotypical thick lips and wider nose)
As stated ancient Egypt was comprised of many types of black Africans (gentically and physically) distinct ethnic groups. Most of them came together during their exodus ancient Sahara (which comprised 1/3 of the continent).
Who cares what you argue...you have no narrative! All that you all opt to do is set the evidence aside and attempt compromise non black people into the ancient pre-dynastic populations of the Nile Valley. This indicates that you all have a major emotional attachment to that notion..."facts be damned."
You see? Admitting that fact which you cannot logically refute hurts your heart apparently. This is the "silliness".
I was putting up a few questions, not really trying to present an opposing argument. I'm saying from what little i know and have read I don't see your side/version winning out in the long run, and personally I would just settle for black Africans having a part in ancient Egypt. I would be happy for you if majority of scholars side with your position years from now and it is made public. I acknowledge the fact that you do/will have biased opinions making it an uphill battle - not from me though.
Any challenges or questions you get presented should always be seen as an opportunity to make your position stronger, not as a personal attack.
Oh so once again the measurements of those "Negroid" early ancient Egyptians skulls will without notice change and rid us of this "Afrocentric nonsense"? lol Seriously though? lol Nm.
Alternative to what? "socially black" Neolithic Egyptians? I quoted your source that you misrepresented as stating how the Egyptians portrayed the Nubians as black, not themselves. And other sources agree:
"Their artistic representations of their neighbors are demeaning, and they clearly show that the ancient Egyptians considered themselves physically different from Nubians and other sub-Saharan Africans in facial features and skin tones, and from “Asiatics” as well"
Wenke, R. J., & Olszewski, D. (2007). Patterns in prehistory: humankind's first three million years. New York: Oxford University Press.
If you are so concerned with "black" as a skin color then merely look at the graphical representations of Egyptian made of themselves relative to their neighbors.
Egypt has no single narrative. However, along with other parts of Northern Africa, variability in physical characteristics, religious practices, art, and language are more proximal to near-eastern counterparts than sub-Saharan Africa. Component analyses of genetic variability and structural variability indicate affinities with other African peoples as well as Asiatic and European. Linguistically, Egyptian is unique, but it is part of a collection of languages that spread throughout the near-east and then Eurasia, but not south of north Africa.
It seems highly probable that for all practical purposes Egyptians continuously occupied regions we identify as Egypt today. However, this tells us nothing about either the content of their character or the color of their skin:
"We have seen how important proving the blackness of the Egyptians is to the structure of Bernal’s argument. The reason why this attribution of colour also serves as an appropriate metaphorical expression for his whole enterprise is because it provides the crucial link between ancient civilizations and modern groups, who seek to confirm their status through association with these past societies. The question that needs to be raised is what validity any such claims can possibly have. It is of course quite certain, without any need for proof, that many different groups, from many directions and at many different times, had their impact on the development of what became Greek culture. But the thesis, as Bernal has argued it, concerns not so much development as origins: the focus throughout the whole of Black Athena is on establishing what first determined the character of the culture. This, too, only makes any sense on a quite un-historical set of assumptions."
O'Connor, D., & Reid, A. (Eds.). (2003). Ancient Egypt in Africa (Vol. 1). Cavendish Publishing.
Nor is the problem limited to "Egypt vs. Africa vs. whatever" but involves important distinctions between upper and lower Egypt.
Also, studies that attempt to characterize what is distinctively Egyptian (and distinctive relative to what) do so by e.g., excluding commonalities between archaeological findings in Egypt and those from e.g., south west Asia. For one example:
Warfe, A. R. (2003). Cultural origins of the Egyptian Neolithic and Predynastic: an evaluation of the evidence from the Dakhleh oasis (South Central Egypt). African archaeological review, 20(4), 175-202.
A continuous population in Egypt does not mean "black African" any more than we are all "black African". Physical characteristics of the Egyptian populous changed overtime and involved
1) The introduction of genetic variation via conquest and slavery
2) Within group variation based on socio-economic status
3) Temporal shifts as waves of immigrants, conquests, etc., changed population dynamics
4) The proximity of Northern Africa to the most powerful, extensive, and influential empires of the ancient world.
You wish to read into few studies on bone length not just skin color but some unified Africa which wouldn't exist even if there were no Egypt. It is particularly inapplicable to Egypt because, from a linguistic to a genetic perspective, Egypt has been occupied by probably the most variable (in a variety of ways) peoples on the planet.
There is no single narrative apart from those provided by white supremacists and afrocentrists. And your narrative is a handful of papers from a single origina and misquoting sources you haven't read to talk about a field you apparently don't know about which involve technicalities from the use of statistical distance metrics to linguistic models.
Better that than your lies and dishonesty. If you can't even honestly cite your own sources, either you presenting yourself as being familiar with information you are merely regurgitating or you are deliberately being dishonest to mislead.
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