Quote:
Originally Posted by
Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla
HOWEVER - Black Athena was a largely discredited work even when I was an undergraduation half a decade ago, the thesis that not only Egyptian but also Greek cultures were largely the result of Black immigration to those areas which was subsequently "bred out" by later populations and the cultural memory supressed is, I think, indefensible.
The controversy of "Black Athena" was not rather or not the ancient Egyptians were black, but rather surrounding the validity of argument that ancient Greek culture was largely influenced by black Africans (the Egyptians) and Semitic populations of the Middle East. As a matter of fact Mary Lefkowitz who was the most out spoken critic of the notion, even grudgingly admitted that the original ancient Egyptians came from Sub Saharan Africa and not points north as earlier scholars had asserted:
Quote:
"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)
She even acknowledges the fact that the closest populations biologically to the early ancient Egyptians were Sudanese (Nubians) populations as opposed to Middle Easterners or Europeans:
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)
She cited these results from biologist S.O.Y. Keita:
Quote:
"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
link
While the main argument of "Black Athena" being the contribution of non Europeans to the creation of Greece is highly debated, the side argument that the ancient Egyptians were originally were Africans who migrated from regions further to the south and west (the ancient Sahara) is clearly validated by contemporary archaeological and biological research.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla
It is unfortunatle now impossible to know what sort of contact or mixing Greeks had with Black Africans.
Actually a 2008 study has pretty much confirmed that their was a major migration of "black" people from the regions of Northern Africa into the Middle East and further north into Anatolia and Greece:
Quote:
"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."
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
While this doesn't say much about cultural influence from Africa into Europe (other than the spread of agriculture), it does give validation to the argument there was a major African and Semitic presence in the region of ancient Greece early on. The presence of the African haplogroup E in modern day Greece (with frequencies mirroring that of some North African groups) is also a dead give away of some sort of migration or extensive interaction between both regions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla
There's a professor over here (in the UK), I forget the name, but he presented a series on BBC 4 about the actual black civilisations at the edge of North Africa and Sub-Sahara - making the point that if black people want something to be proud of they don't have to appropriate Egyptians or Romans like Septimus Severus.
Well the point of discrediting the Eurocentric lie that ancient Egypt was not originally a black African civilization is not because of the false yet common misconception that there weren't plenty of other great ancient African civilizations, but simply well...to correct a lie. Here was a recent New York Times piece had to say about the issue:
Quote:
More recently, our own Western prejudices — namely the idea that geographic Egypt was not a part of “black” Africa — have contributed to the dearth of knowledge about Nubia. The early-20th-century archaeologist George Reisner, for instance, identified large burial mounds at the site of Kerma as the remains of high Egyptian officials instead of those of Nubian kings. (Several of Reisner’s finds are in the show, reattributed to the Nubians.).....In one of his catalog essays the archaeologist Geoff Emberling, who conceived the show along with Jennifer Chi of the institute, examines some of these historical errors.
“We now recognize that populations of Nubia and Egypt form a continuum rather than clearly distinct groups,” Mr. Emberling writes, “and that it is impossible to draw a line between Egypt and Nubia that would indicate where ‘black’ begins.”
link
So clearly modern scholars are now beginning to accept that there has indeed been a racist cover up of this fact in the past (which still largely goes on today) based on consistent biological and cultural evidence. Namely that the Egypt and Sudan (dubbed the "black" civilization of the two on the Nile) were a biological and cultural continuum with common ancestry from the retreat of Saharan populations to reliable water sources (as shown by Basil Davidson in my earlier post)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla
Were the pharohs black?
I would say no, not by the time they enter the historical record (remember, there can be no history without writing). Looking at your images, the first one clearly differenciates between the lighter skinned pharoh and darker skinned Gods, some of your other images come from the 25th Dynasty, an acknowledged anomoly:
http://wysinger.homestead.com/kingtaharqa.html. Some of the other appear to demonstrate headwrapping, and other still are quite ambiguous, one of the most ambiguous is the one rendered in, is it black stone, I can't tell.
You mention the first Dynasties, but did you know that this is a bust of Egypt's first Dynastic King?
Attachment 6016
While I'm not that interested in eye balling statuary those facial features don't exactly scream European or even Middle Eastern to me, instead they look like those one's quite commonly seen in tropical Africa. The Sphinx is no different.
Attachment 6017
As matter of fact an anthropologist whose work was heavily praised by Afrocentric critic Mary Lefkowitz had concluded that ruling class of the Pre-Dynastic population of Upper Egypt were more closer to certain Nubian populations than to upper Egyptians (perhaps indicating that they were more Nilotic as opposed to Ethiopic/or perhaps evolutionary factors as a result of agricultural development):
Quote:
"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)
What is your take on all of this evidence? Do you have any counter biological evidence that justifies your skepticism of this theory?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla
Overall, I think you are making rather more of the evidence than it warrents. For one thing, Egyptian civilisation is generally reckoned to have come into being around 3,000 BC, while those genetic studies seem to be talking about a black population in 4,000 BC.
The Egyptian civilization as we know it is 5,000 years old. This around the time period when both the North and the south were unified (Dynastic civilization and the vast majority of the Pre New Kingdom population originated in southern Egypt not the north). The focus on the populations directly prior to this time (Pre-Dynastic era) is of interest because it explains what populations were directly responsible for the creation of Dynastic Egyptian civilization.
Renown Egyptologist Robert Bauval is a modern leader in Pre-Dynastic histories of ancient Egypt. His book the "Black Genesis" gives insights into the much earlier cultures of the Egyptian Sahara. He also recently gave his opinion on this very issue of original Egyptian race:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5wLCVpBjhk