r/MapPorn • u/heatmapper25 • 22h ago
Pyramid-era Egyptian - DNA Distance Heatmap
Closest living people: Copts and Yemenis. Scandinavians (0.27) and Indians (0.36) before Subsaharan Africans (Dinka 0.64, Yoruba 0.68).
Egyptian Arabs from Cairo: 0.090. Behind Bedouins from Jordan, Tunisia, and Libya. Coptic Christians (0.056) are the last genetic link to pharaonic Egypt.
Genetic similarity does not necessarily mean direct ancestry.
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u/Busy-Contact5885 21h ago
It’s crazy how long ago Egyptians had such an advanced civilization. Like 1,500 years before the Greeks. Insane.
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u/timmytissue 20h ago
I think it's actually more crazy how so many civilizations rose in somewhat similar timescales without direct contact.
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u/Theseactuallydo 17h ago
That might suggest a climate-related trigger, at least in part.
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u/minecraftzizou 9h ago
and the development of writing in similar times
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u/Traditional_Vast_864 3h ago
Not really, the only ones to independently develop writing were the meso-Americans, Mesopotamians and Chinese,
the romans, Greeks and Egyptians for example got writing from sumer, this is also a reason why most of subsaharan Africa didn't have writing, they weren't in a geographical place close to the origin of writing place so they didn't develop it, just like the rest, but the medetranian was close to the fertile Cresent and borrowed it faster.
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u/minecraftzizou 2h ago
there is also the Indus valley, but my point wasn't about developing the concept of writing systems from scratch but rather a writing system in those areas that allowed them to immortalize information.
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u/jore-hir 20h ago
Civilization didn’t start there. For example, the first megalithic constructions were erected further north, when Egypt only had huts. Later, the Vinca culture built cities (or settlements) that eclipsed whatever contemporary Egypt had. And even during the time of the pyramids, Egypt still had to import key technologies such as wheeled vehicles from the north.
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u/BOQOR 18h ago
No civilization without writing. It is right there in the name Vinca "culture". The only civilization older than Egypt is Sumer.
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u/jore-hir 16h ago
The word “civilization” comes from “civitas” (city, settlement, nation).
So, the concept doesn’t rely on writing but on complex and stable communities, which existed millennia before “classical” Egypt.
Building giant pyramids is certainly impressive, but other sophisticated civilizational achievements had happened before and elsewhere.
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u/pretentious_couch 15h ago
There is no universal definition of civilization, but many consider a writing system or some other record-keeping system like the qhipu in the Andes as a prerequisite.
And what civitas meant in Latin doesn't change what the world civilization means now.
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u/jore-hir 13h ago
It’s the literal origin and meaning of the word you’re using. No discussions about that.
You want to implement a new meaning? Good luck.
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u/Traditional_Vast_864 3h ago
Your own definition (complex, stable communities) is also a stretch. If that's the bar, every large Neolithic settlement qualifies, and the word becomes meaningless. You can call Vinča advanced, and it was. That's different from calling it a civilization
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u/Traditional_Vast_864 3h ago
You're using the etymology as if it settles the definition, and it doesn't. Words drift from their roots all the time. "Civilization" in the archaeological sense is a technical term with criteria, and "stable community" alone would make nearly every Neolithic village a civilization, including Çatalhöyük and Jericho. Then the word stops meaning anything. Also, civitas meant citizens or a citizen body, a political community. That's closer to "state" than "village." Egypt had that by 3100 BCE, with a king, a bureaucracy, taxation and a territory stretching about 1,000 km along the Nile. Vinča had no centralized authority we can detect. "Millennia before classical Egypt" also moves the goalposts. The original comment was about Egypt vs. the Greeks, and you're comparing Vinča to Old Kingdom Egypt, not classical Egypt. Vinča peaked around 4500 to 4000 BCE, and Egypt's state formation came about 900 years later. That's a gap, not millennia. And as the other commenter pointed out, writing isn't the only possible marker. Record-keeping works too, like the Inca quipu. Vinča has neither. Its signs are undeciphered and not shown to encode language or accounts. You can't say writing doesn't matter and then rely on a culture that has no writing, no record-keeping, no state and no cities on Egypt's scale. Vinča is impressive. It just isn't what archaeologists mean by a civilization
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u/quez_real 11h ago
The word “civilization” comes from “civitas” (city, settlement, nation).
That's etymological fallacy and irrelevant. Words are changing meaning all the time
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u/jore-hir 11h ago
If there’s a fallacy, that is replacing the meaning of words without a common agreement.
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u/quez_real 10h ago
Do you use word "agreement" with its original meaning or the replaced one?
from Latin ad (“to”) + gratum (“pleasing”)
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u/jore-hir 11h ago
If there’s a fallacy, that is replacing the meaning of words without a common agreement.
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u/Antique-Musician0208 17h ago
Isn't IVC as old if not older than Ancient Egypt? IVC started before 3000 BC
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u/Traditional_Vast_864 3h ago
Göbekli Tepe is older than anything in Egypt, but it was built by hunter-gatherers. Nobody calls that a civilization, and by your own logic it doesn't count either. And "Egypt only had huts" is off: Nabta Playa in southern Egypt has a megalithic stone alignment from around 5000 BCE, roughly when the earliest European megaliths appear. Vinča settlements were big for the Neolithic, but they were villages, with no state, no monumental architecture and no writing. The Vinča symbols are undeciphered, and most scholars don't treat them as writing. By 3100 BCE Egypt had a unified territorial state, administrative writing, and cities like Hierakonpolis, and it was building in cut stone (Djoser's pyramid) before the Great Pyramid. The wheel point is true but doesn't show what you think. Chariots only arrived with the Hyksos, around 1650 BCE. But the pyramid builders didn't need carts. Sledges on wetted sand plus the Nile moved stone better than wheels would have. Not adopting a technology you don't need isn't a lack of civilization. Finally, "civilization" comes from Latin civilis, relating to citizens, and etymology doesn't define the archaeological term anyway. Archaeologists use criteria like cities, state organization, writing, monumental architecture, and specialized labor. Egypt ticks all of them.
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u/Fit_Caterpillar7573 15h ago
That map shuld be shown to every afrocentrists or other idiots who want to talk about Afrika as a whole one. Northern Africa has 1000 times more in common with mediterranen Eurasia; then Subsaharan Africa, in every single aspect; history, antropology, culture etc apart from there is a bit of salt water beetween.
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u/Moriarty-Creates 18h ago
The Afrocentrists are not going to like this
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u/Fit_Caterpillar7573 15h ago
They dont like science and facts at all, their imagination is wilder, then a fantasy writers.
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u/Bosya_123 21h ago
And again we see an island where Kyrgyzes live, and to a lesser extent where Kazakhs and Hazaras live.
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u/ProfessorPetulant 21h ago
More in common with the Finnish Sámi than with Lybian Tuaregs is crazy!
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u/gimeebilgrays 21h ago
Why is Atbara so much genetically closer than the other cities in Sudan?
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u/Own-Internet-5967 15h ago
Those are Egyptian Copts living in Sudan. Not ethnic Sudanese people
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u/Traditional_Vast_864 3h ago
Sudanese Copts are sudanese, they have been here for thousands of years, the kushites raided Egypt and brought them as slaves a lot.
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u/Own-Internet-5967 2h ago
Sudanese Copts are not black like other Sudanese. They look the same as Egyptian Copts.
Also Sudanese Copts mainly arrived to Sudan 200 years ago during the early modern period
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u/Traditional_Vast_864 2h ago
True, but I meant historic ancestors copts were familiar as slaves, merchants priests etc, new age copts arrived with the ottomons in the 19th century, Copts are wheat skined like other meds.
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u/Own-Internet-5967 2h ago
ya zol u keep downvoting me for no reason
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u/Traditional_Vast_864 1h ago edited 1h ago
My bad bro, wait are you Arab almost, no one knows zol except other Arabs 😂
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u/fixminer 20h ago
Does this only consider the native population of Australia (and other countries)? Otherwise I would expect the value to be more similar to Europe.
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u/Fabulous_Poetry6622 19h ago edited 19h ago
Genetic distance does not equal ancestry!!!! This needs to be a disclaimer in every one of these posts, they are incredibly misleading to people without knowledge in this field.
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u/Pizzaflyinggirl2 17h ago edited 15h ago
Also it is completely wrong OP's claim about copts being the last genetic link to ancient Egypt when muslin Egyptians also have ancient Egyptian ancestry.
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u/The_Flying_Lunatic 15h ago
Could you please elaborate?
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u/IsoldeInInk 14h ago
I can: a smaller percentage of subsaharan ancestry completely overrides the ancient egyptian ancestry muslim egyptians have because it’s so extremely different. It makes them, in total, very different from ancient egyptians. Yet they still derive most of their ancestry from them.
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u/Greedy-Peace-2500 21h ago
It's cool to see the samples from the Arabian peninsula be close to these old kingdom ones, in the Arab folklore we are descendants of Hamites (Egyptians) through Hagar.
Afro-Asiatic connection across that area is fascinating in general
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u/Patient_Inevitable77 11h ago
There is no difference between Christian and muslim Egyptians
Except for the fact that Egyptians who converted could marry a wide variety of ethnicities( levantenes , arabs, other african nations) which diluted the ancestry ( not by a great amount because this is not how genetics work)
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u/PoliticalNerd87 13h ago
Why is there such a massive divide between north and south Sudan?
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u/Responsible-Motor-21 8h ago
El Sud is a gigantic swamp dividing north and south Sudan. It formed a biological barrier that couldn't really be navigated until the 20th century.
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u/Own-Internet-5967 12h ago
Because North Sudanese have significant West Eurasian ancestry while south Sudanese dont
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u/Traditional_Vast_864 3h ago
Not significant, Our Eurasian is acceptable, it increased massively after arabic migrations.
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u/Own-Internet-5967 2h ago
Your Eurasian is half of your ancestry. and Medieval era Nubians (before Arab migrations) had almost 60% Eurasian ancestry.
Here is the DNA study on Medieval Christian period Nubians: Social stratification without genetic differentiation at the site of Kulubnarti in Christian Period Nubia | Nature Communications"We find that the only fitting model is one using Levant_BAIA as a source (p = 0.44), and we estimate that the Kulubnarti Nubians had 57.5 ± 0.3% West Eurasian-related ancestry ultimately most like that found in Bronze or Iron Age people from the Levant, although this ancestry was likely introduced to Nubia through ancient Egyptians or a group related to them."
Also, modern Nubians have more black African DNA than their Medieval Nubian ancestors:
" The Kulubnarti Nubians on average are shifted slightly toward present-day West Eurasians relative to present-day Nubians, who are estimated to have ~40% West Eurasian-related ancestry"
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u/Traditional_Vast_864 2h ago edited 2h ago
I already read the Kulubnarti paper. You're right that the medieval group comes out more Eurasian than modern Nubians, roughly 57% versus 40%. The paper also puts them at about 43% Nilotic-related ancestry, and says the Eurasian part likely came in through Egypt over around a thousand years. It also finds that the Eurasian ancestry was disproportionately female-associated, which points to gene flow mostly through women marrying in over many generations. This is consistent with the content raiding the kushite state was doing to Egypt, enslaving Egyptians and and putting women in concubinage is the most affluent theory of why the Eurasian is disproportionately female directional. Meroitic and napata era nubians were much more nilotic related than Than early Christian era due to the concubinage as mentioned earlier. the kadruka study pulled DNA from the hair of a Kerma-period individual from about 4,000 years ago. Although the DNA was damaged and probably not the best, it found That person was genetically closest to early pastoralists from southern eastern Africa, Around Tanzania and kenya. It's only one individual, so I wouldn't build a whole picture on it, but it fits the idea that the Eurasian share built up over time. The medieval figure shows where Nubia ended up after a long run of contact, and it says little about Kerma itself.
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u/Own-Internet-5967 2h ago
habibi I never even said a population replacement, I dont know where you got that from. Looks like we are mostly in agreement
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u/Own-Internet-5967 2h ago
We do have DNA from Kerma itself, the Kadruka sample, and it was around half Eurasian
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u/djikkers 9h ago
north is arabic, south is black
the main reason why there are two sudans1
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u/Pizzaflyinggirl2 5h ago
North is racially black, culturally Arab.
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u/Traditional_Vast_864 3h ago edited 3h ago
Not really, Sudan actually is the most genetically Arab country in the entirety of Africa , we are still black though
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u/CaioHSF 21h ago
How does this "DNA distance" works? I mean, people from Norway and Mali are "closer" to ancient Egyptians than the Koreans and Australians in what sense?
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u/heatmapper25 20h ago
It’s a way to measure how genetically similar two populations are using DNA inherited from both parents. Lower number = more similar. Ancient Egyptians were a Near Eastern/North African population. Norwegians carry a lot of Anatolian/Near Eastern ancestry from ancient farmer migrations into Europe, so they land closer. West Africans and East Asians descend from branches that split off much earlier, so the distance is larger. It's more about how much shared ancestry is left in the DNA than appearance etc.
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u/ataeil 21h ago
Maybe I’m toasted but can someone elif what I’m looking at?
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u/Patient_Inevitable77 11h ago
Look in layman
They collected DNA samples from ancient Egyptians
Now the map illustrates how closer their DNA was with DNA of modern populations nowThis doesn’t mean ancestory just genetic similaritiy
Now there are multiple factors governing the results including migration patterns and intermarriages
North africans (like ancient egyptians) and middle easterns share a common migration pattern of people
Arabs marry each other that’s why they have a high percentage of that ancient DNA
Red means similar
Blue is distant
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u/VisualSome1835 1h ago
Black Africans trying to steal Egyptian culture then getting mad if some white fella did hair braids
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u/Own-Internet-5967 1h ago
its funny because ancient Estruscans (pre-Roman Italians), Greeks and Egyptians braided their hair and they werent black.
Here are some ancient Estruscan (italian) braids: Paris-Louvre-Sarcophagus-of-the-spouses-Etruscans-credit-ecelan-ccby-sa2.5.jpg (1024×768)
Ancient Greece: 10c70bb4a5c268033704a6268be001cf.jpg (250×320)
Ancient Egypt: Ankh-ma-re-with-the-pondering-pose-of-an-ancient-Egyptian-child.jpg (1183×1536)
black people do not own braids.
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u/Haramaanyo 1h ago
I find it ridiculous that some people would be offended seeing non-Africans with braids or other hair-styles that are associated with Africans these days.
People around the world have been doing their hair like that since forever.
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u/HarryLewisPot 20h ago edited 19h ago
This makes me wonder if Arab conquests weren’t exactly random.
The Arab World of today is quite red on this map, but even then, the Kurdish population of Iraq and Syria aren’t as red as the Arab population of the same country.
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u/DobryVojakSvejk 16h ago
What do you mean, random? If course they weren't random, they followed the same natural routes as every other migration in history, hence the same patterns of so many geographically overlapping cultures before them
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u/Key_Fee158 16h ago
The alternative explanation is the Arabian peninsula has had less influx of populations with greater genetic distance to the ancient Egyptians than the Levant, Iraq and Turkey have.
If you notice, the map has dark red spots in Egypt meant to represent Coptic Egyptians. Coptics are genetically closer to ancient Egyptians because they didn’t mix with influx of people from throughout the Muslim world after the Arab conquests. Same principle there.
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u/Own-Internet-5967 15h ago edited 15h ago
The reason egyptian Muslims are further than copts is because they have higher Levantine + Subsaharan African ancestry
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u/HugeWrongdoer2 14h ago
Arabs were already living in most of the middle east well before the arab conquests, arabs might not have even originated in Arabia but from the levant, they weren't a majority and they still aren't, but ancient continuous arab populations descended from pre-conquest nomads exist pretty much everywhere in the arab world.
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u/Super_Range45 14h ago
The highest on the scale is 0.055 ?units. Those are just 3 tiny dots in Egpyt, 1 in Sudan, and a small sploch in Yemen.
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u/honestlydontcare4u 19h ago
Were they colonizers or something?
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u/HarryLewisPot 19h ago
Yes but it seems it was easier to Arabize Afro-Asiatics considering they couldn’t push past Persia but made it to Morocco.
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u/pretentious_couch 15h ago edited 15h ago
That has more to do with Geographics than ethnicity or language directly. Mountains aren't attractive farming land and are hard to control/assimilate.
The same geography that allowed afro-asiatic migration to reach exactly these regions enabled the Arab conquest of them.
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u/HarryLewisPot 15h ago
But why was the Persian mountains hard to arabize but they fared easier with the Atlas Mountains?
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u/Accurate_Signal_4452 14h ago
I think the Atlas mountain still have the most Amazigh speakers in North Africa. It's also a mountain range surrounded by plains and deserts, while Iran is a vast plateau.
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u/HugeWrongdoer2 14h ago
Persia was granted special status nearly immediately after arabs conquered it, Persia didn't like the ummayads and didn't let them sieze control, and when abbasids took power they decided to let Persia do its own thing to stabilize the empire, abbasids in general were much more lenient about letting people do their own thing so long as they pay taxes, arabization of Persia was only attempted by the ummayads who had zero control there.
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u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist 11h ago
Arabization of the MENA only occurred centuries after the Abbasids, so it had little to do with the actual Arab dynasties. Everyone just kept speaking their own regional languages for most purposes outside of legal administration. The Mamluks for example would speak Turkic amongst themselves till the 1500s. People only adopted Arabic gradually.
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u/ProfessionalZebra384 21h ago
Am I reading this wrong, or does this suggest that people from Pharaonic Egypt were closer genetically to modern day British and Scandinavian than they were to modern day southern Libyans, and even very south western modern Egyptians?! Surely I’m misunderstanding this?!
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u/heatmapper25 21h ago
Yes, though those southern Libyans and Egyptians you're looking at are Toubou people. The Nubians from Aswan and northern Sudan are closer than the Brits.
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u/Arthurian_Guanche 15h ago
Somewhere you got lost, Copts are by definition the closest today to Ancient Egyptians. It doesn't take a Nobel prize to realise that. If you look closely at the last map, Copts are the reddest dots on the image. This map has been posted before, and it said the opposite of you. I think you're lying.
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u/NukeTheHurricane 8h ago
Copts are NOT the closest to the ancient egyptians.
They dont even look like them.
Copts mainly descend from egyptianized Hyksos.
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u/Arthurian_Guanche 8h ago
Oh and what are the Hyksos, pray tell? "They dont even look like them"
Dude you've gotta let me ride on that time machine of yours.
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u/NukeTheHurricane 8h ago
Duh. The hyksos are a levantine based population that ruled over Egypt. Some were expelled, some of them stayed and outnumbered the native population.
Ancient Egyptians were NOT from the levant. They were from the south and were related to southern population.
There are many genetic evidences such as the history and the spread of the YDNA EM78 that debunks the mainstream narrative.
Predynastic and Ancient egyptians were black.
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u/Arthurian_Guanche 7h ago
There are so many other things that debunk your myth but whatever, you're obviously settled.
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u/NukeTheHurricane 7h ago
Well, i wish you would.
I got everything that can blow you out of the water.
Good luck with that.
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u/Arthurian_Guanche 4h ago
"I got everything that can blow you out of the water." Sure, nuclear buddy, woo I'm terrified. Listen, I'm not going to waste my patience with someone that ends his statement with a claim about skin colour. I'm done with racialism regarding people that we cannot see with our own eyes. Enjoy arguing with other colour-obsessed gits.
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u/vagabond_primate 19h ago
Wild how so much of Africa didn’t get reached.
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u/Patient_Inevitable77 11h ago
North africans are genetically closer to south europeans and west asians
It’s common knowledge1
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u/w1seR27 16h ago
The (southern) European spread seems to mimic the Roman Empire, could these be related? Idk how to explain the Nordics.
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u/fasterthanraito 9h ago
No, mutations are very rare so the ones that are useful for tracking ancestry go back thousands to tens of thousands of years ago, which makes them way too old to track really recent events like historical empires.
European ancestry is heavily influenced by the Middle East because the first farming populations that replaced hunter-gatherers came from the Middle East
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u/w1seR27 8h ago
But how does that explain the Indian subcontinent? I dont think there is any documented evidence of Egypti to India migration of humans(apart from early humans leaving Africa). This is around the same (~300 years later) than the start of IVC. Dos it mean early IVC and Egyptians had intermixing?
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u/fasterthanraito 6h ago
The first farmers in India came from the Zagros mountains in modern day Iran, who were also somewhat related to the first middle east farmers. So it's not saying that Egyptians went to India but that they both share ancient middle eastern ancestry from 10 to 20 thousand years ago
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u/__Aubergine 16h ago
there’s a bright orange point in southwestern tunisia, any idea on the people studied there? why is it brighter than the the surrounding area ?
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u/Own-Internet-5967 15h ago
These are rbaya bedouin Arab Tunisians. They have predominantly Arabian ancestry compared to the rest of the population
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u/__Aubergine 15h ago
Thank you! Do you have sources related to this study or other studies?
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u/Own-Internet-5967 15h ago
This is the full study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09195-5
We also have another DNA study on ancient Egypt: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15694
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u/Ancient-Secret-555 5h ago
So what does that mean? That these share the closest physical traits but aren't necessarily descendant?
Why are Egyptian Arabs far if they're basically Arabians who came and settled there?
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u/Own-Internet-5967 4h ago
So what does that mean? That these share the closest physical traits but aren't necessarily descendant?
Genetic closeness does not always mean direct descendance. However, we can see that Egyptian Copts are both genetically closest and directly descendants of Old Kingdom Egyptians
Why are Egyptian Arabs far if they're basically Arabians who came and settled there?
That's not accurate. Egyptian Muslims are a mix of ancient Egyptians and extra Subsaharan African and Levantine admixture
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u/wein_geist 1h ago
Oh wow, suddenly nobody complains about the blurryness or the quality of the map, because now its an egyptian. This sub, i just cant
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u/Nuggethole 57m ago
Does this mean Saudis and Yemenis are closer to ancient egyptians than modern Egyptians are ?
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u/Own-Internet-5967 50m ago
Closer in genetic similarity. But modern egyptians have higher ancestry from ancient Egypt
Also, Egyptian Copts are the most genetically similar to ancient Egyptians, you can see the little red dots in Egypt, those are Copts
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u/Infinite_Rub9681 17m ago
This map just doesn't make any sense Arabia was just a desert and no one lived there
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u/IsoldeInInk 14h ago
Is the reason modern egyptians are further away subsaharan african admixture?
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u/ReasonableStory1660 9h ago
It would be from admixture from all types. Egypt was wealthy and had a number of wave of immigrants, Turks, Arabs, Greeks, as well as Sub-Saharan Africans. All of them contributed to changing the most common genetics in the population, it would take additional studies to see which had the largest impact.
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u/IsoldeInInk 9h ago
Yes but turks, arabs and greeks are genetically much, much, much, much closer than subsaharan africans.
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u/Traditional_Vast_864 2h ago edited 2h ago
If by Turks you mean people from modern day turkey you're right because of their Anatolian ancestry which is very close to Egypt's medetranian ancestry , but if you mean Turks from central Asia then they are infact more distant than subsaharan africans
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u/Fluffy_Ad_6982 2h ago
See the afrocentrists?
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u/Traditional_Vast_864 2h ago
Pardon?
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u/Fluffy_Ad_6982 2h ago
The comments are infested with deluded afrocentrist hoteps who claim Egyptian history.
Fight fire with fire.
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u/Traditional_Vast_864 2h ago edited 2h ago
Yeah they are stupid, I myself are from Sudan, and even we don't claim Egyptian history, despite the fact we counqered them. But also I think you claimed before In another comment that most male slaves in the Islamic world were castrated , this is wrong, as low as 3% were castrated , the majority were soldiers or labourers or servants, castration is just not profitable and would lower testosterone, the only castrated ones were palace eunuchs, whom were avaliable only for royals and very very rich statesmen.
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u/NukeTheHurricane 8h ago
The egyptianized hyksos replaced the native (black) egyptian population.
Hyksos DNA is the main component of the modern population.
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u/ReasonableStory1660 8h ago
No, that’s just something Black nationalists made up. This is literally a study of ancient Egyptian genetics and you can see that isn’t the case.
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u/NukeTheHurricane 7h ago
Nopes.
This oriented fake study of an outlier can be debunked from multiple angles.
- The egyptians depicted themselves as afro wearing blacks and claimed that their ancestors came from the south : the land of Punt
- The puntites and the medjays (who lived in the south) were the only ethnic group that looked like the ancient egyptians: NOT the syrians, not the minoans, not the nubians, not the libyans, not the Sea people.
Ancient greek texts confirm the original populations and the native rulers were black
The history and the spread of the black african lineage YDNA EM78 contradicts this study. The endogamous cushitic speaking populations have the highest frequencies of this marker. Also, they carry ev32 which a subclade of the predynastic egyptian EV12. The proto cushite diverged from the predynastic egyptians about 7000 years ago. How could a dark-skinned population emerge from a lighter-skinned population? NONSENSE.
The 4,000 years old BLACK AFRICAN admiture found in modern greeks also contradicts this study.
Craniometric, hematological, and histological studies of the predynastic and ancient egyptians support a black african origin.
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u/ReasonableStory1660 7h ago
Egyptian art shows them with brown skin like what many Middle Easterners get with a good tan. We have Egyptian depictions of Nubians, Libyans, and their other neighbors, they depicted Black people with much curlier hair and much darker skin than they ever used for themselves. You can google Egyptian art of various peoples right now and you’d see that.
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u/NukeTheHurricane 7h ago
The best modern representations of the ancient egyptians are the Beja people who are black, NOT nubians and culturally close with the ancient egyptians.
Ancient egyptians were black.
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u/Own-Internet-5967 7h ago
False narrative
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u/Pizzaflyinggirl2 7h ago
Is the reason modern egyptians are further away subsaharan african admixture?
Yes!!
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u/NukeTheHurricane 8h ago
Its because modern egyptians mainly descend from the Hyksos and not the ancient egyptians who were black.
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u/vraizt 8h ago
Egyptians were never black, stop trying to steal other peoples’ cultures. Is your culture so terrible you need someone else’s?
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u/NukeTheHurricane 7h ago
Last time i've checked
- Ancient greek texts confirmed that the original population was black and that they descend from Dark Epaphus who was also the ancestors of the ethiopians and the pygmies.
- Hebrews confirmed the ancient egyptians were dark skinned and descend from Ham, who was also the ancestor of the ethiopians.
- The ancient egyptians claimed that Punt was the land of the ancestors which was located south of Nubia
- the Ancient Egyptians depicted themselves as dark-skinned, wearing Afros and braided hairstyles.
- Ancient Greeks and Romans often mistook native pharaohs for Memnon, a black mythological figure.
Who's the thief now?
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u/IsoldeInInk 4h ago
Ancient Egyptians were closer to swedes than to subsaharan africans, but really were neither. Modern Egyptians are more subsaharan (”black”) than ancient Egyptians.
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u/NukeTheHurricane 3h ago
You're regurgitating the same bland soup promoted by mainstream egyptology.
Ancient Egyptians were black. They represented themselves as such.
The ancient Greeks confirmed in their texts that the Egyptians were black and descended from a single black ancestor called Dark Epaphus who was also the father of the Ethiopians.
On the other hands, millions of modern Greeks have a 4000 years old black African admixture. The ancient Greeks mixed with an Afro-Asiatic speaking black African population. Those Africans sure didn't come from Zimbabwe.
Finally, cushitic speaking populations diverged from predynastic egyptians 7,000 years ago.
Egyptians were black.
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u/Aggravating-Disk9770 12h ago
Herodotus describes Egyptians as dark-skinned with woolly/curly hair. Diodorus Siculus noted that Kemetic priests explicitly traced their civilization, culture, and script upriver to Nubia.
Herodotus (c. 484–425 BCE). Known as the "Father of History," he was an ancient Greek traveler who spent extended time in Kemet during the 5th century BCE, recording detailed firsthand observations of its people, religion, and culture.
Diodorus Siculus (1st century BCE). A Greek historian who wrote the massive 40-book world history Bibliotheca Historica, drawing on extensive research, Egyptian temple archives, and Alexandrian scholars.
Eyewitnesses from antiquity placed Kemet's roots firmly in the Nile corridor. Primary sources over internet myths and misrepresentation of DNA data.
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u/Own-Internet-5967 11h ago
Herodotus describes Egyptians as dark-skinned with woolly/curly hair.
In your quote, Herodotus described egyptians as tanned and curly haired, looking similar to colchians.
Do you know who the colchians are? They were from modern day Georgia, in the caucasus region
They were not black people. If anything the quotes of Herodotus prove that they were not black people
Diodorus Siculus noted that Kemetic priests explicitly traced their civilization, culture, and script upriver to Nubia.
False narrative. Diodurus never said that
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u/Aggravating-Disk9770 11h ago
He said it and it's well documented. I've shared my sources and no one will actually fact check them.
The Colchians were dark skinned. Europe had many dark skinned populations.
"White" skin is a relatively recent phenomenon in human history.
Please fact check everything I have mentioned above.
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u/Own-Internet-5967 11h ago
Please fact check everything I have mentioned above.
Except that this quote does not even exist. The actual quote is this: "They (The Ethiopians) say also that the Egyptians are colonists sent out by the Ethiopians, "
Diodorus siculus was not stating a fact but explicitly quoting an ethiopian political claim starting his sentence with the ethiopians say that egyptians are colonists sent out by them. This is like talking to a random Ethiopian today and them telling you that they are the origin of Egyptians, it does not make it true just because a random Ethiopian dude said it. Again, diodorus siculus was not stating a fact but explicitly quoting an ethiopian political claim starting his sentence with "the ethiopians say". He never said "the Egyptians say"
The Colchians were dark skinned. Europe had many dark skinned populations.
They werent black. Colchians and Europeans 2500 years ago were not black. Whats next? H1tler was black?
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u/Aggravating-Disk9770 11h ago
All the archaeological, linguistic and accounts from Ancient Egyptians themselves lean heavily towards Ancient Egypt's (Kemet) founders being dark skinned humans what white people and Arabs refer to as "sub-Saharan".
Egyptology was used as a tool by white supremacists to justify the enslavement of Africans pushing the idea that "Black" people are not able to found a civilization.
Herodotus and other Ancient Greeks as well as Romans viewed Ancient Egypt as a "Black" civilization.
Ancient Egypt started "black" and ended up as a multicultural civilization.
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u/Own-Internet-5967 11h ago
False narrative. Also, DNA is not on your side here, and DNA does not lie
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u/Aggravating-Disk9770 10h ago
Not true, many of the DNA samples were taken from populations that were not indigenous to Ancient Egypt. There was a recent one taken from Alexandria which showed DNA from the Levant, of course it did! Alexandria was created later in Ancient Egypt and is not a founding city.
It's like taking a sample from Brixton in London which is a predominantly black area and saying that all of England is black.
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u/Own-Internet-5967 10h ago edited 10h ago
Except that we have a DNA sample from 2700BC, the early dynastic period of Ancient Egypt, before major foreign influence in Egypt, and it is still closest to Middle Eastern people: Whole-genome ancestry of an Old Kingdom Egyptian | Nature
"The Nuwayrat individual is genetically most similar to present-day people in North Africa and West Asia"
This is also the same DNA sample that is in this post we are commenting under
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u/Aggravating-Disk9770 10h ago
I'll take my time to look at this but often times when you look at the sites where they gather samples they from areas where "foreign" population lived.
When we take linguistic, archeological and written (from hyroglifs) the overwhelming evidence points to Ancient Egypt being started from the South and then migrating north.
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u/NukeTheHurricane 9h ago
Except this sample is an outlier.
Predynastic and Ancient egyptians were black africans.
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u/sunk_eyes 10h ago edited 7h ago
Bruh what're you talking about? This scripts are from 2k years ago. Lighter features have already spread throughout europe by then, and also egypt from the levant. I think Herodutus meant that egyptians were relatively darker than his people, which is still true. Many egyptians even these days have curly/coarser hair inspite of their skin tone.
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u/Aggravating-Disk9770 10h ago
Let's take out Herodotus and other Ancient Greek and Roman accounts of Ancient Egypt being a Black African civilization and just look at the overwhelming archeological, linguistic and written evidence (from hyroglifs) point to Ancient Egypt starting in the south and then migrating north.
Ancient Egypt started was founded by indigenous dark skinned Africans and it ended as a multicultural civilization. Similar to what is happening to modern Europe, it started white and it's more and more becoming multicultural with black and brown leaders.
Ancient Egypt lasted for 3,000 years, skin tones changed in that period but it started dark skinned black.
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u/sunk_eyes 10h ago
Archeological evidence suggests that during the period of the old kingdom, egyptians were a mix of ANA, a natufian like population and levantines. Heavily eurasian. Your partially right, in the case that the eurasian hunter-gatherer ancestors of ancient egyptians werent light skinned, but they were still eurasian. Present day horners (ethiopians and eritreans especially) are less eurasian than those people with a good portion of their ancestry being natufian-like, but still they're perceived as lighter skinned than their neighbours. So ancient egyptans were defenitely lighter skinned but not as light as europeans. I am saying this as a black man.
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u/Aggravating-Disk9770 10h ago
So according to your research Eurasians lived heavily in what is today Southern Egypt and Sudan where the founding of Ancient Egypt occurred?
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u/NukeTheHurricane 8h ago
Archeological evidence suggests that during the period of the old kingdom, egyptians were a mix of ANA, a natufian like population and levantines. Heavily eurasian
Fictional nonsense.
The ancient black african that is found in modern greeks and the history of YDNA Em78 debunk this mess.
Present day horners (ethiopians and eritreans especially) are less eurasian than those people with a good portion of their ancestry being natufian-like, but still they're perceived as lighter skinned than their neighbours. So ancient egyptans were defenitely lighter skinned but not as light as europeans. I am saying this as a black man.
Cushitic speaking group have the highest frequencies of YDNA EM78.
Also, they carry EV32 which is a subclade of the egyptian EV12.
So a black population descend from a levantine one? Make it make sense?
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u/quez_real 11h ago
And why do we believe an ancient historian on the events that happened more than 2000 years before him?
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u/Aggravating-Disk9770 11h ago
It's not only that, it corresponds with linguistic and archaeological evidence.
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u/Own-Internet-5967 11h ago
Except that this quote does not even exist. The actual quote is this: "They (The Ethiopians) say also that the Egyptians are colonists sent out by the Ethiopians, "
Diodorus siculus was not stating a fact but explicitly quoting an ethiopian political claim starting his sentence with the ethiopians say that egyptians are colonists sent out by them. This is like talking to a random Ethiopian today and them telling you that they are the origin of Egyptians, it does not make it true just because a random Ethiopian dude said it. Again, diodorus siculus was not stating a fact but explicitly quoting an ethiopian political claim starting his sentence with "the ethiopians say". He never said "the Egyptians say"
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u/quez_real 11h ago
You're arguing about wrong thing. Even if he really said that quote, it would only mean that some people believed in Nubian origin and not that this is what actually happened. When you prove your point, their claim still stands - now with Ethiopian source instead of Egyptian
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u/Aggravating-Disk9770 7h ago
This heatmap is wildly misleading, and using it to draw sweeping conclusions is bad science.
The underlying study sequenced a single individual (NUE001) from near Beni Hasan in Middle Egypt, a region with centuries of documented Mediterranean and Levantine trade, and presented him as a stand-in for a 3,000-year-old civilisation. Extrapolating the genetic identity of an entire empire from one man in the north is ridiculous.
Ancient Egyptian civilization was actually founded in the south, Upper Egypt. The state was unified from southern power centres like Hierakonpolis and Abydos, where all the First and Second Dynasty pharaohs built their royal tombs at Umm el-Qa'ab.
Furthermore, linguistic evidence links the Ancient Egyptian language to the Afroasiatic family, whose deepest ancestral roots trace back toward the Horn of Africa. The ancient Egyptians themselves repeatedly pointed south, recording in their own sacred texts that their ancestral gods originated in Ta Netjer—the "Land of the Gods"—in Punt (the Horn of Africa).
To claim Scandinavians are genetically closer to Ancient Egyptians than the people of the Horn of Africa is a complete artifact of how PCA mathematical tools work, not historical reality. Tools like G25 calculate distance based on shared ancient out-of-Africa bottlenecks, artificially flattening deep continental ancestry. In fact, the Nature study’s own pigmentation model predicted this exact Old Kingdom individual had dark-to-black skin, a detail conveniently left out of these Scandinavian-leaning heat maps.
Finally, notice how the term "Sub-Saharan" is deployed here. It’s an empty, unhelpful category that ignores the immense linguistic, cultural, and genetic diversity of the continent, typically weaponised by European and North African Arab commentators to push black Africans out of Nile Valley history.
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u/Own-Internet-5967 6h ago edited 6h ago
Extrapolating the genetic identity of an entire empire from one man in the north is ridiculous.
He was not from the North. He was from Middle Egypt. And he was from the earliest period of Ancient Egypt before major foreign influence.
Furthermore, linguistic evidence links the Ancient Egyptian language to the Afroasiatic family, whose deepest ancestral roots trace back toward the Horn of Africa.
Misleading logic. Arabic and Hebrew are part of the same Afroasiatic family. Does that mean that Arabs and Jews are black?
The ancient Egyptians themselves repeatedly pointed south, recording in their own sacred texts that their ancestral gods originated in Ta Netjer—the "Land of the Gods"—in Punt (the Horn of Africa).
Ancient Egyptians also referred to Byblos, Lebanon as Ta Netjer, going by your logic then the ancient Egyptians were Lebanese people.
In fact, the Nature study’s own pigmentation model predicted this exact Old Kingdom individual had dark-to-black skin,
The study said that he is genetically closest to modern Middle Eastern people. He was genetically a Middle Eastern man with dark skin like modern Arabs: 2026-01-01T154128Z_399639583_RC2DSIA7WFRP_RTRMADP_3_YEMEN-SECURITY-1769606847.jpg (770×513)
Do you somehow think that black African people are the only ones with dark skin? Arabs have dark skin
To claim Scandinavians are genetically closer to Ancient Egyptians than the people of the Horn of Africa is a complete artifact of how PCA mathematical tools work,
He is genetically closest to modern Copts and Arabians
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u/Aggravating-Disk9770 6h ago
The study said that he was 80% Neolithic North African and 20% Mediterranean.
- ~78% (77.6% ± 3.8%) Neolithic North African (specifically related to local indigenous North African hunter-gatherer/pastoralist lineages like the Skhirat-Rouazi cluster).
- ~22% (22.4% ± 3.8%) Mesopotamian / Eastern Fertile Crescent (related to early Copper Age/Neolithic populations from Mesopotamia/Zagros, rather than "Mediterranean").
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u/Own-Internet-5967 6h ago edited 6h ago
Yes he was Neolithic North African, not Subsaharan African or Somali or Sudanese.
Also, if you read the actual study fully, Neolithic North Africans themselves derived the majority of their ancestry from the Neolithic Levant: Extended Data Fig. 6: Distal ancestries in the Nuwayrat genome and contemporary groups. | Nature | Nature
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u/Aggravating-Disk9770 6h ago
I never used the irrelevant "Sub-Sahanran" term.
The study is flawed because a single elite sample from Middle Egypt cannot be used to rewrite the history of a 3,000-year-old civilisation.
Even if you look at the paper's distal ancestry breakdown (Extended Data Fig. 6), modelling ancient genomes using deep Neolithic proxies ignores how local populations actually formed over time.
The researchers themselves acknowledge that NUE001 is just one data point from an era when regional variation across Egypt was immense.
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u/Roufianos255 16h ago
Cleopatra was blaaaaack
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u/Patient_Inevitable77 11h ago
Cleopatra wasn’t even egyptian😂😂
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u/Roufianos255 10h ago
Lol, I’m trolling
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u/Future_Adagio2052 20h ago
surprised to see how close they are with the arabian peninsula