Natufians & Egyptians were NOT Black

Intro 

Hey guys, I decided to write about this topic of Natfufians & Egyptians for obvious reasons. Recently, I had really long back and forth with some individuals from another discord server that I was in, some of which were also friends of mine from my own discord server. It all started when I was posting Ancient Egyptian samples from G25, I was pointing out how a lot of the older Ancient Egyptain samples, particularly from the Middle and old Kingdom were rich in Natufian like ancestry. The reason why I made the post if I’m being honest was just to piss people off, lol. Because most of the forum post in the section of that server called “Kemetposting” was dedicated to Afrocentric theories about Ancient Egypt. Which a lot of these theories were obviously false. I want also want to highlight that this post is not meant to be “Afrocentric Slander”. I believe Afrocentrism and some of the narratives it promotes can be used in a great and overall positive way. I just want to disagree when it comes to the specific things I will discuss in further detail in this blog:)

So in this blog post, I am going to be attacking these main points. Number 1 is the notion that the Natufians & Ancient Egyptians were black (2 beliefs I used to hold myself). And I will be critiquing much of the arguments used to do so. Also, a quick disclaimer, I am not of the belief that there were zero blacks in ancient Egypt or anything like that, I like Metatron’s position of a multi ethnic Ancient Egypt, however I will say that the majority of the population would’ve bee Eurasian, or MENA like. 

Who were they? 

While I won’t bore you with a bunch of facts about the ancient Egyptians which you should know already, I will explain to you who the Natufiuans were. The Natufians were an Epipaleolithic hunter gatherer culture from the Middle East, mainly based modern day Israel - Palestine. Also, it rumored that they were the 1st to practice agriculture, this is debated and isn’t crystal clear at the time of this writing, however practice some form of cereal cultivation seems to suggest an early development of agriculture. They were also only semi sedentary population, which is kind of odd for a people loving before the development of agriculture. 

 The argument:

• Osteology (Prognathism = Black) 
• Skin color (Dark Skin = Black) 
• E1b1b lineage (Common “haplotype of Africans”)

Rebutal

Many people who try to make these claims are usually Afrocentrist (not that this automatically makes their claim wrong or inaccurate), because of this, their motivations usually seem to be very clear, as these population are seen to have been responsible for innovation and “greatness”. Due to the history of colonialism & slavery, these motivations are understandable, but it doesn’t make them in the right. The need to attach oneself to certain identities outside of themselves insinuates that notion of not being “good enough” (whatever that means, lol). These groups stereotypically try to promote their advances under the guise of “Black Greatness” or excellence, & in some cases, claim direct decent to these ancient peoples, & cultures, so again there is a strong motivation. The arguments to label these people as “black” gos as follows…

Natfuians

• Osteology

Because certain papers have suggest affinities with sub saharan peoples with ancient natufians skulls, this has given people strong reason for people to believe in this notion, which is understandable. This is a good piece of evidence, and should be taken seriously.

• Skin color

In recent years, many pop science articles have came out and claimed that in Europeans, “light skin” had only developed within the last 7-8 thousand years. Because of this, many people envision an ancient world full of “black people” which the word of label “black” in itself is a loaded word. And therefore, the argument goes, that since they (natfuians) had dark skin (in addition to certain suggested craniometric affinities with Sub Saharan Africa populations), they were “black” people. 

• African Ydna “hyplotypes” 

Because the natufians were predominately haplogroup E1b1b carriers, many people who ponder towards the Afrocentric movements use this as a way of connecting them to the rest of the Subs saharan world, using HOA populations, and as well as attempting to connect Niger Congo peoples who are predominantly E1b1a carriers, suggesting a relationship between the 2, which in my opinion is a laughable attempt to say the least, lol. 

Egyptians

• DNA Tribes
• “Invasions”
• Wall Paintings
• Statues
• Racist archeology

When it comes to the Ancient Egyptians, there are so many arguments that are made, that I won’t be able to counter all of them in this writing. So what I will do is tackle a couple of the main points I see used stereotypically by Afrocentrist who push the black Egypt narrative. 

• DNA Tribes

In 2012, a paper which was supposed to report that finding of testing for STR values in autosomal profiles for a number of 18th dynasty Armana period mummies (including King Tut, & his relatives) which were examined under a study lead by Zahi Hawas, showed “evidence” for genetic ties with African populations. 

• Test for diseases 
• They didn’t test enough STRs (amount needed for individual analysis is 15-20, while for population genetics, much more is needed) 
• The original study was testing for individual analysis only, dna tribes then took that data and tried testing it against entire populations

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20159872/

• Invasions

Another common theme amongst the afrocentric movements is the emphasis of “invasions” of Egypt and times the land was ruled over by foreigners. The argument here is to suggest that during much of these conquest of Egyptian lands and territories, these rulers would’ve brought in a significant proportion of theor population, further diluting the amount of genuine “Ancient Egyptian” ancestry in modern day Egyptians. These include but are not limited to the Arab conquest, the Greek & Roman conquest, the Hyksos conquest, and the Assyrian conquest. The Nubians conquest is usually left out, likely because they are seen as a more original form of the Egyptians, and their conquest is usually made out as a  “re-egyptianizing” of the kingdom as commonly argued by the Afrocentrist (which is definitely was, at least in the cultural sense). 

• Wall Paintings & statues 

Wall paintings are another “evidence” used by the Afrocentrist. They usually point at people with Afro hair, and dark skin, and even statues with stereotypical African noses. All which seem valid at 1st glance when determining whether a people were phenotypically “African” or not. Almost similar to what we see with their claims about the natufians. 

• Racist Archeology 

The final point I will mention is the point of racist archeology, done in much of the earlier research of Egyptology. Which I will admit s a valid point. Although I don’t necessarily beieve all of the higher-ups today in academia (I feel like a nerd using that word, lmao) have an agenda to portray blacks as the inferior race, I can see how sometimes certain colonial narratives can be pushed even today, or how they influence us. Which is very important to mention and realize. However, it isn’t an excuse to do the exact opposite. 

My counter arguments: 

Now that you guys know some of the most fundamental, basic & commonly used arguments from the Afrocentrist communities on the topic of the race of the Natufians and Ancient Egyptians, I will give my counters. 

I want to begin my rebuttal by stating that the motivation to include the natfuians as “blacks” is very clear in the case of the Afrocenetric communities. The claim that since “because white skin developed only 6-7 thousand years ago”, this is somehow a justifiable reason to start labeling all of ancient populations that lived before them as “black” is absurd. Worst of all, this is not even an accurate claim. This usually is refrenced to the SLC45A2 gene, which at my current knowledge, there isn’t an exact solidified age for when the gene was most likely developed, but also, this notion puts forward 2 obviously false narratives, 1 is that skin lightening in human populations worked as a “light switch” effect, which again… is obviously erroneous & we know this because of the existence of other genes that payed an effect on OOA populations for a few 10 thousand years at least such as KITLG, SLC45A5, & TRYP1, but also that that dark skin, equates to “blackness”, which is a loaded word by the way.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3525146/

 These claims of the “blackness” of the natifians also largely ignore that the people living today with the majority of their ancestry and or that related to the natufians are mostly middle eastern, & North Africa people (MENA), and that they only sub Saharan Africans or “black people” with any possible ancestry close to this, are Sub saharan Africans with MENA ancestry. Quite frankly, studies have found almost no real genetic affinities that ancient natifians had with modern day sub saharan populations, only with a minor amount of omotic related dna that was washed out the natufian populations after the epipaleollithic.

 The natufians also shared a source population with the iberomaursians from the Caucuses, specifically a Dzudzuana related populations, a huge contributor to the genetic ancestry of West Eurasian populations (including Europeans). This alone should make it 10,000 times harder to push the notion that they were “black” people for obvious reasons. Keep in all of this in mind, it doesn’t really make sense to these people “black”. 

When presented with these arguments, people with this view tend to start arguing solely on a phemotypic basis, which is even more funny to say the least. When populations such as HOA popes exist today, who are primarily an admixture of East African dinka-related ancestry and natufian like ancestry. These populations (some being 60% sub Saharan African) are even debated on their blackness, because of their exceptionally gracile feature in comparison to sub sharan African populations. And these gracile feature, such as looser curls, thinner noses, while may have been influenced in some ways by environmental factors, almost certainly came from their “natufian related” side, and definitely not their Nilo sharan related side. Finally, I will just say, much of individuals in the afrocentric groups consider the Ancient Egyptians and such to be their ancestors and much of the current populations of western and Central Africa moved from the “nile Valley”, ancient kush and Egypt, and settled in their present day territories, and so they try to claim the natufians beause the ancient egytpians, had lots of dna related to them. The genetic evidence of these claim of a West African, or Central African claim to the natufians, and by extension, the ancient Egyptians doesn’t seem to check out. And now next, we will tackle the topic of the Egyptians. 

Natufians 

• Why? The claim (because they want to claim Egypt and north Africa) 
• Defining “black” very loosely 
• DNA 
• Source population with dzudzuana 
• All their main descendants are middle eastereers or people in Africa with MENA ancestry 
• Somali dna with old kingdom sample
• Skin color 
• Phenotype 
• Very little real connection to sub saharn Africans 

DNA Tribes

As for the argument for a black Egypt, besides the things already mentioned about “blackness” perviously in this reading, the evidence used to justify these views are very questionable to say the least. Starting of with the DNA tribes paper on str analysis which was claimed to have the closest connection to modern day African population, notably the southern African and Great Lakes populations. The anylysis was sucposious to say the least because the STRs are from a study published in 2010 by Zahi Hawas in order to determine and examine family relations and test for diseases. This is important because the amount of STRs collected form the original study published by Hawas were not enough to make an analysis when it comes to population genetics, therefore jeporadising the accuracy of the analysis made by the DNA Tribes paper. 

Purpose of study: 

Mummies involved: 

Amounts of STRs needed for ancestry inference 

Another evidence used for the idea of a black Egypt are greek quotes, and the mention of constant “invasions” during periods in which Egypt was under foreign rule. These accusations can be easily dismissed, 1 because of the easy misinterpretations of Ancient Greek (Herodotus being one of the most mentioned) quotes made by the Afrocentric communities, but then also, because of the 2017 study, which collected over 99 samples from the ancient Egyptians New Kingdom, all they was until Roman Egypt. The mere existence of this study not only makes things inconvenient (for the afrocentric groups that is) but also conflicts with the validity of the Greek quotes from ancient writer such as Herodotus, and conflicts with the “invasions” argument because the 2017 study tested mummies from the time periods of Herodotus, and even before him. This is crucial because one of the main criticisms of the study were mainly focused on the time period of these samples, with people such as Christopher Ehret suggesting that the samples were not “old enough” and that they were also from more northern areas of Egypt. The main question…. How do you explain the samples LEVANTINE DNA/ANCESTRY? When individuals claim that during the same time period, Herodotus was supposed to be seeing an Egypt filled with “black people” and “wooly hair”? This is not to mention that the only blacks that would’ve been around were the “Nubians” or Kushites, would would’ve had a majority of West Eurasian related ancestry. And a limited amount of genuine Nilo Saharans. And Nubia, before the expansion of Eastern Sudanic populations (Dinka-like) from more western areas who were hypothesized to have lived in lower Nubia a few mellennia earlier, most os the Nubian Nile Valley population were Afro Asiatic speakers, and were likely very west euraisna shifted. As we see an example of this from an ancient dna sample from Sudan, fro the site of Kadruka, which was said to have been genetically indistinguishable from, early SPN samples (who had substantial amounts of Levantine related ancestry!!!). All of this makes the idea of a black Egypt a lot harder etc achieve in my opinion, and also a lot harder to attach modern sub saharan Africans to this ancient civilization. Although there may have been some involvement. I wouldn’t name Ancient Egypt a “black civilization”. People try to cope and call it and “African Civilization”, which while true, we all know what that implies. Considering that both Ancient and modern Nubians had substantial amounts of Eurasian ancestry, and that even populations as far south as Kenya also had some, and that a decent proportion of the Eurasian ancestry in modern Nubians can be related to the Egyptians, its makes the case for a black Egypt (especially one relatable to sub saharans) that much harder, as the only sub saharan African dna the the ancient Egyptians seem to have is East African Dinka/Nilotic or HOA releatd. And in limited amounts at that. 

https://youtu.be/gdPFJFZrMwM?si=DtHAJ5Ai24mFoEO-

For the missinterperetation of the greek quotes, I felt that Metatron did a good job at expelling those, so here’s a link to his video. 

2017 Ancient Egyptian DNA Study

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15694

Nubian DNA

Kadruka 

Maps of the Wadi Howar Diaspora (Spread of Eastern Sudanic Nilo Saharan languages into Nubia and it’s surrounding areas) 

Egyptians

• DNA 
• Greek Quotes and 2017 study 
• “Invasions”
• Alleged “connections” to other Africans
• Language families (limited Nilo Sharan, majority Afro asiatic, no niger Congo) 
• Modern Egyptians with dark skin and curly hair
• The only sub saharan influence on Egyptians 

East African DNA in Middle Kingdom sample

Although these are unpublished samples, and validity is questionable, a number of ancient dna samples in dna communities and programs such as G25 or vahduo have been released and are free and available for use and examination for the general public, most people just don’t know about this because of how niche it is, lol. But a number of these samples have came out as west Euraisan, with some young even as far high up as having about over 70% of natufian related ancestry, again, questioning the validity of a black Egypt. 

Youtube Video: 

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