Talk:Genetic history of Egypt/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Merger proposal

I spun this article off because this is already 38,000k, and if we put it back it will seriously unbalance that article. I prefer to keep it separate as a main article, with just a summary on the other side. Wdford (talk) 11:11, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Now that I have created a new article on DNA history of Egypt, and moved all the discussions about modern studies to that article, I would support merging this remaining portion into the Population history of Egypt article as a summary of a main article. What does everyone else think? Wdford (talk) 09:08, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Article name

Why is the article called DNA history of Ancient Egypt if there is so much info on the modern people? Shouldnt it be renamed to "DNA history of Egypt"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.228.7.171 (talk) 01:52, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, after reading the article I rather suggest to delete it. It holds no relevant information about the population composition of ancient Egypt. We already know from the history of Egypt over a period of 3000 years that the population composition has shifted. The predynastic period, the "kingdoms" with their intermediate periods, and the subsequent periods of foreign rule, are already known to feature influx from various groups originating outside of Egypt. Genetic samples from two individuals of relatively late periods and of royal descent (i.e. not representing the general population composition anyways) are completely pointless. ♆ CUSH ♆ 15:54, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

You are probably correct, but I would not like to see all this material dumped back into another article as a result of this deletion, thereby corrupting a range of otherwise readable articles. The reason for the mix of ancient and modern is because it has been determined that the ancient people and the modern people are much the same. If you want to rename the article to DNA history of Egypt I would support that - this article is a work in progress. However I would not support a deletion. Wdford (talk) 18:45, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

DNA Tribes

I've now removed this twice as DNA Tribes is not a reliable source by our criteria. The IP who reverted me complained that if DNA Tribes was removed IGENEA should also be removed. But there's a big difference. The iGENEA report received a large amount of media attention and is well-sourced to independent reliable sources. Not so for the DNA Tribes report. So we report iGENEA because of the attention it got, and we don't mention DNA Tribes because they fail WP:RS. Dougweller (talk) 14:20, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't see any problem mentioning the DNA Tribe study as long as the source of the information is cited. It's been on the article for a long time. DrLewisphd (talk) 15:55, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

That's irrelevant. It doesn't meet our criteria as a reliable source, have you read WP:RS? I asked at WP:RSN and although I've only had one response, that editor does a lot of work in the field of genetics.

Actually yes it does. To quote WP:RS:"Reliable non-academic sources may also be used in articles about scholarly issues, particularly material from high-quality mainstream publications. Deciding which sources are appropriate depends on context. Material should be attributed in-text where sources disagree." I would say that the DNA Tribes results are highly appropriate given the context. The link you referenced to specifically implies that not all given sourced need to be peer reviewed. Therefore, your demand for peer review is highly unreasonable and oversteps moderation lines.MrSativa (talk) 18:25, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

As it doesn't meet our criteria for sources, the only other reason to mention it is if it's a significant view per WP:NPOV - iGENEA is because of all the media attention it received, but this report didn't receive that attention. And despite the fact that it received virtually no media attention, it takes up a lot more of the article than the iGenea report. Dougweller (talk) 19:01, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Like the ip editor said, all studies on this page received minimal media attention. The population structure/DNA field doesn't get all media attention for now. This section of the article listed all DNA studies that have been done on Ancient mummies DNA, like a list of movies or list of mystery books. The study is publicly available, sourced and should be listed along with other studies. DrLewisphd (talk) 10:36, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

You miss my point entirely. We can use peer reviewed articles without their having received media attention, that's not a problem. But if a source doesn't meet our criteria as a reliable source, then we should only use it if it is significant enough to be included per WP:NPOV - I don't like the iGENEA report but it did receive a lot of attention. It isn't true that it received 'minimal media attention." And please note that we wouldn't list all mystery books in a list article, that's a misunderstanding. Dougweller (talk) 11:00, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

I answered you here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:RSN. Please don't remove 90% of the article before reaching consensus or completing dispute resolution. Thank you. DrLewisphd (talk) 18:27, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

That's not 90% of the article and even if it were, if 90% of an article is badly sourced that needs to be removed. You still haven't said anything anywhere to show that DNA Tribes is a reliable source, and 2 experienced editors have agreed it shouldn't be used. Dougweller (talk) 18:31, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

That should have been 3 if you include me, and now 4 (see RSN). You've made no arguments other than that you think it should be in the article. Dougweller (talk) 18:48, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

On the notice board Andrew Lancaster didn't agree with you. He said:In any case every claim on testing company websites is supposedly based on published research, and so it is normally not hard for any responsible editor to confirm if that really exists. Which is what I did by posting to 2 link of those published research (which are also linked in the DNA Tribes documents). I would like to know his feedback. If Andrew Lancaster says we have to remove it, then I won't oppose. I think it's valuable information. It's unfortunate some people want to remove it as those kind of DNA studies on Ancient Mummies are rare and not well covered by the media. They just provide more information about the subject of the article. DrLewisphd (talk) 19:19, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I think you misunderstood him and have asked him to respond. Did you see Moxy's post? Our policy on sources is pretty fundamental to the encyclopedia. If we simply let any source be added a lot of us would give up editing. Dougweller (talk) 20:01, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Dr Lewis, honestly I do agree with Dougweller. Testing companies are of course trying to sell tests, and so we should try to find out if they have sources that are properly published journal articles or the like. Dougweller is also right that there can be exceptions when something gets a lot of media attention. This comes under a policy page called WP:NOTE. In such cases, the media attention itself becomes citable (but I would say we should be careful about citing iGenea in the voice of Wikipedia. Generally if a source is being cited only because of notability we should attribute it.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:09, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I vaguely recall that the iGENEA results and the DNA Tribes results conflicted - do I recall correctly? If yes, should we not mention that fact as well?

The Ramses III section makes claims that the cited internet abstract doesn't actually address. Has anybody perhaps read the full article to check what is being claimed?

Wdford (talk) 15:54, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

created new article

I have moved all the discussion of the "modern" DNA studies to the newly-created DNA history of Egypt article, so as to better match the content of this article with its title. Wdford (talk) 17:09, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I truly think you are overdoing it. Can you please establish notability before creating article after article. ♆ CUSH ♆ 21:50, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

I think we need a count of how many articles we have on the genetical composition of Egyptians, ancient or modern. Dougweller (talk) 08:46, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I fully agree. I don't know how many articles touch on this, but there are far too many (in my opinion). A quick wikisearch for the terms "north africa DNA" gave over 500 hits. I am therefore trying to create one article that contains all the known detail on Egyptian DNA, so that all other articles with relevant material can either be merged in, or have their content reduced to a summary and a reference to a main article. One problem is that those editors who add this stuff tend to add it into every article that touches in some way on Egypt, some in good faith and some maybe not so much. If however we have one solid article on the topic, then these editors can continually add their new data into that article alone, and every other related article can simply share the data via the links.

The suggestion from Cush was to either broaden the name of this article or to merge it away. I agree with his/her points and am trying to do just that. The "latest" article now has a more generic name, and therefore this present article (on which there is little data to begin with) can now disappear and be redirected somewhere, which will reduce the article count again. The following step would be to scan wikipedia for anything mentioning DNA, to link those articles to the new "main" Egypt-DNA article and to eliminate the duplication. That will be a lot of work, but I am making a start. Please join in and help. Wdford (talk) 09:38, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Article creation

Created new article, with material spun out from DNA history of Ancient Egypt, to provide a home for this material so as not to have to clutter up a number of other articles with repetition of the same duplicated and sometimes-contradicting information. Wdford (talk) 16:59, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

How could everyone miss this for so long?

17 July 2009, 18:46, Mathilda37 made a bunch of edits unsupported by literature to the Population history of Egypt page. Slowly most of them were removed but one of it stayed and got carried on to this article. I do find it very odd that users who edited that page shortly after the edit by Mathilda37 actually let those edits stay or somehow didn't see them.

This sentence, originally by Mathilda37, is not supported by the reference cited (perhaps a different reference was intended): "The few successful attempts to extract Ancient DNA from Ancient Egyptian remains have yielded mainly Eurasian DNA types from the Dakleh Oasis cemetery site (from Southern Egypt), and they show a considerable increase in the amount of Sub Saharan mitchondrial DNA only over the past 2,000 years, suggesting that within this timeframe there was more migration from Sub-Saharan Africa to the Nile Valley than from Eurasia to the Nile Valley." Should it be fixed or not? Wdford, Dougweller and other major editors here, I need your opinions. If there is no objection, then I guess it has to be fixed. EyeTruth (talk) 00:40, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Then I guess there is no objection EyeTruth (talk) 04:45, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Cleanup

"genetic history of Egypt" is certainly a valid topic, but it needs to be researched from the ground up. This is just a sore mess copy-pasted off the page it was disfiguring. We should blank it, and then start over based on literature dedicated to the topic itself, not random tidbits lifted off reuters reporting on some crap made for Discovery Channel. Seriously, Discovery Channel is our source for genetic research now? Such stuff belongs blanked on sight. --dab (𒁳) 14:44, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

The big issue is that the acknowledged scholarship on this subject are mostly contradictory. But I agree, stuff from Discovery Channel is just...... EyeTruth (talk) 23:48, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

DRN: Ramesses and Amarna Lineages Two Peer-Reviewed Studies

What is controversial about including the following on the nearly identical DNA history of Egypt, Population history of Egypt, Black Egyptian Hypothesis and Ancient Egyptian race controversy articles. The proliferation of articles was created specifically to try the patience and time of editors unable to conduct four separate talk page conversations on the same issue. I have already engaged in multiple talk page discussions on this issue on the separate talk pages and thought consensus had been reached at least on one of the articles with the same exact editors involved in the talk page discussions on the other pages. I have submitted a DRN on including the below on all four pages as the issues and editors involved are the same: Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard#Population history of Egypt

Recent DNA studies of mummies of the Ramesses dynasty and the Armana dynasty of the New Kingdom state that these dynasties carried the Sub-Saharan African Haplogroup E1b1a.

Regards, Andajara120000 (talk) 17:45, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Are you seriously going to ignore my question in the section above? I see you have enough time for forums shopping. Dougweller (talk) 22:04, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

What exactly are your questions?Each of the inline citations from peer-reviewed studies support each sentence of the article. I am unclear what you are trying to say because each of the citations directly support the statement. I am unclear what problems you have with each of the genetic studies and you have yet to articulate it. Regards, Andajara120000 (talk) 14:52, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Copts

Why is there a section on Sudanese Copts? We're interested in the genetics of modern Egyptians. Also: we need to check the sources. I believe many (perhaps even most) of the "Sudanese Copts" are actually immigrants of Egyptian descent. Steeletrap (talk) 16:29, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Deleted R1b genetic studies as unreliable pending Amarna/Ramesses discussions

Let us keep these two out of the article until both issues are resolved. ::It is unconscionable and highly misleading to readers to keep studies that are disputed for fraud in the article (the R1b) studies while the inclusion of studies that are not disputed for fraud (Amarna/Ramesses) stay out. Regards, Andajara120000 (talk) 05:59, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

If you continue to ignore the issues I raised above about "Recent DNA Studies of Amarna and Ramesses III Lineages" it would appear that these sources don't back the section. It's a standard request to ask people why they've used sources. Seriously, you added these sources and if you can't justify them then perhaps it's necessary to check other of your edits to see if you understand how to use sources on Wikipedia. Dougweller (talk) 10:00, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

::::The Peer reviewed studies support the sentence. I am unclear what you are trying to say because each of the citations directly support the statement. I am unclear what problems you have with each of the genetic studies and you have yet to articulate it. Regards, Andajara120000 (talk) 14:52, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Ah, just check the old version of the article. No accusations of fraud have been made. Your removal of that section appears to have been made to make a WP:POINT. The studies that I removed were removed solely because 2 editors couldn't find where they back your sources. Dougweller (talk) 10:02, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

:::::How is this not fraud if it may not even have studied the pharoadh and the results were thought to be "impossible: "Although these findings were widely reported, the Y-chromosome of King Tut had never been published and the DNA profile displayed in Discovery Channel documentary may not actually have belonged to the Pharaoh. According to Carsten Pusch, a geneticist at Germany's University of Tübingen who was part of the team that unraveled Tut's DNA from samples taken from his mummy and mummies of his family members, iGENEA's claims are "simply impossible." " Regards, Andajara120000 (talk) 14:50, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

iGENEA’s claim to have identified King Tut as a R1b1a2 haplotype carrier is not supported by any peer-published studies, their source for the data used for their findings comes from a Discovery Channel documentary; basically what happened is that part of the documentary takes place in lab doing the DNA analysis of Tut and other mummies, the camera pans over one of the computer screens with a DNA profile on it that supposedly is Tut’s, from this iGENEA’s got the DNA data which they claim shows King Tut to be R1b1a2. But as made clear from the recently deleted section about the claim, the researchers who worked on the actual DNA analysis that was shown on the Discovery Channel documentary completely reject iGENEA findings.

http://news.yahoo.com/king-tut-related-half-european-men-maybe-not-180404727.html

I assumed its inclusion in several Wikipedia articles was due to its notability as the story had some pretty substantial news coverage and not due anyone citing it as support for a position on the ancestry or racial composition of Tut or Ancient Egyptians in general. I think it should only be included in this article to explain the story surrounding iGENEA’s claim and the reaction of the actual researchers who worked on the analysis of King Tut’s DNA. Otherwise it must fail as a reliable source the same way DNA Tribes does and should not be included in the article, IMO.--CorrinoIV (talk) 15:35, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

You are absolutely correct. I reluctantly agreed to it being used only because of the news coverage and not as a reliable source for anything factual. If we include it we should only include it as you suggest. Dougweller (talk) 16:54, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Both studies are heavily disputed, as the very possibility of performing DNA analysis on mummies is challenged. I am proposing to include both studies partly a) to address the issue, as there are people out there who have heard about DNA tests, and b) to illustrate that the DNA tests are disputed and contradictory. PS: the person who said the iGENEA result was impossible was actually working for the competing company, who were under contract from Hawass but who also offer a personal DNA evaluation service to the general public. Andajara is now demanding to include the full tables in the article, in which case all 4 articles are going to be skewed in this direction, which in most cases is UNDUE in their individual contexts. I then propose that we do the full version for the DNA article, but only a summary with a blue-link in the other articles, to avoid UNDUE in every one of them. Wdford (talk) 17:31, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't think the DNA Tribes studies should be included any of the articles, they are not peer-received. The only reason why the iGENEA study was included at all in this and other related articles is because of the controversy surrounding the claims reported in news articles when it was published by iGENEA. The claims made by IGENEA are unsupported by any peer-reviewed published studies, their data comes from a snippet from documentary in which a camera panned over a computer screen for a moment, I don't see how under any circumstances that anyone would consider it an acceptable scientific source for reliable genetic data on the ancestral components of King Tut and his family.

As for the DNA Tribes studies, once again they are not peer-reviewed and per previous consensus not a reliable source for inclusion in this or other articles. Unlike IGENEA, the DNA Tribes studies lack notability, so the only reason they would be cited in an article would be as supportive evidence. Given the large array of ancestry testing companies and amateur DNA/genealogy groups and publications today, I think it would be rather disastrous for numerous Wikipedia articles if the content from non peer-reviewed genetic studies was allowed to be to introduced.--CorrinoIV (talk) 18:16, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Full tables? Where? That would be almost certainly be copyvio. One of our problems with articles on genetics is the tendency of editors trying to prove a point to use the data in the article rather than the results. Dougweller (talk) 17:48, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

References

I don't know what is going on-some anonymous editor (first edit) cut and paste dna tribes right after my edit

Some anonymous editor (first edit) came and included some dna tribes information right after I added 2 peer-reviewed studies. I moved it into its own section so what I added would not accidentally be deleted because I know dna tribes is disputed. I have no connection to that edit.

I had included just this with direct quotations from two-peer reviewed studies sources, as revision history clearly shows https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=DNA_history_of_Egypt&diff=589598292&oldid=589589640:

Just to be clear. Regards, Andajara120000 (talk) 13:38, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Small note, Andajara120000. Your second source is the ISOGG website, which is not a peer-reviewed study, but a private genetic genealogical group. Their phylogenetic trees of Y chromosome haplogroups is cited in peer-reviewed literature as they do update it often which makes is valuable source for researchers to use. But I think it would be better if you could cite from an actual published peer-reviewed study for a statement about the probably geographic origins E1b1a in Africa to avoid any potential issue about it.--CorrinoIV (talk) 16:15, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Rameses DNA Dispute Resolution Filed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#DNA_history_of_Egypt

This is a response to my bringing up the issue at WP:NORN as it is WP:SYN and we should only be using the conclusions of the BMJ article (the only peer-reviewed source) which are "This study suggests that Ramesses III was murdered during the harem conspiracy by the cutting of his throat. Unknown man E is a possible candidate as Ramesses III’s son Pentawere." See my full post at NORN. The DRN filing is very unlikely to be accepted as this is already at NORN. Dougweller (talk) 16:25, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Here is a link to the full "Revisiting the harem conspiracy and death of Ramesses III: anthropological, forensic, radiological,and genetic study". http://www.academia.edu/2308336/Revisiting_the_harem_conspiracy_and_death_of_Ramesses_III_anthropological_forensic_radiological_and_genetic_study This may be of use for anyone wondering where some of the genetic data is coming from, as only a link to the abstract is cited on the page. CorrinoIV (talk) 16:58, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for that, that can be useful for editors who have only seen the abstract. As Dougweller filed NORN after me as the timing shows, that is an issue. But in any case, yes this closed that case due to the ArbComm but your NORN is ongoing and I highly welcome outside editor voices there.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research/Noticeboard

IP editing losing sources, making a mess

Two IP edits have copied material from the page, not the edit page, which has left source numbers, eg [34] (don't know if that's one of the numbers in question) and not links to sources. This MUST be fixed before we edit further or it will be much harder to fix later. I have no time. It's pretty much vandalism or trouble-making in any case. Dougweller (talk) 19:39, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Recent Rameses III and Amarna Lineages DNA Studies-Only Peer-Reviewed Studies on Wikipedia?

There seems to be some debate on inclusion of the references from DNA tribes. What is the justification that only peer-reviewed scientific information is permitted? This is regarding the below (not the references from Zawi Hawass but the additional DNA tribes reference for Amarna. I would like a conversation before sourced and referenced material below is reverted again:

"Recent DNA studies of Ancient Egyptian mummies of a New Kingdom dynasty have confirmed Sub-Saharan African origins for notable New Kingdom pharoahs from both the Rameses III (from 1186 B.C.) and Amarna (from 1353 B.C.) lineages: In December 2012, Zahi Hawass, the former Egyptian Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs and his research team released DNA studies of Rameses III (who historically is assumed to have usurped the throne and as such may not represent earlier lineages) and his son have found he carried the Sub-Saharan African Haplogroup E1b1a, and as a result clustered most closely with Africans from the African Great Lakes (335.1), Southern Africa (266.0) and Tropical West Africa (241.7) and not Europeans (1.4), Middle Easterners (14.3) or peoples from the Horn of Africa (114.0).

Earlier studies from January 2012 of the Amarna mummies had reached similar conclusions with the average affiliations of the mummies found to be Southern African (326.94), Great Lakes African (323.76) and Tropical West African (83.74) and not Middle Eastern (6.92), European (5.21) or with peoples from the Horn of Africa (14.79). As no other studies of other Ancient Egyptian mummies are available, the questions as to the genetic affiliations of other pharaohs and figures (such as Cleopatra VII, the last pharaoh of Egypt from 51 B.C. following the Greek Conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 300 B.C.) is yet undetermined. "

Due to [1], I have replaced the Amarna lineages reference with the peer-reviewed study it was based on: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=185393. There should be no further problems now. Regards, Andajara120000 (talk) 22:18, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

These are the two peer-reviewed studies in question; there should be no further problems: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=185393

Hawass at al. 2012, Revisiting the harem conspiracy and death of Ramesses III: anthropological, forensic, radiological, and genetic study. BMJ2012;345doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.e8268 Published 17 December 2012 Regards, Andajara120000 (talk) 22:26, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't see any conclusion in either of these references concluding that Egyptian kings were descended from sub-Saharan Africans - did I miss something, or is this just personal synthesis? Wdford (talk) 09:36, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

I quote: " Genetic kinship analyses revealed identical haplotypes in both mummies (table 1); using the Whit Athey’s haplogroup predictor, we determined the Y chromosomal haplogroup E1b1a. " Both Ramses III and his son have haplogroup E1b1a, the haplogroup associated with the Bantu Expansion - except that they ruled BEFORE the Bantu Expansion. This is a clear indication that E1b1a was present in the Nile Valley as well as E1b1b, and both may have come out of the Sahara Desert after it's wet period (7500-3500 BC) ended (see the Neolithic Subpluvial). My guess is that E1b1a and E1b1b moved out of the Sahara into the Nile Valley together, and from the Nile Valley moved to West Africa (E1b1a) and East Africa (E1b1b). Many West African people's oral history puts their origins in the Nile Valley, while people from the Nile Valley put their origin locally. (See The African Origin of Civilization, by C.A. Diop, Chapter IX "The Peopling Of Africa From The Nile Valley".) MrSativa (talk) 15:32, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Hello I started a discussion on the Wikipedia noticeboard regarding the use of sources in response to your question, please see Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard ‎ (→‎DNA Tribes Used As Supporting Source To Two Peer-Reviewed Studies). Regards, Andajara120000 (talk) 10:51, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

References

Ancient Egyptians black or white? (Like Amenhotep, Akhenaten and Nefertiti, not the greek Cleopatra)

There was too much Jargon in the article that I didnt seem to find what I was looking for. Are Ancient Egyptians black or white based on the DNA study? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.71.48.151 (talk) 11:38, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

DNA studies don't determine skin color. Dougweller (talk) 13:42, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

They show that the dna of Tutankhamon and Ramses III is very much like the people of Southern Africa today, who are Black people (not going into the issue of 'race' for a moment). So yes, Tutankhamon was Black in the sense we saw it in the 20th century. His haplogroup is most likely the same as Ramses III, which is almost the same as the majority of African American men and most 'sub-Saharan' Africans. The term 'sub-Saharan' itself is deceptive, because Africans are much older than the Sahara. And on both sides of the Sahara, most men have haplogroups E1b1a or E1b1b. Both came from East Africa, the Ethiopia/Somalia region, where Afro-Asiatic (including Semitic) also came from. MrSativa (talk) 04:51, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Please do not use this page as a forum to discuss the subject DNA history of Egypt or skin color. Doug Weller (talk) 13:35, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

However, dna studies could easily demonstrate skin color if they tested for, for instance, SLC24A5. http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1003912 MrSativa (talk) 03:46, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Logical Inconsistency?

I'm not much of an expert of population genetics so I don't want to mess with the article, but there is a logical inconsistency in Paragraph 4 under the heading "Ancient DNA": "The sequencing in 2015 of the DNA of a 4,500-year-old skeleton from Mota Cave in the highlands of southwest Ethiopia, showed that Middle Eastern farmers migrated into Africa around three thousand years ago (...)". It strikes me as rather peculiar how DNA of a 4500 year old skeleton by itself can give any insight into what happened 1500 years later. Wassermensch (talk) 00:13, 13 December 2015 (CET)

Did you read the references provided? Wdford (talk) 10:28, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Genetics again

See the discussion at Talk:Ramesses III#Genetics. The study clearly says "Objective: To investigate the true character of the harem conspiracy described in the Judicial Papyrus of Turin and determine whether Ramesses III was indeed killed." We can use it to discuss that, but not anything else. It keeps getting inserted here as an attempt to show racial history of the Egyptians, but in this context is simply cherry-picked. We should only use studies focussed on the genetic history of Egypt here rather than a study that is not aimed at the genetic relationship of the 2 mummies examined to other populations. Such a study would presumably have made a more detailed analysis. Doug Weller talk 12:11, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Age Of Sources

Nearly all references are from before 2006. DNA didn't begin to even be relevant until 2005, after the Human Genome was mapped in 2003, and of course new discoveries have been made since and will continue to be made for a very long time. The fact that human genetics is such a new science means that the references should e a lot more recent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MrSativa (talk • contribs) 17:07, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Good point. Doug Weller (talk) 18:41, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

As soon as you find a reliable source that says DNA studies can now accurately distinguish the race of the donor, please let us know immediately. Wdford (talk) 03:37, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Race doesn't exist, haplogroups do. And we can compare their dna to people who exist today, to know what they looked like. If we don't have a lifelike contemporary depiction to go with that - which in the case of Tutankhamon, we do, in the form of the Golden Mask. MrSativa (talk) 20:34, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Firstly, you are assuming the Golden Mask is an accurate depiction of Tut - the latest research suggests the Mask was originally made for Nefertiti. Second, the Mask and the Bust of Nefertiti don't really look alike, so maybe their art was not a true reflection of actual personal appearance. Third, both the Mask and the Bust could just as easily depict Greeks or Arabs or Blacks or Indians, so that helps you nothing at all. Fourth, Tut had lots of DNA, as do all people, and some of that DNA more closely follows Arabs and Whites than Blacks, so haplogroups are not conclusive either. I think you are fishing for straws, yes? Wdford (talk) 07:59, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

"Second, the Mask and the Bust of Nefertiti don't really look alike," that's because the bust of Nefertiti is an early 20th century German fake. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/arts_and_culture/8038097.stm Very entertaining that Zahi Hawass thinks that this bust represents the soul of the Egyptian people. There are other depictions of Nefertiti in stone that show very African features. "Third, both the Mask and the Bust could just as easily depict Greeks or Arabs or Blacks or Indians, so that helps you nothing at all. " In the case of the Golden Mask, only if those Greeks and Indians looked exactly like Eddy Murphy. Clearly, it is not me who is clasping at straws. MrSativa (talk) 08:37, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

So six years ago a single art historian made a wild claim which was ignored by all the other experts, and in your personal opinion the mask of Tut (which might not even have been made for him) looks exactly like Eddie Murphy, even though it looks nothing like Murphy at all. That's it? That's what you've got? And you wonder why you are making no progress? Wdford (talk) 16:32, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

First things first, the bust of Nefertiti violates all kinds of canons of Egyptian art. BBC: " The historian said he based his findings on several points, including the fact the bust has no left eye, which "is an insult for an ancient Egyptian who believed the statue was the person". He also said the shoulders were cut vertically while Egyptians cut shoulders horizontally, and that Nefertiti's facial features were accentuated in a manner resembling an Art Nouveau style. " In other words, she was based on some silent movie era understanding of Ancient Egypt. There are lots of fake Egyptian artifacts around. MrSativa (talk) 23:58, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

On who Tutankhamon most looks like - how about Tupac? Or even better, Genevieve Nnaji?

https://www.naij.com/668293-finally-genevieve-gets-marriage-proposal-photos.html http://www.egyptartsite.com/mask.html Notice the high cheekbones, the eversion of the lips and mild prognathism. So like I said, she could be Greek or Indian, if a Greek or Indian person looked like her. She is in fact Ghanean. Then - if the West created Ancient Egypt, why did it not reproduce Ancient Egypt? Why did they never equal the pyramids, in fact where are the European and Mesopotamean pyramids? Two can play that 'absence of evidence' game.MrSativa (talk) 00:45, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

This isn't a forum, and no one here so far as I know is saying that the West created Ancient Egypt, that's a straw man. Doug Weller (talk) 16:11, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

I just don't understand why you guys are seriously that insecure about this new data being on a wiki page? If they were white or black. Let the reader make their own decisions. But don't hide data that can lead one to believe that they were black. That is actively being a part of a conspiracy. So if you do believe that they were white then just put your data on the page. I know this is a page based on the controversy itself. But like I said this is the first page that comes up on a search for learning about the race of the Egyptians. Allanana79 (talk) 20:21, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

First, the bust of Nefertiti is accepted as genuine by all experts in the field – seemingly only an art historian tried to create a conspiracy theory. Second, the art of the Amarna period broke many of the artistic conventions, so it’s no surprise that this piece does so as well – this is one of the most well-known characteristics of the Armana period, as you should surely know. Third, the right eye of this bust is a separate gem that was glued in with wax, so it could be that the left eye was damaged, or perhaps the sculpture was never finished to begin with – it was found in the workshop so may well have been still awaiting the finishing touches. This has been suggested by various people – why do you not know this?

Nobody is claiming that “the West” created the pyramids – this question reveals a lot about your personal hang-ups. And if the black cultures of Africa created the pyramids of Egypt, why did they not reproduce or equal them elsewhere in Africa? There are small tiny pyramids in Nubia, which were built hundreds of years later and which are a fraction of the size – why were the known black pyramids not equals of the pyramids of Egypt?

As well, Rameses III ruled at the end of Egypt’s greatness, so his race – whatever it may have been – has no bearing on the achievements of the previous millennia. It’s obviously possible that his father had some black blood, as there were many black soldiers and slaves and traders etc in Egypt by that time, but his father was a usurper and his mother an unknown, so he was probably not related to the generations of kings who came before him anyway. Even if he did have a few drops of black blood, he is not necessarily representative of Egyptians generally – even of his own time. And finally, E1b1a is not uniquely a “black” thing – so in isolation it proves nothing, and the study to which you refer did not attempt to identify race from DNA to begin with.

What you seem to have is a handful of speculation, not supported by mainstream science or archaeology, along with a big chunk of wishful thinking. It is interesting to see a suggestion to include data “that can lead one to believe that they were black” – what is the motive here actually? Wdford (talk) 22:28, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

This is true. My y haplogroup is O1. And I'm whiter than snow. You can come to your own conclusions on Ramses. You can believe he was mermaid or alien or from Atlantis if you wish. But keep the data on him so that other people can come to their own conclusions. As to the Nerfitti Bust. It could very well be real. I had never heard before that it was a fake. They should do radio carbon dating on it. If it is real it's probably not Neferiti though. Just look at her reconstruction. Come on guys just leave the information on them having possibly been black up there. Allanana79 (talk) 16:19, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

DNA Tribes And Ancient Egyptian DNA

I don't know why this keeps getting deleted, so I post it here. Maybe when enough people comment on it, it can be moved to the main page:

In 2012, a study was released in the British Medical Journal, signed off on by Zahi Hawass, Revisiting the harem conspiracy and death of Ramesses III: anthropological, forensic, radiological, and genetic study, that stated that the haplogroup of Ramesses III and his son was E1b1a. E1b1a is the haplogroup mostly associated with the Bantu Expansion of 1000 BC onwards.

Genetic kinship analyses revealed identical haplotypes in both mummies (table 1); using the Whit Athey’s haplogroup predictor, we determined the Y chromosomal haplogroup E1b1a.

In 2012, DNA Tribes listed the DNA of the various mummies of this study, using a Match Likelihood Index or MLI, which compares the dna of an individual to dna of people in various parts of the world. You divide the MLI of one region with another to see how much more the individual's dan is like one regions vs another. King Tutankhamon's MLI Southern Africa (1,519.03), African Great Lakes (1,328.01), Tropical West Afrcan (314.00), Horn of Africa (44.35), Sahelian (30.41), Levantine (21.08), Aegean (9.85), Arabian (10.91), Northwestern European (5.33), Mediterranean (6.04), North African (6.55), Mesopotamian (5.27). For example, King Tutankhamon's dna is 1519.03/10.91 = 139 times more like Southern African DNA than like Arabian DNA.

I think it is very strong evidence that should be included in the main article. MrSativa (talk) 01:43, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Uhh yeah considering they use DNA tribes as a source on everything else. And now they took the Ramses data off. This really gets to me. What can we do as regular users of Wikipedia? Allanana79 (talk) 17:56, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

We do? We shouldn't, and doing something wrong in one article isn't a reason to do it here. Your only purpose seems to be to add this data. And let's face it, 12 edits doesn't make you a 'regular user' if by that you mean editor. Doug Weller talk 18:58, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm new to this. And the only reason why I am is because of the information that was on Ramses. Which I had gotten really excited about when it first came out and I found it on Wikipedia. Only to go back two weeks later to see that it had been taken off after I tried showing someone. This was the only reason I became an editor. I use Wikipedia for everything. I'm always on it. Allanana79 (talk) 19:12, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Why do you keep taking the data off? There is clear evidence that at the very least one known Egyptian Pharoah carries a sub Saharan Marker. Which has been proven as fact. All the other Pharoahs may or may not have been but this one obviously was. It genuinely appears that you are taking this information out because you do not want others to see this. Ridiculous dude Allanana79 (talk) 17:58, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

I wish that the genetics bit was all in one section. I've just responded to someone else in the section below called "Section on "Recent DNA Studies of Amarna and Ramesses III Lineages" moved here from article" It's about policy and guidelines. Doug Weller talk 18:37, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Section on "Recent DNA Studies of Amarna and Ramesses III Lineages" moved here from article

"Recent DNA studies of Ancient Egyptian mummies of a New Kingdom dynasty claim to have confirmed Sub-Saharan African origins for notable New Kingdom pharoahs from both the Rameses III (from 1186 B.C.) and Amarna (from 1353 B.C.) lineages: In December 2012, Zahi Hawass, the former Egyptian Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs and his research team released DNA studies of Rameses III and his son have found he carried the Sub-Saharan African HaplogroupE1b1a. As a result clustering most closely with Africans from the African Great Lakes (335.1), Southern Africa (266.0) and Tropical West Africa (241.7) and not Europeans (1.4), Middle Easterners (14.3) or peoples from the Horn of Africa (114.0).

Earlier studies from January 2012 of the Amarna mummies had reached similar conclusions. As a result, the average affiliations of the mummies were found to be Southern African (326.94), Great Lakes African (323.76) and Tropical West African (83.74) and not Middle Eastern (6.92), European (5.21) or with peoples from the Horn of Africa (14.79). As no other studies of other Ancient Egyptian mummies are available, the questions as to the genetic affiliations of other pharaohs and figures (such as Cleopatra VII, the last pharaoh of Egypt from 51 B.C. following the Greek Conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 300 B.C.) is yet undetermined."

As this is challenged above and I couldn't figure out all the links between the sources and the cited text, I'm moving it here for discussion. Where precisely do all of these sources "claim to have confirmed Sub-Saharan African origins for notable New Kingdom pharoahs from both the Rameses III (from 1186 B.C.) and Amarna (from 1353 B.C.) lineages:" - the sources need to discuss this specifically. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 14:03, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

I have clearly edited it to support the inline citations before you deleted them. I am unclear what problems you have with the genetic studies presented here.Regards, Andajara120000 (talk) 14:54, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

This is what the MLI or Match Likelihood Index means. You divide one region's number with another, to see how much a mummy's dna is like people who are alive today in that part of the world. So when King Tut has a Southern Africa index of 326.94 and a Middle Eastern index of 6.92, it means that King Tut's dna is 326.94/6.92 or 47 times more like today's Southern African dna than today's Middle Eastern dna. DNA Tribes FAQ: "For instance, if you obtain a score of 25.0 for Bavarian and 5.0 for Macedonian populations, this implies your genetic profile is 25.0/5.0 = 5.0 times more likely to be common in Bavaria than Macedonia"

http://www.dnatribes.com/faq.php MrSativa (talk) 15:21, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

DNATribes is not a reliable source. We should only use academic sources here. Doug Weller (talk) 15:51, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

You are just being obstructionist. 'We' are all of a sudden requiring extraordinarily high standards of evidence, while pushing orthodoxy on no evidence at all. For instance, there is corroborating evidence in that the Amarna study shows that the haplogroup of Ramses III and his son is E1b1a, the haplogroup predominant in so-called Sub-Saharan Africa. The dna of Tutankhamon is closest to the dna of people alive today in Southern Africa - not the Great Lakes, not Tropical West Africa, however Southern Africa. Hmmm... what is the predominant haplogroup in Southern Africa today? E1b1a. Just like Ramses III and his son were E1b1a. I sincerely hate individuals who want to defend the status quo, cloaking themselves in the mantle of 'objectivity', 'science' 'standards'. You either follow the evidence or you don't. I wonder if Mary Lefkowitz ever issued an apology.MrSativa (talk) 16:22, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

No, this is the way Wikipedia works. We don't interpret our sources. You could do that elsewhere, but not here. Your personal attacks are noted. Doug Weller (talk) 17:29, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Sorry but Doug what is your excuse for taking the DNA data on Ramses 3 Y chromosome haplogroup off of this page. This is the page that it definetely should be kept on. So you are purposefully hiding this information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Allanana79 (talk • contribs) 17:38, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

So instead of discussing whether this meets our policies and guidelines you stoop to an absurd accusation that I'm racist? Wow. Doug Weller talk 19:55, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

References

I mean seriously. You have taken the data on Ramses iii DNA off of every page on Wikipedia. Why are you doing this if not out of rascism or to hide the facts about ancient Egypt? I have used Wikipedia for years now and these kind of things takes away my trust in Wikipeda. Why do you not want people to know this about their DNA? You keep giving excuses but then I go to another page and you take the information off there as well stating another excuse. Allanana79 (talk) 18:07, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

No excuses, just policy and guidelines versus your personal attack. Sources shouldn't be cherry-picked for data that supports your point of view - we should be using journal article summaries and should only use studies for the purpose for which they were performed. Doug Weller talk 19:01, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

For anyone attempting to learn about the race of the ancient Egyptians. The first thing that comes up after a Google is Ancient Egytpian race controversy on Wikipedia. However there is a ton of data on subjects such as archaeology linguistics. All pointing to them being white. When in fact the opposite is true. So why can't the information that pertains to them being black not represented.? DNA points in that direction. There is no however any data on this page about the DNA of the Pharoahs. Which does state that they were black. Why would you not want this information revealed if you aren't racist? No. It has nothing to do with this or that needing peer reviewed data. Or some other excuse. Because the Ramses 3 data is peer reviewed. You are just hiding because you don't like the fact. Allanana79 (talk) 19:24, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

If you are genuinely not racist than show me an edit of yours that brings one to the conclusion that they may have possibly been black. All of your other posts on talk have been keen on taking this information off. I read in one place you compared Eurocentrics with afrocentrics but that was all. This information is vital as of recently with the coming of Gods of Egypt. Many people will be searching the Internet for this type of info. You can post the data on whatever page. As long as people can see it. Because from my readings on the Ancient Egyptian race controversy on Wikipedia one would come to the conclusion that they were white. Allanana79 (talk) 20:13, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

I am not going to get into an argument with you over whether or not I'm racist (although I will say that one of the most inspiring things I've ever done was March at Selma with Martin Luther King). What do you mean by "the coming of the gods of Egypt"? And what I get out of that article is that the "race" issue isn't susceptible to the sort of answer you clearly want. Even if it could, I really don't care. We all came from Africa at some point. Doug Weller talk 20:32, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

I know you're not racist dude. In fact I would be a candidate for being racist. But I truly believe the AE were black from all this new data that has been published. I always thought they were East African. But by removing this information validates the Afrocentric argument that there exists a conspiracy surrounding the facts. Gods of Egypt is an upcoming movie with an all white cast. Also. I am not afrocentricst in the least. I don't believe the ancient Jews were black. And I especially don't believe the olmecs were black. Allanana79 (talk) 20:38, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

2015 (UTC)

I agree with Allanana79 here. There's no reason to remove the results of Ramses III analysis by the British Medical Journal. It is an "anthropological, forensic, radiological, and genetic study". It was there for a long time before User:Doug Weller removed it. The British Medical Journal is certainly a valid source respecting both WP:NOR and WP:VERIFY. This article already has the virtue of a compilation of various DNA study done in Egypt and it would be unfortunate to hide this from the people reading the page for whatever reason. It is true information done by a respectable source in relation to Ancient DNA from Egypt as discussed with User:Doug Weller in my talk page. The British Medical Journal has notoriety and the study is cited by many other studies. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&um=1&ie=UTF-8&lr&cites=393217438290699417 Removing it is simply hiding information about the DNA history of Egypt, information used by experts from other studies. As discussed with User:Doug Weller in my talk page I removed the reference to sub-Saharan Africa because such mention didn't exist in the BMJ study as people outside Africa can carry the E1b1a haplogroup of Ramses III. DrLewisphd (talk) 12:28, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

We have many articles which have had material in them for a long time which clearly doesn't belong.

New users often struggle, as I did when I was new, with our concept of "no original research". A lot of original research added to our articles is based on excellent sources. It's how you use the sources that count.

We expect all users to accept good faith, and suggesting that I am trying to hid something is suggesting bad faith.

On their own findings from a genetic study of a mummy are raw data. This study "processed" it to use it to link 2 mummies. It made no comments on anything else. You want to take the data out of the context in which it was presented and use it for a different purpose, unlike the way the article uses its other sources. How does it relate to the lead? You can't relate it because it's presented in isolation. Doug Weller talk 18:24, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

I won't repeat my argument above, but what wikipedia policies does this British Medical Journal study you want to remove infringed? This is very important you tell me for me to understand your point of view. This study is from the British Medical Journal and certainly a valid source respecting both WP:NOR and WP:VERIFY. ""It is notorious and cited by other studies about the population history of Egypt."" For example, the study used in this Wikipedia article mentioning the "mtDNA haplogroup I2" of the Ptolemaic mummies (quote from this wikipedia article) has itself cited the previous British Medical Journal study you want to remove. So this study seem to fulfill both WP:NOR and WP:VERIFY as it is even used by other studies about the DNA history of Egypt! Since there's small consensus with Allanana79 and since this study is a valid source of information cited by other study about the DNA history of Egypt, I will put the reference back and you may contact the relevant notice board or other dispute resolution if you want to dispute the validity of the source or other wikipedia guidelines or specify which wikipedia rules is infringed here. I think we can all agree the British Medical Journal is a valid source of information and this study is relevant to the DNA history of Egypt. DrLewisphd (talk) 17:49, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Um, no offence to Allanana70 but they are simply saying "I like it", and consensus is not built by numbers of "likes" but by policy and guideline based arguments. It's actually up to you to argue why it should be included when editors with much more experience than you try to explain why it shouldn't be. See Wdford's comments below. Sure, the same data may be used by other studies, but they will be analysing the raw data for a purpose. In the Hawass article it was used to show a relationship between mummies and we should only use it for that purpose. Please don't keep replacing it, the default is not 'it's ok'. Doug Weller talk 11:07, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

I lay down my arguments in my 2 posts above which I wont repeat again. I don't know if your seniority makes you a superior and more reliable editor (is it a wikipedia rule?) but I laid down my argument clearly above. The consensus is small but it's still there. The British Medical Journal study respect both WP:NOR and WP:VERIFY and it's typical for such studies to have multiple objectives. Being a study about the DNA of ancient specimen make it about the DNA history of Egypt it doesn't have to have the words: "DNA history of Egypt" to be about it. It is an "anthropological, forensic, radiological, and genetic study" like the study mentioning the "mtDNA haplogroup I2" of the Ptolemaic mummies referenced in this wikipedia article. It is even cited by other studies about the DNA history of Egypt. This article has already the virtue of a compilation of studies about the DNA history of Egypt and the BMJ study is certainly part of a continuous series of such studies. I will ask you again which wikipedia guideline is infringed here, you may contact the relevant noticeboard of dispute resolution if you want to remove a reliably source material with a small consensus. In general, it would be sad to remove the information, people reading the wikipedia article would lose information about the DNA history of Egypt, it is a very interesting results. The Ptolemaic results are interesting but so is the Ramses III results. Basically, you just want to remove the information by spitting hairs not because it's untrue, badly sourced, not relevant to the DNA history of Egypt or something like that but for some other reason. We can all agree, I think you can agree with us, the information in the British Medical Journal study is verifiable, well sourced, cited by other studies, true, relevant to the DNA history of Egypt. Isn't it? DrLewisphd (talk) 12:36, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Which consensus are we referring to here please? Wdford (talk) 14:22, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

RSN

See WP:RSN#Can we use a genetic study not aimed at the DNA history of Egypt in that article?. Doug Weller talk 15:02, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Unsupported Eurocentrist Leaning Claims

On the claim that one of the late period mummies had MtDNA haplogroup I. This is what the article says:

The data sets retrieved so far are small — a tiny fraction of what would be required for a whole genome sequence. But they show that human DNA survives in the mummies and that it is amenable to sequencing. The researchers determined that one of the mummified individuals may belong to an ancestral group, or haplogroup, called I2, believed to have originated in Western Asia.

On trying to de-africanize the Ancient Egyptians:

" Luis et al. (2004) found that the male haplogroups in a sample of 147 Egyptians were E1b1b (36.1%, predominantly E-M78), J (32.0%), G (8.8%), T(8.2%), and R (7.5%). E1b1b and its subclades are characteristic of some Afro-Asiatic speakers and are believed to have originated in either the Middle East, North Africa, or the Horn of Africa. "

Of course not. E1b1b and E1b1a originated from E1b1, all in East Africa. E1b1b is not 'characteristic of some Afro-Asiatic speakers' - it is thoroughly associated with the spread of Afro-Asiatic itself, about 3500 BC. This is again why it is highly concentrated among the Somalis and the Berbers. E1b1a is linked to the spread of Bantu, about 1,000 BC onwards. Both originated about 20k to 30k years ago in East Africa. The Afro-Asiatic languages originated in the same place, which is why most Afro-Asiatic language families, including Semitic, are still found in East Africa today - South-, East- and Central Cushitic, Omotic, Beja, Semitic, Hausa (West Africa), Berber (Northwest Africa) and Ancient Egyptian (Northeast Africa).

E1b1a distribution https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/96/Distribution_of_haplogroup_e1b1a_in_Rosa_2007.jpg/330px-Distribution_of_haplogroup_e1b1a_in_Rosa_2007.jpg%7C

E1b1b distribution https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/E1b1bRoute.png More realistic spread of Haplogroup E from East Africa

And the concentration of Semitic languages in East Africa, rather than Southern Arabia, the Levant or Mesopotamia - again the farther one gets from Africa, the homeland of all the other Afro-Asiatic languages, the fewer Semitic languages there are. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/Semitic_languages.svg/450px-Semitic_languages.svg.png

As one can see to this day, not only is the Semitic language family an Afro-Asiatic language family, it's highest diversity and therefore point of diffusion is the same as the place where most other Afro-Asiatic language families are most diverse, and therefore oldest - the Ethiopia/Sudan region.MrSativa (talk) 18:40, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Let's keep this "Black Egyptian" thread in one place

According to the article List of haplogroups of historic people, DNA testing has shown that Adolf Hitler was probably black; Queen Victoria and Thomas Jefferson were probably Arabs, and Chris Rock was probably Chinese. DNA testing also found that Kennewick Man, an 8500-year-old skeleton found in Washington State USA, was closely related to ancient Europeans even though Europeans only reached that part of the USA in the 1500’s. This predictably caused a racist storm in the USA. An even bigger racist storm resulted when DNA testing also found that Tutankhamen and his family were probably white. As a result the reliability of DNA testing for establishing "race" is heavily discredited. Afrocentrics like to claim Ramses III as black based on DNA tests, but utterly reject accepting that Tutankhamen was white as those DNA tests "obviously must have been contaminated". Since Ramses III had as much chance of being black as did Adolf Hitler, this actually proves nothing, and only people with a racist agenda would continually demand that this be included in a Wikipedia article so that "people can see that at least one Pharaoh was probably black". Wdford (talk) 19:07, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

If that's the case than there should be no problem having that information on there. What are you actually afraid of anyway? Obviously you are afraid. I have read all your previous edits on talk. You're from South Africa. From what I understand Ramses was the same e1b1 as Nelson Mandela. Isn't that interesting? Your former president? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Allanana79 (talk • contribs) 20:14, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Well actually there is a problem with including that information - Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a blog, and there are policies which specifically prevent people with specific agendas from loading in every snippet of half-relevant data so as to skew an article to support their POV. As Dougweller has pointed out many times, this factoid that a certain editor keeps plugging back in falls foul of those policies, and a certain editor is skating on thin ice as it is. "Interesting" is not the same thing as "encyclopedic". DNA haplogroups do NOT indicate race, and since they derive from tens of thousands of years back in the family tree they hardly indicate much of anything really. To pretend otherwise is somewhere between delusional and fraudulent. What exactly is your burning motivation to insert this factoid which could possibly be misinterpreted to misleadingly suggest that the king who ran Egypt into the ground after 2000 years of glory may possibly have had a few drops of black blood in his family tree ten thousand years earlier? Wdford (talk) 10:29, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

It is the only known haplogroup of an Ancient Egyptian Pharaoah that's why it should be in there. There is the section on ancient DNA right? It's not MODERN DNA. And since we don't have any other pharoahs and we don't have any other ancient DNA why would it be illogical to not have the only peer reviewed DNA haplogroup of a Pharoah in the section on DNA history of egypt? Allanana79 (talk) 04:04, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

But such decisions need to follow our policies and guidelines. Doug Weller talk 07:17, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Then you would need to take down the entire Article. In fact. Let's take down all of Wikipedia. Because everything doesn'nt meet your guidelines Allanana79 (talk) 07:08, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

How is the only Pharoahs DNA not relevant to ancient DNA on a section called ancient DNA of Egypt?! Pray tell!! How does that not meet your guidelines?? I will bring this to the top of Wikipedia if I have to go up to San Francisco to do this. I will make sure this stays on this page. Believe me. Allanana79 (talk) 07:11, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

The WMF doesn't deal with this sort of issue, I can guarantee you that. I do talk to them every 4 weeks. You still don't have any policy or guideline based reason - just WP:ILIKEIT. Doug Weller talk 10:27, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

The current political situation of our times being what it is wouldn't you think keeping this information on Wikipedia is important? Everything that's been going on here in the west for the past 200 years and in Africa for the past 400 years wouldn't you agree this information is vitally important? Come on you went to an Ivy League school you know this? Allanana79 (talk) 22:02, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

There are none so deaf as those who will not hear. Just making excuses. By the way, the statement of E1b1a is included on the Ramses III page. Check out the talk page there too. MrSativa (talk) 04:30, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

DIscussion moved from orphanned Talk:DNA history of Ancient Egypt

Unreal Doug. You do not think DNA tribes is a good source but you thought IGNEA was a good source? Dnatribes was based off of a peer reviewed study and IGNEA was based of a screen shot!!! Give me a break. It's obvious to everyone that you and Wdford are biased. How did you ever come to be an administrator?? I know this is in the past and currently the IGNEA TUT claim is no longer on there. But that you guys actually considered it over dnatribes? Allanana79 (talk) 08:05, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

It's IGENEA and I made it clear I didn't think it was a reliable source, but that it had had enough attention - newspapers, the Discovery Channel, etc to be a significant view we could mention. Why are you saying it was based on a screen shot? It wasn't. And the article made it clear that there claims were "impossible". Doug Weller talk 11:26, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't know it just seems like you're biased towards towards the Eurocentric camp on the Egyptian controversy. Maybe I'm interpreting it wrong. Ugh I'm tired. Allanana79 (talk) 08:01, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Allanana79: "It's obvious to everyone that you and Wdford are biased. How did you ever come to be an administrator??" - Absolutely. It should not take years to post something as simple as the statement that E1b1a is connected to the Bantu Expansion. Somehow this is 'original research' in Doug Weller world. Apparently you aren't even allowed to imply that the Ancient Egyptians were Black. Even when they have the same genes as other Black people living today. MrSativa (talk) 17:36, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

It was based off a screen shot on the discovery channel. The Ramses data is peer reviewed and dnatribes is based off of peer reviewed data. All of the information taken from IGNEA was captured from screen shots off a television show on the discovery channel. This was admitted by them. This is the reason this information is not allowed on Wikipedia. If it was peer reviewed you bet your behind it would be on every article in the universe possible. All of the other information is not dispersed because it is all pointing towards them (the AEs) being sub Saharan thus poor people or third world people of today. Allanana79 (talk) 08:09, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Allanana79 You haven't answered my question. What makes you think our article used a screen shot? You seem to be saying we simply used it based on their what - their website, a screenshot, what? How do you know this? I'm biased towards following our policies and guidelines - very different from say writing a thesis for a Master's degree. Or a peer reviewed paper for that matter. The Ramesses data is not used to discuss the demographic history of Egypt which is what the article is about. If we use it in this way it's original research which is against policy. Please answer my question about how the article used iGENEA. Doug Weller talk 09:57, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Allanana79, I've moved the discussion to the correct talk page. Doug Weller talk 11:46, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't think I'm following you. There isn't a page based on the information from IGNEA on Wikipedia. I was making an observation on your past decisions on which data to allow on Wikipedia. And from what I have gathered from my observations your history shows bias towards the Eurocentric camp on this controversy. Allanana79 (talk) 21:04, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

All you have to do is Google Tut DNA IGNEA and you can that they got their data from a screenshot. You guys considered that in a flash. But flat out refused the data from dnatribes which was based on peer reviewed data taken from http://jama.jamanetwork.com/mobile/article.aspx?articleid=185393. And even refused data on Ramses 3 haplogroup which undeniably states African roots with e1b1a as marker. Allanana79 (talk) 21:21, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Can we please focus on our guidelines and policies. iGENEA is not a reliable source and I never suggested it was. However, if you look at WP:NPOV and the actual way we included it, I felt that I had to recognise it as significant due to the media discussion.

Earlier disputed DNA studies of King Tutankhamun (from 1332 B.C.) from 2011 resulted in scientists at a Zurich-based DNA genealogy centre, iGENEA, in a Discovery Channel documentary 2011 claiming Tutankhamun had Haplogroup R1b1a2, to which more than 50% of European men, but less than 1% of modern-day Egyptians, belong to. Although these findings were widely reported, the Y-chromosome of King Tut had never been published and the DNA profile displayed in Discovery Channel documentary may not actually have belonged to the Pharaoh. According to Carsten Pusch, a geneticist at Germany's University of Tübingen who was part of the team that unraveled Tut's DNA from samples taken from his mummy and mummies of his family members, iGENEA's claims are "simply impossible."

On its own we definitely shouldn't include it.

Have you read original research yet? Please do and explain how that does or doesn't apply to the Hawass article being used. I'm not sure which peer reviewed article says Ramesses has African roots, perhaps you can refresh my mind.

References

Doug Weller talk 09:51, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

So you're saying E1b1a is not African? What are you saying you're speaking in some strange pretentious Wikipedia scholar speech I don't understand. Allanana79 (talk) 04:05, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

The British Medical Journal is not peer reviewed? Are you kidding me??! Allanana79 (talk) 04:38, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I really do not understand a word you are saying. We have horrible miscommunication. Please use laymans terms or some other register please. Allanana79 (talk) 04:40, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Ok I read about neutral point of view. You posted the article about Tut in a neutral manner but with a euro undertone. You realize that right ? Allanana79 (talk) 04:43, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Following the discussion at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard I've removed it.[2] Doug Weller talk 11:52, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

What does that mean? Allanana79 (talk) 04:53, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

I presume you read the link. It means other experienced editors agreed with me. By the way, it's archived now so please don't edit that page, although of course you can start a new discussion Doug Weller talk 06:02, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't edit. I don't have a computer and I don't know how to do all that. Thank you though. Allanana79 (talk) 01:35, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Hey Doug. I have a question for you. What race do you believe the Egyptians were personally? With all the evidence there is from DNA tribes and Ramses Y chromosome haplogroup and all of their artwork and their skeletal remains. All of the first hand accounts from Greek historians and other classical writers. What color were they? Allanana79 (talk) 08:33, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

They were probably much like they are today - closer to Arab-looking more than anything else. Please remember that the Greek historians and other classical writers were writing 2000 years after the pyramids were built, at a time when Egypt had been invaded by many others, including even Kush. The people they saw in their day were not representative of the original Egyptians anymore, despite the Afrocentric claims to the contrary. Ramses III was himself a late-dynasty product of a usurper, so his race is not representative of the 2000 years of glory that came before. The ancient artwork clearly distinguishes Egyptian people from "black" people - see eg [3]. Skeletal remains are not accurate as a racial indicator, as the skull shapes and limb ratios fit the Arabs as well as anybody else and better than most. The Afrocentric "case" frames race as "anything that is not white is black" - this ignores all the other "races" that one would expect to find in Egypt, as a deliberate attempt to appropriate the achievements of other "races". Don't be fooled by racists. Wdford (talk) 11:29, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Even Obama could be said to look like an Arab so this all depends on ones definition of black. People in Ethiopia look very Arab as well. So what is the problem with saying they were black or colorourds like you say in South Africa? It just seems you wish to bring them as close as possible to European or as far away as possible from any type of African. It really is ridiculous. If you can't see that than you are a fool. Allanana79 (talk) 02:41, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

It certainly does depend on one’s definition of black. Arabs do not consider themselves to be black or coloured. Berbers do not consider themselves to be black or coloured. Egyptians do not consider themselves to be black or coloured. Therefore having foreign racists describing these people as black or coloured, for the sake of trying to bask in associated glory, is racist and demeaning and fraudulent. I’m sure there must have been black people in Egypt since day one, exactly as there are black people in the USA and in the UK, but that doesn’t mean that the Americans or the British are a “black people”. Perhaps some people in Ethiopia look very Arab because their family tree has a lot of Arab blood – Egyptian and other Arab traders have been visiting these lands for millennia? It just seems you wish to bring them as close as possible to black or as far away as possible from any type of non-black. It really is ridiculous. If you can't see that than you are a fool. Wdford (talk) 11:18, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Here is an article in a respected journal, describing a paper published recently in another respected journal. It states that, about 3000 years ago, there was a large backflow of migration from the Middle East into Eastern Africa. Perhaps that explains why so many people in Ethiopian and the Sudan look a lot like Arabs? [4] Wdford (talk) 14:16, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

I just thought of something. You could be right. The conspiracy could be the reverse they only published the DNA of the Amarna mummies because those were the only mummies that were black and Ramses iii because his was the only haplogroup that came out e1b1a. It's so confusing. Probably because Obama is in power they would have done this. I'm just brainstorming. We will find out soon though I hope. Allanana79 (talk) 19:03, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

To clarify about Ramses III's E1b1a Y DNA - that was predicted from a STR haplotype, i.e. it is most likely E1b1a but not confirmed to be so. The haplotype in question was quite odd, not resembling typical modern E1b1a (such as the Bantu modal haplotype) much at all. So it is probably wise to be cautious and wait for a proper analysis with SNP testing. I gather that the Egyptian archaeological establishment wants all the ancient DNA analysis done in Egypt by Egyptian scientists, not I think for any sinister reasons but out of ordinary patriotism/self-aggrandizement/employment of nephews. Alas this means it may be a while before we see conclusive results. With aDNA everything should be replicated by independent laboratories so hopefully they will send samples to some established aDNA lab for confirmation, allowing them to keep all the credit for discovery while reassuring anyone who may question their motivations or competence. Megalophias (talk) 16:53, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

I guess I do have a bias on the subject if I'm going to be super honest about it. It is far more interesting to me if they were black than just another white civilization. I'm actually surprised not too many people share my view. So while I am looking at the data I obviously prefer to see it going in that direction. While mentally excluding the data pointing towards the other. So I forced myself to look at it from the other side and even if they come out looking somewhat white?! Culturally they were closer to Africans what with their leopard skins, circumcision etc etc. Thus I personally safely assume they were black just by the continent, the river and culture they were on and associated with. Allanana79 (talk) 19:34, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

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Content from "Revisiting the harem conspiracy..."

First added by IP here and restored by User:DrLewisphd:

• here
• here
• here
• here
• here
• here

As stated in the several edit notes removing this, this is a primary source (which we shouldn't use at all, and if we use them, we should stick very closely to what they say), but this result is not discussed in the abstract or conclusion by the authors of the paper. Jytdog (talk) 19:16, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Hello. First, I would like you to point to me which guidelines is infringed here to remove this valid and reliably sourced information. I need to know which guidelines so I can refer to it and respond to you. Second, there's no reason to cherry pick which DNA studies should be presented in this article. The section has the virtue of a list of ancient DNA studies. People expect all ancient DNA studies (from reliable source). There's not a lot of them in this narrow and cutting edge field. Basically, they are all presented here in this article beside one (Ramses III and unknown man E from the BMJ study). Why cherry pick which study/ancient DNA should be presented here? People reading this article expect every ancient DNA studies to be presented here. They are very rare. Third, those are not raw data, as explained in my edit, the haplogroup of the MtDNA Ptolamaic mummies are already included in the article, thus haplogroup is considered a valid information to be presented in this article and not raw data. Which I obviously agree with. Fifth, this is also true for future studies. If there's future studies presenting haplogroups of ancient egyptian mummies, no matter which haplogroup, they should be presented here as long as they are from a reliable source. There's not a lot of them and they are all important in this narrow and cutting edge field of population genetics of ancient specimen.

So basically, the information is removed not because, it's not valid, not related to the article but because [insert guideline]. The targeted removal of valid and reliably sourced information. People obviously expect the results of all the ancient DNA studies of Egypt to be presented here, not just a few (as long as they are valid and from a reliable source). All the ancient DNA study results about Egypt are included in this article beside one. That is the ancient DNA results of Ramses III and Unknown Man E. You say we must be careful of what study results is included here but in this case only one study results about Egyptian ancient DNA/haplogroups is not presented in this article. This is why I'm adding this information and expect other haplogroups of other mummies from ancient Egypt from future studies to also be included in this article in the future. DrLewisphd (talk) 22:40, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Does this dispute have a history to it? Anyways, what DrLewisphd is positing above doesn't sound faulty to me. EyeTruth (talk) 04:15, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for talking, drlewisphd. My primary goal was to stop your edit warring; you should have come here after the first revert and asked what is up. Thanks for asking now.

In my view, there is no value at all to this whole section and we should remove it. There is data on 6 people there now (8 if we include the Ramses paper). That is such a small sample that it tells us little to little to nothing about the population. There was a massive discussion about excluding DNA studies from articles about ANE history which I can't find now - it failed but a proposal in it to use only secondary sources (reviews) got a bit of traction. We should not be citing the primary literature in these articles..

The answer to your question is WP:NPOV, WP:V, and WP:OR (the three key content policies) as well as WP:SCIRS, the relevant sourcing guidance for this article, which all call us to use secondary sources, and use primary sources only with caution if at all. Jytdog (talk) 06:15, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

The purpose of the study involving the 5 mummies was: "Consequently, our primary aim was not to determine entire genomes here. Instead, our goal was to determine the degree of information that can be gained from mummified tissues when they are analysed by NGS technologies." It was a methodological enquiry, not an attempt to examine the DNA history of Egypt. And this article is not about "DNA/haplogroups found in Egypt", but the "DNA history of Egypt", and we should only use academic studies aimed at the subject of the article. That way we avoid editors making their own interpretations as to what is relevant or cherry picking. If the results of the studies in question are ever used in academic work on the DNA history of Egypt, that's the time to use the information, but not from these sources but from ones studying the DNA history. Those studies would put hopefully put the raw data from the primary sources into the appropriate context necessary to include it here.

There is a history to this, by the way, of socks trying to insert this to prove or imply that Ramesses III was black into various articles. Doug Weller talk 13:20, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

And look at the wording of the paragraph on the 5 mummies: "The researchers observed that one of the mummified individuals likely belonged to the mtDNA haplogroup I2, a maternal clade that is believed to have originated in Western Asia." The study actually says "Even on the small-scale level of NGS sequencing for an initial characterisation of our samples and displaying only a mitochondrial read count of 1 %, we showed that one Egyptian mummy yielded a well-covered HVR2 region of the mitochondrium and gave an indication for haplogroup I2 (Fig. 9). Moreover, it is believed that haplogroup I2 has its phylogenetic origin in the Near East/West Asia" - note how "an indication" became "likely" in our article. Doug Weller talk 13:49, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Unless, the whole section is removed as proposed by Jytdog (talk), I agree the Ptolemaic mummy results should be in the article but so are the 20th dynasty ones and all the future ancient DNA results from Egypt (from reliable sources). You can't just pick and choose which ancient DNA and haplogroup results you want to present here. They are all presented here beside one. EyeTruth (talk) agrees with me. All my argumentation, you didn't answer, is above. This is why I'm adding this reliably sourced information and expect other haplogroups of other ancient Egyptian specimen from future genetic studies to also be included in this article and subsection in the future. DrLewisphd (talk) 18:55, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

The haplogroup assignment of the ancient Egyptian specimens was one of the things that were examined, and one of them wound up carrying the I2 maternal lineage [5]. Also, the Amarna specimens may indeed have borne the E1b1a paternal haplogroup since the modern distribution of a clade is not necessarily the same as its ancient distribution. Anyway, if the actual DNA of ancient Egyptians is irrelevant here, then surely so is the inferred DNA of modern non-Egyptians. Soupforone (talk) 04:11, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

What you just wrote, is why we don't use news media sources to discuss science. Doug quoted the actual article which is tentative about the I2; the news piece is definitive. That is what news pieces do. That is not what we do. This is why we don't pull stuff out of primary sources about science, but instead rely on reviews in the scientific literature. Jytdog (talk) 04:31, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Only the initial portion of the study is tentative about the haplogroup; the conclusion is not particularly. More importantly, the lead scientist published a comprehensive dissertation, where he indicates that "using the identified mitochondrial SNPs of this mummy, haplogroup I2 was defined with a quality score of 97.7%" [6]. So yeah, that's a pretty certain haplogroup assignment. Anyway, just so it wasn't already clear, I do get Doug's point. Soupforone (talk) 04:58, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

2017 study

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

The article said the following:

In 2017, a study by Schuenemann et al. extracted DNA from 151 mummified ancient Egyptian individuals, whose remains were culled from Abusir el-Meleq in Middle Egypt. The specimens were radiocarbon dated to a period stretching from the late New Kingdom to the Roman Period (1388BCE–426CE), with only samples possessing a contamination rate of under 3% analysed. Complete mtDNA sequences were obtained for 90 of the ancient Egyptian persons, among whom the most common mtDNA lineages were the T1, U, R0, M1 and T2 haplogroups during the Pre-Ptolemaic period, the U, T1, W and J haplogroups during the Ptolemaic period, and the U, T, R0 and M1 haplogroups during the Roman period. Modern Egyptians, though similar to the ancient Egyptian samples, were found to carry a greater proportion of the African mtDNA lineages L0–L4, which the researchers suggest may have increased in the post-Roman period through population movements in the Nile Valley and Trans-Saharan commerce. Y-DNA data was extracted for three of the examined ancient Egyptians. Of these males, two carried the paternal haplogroup J that is common in the Middle East, whereas the other belonged to the E1b1b1 haplogroup that is frequent in North Africa. Genome-wide nuclear analysis for the three ancient Egyptian individuals found that they were predominantly defined by an ancestral component that peaks among the Natufians and Neolithic Levantine ancient individuals. As such, they appeared to differ from modern Egyptians by possessing smaller Neolithic Iranian and Sub-Saharan African components. Outgroup f3-statistics measuring shared drift between the three ancient Egyptian samples and other ancient and modern individuals indicated that they were most closely related to Neolithic and Bronze Age samples in the Levant and to Neolithic Anatolian and European populations. Phenotypically, one of the ancient Egyptian individuals was examined for functionally relevant SNPs. The person was found to carry the derived SLC24A5 allele (associated with a lighter skin pigmentation), as well as an allele of the HERC2 gene (associated with dark eye color), and an LCT allele indicative of lactose intolerance. Nonetheless, the researchers caution that the affinities of the examined ancient Egyptian specimens may not be representative of those of all ancient Egyptians since they were culled from a single site in Egypt.

References

Which I reduced to:In 2017, a study by Schuenemann et al. extracted DNA from 151 mummified ancient Egyptian individuals, whose remains were culled from Abusir el-Meleq in Middle Egypt. The researchers caution that the affinities of the examined ancient Egyptian specimens may not be representative of those of all ancient Egyptians since they were culled from a single site in Egypt.

References

The first set of content is UNDUE weight based on a primary source, and a "hot news" one at that. We generally wait for actual secondary sources to appear in the scientific literature. it is really dangerous to rush ahead, following hot news stories around primary scientific sources. A few years ago there was big hype around a stem cell paper and someone rushed to add content based on the hyped primary source to WP. (Note the edit date, and the date the paper came out) only to delete it later when the paper was retracted. (We actually have a whole article on that mess Stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency) We should not be jerking the public around like that. There is no reason to do that - we have no deadline here.

This content should not be in the article now, and should definitely not have all this WEIGHT. I reduced it to the encyclopedic-at-this-time content - the paper published and the results are problematic to generalize. Probably should have reduced it further....

Happy to discuss. Jytdog (talk) 04:09, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

I agree with lots of what you said -- I do remember that whole stimulus stem cell fiasco quite well. I was one of the people extremely excited by the prospects offered by that paper. Alas, fraud! In any case, I would be happy to reduce that paragraph if you see it fit. I just found your culling quite extreme. In a sense, a reader of your paragraph would have literally have no idea what the results of the paper are! We can definitely reduce the paragraph to the conclusions of the study of the genetic affinity between ancient Egyptians and West Asians/Europeans, as well as that ancient Egyptians don't share that 8% SS African signal with modern Egyptians (a likely much later contribution).

I also find the risks that this paper turns out to be a fraud extremely (exceedingly) low. Could the data be interpreted in 2ary sources in a way that fundamentally changes our (and the authors') conclusions here? I suppose anything is possible, but again, very unlikely. I have no concerns there, but I can definitely see where you are coming from.

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 04:21, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

@Jytdog: I just took a brief look at your contributions and I see you do a great deal of good work around here, especially around primary sources. So feel free to revert my latest edit if you feel it's still too heavy on the primary source. Happy to discuss whatever format you feel is good until we have a good number of 2ary sources (a bunch are already coming out on this topic).

I take a slightly uncompromising initial position because lots of people with agenda (Afro or euro-centric) try to inject their POV here. I see you are one of the good ones, so I trust you judgement on this.

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 04:36, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the compromise on WEIGHT. i can live with it. Jytdog (talk) 05:48, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

I will add that Jytdog listed what is problematic with the primary source. The issue of bias as Aua stated of "Afro or Euro" centric Egyptology POV is and will be a major issue when it comes to the "racial identification" of Ancient Egyptians. As such, I am of the opinion that Ancient Egyptians were "Ancient Egyptians" and not "present day (insert color) Race" of this modern period. However, my opinion of Ancient Egyptians being Ancient Egyptians does not necesarily remove the potential for "scientific researchers" to be driven by Bias and present data in a way to present the Ancient Egyptians as (insert color) Race group. DNA testing for "Race" of Ancient Egyptians seems as a continuation of Scientific Racism.Authorityofwiki (talk) 08:44, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Light and dark skin may indicate race to some people but that should not prevent scientific investigation of the causes of skin color. I was pleased to see that at least they had looked at the social background of the mummies because that was a concern of mine when I first heard about it but hadn't seen the piece in Nature. Doug Weller talk 10:39, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

I second User:Doug Weller here. I don't think there is anything inherently racist or wrong about studying skin tones. In regards to ancient Egyptians, and based on this PC analysis in the paper, I think they would look something between modern Bedouins and Palestinians. Neither your Nordic or Spanish European nor your Ethiopian or Nigerian African.

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 16:54, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

This study is not about "skin color" or "skin tone". Also the study of skin pigmentation is different from the pseudoscience of "Race classification" of humans (see Scientific racism. If we are to use technical science terms, humans are one race(species) but the Race (human categorization) shows that these type of studies only lead toward simplistic views ie "Ancient Egyptians are White(European)" or "Ancient Egyptians are Black(sub-Saharan African)".Authorityofwiki (talk) 17:04, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

That one (not 151 or 90) ancient Egyptian individual from this site apparently carried that derived pigmentation allele indicates nothing about his/her race or biogeographical dervation, let alone that of ancient Egyptians in general. Most Near Easterners and many Europeans still bore the ancestral allele until not that long ago. The derived allele is also quite common now among Afroasiatic speakers throughout Africa, but is not at fixation there nor is it in Asia. Soupforone (talk) 17:30, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Aua, 151 mummies were examined in total. The 90 mummies are just the ones for whom the scientists were able to ascertain complete mtDNA sequences, whereas only three of the mummies were analysed for genome-wide affinities and one mummy was phenotypically typed. Perhaps these latter two things are what the person above means by small sample size. Anyway, he/she is correct insofar as that the researchers do make some unfounded assumptions.

For example--
(1) They suggest that modern Egyptians likely experienced Trans-Saharan gene flow in the post-Roman period, largely because that is when the macro-haplogroup L appears to spike in frequency in Egypt. However, what these scientists overlook is that haplogroup L3 (which constitutes most of the L lineages in Egypt) has an ancient presence in the Near East itself. It has been found in old fossils associated with the Pre-Pottery Neolithic culture, which is presumably why the clade still occurs at frequencies as high as 30% in eastern Saudi Arabia [7]. Ergo, it is not a foregone conclusion that the L3 sequences that are now present in Egypt were due to Trans-Saharan movements. These haplogroups could instead just as easily have been brought by settlers from L3-rich areas in the Arabian peninsula.
(2) They suggest that there is little genetic continuity between the examined ancient Egyptians and modern Ethiopians because the latter on average carry >60% macrohaplogroup L lineages. The problem with this claim is that the former (ancient Egyptians) are an ethnic group, whereas the latter (Ethiopians) are a nationality; so it is comparing unalike variables. Also, the larger Afroasiatic-speaking populations in Ethiopia actually carry around ≥60% non-L haplogroups [8]. This is a common mtDNA profile seen among many other Afroasiatic-speaking groups in Africa and the Arabian peninsula (ex. Egyptians in Gurna [9] and El-Hayez [10], Maghrebis in El-Jaddida [11] and Algiers [12], Yemenis in Hadramout, Al Jawf and Hajjah [13]). Soupforone (talk) 17:30, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

These flaws notwithstanding, the analysis is indeed quite fascinating. The discovery of the M1 mtDNA haplogroup among the examined ancient Egyptian individuals is especially interesting since it is the first time that this mysterious clade has been found in any ancient human remains, and at a sizable frequency too. Anyway, what perhaps should also be noted are the genetic affinities of the ancient Egyptian royals from the Amarna site, which Habicht et al.'s analysis indicates are probably authentic [14]. Soupforone (talk) 17:30, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

I just reverted to the consensus version from yesterday, Soupforone, but added info on haplogroups as compromise. I am not a big fan of all or none approach.

I think you do have valid points, especially with regards to L3. There was way more to this paper than just haplogroups. Haplogroups are not reliable indicators of race on individual basis anyway (Napoleon was E-M34, for instance). Looking at the whole picture though, PC analysis clearly shows the three examined individuals were closer to current inhabitants than to, say, Ethiopians. In terms of genetic distance in the supplementary materials, the three individuals were closer to current French than Ethiopians actually. So I don't put much stock in the haplogroups on their own.

In any case, we are not here to inject our own opinions on this study or our interpretation of its flaws and limitations. We report what 2ary sources say about it.

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 18:29, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

DNA of upper class of any society will tend to show a differing genetics from the majority common class. The Ancient Egyptians (majority) were not included in this study therefore the conclusions of this study is a primary source(very limited) at best. This study does not deserve Undue Weight within the article. If this study is included in this article, then the works of Cheikh Anta Diop should be included as a counter to reach NPOV for the article.Authorityofwiki (talk) 18:42, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

That's an unfortunate misunderstanding of NPOV, Authorityofwiki. Cheikh Anta Diop is an avowed afrocentrist whose views are very much on the fringe of accepted science. We don't owe him a duty of inclusion in a paragraph about genetics.

Quite the contrary, Cheikh Anta Diop predates "Afrocentrism". Infact, current genetic research on the "racial classification" or the newer terms "geographic groupings" all lead to the pre-existing biases in researchers especially those with a inherent bias to prove that Blacks are inferior. Carleton S. Coon defined "true Blacks" as only those of cultures south of the Sahara, and grouped some Africans with advanced cultures with Caucasian clusters.[15] With this type of bias, where there are major civilization stoneworks/buildings and reside at said locations are dark-skinned peoples of modern African ethnicities, researchers look for a foreign (European, Middle Eastern, Levant...anything but Subsaharan African) civilization builder. This Bias is seen on the Great Zimbabwe article as well. Btw, "subSaharan African" = "Negroid", code word debugged. I highly question all of the motives of the DNA History of Ancient Egyptians...yet the DNA History of Greeks or Romans is not in Question? Why? Because currently, Rome and Greece is populated by Europeans, therefore no question as to their "racial" DNA being anything but "European". The bias I speak of is the residue and pervasive Scientific Racism among the researchers themselves whether it is Explicit or Implicit, it remains a bias that makes the science itself dubious. Authorityofwiki (talk) 19:11, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Soupforone, your edit was actually the bold one since it reverted a consensus version reached yesterday with Jytdog. In any case, I won't revert you for the next few hours, but await your compromise suggestion as to what to include.

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 18:47, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

I do prefer my own version :) But let's see what reasoning Soupforone provides. Jytdog (talk) 19:54, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Aua, a glance above shows that there is no consensus for that phrasing. I also did not inject my opinion in the wikitext, just here on the talk page as you yourself have done. Anyway, you appear to have misread that PC diagram, Figure 4a. The Ethiopian Jew (not general Ethiopian) sample is an outlier in the magnified square rather than in the regular plane where the French sample appears alongside the three unmagnified ancient Egyptian individuals. Also, please note that when the scientists allude to African ancestry, they specifically mean Yoruba-related ancestry -- this is indicated in the general supplementary file (“We observed an increase of Yoruba related African ancestry in present-day Egyptians compared with our ancient samples... We used Yoruba and different West Eurasian groups as proxies for the source populations.” [16]). Further, while it is true that in the supplementary file 4 the genetic distance between the three ancient Egyptian individuals and the Ethiopian sample is greater than that between these ancient Egyptian individuals and the French sample, this doesn’t really mean much since the Ethiopian sample is actually a lumped sample of Afroasiatic-speaking populations and Nilo-Saharan-speaking populations (the authors indicate that they borrowed the sample from an earlier study, which used cross-linguistic samples). It is therefore hardly surprising that this national (not ethnic) sample would show attenuated affinities with ancient Egyptians than Afroasiatic-speaking Ethiopian samples usually do. As to haplogroups, they are not perfect, but the one viable thing about them is that they are at least based on observed genetic data (a person either has the mutations or he/she does not) rather than being statistically inferred like genetic distance estimates. Soupforone (talk) 21:24, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

@Soupforone, 1) I would gladly engage in a scientific discussion with you on this, but we are not here to decide, based on our own opinions, what is scientifically valid and should be included. Secondary sources (this, this, and this, and more) have all reported on the study and we owe our readers the duty to include. I still wait to see what your proposed phrasing is.

2) If you didn't find where we compromised on the wording, you might want to actually take more than a glance at the past discussion before reverting this page.

What follows bears no consequence to the content of the article, but since we are discussing this:

3) It would be wrong to compare Ethiopian Jews to Ancient Egyptians if Ethiopian Jews were distinct from non-Ethiopian Jews. Now, I don't wish to start another thorny discussion about Beta Israel and whether they are genetically distinct from non-Jewish Ethiopians, but based on the majority of evidence on this topic, genetically, they are closer to their African neighbours than they are to Middle Easterners.

4) Valid point re: linguistic vs national Ethiopian sample (which they obviously would borrow from another study). But show me a single Ethiopian sample that clusters with ancient Egyptians and I will concede the point. Until then, all the evidence I have points to Ethiopian having no genetic affinity to Egyptians, modern or ancient. Ethiopian are very much the furthest away from the sample in this study (you'd expect they'd be a bit closer if even a small component in their mixture had a relation to Egypt, eh?).

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 22:26, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

1) Actually, I was correcting what you claimed above (viz. that the PC diagram contained Ethiopians; the sample therein is in fact of Ethiopian Jews). Anyway, my proposed wording is either what I initially wrote in the wikitext, or the bare phrasing above that-- "In 2017, a study by Schuenemann et al. extracted DNA from 151 mummified ancient Egyptian individuals, whose remains were culled from Abusir el-Meleq in Middle Egypt. The researchers caution that the affinities of the examined ancient Egyptian specimens may not be representative of those of all ancient Egyptians since they were culled from a single site in Egypt."
2) I saw that phrasing, and I also saw the diametrically different claims just below it. That is not a consensus.
3) That is not quite correct, but I won't explain why that is because it is offtopic.
4) The lumped Ethiopian sample in supplementary file 4 is actually not the furthest sample away from the three ancient Egyptian individuals. That would be the Sudan sample. Still, it wouldn't exactly be puzzling if the Ethiopian sample had been the most biologically remote since it, like the Sudan sample, includes Nilote populations (Gumuz, Anuak), for whom a separate ancestral component from Egyptians has been inferred. On the other hand, a shared ancestral component has been inferred for Afroasiatic-speaking Ethiopians and Copts [17]. Soupforone (talk) 02:07, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Soupforone, what is a "SubSaharan African DNA"? what is a "Levant DNA" or an "Anatolian DNA"? I'm asking this to get a basis for why the researcher Wolfgang Haak concluded "Ancient Egyptians did not have subsaharan african DNA".Authorityofwiki (talk) 02:32, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

@Soupforone, I would be for including your whole initial paragraph, but Jytdog brought up a good point re:WEIGHT. I tried to cut it down a bit, but you accused me of cherrypicking findings in your edit summary. The findings I pointed out were very much the ones secondary sources highlighted. See above.

I don't agree with the bare summary because you are not including the study's findings, and simply censoring its results. Obviously, including limitations is reasonable, but you are just telling readers now a study happened, and it has limitations. Uhm, OK, but what did the study find?

My suggested format, so that I accommodate both weight and your cherrypicking concern is to say:

"In 2017, a study by Schuenemann et al. extracted DNA from 151 mummified ancient Egyptian individuals, whose remains were culled from Abusir el-Meleq in Middle Egypt. The authors concluded ancient Egyptians shared more ancestry with Near Easterners than modern Egyptians. Their results suggested modern Egyptians received additional sub-Saharan gene flow in more recent times. The 90 mitochondrial DNA and 3 nuclear DNA samples examined had almost no significant Sub-Saharan African DNA. The researchers caution that the affinities of the examined ancient Egyptian specimens may not be representative of those of all ancient Egyptians since they were culled from a single site in Egypt."

References

It's about same length as paragraph you deleted, so no problem with weight there. It also has the conclusions in the abstract itself, so no cherrypicking. The SS connection is the thing most secondary sources appear to have latched on to (and is interesting given some people do hold the genuine belief that ancient Egyptians were of SSA origin), so there is no issue in including it.

If we can't agree on a format, we can invoke WP:3O, and if that doesn't work, mediation, because I believe the study's findings, extensively discussed in 2ary sources now, are worthy of mentioning. Censoring because they don't fit an afrocentrist narrative being pushed by some editors here is quite dangerous.

I definitely can have an interesting conversation with you re: Copts, Ethiopians and Beta Israel, but will resist for now pending compromise on article.

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 04:07, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Aua, These News articles that are reporting on this Study are not Secondary sources. In this case, a secondary source would be other peer-reviewed studies and meta-analysis studies or scholastic books which reference this primary source study. The news articles are only reporting the study and are not secondary sources (the Primary Source is too New). The News journalists are not qualified to be Secondary Source analysts of the Primary source findings. Hence why the SSA conclusion of the primary source is contested by many people Commenting on the Study itself. Authorityofwiki (talk) 04:39, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Aua, your statement of "Censoring because they don't fit an afrocentrist narrative being pushed by some editors here is quite dangerous." I will take is a response to some of my posts on this discussion. My response: I only proposed presenting the Chiekh Diop as a counterbalance otherwise presenting this ONE as the One and Final Conclusion on what the "race" of the "Ancient Egyptians" were is also "quite dangerous". I've read the comments in the nature article and some other news articles stating this studies "conclusions", and there is currently a war of words between White Nationalists(Eurocentrics) making derogatory comments such as "Thats why Egypt fell because of Subsaharan African DNA introduced later...etc"..that is very dangerous Leap of Logic. Wikipedia shouldn't promote one narrative as the authority especially a WhiteNationalist(Eurocentric) view of Ancient Egyptian "race classification", the world has been down this path before! Authorityofwiki (talk) 04:50, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough on 2ary sources. It's the closest thing we have right now, and it is in reputable publications. I am only using it to establish that the claims in the 1ary source are notable. But you are right, describing them as 2ary sources is not accurate.

I see your concern, and do share it in fact. The matter of the fact is, the study found no SSA DNA. It's just really that. We can't attach our OR to their findings. That's what they found, and it's notable enough to make it into several publications and we should report it. No policy against reporting from 1ary sources, as long as we do it carefully sticking very strictly to what the sources say. I tried to do just that in the compromise above.

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 04:56, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm waiting for some reliable secondary sources and additional studies of other sites, populations, time periods, etc, Ancient Egypt as modern Egypt is quite diverse. Until then, I consider this a singular primary source. Authorityofwiki (talk) 05:09, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Aua, that two-sentence summary was actually Jtydog's original phrasing, not mine. I prefer the full paragraph because it at once shows the actual haplogroups that were identified, touches on the nuclear estimates, and also notes the scientists' caveat that the results from this single archaeological site cannot be extrapolated to the wider ancient Egyptian population. The suggested wording above, like your initial amendment, does not work for the reasons explained below. The undue weight claim is odd since this is a wikipage on the DNA history of Egypt, and the study in question is the largest ancient DNA analysis conducted so far on native Egyptians.

With that established, your initial amendment of the two-sentence summary doesn't function because:

• it focuses only on the maternal haplogroups carried by the specimens, although the scientists also identified paternal haplogroups for three of the individuals;
• it does not mention what actual metric the genetic distance estimates were based on, nor that outgroup f3-statistics measuring shared drift between the three ancient Egyptian samples and other ancient and modern individuals indicate that they are most closely related to Neolithic and Bronze Age samples in the Levant (not to the modern ones) and to Neolithic Anatolian and European populations;
• it suggests that the greater Sub-Saharan influence extant among modern Egyptians compared to ancient Egyptians was brought about by the slave trade, although the scientists indicate that this influence also could have become more pronounced through population movements in the Nile Valley during the post-Roman period;
• it omits the scientists' suggestion that the presence of L lineages in modern Egypt (including haplogroup L3) may constitute Sub-Saharan influence;
• it focuses on only one of the phenotypic genes that the scientists examined (SLC24A5), but does not indicate the small sample size involved, nor the other pigmentation gene that was also analysed and which the specimens did not carry (SLC45A2), nor the other three examined derived alleles that the specimens lacked (HERC2, LCT and EDAR).

Given the above, I suggest this phrasing-- In 2017, a study by Schuenemann et al. extracted DNA from 151 mummified ancient Egyptian individuals, whose remains were culled from Abusir el-Meleq in Middle Egypt. The specimens were radiocarbon dated to a period stretching from the late New Kingdom to the Roman Period (1388BCE–426CE), with only samples possessing a contamination rate of under 3% analysed. Complete mtDNA sequences were obtained for 90 of the ancient Egyptian persons, among whom the most common mtDNA lineages were the T1, U, R0, M1 and T2 haplogroups during the Pre-Ptolemaic period, the U, T1, W and J haplogroups during the Ptolemaic period, and the U, T, R0 and M1 haplogroups during the Roman period. Modern Egyptians, though similar to the ancient Egyptian samples, were found to carry a greater proportion of the African mtDNA lineages L0–L4, which the researchers suggest may have increased in the post-Roman period through population movements in the Nile Valley and Trans-Saharan commerce. Y-DNA data was extracted for three of the examined ancient Egyptians. Of these males, two carried the paternal haplogroup J that is common in the Middle East, whereas the other belonged to the E1b1b1 haplogroup that is frequent in North Africa. Genome-wide nuclear analysis for the three ancient Egyptian individuals found that they were predominantly defined by an ancestral component that peaks among the Natufians and Neolithic Levantine ancient individuals. As such, they appeared to differ from modern Egyptians by possessing smaller Neolithic Iranian and Sub-Saharan African components. Outgroup f3-statistics measuring shared drift between the three ancient Egyptian samples and other ancient and modern individuals indicated that they were most closely related to Neolithic and Bronze Age samples in the Levant and to Neolithic Anatolian and European populations. Phenotypically, three of the ancient Egyptian individuals were examined for functionally relevant SNPs, with one sample producing no results. The remaining two persons were found to carry the derived SLC24A5 allele associated with a lighter skin pigmentation, but they did not bear the derived SLC45A2 allele that is also responsible for a lighter complexion. The specimens also lacked derived alleles for the HERC2 gene (associated with dark eye color), the LCT gene (associated with lactose tolerance), and the EDAR gene (associated with tooth morphology and hair thickness). Nonetheless, the researchers caution that the affinities of the examined ancient Egyptian specimens may not be representative of those of all ancient Egyptians since they were culled from a single site in Egypt.[18] Soupforone (talk) 15:40, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

@Soupforone: I am down with that phrasing and agree with the reasoning. Regarding weight, I think it makes sense to include this much given how pioneering this study was in terms of extracting ancient Egyptian DNA. I would love to have Jytdog onboard as well. Jytdog, I know you are concerned about weight with reliance on this primary source, but Soupforone phrasing, while a tad lengthy, sticks to the 1ary source and we can refine it along the way as scholarly secondary sources come onboard.

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 18:41, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for talking. There is a bunch of interpretation of the paper in that content, both in the selection of what is made important by discussing it at all (what, intrinsic to the paper, guided this selection?) and some outright interpretation of the paper. For example where, in the paper itself, do the authors say "among whom the most common mtDNA lineages were the T1, U, R0, M1 and T2 haplogroups during the Pre-Ptolemaic period, the U, T1, W and J haplogroups during the Ptolemaic period, and the U, T, R0 and M1 haplogroups during the Roman period. "? This appears to me, to be editors' interpretations of Figure 3a (and for some reason in the discussion of the ancient samples, leaves out the very light blue haplotype, which is either J or T and was more abundant than T2). These two issues - the selection of what data to present here, and some of the content itself being interpretations, are key issues with generating content from primary sources. And none of this addresses the bigger issue with using primary scientific sources at all, which is that we don't know how the field will receive this research until it is discussed in a review article. Jytdog (talk) 21:03, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Jytdog has a good point. To avoid cherrypicking what to present, how about we just stick to what the authors chose to present in the abstract? Our paragraph will be (added part bolded):

In 2017, a study by Schuenemann et al. extracted DNA from 151 mummified ancient Egyptian individuals, whose remains were culled from Abusir el-Meleq in Middle Egypt. The authors concluded ancient Egyptians shared more ancestry with ancient Near Easterners than modern Egyptians. Their results suggested modern Egyptians received additional sub-Saharan gene flow in more recent times. The researchers caution that the affinities of the examined ancient Egyptian specimens may not be representative of those of all ancient Egyptians since they were culled from a single site in Egypt."

I know Soupforone raised some objections, but that's what the authors highlighted in terms of results in the abstract, so no one can say we are selective in what we chose to include. As more secondary sources come around, we can rephrase obviously.

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 21:22, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Jytdog, the haplogroups were indeed taken from the study's Figure 3a. However, no interpretation was required since a haplogroup legend is provided therein. I indicated the highest frequency clades, which includes the mtDNA haplogroup J in the Ptolemaic period. I have no qualms with indicating all of the observed clades, paternal and maternal. Soupforone (talk) 04:03, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Aua, the study itself is far more nuanced than the abstract. For example, the scientists indicate that the three ancient Egyptians differ from modern Egyptians by a relatively larger Near Eastern genetic component, in particular a component found in Neolithic Levantine ancient individuals. They then point to Figure 4b, which shows these Ancient Egyptian samples as being quite similar to both the Levantine Bronze Age samples and modern Egyptian samples, but with the latter possessing minor Yoruba-related ancestry. Different wording is therefore clearly required. I suggest we use the full phrasing above, including the f3-statistics on this close relation to Neolithic and Bronze Age samples in the Levant, and also note all of the observed haplogroups (both the higher and lower frequency clades). Soupforone (talk) 04:03, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

I would be in favour of including all those details should 2ary sources discuss them later on. For now, I have come more or less to the same view as Jytdog, and prefer to minimize this until those 2ary sources become available. The least biased way to include information is to take it from the abstract, and leave a more nuanced discussion to the 2ary sources. This fulfills WP:WEIGHT, WP:PRIMARY and WP:NOTABLE. Another editor, uninvolved in this discussion has already taken the step of including a brief statement of the results of the study very close to the format here, so I have no issue their addition.

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 05:12, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Aua, there actually is no consensus for that particular phrasing, which is not unusual since it wasn't even discussed here. Also, Jytdog's bare phrasing above is based on the analysis itself, not the abstract. That is probably because of WP:NOABSTRACT. Anyway, I'm okay with that bare phrasing for the reasons already explained. Soupforone (talk) 15:34, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

@Soupforone, your approach of either having the phrasing you want or practically nothing with the bare phrasing is counterproductive. I suspect the majority of readers would be interested in knowing what the study actually found. Saying it happened and had limitations only is ludicrous as you are omitting the most important part of the study. I support TheAstuteObserver's phrasing here (or potentially small modifications thereof). The abstract is being used as a guide of what the main result of the paper worth mentioning are (otherwise, you will accuse any edits of cherrypicking, as you did mine).

Please name a guideline you think including the results breaks (and it's not WP:PRIMARY, as it permits the use of primary sources).

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 17:04, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

The current version is the most appropriate so far. Please be aware that secondary sources will be published eventually that discuss this paper. Can we please just wait until we have appropriate sources to summarize? Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 17:48, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

I'll add my voice to Jytdog's and say I'm happy with the current version until secondary sources come about. Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 17:58, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Here is a "secondary source" somewhat where Geneticists are quoted giving their positions on this study [19]

"Geneticist Iosif Lazaridis of Harvard Medical School in Boston, who studies how and when ancient populations mixed, calls the new results “a big accomplishment.” But he wonders how representative Abusir el-Meleq is of ancient Egypt as a whole. “Egypt is a big place,” he says. Other regions may have experienced its conquests in different ways, some perhaps with more genetic mixing. But Lazaridis hopes for more revelations to come. “Now that it’s been proven that it’s possible to sample from mummies—well, there are literally thousands of mummies.”"

If you can add this to the phrasing, then that would cover the "waiting" for "secondary scientific sources" of which I assume a Geneticist like Iosif would bring?Authorityofwiki (talk) 18:13, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

That very source you used is the one I used above in my first suggested formatting. You replied: "Aua, These News articles that are reporting on this Study are not Secondary sources. In this case, a secondary source would be other peer-reviewed studies and meta-analysis studies or scholastic books which reference this primary source study." I agreed with you and conceded the point. A secondary source is one that is scholarly. I'm sure we will have a bunch of them soon enough; we just gotta be patient.

As to the limitation (geographic and temporal), we already allude to that in our current phrasing.

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 18:25, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

My apologies for having a knee-jerk reaction, I was under the assumption the news articles were used to only agree with the primary source. After reading this news article and how this discussion has proceeded, I thought a resolution to this conflict would be to have primary source plus quoted Scientists and their views on the studies as a placeholder for "scholastic secondary sources"? But I still think in these types of scientific studies, secondary sources are other studies and metaanalyses which include the primary source or equivalent. Authorityofwiki (talk) 18:34, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

No worries! Well, I still agree with your original position and I think you were right in demanding scholarly resources. I think with this charged topic, putting those quotes as placeholders for 2ary sources could open the door to more demands. For instance, take a look at this. What if someone were to come here and demand we include the accusation that the German researchers are "fake researchers?" For now, I say, let's keep the minimal wording we have. I am pretty sure we will be having another interesting discussion very, very soon once those 2ary sources trickle in!

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 02:23, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Aua, that too is incorrect. Per WP:NOABSTRACT, phrasings based on the abstract are inadequate for the following reason-- "when it comes to actually writing a Wikipedia article, it is misleading to give a full citation for a source after reading only its abstract; the abstract necessarily presents a stripped-down version of the conclusions and omits the background that can be crucial for understanding exactly what the source says." Soupforone (talk) 03:17, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Jytdog, the current phrasing will have to be changed since it was undiscussed and is inaccurate. It goes-- "In 2017, a study by Schuenemann et al. extracted DNA from 151 mummified ancient Egyptian individuals, whose remains were culled from Abusir el-Meleq in Middle Egypt. The DNA results showed that these Ancient Egyptian mummies were genetically the most similar to people from the Middle East (especially modern people from the Levant) and had less Sub-Saharan African ancestry than the average modern Egyptian. However the researchers cautioned that the affinities of the examined ancient Egyptian specimens may not be representative of those of all ancient Egyptians since they were culled from a single site in Egypt and DNA studies were not conducted on mummies from time periods preceding the New Kingdom."

Firstly, the analysis indicates that the ancient Egyptian mummies whose genomes were examined were actually most similar to certain ancient (not modern) Near Eastern populations [20]-- "Model-based clustering using ADMIXTURE (Fig. 4b, Supplementary Fig. 4) further supports these results further supports these results and reveals that the three ancient Egyptians differ from modern Egyptians by a relatively larger Near Eastern genetic component, in particular a component found in Neolithic Levantine ancient individuals". Secondly, the scientists specify that the Sub-Saharan African ancestry they are referring to is Yoruba-related-- "a substantially larger sub-Saharan African component, found primarily in West-African Yoruba, is seen in modern Egyptians compared to the ancient samples". Thirdly, only three ancient Egyptian individuals were genomically typed, not 151-- "we successfully obtained complete human mitochondrial genomes from 90 samples and genome-wide SNP data from three male individuals passing quality control". With this considered, what phrasing do you propose? We need to work out a logical and fair system here since this is just one of what will probably be many other ancient DNA analyses on dynastic and predynastic Egypt. Soupforone (talk) 03:17, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Re: WP:NOABSTRACT: we are not just reading the abstract and citing the paper. As you can tell from this discussion, we all have pretty much read the whole paper at least a couple of times by now. Hence, no issue there. We are just using the abstract as a guide for what piece of result is most important to include as stated countless times above. This is the fairest way to avoid you saying we cherrypicked what to include, as you have previously done. You seem like an intelligent person and I have no doubt you understand my point here. Ultimately, it's a delicate balance between WP:PRIMARY, WP:WEIGHT and WP:NOABSTRACT, and I believe this is the best we've got so far.

Re: your objections. First, I'll break this down to two premises:

1. Ancient Egyptians being closer to ancient Near Easterners than they are to modern Egyptians (your assertion)

2. Ancient Egyptians being closer to modern Near Easterners than they are to modern Egyptians (the article)

As you know, the paper does in fact support both. So it's not wrong what we have currently. For instance, re: mtDNA analysis of the 90 samples, the paper states: "Both analyses reveal higher affinities with modern populations from the Near East and the Levant compared to modern Egyptians." This can also be seen graphically in their figures re:nuclear DNA PCA cluster.

Re: your second objection. I'll break down your argument into two points:

1. Researchers used Yoruba ancestry when referring to SSA ancestry

2. Thus, saying no SSA in ancient Egyptians as a blanket statement ignores this detail.

Fair point on 1. However, they also looked at Ethiopian ancestry and found: " continuity with modern Ethiopians, who carry >60% African L lineages, is not supported." You will counter by saying "But hey, Ethiopians are heterogenous!" But to that I say: WP:OR. On second thought, this whole second point is pretty WP:OR on our part.

Fair point on the number of samples. The current phrasing is not wrong though; they DID in fact examine that many samples. 90 mtDNA and 3 nuclear passed contamination threshold. You are being misleading when you say they used 3; their conclusions and analysis is based on the 90 mtDNA as well.

Where do we go from here? I support leaving it as is. Nothing is false in what we have. I'm sure we can all this energy for when secondary sources come about.

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 04:06, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

In any case, to be honest with you, I am not really 100% happy with the current phrasing, especially re: "less SAA" part as it implies ancient Egyptians had somewhat of a significant SAA genetic contribution to speak of. The researchers themselves have denied that. “We didn't find much sub-Saharan African ancestry,” one of the authors said. Both Nature and Science Magazine articles state: "the mummies contain almost no DNA from sub-Saharan Africa." But it is a compromise and I am happy giving the reader the very bare results until we get more from those 2ary sources.

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 04:14, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Soupforone you are confusing NOABSTRACT, which advises people not to do the sloppy thing of just reading an abstract and not the whole article, with our specific problem here, which is avoiding OR in interpreting a primary source. I am not going to entertain arguments like that - please don't make them. I have removed the content from the article for now, as we cannot agree on how to handle this ref. Jytdog (talk) 06:33, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Aua, you write above that the mtDNA analysis of the 90 ancient Egyptian individuals indicates that they have higher affinities with modern populations from the Near East and the Levant compared to modern Egyptians, but the actual wikitext indicated instead that of the 151 mummified ancient Egyptian individuals, whose remains were culled from Abusir el-Meleq in Middle Egypt[...] The DNA results showed that these Ancient Egyptian mummies were genetically the most similar to people from the Middle East (especially modern people from the Levant) and had less Sub-Saharan African ancestry than the average modern Egyptian. This is a key difference since the 151 figure is actually for all the ancient Egyptian mummies whose DNA was analysed, not just the 90 individuals who were examined for mtDNA. Also, it is certainly not OR that by Sub-Saharan African DNA the scientists specifically mean Yoruba-related DNA -- they repeatedly indicate this in both their central analysis and the supplementary files (other ex. "We observed an increase of Yoruba related African ancestry in present-day Egyptians compared with our ancient samples... We used Yoruba and different West Eurasian groups as proxies for the source populations." [21]). Soupforone (talk) 15:00, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Jytdog, fair enough. Given the breakdown above of the factually inaccurate claims in the wikitext, how does this phrasing work for you?-- "In 2017, a study by Schuenemann et al. extracted DNA from 151 mummified ancient Egyptian individuals, whose remains were culled from Abusir el-Meleq in Middle Egypt. The specimens were radiocarbon dated to a period stretching from the late New Kingdom to the Roman era (1388BCE–426CE). Complete mtDNA sequences were obtained for 90 of the ancient Egyptian mummies, who possessed highly similar mitochondrial profiles throughout the examined period. Modern Egyptians generally shared this maternal haplogroup pattern, but also carried more African L0–L4 clades. However, principal component analysis and multidimensional scaling of the mummies' mtDNA haplogroups found that they shared greater mitochondrial affinities with modern populations from the Near East and the Levant compared to modern Egyptians. Additionally, three of the ancient Egyptian individuals were analysed for Y-DNA, and were observed to bear paternal lineages that are common in both the Middle East (haplogroup J) and North Africa (haplogroup E1b1b1). The researchers cautioned that the affinities of the examined ancient Egyptian specimens may not be representative of those of all ancient Egyptians since they were culled from a single site in Egypt and DNA studies were not conducted on mummies from time periods preceding the New Kingdom." Soupforone (talk) 15:00, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

I like Soupforone's new phrasing and support its inclusion. Factual, neutral with no OR and closely matches the primary source.

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 16:23, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Alright. Jytdog, if you have no objection, I will rephrase the passage to point to the above. Soupforone (talk) 02:55, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

I like Soupforone's new phrasing and support its inclusion. Factual, neutral with no OR and closely matches the primary source.

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 16:23, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

arbitrary break

So I will suggest the following.

A study that published in 2017 described extraction and analysis of DNA from 151 mummified ancient Egyptian individuals, whose remains were taken from Abusir el-Meleq in Middle Egypt. The authors said that they provided "the first reliable data set obtained from ancient Egyptians using high-throughput DNA sequencing methods" and that obtaining well-preserved, uncontaminated DNA from mummies has been a problem for the field. The specimens were from a period stretching from the late New Kingdom to the Roman era (1388BCE–426CE). Complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences were obtained for 90 of the mummies and were compared with each other and with several other datasets; the authors found continuity throughout their own dataset, and found the mtDNA from ancient Egyptians was similar to mtDNA from people from modern western Eurasia, and that there was an absence of sub-Saharan sequences that are present in the mtDNA of modern Egyptians. The nuclear DNA was more contaminated and the authors only provided data from three individuals; analysis of this DNA led to results similar to the mtDNA results. The researchers cautioned that their results may not be representative of all ancient Egyptians since they were from a single site.

We don't emphasize authors, and the "2017" date is when the paper published. Who knows when they did the work. The authors emphasize many times the importance of the data set they obtained, and no version has expressed that yet. So I added it. I removed detail. Is this ok with you all. Jytdog (talk) 04:16, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, this looks fine. I have made a few tweaks to the wording and ordering - my additions in capitals:

A study that WAS published in 2017 described THE extraction and analysis of DNA from 151 mummified ancient Egyptian individuals, whose remains were RECOVERED FROM from Abusir el-Meleq in Middle Egypt. The authors said that obtaining well-preserved, uncontaminated DNA from mummies has been a problem for the field AND THAT THESE SAMPLES provided "the first reliable data set obtained from ancient Egyptians using high-throughput DNA sequencing methods". The specimens REPRESENTED a period stretching from the late New Kingdom to the Roman era (1388BCE–426CE). Complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences were obtained for 90 of the mummies and were compared with each other and with several other datasets; the authors found continuity throughout their own dataset, THAT the mtDNA from ancient Egyptians was similar to mtDNA from people from modern western Eurasia, and that there was an absence of sub-Saharan sequences that are present in the mtDNA of SOME modern Egyptians. The nuclear DNA was more contaminated and the authors only OBTAINED RELIABLE data from three individuals; analysis of this DNA PRODUCED results similar to the mtDNA results. The researchers cautioned that their results may not be representative of all ancient Egyptians since they were from a single site.

Wdford (talk) 09:19, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Generally OK with that, except what is the support in the source for the word "some" (as in "some modern egyptians")? Jytdog (talk) 13:36, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Jytdog, that phrasing looks okay except that:

• in order to avoid confusion, it should refer to the scientists as scientists rather than as authors
• the scientists should probably be identified per Template:Who
• as per the analysis, it should indicate that modern Egyptians generally shared the same maternal haplogroup profile as the examined ancient Egyptian individuals, but also carried more African L0–L4 clades ("modern Egyptians share this profile but in addition show a marked increase of African mtDNA lineages L0–L4")
• it should indicate that principal component analysis and multidimensional scaling of the mummies' mtDNA haplogroups found that the examined ancient Egyptian individuals shared greater mitochondrial affinities with modern populations from the Near East and the Levant specifically compared to modern Egyptians; western Eurasia is too broad since it includes Europe, where the most common mtDNA haplogroup is the H clade, which was not observed at high frequencies in these ancient Egyptian specimens ("To further test genetic affinities and shared ancestry with modern-day African and West Eurasian populations we performed a principal component analysis (PCA) based on haplogroup frequencies and Multidimensional Scaling of pairwise genetic distances. We find that all three ancient Egyptian groups cluster together (Fig. 3b), supporting genetic continuity across our 1,300-year transect. Both analyses reveal higher affinities with modern populations from the Near East and the Levant compared to modern Egyptians")
• it should indicate that three of the ancient Egyptian individuals were also analysed for Y-DNA, and were observed to bear paternal lineages that are common in both the Middle East (haplogroup J) and North Africa (haplogroup E1b1b1) ("the affinity to the Middle East finds further support by the Y-chromosome haplogroups of the three individuals for which genome-wide data was obtained, two of which could be assigned to the Middle-Eastern haplogroup J, and one to haplogroup E1b1b1 common in North Africa")
• in the caveat, the geographical location of the site at hand (Abusir, Egypt) should be indicated so that readers don't confuse this with a genetic locus. Soupforone (talk) 14:38, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

The phrasing, with the recommended tweaks above, would then look like this-- "A study by Schuenemann et al. published in 2017 described the extraction and analysis of DNA from 151 mummified ancient Egyptian individuals, whose remains were recovered from Abusir el-Meleq in Middle Egypt. The scientists said that obtaining well-preserved, uncontaminated DNA from mummies has been a problem for the field and that these samples provided "the first reliable data set obtained from ancient Egyptians using high-throughput DNA sequencing methods". The specimens represented a period stretching from the late New Kingdom to the Roman era (1388BCE–426CE). Complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences were obtained for 90 of the mummies and were compared with each other and with several other ancient and modern datasets. The scientists found that the ancient Egyptian individuals in their own dataset possessed highly similar mitochondrial profiles throughout the examined period. Modern Egyptians generally shared this maternal haplogroup pattern, but also carried more African L0–L4 clades. However, principal component analysis and multidimensional scaling of the mummies' mtDNA haplogroups found that they shared greater mitochondrial affinities with modern populations from the Near East and the Levant compared to modern Egyptians. Additionally, three of the ancient Egyptian individuals were analysed for Y-DNA, and were observed to bear paternal lineages that are common in both the Middle East (haplogroup J) and North Africa (haplogroup E1b1b1). The researchers cautioned that the affinities of the examined ancient Egyptian specimens may not be representative of those of all ancient Egyptians since they were culled from a single site in Egypt. Soupforone (talk) 14:37, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

About WHO, that is what the citation is for. We generally do not mention authors. Am OK with "scientists" instead of authors. I don't understand why you think anyone would think Abusir is a genetic locus instead of a place (especially with the Wikilink) but adding something like "archeological site" before the place would be OK with me or Middle Egypt as you did is fine too. I hear you on the issue of continuity with modern Egyptians. The paper directly supports this with "Modern Egyptians share this profile but in addition show a marked increase of African mtDNA lineages L0–L4 up to 20% (consistent with nuclear estimates of 80% non-African ancestry reported in Pagani et al.17). " So something like the scientists found continuity throughout their own dataset, and found the mtDNA from ancient Egyptians was similar to mtDNA from people from modern western Eurasia, and that there was an absence of sub-Saharan sequences that are present in the mtDNA of modern Egyptians, whose mtDNA was otherwise similar to that of the ancient Egyptians. I understand that you want to drill way down into the science but that is not what we should not do, with a primary source. We should just communicate their high-level conclusions. Jytdog (talk) 14:54, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

My 2 cents: I don't think we need to identify per WHO, but generally agree with Soupforone's tweaked version.

For the clades/haplogroups, do you guys reckon we can just have them in a table the same way we do for modern Egyptians section? I'm sure other studies will come along and that table will grow with time.

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 22:49, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Too much detail from a primary source. For all we know these results are going to found to be invalid or ignored by the field. Until there are secondary sources in the scientific literature we should not drill down to this detail yet. Jytdog (talk) 23:11, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Jytdog, if you are certain that it is in step with the who template, then alright; let's give that a shot. However, that phrasing needs to be reworded since it's a run-on sentence and contains the western Eurasia mtDNA problem explained above. Also, the African L0-L4 haplogroups, although very infrequent, were not entirely absent from these ancient Egyptian samples. The phrasing would therefore be-- "A study by published in 2017 described the extraction and analysis of DNA from 151 mummified ancient Egyptian individuals, whose remains were recovered from Abusir el-Meleq in Middle Egypt. The scientists said that obtaining well-preserved, uncontaminated DNA from mummies has been a problem for the field and that these samples provided "the first reliable data set obtained from ancient Egyptians using high-throughput DNA sequencing methods". The specimens represented a period stretching from the late New Kingdom to the Roman era (1388BCE–426CE). Complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences were obtained for 90 of the mummies and were compared with each other and with several other ancient and modern datasets. The scientists found that the ancient Egyptian individuals in their own dataset possessed highly similar mitochondrial profiles throughout the examined period. Modern Egyptians generally shared this maternal haplogroup pattern, but also carried more African clades. However, analysis of the mummies' mtDNA haplogroups found that they shared greater mitochondrial affinities with modern populations from the Near East and the Levant compared to modern Egyptians. Additionally, three of the ancient Egyptian individuals were analysed for Y-DNA, and were observed to bear paternal lineages that are common in both the Middle East and North Africa. The researchers cautioned that the affinities of the examined ancient Egyptian specimens may not be representative of those of all ancient Egyptians since they were from a single archaeological site. Soupforone (talk) 03:56, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Aua, a little frequency table with the ancient DNA haplogroups would make sense. It would be awkward to discuss the DNA history of Egypt without at least specifying which clades have been found. Soupforone (talk) 03:56, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

well, this is OK, I guess. But no, no table posting results from this primary source! You all are treating this paper like it is "accepted knowledge" but it just one paper, in a long line of papers that the scientific community uses to grope toward an approximation of reality. We rely on secondary sources to tell us what the field has accepted. Please. Jytdog (talk) 04:16, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

How about the Habicht ancient DNA analysis? It appears to authenticate the Amarna royal mummy sequences, which date from the 18th dynasty. [22] Soupforone (talk) 14:18, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Before we get bogged down in this table business (my bad for bringing it up!), let's celebrate the fact we finally have a consensus on the format of the paragraph!! Awesome work, guys!

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 15:14, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, what is this "euro-centric" bias spoken of here? Who would ever claim that, speaking loosely, the Ancient Egyptians were European or led by Europeans? I've seen the other way, like the Black Egyptian Hypothesis that this study delivers another hammer blow to, but not from the Euro side. Also out of curiosity, are either Soup or Aua expecting that, when more mummies from different periods and from different places are studied, the results will be in anything other than broad agreement with those of this study? I mean, until the studies are done obviously you don't know, but surely this 2017 research will in hindsight be seen as the beginning of a refutation of the BEH? I think it's been pretty well rubbished anyway. --BowlAndSpoon (talk) 02:09, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Once the predynastic Egyptian fossils are analysed, it appears likely that more pronounced affinities with the Neolithic Capsian culture, the Mesolithic Natufian culture and the Neolithic Levant will be found, and weaker ties to the Anatolian Neolithic and Caucasus Hunter Gatherers. This could mean greater haplogroup E frequencies and Basal Eurasian nuclear DNA, like in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. Soupforone (talk) 04:17, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Okay gentlemen, as per the above, I've adjusted the phrasing. Soupforone (talk) 04:17, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

(EC) @User:BowlAndSpoon: Euro-centricity is a bit more subtle, to be honest with you, but you can see it in, say, the Daily Mail's coverage of this story. An average reader will leave that article thinking that the study supports ancient Egyptians being at least partly European or white (never mind the anachronistic use of "Turkish"). Some people I have encountered firmly believe that all Middle Eastern civilizations were white but they "browned" up when Arabs came on the scene. Afrocentricity is a bit more obvious, as you probably know. In my personal opinion, BEH is total rubbish. I suspect --no, believe-- that future studies will only reinforce the findings in this study: mainly that ancient Egyptians were native to the region and that the closest people alive today to those ancient Egyptians are modern Egyptian or Near Easterners (as this study has shown). In other words, the vast majority of ancient Egyptians are not black or Ethiopian, nor European or Greek, but Near Easterners and direct ancestors to the people inhabiting the region today. To date, I have seen no convincing evidence to the contrary, and believe it to be the case unless a large scale future study proves me utterly wrong.

Thanks Soupforone! I look forward to the inevitably of a future discussion once secondaries come around!

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 04:21, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for implementing, and for the productive discussion. Jytdog (talk) 05:20, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

New DNA Vs Ramses 3 Y Haplogroup

I find it hillarious that you guys will allow this "new dna study" to be up but not Ramses 3 E1b1a dna. Ridiculous and one sided. Allanana79 (talk) 04:52, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Personally I am fine with including the Ramses III results, but the new study is far, far more important and informative - 90 mitogenomes and 3 full genomes compared to 1 lousy set of Y STRs yielding an uncertain haplogroup prediction. With luck we will get the full genome of Ramses III one day. Megalophias (talk) 16:34, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

The problem is the time frame. If they marketed their study as a genetic study of the Greek and Roman era elites in Egypt, that would be fine. They are referring to them all as 'Ancient Egyptians'. Ancient Egypt started in 3200 BC, and lost it's sovereignty to a Persian invasion in 525 BC. Then there was Greek rule, then Roman rule. So why conflate elite mummies all the way up to the fall of the Roman Empire? MrSativa (talk) 16:51, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

I still am opposed. The new research was focussed on ancestry, the other article was never aimed at examine ancestry. If it had been it would have had more data and more context. Doug Weller talk 20:24, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

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Ancient DNA

Ancient Egyptian mummies have been genomically analysed for mtDNA and nuclear DNA. The fossils date from between the Third Intermediate Period and the Roman era. They were found to have similar Near Eastern affinities as modern Egyptians, but apparently with less gene flow from below the Sahara. It's as yet unclear what exact haplogroups they carried. However, this will undoubtedly influence the hypothesized Afroasiatic Urheimat [23]. Soupforone (talk) 15:05, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

This study is highly contested because of its small samples and limited time frame used to come to this biased conclusion. Ancient Egypt has a much longer history then this study prods at. the Conclusions are at best, a very Eurocentric and Pro-Caucuasian biased conclusion.2001:558:600A:83:A8DE:DEE:F992:2BF (talk) 21:14, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

It really is not biased in any way. They found a good number of mummies (90), analyzed them according to contamination criteria (3) and then compared them to other ancient and modern DNA. How is there anything eurocentric about that? As far as I know, it is one of the first studies looking at complete ancient Egyptian DNA (both mtDNA and nuclear).

Is it limited in scope, both geographically and temporally? Yes, absolutely. But that's a necessary evil given the difficulties associated with analyzing ancient DNA.

"The study, published on 30 May in Nature Communications1, includes data from 90 mummies buried between 1380 bc, during Egypt’s New Kingdom, and ad 425, in the Roman era." In other words, they included (a lot of?) mummies from long after the collapse of Ancient Egyptian sovereignty after the defeat to Cambyses The Vandal. I would not be surprised if Egyptians, especially in the Delta, would have affinities with people in the Levant at that time. However, Ancient Egypt started in 3200 BC, no 1380 BC, and the article does not point that out. And considering the immense opposition against testing mummies coming from Zahi Hawass, bias should be the first thing that comes to people's minds. Also, it was Hawass who stopped them from testing, not the degradation of the DNA in the mummies. Nonetheless they were tested, and the DNA of Ramses III and his son, and Tutankhamon were tested - Ramses III and son have haplogroup E1b1a, and Tutankhamon's dna is most closely related to people living in Southern Africa today, as stated by DNA Tribes. "These regional matches do not necessarily indicate an exclusively African ancestry for the Amarna pharaonic family. However, results indicate these ancient individuals inherited some alleles that today are more frequent in populations of Africa than in other parts of the world (such as D18S51=19 and D21S11=34)." [24] MrSativa (talk) 17:20, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Just because you don't like the results doesn't make them biased.

Them being biased is what makes them biased. MrSativa (talk) 17:23, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Once again, repeating yourself doesn't make DNA Tribes a peer reviewed source we might be able to use, and this is not a forum for you to use to argue about ancestry. Doug Weller talk 18:34, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

On a related note, Soupforone, thanks for adding the study to the article. Do you think we should say something about genetic distances included in the supplementary material? It definitely is interesting to me.

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 21:53, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Limiting the time period to a certain set of mummies (90) against a much longer period and larger Number of Human DNA samples of Ancient egyptians does make the Study at best a biased result driven pseudoscience. This is not conclusive of the conclusions made by the "researchers" on making a grand claim that "Ancient Egyptians are not of Subsaharan African origin but of European origin"...this is a wild claim which needs more evidence than 90 mummies out of millions of Ancient Egyptians. Egyptology is a highly Eurocentrically biased field of study.Authorityofwiki (talk) 03:12, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Your assertion presumes malice on the part of researchers: they somehow would know in advance what period of time had a higher likelihood genetic analysis would yield a certain genetic pattern and they would go for it. Instead, what really happened was that they looked at the mummies they had access to and this is what they found. I bet as more research comes around, similar results will reinforce what they found (a second bet, if you don't mind, is that you will deny all that science which you disagree with).

FYI, the study didn't say "ancient Egyptians were European." It just said they share more with ancient peoples of West Asia and Europe than current Egyptians do. In terms of whom they are closest to genetically, they are closest to current Egyptians (see supp material of that paper) as one naturally expects (furtherest away, mind you, from current Africans and second closest to Europeans after Middle Eastern people). The paper also noted that current Egyptians have an average Subsaharan signal at 8% that is absent in ancient Egyptians, likely due to the more recent slave trade.

I urge you to keep it scientific and take your own personal bias out of this,

Cheers, Λuα ^{(Operibus anteire)} 04:12, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

My bias is quite clearly not the issue here. The rush to promote this conclusion based on incomplete science is the issue. My commenting on what has been problematic with Egyptology in general and specifically in this case is just stating an observation. Authorityofwiki (talk) 08:34, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Authorityofwiki, you obviously set up your account for one reason and one reason only, as your opening post as an IP showed: "the Conclusions are at best, a very Eurocentric and Pro-Caucuasian biased conclusion". Thank you to Aua and Soupforone for the informed discussion of the study. --BowlAndSpoon (talk) 01:55, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

BowlAndSpoon, attacking me for voicing my view on this study is a Personal Attack. Your implication of my "motivations" etc are completely devoid of truth. You may have a bias and are upset with me using such language which may have upset you. But I already discussed with Aua, Soupforone, etc, infact I already stated my reasons why minus the hyperbole, I had concerns with this study. But you attacking me here for simply making a comment about the Source itself...give me a break, I have every right to discuss and even make hyperbole comments about a source. But you have no right to Personally Attack me for expressing my 1st Amendment Right, Freedom of Speech on any topic including the DNA History of Egypt and this one study.Authorityofwiki (talk) 06:16, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

I fixed the bad writing in that section. The previous first sentence started with "A study by published in 2017". The beginning of that sentence makes no sense. Publish by what? So I fixed it by including the leading name of the scientist like other studies mentioned in this section. I also removed redundant pronouns like "the scientists". It is obvious that scientists were the ones carrying this study. The sentence "The scientists found that the ancient Egyptian individuals in their own dataset possessed highly similar mitochondrial profiles throughout the examined period" is vague so I fixed it. I welcome further spelling/grammar fixes. The most important edit however is including further information about mitochondrial analysis that goes into more specific into comparisons of the study's meta ancient Egyptian population with modern populations. I suggest including reference to the figure in question - Figure 3c)- for any reader who wants to check it out in the study. The addition does not seem to be a breach of any population. Giving more information, especially when compact and fruitful should not be met with hostility. CaliphoShah (talk) 04:48, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Followind the recent edit, I have only restored mention of Sub Saharan instead of just saying "African clad". Most people will be confused since Egypt is in Africa. It is more accurate and in the spirit of the quoted study to be more specific about which part of Africa is relevant. In fact, this is implied by the study's title. Furthermore, I have reworded what is previously said to be the most important claim so it is not complex for the reader. It is important to be be specific about certain countries as it is informative yet minimal enough not be excessive. Perhaps the mention about Anatolia should be removed. I am willing to compromise. CaliphoShah (talk) 05:43, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

It is not a question of hostility it is a question of being restrained with a primary source that has not been the subject of a review. More is not always better. Again please read the above and the archive. If you want to discuss further detail please do see here first; you are on the edge of getting blocked. Jytdog (talk) 05:47, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

There is certainly no edit war going on. You did not revert all my changes indicating you agree with at least some. What type of edit war has both sides compromising and not reverting everything? The only one who claims it was an edit war was an other user. He is bringing his hostility from edit warring in other pages and trying to push other users to ban me. Since Wikipedia is about consensus, claims of edit warring by another user who is not an admin/mod should not be taken as indisputable fact. I realize there has been a discussion going on for some time, hence why I also included spelling/grammar fixes which should always be welcome. I also refrained from doing a complete revert. I only tried to further edit by fixing what I previously wrote to make it more acceptable. My latest edit was not about more, it was about quality. The Near East is a nonsensical region from a genetics perspective since it is so heterogeneous even compared to Europe. This is why I felt the need to include the name of specific countries that the study talks about. Yes, Wikipedia prefers secondary sources when it comes to biology. But at the very least, the text should be readable. Any person who comes to this page will be confused at the lack of differentiation when it comes to "African clade". They'll rightfully ask themselves: "Well how can modern Egyptians be further from Ancient Egyptians by having more African in them?" This is why being specific so that the writing is consitent should not be seen as being "restrained by primary sources". CaliphoShah (talk) 06:09, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Have you read the prior discussions yet? WP is indeed about consensus and the current language was carefully negotiated already. You are free to join but you need to take in what has already been discussed. Jytdog (talk) 06:12, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes I did and it's why I was flaggerblasted by how days of discussion couldn't result in the first sentence of the paragraph in question being written properly. Careful negotiations shouldn't end up with unintelligible sentences. The only reason why it's taking so long just to fix something so simple is because the whole "Afrocentrist vs Eurocentrist vs Realist" debacle has led to unnecessary precaution. My edits have no claims in them that an Afro centrist or Eurocentrist would find more offensive than what was already written. Both the former and latter reject any close link with Ancient Egyptians and modern Middle Easterners. So being a little more precise on which mid east population is closer wasn't an attempt to get into that pseudo political nonsense. But I do refrain myself from abusing Wikipedia's policy so I didn't revert everything. However I shouldn't be blamed for taking advantage of a loophole. Last I check, the wikipage regarding consensus says: "Editors may propose a consensus change by discussion or editing. That said, in most cases, an editor who knows a proposed change will modify a matter resolved by past discussion should propose that change by discussion. Editors who revert a change proposed by an edit should generally avoid terse explanations (such as "against consensus") which provide little guidance to the proposing editor (or, if you do use such terse explanations, it is helpful to also include a link to the discussion where the consensus was formed)." So in the spirit of WP stance on Consensus, I was in the full right to stir the pot sort to speak so that the very basic can be implemented. And the discussion other users had didn't come to the conclusion that bad grammar was the goal of their edit. So perhaps it's the other user who should get to realize why it is ok for people to edit incomprehensible text. CaliphoShah (talk) 06:29, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

There is nothing unintelligible about "a 2017 study". The stuff about afro vs euro was really peripheral - in general we are very careful with summarizing primary sources as it is very easy to do OR or skew WEIGHT by pulling out some detail that really matters to somebody. This taking extreme care, is WP's general approach to primary sources - every policy says this. My preference would be to not cite it at all and wait for secondary sources in the literature that tell us what the field itself finds important. But folks really wanted to have content from it, so we worked hard to summarize what the source says, giving WEIGHT to what it gives WEIGHT to. Jytdog (talk) 07:31, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Before my edit the first sentence started with "A study by published in 2017" How does that wording make any sense? To what or whom does the preposition "by" refer? It was extremely unintelligible. Also you are ignoring the quote I brought up about WP stance on consensus. There is no malice, according to Wikipedia's policy, in making edits as that stimulates further discussion. The wrong attitude is the reaction some have to those edits. The world didn't end because of my edits. Anyway, if you want to contribute to the discussion about this section of the article and in how to improve it, that would be a welcoming thing. My suggestion about making the text more readable by specifying "African" to "Sub-Saharan African" is a very easy thing to discuss. Again edits by others is a way to stimulate conversation and push for consensus. It's not a crime according to WP policy so do not be so threatening toward someone following the rules.CaliphoShah (talk) 18:09, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

i see. yeah the "by" was a mistake; we don't need to name the authors. Less is more here - will fix that. Sure adding "Sub-Saharan" so it reads "carried more Sub-Saharan African clades" is fine - did that too. Jytdog (talk) 05:56, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Why would the Liberal media be pushing this nonsense and at the same time push diversity and destruction on confederate statues? Makes on truly wonder what is going on? It's almost as if THEY are attempting to keep black Americans in eternal victimhood. Or is this Arab Supremacy? Not sure. But I sure as hell know they were not white Indo Aryans like this suggests. Remarkable. Allanana79 (talk) 18:52, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

The recent study doesn't suggest Ancient Egyptians "white" (whatever that means) or Indo Aryans. Rather it suggests closest people to them (at least Egyptians from the New Kingdom onward) are modern populations of the Middle East, those of Arabia and Egypt being some of the closest. What do people from the West coast of Africa and the South tip of the continent have in common with Ancient Egyptians?CaliphoShah (talk) 06:51, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

This is saying that 151 probably cherry picked mummies from the LATE NEW KINGDOM TO THE ROMAN PERIOD. Had little sub Saharan admixture. You can assume what you want. But I really don't understand why Doug Weller won't allow DNA Tribes 18th dynasty report or Ramses 3 Y Haplogroup studies into this article. It seems extremely biased and I am pissed. And I am hardly an Afrocentrist SJW. Considering my political views and party affiliation. Allanana79 (talk) 15:59, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

I've made my reasons clear. We should only use peer reviewed material focussing on the DNA history of Egypt, not private companies or articles focussing on something else. Doug Weller talk 18:04, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Dakleh Oasis ancient DNA

Molto et al. (2017) sequenced ancient DNA from fossils excavated at the Kellis 2 cemetery in the Dakleh Oasis, located in the southwestern desert of Egypt. 21 of the Kellis burials have been radiocarbon-dated to around 80-445 AD, which was the Romano-Christian period. One of the fossils was found to carry the mtDNA haplogroup U1a1a, a maternal clade that today is primarily distributed in parts of the Near East [25]. The scientists also apparently identified specific point mutations in some of the analysed ancient Kellis individuals, which suggest maternal associations with areas further south below the Sahara [26]. These other mitochondrial lineages are perhaps mainly represented by haplogroup L3 subclades, which have been observed among some modern Egyptians. Parr (2002) conducted an earlier ancient DNA analysis at the Kellis 2 cemetery and apparently found diverse maternal lineages, indicating that the men there had likely brought in wives from different places [27]. Soupforone (talk) 14:40, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Tomb of Two Brothers ancient DNA

Ancient DNA analysis of the mummies of the 12th dynasty aristocrats Nakht-Ankh and Khnum-Nakht, which were entombed at the Tomb of Two Brothers in the Deir Rifeh cemetery, found that the brothers belonged to the M1a1 mtDNA haplogroup. [28] Soupforone (talk) 15:54, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

please don't propose generating content based on press releases (or the underlying primary source)... please. Jytdog (talk) 18:26, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Origin of I2

The Wikipedia page of mtdna haplogroup I2 clearly states: "Possible place of origin Insufficient Data". And yet the page about Egyptian DNA page states that haplogroup I2's origin is "believed to have originated in Western Asia.[7]". So which is it: insufficient data or Western Asia? 83.84.100.133 (talk) 21:36, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_I_(mtDNA)#I2

Hiding and Misleading

Under the section of the page title Ancient DNA the Haplogroups found are purposely not mentioned and people are using misleading words such as "Middle East" when the study does not. I think we should quote the study directly and stop hiding the findings. So we should change the words "that are common in both the Middle East and North Africa" to a direct quote from the study such as "two of which could be assigned to the Middle-Eastern haplogroup J, and one to haplogroup E1b1b1 common in North Africa".

Also, there is a misleading sentence on the Origin of E1b1b that insinuates it originated from the Middle East which is in total contradiction with E1b1b's own Wiki page, it's the subclades that can be found in other places but the origine of E1b1b has been established. So the sentence "E1b1b and its subclades..." should be instead "E1b1b subclades" otherwise we're misleading people.

There seems to be individuals here who promote a Middle East agenda and keep the page outdated on purpose and use terms such as "Sub Saharan African" in a racist manner regarding the Horn of Africa and hence they keep the page outdated on purpose or withhold information about the study. I think we should be objective and keep this page dated and say clearly what the study found and stop whitewashing it. Arboleh (talk) 16:15, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

RfC

Please see Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#RfC:Genetics_references Jytdog (talk) 17:03, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

RfC on the commentary by Keita

Should this addition be removed? The addition in question is this diff which was objected to on the basis of WP:TOPIC and repetition of results already stated in a preceding paragraph. Masrialltheway (talk) 05:43, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

Survey for RfC on the commentary by Keita

• Remove. As per the reasons that I stated in the discussion subsection below. Masrialltheway (talk) 05:48, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
• Bad RfC, procedural close. Firstly, the statement introducing an RfC should be neutral, generally of the form "Should X be done?". This one is not; it advocates for one side. In addition, I do not see that regular old discussion of the disputed material preceded an RfC being filed, which is also necessary. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 21:26, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

@Seraphimblade: I created subsections (survey and discussion) and modified the RfC to move my own remarks to the discussion subsection (and made my remarks much more detailed there), and just stated the RfC as: "Should this addition be removed? The addition in question is this diff which was objected to on the basis of WP:TOPIC and repetition of results already stated in a preceding paragraph." This presents the addition and the objection to it without advocating. As for the discussion, it can also follow the RfC, which is why I initially left the format without subsectioning, but you are correct, I created a discussion subsection, which is better. Thank you for making these important remarks. Masrialltheway (talk) 05:30, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

• That is not so much the point. The point is that, as you will find in WP:RFCBEFORE, it is expected that editors will first make an attempt to resolve the issue through regular old talk page discussion, and only use an RfC if that discussion has come to a complete impasse requiring input from others. I don't see that this step has been undertaken here at all. An RfC is the last resort, not the first. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 15:22, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

I understand what you are pointing out, but I wouldn't have resorted to RfC if there was any possible way to resolve this with the editor who added it, based on our exchanges, it will not go anywhere whatsoever; which is why I resorted to RfC, it wasn't the first resort for me, but because input from other editors is indeed needed. It is true, as you pointed out, that RfC expects a preceding discussion, but it doesn't seem to necessitate it like other resolution venues, and allows for a discussion within the RfC section. I have created a discussion subsection below, but I can't force a response, and I have presented a good amount of details on the issue to make it clear. I know it's not a perfect situation, but I believe this RfC can be helpful. Masrialltheway (talk) 03:13, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

Discussion for RfC on the commentary by Keita

To begin with, this addition should be removed as it is not following WP:TOPIC, since this is a Wikipedia article on the DNA of Egyptians, not a Wikipedia article on haplogroup E-M35, where such a lengthy comment may fit. The source by Keita is not a DNA study on Egyptians, it is a commentary where Keita merely comments on results from actual studies (which is usually what Keita does), these results (i.e., the origins of E-M35 in Eastern Africa, and E-M78 being predominant in Egypt) are already stated from an actual DNA study in a preceding paragraph and do not need repeating from a commentary source that adds nothing new and merely bloats the section with an entire paragraph; commentary on Omotic populations and other mutations of E-M35 does not belong here, this is not a Wikipedia article on E-M35 or other populations. This addition bloats the section with repetition and superfluous comments on E-M35 mutations and other populations, it is likely to attract even more superfluous additions in that direction, and is likely to create a small WP:COATRACK within this section. I tried to see if this addition can be shortened, but shortening it and removing the superfluity results in nothing other than the statements mentioned above that are already stated from an actual DNA study in a preceding paragraph, so at best, this commentary source could be placed as a supporting source next to what is already stated in a preceding paragraph, but I don't see the significance of creating a citation clutter.

For clarity on the points I am making, here is both the addition and the paragraph which this addition repeats the results stated in it; I will remark on this addition sentence by sentence. Here is the addition:
"Keita (2008) examined a published Y-chromosome dataset on Afro-Asiatic populations and found that a key lineage, the E-M35/E-M78, sub-clade of the haplogroup E was shared between populations in the locale of original Egyptian speakers and modern Cushitic speakers from the Horn of Africa. He summarised that the origin of the M35 subclade was in East Africa and its clades were dominant in a core group of Afro-Asiatic speakers which included Cushitic, Egyptian, Berber groups. Keita identified high frequencies of M35 (>50%) among Omotic populations but stated that this derived from a small, published sample of 12. Keita also noted that the PN2 mutation was shared by M35 and M2 lineages and originated from East Africa. He concluded that "the genetic data give population profiles that clearly indicate males of African origin, as opposed to being of Asian or European descent" but acknowledged that the biodivesity does not indicate any specific set of skin colors or facial features as populations were subject to microevolutionary pressures."
As to the results from actual DNA studies which this addition repeats, in the third paragraph of the section "DNA studies on modern Egyptians" the following is already stated (I will refer to this as the "third paragraph" here, but in the article it is part of the third paragraph):
"E1b1b subclades are characteristic of some Afro-Asiatic speakers and are believed to have originated in either the Middle East, North Africa, or the Horn of Africa. Cruciani et al. (2007) suggests that E-M78, E1b1b predominant subclade in Egypt, originated in Northeastern Africa (Egypt and Libya in the study), with a corridor for bidirectional migrations between northeastern and eastern Africa (at least 2 episodes between 23.9–17.3 ky and 18.0–5.9 ky ago), trans-Mediterranean migrations directly from northern Africa to Europe (mainly in the last 13.0 ky), and flow from northeastern Africa to western Asia between 20.0 and 6.8 ky ago. Cruciani et al. proposed that E-M35, the parent clade of E-M78, originated in Eastern Africa during the Palaeolithic and subsequently spread to Northeastern Africa, 23.9–17.3 ky ago. Cruciani et al. also state that the presence of E-M78 chromosomes in Eastern Africa can be only explained through a back migration of chromosomes that had acquired the M78 mutation in Northeast Africa."

The first two sentences from the addition are already stated in the first sentence above from the third paragraph , as well as in the results from Cruciani et al. in that third paragraph, i.e.: " Cruciani et al. proposed that E-M35, the parent clade of E-M78, originated in Eastern Africa...". The third and fourth sentences from the addition are superfluous commentary on Omotic populations and other mutations of E-M35, which does not belong here, this is not a Wikipedia article on E-M35 or other populations. The last sentence from the addition is also merely a superfluous comment on the Africanity of the results, and side remarks on skin color and facial features do not really belong here either, this Wikipedia article is about DNA, and therefore paragraphs should be dedicated to actual DNA studies and their results on Egyptians. So, as I remarked, this is a bloated addition from a commentary source, it is not a DNA study itself and it adds nothing new while bloating the section with an entire paragraph, taking into account the guidelines that I stated above, and shortening this addition and removing the superfluities results in nothing other than the statements mentioned above that are already stated from actual DNA studies in a preceding paragraph, so at best, this commentary source could be placed as a supporting source next to what is already stated in a preceding paragraph, perhaps next to the three sources cited for the first sentence in the the third paragraph above, but again, I don't see the significance of creating a citation clutter. Masrialltheway (talk) 05:30, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

The introductory remarks to the Ancient DNA section are outdated and poorly organized

Below in bolded italics is are introductory remarks before specific mummies are discussed. The information is technologically outdated, references are mostly from the 1990s some even 80s and all prior to the specific DNA discussed afterwards about particular mummies starting in 2012 (tested 2010). Some of the commentary was made when little or no mummies had even been tested. Any such critical analysis should have updated references and should be in context or introducing the subject of ancient DNA testing and with consideration of methodology ranging from when mummies discussed were tested 2010 to 2020 and ongoing not limitations in contexts of the 1990s Ancient DNA "Contamination from handling and intrusion from microbes create obstacles to the recovery of ancient DNA. Blood typing and ancient DNA sampling on Egyptian mummies is scant. However, blood typing of Dynastic period mummies found their ABO frequencies to be most similar to that of modern Egyptians and northern Haratin populations. Consequently, most DNA studies have been carried out on modern Egyptian populations with the intent of learning about the influences of historical migrations on the population of Egypt. A study published in 1993 was performed on ancient mummies of the 12th Dynasty, which identified multiple lines of descent, some of which originated from Sub-Saharan Africa but other lineages were not identified. However, DNA grouping methods and classifications have attracted criticism, in the view of some scholars, for excluding data on African populations. Barry Kemp has noted that DNA studies could only provide firm conclusions about the population of Ancient Egypt if the sample results featured a significant number of individuals, which represented a broad geographical and chronological range." The first thing mentioned is that contamination is an obstacle. That is not a proper introduction to the topic. "Obstacle" is not defined. The reference used is 1999, eleven years before the first mummy discussed was tested under much more advanced technology and it is biased to use that as introduction to the topic and not mention that methods are used to try to exclude possible "obstacles", possible contamination and this varies from case to case. Then ABO frequencies are discussed. That is blood typing not DNA analysis, references are 1982 and 1993. Then an article is mentioned A study published in 1993 was performed on ancient mummies of the 12th Dynasty, reference again is old and no one has been able to find this on the internet Paabo S, Di Rienzo A (1993). "A molecular approach to the study of Egyptian history. and one wonders of the details and 1993 methodology. Right after citing this mysterious article which supposedly said they identified multiple lines of descent, some of which originated from Sub-Saharan Africa but other lineages were not identified, then further remarks in this intro "However, DNA grouping methods and classifications have attracted criticism, in the view of some scholars, for excluding data on African populations." First an example is cited of identifying descent from Sub-Saharan Africa but other lineages were not identified and then goes on to say "criticism, in the view of some scholars, for excluding data on African populations" !!! This is not objective commentary. It is an attempt at covering every base of a polemic. If you want to inform about limitations and methodology in DNA testing it should be updated to 2010 when Rameses III was predicted to carry Sub-Saharan DNA(!) and up to 2020 and ongoing constant improvements and new techniques. Central16 (talk) 20:38, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

@Central16 You continue to delete content that derive from peer-reviewed publications and revert the edit of other users. This may escalate into edit warring and lead to your account being blocked. You have included a paragraph without any supporting citations/counter-argument to the points raised by Keita and Kemp on methodological bias or unrepresentative DNA sampling. I have stated this previously, but if you are to make any changes then include sources to the pre-existing section which counter the views of the sources previously cited. Please see the answers below.

1. The information is not technically "outdated" as it was published with ongoing DNA studies at the time (Krings et al 1999, Paabo and Di Rienzo 1993). This article examines the DNA History of Egypt not the DNA studies of royal mummies from 2012 hence it is contextually relevant in documentating the entire history of DNA studies and the scholarly view on the applications/limitations of genetic testing.

2. You are factually incorrect, DNA studies on Egyptian mummies have been ongoing since the 1990s but the first genetic test on a royal mummy was on Ramses III in 2012. This article does not have an exclusive focus on those royal mummies so this is not a valid line of argument.

3. How is the criticism provided by Keita and Kemp biased ?, do you have any supporting evidence or is this your POV ?

4. Blood typing are an early form of genetic evidence and hence are relevant to the history of genetic testing.

5. The 1993 DNA study is cited in the secondary source which I have provided. Please, look at the secondary source carefully as that book is available online. It is a chapter from Egypt in Africa (ed Theodore Celenko) published in 1997. The chapter references the Paabo study and states: "A study of 12th Dynasty DNA shows that the remains evaluated had multiple lines of descent, including not surprisingly some from "sub-Saharan" Africa (Paabo and Di Rienzo 1993). The other lineages were not identified, but may be African in origin". Keita cites the publication as "Paabo, S., and A. Di Rienzo, A molecular approach to the study of Egyptian history. In Biological Anthropology and the Study of Ancient Egypt. V. Davies and R. Walker, eds. pp. 86-90. London: British Museum Press. 1993".

6. The criticism on DNA grouping methods/classifications were also raised by Keita/Kittles in a 1997 peer-reviewed study which is available online and the accompanying citation is included.

7. I provided an updated source from Keita that was published this year (2022) about some genetic studies still having a biased approach and the need to integrate other sources of evidence. However, you still deleted that source along with the entire sub-section.

8. "Ongoing constant improvements and new techniques", do you have any supporting evidence on how DNA studies have addressed the criticisms/points raised by the cited sources ? You could have included those supposed sources in the pre-existing section rather than delete content which has supporting references.

Your changes will continue to be reverted and you may be possibly blocked from editing if this behaviour continues. The most constructive change would be a reorganisation of the section but you cannot unilaterally decide to delete an entire sub-section without any consensual support, as all of the accompanying references are from modern sources and are relevant to the bio-historical focus of the article. WikiUser4020 (talk) 11:08, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

@WikiUser4020 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Central16 (talk • contribs) 22:33, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

It is misleading for you to say there were "ongoing DNA studies" of mummies in the 90s. You have shown no studies of mummies in the 1990s. DNA studies are published in peer reviewed scientific journals. You refer to one (unknowingly) to a chapter in a book, not studies.

The book is Biological Anthropology and the Study of Ancient Egypt by V. Davies and R. Walker is not a peer review science journal

It is early PCR amplification Paabo was doing on the liver of the mummy Nekht-Ankh and in a book chapter where he is discussing the topic more generally

They don't indicate which of the modern mitochondrial lineages were related to Nekht-Ankh because not all of those modern Egyptians had Sub-Saharan DNA

but Nekht-Ankh is covered in our article on a 2018 article: "The SNP identities were consistent with mtDNA haplogroup M1a1 with 88.05–91.27% degree of confidence, thus confirming the African origins of the two individuals"

There are different theories on the original of haplogroup M

This branch M1 is the African one, it might also be argued whether or not if African it is Sub-Saharan or North African. One can also notice that

even before this in 1989 Paabo had collected some mummy DNA and written about it in an article:

Ancient DNA: Extraction, Characterization, Molecular Cloning, and Enzymatic Amplification

but the article is about molecular cloning methods to amplify mitochondrial DNA sequences not about the specific mitochondrial DNA sequences of the mummies.

This is in infancy stage for DNA mummy analysis which did not become formative until the study in 2010 (pub 2012)

It is also biased to begin introductory remarks on ancient DNA by saying contamination is an "obstacle" but make no mention of methodology to bypass or reduce the influence of contamination and microbial damage which varies on a case by case basis. The Ancient DNA section here reference mummies tested 2010-2020. So remarks on contamination should refer to that whole period and technological progress throughout that period For instance newer methods such as doing multiple extractions from the mummies from different types of tissues, now including teeth and soon more advanced hair analysis from the same mummy can reduce contamination levels. Many of these methods were not being used in the 90s. Each of these articles discusses the contamination assessment details and methods they used.

You or someone had this:

"Keita (2022) argued that some genetic studies have a "default racialist or racist approach" and should be interpreted in a framework with other sources of evidence. "

Even if that might be somewhat reasonable critique in some cases is stated in an inflammatory way critique and doesn't belong in an encyclopedia on DNA recovered from mummies. That is more appropriate for Ancient Egyptian race controversy

When he says a "default racist approach" he is saying that in his opinion certain geneticists are racists. That it is their default attitude before they even present their argument.

I don't think this ""Keita (2022) argued that some genetic studies have a "default racialist or racist approach" and should be interpreted in a framework with other sources of evidence. " is appropriate for our article. Let Keita say that when someone goes to his article. I wouldn't stop you if you add instead " S.O.Y. Keita, a biological anthropologist, argued in 2022 that some genetic studies may be racially biased in their conclusions and also do not consider additional anthropological and morphological evidence" Central16 (talk) 22:30, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

@Central16 I have cited several DNA studies which was published pre-2012. (Krings et al 1999, Paabo and Di Rienzo 1993) and there are several more studies i.e. Cavalli-Sforza 1994 from that decade which were published. Paabo's work was published and hence can be featured as a reliable source of evidence per guidelines. You have no presented supporting evidence that his work was "private" but only repeated your personal interpretation of his work and DNA methodology in general. Please read the guidelines on reliable sources, secondary published sources qualify in this area: WP:SCHOLARSHIP or WP:SOURCE

You have not addressed any of my previous points or provided direct evidence which specifically counters the criticism by established scholars such as Keita and Kemp. The points you raised do not seem legitimate to justify removing the entire section and lack any supporting evidence hence I will no longer respond to your comments. WikiUser4020 (talk) 23:04, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

@WikiUser4020 you have posted zero studies prior to 2010 which report Ancient Egyptian DNA, zero. You don't know what a study is. A study is a peer reviewed article published in a scientific journal especially for a hard science topic such as genetics.

A chapter in a book is not a study. But the fact that you have posted no studies prior to 2012 is not a problem. The problem is actually the opposite, you are posting outdated commentary that should pertain to DNA analysis AFTER 2009 not before because this DNA article which pertains to DNA extraction methods technology 2012-2020 and ongoing improvements to reduce contamination issues but you didn't understand it and you know zero about measures to reduce contamination . You are using outdated sources and inflammatory political commentary, example "default racialist or racist approach". Central16 (talk) 04:01, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Keita 2022

The paper by Keita 2022,(which is btw spammed all over various Ancient Egyptian related articles) is misleading the readers. The specific part talking about STR loci affinity is cited by data from Hawass et al. 2010,which analyzed the Kinship of various mummies and analyzed 8 STR loci on disease and virus alleles and their distribution in African, European and East Asian populations. The readers must know what and how many STR locis got analyzed, as well as the specific meaning. Talking randomly about STR analysis is not encyclopedic. Furthermore, why is this cited all over Wikipedia, the impact on these topics is marginal to off-topic for various articles. The Hawass paper:. Keita cites the Hawass data in citation 102.-- 2A10:1FC0:5:0:0:0:BE95:FD8D (talk) 14:50, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

How exactly is Keita "misleading ?", the author explicitly cautions the reader that it is a single, affinity analysis and the results will depend on the associated interpretation. He cited the Hawass 2010 genetic study on the Amarna family and the 2012 study on Rameses III. Keita is a credible source and provides analysis on the genetic data on the Amarna and Rammesside mummies. Hence, the source can be cited in those related, pages on Wikipedia. There is no need to delete or omit cited, content as was attempted with the Candelora 2022 source. The source will and can remain as it is a peer-reviewed paper. That is in line with Wikipedia guidelines and editors of this page agreed with the strict use of peer-reviewed sources. The STR genetic data is already linked to an external page on the topic for general readers to access further information. Although, your amendments to the STR loci and links to the Hawass 2010 paper are fine and hence can remain as a compromise position. Overall, can you provide a secondary source disputing the methods of Keita or is this your personal view ?, assuming this is the latter then there is no need to keep this sub-section open as this is an authoritative source. WikiUser4020 (talk) 17:48, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Voicing agreement with 2A10:1FC0:5:0:0:0:BE95:FD8D (talk · contribs). This Keita addition was made by WikiUser4020 of course. Keita did not “analyse” anything, and did not “use” any algorithms, he is not conducting a “study”, and therefore he cannot “conclude” anything, the amount of misleading words in the presentation of Keita’s comment is terrible. This is a Keita piece titled "Ideas about Race". Presenting Keita’s commentary piece as a “study” with these misleading words is embarrassing. Keita is commenting as usual and sneaking in his semi-Afrocentric two cents as he usually does. He is citing the study itself for his own “an affinity with sub-Saharan” comment, and another source for the algorithm part. This is not a study, and this user (WikiUser4020) is misleadingly presenting it as a study. In fact, it contains a lot of ideological commentary all over, which is not surprising given that the paper is not a scientific study and it is titled “Ideas about Race”.
This user (WikiUser4020) is spamming the article with Keita comments, and abusing them to push his/her Afrocentric/Blackcentric view (doing it while denying it, as if other editors are blind), and presenting these comments as studies. This has mislead other users into titling the subsection as “2022 analysis by S.O.Y Keita”, which is misleading, and then even worse the title was changed by WikiUser4020 to “2022 STR Analysis and the population affinities of New Kingdom mummies by S.O.Y Keita” (diff), and then eventually other users were mislead into titling it “2022 study of affinities of the New Kingdom royal mummies”, all of this is done as if it is an actual study, as presented by this user with misleading words, and including Keita’s commentary on the “affinity” as part of the title as if it is an actual study of that, with “analysis” and “conclusion”. This is just bad, dishonest, and terribly misleading. Note also the tone in the above statement from this user’s reply above saying that “the source will and can remain”, a typical battleground attitude, and it’s exactly why I don’t want to engage with this user again; peer-reviewed does not translate automatically into a good use of the source or into the source being suitable for use in a specific article, and not every addition is a contribution. This user is also misleadingly asking in his/her reply above: “can you provide a secondary source disputing the methods of Keita?” Well, no one needs to provide any secondary source disputing the “methods” of Keita, because there are no “methods” of Keita, it is not a study.
I will try to bring the attention of other editors by prompting a discussion through an edit, there is no way to have a fruitful discussion with this user, who will just revert my edits and insist, so I can only hope that other editors notice the issue here, it takes a disagreement from two or three editors to put an end to this, this particular user should be forced to discuss his/her edits in detail before adding them, because his/her edits are done in rapid succession, burried in the middle of minor edits, and are misleading in a way that is not always obvious to the reader; as I’m pointing out in the user’s use of misleading words above and his/her misleading presentation of an opinionated commentary as if it is an actual study with “analysis”, “use of algorithms”, and “conclusion”. This is insulting to other users, and the cleanup is taxing. Plastering Keita all over the article is a long term issue with this user, along with other Afrocentrically/Blackcentrically motivated edits. If the 2022 Keita commentary piece titled “Ideas about Race” is to be restored, it must be only as a very concise short comment on the actual study, and must be presented with absolutely clear indication that it is a comment from Keita and that it is not a study. Because it is not a study. Masrialltheway (talk) 22:11, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

This is not a serious response but rather an incendiary claim of bad faith. I will address this in a number of ways.

I have never identified as an Afrocentric and made this clear in previous discussions. Although, I do take a strong anti-racist approach especially in relation to issues such as African history in which misrepresentation and cultural ignorance is a common issue. However, this hostile view towards African-centred reflects the disposition of the user above. The use of terms such as “Blackcentricity” only makes their personal views more explicit.

Keita is a mainstream biological anthropologist. His studies on the southern predynastic remains of Egypt are widely cited and corroborated by other established scholars such as Christopher Ehret, Kanye Godde and Sonia Zakrzewski. However, to dismiss and misrepresent his work as “semi-Afrocentric” reflects your non-scholarly views about the body of scholarship over recent decades.

I never misrepresented Keita’s work. I even included an in citation where he explicitly states “Analysis of the short tandem (STR) data published on Ramseses III and the Amanda ancient royal family (including Tutankhamun) showed a majority to have an affinity with “sub-Saharan” Africans on one affinity analysis”. Keita himself makes reference to the algorithm and how the results are dependent on this. Overall, this strongly suggests that the reader has not read the full article and it also features extensive commentary on the methodology of the 2017 genomic study as referenced in its title.

I did not originally split the Keita source into a separate sub area but simply revised the title in line with Keita's words which are referenced in the in citation. This is far from misleading but accusatory of bad faith.

The article does not only feature studies but commentaries and published works on the history of genetics from other scholars. This is an arbitrary point as criticisms and commentaries of DNA studies can be included to provide wider context about the reliability of the certain studies. Omitting this type of information is what is actually misleading to wider readers who may not understand issues with interpretations of data, low sample sizes or modelling methods.

You stated that “no one needs to bring any secondary sources disputing the methods of Keita”, in that case this is not a serious discussion grounded with supporting evidence from other scholars as seen with the 2017 criticism of the genome study but an accusatory tirade from a specific user.

All of my edits are well sourced as attested across various other related pages. I’ve sourced a range of scholars excluding Keita on the subject area. However, accussing me of misleading readers seems like a "projection", as I raised the issue of misrepresentation of work on other AE related articles especially on drawing broad conclusions from limited DNA studies rather than having a multi-disciplinary approach which features archaeology, anthropology, linguistics and genetics.

I’ve made it clear in the section on “Original research” that I will no longer be making active posts in future. In fact, I will no longer make any further responses to this user as it is hostile, POV tirade rather than a constructive effort to improve the quality of the article. I will re-include the source and tweak the title as several users (including myself) have revised the title over time. You are seriously in denial or deceiving yourself in regards to the accusations of bad faith as my edits are all based on credible, sources. WikiUser4020 (talk) 04:51, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

@WikiUser4020: No, plain and flat no, you have not responded to anything, you are just repeating what you did and dancing around the issue about this piece by Keita, but I’m not in the habit of repeating myself, my comment is above for everyone to read. You even half-quoted me and said that I said “no one needs to bring any secondary sources disputing the methods of Keita”. Here is what I said in its entirety: “Well, no one needs to provide any secondary source disputing the “methods” of Keita, because there are no “methods” of Keita, it is not a study”. Which is absolutely and incontestably true, there are no “methods” of Keita here, it is not a scientific study; go open any actual scientific genetic study to see what “methods” means. This is not an article about what the “zeitgeist related to the colonial enterprise” is trying to do; this Keita piece is flush with ideological views all over, as I stated in my comment, this belongs somewhere else and has no place here, maybe only a very short comment on the actual study, with only the very short relevant comment, about a sentence or two in length, as I said above. Half-quoting is quite hilarious here, you do know that other editors can read my comment above, right? What I’m stating is in my comment, stop embarrassing yourself, be honest and quote what someone is actually saying. And, again, stop trying to turn what I’m saying back at me, it’s silly and doesn’t work. And stop telling us about Keita’s occupation every time he comes up in a dispute, I have told you before that his occupation is not an automatic justification for anything here.

As to your views and ideology, stop saying that you haven’t stated your views, no one needs you to state your views, people can discern your views without you stating them, they are quite obvious from your edits, and they are utterly obvious from your old talk page comments on other pages. You are not nearly as subtle as you may think you are. And I’ll bring your views up every time I see you pushing them, no matter how much you scream “bad faith”, this is not about good or bad faith, I believe others should notice.

As to my own views, well, no need for you to speculate, let me state it to you clearly in case you are unable to figure it out: I’m an Egyptian, there is nothing more abhorrent to me than the nonsensical black-white dichotomy fights over Egypt, this nonsense has nothing to do with Egypt, my only single view here is that Egyptians should not be misrepresented in this particular article, specially by people like you, and as it happens, given the nature of this particular article, “not misrepresenting the Egyptians” in this particular article is absolutely equivalent to “not misrepresenting the scientific studies about them, or be misleading about them in any way, or be misleading in any presentation of anything in any way”, which in its turn is equivalent to adhering strictly to the Wikipedia guidelines that are really clever and the admins pretty much thought of everything. That is why you have been finding it impossible to be manipulative with me, you just simply can’t in this setting; and unfortunately for me, the only reason you are getting away with somethings is that time is a luxury that I’m not fortunate enough to have in large quantities, otherwise I would have made it extremely difficult for you to be manipulative or push your ideology in any article that pertains to Egyptians, and I would have pursued every edit of yours that is less than pristine on any article about Egyptians on the appropriate noticeboard if necessary, because you are not only pushing your ideology in a copious number of edits over many pages in very rapid succession (you even bragged to me before about the number of edits you are making as if it is automatically a good thing), you are also going to attract edits in the opposite direction of the nonsensical black-white dichotomy to counter your plastering of the articles with your ideology and with specific words that you are inserting, like you are doing here from commentaries (but I guess that is okay with you so long as you have inserted the word “sub-Saharan” as many times as possible in the articles), you are even citing a “History of Slavery” book somewhere in this article (what does that have to do with Egyptians? Well, we know what it has to do with your ideology, at least). I'll focus on the point, and try to resolve it with other editors below. Look at your response above, you are stating what you are doing with absolutely no response to my point about this piece by Keita, you are even trying to half-quote me to dismiss the point, bad move. Look at you talking about serious discussion, you have reverted my edit of course, exactly as I expected in my comment above. You have done nothing by changing the subsection’s title into “analysis and commentary”, it is still misleading, and my point still stands; again, Keita is not “analysing” anything, this is not a scientific study, and should not be presented in such verbose manner in a an entire section. Remember, you don’t own the article. Masrialltheway (talk) 18:29, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Nah you’re a white supremacist, it’s so obvious. 24.228.27.179 (talk) 04:56, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

The actual study, which published the DNA data, is Hawass et al. 2010. Keita appears to have put the data into the popaffiliator program as he did in 2018 with Gourdine et al. So it might be better to have a section on the 2010 study and include Keita's commentary there. Ario1234 (talk) 08:43, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

@Ario1234: I agree, and that is exactly what I’m proposing. I propose the following short comment from Keita, and nothing else is needed whatsoever, with clear indication that it is a comment from Keita, and I’m also making it more like how it is stated in the Keita piece (p.16 in the pdf file, which is p.108 in the page enumeration): “In a comment on “Hawas et al. (2010&2012)”, Keita stated his view that the majority of the samples ‘have an affinity with sub-Saharan Africans in one affinity analysis, which does not mean that they lacked other affiliations—an important point that typological thinking obscures.” Anything else is redundant and is WP:UNDUE for a single comment from something that is not a scientific genetic study. I also propose that the following should be added immediately after it, so that everything is absolutely clear to the reader: “Keita is citing the two studies by Hawas et al. (2010&2012) for his view about the affinity, but the two studies themselves do not make this statement.” This should be included as a comment in the end of the section titled “2020 study of Tutankhamun and other mummies of the 18th Dynasty”. Masrialltheway (talk) 19:00, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Bring scientific and academic sources that literally mention that the ancient and current Egyptians are similar. (No original research please) Sarah SchneiderCH (talk) 19:23, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

@Sarah SchneiderCH: I'm sorry, but what are you even talking about here? Are you commenting about something else? Masrialltheway (talk) 19:29, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

I haven't been able to read the Keita paper yet. Can you confirm if he just put the STR data into the popaffiliator program, like he did in this article: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327065612_Ancient_Egyptian_Genomes_from_northern_Egypt_Further_discussion . Or is there something new? Ario1234 (talk) 20:23, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

@Ario1234: No, Keita is not doing anything new in this cited 2022 piece, it is not a study, the 2018 source you are linking by Gourdine et al. is the one that is cited in the Keita 2022 piece for the "algorithm", which is itself just the online popaffiliator program; Keita is decent enough to admit that this is not a perfect situation, but I don't think we need such caveats to begin with, and we should definitely not present this as a study with its own section. And, this is not an "analysis" or "methods" in the sense used of these terms in genetic studies, which are much more involved than feeding into an online calculator. This link is to a paper that is focused primarily on criticizing Schuenemann et al. Should we strengthen the above proposition into "In a comment on “Hawas et al. (2010&2012)", Keita pointed out, based on the popafilliator online algorithm, that the majority of the samples...", instead of "Keita stated his view that the majority of the samples..."? I believe that is better and more neutral, and I apologize for not using "pointed out" from the start, because I was a little annoyed from the above exchange. But, what absolutely should not be used here are the words "analysed" and "concluded", they give a sense of something much more involved than feeding into an online calculator. The second proposition I made can be amended similarly or discarded with, to keep this as short and to the point as possible, as a short comment in the end of the section titled “2020 study of Tutankhamun and other mummies of the 18th Dynasty”, which I believe is the proper place for it. Masrialltheway (talk) 02:02, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

The 2020 Tutankhamun section is probably the right place. That data appears to be from 2010 though it was only published in 2020. Ario1234 (talk) 05:21, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

@Ario1234: There is indeed one published in 2010, but yes, that section is the proper place. I think the proposition I made above can be made a little bit more descriptive. I was trying to steer clear from directly addressing the “algorithm” that is cited by Keita in this piece, because there will be no addressing of the cited Keita piece itself, the discussion will instantly shift toward the “algorithm” itself, i.e., the popaffiliator online calculator, which would involve remarks about the Pereira et al. short paper which presents this online calculator (I haven’t read Pereira et al. before, but I read it after you made things explicit). Something to note is, Pereira et al. classifies three data sets: 3R (East Asia, Eurasia, and sub-Saharan Africa), 5R (3R + North Africa and the Near East), 7R (5R + Central-South America and North America). 3R is used, which means data from North Africa and the Near East are not part of the calculation here, which is significant. Note also the cautionary remarks in Pereira et al. about this calculator (p.12) which is geared toward being used in forensics. So, although I’m stating above that Keita is decent enough to admit that it is not a perfect situation, but he only does this in the context of what he is saying about racial schema, not really transparent enough about the significance of the absence of the aforementioned data specifically, but to be fair he is clear in saying that the Nile Valley would need substantial data. As I said above, we don’t need all of this, and to keep away from arguing about something else entirely, the focus should be on the citation itself, the fact that it is not a study, and the short comment that is relevant from it, and not presenting it in an entire verbose section and making it seem like it is something that it is not. So to make the proposition more descriptive, here it is in its entirety: "In a comment on Hawas et al. (2010&2012), Keita pointed out, based on inserting the data into the PopAffiliator online calculator (which only calculates affinity to East Asia, Eurasia, and sub-Saharan Africa, but not to North Africa or the Near East, for instance), that the majority of the samples: ‘have an affinity with sub-Saharan Africans in one affinity analysis, which does not mean that they lacked other affiliations—an important point that typological thinking obscures. Also, different data and algorithms might give different results, which would illustrate the complexity of biological heritage and its interpretation.'" This covers everything fairly from that comment, without making it seem like it is something that it is not. It is preserves the quotation bits that are in the current presentation, but with the direct precise quote, it tells the reader about the nature of this comment and presents it as a comment, not an entire verbose section that sets the stage for it and gives heavy weight, and it tells the reader more about the "algorithm". Masrialltheway (talk) 17:59, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that the Keita source is being cherry-picked to push a POV? Wdford (talk) 18:57, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but this POV pushing is done indirectly, by presenting it as a study, which it is not, by weight through large amount of text, and by presenting it in an entire verbose section titled "2022 study", or "2022 analysis", which is absolutely wrong, Keita is neither conducting a study in this 2022 source, nor is he analysing anything in this 2022 source, he is merely citing an earlier use of the aforementioned online calculator, which is limited as I'm saying above, and I just want this to be extra clear in the presentation. This Keita source can generally be described as sociological in nature maybe, and is not proper here, because given its nature it is not free of ideology; the word study in this article will be understood as a genetic study, which is misleading here. The user even removed the word "unfortunately" from the phrase "unfortunately only has three choices" in the Keita source, which I replaced in the proposition above by a more illustrative sentence on the nature of the calculator. If this were presented as a comment with clarity as to the limitations, as I'm suggesting above, I wouldn't have reacted that strongly against it, so long as things are clear to the reader. Masrialltheway (talk) 20:23, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

OK, I agree with that. As always in contested issues, we need to stick closer than usual to the source, and we need to be very clear about what the source is really worth. Putting data from other people's studies into an internet "calculator" is not scientific at all - it falls really into the same category as a website which tells you that everyone is only six removes from being related to both Kevin Bacon and Cleopatra. Such material needs to be presented in quotation marks to avoid copyright violations. If it is directly sourced, and directly quoted, then the POV pusher will have to accept it. The alternative is that it is declared non-RS and UNDUE, and is removed entirely. Cherry picking is not acceptable. We should also explain exactly what the internet "calculator" really is, and how reliable it can be assumed to be, so that readers can see how little this is worth. PS: This fake "study" has been inserted in other articles too. Wdford (talk) 06:40, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

So is anyone going to change the text? Ario1234 (talk) 10:02, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Masrialltheway's proposal, as it reflects Keita's article more faithfully than the current presentation as a "genetic study" when in fact it is a review article that comments on and contextualizes previous scholarship from the author's point of view. Masrialltheway's text also sufficently attributes the material to Keita without "ooh, that's just a personal view" and other weasel wording. The only problem is: where to put it? Obviously, it cannot appear in the (btw totally indiscriminate and unweighted) listing of individual studies. Maybe a dedicated subsection about critical reflections on the extant aDNA studies? We could also move the "Criticisms of the 2017 DNA study" there, and restore the uncensored presentation of Candelora's paper which I personally find much more inspiring than Keita's umpteenth attempt to tell us that aDNA has less to say about ancient humans than skeletal morphology (something that hardly any anthropologist would subscribe to these days).

On a more general note: genetic research does not happen in a vacuum, but always needs to contextualize data based on input from other disciplines. Scholars from other disciplines are certainly equipped and entitled to comment on the methodology of genetic studies and how they contextualize their findings. These voices are significant (e.g. without Heyd's "Kossinna's smile", genetic studies wouldn't have attained the degree of quality and interdisciplinary depth as we witness today). What we should avoid however, is to ascribe somew kind of "supreme wisdom" to such commentary surrounding genetic research which the implicit goal to diminish/demolish the significance of its research results. People like Keita and Candelora have important things to say, but that's about it. Spatiotemporal sample density and statistical modelling of data hopefully will steadily improve; geneticists will continue to tell us things that we may like or not, but there is no better tool for tracing ancient population history than that. We shouldn't give too much space to people who apparently still believe (NB I'm not talking about Candelora or Ehret!) that the size of fibula, tibia and stuff has higher explanatory power. Austronesier (talk) 11:38, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree with what Austronesier is saying in general about the discussions out of various disciplines, specially when it is based in good argumentation, and that those should be included where they belong, and as what they are. The problem with Keita in general is that he cannot help but be defensive against certain specific things, and oftentimes his arguments are in a certain specific direction, which is not always obvious. I‘ll focus on the content instead of the reservations about Keita. I’d say we initially include the proposal in the suggested subsection, and then if a subsection for critical discussion of the aDNA studies is to be created, as suggested by Austronesier, it should be moved there, or if other users see the alternative mentioned by Wdford as the proper way to go, then that can be done later. I’ll proceed to initially include it in the suggested subsection. Masrialltheway (talk) 19:18, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

@Austronesier This is a side point but I just wanted to correct the glaring, mischaracterisation of Keita. He does not privilege anthropological findings above genetic studies as implied.

Biological anthropology and genetics evaluate different aspects of human biology. The former examines physical traits to understand evolutionary history such as skeletal anatomy whilst the latter examines the study of genes and genetic variation. There is some overlap between the related fields but they provide value in distinct, key areas.

Keita specifically criticizes the genetic determinism found among some writings such as the 2017 DNA study which presents genetics as the conclusive answer to determining the origins and ethnicity of the ancient Egyptians.

1)Firstly, he explicitly argues for a multi-disciplinary approach in which archaeology, anthropology, genetics and historical linguistics complement each other to determine the origins and population affinities of the ancient Egyptians. The need for various sources of evidence was also expressed by the International Scientific Committee for the UNESCO General History of Africa in the concluding report of Volume II publication to determine the peopling/population history of Egypt. Improvements in genetics will not negate this view that a multi-disciplinary approach takes precedence over a single source of evidence as has already been echoed by Keita, Ehret and likely among UNESCO scholars in the forthcoming Volume 9 UNESCO publication.

2) Furthermore, genetics is a relatively new area of research and there have been a limited amount of studies applied to ancient Egyptians. Keita raises this point and the fact, there have been no current DNA studies applied to the skeletal remains of pre-dynastic, southern Egyptians. Yet, there have been several modern biological anthropological studies on the skeletal remains over decades which serve as a body of work for modern scholars. Also, the available genetic studies have examined genetic markers and affinities rather than histology such as skin tissue which is more relevant to the determining the physical appearance of the ancient Egyptians.

I will not respond to the accusatory, unsourced and prejudicial comments above by either Wdford or Masrialltheway in which they make personal attacks simply becasue they dislike the range of reliable sources that I have presented.

WikiUser4020 (talk) 14:45, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

I will not answer in detail lest we might go in circles as we did before. Just two things that I find revealing: a) determining the origins and ethnicity of the ancient Egyptians: the ethnicity of ancient Egyptians is beyond doubt – they were ancient Egyptians, people of km.t. Unless of course when you use "ethnicity" as a euphemism for "race", which brings me to b) genetic studies have examined genetic markers and affinities rather than histology such as skin tissue which is more relevant to the determining the physical appearance of the ancient Egyptians: seriously? Skin color is relevant? Back to the paper bag? Back to the obsolete ideological debate about the "ownership" of the ancient Egyptian civilization based on s-k-i-n c-o-l-o-r? I don't think you should edit articles about population genomics when you think that the determination of genetic ancestry is just a lesser tool for the higher goal of estabilishing the skin color of ancient individuals and entire populations. That's a kind of thinking that is very remote from everything that Keita(!) and all other modern scholars represent. In defense of Keita: his aim as a physical anthropologist (and NB, genetics is part of physical anthropology too!) is not different from that of population geneticists: to determine the biological ancestral origin(s) of the people of ancient Egypt. Further, Keita, geneticists and scholars from other disciplines agree that this is just one piece when talking about the origins of the ancient Egyptian civilization. The other main parameters are culture and language, and they don't necessarily have to overlap 100%. Keita is right that the current sampling density is insufficient to tell whether the population of the ancient Egyptian civilization was indigenous to the Nile valley, thus being a continuation of the unsampled pre-agrarian population in the same area, or whether they received substantial geneflow from the south or north during the formative period. Phenotypical morphology is pretty irrelevant here unless it serves as a preliminary proxy for genetic ancestry as long as no aDNA has been extracted from skeletal remains (although examples from ancient Americans and southern China have shown that morphological ancestry estimates can be very much hit-and-miss; that's quite the opposite of what Keita writes all over the place). –Austronesier (talk) 20:48, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

@Austronesier You are mischaracterising my views again with this straw man positioning. I raised this topic of ethnicity originally in response to the comments by @Masrialltheway and his characterisation of Keita as a "semi-Afrocentric". Although, I would rather avoid further discussions with the user given his accusatory claims.

You are confusing "ethnicity" with "nationality" and traditional concepts of race. I have already clarified this in previous talk section in the AE race controversy article that raising discussions around the the population origins/ethnicity of the ancient Egyptians does not necessarily mean reigniting the old, racialist debates. However, stating the ethnicity of the ancient Egyptians were "ancient Egyptians" is a vague statement.' The earliest southern Egyptians, would have had close biological and cultural ties with Saharan and Sudanese communities and been largely indistinguishable from those southern communities. I don't think this a controversial point to make especially in light of the upcoming UNESCO publication.

"Skin color is relevant? Back to the paper bag? Back to the obsolete ideological debate about the "ownership" of the ancient Egyptian civilization based on s-k-i-n c-o-l-o-r? I don't think you should edit articles about population genomics when you think that the determination of genetic ancestry is just a lesser tool for the higher goal of estabilishing the skin color of ancient individuals and entire populations"

I really think you need to understand the specific points that I am raising and not draw hasty, presumptive conclusions. I never mentioned the terms "paper bag" or "ownership" as Keita and Schuenemann et al both referenced histological indicators in their works, I don't think that it is necessarily a controversial point and arguably informative of the phenotype and evolutionary adapation of the ancient Egyptians.

I never stated that genetics was a lesser tool but was discussing this in the context of the determining the population origins of Ancient Egypt and the inflammatory comments raised by @Masrialltheway. Genetics has been raised by both Ehret and Keita in relation to this fundamental question.

The material culture and language do need to support genetics/physical anthropology. This cannot be understated and this not my personal opinion but explicitly argued by scholars such as Ehret in his 2023 publication (please re-read the fifth chapter). Kanya Godde also cited archaeological and anthropological evidence to demonstrate population affinities. The emphasis on a multi-disciplinary approach was also iterated in the concluding report of the UNESCO Volume II publication and will likely be featured again the upcoming Volume 9 publication.

In relation to the comments on Ancient Americans and China, can you at least provide supporting evidence and not make unsourced opinions ? (I did mention in a previous post that discussions would be constructive with credible sources)

Yes, it would be sensible to keep the discussion to a minimum as I did mention the post above was a side note to 1) correctly characterise the work of Keita and 2) respond to the incendiary claims of Masiraltheway. It was not to downplay the scientific validity of genetic studies in itself but address the assertions made by Masrialtheway which unfortunately touched upon the ethnicity question on this particular page. WikiUser4020 (talk) 21:52, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Keita was born Jon Walker in the USA, he changed his name to sound more "African", and he has written extensively about "race". Keita definitely does lean heavily toward an Afrocentric origin for Ancient Egypt, and he is not slow to dig out his standard quiver of "facts" to respond to any new evidence which indicates the contrary.

Obviously the ethnicity of the ancient Egyptians were "ancient Egyptians". Any other definition of ethnicity would be a racial discussion.

The statement that "The earliest southern Egyptians, would have had close biological and cultural ties with Saharan and Sudanese communities and been largely indistinguishable from those southern communities", is clearly an attempt to establish a claimed racial affinity – so the POV at work here is once again made blatantly clear.

Exhaustive discussions on various talk pages have clearly established that the various peoples of the area have been trading for millennia, that the Qustul burner itself was imported from Egypt, and specifically that much ancient Egyptian art and other pre-Dynastic "culture" was influenced by links with Mesopotamia. Focusing on putative links with Nubia and parts south, and claiming that this demonstrates that they would have been "indistinguishable" from Egyptians, is transparent POV pushing.

The language of the ancient Egyptians was vastly different to that of their immediate neighbours in Nubia.

Biologically, the old and disputed limb ratios and cranial shapes argument has been undermined repeatedly by scientific proof that these "measurements" will change due to climate, and do not necessarily indicate any original "race" – in a primitive society (without heating and air-conditioning) all communities living in similar climates will quickly acquire a physical resemblance.

On the other hand, the available DNA shows a much stronger affiliation to the Middle East, and tons of ancient Egyptian art shows the ancient women to have been very pale indeed – totally unlike anything from "Saharan and Sudanese communities", and very distinguishable indeed.

When is this much-hyped new "UNESCO publication" going to arrive please? Wdford (talk) 11:34, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

@Wdford I will not provide another rebuttal to prejudicial, ignorant, accusatory and unsourced comments. All of the points above are factually wrong and the biological and cultural affinities have been attested in a range of modern archaeological, biological and linguistic data/studies. I have addressed this in the AE race controversy talk section with cited scholars which included Ehret, Keita, Smith, Wendorf, Godde, Lovell and Zakrzewski. That is not my POV but the results of those modern studies which serve as the basis of scholarship in evaluating the origin of AE. This will be reconfirmed in the upcoming UNESCO publication which is internationally recognised. You can do your own research in determining the release date as I will no longer engage in these pointless discussions. I think it is time to draw this section to a close. WikiUser4020 (talk) 12:49, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

And yet more cherry-picking, to support your racial POV. The argument has indeed raged in the AE race controversy talk section, where tons of cited evidence was presented to undermine your POV - including from these very sources. However as usual you brush over all scholarship which does not support your POV. Wdford (talk) 14:49, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

References

A "plain English" summary section is needed at the end of this article.

It's too technical for the average person to sift through. Boil it down to a series of main points, please. Thank you. 2600:8801:BE01:7C00:C5CA:D95C:59A:D4F1 (talk) 00:44, 21 January 2023 (UTC)